Mona in Three Acts

by Griet Op de Beeck

  2

  “These are occupied,” the lady says quickly, her expression suggesting she’s under siege by enemy troops. With the aid of a large umbrella, a big shopping bag, and two children’s sweatshirts, she has managed to appropriate a total of seven chairs.

  “I just wanted to sit on this one. My brother and his wife are sitting there.” I point to Alexander and Charlie, and then to the only chair that doesn’t have any of her belongings on it. The woman continues to look at me mistrustfully. “I’ve come to watch my godchild,” I add.

  “Oh,” she replies, somewhat apologetically.

  I sit down. “Sorry, Marcus was late for the meeting, so I couldn’t get here any earlier.”

  “Don’t worry, they haven’t even started,” Charlie says.

  “So, is Marvin nervous?”

  “Yes, they’re performing a dance the teacher taught them, and she used to do jazz dance or something. Anyway, she’s set the bar pretty high. Marvin has been struggling with it.” Charlie smiles. She doesn’t look like the average mother walking around here. Since her clothing line has become an international success, Alexander has mainly been the one taking care of Marvin, which seems to work fine for him.

  The show is supposed to begin in a couple of minutes. Children rush to and fro, talking away; parents and grandparents are everywhere, looking for seats; a man with a curly mustache is filming the audience with a video camera, which I find a bit odd.

  “So, are you optimistic about his chances?” Charlie asks.

  “Dad’s? I’m trying to be. I think I failed him, though.”

  Alexander leans forward to hear me better. “What do you mean?”

  “We did mention it to each other. Charlie, when was that? At that dinner for my thirty-fifth, we noticed that Dad had lost a lot of weight.”

  Charlie nods. “He said he wanted to lose the belly and that he was much more active now that he’d retired. And he was eating fewer sweets. It all sounded reasonable. He went for lots of walks with that bird guide he bought, which he’d wanted for ages. And he cleared out the garage and the attic and that old shed at the other end of the garden. He was constantly doing stuff.”

  “Yes, but I should have asked more questions. I should have known you have to with Dad. The doctors said we caught it quite late.”

  “Do you know what Mom is saying now?” Alexander’s expression is serious. “That he was doing all those odd jobs so slowly because he couldn’t go any faster, and that he didn’t really go out walking, he just drove somewhere and went to sleep on a bench.” My brother recounts this dryly, factually. “He was also eating more than he used to, trying to compensate for the weight loss.”

  “Why is Marie only telling us now?”

  “I was talking to her about it the day before yesterday, and she told me she’d known for some time that something was wrong.”

  “Why didn’t she ever say anything to us, then?”

  “Dad didn’t want her to, apparently. I always thought it was weird that he gave his dental practice to that young guy. He’s only sixty-one, after all, and he’s done nothing but work his entire life.”

  “That was exactly why it made sense to me. He made it sound convincing, anyway.”

  “Yes, he was always good at making things sound convincing. That was his specialty, wasn’t it?” Alexander seems somewhere between irritated and pitying as he says this. “Mom said he simply couldn’t keep up the pace.”

  “When did he stop working?”

  “A good year ago?” Charlie glances at my brother. Alexander nods. “Typical of your dad, really, that he kept going, despite those warning signs. He’s always been scared of illness and doctors, like a lot of people in the medical profession, in fact.” Charlie points at the stage. “Look, Marvin is standing in the wings. Can you see him?”

  We wave, but he’s already gone. I think about Dad, about how quiet he was at that party. And the way he hinted about it being bedtime at ten thirty and the way I lovingly laughed it off, assuming that he was just teasing me.

  “He did look exhausted at that dinner for my birthday.”

  “What did you say?” Alexander asks, his gaze fixed on the stage as though he still has a chance of spotting Marvin, I suspect.

  “Nothing. Never mind.” The family of the woman with the besieged chairs turns up. The man who sits next to me smells of gym locker rooms. I turn a little more toward Charlie. “I don’t get why Marie didn’t encourage him to go to the doctor sooner.”

  “Marie encourage Vincent?” Charlie adds a little laugh.

  “Mom doesn’t have any influence over him, Mona. You know that.”

  “I don’t understand how I missed it, I’m usually so—”

  Then music blares from the speakers, a Christina Aguilera song, I think. Around twenty children walk onto the stage, one at a time. Then suddenly they all jump into the same pose. Marvin is in the front row, his face a picture of concentration. They adopt a different pose and then move from one foot to the other as they do something rhythmic with their arms. You can hardly call it Art with a capital A, yet I feel myself getting goose bumps. I wave at Marvin while his act is still going on, a silly, poorly timed gesture, pride expressed clumsily.

  I wonder whether Dad ever attended one of our school shows. I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I can’t remember him ever having done that.

  3

  The gastroenterologist, a new doctor, is speaking. He talks in a muted way, as though words are less cutting when spoken more quietly. He has adopted his most neutral expression. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d practiced it in front of the mirror in his student days. Not a trace of a frown, corners of his mouth turned neither up nor down, eyes neutral—it’s an art in itself. Not that I expect doctors to writhe around on the floor in misery at each depressing diagnosis, but something that could be taken for sympathy, that would be nice. As his colleague speaks, Cleavage looks down, sniffs, coughs, clicks his ballpoint pen in and out four times, runs his hand through his thin hair, and straightens his shoulders as though he’s suffering from back pain.

  Marie perceives these men differently than I do. She’s the daughter of a cardiologist, she knows her way in this world—that’s what she wants to project. She uses slightly less common medical terms that aren’t necessarily useful in the context: carcinoma for tumor, sedative for tranquilizer, rubella for measles. She names this childhood illness as part of the list of complaints she’s had to bear, to show that she’s experienced in suffering pain and afflictions. She comes up with questions that aren’t aimed to solicit replies but to show off what she knows. She goes out of her way to compliment the doctors on their skills and knowledge, which, if you ask me, they haven’t demonstrated yet. Alexander attempts to use each of Marie’s pauses for breath to try to find out what exactly is going on.

  And I look on from a chair I’ve pulled up. I don’t like it that Dad isn’t here himself—Marie didn’t want him to be. It amazes me that the doctors agreed to it, but there are many things here that amaze me. I don’t feel like listening, a few words tell us enough: the operation will be palliative. That the tumor in his bowels is probably quite substantial. There’s a genuine chance that it’s stuck to other organs. They won’t be able to tell until they open him up. In the worst-case scenario, he’ll need a stoma, temporarily at least. Each sentence rules out certainties. Right at the very end, the gastroenterologist adds that, if all goes well, he’ll still have some time. They don’t want to put a number on it, of course, but somewhere between two and five years is imaginable if all goes well.

  Suddenly, Cleavage wakes up from his little coma. “If all goes well,” he repeats for the third time.

  If you know you’ve got five years to live at the most, are you dying? Can you say goodbye to someone for five years?

  The doctors shake our hands, wish us the obligatory good luck, and send us back out into the hallway. And we stand there, the three of us, outside of time for a moment. No one speaks, no
one looks at anybody, no one takes the initiative. You need space for a realization to sink in.

  When Cleavage comes out of the consultation room, we’re all still there. Marie looks like she’s been caught out. “Come on,” she says, hurrying toward the cafeteria, as she tells us all the things you can get there, like we wouldn’t know.

  “This is a sorry excuse for pie.” Marie sighs as she eats her apricot pie.

  She rarely eats sweets in public, but the large slice of apricot pie—The portions are comfort-sized in the hospital, I couldn’t help but think when I saw the way they cumbersomely filled the plates—is disappearing fast. Alexander sips his coffee and looks at me as though it’s my turn to speak. I avert my gaze.

  The cafeteria is located in the hospital’s new wing. They tried to make it look cheerful: a wall painted dusky pink next to a pale-green one, everything else in fresh whites, laminate tables and dark-gray chairs with aluminum legs, shiny tiled floors and wacky light fixtures in the same creamy white as the ceiling.

  Marie and Alexander are in agreement and they want me to agree with them too. That’s how we do things in this family, we agree because we love each other. And that love must be constantly reaffirmed by, for example, uniting in support of a single, clear-cut vision of things. Often Marie’s vision, because we don’t want her to be unhappy. Her happiness has always been very important, probably because her unhappiness is so toxic. A woman who has done so much for you, when you’re not even her own child. I look at her, I can see that she’s suffering, the face hovering above the pie is not open to misinterpretation. But this request of theirs is difficult for me.

  “Dad is an intelligent adult, doesn’t he have the right to know what’s wrong with him?”

  Marie’s eyes grow cold.

  Alexander takes off his watch and lays it beside him on the table, like he wants to measure how long it will take me to change my mind. “Mona, you know that Dad can’t handle it. He was so afraid of having cancer that he ignored the pain all that time. The idea that there’s no cure would destroy him. It would be a form of egotism for us to burden him with it. What’s more, it’s better for him medically to remain optimistic, isn’t it? It would increase the chances of him getting a few more good years. That’s how you should look at it.”

  That’s how I should look at it. Alexander means it kindly, I get that. Marie is scraping the last bits of pie from her plate with her fork, not looking at me. I want to make a plea for all that is authentic and honest, for people to be taken seriously even if they are afraid, for looking hard reality in the face even when that’s not easy. But experienced as I am at weaseling, I just say, “I think Charlie would agree with me.”

  “Charlie’s not family,” Marie says. Alexander looks at her. “Well, not really. You know what I mean.”

  I finally surrender. As we get up, Alexander grabs hold of me. He never does that. And then Marie turns it into a group hug. I feel her bony body against mine; she smells of hair that hasn’t been washed for a long time and coconut lip balm.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without my children. I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course we do, Mommy,” Alexander says.

  “We have to be there for each other at times like these. We’ll help each other through it.”

  Marie goes in to Dad; I wait outside the building with Alexander. He smokes a cigarette nervously and looks at me like he wants me to ask him something.

  “Are you all right, bro?”

  “I’m so glad I never became a doctor.” He throws his burning stub onto the asphalt and lets it smolder there. I stamp it out and smile at him, but he doesn’t notice. My brother’s face hardens. So cold, now of all times. I should probe further, there’s something behind it, guaranteed.

  “Isn’t it high time we got in touch with Anne-Sophie?” Asking a new question is easier than providing an answer sometimes.

  “We should suggest that to Mom and Dad, shouldn’t we? Let’s wait until after the operation, then we’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with, right?”

  4

  “Oh, that was it. You asked if I’d go to see your dad with you tomorrow, but it’s not going to work, because I’ve just reached a crucial chapter and I can’t stop now.” Louis says this casually as he breaks a sugar lump in two and puts half in his coffee.

  “How sweet of you.”

  “I don’t need your sarcasm.”

  “My last bit of sarcasm dates from before the Punic Wars. I’m just fed up with having to nag you about this kind of thing.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Um, well, your egocentrism, your lack of empathy, your way of dealing with people: how they’re hurled into the deep freeze whenever you’re busy with something and not allowed out again until it’s convenient for you. Take your pick.”

  “I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “You don’t understand. Only people who write can understand.”

  “Fine. I already said I didn’t feel like nagging.” I turn back to my book.

  “Listen, honey pop, you know I sympathize with what you’re going through, but you’ve known me long enough now to know how important it is for me not to stop when I’ve reached a crucial section.”

  “And last week it was important you took part in that library event, and two days ago you absolutely had to attend that launch as though literature’s fate would be sealed without you.”

  “You knew I was a writer when you got involved with me.”

  “And last weekend, Arlette needed you desperately, and last Thursday you were coming down with something there was no trace of the next day, I have to say.”

  “I filled a whole hankie with snot. What if your dad had caught something on top of it all?”

  “Even if you didn’t have a real excuse, you’d invent something so you didn’t have to come.”

  “As if your dad’s so eager to see me.”

  “I absolutely don’t expect you to come with me every time, but now and again, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “You know all this reminds me of those terrible things I went through: my brother dying, my godmother passing away three years ago. I find it really hard to cope with.”

  “And where was I when your godmother was on her deathbed?”

  “Yes, you came with me a lot and I’m grateful for that. You’re stronger than me.”

  “That’s easy enough to say. It wasn’t easy for me, but I did it for you.”

  “As if I haven’t done an unbelievable amount for you already.”

  “Name three things. They don’t even have to be recent.”

  “Just two weeks ago: I took you to that Michelin-starred restaurant you’d wanted to go to for ages.”

  “That was a late birthday present, which was a tiny bit fancy because you didn’t give me anything at all the year before. Plus, you wanted an excuse to go anyway.”

  “OK, fine. But when you were worried about keeping your father’s long-term prognosis from him, I discussed it with you at length.”

  “You didn’t discuss it with me. You launched into a monologue about the way you saw it, mainly making me feel like I shouldn’t stick up for myself. It’s been bothering me ever since.”

  “Come on, that was a good conversation.”

  “You thought so. But let’s take that as one example. Now two more.”

  “. . .”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “You’re pressuring me so much I can’t think. But you know how much I love you.”

  “Nothing is easier than saying that, eh?”

  “No one will ever love you more than I do, and you know it. You’re playing a perverse game, tripping me up on my words.”

  “I asked a simple question and you don’t have an answer.”

  “Mrs. Manipulator at work.”

  “Like manipulation’s not your greatest talent.”

  “Here we go agai
n. I’m good with words, yes. If I’m not mistaken, that’s one of the things you fell for about me.”

  “That’s true.”

  “It’s sweet of you to say so. Really, you’re a good girl, with a good heart, I know that.”

  “You’re the one who slipped up, you know.”

  “You’re stopping me from doing my work, making a scene just because I have to write, and I’m the one who slipped up? Well, everything’s a matter of perception.”

  “I said right away that I didn’t want to get into a discussion, and I always—and I mean always—go along with your wishes when it comes down to it.”

  “Exactly—when it comes down to it. But not without nagging my ears off for hours first.”

  “I bite my tongue all the time, Louis. It’s just—I often feel let down, and now, with this whole horrible business—”

  “If life with me is so shitty, then you should look for someone else. A nice boring man with a dull job who sits down next to you on the sofa every evening to have a nice chat about the trivialities of the day and the concerns of your heart.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. But you’re the other extreme. And now, now that my father’s ill, I’m finding it harder than usual. Is that allowed? I’m only human, you know.”

  “Mona’s only human—I’ve never heard that before, that little line.”

  “Maybe I have reason to say it now and again.”

  “If I make you so unhappy, I’ll leave you. Then you’ll be free and everything will be better.”

  “Ach.”

  “No, not ach. I will say this now: I’m sick and tired of it, this crap about me being an egotist. Well, wake up—we live in individualistic times, everyone’s looking out for number one. You too; you want to claim me for yourself, while I don’t have any space for that in my head. This is not what I expect from a relationship. I expect support and understanding and—”

  “And I’m not giving you that?”

  “Sometimes, yes, but not all the time. You have no idea what it does to me, constantly having to hear that I’m failing in my duties. I don’t know if I can keep dealing with it. I sometimes think seriously about—”