Mona in Three Acts

by Griet Op de Beeck

  As I’m putting my shoes back on, the woman on the other end of the conveyor belt asks, “Whose luggage is this?” She points at Marcus’s bag. Murphy’s Law and me.

  I feel like just walking on, but I put away the rest of my stuff, take my luggage, and go over to the lady. She’s a large woman, almost as big as Marcus. She has a slight squint, not a bad one but just enough to confuse you. She’s holding Marcus’s toiletry bag and taking out all kinds of bottles: shampoo, shower gel, aftershave, deodorant, night cream. Night cream, you can only be so tough, apparently. I try to imagine Marcus late at night in front of the mirror, having just snorted a line of coke, now dabbing at his skin with delicate fingertips.

  “Sir, don’t you know that liquids and gels have to be packed in a transparent, resealable plastic bag?”

  “I didn’t have a bag.”

  “Well, you can get them here.” There’s something implacable about her, she’s probably been like that all her life. “Besides, these bottles are all much too big.” I look at Marcus. I see the veins in his neck tighten, they rise up out of the skin, blue and threatening. “You understand I’ll have to take them from you, sir.”

  “Christ, what shocking treatment people get here. Those are my things and I don’t want to arrive in Berlin stinking to high heaven.” He looks at her defiantly. I consider doing something, but I don’t know what.

  “Complaining won’t get you anywhere, sir. We’re just doing our job.” She takes two small containers from his bag, vitamins, I think, and a strip of pills. “And do you have certificates from your doctor to say you need these supplements and this medication?” She opens the containers, looks inside, and sniffs at them.

  “Pardon?” Marcus roars.

  “I’ve never heard of that either, that you’d need something like that,” I say, adopting my friendliest expression.

  “You can find it all on our website, ma’am. You should try that sometime: reading up on important matters beforehand. It would save us a lot of time and hassle.” She turns around and bends down to get a trash can.

  And then it happens. Marcus gives the woman a shove; she falls and cracks her head on the table; he grabs some of his belongings and runs off. This is the kind of craziness that only an intoxicated Marcus is capable of. With two security guys running after him, Marcus bumps into a woman with a stroller, falls over, and scrambles to his feet again. Now the men have caught up with him. They attempt to stop him, but he strikes out, his fist clenched, and smacks one of the men in the face. The man falls to the ground and grabs at his nose with both hands. A third security guard turns up, a real burly-looking fellow. After some pushing and shoving, they manage to get Marcus under control and two of them cart him off. I stand there watching, frozen to the spot, amazed by the absurdity of the situation. The woman is back on her feet again by now, she seems slightly more cross-eyed than before, but that could just be my imagination.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say prissily. “He’s a little on edge.”

  The woman doesn’t reply, doesn’t even glance at me, and I don’t blame her. A colleague puts our baggage to one side. The flow of passengers is moving smoothly again.

  I say to the security man standing nearby, “We’re supposed to board in a minute.”

  “Well, your husband should have thought about that earlier.”

  I don’t want them to think we’re married, but I don’t have the energy for an argument. “Where did they take him?”

  The man simply points.

  “Sorry,” I say again, and then think about how sick I am of having to apologize for him. I put his things in my purse, pick up the bags, one in each hand, and head off in the direction the finger pointed. I’ve already had enough of this day.

  More than two hours later, Marcus emerges from the small room: a small boy, walking dejectedly, lost his mommy on a busy shopping street. He looks around, one hand over his eyes. It’s because the sunglasses are gone, I think, that the gaze strikes me like this, so suddenly. He comes over, barely dares to look at me, and leaves his nose alone. Adrenaline sobers you up, and time in this case.

  “The flight—”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve informed Hans that we’re delayed. What do you think, should we try to get another flight or—”

  He interrupts me again, very quietly. “I’ll have a long talk with him over the phone tomorrow.”

  I give Marcus his things back and roll the bag right next to his legs. He doesn’t even look up.

  “They called the police, that’s why it took so long. I broke my sunglasses when I fell, goddamn it.”

  “What now?”

  Marcus shrugs. He takes his bag and goes outside, I follow him. When he reaches the automatic doors, he stops and lights a cigarette. He sucks on it and stares ahead. Regret always comes later with him. Then he looks at me from under his bangs, sheepishly almost. “Headache,” he says. “They come on suddenly, like storms.” He just stares. “You must be so angry with me.”

  “Less angry than you probably are at yourself. Maybe it would do you good to go back to—”

  “It’s not normal, I think, you being so nice.”

  “Probably not, no.” After I’ve said this with a forced smile, I wonder why, actually.

  “Can I please take you to lunch at a fancy restaurant, my treat, to make it up to you? Then I’ll drop you off at home.”

  “Oh, Marcus. I think I’d rather—”

  He throws his cigarette in the gutter and suddenly hugs me. This big, tough man clamps his strong arms around my body. Strangely fragile, it feels, and intimate. It takes him a long time to let go. “You’re my best friend, do you know that?”

  I smile a little, almost sarcastically. “Indispensable. To the theater too.”

  I let Marcus take me to lunch at a restaurant he apparently remembers that I like. We order the four-course menu and drink wine. We talk about the play but also about life, and his problems, and my father. He says I should say what I still have to say, before it’s too late, he really regretted not doing that. Without his sunglasses on, everything seems to go much more smoothly. Marcus doesn’t even drink too much, he is human, a warm man. As he eats his dessert—he has a sweet tooth—I look at the famous director sitting opposite me, this big kid, and I wonder what binds me to him. Maybe I unconsciously know the answer.

  11

  Cleavage told Marie yesterday that he’d hoped the gentleman would heal more rapidly after his operation but that, even so, things were progressing in the right direction, step by step. From a man who makes everything sound like a hopeless drama, this almost feels like optimism.

  It’s a gloomy day, clouds threaten outside, but I’m fine here. I have finally managed to spend a few hours with Dad on my own. He’s telling me about the quiz show he watched last night: if he’d been one of the contestants, he’d have had a good chance of winning. That must mean he’s getting better, he thinks. He gives me an encouraging look, as though I’m the person who needs to get better. And then I say it, just like that, having wanted to subtly steer the conversation in that direction, test the waters. I say it, I lay it down, carefully but unavoidably, between us: the hidden story, the letters, J. Dad doesn’t seem angry. There’s a touch of dismay in his eyes, though.

  “You haven’t mentioned it to anyone, I hope?”

  “No, Louis is the only one who knows about it.”

  “Promise me you’ll keep it between us.”

  This is tricky because of my brother and sister, but I don’t want to be difficult.

  “I promise.”

  “Are you angry with me?”

  I wouldn’t know how to be, I realize. “No, just curious.”

  Then he begins to tell me. First hesitantly, but then more eagerly. As though he’d been waiting centuries to be able to.

  Her name was Joanna. He’d met her at a party that Marie hadn’t attended because of a headache. He noticed Joanna in the far corner of the room, she was drinking a cocktail thro
ugh a straw, he still remembered that, and he wanted to keep on looking at her, he tells me. Not only because he found her attractive, not only because she had an infectious laugh, but because there was something about her, in her, something he wanted to be close to, that’s how it had felt.

  He’d gone to talk to her because he couldn’t not, and they started chatting. They skipped the dinner and took a walk in the late-evening light, and during those few hours, he’d been more honest about himself than he ever had to anyone before. Because it was easy with her, because she was open too, toward him.

  He talks about her like everything in his life was supposed to lead to that one point. A softness has come over him since he said her name, a softness that I’ve always suspected more than actually seen.

  Four days later, they met up again, and then—he wavered for a moment—they made love. He seemed to want to explain how exactly it had gone, but when he suddenly seemed to realize he was talking to his daughter, he stopped. He’d thought that it might blow over if they did that, perhaps it was about the conquest, that’s what he’d told himself, but it hadn’t worked that way. She was the loveliest, strangest person he’d ever met, he says, so different from the others. He’d never believed that one person belonged to another person before, but she’d made him, the sober-minded man, reconsider. It was something he’d wanted all his life.

  There is vastness in his eyes, and rain and whispers and wind blowing, as though he’s elsewhere, which he is, I believe. “Joanna wanted me,” he says, she wanted him. She’d said so after a good five months. Five months in which they’d seen each other when they could, in which she’d written him letters, in which they’d found each other and comforted and helped each other, in which they’d told each other their whole life stories, and then all over again, in which they did things for the first time: skinny-dipping in the pond at the back of the Goovaerts’ family estate (they were never there in the summer anyway), licking a single ice-cream cone together, chocolate—both their favorite—with teasing enjoyment, and then really greedily as though they were momentarily adolescents again, and then licking each other, with chocolate on their faces, where anyone could see them, and then taking a taxi into the city just to be able to kiss in the back seat, like in the movies, and setting off in the car and driving until it was nice enough outside to be able to sit on the grass and stare up at the sky and then even more at each other. Like life had begun there and only there, for both of them, that’s how it sounds to me.

  And that she’d suddenly said, just as she was putting her glasses on, he still remembered that, that she thought nothing was right in the world if they couldn’t be together and that difficult wasn’t the same as impossible. He’d replied that it felt the same way to him and then he’d added a but. And she’d cried and held him and delivered a wondrous speech, and he had never been so completely moved, he had never wanted something so much, never. But.

  Dad stops talking and stares at I don’t know what. I look back and wish I could do something.

  “But is the worst word,” I say.

  Then he looks at me, with a touch of gratitude, I think, perhaps only because I’m listening, perhaps because he can tell that I feel it too.

  “Why did you let that chance slip away?”

  “How could I choose to be with her instead? After everything. And Marie, she’d have—” He deliberately doesn’t finish his sentence.

  The biggest truths can be found in half sentences, I can’t help thinking. I pull up my knees and wrap my arms around my legs.

  “A person can’t have everything, that’s how it is. And maybe it was too good to be true.” He fiddles with a needle in his forearm. “It doesn’t matter. I did what I had to do. I pulled the plug.”

  “And when you look back now?”

  He only stares into the distance. Sometimes people don’t have to say anything to answer a question that wasn’t a question.

  I drive home. Rain gushes down the windshield, the windshield wipers swish fanatically back and forth; each time I turn off the heat, the windows steam up. I imagine children who would be upset by a story like that. I simply wonder what my life would be like if that woman had taken Marie’s place. I accelerate, turn up the radio; R.E.M.’s “At My Most Beautiful” comes out of the speakers, as though everything works out as long as it’s tackled on a large enough scale, that’s what it sounds like. I drive too fast on wet roads, sometimes I do that.

  12

  Louis calls to me from the bathroom, yelling like something’s on fire and I’m the fire department. I find him over the toilet bowl, red-faced and busy with a plunger. He states the obvious, his voice filled with despair: “It’s blocked again.” Then he looks at me.

  “I’ll call a plumber.”

  “I’ve been there before, they won’t be able to come for five days. Can’t you try?”

  I take the plunger from him, notice that he used the toilet before realizing there was a problem. I try not to look and push the red rubber monster in and out of the hole, my face averted, and then again, and then again, and just as much happens as when he did it. I even get the impression that the cloudy water has risen somewhat. I quickly close the lid and give him his weapon back.

  “Plumber, then. I’ll say it’s urgent. We’ve still got the bathroom in the hall.”

  “Goddamn it, a person can’t even take a shit in this place. It’s going to start to stink and I still need to take a shower. Christ.” Louis heads toward the bedroom, grumbling.

  A few minutes later, he comes into the kitchen holding his suit jacket. “Look,” he says, pointing at a greenish stain on his lapel. “What’s this?”

  “How should I know? It’s your jacket.”

  “Not only can I not shower, now I don’t have anything to wear either. I’m not going to that party. Fate is conspiring against me.”

  “Wear the black jacket.”

  “It’s gotten too small.”

  “Then we should buy a new suit sometime.”

  “Yes, but that won’t help me now.” He walks off again.

  I consider for a moment trying to get rid of the stain, but say nothing and do nothing. I didn’t feel like going to that party anyway. The plumber’s answering machine says that I can leave a message after the beep. I think about Dad and Joanna’s story, I can’t help it.

  13

  “Look, I don’t like to speak ill of people, especially not now. And I do want to understand, because he is sick and afraid and what do I know, but the way he’s criticizing the hell out of me, I can’t cope with it anymore.” Marie holds a hand to her mouth.

  “Shall we play chess in the dining room?” Louis asks Marvin.

  “If you’re a good loser,” my godchild says, with his most waggish expression. My father taught him. I can’t remember Dad ever playing chess with any of us, but things are different with his grandson. “I’ve already beaten Grandpa four times and he’s a chess master, so . . .”

  They get up and disappear into the dining room. I don’t know what it is with Louis and Marvin but, all of a sudden, they’ve found each other. Marvin let Louis read him a fairy tale he’d written for school and Louis was truly amazed at his linguistic dexterity and originality. Since then, Louis has liked to spend time with him whenever the family’s together, certainly when he wants to avoid a conversation he finds boring or irksome. All the same, it’s nice to see. He never wants to have any kids himself, he claims. “But what if it was another little Marvin?” I once asked. “Yes, that would be all right, for a few hours a week,” he’d replied, “and then we could tie him up outside again.”

  Marie gasps for breath, she hadn’t finished yet. “Gives me a complete dressing-down, just like that, you know, out of the blue, while I try to do everything for him.”

  Alexander tops up her glass and lifts the bottle to check whether anyone else wants more wine. “Terrible. What did he say?”

  “All kinds of things. It’s too painful to repeat them.”

 
; “Maybe he just had a bad day, that can make you say things you don’t mean,” I suggest.

  “Or perhaps he was being his real self for once,” Charlie murmurs.

  I knock my knee against hers under the table.

  “Oh no, he’s done it several times now. And he lashes out at the nurses too, or snaps at them. You should see the looks they give him. They’re only trying to do their jobs.”

  “Shall I try to talk to him?” Alexander asks overconfidently.

  “God, no. He’d only get angrier if he knew I told you. Daddy likes to play the hero in front of his children.” She sits completely hunched over. “Of course, I’m hoping he’ll be well enough soon to be able to come home. But at the same time, how’s it going to work, all of that? A bed in the living room, some extra pajamas, and a tray on legs so that he can eat lying down if necessary. That’s the least of it. But his rages, his stubbornness, his panic when the slightest thing goes wrong, his—” Then she stops talking, raises her eyebrows, and hold her hands up in surrender.

  Alexander squeezes her upper arm encouragingly. “I understand that it frightens you. But let’s take things one day at a time and deal with problems as they arise, Mom. There’s no point getting so upset about it.”

  “That’s true,” Charlie adds, “and perhaps it won’t be as bad as you think.”

  Two fat tears run down Marie’s face, drawing blueish trails of eyeliner. She takes a deep breath as if to pull herself together.

  “Maybe.” Then the crying stops. Trying not to cry looks even sadder than letting the tears flow. “I’d thought, you know, that at moments of crisis, people grow closer, but that’s not true, is it? He never touches me. I’m not even allowed to get close to him, he says he can’t breathe. And he doesn’t talk either, I have to drag each word out of him, a few sentences about how he feels, what he’s lying there thinking about. And my feelings, well—”

  “Dad’s not an easy person, we know that,” Alexander says.

  I think about how Dad used to rant and rave at her. It was like he could only handle her scornful silence, her meandering whims and moods, if he could explode from time to time. And then there’d be a lot of sorrys afterward and a large bunch of flowers. I remember the sticky tension of that silence, waiting ages for the calm to return. It must have been awful for Marie, all those days, all those nights. “Have things been any better in recent years?”