Becoming Mona Lisa (2 page)

“I was thinking about the year I dressed up as Mona Lisa for Halloween.”

“Seems appropriate,” Tom said, looking amused.

“I think I was eleven. I shaved my eyebrows, which was a total waste, because no one even knew who I was supposed to be.”

“They grew back,” Tom said, as his eyes met mine. He held my gaze, and for a moment I thought he saw me. “So, what are you gonna do with your day off?”

“I'm going to remodel the bathroom.”

“Really?” he asked incredulously.

“No, not really. But it's a good idea, don't you think?”

“What about the wallpaper?”

“It's gotta go,” I said softly.

“Seriously? I like it,” he admitted, sounding shaken.

“You do?”

“I like peeling it. I guess I could do crosswords instead.”

“Why not,” I said, thinking it was the most ridiculous conversation I'd ever had with another human being.

“So, what are you really doing today?” Tom asked, putting his back to me as he rinsed his coffee cup.

“I might sort through some of that stuff in the garage later.”

“Why?”

“Because it's a mess, Tom.”

“Everything's a mess here,” Tom mumbled, sounding defeated.

“No kidding,” I said, sounding pathetically agreeable.

“I guess it's up to you what you do with your time off. I gotta go. I have someone picking up a nice, used Saturn in less than an hour,” he said, turning toward the window. “Oh, jeez. Thurman's out there.”

“One day you should tell him off,” I suggested.

Thurman Pippin stood in his front yard in a flannel shirt and his pajama bottoms. He held a pink dog leash, connecting him to a chihuahua near his feet, a miserable ankle-biter the old bastard adored, because it had belonged to his late wife, a yet-to-be-canonized saint who had died last year.

“He thinks we killed Ida,” Tom reminded me.

“He's a freak,” I complained, turning to the window. Thurman was the bane of my existence, of our existence, the single thing Tom and I had in common.

Thurman Pippin. Aging militant. A man who made my life a living hell. He'd retired when Aunt Ida was alive, and I had no idea how much longer he might live, because I couldn't have guessed his age, no matter how large the prize. The closest I could come was somewhere between infancy and dirt, and that wouldn't win me a plastic yo yo.

Thurman was the ultimate neighbor from hell and his obsession with us had grown with each passing year. He was positive we'd murdered my great aunt.

No one killed Aunt Ida. She had passed away in her sleep at the age of ninety-two.

Tom and I had arrived for dinner later that same day. I knew something was wrong the moment we stepped into the house. The television blared the Home Shopping Network, and there was Aunt Ida in her Barcalounger, covered by an old afghan, dead as a doornail. I remember screaming and clinging to Tom. I do not remember committing murder.

I scowled at Thurman, and I thought he saw me. I recoiled from the window, and Tom did the same.

“Asshole,” my husband muttered.

Tom stood at the mirror in the foyer, and the clear blue eyes in the reflection there, met mine. Our eyes held for another moment, until he looked away.

There's still something there.

The man in the mirror was attractive, and sad. His blond hair was perpetually messy, yet perfect for the man whose appearance seemed unaltered, despite the passing of time.

He stepped back into the kitchen. I looked at him.

“I forgot my brownie,” he said, taking the individually wrapped pastry from the counter. “Is Thurman gone?”

I braved another glance at my asinine neighbor. “Yeah, he's gone.”

“Good.”

“Have a nice day,” I said softly.

“You, too,” he said, stammering as if there were more he wanted to say. I knew there was, but he didn't say it. Neither of us did. We pleaded the fifth, at every opportunity, for the fifth consecutive year. It had to stop.

I heard him on the porch, and I ran to the foyer and opened the door he'd just closed.

“Tom?” I whispered, and he turned, his eyes registering surprise.

“What?”

“Will you hug me?” I asked, willing myself not to cry.

“Why?”

“There doesn't have to be a reason. I'd like you to hug me.”

He did.

He felt familiar, and stood stiller than a cadaver. It was like being hugged by a third cousin, twice removed, who'd flown in from Wisconsin for a once-a-decade Siggs reunion.

The embrace was obligatory, almost cold.

I felt worse. “Thanks,” I mumbled.

“No problem,” he said.

He strolled down the sidewalk, his right hand in his pocket, his eyes registering shame as they made contact with the asinine car in our driveway.

When Tom wasn't holed up in rural hell with his unhappy wife, he was serving time as a salesman for the Bucks County Auto Super Store. The automobile outside our house was their pride and joy. It was ridiculous, but appropriate. The vehicle was a late model Toyota, replete with a deer head – sporting over-sized resin antlers – attached to the roof, above the windshield. A bushy white tail was adhered above the lock on the trunk.

Plastic legs protruded from the front and rear bumpers. It was supposed to look like a majestic creature prancing along the roads of Bucks County. It didn't.

Tom's professional life had come full circle. He was just as emasculated by this job as he'd been in high school, when he'd danced around in August heat, in a chicken costume, advertising the local barbeque, until he fainted and was rescued by two pedestrians in their

mid eighties.

The chicken costume was long since retired, set aside with all the dreams my husband once had for his life. He wanted to do more, be more, and once, long ago, we'd snuggled in bed and talked of the things we'd be. We were none of those things, and I sighed deeply, and wondered what the hell happened.

I returned to the kitchen, refilled my coffee mug, thrust two slices of limp, white bread into the old toaster, and forced its plug into the grimy outlet. The toaster shook, the bread shot out like a cannon, and flames leaped from the left slot.

“Jesus,” I said, as the toaster vibrated, launching crumbs from its bowels, like bits of confetti. I wrapped my hand in a stained dishtowel, whispered a quick goodbye to those I loved, and unplugged the Westinghouse fire trap.

It was moments like this when I wished my dad was still close by.

He wasn't.

He and my mother lived in a retirement community ten miles outside Miami, Florida.

Dad had been a music teacher, who was basically tone deaf. What he could do was fix stuff.

One could give my father a rusty pile of junk, and George Harrison, who resembled the legendary Beatle in face, not talent, would turn it into a rocket ship. I missed him. A lot.

I dropped the towel on the table, and looked out the dirty window at small-town America. Despite the horrendous condition of my old house, it was, in a sense, what I had always wanted. There was a certain sweetness to the slowness of small-town living, and Oxford Valley, Pennsylvania, the place I called home, was no different.

It was autumn in Pennsylvania, my favorite time of year. Trees bared in preparation for winter, and a spring of new growth. It was quiet, and gradual, and it should have brought me peace. Instead, it made me wistful. I closed my eyes and imagined the smell of autumn.

In reality, all I could smell was burning toaster, but the symbolism was nice.

Something moved, catching my attention. Thurman was back. I sipped the steaming liquid in my cup and spied on my neighbor. Thurman spotted a piece of paper in his side yard. He picked it up, wadded it in his fist, and turned toward my house.

What the hell is he doing? Oh, my God, he's not coming over, is he?

He toddled toward the road and tossed the paper in the direction of his open garbage can. He missed. His face twisted with disgust, as he angrily bent forward, grabbed the paper, and made another attempt. This time the trash hit its mark, but
what was that?

I did NOT see that.

While Thurman had been focused on getting the paper
in,
something had popped
out.

Oh, my God, I saw Thurman's junk!!

The age-old question of boxers or briefs, at least when it came to Thurman Pippin, had been answered, and the answer was NEITHER! He went commando, but in his defense, he was still in his pajamas.

I rose so quickly I knocked over a scarred kitchen stool the color of baby puke. I was tempted to claw my own eyes out, but I expected to live another fifty years, and couldn't face a lifetime of darkness.

“Holy cats, I saw Pippin's pecker!” I said out loud. I laughed until I was breathless, something I hadn't done in years, then scanned the counter for my cell phone. I found it buried beneath a Fangerhouse catalog addressed to Ida, and dialed Tom. My call went to voice mail. I left a message.

“Tom, it's Mona. No one died. Call me back.”

I dropped the phone into the pocket of my robe, which had been Aunt Ida's. Time had faded the Pepto Bismol pink to a pleasant shade, and had the robe been absent of coffee stains and cauterized holes from Aunt Ida's Pall Mall cigarettes, it might have been nice.

It wasn't.

I wore it anyway.

I headed for the bathroom, opting for a shower while I waited for Tom's call. I closed the door, and stood before the full length mirror on the wall.

Good Lord!

I looked at myself, seeing myself in a way I normally didn't. While I'd been poking fun at Tom for his taste in ties, he'd been looking at this?

Some things improved over time. Obviously, I wasn't one of them. I was only thirty-four years old, much younger than the thing in the mirror.

“Mona Lisa Harrison Siggs,” I said aloud, expecting some sense of recognition to come with the speaking of my name. “Who are you?” I whispered, and the thing's mouth moved.

The thing in the mirror was not me, it was not the grown version of a little girl born to an art teacher and music teacher, ten years after they'd abandoned any hope of having a child.

I was an unexpected gift, the most precious thing in the lives of two people I called Mom and Dad. Mom, with her affinity for art, which had evolved from the Louvre in her twenties, to paint-by-numbers in her seventies, and Dad, with his old Victrola, repaired by his own hands, complete with a collection of old records that filled his life with scratchy music written by some of the world's greatest composers.

I was once nothing more than a dream in the minds of two aging teachers. I'd become Mona Lisa, beloved child. A girl who, if born a boy, might have been called Beethoven. I was their most precious gift. Now I was
this?

What in the sam hell?

I was surprised when my eyes filled with tears, and I lifted the robe to wipe them away, feeling a crusty hole graze my left cheek. I was horrified by the image I saw in the water-speckled reflection.

Did this person ruin my marriage?

The thing in the mirror was not the woman Tom Siggs had married.

Where was she?

Where did she go?

I held my own gaze for ten minutes and tried to psychoanalyze my failings, the task a failing in its own right. I wasn't a therapist. I was a WalMart cashier!

Once, I thought I'd be a book editor, or a journalist, strolling the streets of New York City, carrying a briefcase and an overpriced coffee. Now I worked at WalMart.

I didn't look down upon WalMart employees, in fact, it was in the “blue-aproned sector,” where I'd met some of the finest people I'd ever known. It wasn't the job that had let me down, it was me.

I'd failed to meet my own modest expectations.
Repulsed, I fled from the mirror, into the safety of my bedroom, but nostalgia wasn't willing to free me just yet. My eyes were drawn to an old Polaroid photo, taped to the bedroom mirror. I averted my eyes from the thing that had followed me into the bedroom, and grabbed the fading photo. In the dim lighting it was barely visible, but I didn't need to see it. I'd memorized the moment. Fifteen years had passed since the camera captured two young lovers in their third week of romantic bliss.

We'd been students at Penn State. I was a sophomore, studying journalism; Tom, a senior, a music and drama major, who dreamed of becoming a teacher. I'd met him in a park on an ordinary day that changed my life. Forever.

I moved to the window, and the sun cast its light upon my treasure.

“
Hey,” I said to the familiar faces in the photo. Tom and I looked hopeful, happy - younger, more optimistic versions of the grown-ups we'd become. There was an inscription on the back. It had held up well, better than the faded picture, better than the people in it.

Me and the man I will marry.

A lot had happened since that day.