A Late Thursday Book Teaser

Thursday Book Teaser is a Carole-version of all the other book teaser memes out there. Every Thursday, I'll share a little tease of a book I'm currently reading. I'll randomly pick a page or I'll give some random number and flip to that page. I'll just share a few sentences to try and tease you. Anyone can join in! Just remember ...no spoilers! By the way this picture I found on Google and edited it myself.

So sorry for this being extremely late! The automatic posting thing failed *shakes fist at blogger* and then for some reason my internet wasn't working ALL DAY, so I couldn't get on and fix it. Gah! *shakes fist at internet* 

Well finally got this post to look right. I do apologize to Holden Robinson for it looking crappy last time. I sent the email I received to a different email account and then downloaded it to me computer. Then I had to edit each line and blahblahblah.... Volia! It now looks fine. Damn technology. 

Well, here's the book excerpt of Becoming Mona Lisa by Holden Robinson. This was given to me from CM:

"My mother once told me if I looked at my reflection long enough, my 

features would become obscure, and I would gradually become a Picasso. I never 

asked how long it would take, this transition from me to something I didn't 

recognize. It may be minutes for some. In my case, it took a few years. 

 Thirty-four to be exact. 

I guess it wasn't that I'd become a Picasso. I guess I'd 

become more of a pooka. A pooka is an invisible creature, like the rabbit in the 

old movie, Harvey, starring the incomparable Jimmy Stewart. 

The distinct difference between me, and the pooka known as Harvey, was 

Harvey had always been invisible. I hadn't. I'd simply disappeared. Over time. 

I watched Harvey repeatedly, long before I understood the similarities I'd one 

day share with the big, white rabbit.

I loved the rabbit, but I loved Jimmy Stewart even more. Every year, at 

Christmas, I'd hunker down with my mother, father, and my beloved Aunt 

Ida, and we'd watch It's a Wonderful Life, and string popcorn for the tree. Aunt 

Ida would watch through cataracts, I through tears, and by time the credits rolled, I'd be 

emotionally spent, and Aunt Ida would have half a bowl of Orville Redenbacher's 

sewn to her skirt.

My mother, ever the teacher, would turn the movie's message into a lesson, one 

of many she'd pass along, and it was her voice I'd most often heard in my head 

as I battled my darkest days.

“Wear good shoes, Mona.”

“Wear good underwear, in case you crash your car, Mona.”

“Never miss an opportunity to tell someone you love them, Mona.”

I guess two out of three ain't bad. I wear good shoes, and good underwear. 

It's the third one I screwed up.

Big time.

I was thinking of this as I pulled into my driveway on a Sunday evening, after 

an uneventful shift at WalMart. My old Jeep emitted a familiar groan as we 

pulled into the driveway that was once smooth, and now felt like driving a Radio 

Flyer down a washboard. I shut off the ignition and we both sighed. The old truck 

and the unhappy wife. I labored up the sidewalk onto the porch. My feet crossed 

the fifty-year-old timbers, and the wood moaned beneath my treading. A 

stranger's reflection stared back at me from the single-pane window, as my hand 

sought the rusty knob. I opened the door and crossed the threshold, into the 

abyss that had become my life. 

I stood in the foyer and kicked off my shoes. The linoleum 

was cool beneath my feet, and the loneliness seeped in almost instantly, as if it had 

been there waiting. It was familiar, this sense of emptiness.

“Comfort in the evil you know,” I once read on the jacket of a book about bad

marriages. I had come to a formidable crossroads, left with the choice of 

saving my marriage, or killing my husband, but advancements in forensics had 

made it impossible to kill anyone and get away with it, so I got myself a 

library card, and checked out every book ever written on how to mend 

what seemed unmendable. I returned them all, three weeks later. Unread.

“I'm home,” I called to a silent house. “Tom? You here?”

“I'm in the kitchen, Mona,” came the response from the roommate who was 

my husband.

“What are you doing?” I asked, finding Tom Siggs at the kitchen table, his nose 

in a crossword puzzle.

“Same old, same old. How was work?” he asked, as our eyes met, as a 

recognition almost occurred between two idiots in a relationship dying of boredom.

“It was like work,” I said.

“Work usually is,” Tom replied, his gaze back on the paper.

“Dinner?” I asked.

“Dinner?” Tom repeated.

“The meal you eat at night, Tom.”

“I know what dinner is, Mona.”

“Did you want some?”

“I'll light the grill.”

“Awesome,” I said, with no enthusiasm.

Tom left his paper in the waning sunlight, and I took his chair. It was still 

warm, and I felt sadness and heat creep into my body, joining the loneliness 

that had settled there. It was almost like being touched by him, but not, yet 

it was the closest thing I'd had to a connection with my husband in as long as 

I could remember.

I looked at the man who stood outside my back door. A man who was once

 a stranger, then my friend, my lover, my husband, a stranger. A perfect circle, 

one Dante would appreciate.

What happened?

It was a question without an answer, a complex equation with an elusive 

solution, one that could be found over time, if either of us were willing to make 

the investment. We weren't.

“I'm troubled about something, Mona.”"