"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.”"
