MONICA

by Marianne Carlson

“I’m worried about her, I’m no child psychiatrist, but there is something wrong.”

“She’s fine, she is just experiencing growing pains.” 

“Growing pains?” Evelyn was incredulous. A handsome man, it was important to Mark, husband of Evelyn, father of Monica, the subject of discussion,  to keep his emotions in check, and when he felt the slightest indication that he may  loose his cool, he had a habit of biting his lower lip. The bite, more like a  nibble, was a reminder to him to pull himself together. Since things were not good between Mark and Evelyn, that lower lip was being mangled daily.   Tall and muscular with thinning brown hair,  his brown eyes were often troubled.  It was as if there were many unresolved issues which he pondered frequently, and these issues gave him sleepless nights. 

“Plus the fact she doesn’t like school, she told me she hates Miss Lilly, her teacher. Miss Lilly told me she has to put Monica in a time out at least once a day and when I asked her why she said it is because Monica often hits the other kids with shovels from the sandbox. She threw a little dump truck at Peter from down the street and he needed stitches over his eye. If it had hit him in the eye, it might have blinded him. According to Miss Lilly, Monica has disturbing tendencies towards violent behavior.”

Mark took a deep breath, God, what a headache, would she ever stop talking.  A prosecuting attorney, he was masterful at his job, a raising star, but his days were full of perpetrators whose lawyers were always looking for a plea. A nasty business, this plea bargaining, and it gnawed at him. Thugs who should be facing time in the slammer released on community service, a travesty. Mark’s court room persona  was perfected to a fine tune - an orator weaving a tale, his face a blank slate, until he went in for the kill. This was one reason why he was so good at his job, but his insomnia was making things much harder, and the last thing he needed was to come home to an irate Evelyn, overwhelmed by Monica’s foibles.  That lower lip was getting raw. 

“I’m serious, Mark something has to be done.”

“Where is she now?” Mark hung his coat in the closet and started for the stairs.

“In her room. I told her she needed to stay there until she was ready to apologize.”

“Apologize? To who?”

“To Peter. To Miss Lilly. To me.  I don’t know, Mark. She is beginning to scare me. She has no remorse whatsoever.”

“I’m not sure a four year old even knows the meaning of remorse, Evelyn.”

Mark climbed the stairs, reluctant to enter Monica’s small bedroom. She sat on her pink bedspread, too young to be so crestfallen.  It was as if the weight of the world was on her tiny shoulders.  The quintessential bedroom for a four-year old girl, everything was pink, but for the first time it struck Mark how incongruous all that pink was, pink did not suit her.

“Hi Monica, tough day at school?”

“Not bad.” Monica was so still she almost appeared drugged, a strange lassitude for a four year old. 

“But not good either?”

“Yeah, not good. 

“What happened?”

“Peter hit me with a toy truck.” 

She was lying. Peter knew that she was lying, and as he listened, an ineffable horror almost overwhelmed him. His work had brought him face-to-face with too many career criminals, some (for whatever the reason) came out of the womb warped beyond repair from the beginning. He knew all these time-outs were a harbinger of things to come, and for the first time he faced the future with Monica with great apprehension because he knew with every fiber of his being that this future was not going to be pretty.

“Miss Lilly tells us that it was you that hit Peter.” Without realizing it, Mark had assumed his nonchalance mode, a signal that he was preparing for the attack.  He thoughtfully nibbled his lower lip as he watched his daughter’s body language, always a dead giveaway.

“Miss Lilly hates me. She always chooses Peter to stand at the head of the line.” Monica’s unflinching stare was unnerving, a face-off between two adversaries.  As he watched her, he realized to his horror that it wasn’t his daughter, but himself that he was trying to stare down. Years of education, college, law school, none of it held a candle to what Monica taught him at that moment. Looking at her was like looking into a mirror, but it was worse than that, it was as if he was stripping them both bare. Suddenly the realization that years of polished performances in front of a judge had removed his ability to know himself at all, he was an actor unable to remove his mask.

“Stay in your room until dinner,” he told her as he abruptly turned and left the room. Shaken, he went into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed. Evelyn came in and confronted him with her usual sledge hammer approach.

“Well, what did she say?”

“She said Peter hit her.”

“Did she really? And you let her get away with that?”

“No. She knows that we know she is lying.”

“How will we punish her?”

“I don’t know, Evelyn, I don’t know, but I need to lie down now. I have a terrible headache.”

It's All Temporary