Picture Paradox
Mona makes a chilling discovery the first time she introduces her girlfriend to the family
Mona was pleased that Vee seemed to be getting on so well with her family. She looked across at her girlfriend, currently chatting and laughing with her Mum, while making crumby gestures with the chocolate chip cookies she had baked and brought as a hostess gift.
Sitting cross-legged on the rug, her niece was happily playing a card game, that Vee had taught them earlier, with Mona’s sister. But Bingo the dog, who was notoriously effusive with visitors, had given Vee’s trouser leg one sniff and decided he would not allow this visitor to scratch behind his ears.
Sighing to herself, Mona sipped her coffee and tried to relax. Not all her family members had taken it calmly when she had come out as being a lesbian, and Mona was the first girlfriend she had brought home.
Dad refused to be in the same house as them. Mum said his age group carried more baggage regarding diverse sexuality and promised he’d get over it given time. Mona wished he could, because she’d always been a daddy’s girl. She’d been such a mini-me of her father that, as a child, she had her own miniature set of tools stored in his shed. The two of them had happily spent weekends together on many repair and upcycling projects. It was upsetting that he hadn’t spoken to her now for several months.
“Mona,” her Mum called from across the room, “would you like to look through Grandma’s stuff and see if you want anything for your flat?”
She put down her cup and followed her mother to the landing, where they hooked the ladder down from the loft.
“Let me go up Mum,” Mona suggested, “you don’t want to get your dress dusty.”
As always, Mona wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt, nothing too fancy, and in no time she had climbed halfway up the ladder so her upper body was in the loft.
“There are three lidded boxes to the right of the hatch,” her mother called up, “and a few sticks of furniture I thought you could use.” Then she returned to the hubbub in the living room, leaving Mona to investigate.
Amongst the rafters and boarding, cluttered with suitcases and boxes of reports and drawings from her school days, Mona could make out her Grandma’s stuff. A small set of bedside drawers, a circular side table plus a rather ugly clock she remembered from Grandma’s mantelpiece. She wished she could ask Dad to work with her to bring the drawers and table into this century.
Blowing out a sigh, she dragged one of the three boxes towards her and removed its lid. Under a few ornaments and lacy doilies she spied a photograph album, which she lifted out to leaf carefully through the pages.
Fragile sepia toned photographs of people were mounted on thick black sugar paper. Mona recognised Grandma’s writing in white chinagraph pencil below the photos, recording names, places dates. She smiled at images of Grandma as a baby, a toddler, a schoolgirl and later as a young woman standing proudly beside a car. A larger, loose photograph fell out. It showed Grandma and some friends gathered by the river, a boat was in the background.
Squinting at the image, Mona was enjoying looking at their dated clothes and hairstyles, until one of the girls in the picture caught her eye, who seemed very familiar. Mona swallowed. She wanted a closer look at this picture so she descended the loft ladder, determined to take it into a good light and study it more closely.
Mona moved into her childhood bedroom and closed the door softly behind her, so she wouldn’t be interrupted. She took the photo to the window to inspect it.
Amongst the smiling faces of young men with ugly short back and sides haircuts who held oars, and girls with marcel waves and cloche hats, she identified her Grandma Tilda smiling widely. But next to her Grandma, unmistakable to someone who knew her as well as Mona, stood Vee. She looked unsmilingly into the camera, one hand holding her hat so the wind wouldn’t blow it away.
Something cold shifted in Mona as she puzzled over how her girlfriend could possibly have known her Grandma so many decades ago, and why she was still seeking out her family.
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