Dating da Vinci (8 page)

Perhaps I was Catholic after all. I had the Catholic guilt part down to a T. I'd felt guilty for any happiness since Joel, as if I were betraying his memory. How could I lose the guilt to make room for healthier emotions?

“I'll work on that,” I promised. “And the praying part, too.” I thought back to the forty days after Joel's death, how Gabriella and her husband had gone to daily mass to pray for Joel for the repose of his soul. I had gone to church a month after the funeral, and in between I had only bitterly thought of my loss. I hadn't prayed for Joel at all. Had his soul suffered because of it? Did the fact that he'd died with mistrust between us impact his feelings for me now?

“Beyond praying for him, the greatest thing you can do is to honor his memory and live the best life you can. From the little bit you've told me about Joel, I can imagine how sad he might be that his traditions and spirit of your family died along with him. He was the joy conduit.”

“He was. I never realized until he died how much I depended on him for happiness. I've been trying for the boys' sake, but it's hard. And it takes four neighbors to put up the lights that Joel could do single-handedly. But I've been doing everything with a heavy heart.”

The deacon made a steeple with his fingers and pointed them at me. “So try doing them with a joyful heart.”

He made it sound so simple. First I'd have to cut the cables that kept my heart restrained, one by one. I slipped the pennies in the
pocket of my jeans, saving them for when I really knew what I wanted. Five wishes almost seemed extravagant; I wouldn't spend them frivolously.

A half hour later, I sat in the car in front of the Socials building around back of the enormous Life Church campus. I'd promised myself I would give it one chance. One singles mixer and if I felt uncomfortable, I would be out of there faster than a rabbit spotting a wolf. I wore my new outfit, a layered ensemble with a black jacket, black tuxedo pants and a red V-neck cami. Red. I couldn't believe I was trying to pull it off before I was ready, but it was a touch, a root, a beginning.

Deacon Friar had lifted my spirits, convincing me it wasn't too late to feel connection with Joel, that I could spend an eternity with him, and this news calmed me. It gave me something to look forward to—not just when I died, but right this minute.

I gathered the courage, feeling the pennies in my pocket, and entered the building where more than a hundred people between the ages of 25 and 45 gathered. The group was attractive, wearing their finest look-at-me attire and chemical elixirs, the perfume and cologne mingling in an overwhelming potpourri scent.

“Welcome to singles,” a pretty twenty-something female said to me as she handed me a sign-in sheet and nametag. I surveyed the room, filled with sad people pretending not to be sad. In one way or another, we were all desperate, each wanting to find that something that would make our lives a little better. The never-been-marrieds were searching for fulfillment and family. The divorcées were looking for second chances, and the widowers were just searching, period. I imagined what we all had in common was the desire for connection, only for the living, but I wasn't sure anyone in the room could make me feel that.

I made my way through the crowd to the bar, where, to my chagrin, no alcohol was served. Life Church would not want to be responsible for hook-ups resulting from beer goggles, would they? I
accepted an orange spritzer instead, which was just orange juice mixed with Sprite, a sly trick I'd used to get my boys to get their vitamin C.

When I spun around I bumped into a handsome man about my age holding an orange drink, too. “I prefer mine with vodka, but what can you do?” he said.

“I forgot my flask,” I said, thinking someone this attractive didn't belong at a singles mixer. He could get any woman he wanted. My blink reaction was that he was either a multiple divorcé or a workaholic womanizer who just came to these things to pick up chicks. (But isn't that what we were all here, for? I had bought into my mother's idea of finding a new friend, but once here I could see friendship was the furthest thing from these people's minds. They were all trying much too hard.) He seemed too happy to be a Griever.

He began to respond when a bosomy redhead grabbed him by the arm and whipped him around in a hug reserved for the overly friendly. She looked his type. Maybe he'd already taken her home before, or maybe she was trying to seal the deal, but I had no desire to wait around just to get his name. In fact, I had no desire to be there at all. Besides, I had a friend at home waiting for me.

I found da Vinci napping on the back patio with a row of golden mums he had planted appearing like the frame on a beautiful picture.

Without thinking, I walked over to his body splayed out in the armchair and ottoman and ran my fingers through his dark hair, causing his lashes to flutter in sleep. He opened his eyes and turned his head, where his lips met the soft skin on the underside of my wrist and kissed it, causing a thousand butterflies to take flight.

His eyes locked with mine and he whispered, half asleep, “
Ché modo buono di svegliarmi.
” He could have said, “Do my laundry,” and it would've felt poetic to me at the time, but what he said was far better: “What a nice way to wake up.”

con·nec·tion \
n
1 : the linking or joining of two or more parts, things, or people (
Origin:
late Middle English, from Latin)

I COULDN'T STOP THINKING about that kiss the rest of the week. I pretended it hadn't affected me, going about my business as usual, taking da Vinci where he needed to go, his next temp job at a flower shop and classes at U T. I zipped right through the week, soccer and football and chess club and laundry and coffee with my mother and salad with Anh and life should've felt exactly as it had before da Vinci arrived in my classroom, but it felt anything but. The only difference in my life came down to a connection, taking me from the lonely dark cave of my sadness out into the light, led by one strong-armed Italian.

When you lose a spouse, you can suddenly feel as though the strings to your life have been cut forever, as if you're an abandoned kite floating aimlessly in the clouds. Like non-stop static on a television screen, the picture becomes fuzzy, the signal lost. The connection is broken forever, like a baby being separated from its mother after birth or downed power lines in an electric storm. This is the way I felt after Joel died. I had lost my connection and didn't know how to get it back or even if I could.

Most spouses in happy marriages know that the best part is shared experiences: making love, making memories, making a life that becomes richer because you have each other. You understand the other
with just one look or sound. It's true what they say about partners starting to look like each other as they age. You eat the same food, breathe the same air, go where the other goes. So the absence of one makes the other feel immobile. You literally feel half the person.

But after meeting with Deacon Friar, I realized I had it all wrong. My connection to Joel had not been lost, and in some ways, we could be closer than ever. Because instead of him being outside of me, he was within me. He was just on the other side of the universal plane, in the spiritual world, and if I believed that our spiritual relationship had been strong in life, it should be just as strong after death. If I believed our spiritual link could never be broken, then “'til death do us part” would only be the physical separation, but could never snip the cord that linked Joel and me for eternity, right? The very meaning of soul mate in action.

Yet doubt had permeated my thoughts since his death, the fear that if we each have only one soul mate, I wasn't his. If he had believed Monica, his first love, was his soul mate, then what was I? The next best thing? I had grown up to believe in the fairy tale of “happily ever after,” one person to share your life with. But Joel had loved two women in his life, had felt the awesome power of connection, not once, but twice. I thought of her standing in the back of the crowd at his funeral, dressed impeccably in an expensive black suit, her silky black hair cut in a sharp bob about her refined features. Just like in her pictures, she looked like a model who never left the photo shoot. Even in my anger, I could see that she was in pain. She had loved him as much as I had.

Seeing her in person after only seeing pictures of them together had made my doubt resurface. Was their connection greater than ours? She was the one thing that kept me from believing our love was eternal. The mystery that was Monica pecked at my faith. If I couldn't let go of my jealousy and doubt in his life, how could I possibly after his death? Why had my faith taken such a fall?

What if before I could move on, I would have to go back, to use one copper penny on resolving the issue once and for all? It was as if Deacon Friar had tossed me a special widow key that gave me permission to unlock a forbidden door. I'm not even sure if deacon knew he had given me a key, but those five pennies, five wishes for a better life, became calling cards for something more.

And if I could resolve my issues with Joel and his two great loves, then maybe I could come to terms with the possibility of a connection with somebody
other than
my husband. I would never have believed it until that kiss on my wrist ignited the wick that I could feel go all through my body and straight into my heart—the stirrings of something so familiar, yet so ancient I could barely recognize it. Of course I was fond of da Vinci. I enjoyed his company, and like most women who laid their eyes on him, I was attracted to him. But besides the student/teacher issue, I expected to feel nothing other than a platonic connection. Romance? Never. Just a fantasy? Perhaps. But I didn't believe I would ever act on it.

Yet I did go horseback riding—I, the one who preferred even a smelly human to animals, rode horseback with da Vinci on a sunny fall afternoon when I should've been working on my dissertation. But besides connection, I felt something else: freedom. Freedom to cut loose and do something new and completely unexpected. If I was channeling anything left behind of Joel, it was his passion for adventure, being spontaneous. The next thing I knew, after riding across the field like a painting on a romance novel, da Vinci hopped off of his horse, stopped my horse by grabbing the reins and I nearly leapt into his arms. And on the way down? I kissed him.
On the lips
. I considered it a “thank you for helping me down kiss” though da Vinci seemed to not think anything of it. They probably kissed in Italy the way we shook hands in America. So I didn't make a big deal out of that kiss, either. Yet like the first, I couldn't get it out of my head, either.

I couldn't tell Anh about da Vinci's kiss, because what was there to tell? She might think there was a budding romance, which there certainly wasn't. Not on my end. If you told Anh something, she wouldn't let it go. She would call and ask me about it each day, like a doctor checking charts on rounds.

And with da Vinci just starting college, he was making all kinds of new friends. The fraternities wanted to rush him, the girls were probably pawing all over him, and that's the way it should be. My role as his teacher and landlord and friend was to help him find himself in America and that meant making friends outside of my four walls. I told him not to judge the frat boys so quickly, to give things a chance—something I couldn't believe was coming out of my mouth.

I also had my dissertation to attend to, so when I dropped da Vinci off on campus, where he stood out like a beacon in the throng of students, I made my way through the college crowd to the library, where I would dive back in to my work. It wasn't until I cracked open the notebook that I hadn't touched since the week before Joel died, that the enormity of the work hit.
The Language of Love.
I scanned my notes—more than forty hours of research and thought had already been put into it. Should I scrap the whole thing and ask my professor for a new topic? But what? And my notes were
really good.
I had stopped working on it, in truth, because I had lost connection to the material, too. But now I could begin to appreciate the topic of love again, as someone might appreciate fine art, detached, but drawn to the subject. I would no longer see love through the blurred eyes of grief, but try to be objective. Besides, I wanted to finish what I'd started, a way to prove to myself that love does go on after your husband dies and especially that a dissertation on the
language
of love could survive even death. I did still have dreams, the biggest dream to be a professor with a doctorate.

I grabbed the laptop from my attaché case and clicked it on, the hum causing a few stares from all directions. I slunk into my seat and began typing, the material beginning to pull me in.

—By Ramona Griffen

Where does love begin, and where does it end? Anthropologists who have studied love claim that for millions of years the ever-changing world has not changed the primal instinct of love, mating, and sexuality. Though technology and evolution have morphed the way in which we live, the language of love is the one constant in the universe, transcending time and cultures. And researchers say it all begins with one look.

The eyes have it.

Across cultures and even species, lovers begin their courtship with a flirting sequence highlighted by the copulatory gaze. As the potential mates stare at each other for two to three seconds, the pupils dilate, indicating a strong interest, and then look away. This powerful gaze is followed by an anxious diversion, fidgeting, or moving away, or it is reciprocated with another universal friendly exchange: the smile.

My cell phone buzzed, causing more angry warning glares, quite the opposite of the copulatory gaze, and I reached into my overstuffed bag to retrieve it. I whispered hello as I beelined for the entrance.

“You've got to help me.”

Rachel.

“Don't tell me. You gained a pound in San Francisco and need me to stand by you to make you look slimmer.”