Dating da Vinci (7 page)

“You like?” da Vinci said, pointing to the exquisite landscaping in front of the office complex.

I said yes without so much as looking at his handiwork. “I like very much,” I told him.

As we passed by the Hallmark Stables on the way back to my house, da Vinci's eyes lit up upon seeing the horses grazing in the field. “Da Vinci rides horses,” he said longingly.

I glanced at the dozen or so animals in the pasture. I'd passed them nearly every day going home, but I'd never really noticed them before. Like Joel, I'd been raised a city girl in Dallas before moving to Austin to go to college, met Joel and, well, stayed and had babies and did the
New York Times
crossword puzzle every day. Was there more to a happy life than that?

I'd never ridden a horse in my life, save for pony rides at birthday parties. The expansion of Austin from a small city to sprawling suburbia meant occasionally the city and the country collided. “You ride horses? Well, we could arrange that.” As a stranger in a strange land, da Vinci was coping well, but I could sense he missed more than just his mama back home. If riding a horse would make him happy, then it was the least I could do.

Da Vinci ran his dirty fingers through his longish hair and instead of cringing at the thought of all that dirt, the idea of washing his hair flitted through my brain.
Here, let me help you with that
, I could say. My favorite part of getting my hair done was the scalp massage, and it was the first time I felt compelled to wash anyone's hair other than my children's. Something could be seriously wrong with me.

We passed by the string of fast food chains I'd sworn off, but da Vinci practically panted like a dog. “What you say, donut holes on way home?”

I hadn't eaten junk food in forty-eight hours. I practically jumped the curb as I screeched into Dunkin Donuts. How I'd missed thee!

Da Vinci and I made a great team. We finished off 36 Munchkins in under ten minutes, dunking them in coffee and rolling our eyes in sugared ecstasy.

“I love American food,” da Vinci said, patting his tight abs.

“It's terrible for you,” I said, popping the last chocolate-cake donut hole in my mouth, savoring the crunchy outside and doughy center. “It will make you fat.”

Da Vinci reached over and gently wiped away a large sugar crumb from my lip. “Then we jog extra mile tomorrow morning to work fat off bodies.”

Fireworks went off in my head, proof that da Vinci had an effect on me. I'd sworn the only way anyone was getting me to run was to be chasing me with a machete. But to spend more time with da Vinci and possibly lose a few pounds in the process? I'd be an idiot to turn that down.

I dropped da Vinci off at the house, reminding him about his early classes at UT the next day. I offered to drive him because I needed to visit the library for more research for my dissertation. Honest.

Da Vinci thanked me with his smile, something like a physical tip that was far better than money ever would be. “We ride together,” da Vinci said. “Da Vinci teach Mona Lisa to ride.” It dawned on me he didn't mean the car, but horses, but I was too caught up by my nickname.

Mona Lisa: the famed art of the pseudo-smiling brunette painted in the 1500s and the nickname given to one blonde widow by her sexy tenant. I had figured out the Mona Lisa within Ramona Elise in college in my first linguistics class. My parents hadn't been that clever on purpose. They had just lumped two family names together as so many expecting parents do: Ramona for my paternal grandmother and Elise for my maternal great-grandmother. It was an accident, yet Anh believed my secret moniker and da Vinci's appearance were no accident at all.

I didn't mind da Vinci giving me a nickname, forming some bond that only we shared. I never considered bonding with da Vinci on purpose. But it was an unwritten rule that no teacher could date students, so my idea of bonding did not go beyond that of one caring teacher helping out a student.

As I stepped into the beautiful marble foyer at the archdiocese where I was to meet with Deacon Friar (a man who had lived up to his moniker, another example of name revealing one's destiny), I stared at the largest reproduction of the da Vinci's
Last Supper
that I'd ever seen. The picture was at least twenty feet wide, so large that I could study the expressions of the disciples and the hands of Jesus, and I shuddered. The work was pure genius.

I thought of Joel and our last supper together, the night before his collapse on the basketball court, an hour after our nonverbal argument; we ate pizza, but not just any pizza: Joel's favorite, the expensive kind we could only afford once a month. It was hand-tossed by an Italian, the short, mustached man who had come to America with only a dream in his back pocket and a recipe for the crispiest yet gooiest pizza I'd ever tasted. I smiled at the memory. I hadn't thought about Joel's last supper before that moment. I'd thought about his last breakfast: Wheaties. And his last snack: peanut butter on crackers before he headed out to the park to play a pickup game with the neighbors. But his last real meal had been his favorite, something that suddenly comforted me greatly.

When Deacon Friar caught me studying the painting, I hadn't realized I had tears in my eyes, but not from the artwork. “It's quite beautiful, isn't it?”

I wiped my eyes and nodded, taking in Deacon Friar's appearance. I expected him to look more like a friar from the seventeenth century, wearing a brown robe beneath a bald head. Yet he appeared very modern, tall and attractive with salt-and-pepper hair and a face full of compassion that fit his profession. Gabriella had told me he was a widower with two grown boys, and that losing his wife had pushed him into the Church in a way that only a loss of such magnitude could. I had said half-jokingly that I should join a convent after losing Joel. Escaping from the world for nothing but 24/7 silence and solitude had seemed like a good fix at the time, but
knowing how crazy the quiet around my home made me, I knew it would be even worse if I went somewhere where it was expected. Besides, I was no nun.

I felt a kinship with Deacon Friar before our eyes ever met. When they did, I found his to be kind, chocolate-brown eyes beneath dark brows. He wore glasses with tiny silver frames accentuating what already seemed a very intellectual face. He carried himself with ease, and as his warm handshake met my cold hands, I instantly felt him to be my spiritual superior. If spirituality grew along the lines of biology, mine would be considered a toddler, able only to articulate that I believed, but unable to verbalize a deeper understanding of what it was
exactly
that I believed.

To my surprise, I found it easy to open up to Deacon Friar, how my parents had been lapsed Episcopalians before being moved by the sunshine spirituality offered by the megachurch lifestyle: non-denominational, 100 percent rah-rah Christianity.

We entered a small courtyard with luxurious gardens and a stone path that led to a fountain with two angels. The courtyard itself might resemble Gabriella's idea of Heaven. In the last two years, I had lost all sense of beauty, but sitting amidst the majesty of nature, I could feel the appreciation for it stir within me.

“So Gabriella told me about your loss. Joel, right? My son's name is Joel,” he said.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back. I didn't get to hear his name said aloud enough. “Yes, Joel. He was thirty-eight. His fortieth birthday would've been in a few weeks, on September 30th, a week before the anniversary of his death.”

“What did you do for his last birthday? When he was alive.”

His question surprised me. I thought back. “Well, Joel made a big deal of birthdays. He was an only child, so to say his parents didn't spoil him would be an understatement. So we didn't have birth
days
, we had birthday
weeks
. Every day the birthday boy, or girl in my case,
would get to pick one fun thing to do each day, ending with a big party on your actual birthdate.”

“Sounds like a joyful spirit. You had at least four fun weeks of celebration during the year.”

“Oh, that's not all. He was really into decorating for the holidays. Not just the usual ones, either. Christmas, of course, Griswold lights and all. Halloween was one of his favorites—orange lights, lots of spider webs and dressing in costume to trick or treat with the boys. For the Fourth of July, he would buy out the fireworks stand and we would go out into the country and create our own fireworks show. And for Easter, Joel enjoyed hiding the eggs as much as the kids enjoyed finding them.”

Deacon Friar dug in his pocket and handed me five shiny pennies. “When I leave, I want you to think long and hard about the five wishes you want most of all to come true. Then when you're ready, you can cast them into the fountain. I like to call them penny prayers. Most people are uncomfortable with the act of praying, and even for devout Christians, praying can be very difficult after you've lost the person you were closest to on earth. So I've found the penny method works.”

I stared at the pennies in my hand. I get wishes? Wishes beyond just wanting Joel to come back, for the past to have never happened?

“This is where I'm stuck,” I said. “I seem to have lost all of my dreams when Joel died. We had it all figured out, you know? That we were going to go to Hawaii for his fortieth birthday. That we were going to learn to flamenco dance when the kids were older. That we were going to take a road trip on Route 66. Everything centered around
us
. I was always more into the ‘we‘ than the ‘me.‘ And now that it's just me, I'm lost.”

The deacon rested his chin on his hand, looking like
The Thinker
. “It's been ten years since I lost my wife. If you're hoping that the grief will go away, that you'll be able to move on from missing your husband,
then you'll be disappointed. That will never go away. But if you mean you are ready to start enjoying life again, finding pleasure beyond the pain, then that is possible. But I gathered from Gabriella that you've been worried not just about your moving on, but Joel's.”

“We never talked about death. Joel kept things light. When he said he would love me forever, I just want to know what that means. I want to know that we'll be united again.”

“Well, if you believe in God and Heaven, then you know that you'll be united again.”

I nodded, trying to explain. “As a linguist, I study the origin of words. I'm a researcher. I guess as far as Heaven goes, I just need a little more research. The details, you know? My mom's pastor told me I should be happy for Joel, which kind of turned me off about finding out anything else about it. I mean, I'm sorry, but how can I be happy for Joel when I know he didn't want to die until we grew old together and he got to meet his grandkids and great-grandkids? So even though I should be happy that he is with God, I'm not. There, I said it.”

“It's not fair,” the deacon said thoughtfully. “Not only unfair that he died, but that everyone tells you he now enjoys perfect union with God in the most majestic place we can imagine while you get to raise two boys alone and deal with the anchors of the life he left behind. I felt the same way.”

He had taken the hundred-pound weight on my shoulder and tossed it into the fountain. There it was. It was something the other widows and widowers and divorcees had tiptoed around in Parents without Partners, but we hadn't said those words because it made us sound selfish. Besides the anger and the fear of failure and the enormous sadness, there was jealousy there. I wanted peace and tranquility and to tiptoe through daisies with my husband.

“And his soul?”

“There's a lot of debate about when the soul is reunited with the body, but the Catholics believe it is after purgatory, or the cleansing
of the earthly life. And the amazing part is, once our souls are reunited with our bodies, we are freed from its slowness of motion with the quickness to go wherever the soul pleases. The Apostle says, 'It is sown in weakness; it shall rise in power.'”

“So Joel can finally make that jump shot he always dreamed of?”

The deacon nodded. “That's right. And even better the soul takes total dominion over the body. ‘It is sown in a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.‘ So the body becomes more like a spirit. Thus the risen Christ was able to pass through material objects.”

“Pass through walls. He'd get a kick out of that. Can I ask you something personal?”

“Of course.”

“Do you talk to your wife?”

“I do sometimes, but it's normally through prayer. I pray for her soul. It's not like a séance or something silly like that. If we see ourselves at our essence as spiritual beings, then I see no problem with trying to maintain that spiritual connection. We are all made up of energy, in this life and beyond. So sometimes I tell her that I love her and miss her and am praying for her.”

“Do you think they know? What's going on down here? Like some sort of big plasma screen in the sky that lets them watch us?” I couldn't help but ask. I hated not knowing if Joel could see Bradley catch the winning pass or how funny William looked with both of his front teeth missing.

“I don't have any evidence on this, of course, so I'm not speaking as a theologian here, but as a widower. I choose to believe they can keep tabs on the lives of loved ones, but it's not like a nightly news version of what's happening on earth. If TV news is troubling to us on earth, imagine how it might seem from Heaven. Instead, I think it could be more like a highlight reel. They see images of loved ones as if in a reflecting pool. Nothing distressing, only linking of the spirits. I think they can feel us and feel our prayers for them. Don't you feel
him, Ramona? He'll always be with you right here.” He tapped his own heart with his index finger. I put my hand over mine.

“But I thought it was just me missing him, not feeling him. Just my mind playing tricks on me. And I want it to feel good, not sad.”

“I think that's what it really means when we say, ‘Love never dies.‘ The spirit never stops loving. So accept it freely.”

I let the tears fall. Each time I thought of Joel, it was followed not by fond remembrance, but by anger that he wasn't there physically or sadness that I could not reach out and touch his wavy brown hair.