SIX HOURS LATER, WE were naked on the king-sized bed in an expensive suite I would've never been able to afford, living out the Fantasy Sex Day I couldn't believe was a reality. If a best friend could get any bester, then Anh had done so. Getting away unleashed any inhibitions I'd had about being with da Vinci. I felt young again, beautiful again and sexy again. Me, the thirty-six-year-old widowed wordsmith. Da Vinci became sweeter and more real by the minute. He cradled me, caressed me, and made love to me like I was the only thing he desired on the planet.
Getting away from Austin was like shedding a protective skin. As da Vinci and I walked along the shoreline after dinner, I realized I wasn't the same person at all. I still didn't know who I was, but getting outside of my comfort zone, my wall of imprisoned grief, I let myself smile again and really, really meant it. I let him hold my hand in public and didn't mind being seen by others. I could see the way other women looked at him, how they all wondered what I'd done to get a man as striking as him. They probably assumed I had money, though I didn't look it, or I was incredibly famous to land a boy toy such as this, though I saw him as so much more than a handsome man on my arm.
If I had been feeling poetic, I could have thought of him as my savior, my rescue pilot, my wake-up call. Mostly, though I just thought of him as da Vinci, the man I taught English to who taught me about so much more.
I sat next to him, our arms touching as we ate ice cream on the dock while we watched boats coming into the harbor. The night smelled salty and sweet, and I breathed in the air as if I'd never get enough of it. “What do you think?”
He raised his brows. Most of the time I was still too vague with him, even for a teacher. “Think of life? Love? Galveston?”
“Yes. All of it. Every last bit of it. Tell me everything.”
Da Vinci's eyes crinkled in the moonlight, and I couldn't believe how romantic he looked under the stars. I wanted to capture the moment and put it on postcard and mail it to every woman I knew to tell them I was doing okay. Ramona Griffen would survive. Look what I did. Otherwise, would they ever believe me? I couldn't believe it myself.
“All of it, yes? Okay, then. I like this place very much. This beach is breathtaking. I like your place very much. Your shower nice. Your bed is lumpy. Your pancakes not hold candle to my pancakes. I like school, so-so, but am learning. What I like most about America so far, though,” he said, leaning toward me, “is my Mona Lisa.”
He kissed me softly, and I threw my ice cream into the lake, and he did the same. Then I heard two teenagers yell, “Get a room.”
“What a marvelous idea! Our room,” I said, relishing the sound of it, and we went back to the suite and drank champagne until I got tipsy, which didn't take but one glass because I never drink it. Champagne is for celebrations, and I hadn't felt like celebrating in so long. I'd forgotten how much I like the taste of it, the bubbly sweetness that feels like little fireworks in my mouth. The room began to spin when da Vinci lay on top of me, making love to me again. I was overwhelmed with his scent, the feel of his soft skin and hard muscles and the beat of his heart against mine that told me he was very much alive and very much mine for the moment.
Between kisses, he gazed into my eyes and clearly whispered, “ Tiamo, ” and though my translation is sluggish when I'm inebriated, I am fairly certain that da Vinci had told me that he loved me.
My cell phone blared “Bootylicious,” awaking me the next morning. The song was a cruel practical joke Bradley pulled on me after I'd told him and his brother to stop singing it in the car one day. He'd taken my cell phone, and for the past six months, his tech-idiot mother couldn't figure out how to reprogram it. Like so many other things about widowhood, I didn't ask someone to do it for me.
The bedside alarm clock blinked its red digits-7:30 a.m. Not my bedside alarm clock-the one Joel bought me for our fifth anniversary from Pottery Barn-but a boring, old brown one better suited for a cheap hotel than a pricey suite. No one ever calls me in the morning, so I assumed the worst. Something had happened to my boys, or Anh and Vi had actually caught the bird flu and were in ICU, or my boss was calling me to fire me because he'd found out da Vinci and I had gone on a sexcapade.
“Hello?” I mumbled as the morning sun cut through the hotel blinds, my head pounding from the champagne. I remembered where I was, which caught me by surprise, and yet there lay the proof: da Vinci in gorgeous sleep. He didn't even snore. My life couldn't get any better.
I began to recall that da Vinci had said he loved me when the voice on the other end spoke. “Ramona? Hi. I hope it's not too early to call, but I'm actually in the airport and thought I'd return your call before I'm on my long flight.”
“I'm sorry,” I said, still dreary from sleep. “Who is this?”
“Oh, I apologize. Silly me. It's Monica Blevins. Returning your call.”
My pounding head pounded harder, my mouth so dry I couldn't speak. I had to get water before I could respond.
“Are you there? Ramona?”
While downing a glass of water in the bathroom, I stared at my naked frame, vowing to double my sit-up regimen from zero to at least ten per day, then covered up with a towel and sat on the toilet lid. I couldn't talk to Monica while naked, if I could speak to her at all. Composure seemed impossible. “No. I mean, yes, I'm here. I'm just surprised is all. I mean, it's early. Yes. I'm out of town.”
“Is it a bad time, then? I can call you back at a later date.”
A later date? Would any time be better? Maybe after a cup of joe, some bacon and eggs, and a good hour-long meditation to prepare for her call? “No, it's fine.” I told myself to calm down. To think clearly. I wanted to sound composed and smart and not embarrass Joel. After all, he'd married me and not her. She'd probably downed two cups of Starbucks and looked smashing in another designer suit. But it didn't matter. It was only the phone. What was I so afraid of?
Monica continued. “Okay, then. So you said you wanted to speak with me. It was good to hear from you, actually. I've been wondering how you and the boys have been.”
I blinked back tears, trying hard not to dissect her every word. She'd really been thinking about us or is that something that you just say to widows? To the family your fiancé creates after you've dumped him? “I did want to talk to you, but it's really not important now. I thought it was, but I guess it's not. It's fine. I'm sorry to have bothered you, really.”
“No. I'm glad you did,” she said. “I've been meaning to call you, too, and I didn't have the nerve to do it. I want to set some things straight about Joel, and I have a few questions that only you can answer.”
In my hangover haze, I wasn't sure if she'd said the words I had intended to say. SHE-SLUT had questions for me? Questions only I could answer? What was going on here? “You do?”
“It would mean a lot to me. Oh, shoot. They just called us to board. Can we get together for coffee when I get back from Tokyo?”
I slumped over the toilet and held up my head with my hand. I didn't even sound like myself when I said, “Absolutely. Let's have coffee when you get back from Japan.”
I'm not going to lie. Monica Blevins ruined my Fantasy Sex Weekend. My sexcapade was officially over the very moment booty-licious Beyoncé sang. Even my young hot Italian couldn't improve my mood. Which is too bad, really. Because I had moved on. Until. She wanted to “set some things straight.” She had Questions and not just The Answer?
I had exactly 149 questions formulated in my mind that she might ask me. They went from bad to worse:
Did Joel tell you we went to Cabo that long weekend he said he was at a conference in D.C.?
Did you find the receipt for the hotel rooms we rented Friday afternoons?
Did Joel tell you he was leaving you to come back to me?
Did he tell you he never loved you as much as he loved me?
The last one really got me. I could barely eat lunch over that one. No, I would tell her. He said he loved me and only me. He was lying.
Da Vinci did his best to take my mind off the call. Not just making love to me again, but his insistence on making the most of every moment: going sailing, feeding the birds, buying me a balloon with a big yellow happy face on it. Okay. I finally smiled. I laughed even. But She was never far from my mind.
I wanted to be happy for me because da Vinci had told me he loved me, or I was fairly sure he'd said it, but I didn't have the nerve to ask him to repeat it, and I knew, call or no call, that I wasn't ready to say it back.
The Chemistry of Love
With nearly 7,000 languages in the world, there are nearly as many ways to say, “I love you.”
Albanian: “ Te dua. ”
Chinese: “ Wo ie ni. ”
Dutch: “ Ik hou van jou. ”
Greek: “ S' agapo. ”
Italian: “ Ti amo. ”
Zuni: “ Tom ho' ichema. ”
The words may be different, but scientists say the chemistry behind the words is the same. Love is, in effect, a chemical reaction. The cuddling chemical is known as oxytocin, linked to milk production in women, making both men and women calmer and more sensitive to others. Oxytocin levels are highest for women just after childbirth, which can explain how moms are able to cope with screaming newborns and care for them.
The hormone also plays a huge role in romantic love during sexual arousal, prompting couples to pair up and cuddle before, during, and after lovemaking. Production of this love hormone can come from both emotional and physical cues, including the loved one's voice and look or even just thinking about the lover.
So, what? The Duke of Milan's hormones made him drop his royal drawers for every blushing countess he had chemistry with? Sorry, lovey, the oxytocin made me do it! Right.
Addicted to Love
Oxytocin then passes the love baton to a new group of hormones, morphine-like opiates that calm and reassure lovers with intimacy, dependability, warmth, and experiences.
These steady hormones are more addictive, explaining why the longer two people have been married, the more likely they will stay married. Staying together becomes addictive, with lovers relying on the endorphins and marital serenity they bring one another. Absent lovers yearn for each other when they are apart because, like a drug, they yearn for the steady high endorphins bring. Similarly, the absence of endorphins plays a part in grief over the death of a spouse.
I lifted my hands from the keyboard and noticed they were shaking. So I wasn't crazy after all. It was those pesky absent endorphins making me miss him so. Making all those absent lovers write such eloquent love letters across the miles. How long? I wondered. How long does it take to come down off of a lover's high? After I had been bonded, addicted to Joel for so many years? If a part of my grief was chemical, then could falling in love cure me of my grief once and for all?
I stared at the date on the calendar, Joel's death date, and yearned for my boys to return home from my parents so I could hug them. I couldn't even go hug da Vinci because he was gone again at another temp job and then to a study group with kids his own age. There I go again, calling him a kid. If our age difference wasn't a big deal to him, why did I think of it at all?
I took a sip of hot tea and picked up the album Cortland helped me create on Joel's computer. It arrived while I was gone with da Vinci in Galveston. I tried not to be sad that I wasn't here when the postman delivered it. I didn't want him to think I didn't care about the delivery, that the album meant nothing, because in fact, it meant everything. Of course the “him” I was referring to wasn't the postman at all, but Joel.
I had carefully laid copies of the book on the pillows of the boys' beds to surprise them when they returned. I took my own copy and lay with it on Lumpy, a bed I knew I had to replace sooner rather than later, and carefully looked through its glossy four-color pages at the happy family we had been. By the tenth time I viewed it, I saw the pictures through clear eyes, the tears dried, and my heart was full once again.
When I returned to the computer, I could finish the section, now three-quarters complete. Besides, I had to know about the Monogamy drug, and even more so, if my husband had it in his system when he'd died.
Monogamous Mating
Only three percent of mammals are monogamous, and scientists say humans are not among them. Monogamous: mating and bonding with one partner for life. Scientists claim a drug called vasopressin would help. It is called the monogamy chemical.
Lifelong mating is linked to the action of vasopressin, which kicks in within 24 hours after mating, at least for the male vole (a mouse-like rodent) that falls into that small three percent of monogamous mammals.
Once vasopressin kicks in, he is indifferent to all other lady voles, no matter how comely or come-hither. In addition, he becomes aggressive toward other males, a classic exhibition of the jealous husband syndrome.
What keeps a lover from straying, then, may not be one isolated chemical, but the love potion created by all of them: a dose of oxytocin, a scoop of endorphins, and a dash of vasopressin for long-lasting kick.
If humans were ruled by one drug, vasopressin, then might their ability for long-lasting love die along with their spouse? Would they never love again, forced to live out the rest of their lives alone and loveless?
If I had wanted a monogamous mate, I should've married a rat. Literally. I turned off the computer, thinking again about Monica and trying the breathing exercises Cynthia had recommended for when I felt anxious. After twenty-one counts, I had stopped thinking about Her and decided to get out of the house.
Sometimes Grievers do irrational things such as sit on the porch, willing their loved ones to return home, even when those loved ones have passed on. For months after his death, I imagined Joel would walk through the door. “Where have you been?” I would ask him, half-angry, half-relieved he had returned. He would wrap me into his embrace and say, “I love it when you worry about me,” and kiss me, and we'd go on with our lives.
I waited on the bench in the yard on Joel's DD, not awaiting his return, but that of my boys. I craved time away from them until I got it, and it didn't take long before separation anxiety kicked in. It had, in fact, kicked in back in Galveston, but I tried to be a Normal and just enjoy time alone with da Vinci. Still. Sometimes I felt as though I needed my boys to verify my existence. I couldn't survive another two days without them, and I needed the strength of their smiles to get me through that day.
Gabriella spotted me and waved, and I silently wished she wouldn't come over, but she did anyway, dressed in a warm brown and blue floral dress that fell to her calves. From across the street, she looked like a bunch of violets drifting towards me. Sometimes I thought Gabriella paid no mind to seasons. She dressed as if it were spring year-round. She carried something in her hand-food, I presumed. With her steady stream of casseroles and baked goods, Gabriella had kept the boys and me alive after Joel had died. The boys must've thought the food train would never end, because the first day she didn't bring us food, Bradley said, “Great. I guess it's back to eating Mom's type of cooking,” which is to say not very good, and I'd relied too much on fast food to nourish us.
Today it was a meatloaf; I could smell it before she even told me what lay beneath the aluminum foil. “We just got back from Joel's grave,” she said with a bright smile, inhaling as she sat next to me on the bench. “Such a beautiful day.” Yes, I thought, as beautiful as it had been two years before, same blue sky and spotted puffy clouds and warm October afternoon. A beautiful day to die.
“I was there a few days ago,” I whispered.
“The orange pansy was a nice touch. They were his favorite, weren't they?”
“Orange pansy?”
“The one on his grave.”
There was no pansy. If there had been, I would've smashed it when I had lain on his grave. “Only one pansy?”
Gabriella nodded. “As if it had been planted there on purpose. No other pansies as far as I could see, either direction.”
I wondered how I could miss an orange pansy and who might've planted one there. But one? Who would plant one pansy? I squelched the thought that Monica had done it; that my call had brought up old feelings for Joel that sent her to his grave with his favorite flower.
Down the block, two men from the neighborhood walked side by side in their basketball gear, ready for the 2 p.m. pick-up game. Dave the banker and Tom the car dealer, both average players at best, not half as good as Joel. Dave bounced the basketball and with each hit on the pavement, my heart caved in a little more.
“Shall we go inside?” Gabriella asked, noticing them, too. I had spent Joel's first DD in bed all day, telling the boys I was sick while my father took them out for bowling and ice cream. I had lain there all day, waiting for the moment the clock ticked 2:37 p.m., half-expecting something to happen when it did, whether it was an external sign or an internal combustion, but the minute was just like the one before it: heavy with sadness. I had even closed my eyes and imagined him lying beside me on Lumpy, his leg crossed over mine, as he did so often, and curling my hands into his chest where I could feel his heart beat. I felt that Joel deserved something from me in that moment, some eulogy or prayer, but all I could muster was one simple sentence, “I love you, Bear,” and in my mind, I could hear him say back, “Love you big, Ramey.”
Forty-five minutes until the exact moment Joel collapsed on the basketball court. “I'd rather sit here,” I said. “I'm waiting for the boys.”
Donald emerged from his front door, wearing red warm-up pants and a white T-shirt. In an effort to stay fit for Zoya, he played with the guys, though I couldn't recall him ever making a basket, something that inevitably wound up in our conversation after each game. “Missed it by a mile,” he would say. Or, “So close it had to hurt.”
“Howdy there,” Donald said, followed by Zoya, who was dressed unusually normal, meaning no low-cut tops or tight jeans or massive amounts of jewelry and make-up. She wore her thick hair in a pony-tail. While Donald met up with the guys and they greeted and then waved to me, probably feeling badly that they were playing today, Zoya joined us on the bench, now full. She held her arms around her stomach, and I could see she'd been crying.
“You okay?” I asked. I liked that someone other than me could be having a crappy day.
Zoya nodded. “Donald impregnated me.”
Gabriella gasped and hugged Zoya, and I did the same. “Congratulations.”
Zoya began crying. “He gave me bad baby that makes me sick and ugly. I can't do workout or eat food or drink my coffee or fit into my sexy pants.”
“A baby is worth all those things,” Gabriella said, shaking her finger for emphasis. “We'll go shopping for sexy maternity clothes if that's really important to you.”
Zoya wiped the raccoon eyes from her face with her sleeve. “They make such things?”
I nodded. “Very stylish, indeed.”
Zoya's mood lifted. “I love America. Then Zoya happy about baby. Thanks for friends like you.” Zoya took our hands and held them in her lap. “I am sorry for telling you on day of mourning, Ramona. I lit candle for Joel this morning.”
“Do Russians do that?”
“Gabriella taught me. When I am thinking of someone I miss, I light a candle and say a prayer for them. It made me think of Halloween party three years ago when Joel drug chains in attic to scare us.”
Gabriella laughed. “Joel would stop at nothing to try to get the last laugh. God rest his soul.”
I remembered that night, how Joel had begged me to be Frankenstein's bride and, as usual, I agreed. I tried to get the picture of us in my mind, but only bits and pieces of our costume flashed in my mind. How could I forget such an odd image, the two of us in green paint and that black beehive wig with a white lightning stripe? During the middle of the party, Joel had grunted something about making a Frankenbaby with me later, and we had sex in our costumes, which turned out to be sexier than I imagined.
I silently vowed to get every printed photo from our ten years' worth of Halloween costume parties, and put them out as decorations for Halloween. The crispy orange leaves fell toward us, one perfectly shaped oak leaf sailing onto my lap. I grabbed it by its stem and twirled it. “Let's put those little ghost things Joel liked so much on the branches.”
“Oh, the kids will love that,” Gabriella said.
“Joel will love it, too,” Zoya said, catching herself after she'd said it, wondering, I assumed, if I believed Joel still had the capacity to feel such an emotion.
I patted her knee. “You're right. Joel will absolutely love it.”
A hundred little white ghosts swung in the wind when the boys and I walked down to the park. It was 2:48 p.m. I imagined my father, the timekeeper, had known exactly when to pull up, to cause some sort of distraction so I wouldn't be sad. My father's grief had to include how sad he felt for the boys and me. Gabriella had insisted we stop and pray when the time came, so we stood underneath our white ghosts and she prayed us through the minute of his death. I don't even recall what she said, but it sounded like a song: smooth and rhythmic and full of emotion.
William hugged me tightly and let me kiss him on the head and-probably instructed by his grandfather-Bradley allowed me to hug him, too. “We want to go to the park and make a basket for Daddy,” William said, pushing up the frames on his button nose. “I've been practicing at Grandpa's house.”
I felt the tug of a cry, but kept the tears at bay. William was terrible at basketball, perhaps worse than Donald. When William was younger, Joel had tried to get him to make the shot on the regulation court, but the then-five-year-old was much too short for it.
Bradley raised his brows and nodded. “I think he can do it, Mom,” he said. “He wants to make Daddy proud.”
My father turned away to wipe a tear from his face, and Zoya and Gabriella had tears streaming down theirs. I couldn't possibly go to the court while the other men were playing, but I couldn't let my boys down, either.
“We'll all go,” Gabriella said, and my father nodded and retrieved a basketball from the backseat. It was a blue and red Globetrotters basketball, one I had gotten Joel for our first anniversary after we had seen the team perform at an exhibition game.
My father walked beside me and grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “How you holdin' up, pumpkin?”
“On the bright side, it's a pretty day.” Growing up, my father had told my sister and me to always look at the bright side. I often heard him say the same thing to my sons. It had annoyed me growing up, but now I appreciated his optimism. Somebody had to do it.
“That it is, darlin'. Never a bluer sky.”
When we arrived at the park, the players were gathered in a circle, their shirts covered in sweat, their heads bowed in prayer. We stopped until the moment passed and they dispersed. I wondered if Deacon Friar had been right and the deceased could feel our prayers in Heaven. Gabriella had told me once that her mother believed it was like a game show in Heaven, and the person with the most prayers said for them had the highest score, allowing them to move closer to God, like cosmic board spaces, but I hated to think of getting to Heaven like a contest. How many lonely people died that no one prayed for, save the nuns? If Gabriella's mom was right, Joel probably skipped ahead a few spaces that day.
After we said our hellos and goodbyes to the men, we had the park to ourselves and sat on the cool cement bench that the neighborhood had bought in remembrance of Joel, with a silver plaque in the middle that read, “In Loving Memory of Joel Bradford Griffen.” The boys began to warm up and peered over their tiny shoulders at their small audience.
“Ready?” Bradley asked, and before we could answer, he lobbed the ball from the free throw line, sinking it. “Nothin' but net!”
William retrieved the ball, and I said a tiny prayer that he would make it because it meant the world to him. He bounced it once, twice, and the third time, it landed on his foot, causing the ball to veer left, but he caught it before it escaped, and he started over again. With his tongue stuck onto the top of his lip, his brow furrowed in concentration, William heaved the ball to the sky, causing it to soar toward the goal… and hit just underneath the rim before catapulting back to earth.
His shoulders fell in defeat.
“It's okay, bro,” Bradley said, and I couldn't believe how uncharacteristically nice he was being to his little brother. “Go again.” He bounced the ball to William.
A second time, knees bent, William hurled the ball upward, this time landing on top of the rim, but circling it and falling to the right and down.
“This is the money shot,” Bradley said, and William turned back to us. “This is the money shot!” he yelled.
He positioned his right palm underneath the ball, his elbows bent, feet planted firmly on the free-shot line, and in one sweeping motion, he jumped up high into the air, the ball sailing toward the rim and falling straight through the net. “That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!” William said, and Bradley high-fived him before we gathered him in a hug. Thank God. I meant it. I would've sat there until sundown to make sure William got the shot he wanted. Surely the boys' guardian angels had given that ball a little lift on its journey to the net.
I knelt down beside my seven-year-old, eyes moist with tears, and beamed. “Daddy would be very proud,” I said. “And so is Mommy.”
An hour later, I knelt down again, this time at Joel's grave. I had never asked the boys to visit their father's grave, believing it was too macabre for young children, though Gabriella's children had visited his grave numerous times.
Bradley and William folded their hands and stared at their father's gravestone. Bradley knelt down and traced his fingers in his father's name, while I stared at the orange pansy, which had not been planted at all. No earth had been moved, the grass perfectly grown in around the flower's stem, and upon closer inspection, I saw that the flower had grown up precisely where my tears had fallen two days prior.