I NEVER INTENDED TO take home da Vinci.
I don't mean “a da Vinci” as in a reproduction of the man's art, best known for his Mona Lisa and Last Supper paintings. I mean to say I took home Leonardo da Vinci, the living, breathing man; only not that man, the genius from the fifteenth century, but a young Italian immigrant who shared his name in modern day Austin, Texas.
It is far more accurate to say I took home Italian for dinner.
It began innocently enough, with me breaking my rule yet again not to get involved with a student, but I assure you I had never gotten this involved before.
My students, all adults ranging in age from their twenties to their sixties, shuffled into the cramped classroom with the wide-eyed wonder of children on the first day of school. I smoothed my blonde hair behind my ear and reviewed the student roster on my clipboard: eight students, five languages. Of the 6,912 known living languages in the world, I had personally encountered more than fifty in my role as an English language instructor to immigrants (including those speaking languages most Americans have never heard of, like Balochi, Dari, Pashto, and Tajik). But it wasn't an unfamiliar language that caused me to catch my breath. It was a name, jumping off the page like a typo or emblazoned in lights on a marquee. The usual: Miguel, Margarita, Jesús-Spanish; Helena-Swahili; Jayesh-Farsi; Pénélope- French. And lastly, the one that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand: Leonardo da Vinci-Italian.
My best friend says that funny tickle is the breeze of fate telling you your life is about to change, but I'd been walking around in a fog so long I barely noticed.
I surveyed the students-none remotely resembling an Italian. I'd encountered people with famous names before: a homely grade-school friend named Elizabeth Taylor, a high-school boyfriend named Bill Clinton, even a wiry bank teller with the macho moniker of John Wayne, but someone named after perhaps the greatest genius of all time? This I had to see. I imagined he would resemble the only sketch I'd ever seen of the artist da Vinci: a self-portrait he'd made in his old age, with a crazy long beard and deep wrinkles. I wondered if Cecelia, my friend in admissions, was playing some kind of joke on me.
I watched my students take their places, smiles plastered on their faces as they exchanged pleasant nods to their classmates. A smile was the universal hello, even if it wasn't genuine, but it soon would be. I wished Americans could see how well the students got along: people from vastly different areas of the world, from all walks of life, from peasants in remote villages to descendants of royalty. My students shared one distinct characteristic that bonded them for life: they were outsiders desperately wanting in.
I could typically tell who was whom from their appearances. Their skin colors ranged from the very fair, belonging to a lanky French woman to the rich ebony of an African. Their dress was the second cultural marker, though you could tell how quickly they planned to assimilate if they wore American-style clothing.
I passed out the workbooks, noting that da Vinci was still missing, if he existed at all. Getting lost in America was common, something that we concentrated on heavily in the first six weeks-how to get from point A to point B was critical for survival. Each student carried a map with color-coded instructions. My building, the Panchal Cultural Center of Austin, was in orange. I noticed the map was the one item all my students carried in their hands. I waited a few minutes longer for da Vinci to show, but when he didn't, I started my class as I did each semester, with a welcome in my students' languages.
“ Karibu! jHola! Bonjour!Xosh amadid ” I welcomed them with a smile, my hands clasped together then widening in a warm gesture.
My students replied back in their native tongues, pleased that we had made a verbal connection. I knew the word welcome in a hundred languages, but was only fluent in four: German, French, Spanish, and English. As a linguist, I knew enough to get around in dozens of foreign countries though I'd never traveled anywhere outside of the United States, except for Mexico where I went with my husband every year for vacation. My heart paused as I thought of him, but soon resumed its normal rhythm. I'm not certain how long it takes a broken heart to mend, but I hadn't done anything to speed along its recovery.
In fact, my life had become so simple and routine that I began to believe survival mode was the only mode, or at least the only mode for me. My only source of adventure lay before me, the seven students who would hang on my every word, unlike my two sons, who grew more belligerent with each passing year, especially with their father gone. After Joel died, I wanted nothing more than to stop communicating altogether, yet finances forced me to work right through my grief. In the almost two years since Joel's passing, I found myself more comfortable with complete strangers from around the globe than I did with my friends and family.
I liked that each semester began with a blank slate-I did not know them, and they did not know me. They were floundering to make it in America, I was floundering to make it through another day. I had never had so much in common with my students. For the first time in my thirty-six years, I didn't fit in, either.
Our class began with a lot of non-verbal communication-pointing to charts and learning the signs they would encounter-stop signs, restroom signs, road signs, traffic signals-all important things that could keep them alive, fed, clothed, and not run over by a bus.
“Man,” I said pointing to the bathroom sign. “Woman.”
“Man,” an Italian voice boomed from behind me. I turned from the chart and looked to the door, where my eighth student stood beaming with a smile and pointing to his chest, mastering his first spoken word of English in my class. Man. My mouth parted in surprise, for the man in front of me, masculine in every sense, was not an old man at all, but a young, gorgeous Italian with chin-length black hair, broad shoulders, and a tall frame. His brown eyes glistened under large black eyebrows, raised in an expression of pride. He wore cargo pants and a fitted long-sleeved T-shirt with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. His smile, already on the first day, was genuine. I couldn't take my eyes off of him. Even Cecelia couldn't dream this guy up.
“ Benvenuto, ” I stammered shyly, then pointed to his seat, one off to the side so he wouldn't distract me.
“ Ciao, signora, ” he said, pointing to the sign of the woman and then to me. “Woman.”
I nodded, feeling myself blush. He was only pointing out the obvious; he hadn't even complimented me, but the way he looked at me made my insides somersault. “ Mi chiamo Ramona. ”
He leaned forward in his desk, which seemed too small for his muscular frame, and pointed to his chest again, this time his large hand over his heart. “ Piacere di conoscerla, Ramona. (Pleased to meet you, Ramona.) Mi chiamo Leonardo. ”
“Da Vinci,” I added. The class laughed. I pointed to Leonardo. “This man is Leonardo da Vinci.”
The class recognized the famous name and laughed again. “ Si, ” Leonardo said, twisting his body to face them, a large grin on his face. “This man is Leonardo da Vinci,” he repeated after me in broken English.
After our two-hour lesson, I sent them out with a good-bye in their languages, ending with Arrivederci for da Vinci. Yet instead of leaving like his fellow classmates, he stood over my desk where I sat gathering my papers and making notes. I glanced up, my head even with his hips. I caught my breath again, his presence unsettling. He had to be at least six foot three. I stood, my five-foot-four frame coming up to his chest, my mind searching for its Italian language files, where I was conversational at best. I spoke to him in Italian. Leonardo replied quickly, and I tried to process as many words as I could. Key words enabled me to decipher the meaning from the context. I shall translate.
“May I help you, Leonardo?”
“ Si, Ramona. I need food, rent, sleep, job.” Like I said, key words. He looked at me with those pleading dark chocolate eyes, his Roman nose and chiseled features like the ones the real da Vinci had probably carved a dozen times into statues. This modern da Vinci looked more like a Greek god than any mythological interpretation I'd seen. The only Italians I'd ever met were short men with dark mustaches who operated the Italian restaurants in Austin. But then again, I don't get out much.
I checked my watch. Cecelia would be gone by now, and I had to get to the school to pick up my boys for flag football practice. The social services department, which would help Leonardo with these matters, was closed on Mondays since they worked on the weekends. I couldn't very well leave him stranded, could I?
He smiled at me again, and I noticed the dimple in his right cheek and the deeper dimple in his chin. I couldn't say no to that most of all. I'd lived in a shell the last two years, so helping someone, especially a cute someone with a killer-watt smile, might be the remedy I needed for my depression. Prozac, among other things, wasn't cutting it.
“Come with me,” I told him, and even as I said it, I wondered what I was doing. Where would I take him, a hotel? Shove the want ads in his large hands and order him a pizza? Panchal's tagline hung above the whiteboard: One human race. Panchal believed everyone belonged, and no one should ever be lost, physically or figuratively. So as a faithful employee, I took Panchal's torch and made sure da Vinci found his way. I didn't unlock his door on my black Toyota station wagon until I scooped the fast food bags and candy wrappers and empty drink cups and shoved them into an even larger McDonald's bag.
Junk food had become my therapy; its salty, fatty flavor was far more soothing than a therapist could ever be. Another unfortunate side effect of widowhood wasn't just the mess that my life had become, but the physical piles of grief everywhere I turned. I had become Linus and Pigpen from Peanuts all rolled into one, only my security blanket was around my heart. The Pigpen side of me, however, was evident in my car, the kitchen sink, the closets, you name it.
My mother liked to remind me what a neat freak I was Before, but I told her people change. People die and people change. Two of life's certainties. I should've become more organized After, yet all the effort left me so exhausted I stopped caring so much, save one thing: I dusted religiously for fear of dust mites. Have you seen those things magnified a thousand times? Creepier than a monster in a horror flick.
True, some Grievers become better people After like some of the heroic 9/11 widows who started non-profit foundations and pursued big dreams, but I don't get that. Until today when I'd felt compelled to help da Vinci, the only thing I'd cared about doing was downing double bacon cheeseburger and raising my boys.
Neatness became a part of my past like so many other things: happiness, joy, adventure, love.
“ Grazie, ” da Vinci said to me repeatedly as we drove down the interstate.
He made himself at home even in my car, fiddling with the mirror and changing the stations on the stereo.
“Rock and roll,” he said, nodding his head to the beat of an old Beatles song.
“You like rock and roll?” I asked him in Italian. I wanted more than small talk. I wanted to know everything there was to know about this man in my passenger seat on day one. I told myself it was for insurance purposes; I shouldn't be driving around a complete stranger if he could be dangerous, though I doubted he could be. Even for his size, he looked like a gentle man-maybe it was the kind eyes or the fluidity of his movement. He moved like a dancer in the body of a linebacker.
Talking wasn't a problem for da Vinci. I understood enough to know that I liked him. He spoke lovingly of his homeland, his poor farming community outside of Milan, his four sisters, and he claimed to know a lot about women. I hadn't doubted that a bit. He was twenty-five, never been married, “because there aren't pretty girls like you.” If that alone didn't turn me to putty, his next statement did: he missed his mother. (Okay, his mother's cooking, but still.)
Like many of my students, he was in America at the University of Texas on a student visa. Lucky college girls, I thought. He'd have them lined up for nude portraits in no time, even if he didn't sketch.
Most of my students were poor, scraping together whatever savings they had in their homeland to travel to America to live a better life. I wasn't surprised that da Vinci only had enough money for one month's rent and even then it would be at a cockroach-infested motel. I couldn't see a man this beautiful at an embarrassing excuse for American real estate.
“$200 for rent? I know the perfect place,” I told him, my body feeling as light as air. “My studio apartment in the backyard of my house.”
Da Vinci seemed very pleased, and because it had been a very long time since I'd pleased a man, I felt pleased myself.
Understand that I have never offered my garage studio to a student before, but then I had never met a student like da Vinci, either. I hadn't touched Joel's private workspace in two years, leaving everything as it had been the day he died. It belonged to Joel, and I felt in some ways that the space would never be anyone's but his. I had wondered if I would just turn it into a museum, my place where time stood still. But it was, by all accounts, time for the hands to start moving again. But how?
During our ride I gathered that da Vinci was not only not an ax murderer, but that he was honest, sincere, hardworking, and something I couldn't quite put my finger on, but it was something I'd lost and didn't believe I would ever find again. As I pulled into the elementary school's circle drive, it came to me.
La vita allegra. Joyful living. His eyes danced with excitement and awe and insatiable curiosity. Not just for America. For life. I ached to feel that again. This is why I gave him a ride. This is why I rented my late husband's studio for scraps. I hoped some of da Vinci's joy would rub off on me. Although I had meant it more in the metaphysical sense than the physical, that wouldn't be entirely bad, either.
I couldn't understand half of what da Vinci said, but who cared? It was nice to listen to a voice again. A nice baritone voice so different than the calming tone of my father or the tinny voice of my mother or, let's be honest, the whiny voices of my sons. Da Vinci was refreshing. Some women wish for Calgon to take them away; I wished for da Vinci to never stop talking. Or looking at me. Looking at me and talking. Especially the part where he'd said I was pretty.
“You'll have no problem making friends,” I said as I pulled my station wagon behind a white Escalade. “I'll hook you up.”
“Hook up?” he repeated. “Hook up Leonardo with Jessica Simpson?”
I laughed. “No, not that kind of hook up. I meant, I'll help you.” So he liked blondes with big boobs and big shiny teeth. I checked my dishwater blonde hair in the rearview mirror, six months overdue for a coloring. The rugged gray strands in the middle stood like little Confederate soldiers, ready to shoot down any approach from a male suitor.
Even my teeth, one of my best assets, had coffee stains. What had gotten me out of bed the last two years besides my boys and caffeine? As for the rest, my sister got the boobs in the family and she'd had to pay for them. He probably thought I was old, that people in their thirties were boring has-beens, too settled down with jobs and kids for any adventure. That's what I'd thought when I was his age.
As we wheeled around the school pick-up line at a whopping two miles per hour, I thought about the last time I'd truly had an adventure. Not since Joel had passed, but before then? Six Flags? All that waiting in line and I didn't even ride the roller coasters. Not even one pseudo-adventure. Settled down was putting it nicely-like most families with young children, our lives were wrapped up in homework and after-school activities and playdates and just getting by. Now even that was hard to do.
Getting out of bed each day for the last two years, followed by the tasks most Normals do with ease-showering, fixing breakfast, going to the grocery store-had been difficult. Each menial task felt impossible, yet I did them, each day adding onto the other until the calendar and the change of seasons told me that the second anniversary of my husband's passing was fast approaching. The life insurance settlement that had kept us going was likewise dwindling to nothing. Who needs a big life insurance package before you hit 40? (Answer: everyone.)
It felt like slowly being strangled-the closer I got to the date, the more difficult I found it to breathe. The progress I'd made in becoming a functional human being again was slipping from my grasp. So I supposed da Vinci was a nice diversion, a bodyguard against my grief.
I knew it was time to buck up, to prove myself, to regain my place in the world, but the thought scared the hell out of me.
My car had reached tenth in line when I began noticing the stares. Moms who rarely waved to me took notice. Da Vinci was like a neon sign blinking Ramona Got Her Groove Back. What must they think? I waved back, both embarrassed and a little proud to be seen with someone who looked like him. I had replaced my New York Times crossword puzzle with da Vinci and I wasn't the trading-up kind of girl.
It was a welcome change from the pitying stares I, the poor, young widow, was used to getting-the awkward conversation and the polite invitations to dinner parties I would never attend without Joel by my side. Even worse had been the transition from the hushed conversation about me behind my back to the swelling tide of the world trying to hook me up. As in the Jessica Simpson-type of hook-up.
You see, the world is divided into two types of people: Grievers and Normals. Grievers want desperately to be Normal again, but the journey back seems impossible, and Normals don't understand why Grievers can't “move on” and “get over it.” After all, death is just a part of life, right? Life goes on. As if.
For those who have never grieved, grief has an expiration date, and mine was imminent. They falsely assumed that time healed, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that I didn't want to grieve forever, but it was more accurate to expect more than two measly years. Grievers don't want Normals to know that if Normals lost their spouses they would likely never recover. Not fully, anyway. We can't be treated like an alcoholic or drug addict, but the wanting is there all the same. Unlike an alcoholic who could give in to temptation, our yearning can never be met. Even crazier is the idea that a lost love can be replaced with a new love, as if all love were equal. It wasn't that I didn't want to love again, either. It just seemed as plausible as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz granting me a wish in her tinny voice. But then if you had told me yesterday that I would have a gorgeous guy in my passenger seat, I would have denied that possibility, too.
The school bell rang, sending children pouring out of the school in a mob of multi-colored energy. I scanned the crowd, my eyes settling on a tall woman wearing a red suit-a suit I would not only not fit into but would look ridiculous in because one had to carry herself a certain way to pull off a cardinal-colored suit like that, and this woman, a dark-haired beauty, had what it took. When she spun around, my heart paused again for the second time that day. Monica. My cheeks flushed. I wanted to look away- Just look away, Ramona, I told myself-but she was like an accident at the side of the road and I falsely believed that if I stared long enough, I would understand what had happened.
My mom-in-law Judith had told me Monica's daughter was attending Lone Star Elementary now-a cute kindergartner by the looks of it, but I hadn't thought I would run into her. It's a big school, and I don't recreate with the PTA. I hadn't seen her since Joel's funeral when I'd wanted nothing more than to run up to her and shake her and demand answers. Wouldn't the world have thought I'd gone insane? Yet if they knew what I knew, or what I thought I knew, they wouldn't blame me a bit. But then I didn't know much, which is a part of the reason I couldn't take my eyes off of her until the rustle of my boys demanded my attention.
Bradley's mouth hung upon when he saw Leonardo in the front seat.
“Are you a football player?” he asked, his blonde hair falling in front of his blue eyes. “Mom, is he my new private coach?”
“Right,” I said, looking at my son in the rear view. “As if we can afford a private coach. Boys, this is Leonardo da Vinci, from Italy.”
His little brother William, my dark-haired, dark-eyed version of Joel, viewed me skeptically through his wire-framed glasses. “Is this some kind of living history lesson?”
I had been known to drag my boys to cultural events now and then to encourage them to learn about the world outside of our Austin bubble. There, that had to account for adventure, hadn't it? We'd gone to museums and dance recitals and traveling exhibits. We tried new restaurants-Greek, Japanese, Thai. I was determined not to have my boys grow up on Chicken McNuggets and hamburgers alone, though the empty bag stuffed with trash proved even I couldn't resist the addictive junk.
“Can we go to Mickey Dee's before practice?” Bradley asked.
“McDonalds!” da Vinci said, recognizing the global franchise. I'd read that the golden arches were more recognized than Jesus Christ or the President of the United States. A large fries and chocolate shake wouldn't hurt. I hadn't had one in what, 24 hours?
My car perpetually smelled of French fries, the perfume of greasy Heaven. How could I blame them? I checked my watch again. “Fine. But when you're done with practice, we're going to sit down and have a real meal together. Something Italian, perhaps.”
William nodded his head enthusiastically. “Does this mean we get to learn to speak Italian, Mom?”
Bradley groaned. He had enough problems mastering the English language.
I glanced over at da Vinci, again messing with the controls on my stereo, something I had always slapped Joel's hand for. I had to admit it was nice having someone fiddle with my knobs again.
“ Sì, è certo, ” I winked at William. “Yes, it does.”