Dating da Vinci (6 page)

“I'm home,” da Vinci said. As if my heart were on an escalator, it rose again from the bottom floor. Besides my class, da Vinci
was learning by repeating everything I said and trying to discern its meaning.

He rushed to greet me, wearing soccer shorts and a T-shirt. He'd joined the Panchal soccer league immediately, and I'd told the boys we'd go watch his first game. His muscular thighs and calves drew my eyes down the length of his body, but I quickly rebounded to his large smile. He took the bags from my arms and together we put them away, going item by item for da Vinci to learn their names. A hundred items, the only embarrassing one being tampons. “Tampon for woman,” he said, not embarrassed in the least. Well, he did have a family full of females in Italy.

The TV was paused on my own sister in a downward lunge, her boobs front and center. The escalator dropped a few stories again. Bradley had taught da Vinci how to use the TiVo (and T V, as he didn't have it in his village), and obviously da Vinci found programming that he liked. We spoke in Italian.

“Did you work out to my sister?”

“Half of the program.”

“Do you like her?”

“I'm sure she's very nice.”

“But do you think she's pretty?”

Da Vinci nodded. “She smiles too much. Her voice is irritating.”

We laughed. Da Vinci: handsome
and
smart.

Together we set aside the ingredients for the lasagna da Vinci would make us for dinner—his mother's recipe, he had said, starting to tear up at the mention of her name. A handsome Italian cooking me dinner every night? This I could get used to.

When Cecelia had found out da Vinci was living in the studio, she had passed along da Vinci's skills sheet to assess job opportunities at the temp agency also owned by Panchal.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Cecelia had asked as we reviewed the sheet. More than a hundred items on the sheet and da Vinci had checked more than half of them.

“He says he's very good with his hands,” I had told her.

Cecelia, who looked like a church lady but gossiped like a desperate housewife, had chewed on the end of her glasses and shook her chest. “Oh, I bet he is. Do share with me if you find out, will you?”

Zoe and her father Michael met us at the soccer field because Zoe was staying with him the rest of the week while Rachel flew to San Diego to give a motivational speech to women who had lost their husbands in the Iraq War. If she became as iconic as Richard Simmons, I was going to throw up. At least I had a sympathetic ear in Michael, whose own reputation had been sacrificed for the sake of his ex-wife's career. Rachel's motivational speeches began with the “woe-is-me, my husband cheated, I thought my life was over, I took control, lost forty pounds, and wham-bam, look at me now, I've got my own TV show and get to meet fabulous people like you” spiel.

If I were in the audience (which I swear I won't be), I would raise my hand and ask my sister how she can ever compare a cheating husband to a dead husband, especially a good dead husband, but she would find a way. She always does. The audience would eat her up like an irresistible confection. Pretty, sweet girls have few enemies. At least Michael, da Vinci and I all agreed she smiles too much. It was a start.

Michael, who frequently got dirty looks when he went in public and had bigger hurdles than most guys back in the dating pool, wore his business suit sans jacket, and Zoe, sans mega hair bow, sat between her nephews. She wanted to play soccer, but her mother said she didn't have time with dance/cheer/gymnastics/pageants. So tonight she was skipping one of them because Michael had to exert power in the relationship whenever he could. Besides, Zoe agreed she didn't feel well (she learned quickly) so Rachel wouldn't tear into Michael.

My feeling sorry for Michael (and his mutual sorrow about my loss) had made us much better friends than we ever were when he and Rachel were married. It was probably because he had been Rachel's whipping boy while they'd been married, and I couldn't
stand how he never stood up for himself. I was in the small minority who believed Rachel had pushed him into the arms of another woman, but I had only told Joel this and he quickly agreed. He had liked Michael, too, and a friend of Joel's would always be a friend of mine. The other thing about grief is that you divide the universe into two parts: those who knew your dearly departed and those who don't. I'm not sure which is easier, but whenever I meet someone who tells me they knew Joel (a classmate, a client, an associate), I latch on to them and make them tell me anything I may not have known about my husband. You think you know everything about your mate until they die. Some days I feel like I'll never know.

Asking the one person I
really
wanted to talk to, the one person who could tell me the most about my husband, was too painful. If I were honest with myself, I would admit that I could not move on without knowing the truth about Joel and Monica, which is why I couldn't put it off much longer.

I only know what he was willing to give, which was precisely six weeks, two days, and one hour before his death:
We're history. A long, complicated history I don't care to recount if that's okay with you.

It wasn't okay with me, which is why I had bugged him to death about it, right up
until
his death. In fact, our final argument had been about Monica, the night before he'd died. He was exhausted from a long day at the office; having passed on his work for her law firm to another partner, he was knee-deep in a new hospital project. He'd just gotten back from running and had clutched at his chest, telling me he felt winded, but I hadn't worried. He was athletic and young, always pushing himself to the limit. I wasn't a runner, wasn't even a fast walker, so I knew nothing of a runner's high or why people would push their bodies to the pain limit. I let him catch his breath, but only for a moment, before I'd gingerly asked him if he would tell me honestly and completely if he was over her.

He had looked at me like a stranger might, someone you think you recognize from across the street, only to find out that no, you don't know them at all. I cringed inside that I'd get
that
look—as he continued to pant and left me for a shower without an answer. I took this as a no.
No, I'm not over Monica Blevins.
After I saw her at the funeral, I realized she was the type of woman that no man could ever truly get over. She was someone babies to old men wanted to get to know and once you did, you came back for more. I was no exception.

My obsession with Monica Blevins had not died along with Joel but had been buried underneath the weight of grief. Now that I was digging myself out of it, there she was again, waiting, taunting.

I wished I'd been more trusting, had more faith in our marriage, but Joel's act of passing on the account did not pacify me. A cloud of suspicion hung over our marriage those last weeks and it had not dissipated even in his death. Did I really think he'd pack his bags and go back to her? Truthfully that's what I'd feared ever since our second date when he'd told me that he couldn't get in a relationship because I would just be a rebound and I deserved better than that. My heart's just mush, he'd told me, and though I teased Joel time and again for his comment after we were committed and then long married, I wondered if a piece of it was true. If after eight years of marriage I was still a rebound girl: the one you go to after the one you love has just destroyed you.

“Alrighty then. That's him?” Michael asked as we sat on the bleachers, looking out at da Vinci warming up with his new teammates.

I acted as though I didn't catch the surprise in his voice. “He starts at UT next week. Coming in late because he had some problems with his visa.”

Michael, attractive even with a receding hairline, loosened his tie. “At least you're giving him a break. You always were the nice one.”

I noted the hint of bitterness, but let it slide when Anh, wearing a business suit and Vi on her hip like an adorable accessory, awkwardly
climbed the bleachers in her heels. I grabbed Vi and planted a kiss on her round cheek. Anh sat next to Michael and flipped her hair. She denied that she flirted with him and he with her, but only someone as out of touch with romance as me could identify it in others. Anh firmly believed that opposites only attract out of boredom and she was far from bored. She hated that Michael drove a gas-guzzling SUV and Michael hated that Anh wouldn't eat meat. (Hey, this is Texas! Cattle country!) Don't even get them started on the war and political agendas—he the flag-waving Republican, and she the die-hard Dem. Nonetheless, I thought they would be perfect together. But what did I know?

“I retract my last statement,” Anh said as she stared at da Vinci with her mouth agape. “You don't have a chance in hell with a specimen like that. Even if he is a living statue in your backyard.”

Michael squinted his eyes. “You like da Vinci?”

“Not in that way.”

“Hell, yes, in that way,” Anh retorted. “Any woman with a pair of … ovaries would like him in that way.”

Michael shook his head and crossed his arms, knowing when to keep his mouth shut.

Anh handed Vi some Cheerios from her oversized black leather purse (she wouldn't dare carry a diaper bag). “So did you call the yogi yet?”

“A yogi,” Michael said, shaking his head again. “Don't go getting her involved in your Eastern mumbo-jumbo.”

Anh ignored him. “Tell the Repub a little yoga might remove that massive stick up his ass.”

“Stop it, you two. You're worse than my boys.” Anh claimed that I was like a pipe with massive clogged drains keeping “flow” from happening. It all sounded drippy to me, but I'd promised myself I would try new things and that included the possibility that my body did need some spiritual plumbing.

One thing I knew for certain: the Cheetos/Oreos/sad movies method I had prescribed for myself had done zilch for my grief and even less for my body image. I had always considered myself an open person until my loss sealed the door shut. With the help of—
what?
— I could open it again. I would plow through the ideas in the grief binder like Columbus searching for his New World. Where I would find
me
again, only God, or Buddha, knew.

Then there was da Vinci, whose coming was both timely and oddly welcome. We began our journeys at the same juncture, side by side as we ventured into the unknown; he trying to start a new life in America, me trying to find the meaning of it again. Anh said we were entering our Renaissance period (
Renaissance: a revival of or renewed interest in something
). The original da Vinci had been a key figure in the sixteenth-century Renaissance, and I had no idea if my da Vinci would play a key role in mine.

With one hard kick, da Vinci scored a goal, and raising his arms in the air, searched me out in the bleachers. I cheered for him and felt the deadbolt unlock, the sound echoing through my soul.

soul \sol\
n
1 : the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being regarded as immortal 2 : a person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity (
Origin
: Old English)

I GAWKED AT DA VINCI'S naked chest a full three minutes before turning the engine off to retrieve him and regretfully see him slide his T-shirt back on his sweaty, dirt-streaked frame. No shock; I wasn't the only spellbound, jaw-slacked female enjoying the view. When I took my eyes off of him for a split second, I saw a woman walking her dog (more like standing still) staring at him, and another just pull over at the side of the road to take a long peek. I thought,
Is this what my life has come to
? Getting my thrills watching a well-built guy planting pansies? Am I so desperate that just watching McDreamy on
Grey's Anatomy
isn't cutting it for me anymore? And wasn't I going to visit my neighbor Gabriella's deacon this afternoon to talk about the very essence of our being: the soul? To prep for it, I should be waxing existential, not staring at eye candy all afternoon.

It wasn't my fault da Vinci got overheated and took off his shirt. It's not like I asked him to. (Would I dare?) I was just an innocent bystander, giving him a ride back home before I hoofed it to the deacon. So if a girl just happens upon a thing of beauty, it would be rude not to appreciate the artistry of a well-sculpted creation. And it somehow calmed my nerves about meeting with a theologian. Because as open-minded as I am about life, culture, differences, I haven't firmly grasped
any one belief about Heaven, God or that mystery that is the soul. I only knew that I hoped we had one and that I would be reunited with Joel someday and that I would recognize him. Hopefully he wouldn't look thirty-eight and me, eighty-eight, because well, that would just be a cruel joke, now, wouldn't it?

Earlier that morning as Gabriella and I walked through the trails in our neighborhood, she shared with me her view of Heaven, something we hadn't discussed since Joel passed. My friends had trod softly where it came to Joel, and though we talked about him, the conversation consisted of funny stories from his life, not musings about his death.

“It's full of flowers and men like da Vinci walking around with angel wings,” she said as her tiny frame kept up with my taller one. Only hours later, as I watched da Vinci among the flowers, I started to believe she could be right. Heaven would be beautiful, right? But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't picture Joel anywhere other than in my house. Joel was a city boy. If Heaven was more of a countryscape than a cityscape, how could he not feel out of place there? Then again, Heaven surely didn't have mosquitoes, Joel's biggest problem with the outdoors. He also didn't like to get dirt under his nails, so he'd worn gardening gloves. I wondered if they had gardening gloves in Heaven. Would the deacon know the answer to that? Were my questions too basic? I wished I weren't such a spiritual simpleton.

Da Vinci, on the other hand, had the dirtiest nails I'd ever seen and as soon as I saw them, I felt the compulsion to wash them for him, slowly, meticulously, using a file to clean every nail, then finish them off with a vanilla-scented lotion. Instead I said, “Don't touch anything,” as he got into the car.