by Malena Lott
Just as the deacon had looked nothing like I'd pictured (because I hadn't spoken to him on the phone), neither did the yogi. The yogi did not look like Gandhi or a Buddhist at all, but rather like a soccer mom from my school. Someone my age had this whole mind/body connection figured out and had young kids in school? In fact, she had four kids and one husband who had left her for someone younger, so I had to believe she could've been on par with my life in the stress department.
Her studio looked like any other gym: blue mats rolled up on the left, large mirror in the middle and stereo equipment to the left. This is the room where I would find enlightenment? It seemed like a bubble bath with candles and aromatherapy would make more sense. I nearly turned around and walked out. I didn't know this woman from Adam. Was I supposed to reveal something to her? Share my deepest secrets? Tell her about Joel and Monica and da Vinci? My stomach (which I learned was a part of the solar plexus chakra) was in knots.
If my sister was the Energizer Bunny of the Workout World, then Cynthia Sheffield was the Cool Housecat who owned her domain without a word at all. She was tall and pretty and lean, with cat-shaped green eyes and long black hair. Gray hairs wove through her otherwise Crystal Gayle-looking hair. Wow. She must really have inner peace to allow her hair to show her age. Without the gray, I would've taken her for twenty-five, but I added fifteen years once I saw the silver streaks and the fine lines.
We sat cross-legged on a mat with soft mystical music playing from the stereo. She spoke softly, explaining the seven chakras and their purpose. We discussed the goal of “flow,” with no roadblocks within our consciousness. I was a wonderful student, listening intently, asking questions when permissible. I thought I got it-like a biology class, each section matching up like the skeletal system or the organs. I was doing fine right up until she explained the figurative representations of the chakras.
“They aren't physical,” she said, “but problems in the chakra can have physical repercussions.”
She talked of ego and personality and inner light. It turned out I had multiple roadblocks. If a speedway represented flow, then I wasn't even a quiet country road.
My brow chakra was in charge of spirituality and spirit-to- spirit communications. Deacon Friar hadn't put it this way, but my issues with my own spirituality and connectedness to Joel resided here.
My throat chakra was responsible for expression and asking for what I really want. No wonder I had choked up when I tried to send the message to Monica. And why had I been avoiding da Vinci ever since our shower? Hadn't I enjoyed the pleasures of our bodies?
My heart chakra was involved with sensitivity to touch. I had tried to make up for my heart sensitivity with hugs from my boys-something I'd done right. But I had no idea that the element of air and problems with breathing were associated with love. How often had I woken up and felt that the air in the room had been sucked out, that the air felt different when Joel died and I hadn't been able to breathe the same since?
The solar plexus chakra associated with freedom, power, and personality, one's sense of being. No wonder my stomach ached all the time. My identity had been shredded the day Joel died. My former self was locked up inside that teddy bear jar. Who was I now? Who did I want to be?
Even my root chakra was in trouble. Not only because it was associated with my mother, but with Mother Earth and trust and security. It was only because of da Vinci that I had started feeling connected again to Mother Earth-running through the leafy paths of our neighborhood, enjoying a country afternoon riding horses, soaking up the sun and enjoying wine again.
If five of my seven energy centers were on the fritz, how was there any hope for me at all? I had to be the worst case Cynthia had ever seen.
“There is hope for all of us,” she said in her soothing tone that I was certain could put me to sleep like a lullaby. She gave me tips on meditation, on how to quiet the chatter in my mind to concentrate on being present, to slowly unwind the knots that hindered my flow. I was still skeptical, but hopeful.
In fact, I was certain that before da Vinci had arrived, all seven of my chakras were out of whack. So as I left that studio, I made the decision that I didn't need less of da Vinci, but more. Much, much more.
Chapter 11
THE STUDIO WAS NOT meant for making love. It was meant for concentration, hunched over a drafting table, the sofa there only to sit a spell until inspiration struck again. Instead, we were bent over the drafting table, and one look at the pencil cup felt like the lead had punctured my heart. I couldn't. This was Joel's sacred place, his refuge. And what was I doing? Seeking refuge in the arms of another man, a passionate man covering me with kisses, warming me in his embrace, whispering, “ Ti desidero, Mona Lisa. ” I want you.
And I wanted him, too. God, I wanted him. If I let go, let myself feel the moment, calmed the chatter in my brain that said it wasn't the right time or the right man, then I wanted da Vinci as much as I had wanted any man.
Two glasses of Pinot had helped. My chakras could not be relaxed on their own, mind you. Two glasses and I felt more dream-state than reality. And as a fantasy this, da Vinci's slow, measured concentration on my body, was divine. I knew if I let us, we could create our own masterpiece-like Gustav Klimpt's The Kiss, mind, bodies, and souls entwined.
The shower had just been a warm-up. Water had acted as a kind of buffer between us. Now we were nearly naked, nothing between us but silky bra and panties Joel had referred to as “funderwear,” strictly reserved for the one or two nights a week we (okay, I) had the energy to make love. To think, before da Vinci had arrived in my classroom, I almost threw my funderwear out. Grievers have no use for funderwear.
If da Vinci represented all Italian men, then may I say Italians make great lovers? He was slow when he needed to be slow and assertive when he wanted to make me gasp; he was soft and firm and dizzying and delicious and always, always sexy.
Within minutes, I forgot all about the pencil holder and the small sofa and the tiny studio and the house in Austin and the great state of Texas and the United States and Italy and the galaxy at large, because I was taken to that place closest to Heaven.
Bliss.
Have you ever had a guilty-pleasure hangover? I have. The next morning, after the amazing (God, did I dream it?) lovemaking in the studio, I woke up and felt different. A little more alive. A little peppy, a little less like the Ramona I had gotten used to. A little like the old, fun Ramona of yesteryear.
I breathed in deeply as Cynthia had taught, pushing my breath from my nose all the way down to my toes and back again, filling up every part of me with the breath of life. The air was ripe with sunshine. Florida sunshine on a crisp October morning in Austin. Go figure.
With unusual lightness, I got up and stretched, doing two of the yoga poses that didn't threaten to throw my back out. I couldn't be too exuberant yet, but I felt like I could even do a handstand if I tried. I had used muscles the night before I hadn't used in awhile. I started giggling, a good girlish giggle long overdue. One probably shouldn't giggle while in the downward-facing dog, but my body felt like it wasn't entirely my own. I had shared it with someone else and it felt like a part of me was still with him.
I rolled my shoulders back. The “him” might like bacon and eggs and pancakes. He could join our Sunday brunch that had been a tradition for the boys and me. I wrapped my fuzzy terry robe around me and headed out into my new life. I walked down the hallway, turned the corner and stopped dead in my tracks.
Above my head was a dangling three-foot spider. Webs hung from the chandeliers. A large pumpkin stared up at me with its gap-toothed grin from under the entry hall table. I began to panic-everything was just as it had been that last Halloween Joel had decorated. What was this? A sign from above? Was Joel angry at me for last night? Happy? No way the boys could've done it. They couldn't even reach the heavy box in the top of the closet.
Just as I felt the room spinning around me, I heard their voices and the smell of bacon waf
ting through the house.
“Mommy!”
“Mother!”
“Mona Lisa!”
When I came to, those three faces stared down at me. How had I not believed in magic, in the power of signs delivered in something other than words? “Is it real?”
“Is what real?” Bradley asked.
“Can you see it? The spider. Is the spider real?”
William's eyes grew large. “No, mom. The spider's not real. I can't believe you thought it was real.”
I sat up and did a 360 of the room. Yep. The decorations were all still there. Whoever did this must've taken hours. “So you're telling me that none of you can see what I see? The house is full of Halloween.”
“Crazy holiday,” da Vinci said. “But boys say lots of candy, so I trick or treat with them.”
“Mom, the house is full of Halloween,” William said.
“It's like the good old days,” Bradley said.
“I can't believe your father did this,” I said, though I wasn't sure it was out loud until I saw the expressions on my son's faces.
William's lids filled with tears. “Mommy, Daddy didn't do this.”
“ We did. As a surprise,” Bradley said.
I looked from one boy to the next, noticing how much they'd changed this year, their faces less babylike, their baby teeth being replaced by the larger ones that seemed much too big for their mouths. Even their voices were losing the cuteness they had when Joel was alive. Could he hear them? Could he hear the change like I could? How ever were they big enough to pull off decorating just as their father had done?
“I helped,” da Vinci said. “Da Vinci is tall.”
“Well, were you surprised, Mom? Did we do a good job?” Bradley asked.
I couldn't speak-the chakra stopped up again, and I patted and kissed them atop the heads, except for da Vinci, whom I only looked at with dismay, wondering if he knew what he'd done. In one fell swoop, he had replaced Joel in not one, but two ways. I excused myself to go cry in the shower, my flow completely and utterly gone.
When I joined my clan at the table, they were busy eating our traditional breakfast, and I tried to act normal, as if the decorations hadn't bothered me or that da Vinci had not only taken Joel's job, but mine, too. I was the short-order cook around here.
I filled my plate with bacon and eggs, poured coffee and sat down at the table, prepared to eat in silence, thinking how unfair it was that I was so close to becoming a Normal only to have the Griever take over my body again.
I chewed my bacon, vowing not to give da Vinci credit for making it crispier than my own or how much I liked the Tabasco sauce in the scrambled eggs, when Bradley looked at me with a straight face and asked, “Mom, did you and da Vinci have sex last night?”
I could not tell a lie. Which is why even when it came to the Tooth Fairy and leprechauns and the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, I'd always been rather vague about their existence. “What do you think?” I would ask my boys, which would cause them to launch into elaborate fairy tales about the tiny Tooth Fairy kingdom where all the fairies bring the children's teeth to polish and shine and then build themselves pearly mansions, or how Santa probably contracts with NASA, or at the very least, FedEx, to help deliver gifts quickly all over the world.
So when they asked me about sex, and in particular sex with da Vinci, which unlike those fairy tales, had actually happened, I couldn't lie. Instead, I said, “What happens between me and da Vinci is our own personal business. We like each other very much.”
I'm not sure if the boys took that as a yes, but it did seemed to satisfy their curiosity for the time being. They stared at each other, stifled a giggle, then earnestly ate their pancakes.
Of course I'd made a huge mistake. As fabulous as the night before had been, how I'd felt the stirring of my soul within me as I allowed passion to be unleashed once again, I knew as a mother I'd made a bad choice. The boys liked da Vinci, had welcomed him into our home, at our table, breaking bread together, laughing and going on as if we were gelling as a family. I couldn't believe I'd allowed it to happen-it was all so soon, wasn't it? How one day you can feel like you're living in a dark cave and the next it's filled with light and you can't believe you've managed to move that boulder all by yourself, yet the world outside of it is so bright and scary. I shuddered. I had to be careful.
“I think it's marvelous,” Barbara said six hours later as she viewed my son's Halloween displays, “If it makes them happy.” I wondered if she would say the same about me and da Vinci, but I had no intention of telling her anything was going on and I had made the boys' promise not to talk about us, either. Suddenly I was sweating bullets over a simple family meal. I wondered if my nerves had to do with something else, too.
“I think they're in love,” Barbara said, referring to Rachel and Cortland, who were a good three minutes late according to my father's watch. “Wouldn't that be lovely to have a spring wedding? Is it too soon? Oh, certainly not. It's not like a second wedding would be an elaborate affair. Now that Rachel's famous, do you think they'll cover their wedding in the society section? I bet Austin Living will want a cover story! Do you think the governor will come?”
I let my mom go on and on about her own fantasy while I prepped the tenderloin for the oven. Dad and da Vinci were in the backyard tossing the football with Bradley while William stayed on the patio playing Sudoku. I glanced at them every few minutes to make sure nothing mischievous was going on. (As if I could tell if they were talking about sex.)
When Cortland and Rachel arrived (now fourteen minutes late), my mother went on as if she hadn't seen them in ages. It might make some people feel good to be greeted like those at the airport with the signs and the tears and high-pitched sentiments, but it just made me feel sad. Grievers need more than a cheerleading section to feel good about reunions when you know the one person you truly wish to be reunited with can never happen.
Cortland surprised me, planting a kiss on my cheek and hugging me tightly.
“Oh,” I said, patting his broad shoulders. “Yes. Good to see you, too. Wow, this is festive, right?”
“Where's the birthday boy?” Rachel said, practically doing cartwheels on her way to reach Dad.
Zoe shook her head and shrugged. “He's not a boy, he's a man,” she pointed out. “But whatever.”
I winked at Zoe and she helped me whip the mashed potatoes in the kitchen. She only got a home-cooked meal when she visited me or her grandma, so helping in the kitchen was her favorite thing. And to think, she didn't have to wear makeup or sequins to get the attention she so craved.
As we were seated around the dining room table set for nine (squishing in a chair for Zoe), I could feel the palpable presence of Joel in the room. I'm not sure if it's because we were surrounded by the Halloween decorations he had so carefully hung each year or because I simply couldn't get him off of my mind.
Both Cortland and da Vinci pulled my chair out for me, one on each side, and da Vinci stiffened as though only he had the right to do so for his lady. As was ritual, Noble began the prayer and we all followed suit. Afterward, forks clanked and my mother began to take a sip of her wine, but holding it in the air, said, “I'm so glad you two are friends.”
Da Vinci nodded, lifting his wine glass to propose a toast. “To friends and lovers,” he said.
And the rest of us awkwardly joined in while my family members eyeballed me. I would shrug it off as an Italian thing. They wouldn't know the difference.
“To friends and lovers,” Cortland said, the one among them who might know the difference.
Zoe piped up, “To friends and lovers.”
My boys glanced over and I gave a quick shake, a silent signal for them to stay out of the toast.
My father added, “Hear, hear,” and we clinked glasses and began an otherwise normal meal except for the question mark hanging above us like a chandelier: “Who exactly among us are friends, and who are lovers?”
“No problem,” Ra
chel said as she stuffed my family videos into her oversized bag after dinner with the promise she would have her editing team transfer the outdated formats onto DVDs, as well as host them on a server.
“I'll give you the photo discs as soon as I print them out,” I told her, hesitant to hand over so many pieces of my and Joel's life together at once. After all, Rachel wasn't known for her organizational skills, and she had lost too many of my things over the years to keep track.
“Ooh, I know!” Rachel said, snapping her fingers together. Her bright ideas always arrived with a thunderclap. “Why don't you, me, and Mom have a scrapbooking party?”
I shrugged, internally cringing at the thought of a) spending the day cutting out construction paper with my sister who would be filling her book with more pageant pictures while I laid out my soul with the last pictures of Joel, and b) ever finding the time to do something so crafty and creative.
“You know you can do scrapbooks online now,” Cortland said, and Rachel beamed at him as if he were a brilliant anesthesiologist, which I'm sure he was.
“What do you mean?” I asked, intrigued.
“Well, since you already have your digital photos on your computer, you can go to a web site where they have design templates, and you just drag and drop your photos onto the pages and order it and they'll ship it to you.”
“Are you serious?” Rachel gasped. “And here I've been spending all that money on glitter and fancy stickers for Zoe's books.”
“I'm not very technically inclined,” I told him, embarrassed to admit I barely knew how to use e-mail, let alone do something important on the web.
“If you have time, I could show you now.”
Rachel shrugged. “Oh, she has oodles of time. I'm going to go out back and talk to the birthday boy. When you two are done, I'll bring out the cake. Think Daddy will mind I had the baker put sixty-nine candles on the cake?”