by Malena Lott
“Have you at least been using Mr. Pleasure 2000?”
“I threw it away,” I told her. “Right after my mother nearly had a heart attack when she found it in my nightstand.”
Her insistence that connecting mind and body and getting my chakras in order would cure my heartbreak and improve my life was as annoying as my mother's insistence that joining her church would kill two birds with one stone-Jesus would heap blessings on my life and land me a nice Christian man, to boot. When that time comes, she would add. But the sheer fact she had to add that as a footnote told me that she believed I might shrivel into a lonely cat lady after the boys were grown if I didn't play nice with others.
“It's not about finding a man,” Anh said. “It's about living again. That's all we want for you, Ramona. It's the one thing me, your Jesus-freak mothers and your Energizer Bunny sister all have in common.” My mother and mother-in-law were both evangamoms at Life Church. Joel used to joke we were book-ended with the Lord. Judith was the first to embrace my mother Barbara when she “found the Lord” at the age of 45. It had been Judith's personal mission to bring all of us into the holy fold thereafter. I was in college, having spent the better part of my childhood bounced from church to church while my mother tried to find one that fit her like a designer suit. She found her fit at Life and a best friend in Judith, which is how Joel and I met.
Joel preferred to tell people we met at a chocolate-wrestling tournament where I was a contestant (and blue-ribbon winner). “One lick and I was hooked,” he would tell the shocked listener.
Truthfully, our moms set us up. Joel had just gone through a tremendous break-up, his wedding to the she-devil Monica called off, and besides some quality time with the Lord, Judith thought the best remedy was for him to “get back out there.” Sound familiar? As for the remedy for my broken heart After, she only recommended the Lord. “You'll never find anyone like my Joel,” Judith tells me on a weekly basis. And I wholeheartedly agree with her.
The doorbell rang. “Speak of the devil,” I said, knowing it would be my mother on her daily visit.
“You mean speak of the Lord,” Anh corrected me with a wink as she headed out the garage. “And find da Vinci. American women will be crawling all over him like horny ants at a hunk picnic.”
She was gone before I could tell her that finding da Vinci would not be a problem since he was all of ten yards away, and that he was not just a student, but a tenant. If anyone would confirm that I was off my rocker for moving him in, it was Anh. But I couldn't date a student, even if he was an adult, as if the idea weren't preposterous enough if he wasn't.
A little companionship might be nice, though. Dinner had gone well the night before. Da Vinci was a tremendous cook and a quick learner. The boys got a kick out of running around the room pointing at objects and making da Vinci guess what they were in English and giggling when he was wrong. He called a clock a wheel and a fork a spoon and the butter butt. At least he was trying. And if da Vinci could tackle the English language and a foreign world, I could make a go of a new world, too.
I'll admit I liked that they liked him. If they hadn't, I would've handed him his walking papers, gorgeous or not. I'd nearly backed out of letting da Vinci stay in the studio when we entered and I found Joel's things exactly where I'd left them, where he'd left them, and I wished for a sign from Joel that I wasn't making a huge mistake, that he was fine with using his space for rent, but the guilt chewed at me like a puppy on a shoe. Unlike some Grievers who claim to “feel” their loved ones with them everywhere they go, I couldn't feel Joel. All I felt was anger, sadness, loneliness. Besides, I didn't believe in signs, did I? I believed in words. Even if a brisk breeze suddenly whirled through the room knocking his pencil cup off the desk, I'd demand it in writing. A note from the beyond. Still.
Choking back tears, I had moved Joel's coffee cup to the cupboard, left the sketch of the hospital he'd been working on on his drafting table, and asked that da Vinci try to leave everything as is. He seemed to understand, though immigrants often nod their heads when they have no idea what's being said.
“I see you're bright and shining as usual,” Barbara said upon entering, in a sing-song voice that was really meant as a put-down of my attire and lack of spit and polish. Pre-Joel's death, I would've gotten a “why-can't-you-be-more-like-your-sister” speech. My dear sister, who, after she found her husband keeping a mistress on the side, lost forty pounds and in two years became the “go-to girl” for fitness in the Lone Star State. After she was nice and rich and famous, she dumped her husband and now dated with incredible ease. I actually preferred her when she was fat.
Now my mom took it relatively easy on me, too busy worrying about me to nag. I had to remind myself that she made her daily invasion into my personal life because she cared. She couldn't imagine a life without my father and she had loved Joel nearly as much I had. As a result, she took my little family on like a fulltime job-keeping up on everything from the latest parenting advice to what's cool with boys so she could somehow make up for what my kids were missing without their father. Of course, we knew this wouldn't work, but when Joel died she and my father did turn into Super Grandparents, taking the kids on quarterly vacations and spending more quality time with them than they ever did with my sister and me growing up. With them and Judith and her new banker husband Bob, my kids got plenty of attention, though I still worried every day it wasn't enough because it wasn't from their father.
Barbara handed me a stack of magazines-she hated to be wasteful and throw them away-and I cringed. I don't believe in signs. Anh does. My evangelical mothers do, of course. God is trying to tell you something, they would say to me. If this was true, what did it mean that Monica Blevins was on the cover of Austin Monthly? I preferred to believe it was just a coincidence; as for the cover, well, she was like Anh, a mover and a shaker. Movers and shakers often get photographed for covers of magazine. It had nothing at all to do with my desire to confront her about Joel.
I placed Better Homes and Gardens on top of her picture and sat the stack next to the chair on top of the stack from last week. My mother really should know better. The stack would eventually cause its own avalanche and my boys would step on them, using them as roller skates on the carpet, and eventually my mother would pick them up and throw them in the trash without my ever having read them, which is what she should've done in the first place.
Barbara clicked on my sister's show, Get Up and Move It, Texas!, her statewide fitness show that I TiVoed, vowing to work out to it later in the day (unlike her, I wasn't a morning person), but I never got around to it, morning, noon or night. My mother, who watched the show faithfully every morning while sipping her coffee, liked to come over and watch my sister again while she helped me do laundry. (While many single moms take care of these duties on a daily basis without any help and Joel didn't even know how the dryer knobs worked, she insisted.) I'd always hated laundry and wished she would've volunteered for the chore years ago, but after Joel died, I missed doing his laundry. Normals believe it is a menial task-wear clothes, dirty clothes, wash clothes-an endless cycle. But a Griever sees laundry as a spoke in the cycle of life. No laundry, no life.
My mother wore slacks and a button-down blouse more appropriate for church or a business office, though she'd never worked a day in her life outside of her home. She considered the church her other full-time job, and belonging to a congregation of 10,000 people meant she was never bored.
Some might say my mother was an enabler, keeping me from cleaning up my own messes, but others might just say she was a mother who loved her daughter and could see that her daughter, for whatever reason, still needed some help. Even with my mother annoying me no end, I weighed the pros and cons and decided that I could put up with whatever she had to dish out-so long as she also did the dishes.
Besides bringing good food and helping hands into the house, she brought commotion with her. It was the stillness of the world without Joel that rattled me the mos
t. I missed the quiet noise of having a partner in my life-the sound of his shuffling down the hall, his heavy breathing in his sleep, his throaty laughter during dinner, his spirited cries during a football game on TV. At first I'd gone to crowded places, believing that any noise could make up for it-the mall, fairs, sporting events. But all I did was prick my ears for the sound in the crowd I longed to hear most, and it never came.
“I met the nicest fellow last night,” Mom said as she separated our brights and whites. I started to roll my eyes before reminding myself that I was docking my boys' allowances each time I caught them rolling theirs. It was rude and where there were rolling eyes, there were words not being said. So far I'd be dinged $2 today, but who would hold me accountable?
“Not now, Mom.”
Barbara shut the washer door with a thud and shook her head. “Is this what it's come to, Ramona? I can't even have a conversation with you if it involves a person of the opposite sex? I feel like if I even say the word ‘man,‘ you'll snap at me.”
I immediately thought of da Vinci pointing to his chest in the doorway of the classroom bellowing the word, man. I definitely preferred the way he said it.
My mother flinched (she'd always been sensitive) and I knew that deep down she only wanted the best for me. I apologized and hugged her and went to pour her black coffee, as strong as her religious convictions. “Tell me about the person of the opposite sex if you really think I should know.”
We sat on the back patio and drank our coffee. The cool morning required a jacket, and I gazed at the empty flowerbeds thinking how pretty maroon and gold mums would look in them, and orange pansies. They were Joel's favorite, though he made me promise I would never tell anyone a feminine-sounding flower like pansy was his favorite. If I planted flowers, that would mean autumn was here and I wouldn't do anything to speed along its coming.
I hadn't mentioned da Vinci yet, though I could see him stirring through the window of the studio across from us, but as usual, my mother didn't let me get a word in edgewise.
“He's a doctor,” she went on. “An anesthesiologist at Mercy. Has a daughter from his first marriage, been divorced for three years and he's on the building committee with your father at church. Noble just thinks the world of him. They're playing golf together this Saturday.”
I couldn't take my eyes off of the window, where every few seconds I could see his dark hair pop into view. After awhile I figured out he was doing sit-ups, something I hadn't done since scrunchies were in style. Thinking about his abs, though I'd never seen them, turned me into butter.
“Are you listening to me, Ramona Elise?” Her gaze followed mine, but da Vinci was nowhere in the frame. “Whatever are you looking at?”
“Of course I'm listening. Dad's golfing with a doctor from Mercy this weekend. Just what I need. Someone that puts people to sleep for a living. Is he handsome?”
“Quite handsome, though I only have eyes for your father,” she said. My mother pointed out handsome men everywhere we went, yet she always followed it with that statement as if it made her less guilty for noticing. “And what's wrong with an anesthesiologist? He keeps people alive while they're unconscious. It wouldn't hurt to find a new friend. That's all. A friend. Judith and I have discussed it.”
“So now you and my mother-in-law are discussing my having male friends? Did the Lord send you a sign?”
Barbara batted her eyelashes. Unlike me, my mother claimed to get signs from the Lord on a near-daily basis. “It just came up. There's a singles mixer we thought you might be interested in. Just for making friends, that's all. Doesn't have to be romantic.”
“I have friends,” I told her, glancing back up at the garage studio window. In truth, I had Anh and my international friends of my cul-de-sac, mostly former students, and a couple of friends at work. Parenting and Joel had taken up all of my time for the last ten years. More friends would've seemed a luxury I couldn't afford. “Besides, Judith has told me repeatedly how uncomfortable it would make her if I began dating.”
“Of course it would. She's not ready for that, but then neither are you, so what does it matter? But a friend wouldn't hurt, darling. Even Judith thinks so.”
“Yeah. You said that already.”
Barbara sipped her coffee, her bright eyes taking in the outdoors. My mother had a peppy personality (inherited by my sis, not me), but then she wasn't yet a Griever. Even my grandparents were both still living. Judith on the other hand, was a Griever. Her world had been wrapped up into Joel, her only child, and she had transferred that attention to her grandsons, which was both a blessing and a curse. “Why don't we do something fun today, Ramona? What do you say? We could meet your sister for lunch and buy you a new outfit. You haven't let me shop for you in ages.”
I recalled the moose sweater she'd given me for Christmas last year and shuddered. I'd cried not because I hated it, but because I couldn't laugh about it later with Joel. I peered at the window again and then down at my slob wear. Well, a new outfit couldn't hurt. Fun had been taken from its dusty box in the basement, brushed off and ready to open.
“Something nice for a singles mixer, maybe?” I said, half-kidding. “Why do I think this won't end well? But what the hell,” I said and her right arm shot into the air as if Bob Barker had told her to “come on down, you're the next contestant on The Price Is Right.”
The one thing my mother loved nearly as much as her church and volunteering was marathon shopping. I had to admit she was devilishly good at it. “Really?” she'd said as if I were pulling her leg. “I'll call Rachel and Judith and we'll make a day of it. You go get washed up and changed then.”
While my mother went back into the house to call Rachel, I watched the Panchal taxi cab pull into my side driveway and honk for da Vinci to take him to the center for his job placement interview. A moment later, he emerged wearing corduroy jeans and a T-shirt, his hair still wet from a shower. I imagined how cramped he would've been in the tiny shower stall, and thinking of him naked, stooped under the low shower head, made me feel weak.
Leonardo descended the rickety steps and looked at me, the sun shining on his flawless face, and waved to me. “ Buon giorno. ”
“Good morning,” I said back, and meant it.
Like the little devil on my left shoulder, my mother exhaled behind me, “My Lord, Ramona. Who in Heaven is that?”
Chapter 3
RACHEL TALKED ABOUT HER favorite topic while we dined on tuna salad sandwiches (because I was in skinny company) in the food court at lunch: herself. The world according to Rachel contained only three things: her career, her looks, and her love life. While Anh referred to her as the Energizer Bunny, I couldn't help but think she did the opposite of a battery and actually drained my energy instead of boosting it. Her enthusiasm might be contagious to “get off your couch and shake your groove thing, Austin,” but it didn't work on me.
She looked fabulous as usual with her tiny, size-2 figure and perky breasts and gleaming blonde hair recently lowlighted. She was two years younger than me, though I'd heard her lie to people and say she was twenty-nine on more than one occasion. She had one daughter, Zoe, who was bowed up and ready for a pageant even on non-pageant days. Her fourth favorite topic, if I were keeping track, would be Zoe and her misadventures in the pageant world. For, unlike her mother, Zoe had no charm, charisma, or personality. She was low-key like me. And she was all of five, for goodness's sake, and her camera-hogging mother couldn't fathom that nature had given her a bookish, inquisitive, athletic girl who questioned everything on the planet instead of a mini-Rachel starlet in the making. I adored her and on a weekly basis thought the best thing for me to do would be to raise her as my own so she'd have a chance.
Zoe joined us for lunch because she only attended a half-day kindergarten, though her afternoons were spent in an endless juggling act of dance, gymnastics, and cheerleading. The only time my otherwise chipper sister had bitten my head off was when I'd suggested, upon seeing a sad dance recital wh
ere my niece was two steps behind the other little girls, that perhaps Zoe had inherited my awkward rhythm.
We'd shopped for three hours already and while my mom and sister's bags piled high next to their seats, the only thing I 'd gotten is the terrible confirmation that my mid-section needed lipo and some of da Vinci's morning sit-ups. Being a junk food addict did have its side effects, namely thunder thighs and a jiggly badonkadonk.
Having someone like da Vinci as a personal trainer just might make me stick to a workout routine. That doughy area that sits atop the pants' waistline was called a muffin top, my sister informed me after I tried on a pair of pants that would've fit me two years earlier. No wonder I hadn't shopped for myself since Joel died. Jogging suits (not used to jog) were my primary wardrobe.
My stomach growled as soon as I'd finished my sandwich, proof that my appetite was spoiled and indulgent. But no more. Today I was going to start taking back control, starting with what went into my mouth. To prove I was serious, I would pass by the fast-food chains on my way home without even glancing at their evil bright signs, let alone turn into the drive-thru where sadly, all the workers knew me by name. Thanks to the excruciating task of trying to squeeze into sizes I once wore with ease, I realized the huge void in my life could not be filled with powdered donuts and cheeseburgers. If only I'd realized that twenty pounds ago.
“Mom tells me you have a hot Italian living in your studio,” Rachel said as she pushed away the cookie I tried to get her to eat.
“What's this?” Judith asked, her red lip pursing in surprise. Judith looked like she'd just had a Mary Kay makeover every time you saw her. Coiffed hair, heavily lined lids, powdered-to-perfection face.
“Oh, he's a student,” I said nonchalantly. “He only had $200 for rent so I thought he could stay in the studio for a bit until he starts earning more money.”
