Widowish: A Memoir(47)

I nodded . . . confused. . . smitten . . . interested. Is Marcos a modern-day Jesus? Is he the Devil? I had no idea. But I knew I wanted more of him.



At night, when I was going to sleep, I would pray for Joel to come visit me. I missed him so much. I had so much to tell him.

I had a dream once that was so real and vivid, it brings me to tears every time I think about it. In our neighborhood, there is a main road that connects via a bridge. Most drivers don’t even realize they’re driving over a bridge because the body of water it covers is a thin, mostly concrete section of the Los Angeles River that serves as an overflow space for when it rains. When you walk across the bridge, however, you realize that you’re walking from one side of town into the other. You’re “crossing over.”

In my dream, I was on the north side of the bridge walking south. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful and clear day. I looked up and walking toward me on the other side of the bridge, waving wildly with the biggest smile I had ever seen, was Joel. I couldn’t believe my eyes! There he is! My love, my everything. It took my breath away to see him like that—so alive! So healthy! I couldn’t move. I couldn’t believe it was him! I smiled and started to wave back. I called out his name, Joel! I kept thinking, He’s so happy! And he’s right there; he’s RIGHT THERE!

He continued to wave with his entire arm. Broad, wide air strokes with that big smile. It was so real. He is so close. He is real! He is alive! My heart was going to burst from happiness and also, confusion.

But you died! I rationalized in my sleep.

And the minute I had this thought, I woke up.

It was so cruel. But it was also encouraging. I saw Joel. He was there. He was happy and excited. He saw me! He was working so hard on his end to prove that he was there. I felt like he had not only heard my prayers—Come see me in my sleep, hun. Please?!—but also answered them. It was a gift.

“Daddy was in my dream last night,” I told Sophie when she woke up that morning. “It was so real. He was alive—” I started to cry. She cupped her elegant hand on my cheek.

“I’m sorry you always see me crying,” I said, sniffling.

“I don’t mind,” she said. I kissed her hand and squeezed it.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, stretching awake. “I saw a hummingbird yesterday.”

One of the gifts we got Joel for his fiftieth birthday was a hummingbird feeder. It was a plain glass cylinder that could be filled with liquid food, and it had a red ledge for the birds to perch on while feeding. Joel loved it. He loved nature and hummingbirds in particular. The red color supposedly attracts hummingbirds, and Joel hung it in our backyard within minutes of receiving it. He never got to enjoy it as much as Sophie and I do. We still have it, and it has seen more hummingbirds than I ever thought lived in all of Los Angeles. Every time Sophie and I see one, no matter where in the world we might be, we believe that it either is Joel, or that Joel sent it to us to say hi.

When Joel died, every little scribble he left behind and all of his love notes to us became frame-worthy. Every silly doodle and sketch, whether on cheap refrigerator stationery left in our mailbox by a realtor or the bottom corner of a take-out menu, became proof that Joel lived, that he was here, that we shared our lives with each other.

Somehow, my life was moving forward without him.

With multiple unsuccessful attempts at planning our next drinks date, Marcos and I decided to meet one morning for coffee. I suggested Starbucks.

“It’s the one that’s right on the boulevard, across the street from the Gap,” I said. “Know which one I mean?”

“Um, no actually,” he replied.

“Really? It’s the Starbucks on the boulevard, near the CVS?”

He had no idea. We lived one mile from each other, but in totally different worlds.

That is how we came to have coffee at his house. Marcos lived a block from Sophie’s school, and while I continued to be a nervous wreck—Someone may see me standing at your door!—it was a nice surprise to find that he made excellent coffee.

What I thought (and hoped) might be a lust-filled morning romp was instead time spent getting to know each other because his son was asleep in the next room.

Marcos had recently taken Davis out of his conventional high school and enrolled him in a nontraditional high school with a flexible schedule, with most of the actual schoolwork being done at home. So while I felt free and unencumbered while Sophie was in school during the day, Davis’s classroom was Marcos’s kitchen table, where we sat between drinking our strong morning coffee and having furtive make-out sessions on the couch.

We continued to meet at his place for a few mornings and got to know each other in an old-fashioned kind of way—by talking. Over coffee. I learned that his father was born and raised in Peru and that Marcos spent his childhood summers in South America with his grandparents. I learned that he had been married before, but not to his son’s mother. I learned that bass, not guitar, was his first instrument and that he had students as young as five and older than either one of us.

I still had only told Jillian about him. “I don’t get it. You haven’t slept with him yet?” she’d say. My answer was we couldn’t find the time or place.

We were adults, planning and sneaking around so that our kids wouldn’t find out. Our schedules didn’t align because Marcos often worked nights—teaching or performing—and as always, I wanted to be available for Sophie.