“No. I'm glad you did,” she said. “I've been meaning to call you, too, and I didn't have the nerve to do it. I want to set some things straight about Joel, and I have a few questions that only you can answer.”
In my hangover haze, I wasn't sure if she'd said the words I had intended to say. SHE-SLUT had questions for me? Questions only I could answer? What was going on here? “You do?”
“It would mean a lot to me. Oh, shoot. They just called us to board. Can we get together for coffee when I get back from Tokyo?”
I slumped over the toilet and held up my head with my hand. I didn't even sound like myself when I said, “Absolutely. Let's have coffee when you get back from Japan.”
I'm not going to lie. Monica Blevins ruined my Fantasy Sex Weekend. My sexcapade was officially over the very moment booty-licious Beyoncé sang. Even my young hot Italian couldn't improve my mood. Which is too bad, really. Because I had moved on. Until. She wanted to “set some things straight.” She had Questions and not just The Answer?
I had exactly 149 questions formulated in my mind that she might ask me. They went from bad to worse:
Did Joel tell you we went to Cabo that long weekend he said he was at a conference in D.C.?
Did you find the receipt for the hotel rooms we rented Friday afternoons?
Did Joel tell you he was leaving you to come back to me?
Did he tell you he never loved you as much as he loved me?
The last one really got me. I could barely eat lunch over that one. No, I would tell her. He said he loved me and only me. He was lying.
Da Vinci did his best to take my mind off the call. Not just making love to me again, but his insistence on making the most of every moment: going sailing, feeding the birds, buying me a balloon with a big yellow happy face on it. Okay. I finally smiled. I laughed even. But She was never far from my mind.
I wanted to be happy for me because da Vinci had told me he loved me, or I was fairly sure he'd said it, but I didn't have the nerve to ask him to repeat it, and I knew, call or no call, that I wasn't ready to say it back.
The Chemistry of Love
With nearly 7,000 languages in the world, there are nearly as many ways to say, “I love you.”
Albanian: “ Te dua. ”
Chinese: “ Wo ie ni. ”
Dutch: “ Ik hou van jou. ”
Greek: “ S' agapo. ”
Italian: “ Ti amo. ”
Zuni: “ Tom ho' ichema. ”
The words may be different, but scientists say the chemistry behind the words is the same. Love is, in effect, a chemical reaction. The cuddling chemical is known as oxytocin, linked to milk production in women, making both men and women calmer and more sensitive to others. Oxytocin levels are highest for women just after childbirth, which can explain how moms are able to cope with screaming newborns and care for them.
The hormone also plays a huge role in romantic love during sexual arousal, prompting couples to pair up and cuddle before, during, and after lovemaking. Production of this love hormone can come from both emotional and physical cues, including the loved one's voice and look or even just thinking about the lover.
So, what? The Duke of Milan's hormones made him drop his royal drawers for every blushing countess he had chemistry with? Sorry, lovey, the oxytocin made me do it! Right.
Addicted to Love
Oxytocin then passes the love baton to a new group of hormones, morphine-like opiates that calm and reassure lovers with intimacy, dependability, warmth, and experiences.
These steady hormones are more addictive, explaining why the longer two people have been married, the more likely they will stay married. Staying together becomes addictive, with lovers relying on the endorphins and marital serenity they bring one another. Absent lovers yearn for each other when they are apart because, like a drug, they yearn for the steady high endorphins bring. Similarly, the absence of endorphins plays a part in grief over the death of a spouse.
I lifted my hands from the keyboard and noticed they were shaking. So I wasn't crazy after all. It was those pesky absent endorphins making me miss him so. Making all those absent lovers write such eloquent love letters across the miles. How long? I wondered. How long does it take to come down off of a lover's high? After I had been bonded, addicted to Joel for so many years? If a part of my grief was chemical, then could falling in love cure me of my grief once and for all?
I stared at the date on the calendar, Joel's death date, and yearned for my boys to return home from my parents so I could hug them. I couldn't even go hug da Vinci because he was gone again at another temp job and then to a study group with kids his own age. There I go again, calling him a kid. If our age difference wasn't a big deal to him, why did I think of it at all?
I took a sip of hot tea and picked up the album Cortland helped me create on Joel's computer. It arrived while I was gone with da Vinci in Galveston. I tried not to be sad that I wasn't here when the postman delivered it. I didn't want him to think I didn't care about the delivery, that the album meant nothing, because in fact, it meant everything. Of course the “him” I was referring to wasn't the postman at all, but Joel.
I had carefully laid copies of the book on the pillows of the boys' beds to surprise them when they returned. I took my own copy and lay with it on Lumpy, a bed I knew I had to replace sooner rather than later, and carefully looked through its glossy four-color pages at the happy family we had been. By the tenth time I viewed it, I saw the pictures through clear eyes, the tears dried, and my heart was full once again.
When I returned to the computer, I could finish the section, now three-quarters complete. Besides, I had to know about the Monogamy drug, and even more so, if my husband had it in his system when he'd died.
Monogamous Mating
Only three percent of mammals are monogamous, and scientists say humans are not among them. Monogamous: mating and bonding with one partner for life. Scientists claim a drug called vasopressin would help. It is called the monogamy chemical.
Lifelong mating is linked to the action of vasopressin, which kicks in within 24 hours after mating, at least for the male vole (a mouse-like rodent) that falls into that small three percent of monogamous mammals.
Once vasopressin kicks in, he is indifferent to all other lady voles, no matter how comely or come-hither. In addition, he becomes aggressive toward other males, a classic exhibition of the jealous husband syndrome.
What keeps a lover from straying, then, may not be one isolated chemical, but the love potion created by all of them: a dose of oxytocin, a scoop of endorphins, and a dash of vasopressin for long-lasting kick.
If humans were ruled by one drug, vasopressin, then might their ability for long-lasting love die along with their spouse? Would they never love again, forced to live out the rest of their lives alone and loveless?
If I had wanted a monogamous mate, I should've married a rat. Literally. I turned off the computer, thinking again about Monica and trying the breathing exercises Cynthia had recommended for when I felt anxious. After twenty-one counts, I had stopped thinking about Her and decided to get out of the house.
Sometimes Grievers do irrational things such as sit on the porch, willing their loved ones to return home, even when those loved ones have passed on. For months after his death, I imagined Joel would walk through the door. “Where have you been?” I would ask him, half-angry, half-relieved he had returned. He would wrap me into his embrace and say, “I love it when you worry about me,” and kiss me, and we'd go on with our lives.
I waited on the bench in the yard on Joel's DD, not awaiting his return, but that of my boys. I craved time away from them until I got it, and it didn't take long before separation anxiety kicked in. It had, in fact, kicked in back in Galveston, but I tried to be a Normal and just enjoy time alone with da Vinci. Still. Sometimes I felt as though I needed my boys to verify my existence. I couldn't survive another two days without them, and I needed the strength of their smiles to get me through that day.