Everett Poésy, also known as Gramps…I was not sure of all he had done in his life, but in his death, he had somewhat redeemed himself in my eyes. In a sad and heavy time, when even a less than perfect man was being grieved, he had brought us together and made us appreciate…life. He did not demand we cry for a life that was lost, but we celebrate a life that was, perhaps, well lived.
Perhaps in some respects it was too well lived, as far as women were concerned, but when Pnina (Babica) gave a speech at her husband’s celebration of life, this was what she had said about him as she stared at Scarlett. “I can never remember a time in my life that my husband did not make me feel. Good. Bad. He made me feel alive.”
I gestured to my husband’s face and body. “Even without the shell, Mariano Leone Fausti. Without this—” I motioned to the plane but meant worldly goods “—I would still be yours. You are much more than those things.” I motioned to his face and body again. “Then this.” I motioned around us. “Your heart. The way you love me. How safe you make me feel in love. In life. This is everything to me. In a world that does not always value these things any longer, you do.” I pointed to his heart and then set my hand over my own. Just the thought of him made it race in my chest, but it also calmed me as nothing else in this world ever could. “You value these sacred things. You valueme. You protect them. You protectme.”
He cleared his throat. “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies,my wife.”
Our eyes connected.
“I am not finished,” I whispered. “You, Mariano Leone Fausti, my husband, are what God intended a man to be for a woman. For me.”
The connection moved between us.
He flung his computer to the side and, getting down on one knee in front of me, took my hands, kissed them, and then set his head against my stomach.
The plane shimmied.
Its mechanics creaked.
All the eyes on board stared at us.
I closed my eyes to it all.
I am steady, if my husband is beside me.
This world is ours, if this man is beside me.
He stood and picked me up, and my arms instinctually wrapped around his neck. I stared at his face, starved for it. I set my nose close to his skin, breathing him in.
A thought flashed through my mind as powerful as lightning, making me feel anxious and secure at the same time. The shock of it, the power of it, the bold truth in it shook my insides, stirring what should be still. I had never felt more secure, because this truth was branded inside of me.
There is no distance that could come between his heart and mine.
He would not allow it.
I would not allow it.
The fabric of our life would always be sewn together by a hand that no mere man could stop.
Our souls were already too tangled.
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
We came to the private suite, and he used his leg to open the door. He stood on the threshold, his eyes coming down to meet mine.
No distance.
Before, even when he had his eyes turned forward, the connection still moved between us without even a pause, as if our eyes did not have to lock us in to continue to feel it.
It…lived, as long as we did.
It was as simple as that.
As complicated as that.
“The woman in you has turned me into a man,” he said in Italian, his voice rough. He lifted me up, kissed my head, and then took me to bed.
My husband carried me up to the door of the villa we would occupy while in Tuscany. It was a place not far from his parents’ place.
