He began volunteering as a tutor at the Italian Home for Children in Jamaica Plain. Despite his somewhat limited success, under his supervision a small group of teenagers developed a lively interest in Italian art and culture. The Professor promised to send them to Italy if they graduated high school with a respectable grade point average.
Though he kept himself busy, each day ended as it began, with him alone in his now renovated house, missing Julianne.
He seriously contemplated buying a dog. Or a ferret.
Despite her overall busyness with graduate school, which was a welcome distraction, Julia continued to be frustrated. Their separation was unnatural, uncomfortable, cold, and she ached to breach that separation and be one with him again. The fact that she couldn’t made her terribly sad. All the romantic activities short of intercourse couldn’t erase that kind of loneliness. And there were only so many times she could listen to comforting music while lying alone in her single bed.
Sexual desires can be satisfied in many ways, but she longed for the attention that he paid to her when they were making love, the way he lavished single-minded devotion on her as if there were no one and nothing else on earth. She coveted the way she felt when he touched her naked form. For in those moments, she felt beautiful and desirable, despite her innate shyness and unease about her body. She desired the moments after sex, when they were both relaxed and sated, and Gabriel would whisper beautiful words in her ear, and they would simply be in one another’s arms.
As the days passed, Julia wasn’t sure how long she could tolerate their disconnection without lapsing into a depression.
* * *
One day at the end of September, Julia opened the door of the Range Rover and silently slid into the passenger seat. She buckled her seatbelt and gazed out the window.
“Sweetheart?” Gabriel reached his hand out to push her hair away from her face.
She stiffened.
He withdrew his hand. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Sharon,” she mumbled.
Gabriel reached over to gently turn her chin in his direction. Her face was puffy, and her skin was blotchy and uneven. She’d been crying for a while.
“Come here.” He unfastened her seatbelt and tugged her over the center console and onto his lap, which was no easy feat. “Tell me what happened.”
“Dr. Walters brought up all this stuff about my mother. I didn’t want to talk about it, but she said that she wasn’t doing her job if she let me suppress everything that happened in St. Louis. I took as much as I could take and then I left.”
Gabriel grimaced. Dr. Townsend had been making similar comments about his own mother, but he seemed to be closer to making peace with his past since his trip to Italy. Certainly, his continued presence at Narcotics Anonymous meetings seemed to be helping.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, kissing the top of her head. “But didn’t Nicole address your relationship with your mother?”
“Briefly. Mostly we discussed you.”
Gabriel winced. He would always feel guilty for the pain he had caused her, but the fact that he had bumped Sharon off Nicole’s priority list for helping Julia made him cringe.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Julia laughed mirthlessly as she wiped her tears away. “Find me another therapist.”
“I wouldn’t be helping you if I did. Any therapist worth her salt would insist that you address what happened with your mother. And her boyfriends.”
Julia began to protest, but Gabriel interrupted her. “I understand what you’re going through. Even though our mothers were abusive in different ways, I understand.”
She wiped her nose with a tissue.
“I’m here to listen, whenever you want to talk about it. But in order to be healthy, you have to deal with your past. I’ll do everything I can to help, but this is something only you can do—for yourself and for us.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “You realize that, don’t you? That the healing process not only helps you, it helps us?”
She nodded begrudgingly. “I thought all the angst was behind us. I thought that after everything we’d been through, we’d have our happy ever after.”
Gabriel tried to repress a snicker. And failed.
“What? You don’t believe in happy ever after?”
He smirked at her and tapped her nose with his finger. “No, I don’t believe in angst.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not an Existentialist; I’m a Dantean.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Very funny, Professor. With a name like Emerson, I would have thought you to be a Transcendentalist.”
“Hardly.” He kissed her wrinkles affectionately. “I exist in order to please you.
“We will be happy, Julianne, but don’t you see that in order to get to the happiness, you have to address the pain of the past?”
She squirmed but didn’t respond.
“I was thinking about visiting Maia’s grave.” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to take you with me.” His voice was hesitant and barely above a whisper. “I’d like you to see it. That is, if you wouldn’t find it morbid.”
“I’d be honored. Of course I’ll go with you.”
“Thank you.” He pressed his lips to her forehead.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes?”