From comfortable distanc.., p.10
From Comfortable Distances, page 10
“Did she teach you about Buddhism?”
“I don’t think she taught me about it so much as she just practiced it.”
“Did you think it was silly—all her meditating and praying to idols?”
“Silly? No. Just the opposite. I was interested in it. I don’t know. I guess it was a little confusing with her being so into it and you being against it.”
“I was never against it.”
“I thought you were.”
“I wanted you to follow your own path, Kash. I didn’t want my mom to persuade you.”
“My grandmother was not one to persuade, Mom.”
Tess closed the photo album, and studied the picture of Prakash up close one last time before she placed the picture in a crack in the edge of the mirror in his bedroom.
“Did she persuade you?” Prakash asked.
“I think that she taught me what she knew, what she practiced. So it wasn’t so much persuading as it was being her daughter, living with her. I suppose that’s what all mothers do. They expose their children to what they believe in and as a child, you either buy in or you don’t.”
Tess leaned back on his bed, positioning one of the throw pillows under her head, and closed her eyes. What had she exposed Kash to? What had she believed in back then aside from work and not being a Buddhist?
“You’re quiet,” Kash said.
“I wanted you to follow your own path, Kash. You know that, right? I didn’t want to force you into anything,” Tess said, her voice gentle.
“I was a kid, Mom. I don’t know if kids have their own path to follow, or maybe they do, just at a certain age. When I went to visit my grandmother, she believed so strongly in so many things.”
“Yes. She did,” Tess said. She had been a blank slate to Kash. She wondered if she had seemed boring to him in comparison to her mother.
“You still there?” Kash said.
“I’m here.”
“Mom, it all turned out okay,” Kash said.
She laughed. “If you say so,” she said. Then, “Did you just hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That—a knocking—is that on the phone?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
Tess picked up the portable phone, switching off the speakerphone. She moved from Prakash’s room to her own bedroom, and stood adjacent to the window that overlooked the backyard. She couldn’t see anyone out there. She moved into the hallway and looked out the side window.
“Mom? What’s going on? Is someone there? Are you okay?”
Outside, she saw a person—it was a man—toss something up towards the window. Was it Neal? She pressed her face to the glass and saw his bald head in the twilight. It was Neal!
What was he doing tossing rocks—were they rocks? —at her window.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I have to go, Kash.”
“What the heck is going on?”
“Someone is here for me. I think it’s Michael.”
“Okay. Send my regards.”
“Sure thing. Can we continue this conversation another time?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Love you,” she said.
She pulled open the window.
“Neal?” she called.
He froze, but he didn’t seem afraid to have been caught.
“Hello, Tess.”
“What are you doing? Why didn’t you ring the doorbell?”
“I didn’t know if you were busy.”
“Go to the front door,” Tess said.
The moment she opened the front door, there he was. His hands were behind his back now, as if he was about to pull a rabbit from them, and for a moment Tess felt afraid. There were so many crazy people around—what was she doing opening her door for this man?
“What’s going on, Neal?”
He pulled a bouquet of roses, red black under the setting sun, and offered them to Tess.
“For you. I picked them from my own garden. In honor of your patron, St. Theresa.”
They were beautiful—fully bloomed. He held them out to her and looked down at the floor when she took them from him.
“They’re gorgeous,” she said. “Thank you. I don’t remember the last time someone brought me flowers.”
She had always told the men in her life that she didn’t like flowers—that giving someone something that died in a week was a bad omen. Now, though, holding this bouquet, she felt intoxicated. She had never realized how powerful an effect flowers could have.
“Come in,” she said holding the screen door open for him.
The neighbor who had married an Israeli man was outside in her driveway with her six-year old son who went to Yeshiva and always seemed to be in trouble from his mother. She was trying to coax him to go into the house with her, but he seemed to want to run up and down the driveway to avoid her. Once he saw Tess outside, he ran ahead of his mother up the porch and into their house.
Neal pointed up at the sky. The stars were beginning to appear.
“It’s such a gorgeous night,” he said.
Tess came out onto her porch in her bare feet and sat down on the top step. Neal sat down beside her. The breeze came in waves. There was a softness to the air, a hint of summer tinged with the coolness of the evening bay breeze. Holding the bouquet between her knees, she wrapped her cardigan around her tighter.
“Are you cold?”
“Feels good,” she said. Then, “I haven’t seen you around in a few days.”
“I’ve been writing through the mornings,” Neal said.
“Your book?”
He nodded. “I usually get to work by 3:00 a.m. and stop by 6:00 a.m. or so to take a walk, but when I am coasting along, it’s hard to stop. This week I’ve been losing track of time, so I’ve been letting myself go with it.
“You get up at 3:00 a.m.?” Tess asked. She held the flowers clasped in her hands now. In the breeze, the petals danced.
“I guess some habits don’t die,” Neal said.
“You’ve been getting up at 3:00 for a long time?”
“For at least 20 years,” Neal said.
“Does everyone in Canada get up that early?”
He looked at her for a moment without saying anything.
“Look at the moon,” Neal said. “Just a slither and yet so bright. Just a few more days until the new moon.”
The night sky was a deep navy blue, the stars suspended like snowflakes. Tess hugged herself; the sea breeze became cooler. She felt the spring in every ounce of her.
“Want to go for a walk?” she asked. She felt the residue from her talk with Kash. A walk would be good for her, get her out of her head a little.
“Now?” he said.
“Now,” she said.
“I could go for a bit, I suppose,” Neal said.
Tess was about to ask him what he needed to do at home, but instead she picked up her bouquet and said she would be out in a minute. She was learning that people’s private business was probably better off kept private. Inside, she grabbed her ivory cable-knit sweater, slipped on her white canvas tennis sneakers and took down the vase from atop the refrigerator, and put the bouquet in it, adding some water. She pressed one of the roses to her nose and inhaled deep and hard. Its sweet smell was intoxicating.
Neal waited for her at the edge of her driveway. They walked up 66th street and then wrapped around 56th drive.
“Have you ever been out on the docks at night?” Tess asked.
“No,” Neal said.
“Come on,” Tess said dodging across the lawn of the house they stood in front of. Neal watched her. “Come on, Neal,” Tess called out. “Come,” she motioned with her hand.
“It’s okay,” she said, making her way through the backyard and up onto the dock. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” she said in response to Neal’s face. “Don’t worry. We’re just going to look out at the water, right? It’s not private property.”
Neal nodded.
Tess climbed the stairs of the wooden dock and moved out to the edge that jutted into the water. Once they sat down with their legs dangling over, the water below their feet, Neal sighed.
“The water is beautiful at night.”
Tess saw her image bobbing along the water’s surface. There was always a moment when she stared into the water’s surface that she felt as if the Tess in the water was going to pop up and pull her in. Little sparkling images of her glowed in the faint moonlight, so that she looked like a candle’s flame blowing in the wind.
“Sometimes when I look at the water, I think there’s a message for me imbedded in it,” Tess said.
“What do you think the message is?” Neal said.
She bit the inside of her top lip. It was sore. Her mother had always told her that she would have bruised lips if she didn’t stop biting her top lip.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I used to believe that if I returned to the water every day, the message would seep into me.”
“Did you stop believing that?” Neal said.
“No,” Tess said. “I don’t think so. It’s just that life seemed to get in the way of me going to the water each day. Other things became more important, I suppose—work, my son.” Tess shook her head. “There are years in my life in which I didn’t seem to exist,” Tess said.
“I think we all have those years,” Neal said. “Life just seems to happen.”
Neal leaned up towards the sky as if he were basking in the sun. His reflection bobbed in and out of focus on the water’s surface. He took out a pen and little pad from his blazer pocket and jotted something down. He folded up the written-on piece of paper and closed his eyes to the sky, breathing in deep, as if he were sealing in a wish.
Tess wanted to ask him what he wrote, but she didn’t. He turned to face her now. There was a quality of his face that was always shifting. His moods were unreadable to her.
“What’s your passion in life, Tess?”
The water danced under the moonlight. The breeze was getting crisper and Tess shrugged her shoulders and let them fall. She liked feeling cold right now. A pigeon toed the shoreline and then skirted backwards. Tess was passionate about selling houses, but it wasn’t the actual selling she loved so much as the chance to connect with others that it gave her. She was passionate about being a businesswoman. Only that exhausted her, too.
“I don’t know anymore,” she said.
In the distance, past the water’s edge, she was able to see the glare of headlights on the Belt Parkway. There was an eeriness to the traffic beyond, as if at some point she would have to move past the water and travel that road alongside everyone else. She had learned that no matter how much she crawled into her shell, she had to come out at some point. There was an everyday-ness to the heart of life that scared her, made her feel desperate to shake things up. While she could never articulate it, would never need to, she was afraid that she would spend the rest of her days traveling on roads alone without anyone ever knowing where she was, or wondering for that matter, when she would be returning. She was beginning to know an emptiness that she had never known, and while it would have been easier to run from the emptiness, fill her days and nights with activities, she believed that there was something for her to learn in the silence.
“What are you passionate about?” Tess said.
“Writing, I suppose. Gardening. I like seeing things bloom—playing a role in creation.”
The glare of the headlights across the way shone on Neal right now, like a spot light. Tess shielded her eyes with her hand.
“Do you believe people can change? I mean really change, or do you think we’re all pre-programmed?” Tess said.
“I think we’re all always changing,” Neal said. “Like it or not.”
“Sometimes my life feels like a game of musical chairs, and I just keep getting a chair.”
“Maybe what matters is that you keep getting a chair,” Neal said.
She nodded. Her fingers and toes had grown stiff in the cool air.
“Should we walk a bit?” Tess said.
They tiptoed their way across the lawn and then walked quickly away from the house so as not to be spotted.
“Do you trespass on your neighbor’s lawns and docks often? Neal said.
“As long as they don’t have attack dogs.” She winked at him.
The street was silent, as if the breeze had scurried everyone home.
“Isn’t it amazing how quiet it is here at night? It makes me wonder what everyone is doing inside their homes.”
“In Canada, the nights were so still that you could hear an animal moving across a field. When the owls would come out and cry, their cries would echo so that it sounded like they were screaming into a megaphone.”
“Up in Woodstock, the nights were noisy. There would be dharma talks and laughter and chanting. We had Satsungs a lot of nights that went on until after midnight.”
“What’s a Satsung?”
“It’s a coming together with other spiritual people. Actually, it means associating with people who help you to realize your truth. You sing spiritual songs together and share one another’s energy.”
In her mind, Tess could see the people sitting around the Woodstock living room, singing and dancing as if waves were flowing through their bodies. She had never realized until this moment what a beautiful thing it was—to be that free.
The church bells began to ring in the hour.
“There they are again,” she said. “The church bells. They remind me of the Sound of Music tonight,” Tess said.
“Is that the movie you mentioned to me a few weeks back?”
“Yes,” Tess said. Then, she turned to him. “What are you doing the afternoon of May 1st? It’s a Tuesday afternoon.”
Neal shook his head. “I don’t believe I’m doing anything,” he said.
“Would you like to be my guest to go see the Sound of Music at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan? I think that you’ll love the movie.”
Neal squinted, as if he were looking for something in the distance.
“If you can’t go, that’s fine,” Tess said.
He looked at her and smiled his sweet smile that made her smile back at him.
“It would be my pleasure,” he said.
Tess was already thinking about how she would arrange her work schedule so that she could get away and go to the movie.
When they arrived in front of her house, they stopped.
“Thank you for walking with me,” Tess said. “And for the flowers.”
Neal looked at the floor as if he was checking to see if his shoes were still on. There were moments when she felt as if she was torturing him.
“Tuesday,” he said.
“Tuesday it is – say around 11am? I can pick you up,” she said.
“I’ll come here,” he said. “If that’s okay,” and she nodded. She still didn’t know where he lived, but it didn’t seem to matter to her at that moment. A car passed in the distance and the way that the headlights hit Neal and then vanished made him look like a ghost on her driveway.
She smiled and he began walking away. She caught sight of rose petals on her porch as she opened her front door, and bent down to pick one up, rubbing its velvet against her pointer finger and thumb as she inhaled its sweetness.
Chapter 12: Every Action Has a Reaction
Tess screeched into her driveway and let the car idle for a moment, catching a glimpse of herself in the rear view mirror before she turned the ignition off. The pockets below her eyes were puffy. She patted them with her fingertip. She could always have them fixed. But that would be another thing to do. Besides, there was something about looking all tucked, tapered and plastic that didn’t appeal to her. She was growing older. Period. Her skin was going to sag. She turned the rearview mirror away and sank back in her seat, allowing her eyes to close for a few moments of precious rest.
She couldn’t remember what time she had made it into the office this morning, but she knew that it was dark out when she had left her home. It seemed to her that the more she tried to accomplish, the more she had to do. She wondered what a day would feel like without her to-do list. What would she do? 10:50 am. She never even took a lunch break, and now here she was back at home at 10:50 am waiting for a strange man who she was taking to see The Sound of Music. Had she asked him on a date? No. An afternoon movie was hardly a date. She laughed at herself and let out a long, deep sigh.
Neal’s knock on her car window startled her. He was on his bicycle, smiling at her through the glass. The front basket of his bike was filled with a large cellophane bag.
Tess got out of the car.
“Good morning, Ms. Tess,” Neal said.
“Good morning, Neal,” Tess said. “What differentiates a bike day from a walking day?” Tess asked.
“There are days in life when you need to go at your own pace, and there are days when you need to feel the air rushing at you.”
“I see,” she said.
His dark denim jeans and white polo shirt made him look like he was trying out for the glee club, only his navy and yellow anorak, which he wore tied around his waist, added a sportsman flavor.
“I’ve come with presents. Ginger cookies, peanut butter cookies, and sugar cookies,” he said, holding out the red and blue cellophane bundle to her. “You can share them with your office.”
“Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you, Neal,” she said. She took the bundle from him and debated putting it inside her house, before she opted against that and put it on the floor behind her seat. She could imagine Michael’s inquisition if she were to bring a cookie basket to work.
“Do you mind the windows open?” Tess shouted once on the highway, her hair blowing helter skelter. She hoped that his bike, which he had put in her backyard, was going to be safe. There was no telling these days who was lurking around the neighborhood. She thought about asking him if he had tucked his bike into the cul de sac, like she had told him to, but didn’t. No need to put any more negative energy toward it. If anything should happen, she’d buy him a new bike.
“Not at all,” Neal said. “I like the breeze.”
