From comfortable distanc.., p.8
From Comfortable Distances, page 8
One deep breath followed by another. That’s what she focused on. She eased back onto the highway, her foot on the gas, moving steadily and carefully alongside the cars. She waited for an opening and then inched into the middle lane. That was how life worked: you waited for an opening and then squeezed your way in. How many emotions she was capable of in a five-minute span. She laughed at herself and glanced in the rearview mirror to gauge her options. What she felt for her mother now was love. A solid, impenetrable love. And the residue of guilt, she supposed, for having fled. She couldn’t even say what she’d been running away from. The thing about running away was that once she got started, it was addictive. She got scared, felt out of her safety zone, she ran. How small a life could become, how predictable. The running hadn’t gotten her any closer to knowing who she was or what she was all about. She had struggled to find herself, as if she were navigating a territory, failing to realize that all along she was the one creating the map. All the struggling and wishing and wanting and trying so desperately to differentiate herself from her mother, as if anyone cared. And after all of it—her fear, her running—what did any of it matter? What did any of it matter? She saw now, as if a banner hung before her, stating it, that her only job in life was to be Tess, and all these years, she had avoided it by one means or another.
Chapter 10: Strange Coincidences
His back was to Tess as she approached him by the water’s edge. Jamaica Bay. She remembered telling a family once that the house she was taking them to see was on Jamaica Bay and the young son had said that he didn’t want to move to Jamaica.
It wasn't until she was up close that she was sure it was Neal.
“I don’t think this neighborhood is big enough for the two of us,” Tess said.
Neal jumped, turning around, so that the mass of pigeons he was feeding scattered in a multitude of directions all at once.
“Oh, my. I'm so sorry.” She started to laugh. “I didn't see what you were doing,” she said. “I didn't mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine,” Neal said. He smiled shyly and opened his palm full of birdseed once again until one of the birds landed on his fingers and pecked at the food in his palm. Another one landed while a troop of pigeons looked on, as if they were eager for their chance to get closer to Neal.
Tess backed away—she didn’t want any of those birds on her with their germs and diseases, and yet witnessing their careful movements as they dipped their beaks into his palm and then watched him as they swallowed, was one of the sweetest things she had ever seen.
“I was expecting you,” Neal said.
“You were?”
Neal flicked the rest of the birdseed away, sending the birds back into flight and unzipped the front pouch of his navy and yellow anorak, producing a Ziploc bag packed with cookies.
“Oatmeal raisin and gingersnap. I hope you like them.”
Tess took the bag from him, pressing it to her nose. The cinnamon-sugar smell was intoxicating. She couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, someone had baked her cookies. Her mother had avoided sugar as if it was poison. A man who baked her cookies! She imagined him mixing the ingredients, thinking of her as he did, hoping that they would turn out just right, that he’d see her to give them to her. The more she thought about it, the more nauseous the kindness of it made her. She didn’t even know if she liked him. She hoped she wasn’t leading him on. It wasn’t like she was home baking cookies especially for him.
“That was very sweet of you, Neal.”
She pulled a piece off of one of the cookies and inhaled it before taking a nibble.
“Mmm. Delicious,” she said before she ate the rest of the cookie. “Incredible. Thank you. Unfortunately, I'll probably eat them all.”
“There’ll always be more,” Neal said.
Tess tilted her head and smiled at him with her best you-poor-fool face.
“You don’t have to bake me cookies, Neal.”
Neal looked confused for a moment, as if she had just asked him to count backwards from 100.
“I bake every morning.”
He was just being nice. Neighborly. He had probably been planning to feed the batch he gave her to the birds.
“Is that what you do for a living?”
She could handle that – a baker. That could explain why he was in Canada –French baking or something of that nature.
Neal took her in for a few minutes as if he were debating an answer. She wished that his lips and his jawbone weren’t so commanding, so masculine. She wondered if he could see desire in her eyes; she tried to straighten her lips, glanced down at the floor to compose herself. How in the world could she be attracted to a man sitting on the sand feeding pigeons from his palm, wearing cheap tan chinos and a zippered up yellow and navy anorak?
“No. I’m not a baker.”
“Do you have a career?” Tess asked.
“I’m on what you could call a leave of absence right now.”
Tess looked around; they were all alone, not a soul in sight. She felt a thickness in her throat, something like fear beginning to well up in her. The way he chose his words. A leave of absence. Michael could be right – parole? She should probably run, get away quickly, before he knew where she lived, although he already knew she was with Best Reality and could find her. No, it was probably best for her to treat this gently. To ease away from this conversation, from him.
“Like I mentioned, I’m writing a book and I bake for a nursing home on Shore Road. Baking is just something I like to do,” Neal said. “I’ve become famous for my cookies,” Neal said.
A pigeon that he was feeding was moving close to him until it was right there and Neal began to pet its head. It made Tess smile. Bad people didn’t pet pigeons, did they? She cleared her throat. She wanted to say, okay, look, what’s your story? Tell me who you are and what you are doing here.
He looked up towards her with a still face and those blue eyes—they were eyes that she knew could get her in trouble, eyes that she wanted to look into, to be up close with. No, now wasn’t the moment to ask him for his life story. After all, what had she shared with him of herself? Tess fingered the cookies and put them in her jacket pocket.
“You feed the birds once, and they’ll always be expecting you to feed them,” Tess said.
“As long as I can, I will.”
The sun was just about to make its way over the horizon. Tess always thought of Humpty Dumpty when the sun rose. If he could just get up over that wall. The glare was already cutting the water in two. Tess sighed and stifled it as a yawn. As spring became more of a presence each day, her winter—full of long hours at the office and nights cuddled up alone under her blanket, updating her to do list on her blackberry for the next day—faded like a dream.
Neal began to walk and she moved alongside him, her shoulders falling, her breath easing. Neal’s soap, a clean, peppermint aroma, filtered through her. There was an antiseptic quality to it, yet amidst the sour smell of the bay, it was comforting. If he were a mass murderer, his moment to make a move had come and gone.
“I never get tired of looking into the water,” he said. “Every time I look, I see something different.”
In the water's rippled mirror, her image was disjointed: a snake like Tess, wiggling from top to bottom, which made her feel momentarily unbalanced so that she looked away.
“What do you see today?” Tess said.
“I see that what comes to shore, leaves the shore.”
There was something about him that made her smile in spite of herself. Simplicity; no static.
“How’s your book coming along?” Tess said.
“Writing is a slow process. There’s never a shortage of distractions. And yet each day, whether it’s for 10 minutes, an hour, I become totally engaged in it and lose the distractions,” Neal said.
“Then I guess I’m always engaged in my business, because I don’t seem to notice that days come and go while I’m working. What do you like most about writing?” Tess said.
A pigeon crept up beside them and then another one landed. The way they made their way closer to Tess and Neal, carefully, looking around them before they made their next move; they looked like they were ease dropping and Tess shooed them away with her feet.
“There's a truth that comes through the writing each day—I may not always like what I discover, but somehow once I face it on a page, I feel freer. Committing to the writing is the hardest part—the rest just happens.”
“And what if you don’t write one day?”
“As far as you would be able to tell, nothing. But on the inside, I feel as if I’m at a distance from myself, like my mind is sleeping and my legs are running. I start to malfunction a bit, I suppose.”
He smiled at Tess and she smiled back.
“I’ve learned that if I don’t write, I’ll never get to know what I’m thinking or feeling. My mentor used to tell me that if you disappear a bit, explore what’s going on inside, the world will wait. Nothing will be lost or missed. It took me a while to be comfortable with tucking myself away from all that’s going on.”
“I don’t know if I believe that the world will wait,” Tess said. “Life is happening all the time. While I’m out here taking some time for me, all the stuff I have to do piles up.”
“No one is ever going to give you permission to slow down and take time for you, Tess—you need to give yourself permission. Trust me, though, the world will wait—it's only going as fast as you want it to go. You are your speedometer.”
“If I’m my speedometer than I’ve probably accumulated a lot of speeding tickets.” Tess laughed. “Do you know that when I was younger, I used to day dream about walking out of my office one day and not going back,” Tess said.
“Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. I guess that’s why I never left,” she said.
“What made you want to walk out?” Neal said.
“Too much to do. I’m always rushing to get stuff done, and then there’s always more to do. I’m tired of rushing,” Tess said.
“You’re not rushing now.”
“No, I suppose not.” Tess focused on the water, the way it drifted from the shore, slowly, steadily, as if it was in a trance.
“I think that if you don’t know what you seek in life, you can spend a lot of time moving in place, or worse yet, moving in the wrong direction,” he said.
“Is that what happened to you?” Tess said.
The tide flowed onto the shore, not crashing so much as arriving. The rhythm mesmerized Tess. She thought of something her mother used to say about grace, how it had to do with flowing versus force.
“Isn’t that what happens to us all at some point?” Neal said. He stared straight ahead, his expression calm, serene. He could have been saying anything with that face.
“Right now, if I granted you the freedom to do anything that you wanted to do, what would you do?” he said.
Tess looked into his eyes. This man didn’t even know her. Why did he care what she wanted to do? His eyes were so intensely focused on her that she wondered if he were trying to win her over – or if he just sought conversation.
“I’d be here, where I am.”
Neal smiled.
“Ah,” Tess said. “Right answer?”
“Only if it was the truth.”
“Oh, Neal. Truth smuth. We barely know one another and I’m not known for spilling out my dreams to strangers. Besides, I’m weary of people who presume that they’ve got it all figured out,” Tess said.
He smiled and cleared his throat; she had amused him.
“I don’t presume any such thing,” Neal said.
“What’s your story then? You realize that you’re beginning to sound like a philosopher.”
“I’m a simple man trying to live a simple life,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’ve encountered in your life, but in my view, life isn’t simple, Neal.”
“People complicate their lives. I see it as a choice.”
“People have jobs and families and bills to pay and responsibilities—sick relatives, home repairs—life is messy. I think that if you asked most people they would rather not work or worry and prefer to rest on a hammock all day and live uncomplicated lives. I don’t believe people try to complicate their lives,” Tess said.
Neal was silent and Tess wondered if she had gone too far; after all, he was a new acquaintance –he didn’t know how outspoken she could be. And yet in the silence, she couldn’t help wonder if she had chosen to complicate her life—between her leaving Woodstock, her relationships, her career. She wasn’t sure what her life was now, if it could be measured in terms of simple or complicated. It was more of a routine: she went to work, kept busy, came home and worked some more and went to sleep.
“We all have responsibilities. It’s up to us to do them with a clear mind or to cloud our minds and create drama around responsibilities. Look at the birds of the air, Tess. You don’t see them worrying about where to live or their bank accounts. They just coast about.”
“How do we know they don’t worry? Tess said. “We can’t read their minds. For all we know, they’re just as neurotic and screwed up as the rest of us.”
Neal laughed and smiled at her and led the way from the docks out through the front entrance of the yacht club and onto 66th street. She wasn’t sure if she were supposed to head back home, say goodbye, or follow.
“You’re an interesting woman, Tess,” Neal said.
The alleys of Ohio walk were filled with old oak and faint yellow leaves. She followed in silence, everything inside of her easing; he could be playful. She liked that. Her shoulders, which she hadn’t known had inched up to her neck in attack mode, loosened. Up close, she could see that stubble was growing in on his head; it reminded her of a Chia pet. She wondered if perhaps he had been in the hospital, undergoing surgery—that would explain his leave of absence, why his head was shaved and now growing in. Only he looked too healthy to be recovering, unless months had passed.
The church bells rang in the distance.
“In Buddhism, the sound of the bell is a reminder to come back to your heart. My son, Prakash, loved that concept growing up. He rang the little bell my mother gave him all the time. I’d hear him ringing it up in his room. It used to make me feel sad.”
“Why?” Neal said.
Tess shrugged.
“Maybe it made me wonder why I didn’t fancy Buddhism the way he did. I don’t know.”
“What do you know, Tess?”
“I know that I’m walking right now while I should probably be at my office.”
“Forgive me if this puts me in the philosopher realm, but I’d say you’re exactly where you need to be by essence of the fact that you’re here,” Neal said. “There are no coincidences in life.”
“Well then that’s something we agree on: I don’t believe in coincidences either,” Tess said.
“What do you believe in?” Neal said.
“Action, doing, putting your money where your mouth is,” Tess said.
Neal cradled the v of his chin in the web of his thumb and pointer finger, moving his fingers back and forth as if he were checking if he needed a shave. They were by the Key Food down at the Avenue U intersection where traffic turned into Mill Basin. Tess always felt ungrounded at this corner—cars turning, cars speeding past, the B100 bus stop with her face plastered on the bus stop shelter, people boarding the bus, people getting off, the bank there on the corner, the supermarket. Everything at once.
“Does your son live locally?” Neal asked.
“No. He went to college on the west coast and made that his home. He’s out in San Francisco. An architect.”
“Do you miss him?” Neal said.
He certainly asked a lot of questions, but Tess didn’t feel as if he was intruding on her life. For all she knew, he was going to add in information on her and her Buddhist upbringing to his book.
“I feel closer to him while he’s away,” she said. “If that makes any sense. He’s off doing his thing and I’m here doing my thing and I know that whenever I want I can pick up the phone and call him,” she said.
They crossed the avenue U intersection and kept walking down 66th street, towards Avenue T. The houses were smaller here, closer together. It was considered Old Mill Basin. The row of trees that lined the block right before the curb somehow made the houses seem protected from the street. Tess had sold two houses on this block in the past year. Not much money to be made, but they were seamless transactions—the banks never hesitated to give loans to young families. Children were waiting on the corner with parents for the school bus. Tess had never been one of those parents that saw Prakash off to school. The school bus picked him up right on the corner of her block. She couldn't remember now if Prakash had told her that he could go alone, or if she told him it was fine for him to walk and wait alone.
