From Comfortable Distances (12 page)

Neal turned round and
round when he walked into the gala of the movie theater.

“My, oh my,” he said.

Tess glanced around—no
one was watching them. She wasn’t sure if she felt embarrassed or charmed by
Neal’s reaction. She observed the chandeliers, the ornate gold staircase
railings, the burgundy carpets, the men in tuxedos and white gloves tearing
tickets. She could have been in a palace.

“It is quite a theater,”
Tess said.

“I feel like we’re going
to see an Opera,” he said.

“It’s probably the last
movie theater of its sort,” Tess said. “The rest of them have become more like
a family basement.”

The on-screen movie
trivia games before the feature started intrigued Neal. How in the world, he
wanted to know, did Tess know all of the answers relating to movies? The year
Casablanca
came out, the name of Julia Roberts’ character in
Mystic Pizza
. Neal was
the first person Tess had ever met that had never seen
When Harry Met Sally
.

When the movie started,
the overture of
The Sound of Music
filling the theater, Neal sank into
his chair and Tess did the same. It had been a long time since she had gone to
the movies mid-day—perhaps not since Prakash was a young boy. It made her feel
luxurious and free.

No matter how many times
Tess saw this movie, she always lost herself in the story of Maria, the
postulant, who left the abbey in Salzburg, Austria, to find out what life
outside the monastery had to offer her.

“Aren’t they adorable?”
Tess whispered to Neal when the von Trapp children, who Maria had become a
governess for, sang for their father, Captain von Trapp, and his dinner guests.
Tess smiled as they sang the goodnight, adieu, song. It was hard for her to
restrain herself from singing along.

There were ten or so
other folks in the movie theater. None of them seemed to be singing along or
even nodding to the music. She felt the tears well up in her with each turning
point in the movie: the children falling in love with Maria; Captain von Trapp
and Maria, the nun-on-leave-of absence, falling in love; Maria’s return to the
abbey to confess her love of the captain to the mother abbess; the scene when
the abbess encouraged Maria to climb every mountain and find her true love.
Tess sat on the edge of her seat during the movie’s final scene when the von
Trapps hid in the abbey as they tried to escape from the Nazis and make their
way up to the mountain. She held her breath as the Nazi soldier that the oldest
von Trapp girl had dated debated turning the von Trapp family in. And then the
struggle was over, and the family fled into the hills, safe and free, a whole
new life ahead of them.

Neal sat silent in his
chair when the movie ended,
Climb Every Mountain
softly humming in the
background.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Tess
said, standing up.

Neal remained seated, as
if he was waiting for someone to come and claim him.

“Neal, are you okay?”

He nodded. He looked as
he had just awoken from sleep—disoriented and hazy.

“Should we leave the
theater?”

He looked around. “Sure,”
he said.

“It’s a powerful movie,”
Tess said.

He nodded again.

“Are you sure you’re
okay?”

“I just need some air.”

Tess motioned him toward
the aisle. “Let’s go.”

Outside, the
mid-afternoon air was cool and breezy. It made Tess feel lazy. “Can I get you
some water, Neal?”

He shook his head. “I’m
fine. Thanks.”

“It’s so beautiful out.
Do you have time for a walk?”

Neal nodded.

The movie had a profound
effect on her, too. She walked beside him in silence. He seemed to be moving on
autopilot, his eyes focused on the ground, his feet marching. They walked down
Seventh Avenue. Men selling beaded necklaces and bracelets and handbags spread
out across tables lined the streets. The smell of honey peanuts always made her
hungry, but she knew from experience that if she bought them, she would eat two
or three and then be done with the bag.

Tess led him into Central
Park through the entrance on 59
^th
street and 7
^th
avenue.
She loved Central Park. To her, it was the jewel of Manhattan. Side by side,
they rounded the park loop, walking toward the 72
^nd
street entrance.
The silence began to feel awkward to Tess.

“The movie affected you,”
she said.

“It wasn’t what I
expected, I guess. It was very….”

“Intense.”

“Yes,” he said.

“It usually makes me
silent,” Tess said. “Although I don't feel as shaken by it today as I normally
do—maybe it’s because I saw it in public as opposed to in my living room.”

Tess led them to the left
once they were at the fork in the road just off east 72
^nd
street. As
they walked down the steps leading to the fountain at Imagination Point, Tess
heard the music and saw the dancers. A woman dressed in a white and red striped
skirt and a little red tank top handed her a flyer:

MAY DAY is a festival of
happiness, joy, and the coming of summer.

The Anglo-Saxons called
it BELANE, or BRIGHT FIRE, which best signifies this joyous day.

MAY DAY is a return to
life. It brings with it new hopes for good planting and rich harvests in all aspects
of your life.

It is the start of a
season of love, attraction, courtship, and mating. Circle the MAY POLE.

It is a skyward symbol of
LIFE!

Someone grabbed Tess’s
hand. She resisted, only to be pulled harder, and then she was part of a larger
circle which went clockwise around the May Pole and then counterclockwise. She
saw Neal smiling in the distance. The circle kept growing, and they were moving
much faster now. In a moment she was able to break free and rejoin Neal.

“That was an adventure,”
Tess said, fixing her hair into place with her hand. “It never ceases to amaze
me how many nuts are in this city,” Tess said.

In the distance, crowds
of people surrounded the May Pole, new circles forming and breaking up every
few minutes as the crowd multiplied. Small children and elderly people alike
spun round. Tess turned to face the lake behind them. People in canoes—families
and couples—were floating about. They couldn't all be tourists. Did anybody
work anymore? One couple lost an oar in the lake and the man stood up, waving
for help. Neal waved back at him, and in a moment, the girl was waving at him,
too.

“Shall we sit down?” Neal
said, motioning with his hand toward the lake.

“On the ground?” Tess
said.

Neal took off his anorak
and spread it out across the grass.

“So you won’t dirty your
clothes,” Neal said.

Tess hesitated before she
sat down and once she had positioned herself, Neal sat down beside her. His
breathing was calmer—he had seemed to let go of whatever anxiety the movie had
caused. He sat like a little boy with his legs folded cross-legged, all neat
and tidy. He focused on the activity in the lake. She had an urge to trace his
cheekbones, to kiss him. She closed her eyes and opened them as if that action
would make the thought go away. Up in the sky, there wasn’t a cloud. She had
feelings for this man. Or maybe it was just that she wanted to touch him. Feel
his lips. His breath. She shook her head. No. If they were going to kiss, she
would let him initiate; men always made the first move. At least that’s how
Tess lived her life. And where in the world had all of these thoughts of
kissing come from? Surely he was feeling it too – surely this was a vibe
between them? Besides, a day kiss meant more than a night kiss. A day kiss was
somehow realer than a night kiss because you couldn't hide from it; it would be
there, in the wide open. A day kiss was exposure, and yet, what did it really
matter? She was almost 56 years old for Christ’s sake. What did a kiss matter?
His eyes were closed. Now was the time. Before she could give it much more
thought, she leaned over and kissed him on the lips, and when his eyes opened,
she kissed him again, softly. She brushed her hand across his cheek, so smooth,
and smiled into his eyes. Before she knew what had happened, Neal was on his
feet, flustered.

“Neal, I'm sorry, Neall—”

But it was too late,
because he was shaking his head as he backed away from her and then he was
rushing through the crowd, and Tess didn't know what was going on. She stood,
and bent back down to grab his anorak and then she began to follow in the
direction he had gone, but the crowd, it was so thick and there were so many
people charging towards her, that she couldn't see him any longer.

“Neal!” she called, only
over the sound of the drums and the flutes by the May Pole, it was useless. 
She hurried back out the way they had come into the park, around the curve, up
to 57th street, but Neal was nowhere. She tried to breathe, to stay calm, not
to let her pride creep in, which was swelling into a bundle of confusion and
humiliation. Surely, Neal would be waiting for her by her car. Perhaps he
was
married? The movie had upset him. She had thought that he would love it,
the music, the story. If he was married, then why had he lied? Could he be gay?
No. Nowadays it was en vogue. She would have sensed he was gay, unless of
course he didn’t know it yet?

She passed the church and
thought of the quote
I cannot step into the same river twice because I am
never the same.
Well, she would never put herself in this situation again,
that was for sure. It wasn’t like she went around kissing men every day. It had
felt like the right moment. Obviously it wasn’t the right moment to Neal. But
to run away? That seemed a bit much to her. When she got to her car, he wasn't
there. Was she supposed to leave the city without him? Was she supposed to
drive around looking for him? What if he never made it home to Brooklyn? Then
she would have been the last person to see him. She waited in her car for over
twenty minutes, listening to her sound track from
The Sound of Music,
humming along to “Edelweiss.” There was a sadness to the song, a foreshadowing,
that made it seem appropriate to the turn of events this afternoon. When the
church bells rang in 5:00 pm, she started up the engine and pulled out of the
spot. She drove down the block slowly at first, pressing the gas pedal lightly,
as if Neal might pop up somewhere. He was an adult after all—he would find his
way home. Besides, she couldn't read his mind—she didn’t know why he had gotten
so upset. She accelerated and suddenly, she was laughing. She had never made a
man run away from her with a kiss. The more she thought about it, the more she
laughed, until tears began to stream down her face. She began to feel lighter
and easier. There was no use trying to concoct reasons on Neal’s behalf. The
truth always came out sooner or later. When it was time for her to know why
Neal had run away, she would find out. That much, she was sure of.

Tess didn’t know how long
she had closed her eyes when she jumped up, startled. Had the doorbell rung?
She rubbed her eye sockets with the heels of her palms, a mannerism that she
had always reprimanded Prakash for. Perhaps she had dreamt that the doorbell
rang. Just as she was about to fall back down on her pillow, there it was
again—the doorbell. Michael most likely. That was the problem with living in a
small neighborhood. If someone was looking for you, they would see your car
parked out front and know you were home. She wasn’t going to answer it. Michael
would have to wait. She saw her answering machine blinking and remembered the
messages Michael had left before she dozed off—something or other about a
contract, and his thanking her for disappearing that afternoon when they had
work to go over. She didn’t know if he had worn off on her, or vice versa with
his work, work, work mentality.

Slowly, Tess made her way
out of her bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs, and pulled open the front
door, careful to hold in the alarm button, as she did not need the police
showing up at her house right now. She had her share of drama for the day. 
Perhaps it was Neal coming to claim his bicycle? No one was at the door. She
stuck her head out, one hand positioned to keep the screen door open.   

“Hello? Anyone? Neal?
Michael? If you are hiding, just come out. I’m going to close the door. That’s
it, I’m closing the door,” she said, and that’s when she saw the envelope
sticking out of her mailbox. Now Michael was writing her letters, she thought,
grabbing it from the mailbox. Only she didn’t know the handwriting on the
envelope.
For Tess.
She looked around for another moment, and closed the
front door fast, bolting the double lock. You never knew who was lurking
around, watching, waiting to break into your house. Being a realtor, Tess had
heard all kinds of stories—burglars following women home from the supermarket
and shoving their way into homes as the woman opened their front doors; men
posing as delivery men pushing their way in once a person opened the front
door. Tess ran up her stairs and looked out her front window before she turned
the envelope over to its flap. It was from Neal. He had written his name. She
unfolded the sheets of ivory parchment, counting one, two, three, four, five
pages, taking in the precise cursive penmanship—had he written it with a
fountain pen Tess wondered, noting how the ink bled the paper.

Dearest Tess,

I am sorry that I ran
away today. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I hope that you will forgive
me. The movie that we saw,
The Sound of Music
, was very beautiful, but very
unsettling to me. I wondered during the movie if somehow you knew my story—if
you had figured it out, and that you had taken me to see the movie to show me
there was hope, that I may very well live happily ever after as a secular man.
I was so I was preoccupied with trying to figure out if you knew, let alone
with the movie itself, that it was too hard for me to even speak. And then when
you reached over to me in the park…I will try to explain, but no matter how I
say it, it sounds preposterous. I wish I had told you sooner, but there never
seemed to be the right moment to say it. And then it somehow became a bigger
deal than it would have been if I had told you right away. Your friendship has
meant a lot to me, Tess. You have made me feel as if I was a man like any other
man. 

I’m a monk, Tess. A
Benedictine monk. Or I was a monk. Right now, I am on a six-month leave of
absence from my monastery in Canada discerning the vows that I took in the name
of St. Benedict some 23 years back. I left the monastery in March; I am
expected to return in September, although I can ask for more time if that's
what I need—I can ask to be dismissed forever if I so choose.

Most days I am sure that
my life as a monk is over. I left the monastery, Tess, not only to satisfy my
own desires, but to satisfy God’s desires, too. It was God that gave me the
strength and the will to go. I believe that my challenge from here on in life
is to figure out a way to live in society without compromising my truth.

Coming back to Mill Basin
after all these years and moving back in with my mother, into the house that I
grew up in, has been a very strange experience for me. It has made me regress
in many ways, relive the days, months, years prior to my decision to join the
monastery. When I had finished Brooklyn College, I locked myself in my room for
nearly three months, reading the Bible and praying. I had started to have
conversations with Jesus, and it frightened me. I wanted the voices to go away.
My parents, devout Catholics, panicked when I withdraw from everything around
me. I thought that they would have been pleased over my passion with religion
being the religious people that they were, but instead they treated me as if I
was an experiment gone wrong. They sent me off to stay in the guesthouse of a
monastery in Saskatoon, Canada in December of 1979 so that I would have a
chance to figure things out—to see if a life devoted to faith and recluse was at
heart what I sought.  They sent me far away thinking that the distance alone
would be enough to make me beg to come home. My parents thought I was going
through a phase, and back then, I didn't know what I thought. There had been an
afternoon I sat in my bedroom and I asked to know Christ, who he was, what he
was, and I felt something brush my hands and arms and neck and throat soft as a
tissue and a voice, hollow and distant, said to me, “I am you.”

At the monastery, the
monks left me alone at first. In the silence, I was able to think. I watched
how they lived—their community was devoted to prayer and study and silence.
They helped one another, and although there was an aloneness to being at the
monastery, no one there was ever alone in their hearts. We all prayed for one
another’s well-being as well as for the well-being of others. As I got to know
the monks, they talked to me of vocation and how if you heard the voice of
Christ, you were to open your heart, listen and not run away.

It was a very long road
ahead, Tess. After my three months with the monks, they sent me home so that I
could figure out if I wanted to return—this time, for good. Going back home
after those magical months was too much for me. I couldn’t find focus in
Brooklyn. I missed the sound of the wind whispering across the prairie at
night, the sound of the coyote’s crying, the stillness of the monastery. Every
moment of every day was precious there—things were done with purpose. At home,
I couldn’t hear anything except for noise that sounded like static.

In 1980, I returned to
the monastery. It was May 6th, the day I turned 24. I went through a six-month
postulate period in which I once again was asked to decide if this life was
what I sought. After that, I took on a year novitiate. During that time, I
learned about the order I was preparing to join, and I spent my days and nights
assessing my call to the religious life. I came to define myself as a monk, and
for the first time in a long time my life wasn't a mysterious puzzle. I felt as
if I was exactly where I needed to be. I learned the Rules of St. Benedict.
After my first year, I took a temporary profession, which lasted for three
years. Next I took a solemn profession. Later, I studied to become a priest,
which led to my being ordained.

It's hard to explain how
the years passed—but I guess the same is true for everyone—we live and time
passing is the consequence. Each day I woke up in the monastery I prayed,
dressed, took a walk, ate a simple breakfast. Contrary to what most people believe,
St. Benedict’s rule requires that a monk work with his hands about six hours a
day and earn money to sustain the monastery. At the monastery we earned our
living by making cookies and honey. I was in charge of making cookies, although
it took me over eight years since the day I arrived there as a novitiate to
earn that honor.

I stayed in my cell and
prayed and wrote and tended to my garden for hours each day.  There was always
time to contemplate, to write, to think, to read, to speak to the brothers. I
had a nice life.

But after many years,
there came the nights when I would sit up on the roof of the monastery, looking
up into the sky with the abbey’s telescope, and I would think about all sorts
of things: why certain stars shined brighter than other stars, why I was living
there when there was so much more of the world that I had yet to see. I started
to question my life; perhaps I was at the monastery because of fear? Perhaps it
had to do with a fact that I had repressed: I didn’t want to end up like my
father who seemed to go through the motions of life; I didn’t want to just
exist. Over the course of years, decades at the monastery, I had realized that
my faith in God was beyond time and place—I knew this because there was no
particular place I needed to be to pray –whether I was in the library, under
the night sky, sitting across from my brothers during a meal, or in my garden
tending to the land, I was able to speak with God.

I began to think about
the choices I had made in my life. The truth was that before my monastic
experience, I was a cluttered and preoccupied mess. I knew the Christian truth,
but there were so many competing values in my psyche that everything was
confused, unfocused, disjointed, and helter-skelter. I had allowed the expectations
of others and society’s values to influence me and I had lost my focus. Being
at the monastery helped me gain a better sense of who I was and who I was meant
to be. But then I began to wonder, what if what I had gone through back then,
in my early twenties, was what any young adult experienced? What if I had
mistaken a religious calling for the chaos of growing up?

When I turned 40, I began
to think about life outside of the monastery grounds. I kept thinking that
there was a whole world out there waiting to be explored. The restlessness to
look around, explore new surroundings, once born, didn’t die. I no longer felt
at peace with my brothers. I feared that my restless energy was beginning to
filter into the other monks. They looked at me with strange eyes, and I would
catch them watching me during meals when they were supposed to focus on their
food.

There was more. On the
roof each night, the stars above me, I knew that religion had nothing to do
with a place or a book. It was about connecting. I started to wonder why I sat
in church so many hours a day if I felt purest in my heart and soul when I sat
on the roof at night and watched the stars fall, or in my garden during the
daylight hours and watched the seeds I’d planted come to life, or even in the
kitchen, baking cookies. I began to skip going into the church and instead
prayed aloud, chanting each morning as I walked the five-mile loop that circled
the monastery. In the afternoons, I prayed as I sat by the pine trees and
meditated. Each time I walked into the church, I felt the prayer go out of me.
It was only when I was free, not confined, that I was able to communicate with
God. I started writing
In Your Own Garden
one afternoon while I tended to the
wild flowers that grew out in the fields beyond the potato patches. I began to
feel connected to myself in a way that I had never felt before.   Finding
myself, connecting with God in this new way came at a price: the monastery was
no longer my home. I asked my abbot if I could live in the hermitage down the
road for a while—to make sense of my heart, be away from the brothers for a
bit, and he allowed me to do that. After eight months of utter silence—reading
and writing in my journal, long walks, studying the night sky for a sign that
never came— I told the abbot that I needed to join the world, see if there
wasn't something that I had missed along my way.

I left the monastery this
March feeling like a fugitive. I believed, and I still do, that it was my job
to finish my book, to share what I’ve learned with others—to remind others that
going to church or temple each week is not what religion is about. That true
devotion is a gift you give yourself, a connection with the universe, with God,
that empowers you.

In less than six months
now, I need to either return to the monastery or ask the abbot for another
three months to discern my vows. I cannot formerly apply for a leave from the
church until I am away from the monastery for nine months total. I don’t know
what is in my future, but I do know that each day since I am away from the
monastery, the reasons that I left are changing. Each day I am learning and
growing and moving into my life. And seeing that movie today—I took it a sign
from God that I was on the right path and that somehow, someway, you are one of
my guides.

The cookies I bake each
morning are for my mother to take to the nursing home that she volunteers at.
It’s the nursing home at which my father died. I know that this is a lot to
tell you, Tess. Right now I am in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, watching all the
people come and go, searching for something outside that they can only find
inside. I will light a candle for you, for me, for every soul who struggles and
finds and flees and ultimately vows to live this life with heart and soul. I
will light a candle and pray that you may see the light always, and that you
may be the light, too. I am sorry that I couldn’t tell you in person, but I
speak to you now as if you were me—for after all is said and done, you are me
and I am you. Our struggles and joys and finding and freedom are but one and
the same.  If you will meet me at dawn by the water tomorrow morning, I will be
thankful, as I always am, for your presence.