From Comfortable Distances (20 page)

In the distance, Neal
sauntered, pausing in front of a blooming batch of yellow tulips. Tess moved
steadily, as she caught up to him. Her heart was racing. When she was less than
a few feet away, he turned his head, spotting her, and smiled shyly, his eyes
downcast, as if he were shielding them from the sun.

“Tess,” he said.

“Neal.”

“A beautiful morning for
a walk.”

“It certainly is,” Tess
said. She fell in line beside him and together they moved on. Standing beside
Neal made Tess feel as if time had stood still. She had forgotten the
simplicity of Neal, how sharing space with him was uncomplicated and relaxing.
Tess focused on her sneakered feet, moving one foot in front of the other as
she inhaled the sweet honey suckled air.

“My mother passed away.”
Although weeks had passed, each time Tess said it out loud, it didn’t seem
possible; she felt as if she were talking about someone else’s mother.

Neal stopped for a
moment, facing her, his hands a prayer in front of his heart. His face was
steady, even.

“I suppose as they say,
it was her time,” she said, meeting his eyes. She glanced at the ground and
started walking again.

“I’m sorry, Tess. The
loss of a parent is never easy.”

“Yes. Thank you. I’m
sorry, too.” She sighed. “She believed in reincarnation. Maybe it was time for
her to change form?” she said. “But you don’t believe in that, do you?”

“Anything is possible,
Tess. None of us know what happens when we die. That’s one of the great
mysteries of living.”

Neal smiled his
all-encompassing lips-pressed-together Charlie Brown smile.

“I missed your birthday,”
Tess said. “May 6
^th
, right?”

“Yes,” Neal said. “My
mother took me out to dinner in New York City.”

Tess thought of her last
episode with him in the city and wondered if he had thought about it, too, when
he was there with his mother. She wondered if his mother had taken him to the
same Italian restaurant his parents had taken him to the night before he left
for the monastery.  May 6th. The day her mother had passed.

Together they looped
around 56 Drive onto Whitman Drive North. The houses were more spacious here,
the lawns wider—daisies and tulips and blooming rose patches abounded. They had
been built later than the houses on 66
^th
street and the houses
leading up to 56
^th
drive. It was as if the developers, having
figured out that Mill Basin was a desirable place for people to settle down,
had decided to create homes on the Jamaica Bay inlet that were bigger and
better than the existing homes. That was the great thing about the real estate
market: at the beginning, you never knew what the end result would be. It was a
bit of guesswork, a bit of intuition, a bit of market analysis, and a bit of
sharp marketing to develop homes in an area that would have longevity and whose
market values would soar. In the case of Mill Basin, it had been a matter of
creating top-quality homes and what followed were top-notch schools and
elaborate synagogues and churches. Of course over the years, the schools had
taken a turn for the worse with all the students being bused in from various
districts and the onslaught of racial riots.

Neal moved precisely,
each step of his foot following the one preceding it as if he were walking a
tight rope, his hands clasped neatly at nape of his belly.  It was hard for
Tess to imagine that he was the same Neal who had come undone when she kissed
him on the lips a few weeks back, the same Neal who had fled from a monastery.

Neal led them around the
bend of National Drive. The houses on the water here were more elaborate,
ornate, their multi-levels shooting high up into the sky. The corner-most house
was encrusted by a large iron gate with sharp, pointy tips, like knives. They
paused in front of it. In the driveway there was a Rolls Royce and a baby blue
Bentley convertible.

“That house has ten
floors,” Tess said. “It’s equipped with two elevators—one for the help and one
for the inhabitants.”

“It’s like a hotel,” Neal
said.

“The real estate in this
neighborhood never ceases to amaze me. People build mansions, but they don’t
realize that they are not going to make a lot on their investments in the long
run. This area is changing. It’s not what it was. You drive a few miles out of
this area and there are lower income houses now.”

“Is Mill Basin still full
of mafia folks? When I was growing up my mother used to fear that I’d get
involved with the wrong crowd,” Neal said.

“The mafia folks are
still here. I don’t think they’ll ever leave Mill Basin. But they’re not the
only ones investing in this neighborhood—Israelis and Syrians are also building
mansions. Our own little United Nations,” Tess said.

They turned down Arkansas
Drive creating a zigzag and Neal pointed at the sunflowers growing wild in one
of the gardens. They looked like crazy children smiling up at the sun.

“
That
house has
always interested me,” Neal said when they reached the corner and were back at
National Drive and the intersection of 56
^th
Drive.

The house was situated on
the water. It was a two-tone brick—tan and brown. Tess had always loved this
house, too, with its breeziness and its majestic air. It was old and dignified.
When it had gone up for sale a few years back, just when she and Michael were
getting ready to go their separate ways, she had asked him if he was interested
in buying it. She was ready to let go of Michael, but having him nearby had
appealed to her.

“The view on the dock
must be beautiful,” Neal said.

“I sold that house to my
last ex-husband, Michael, a few years back,” Tess said.

“Should I presume that
meant you liked the house or didn’t like it?”

Tess smiled. “I love that
house. When we were splitting up, I wanted him in that house. Now, I may not
have been so generous, but back then, I wanted him to have it. I guess I saw it
as a benevolent act for wanting to be out of the marriage,” Tess said.

“Do you regret having him
close by now?”

“Michael is part of my
life. Even before we got together, we worked together—he was the lawyer for my
company—still is. I like having him around. I probably shouldn’t have married
him, but I don’t always do the right thing. Especially when it comes to
marriage,” Tess said.

A wish flower floated by
Tess and she grabbed it in her hand. She couldn't feel it, but she knew that if
she opened her hand to check if it was there, it would fly away. That was the
thing with wish flowers—if you didn't act fast and make a wish, they flew out
of your reach.

The sun was beginning to
beam down now so that half of the sidewalk was in the shade while the other
half was in the sunlight. Tess stayed in the shade while Neal was in the
sunlight. They were by Gaylord drive. Out of all of the blocks in Mill Basin,
this was the one Tess was least familiar with. So many of the houses had
recently been redone. She imagined that's why so few of these houses had been
for sale—the owners had invested in them.

“Do you think you lose
part of yourself by marrying another person?” Neal asked.

“I think you get to see
another side of yourself when you’re married. I think it helps you to grow,”
Tess said.

“Why shouldn’t you have
married Michael?” Neal said.

“He made me restless. But
I guess I made myself restless with Michael. I was never able to let things
just be. I didn't understand what he loved about me—it made me suspicious. I
never felt as if he got me—what I was all about.”

“Did you want him to
get
you?” Neal said.

“I don’t know what I
wanted, but when I was with him, more often than not, I wanted to be alone. I
guess that I didn’t want to share my life. I wanted to live on my own terms,”
Tess said.

“Well, it seems to have
worked out fine—you're friends again.”

“Yes. We were able to
figure it out,” Tess said.

They were in front of
Tess’s house now. She liked looking into her living room from the outside,
making out tidbits of her oriental breakfronts; there was so much to a house
that you couldn’t know from the outside.  The cleaning lady neighbor was on her
porch, cleaning her screen door with a rag, wearing her rubber gloves and her
rubber boots. She was wearing her pink sweatshirt and sweat pants today, which
clashed with her apple-red hair. How was it that her son didn’t tell her how
odd her hair color was?

“How is it that you got
stuck listening to me going on and on today?” Tess said.

“I like listening to you,”
Neal said.

“How’s your book coming
along?” Tess said.

“Fine,” Neal said.

“Fine has a scale of 1-10
attached to it.”

Neal laughed. “I’ll be
sure to be more descriptive when I speak to you.”

“It’s good to see you,
Neal,” Tess said.

“It’s been good to see
you, too, Tess.”

“And whatever happened
between us…” Tess started and stopped as Neal looked down at the floor. Tess
reached over and touched his arm.

“I respect you, Neal.”
Saying it, she wasn’t sure if it had come out the right way. She wanted Neal to
know that she didn’t expect anything from him.

“I understand who you
are,” she went on, again unsure if she was comforting him or making him
uncomfortable.

“Tess, you’re my friend.”

“I am your friend,” she
said.

“Will I see you out
walking tomorrow morning?” Neal said.

“Actually, I need to go
to some meetings tomorrow morning for yoga. I enrolled in a yoga teacher
training program,” Tess said.

“I didn’t know that you
wanted to become a yoga teacher,” Neal said.

“Me neither,” Tess said. “It
just kind of happened—a series of coincidences, I suppose.”

“Change is always good,”
he said.

“Yes, I suppose it is,”
she said.

Neal bowed. “Until we
meet again.”

Tess smiled a deep, wide
smile. “Until then my friend.”

Tess held the
staircase door open for Dale, handing her a bag of cookies. To Tess’s surprise,
Dale had also signed up for the yoga teacher training program at the last
minute—they laughed together after the introductory lecture two weeks back,
remembering how they had both pooh-poohed ever taking the yoga teacher training
program at the studio. Dale’s thought process had been that since her life was
a total mess in her estimation, perhaps studying yoga for eight months would
help her get her life in order.

“Bribes?” Dale said,
opening the bag.

The last two-weekend
lock-ins at the studio, Tess had accompanied Dale prior to the Friday night
session when she stopped at The Bakery around the corner from the studio and
bought a few oversized cookies.

Dale bit into an oatmeal
raison cookie. “Mmm,” she said. “I didn’t know you could bake.”

“I can’t,” Tess said. “I
happen to know a master cookie maker.”

“Are you re-gifting?”
Dale said.

“I won’t tell if you
won’t,” Tess said.

Tess pushed the door open
into the night. Fresh air. There was something magical to feeling the warm
night air after taking an evening yoga class. The carefreeness of it made Tess
feel as if she was on vacation.

“These cookies are
surreal. Tess, you’ve struck gold.”

“I’ll keep them coming,”
Tess said.

Two weeks into the
program and already Tess was becoming disillusioned as to how she was going to
juggle running her company and daily yoga classes not to mention weekend lock-
in’s at the studio. When was she supposed to do things like food shop or clean her
house? Still, she did love the yoga classes, and she had made a commitment to
the program, not to mention that she spent $8,000 on it. Having earned every
penny she had, she wasn’t one to throw money away. There was also the fact that
she hadn’t seen Neal in almost two weeks, not that it should have mattered to
her, but somehow it did. When he left her not one, but two bags of cookies on
her porch, it made her long for a free hour to go walking with him, but with
her having to leave her office every day now by 4:30 in the afternoon to shoot
into NYC, she needed to get to work by 7:00 in the morning if she were to get
her work done, which didn’t leave her time for early morning leisurely strolls.

“Last chance,” Dale said.
Tess looked at the chocolate chip cookie chunk Dale held out to her and shook
her head.

“They're for you.”

“You okay?” Dale said.

“Just in a fog from
class.”

“The more I take these
classes, the more confident I become that I’ll never be able to teach a yoga
class—between spotting all the students and the instructions and keeping it all
moving along and then getting us all to conk out at the end. Way too much to
deal with,” Dale said.

“If you want to teach,
you will; you’ll figure it out,” Tess said.

“You’re a bore tonight,”
Dale said.

“When I first met you, I
had you sized up as an affected snob.”

“That’s sweet,” Dale
said. She had chocolate on her nose that Tess wiped away.

“I couldn’t imagine why
Kyle would put up with you aside from the fact that you’re beautiful. But the
past few weeks of getting to know you, I actually look forward to your company,”
Tess said.

“Great. Then you’ll be
happy to join me for tea. I need something to wash down the cookies,” she said.
“And I need to hear more of your assessment of me.” She linked her arm in
Tess's and led her down to Barnes and Nobles on 17th street and Union Square.

From up on the fourth
floor Starbuck’s Cafe, Tess had a clear view of the kids on skateboards who
tried to jump the ramps that that they had set up on the 17
^th
street
side of Union Square. One after another, the boys—most likely 13-17 years
old—picked up speed, jumped the ramps, and hit the pavement smoothly before
skating off. Ultimate precision and skill.

“I put in a touch of milk
for you” Dale said, sitting down across from Tess, placing the two steaming
teas down on the table and producing a lemon square from a paper bag.

“You’re the skinniest
carbohydrate junkie that I know,” Tess said.

“I’ve been known to eat
four lemon squares in one sitting,” Dale said.

One of the skateboarders
fell, hard, on his arm and Tess jumped in her seat, but he was up in a minute,
shaking it off, retrieving his board and making his way back to do the jump
over again. It must have been 8:30 p.m. by now. Tess wondered if the kids had
homework. If their parents knew where they were.

“How’s it going with
Kyle?” Tess said.

“He wants us, or me, to
pick a date for the wedding, a place, the works.”

“What do you want?” Tess
said.

One of the smaller
skateboarders did a flip off a ramp and hit the ground, standing.

“I guess we should start
planning,” Dale was said.

“Do you have good
friends, Dale?” Tess said.

“I guess, sure. I think
they’re sick of hearing my indecision about Kyle, my job, my life. I’m on
hiatus from them right now. I don’t feel like hearing everyone’s opinions,”
Dale said. “Do you have good friends?”

Tess laughed. “I didn’t
mean it as a competition,” she said. She blew on her tea and took a sip. “Or a
proposal to be your best friend. I was curious what they were saying to you
about Kyle,” Tess said.

“And I asked you—do you
have good friends?” Dale said.

“I’m married to my job,
my company. I don’t have time for friends and lunches and all that stuff that
goes along with friends. I have 50 + employees to manage on a daily basis,”
Tess said.

“Did you ever have close
friends?” Dale said.

“Oh, don’t you go and
psychoanalyze me. Yes, I’ve had tons of friends in my lifetime, but when you
get married and divorced four times you tend to lose a lot of people along the
way,” Tess said. “Satisfied?”

“I’m glad that you have
time for tea and conversation with me,” Dale said.

“We were talking about
whether it’s the right time to move on with plans for the wedding,” Tess said.

“Well, how I see it is
that it’s already May, and if we’re going to get married by the end of the year
like we decided we would, then now is as good a time as any to move ahead,
right?”

“Dale, it’s only a good
time to move ahead with the plans if you feel good about your relationship.
Forget the plans. Focus on the two of you. What matters is if he’s the person
you want to spend your life with. That’s what you need to know before you do
anything.”

“But how does anyone know
that? There are so many days to life. So many hours in every day. I tend to
change my mind a few times every hour.”

Tess took the lid off her
of her tea; the steam flushed her face. “Did you want to spend today with him?”

“Sure, I guess, but we
had to work—”

“I’m not talking about
his working or your being busy. If you were the only survivor on earth and were
granted the wish to keep one person with you, would it be Kyle?” Tess said.

“I think I need another
lemon square,” Dale said.

“Dale, I wish I would
have asked myself those questions before each of my marriages. It might have
saved me a lot of time and grief in my life,” Tess said.

“My heart goes in a
different direction depending on the hour of the day.”

“We make ourselves
scattered, Dale. I do it to myself every day. When I was up in Woodstock
earlier this month it may have been the first time in a long time that I didn’t
feel all over the place every day. I was calm. And when you’re calm inside,
everything shifts,” Tess said.

“So you’re saying I need
to be calmer?” Dale said.

“I don’t know what I’m
saying, Dale. Trust me, I’m trying to figure it out for myself, but I do know
that when you debate something as if it’s a chess game—especially your love
life—you’re going to drive yourself crazy. You need to tune into what you feel
and you’ll find all the answers that you need.”

“I feel happy being on my
own,” Dale said.

“If Kyle was to vanish
from your life tomorrow, no big deal?”

Dale shrugged. “This is
how I see it,” she said. “There’s you, who I think has it pretty together, and
you’ve gone through four divorces. There’s Kim from the teacher training who’s
going through some kind of emotional breaking point about her marriage after
nine years—suddenly she’s starting to wonder if she did the right thing
marrying someone twenty years older than her. There’s Sara from the program
that’s bitter about marriage and is in the midst of a battlefield of a divorce.
It all makes me wonder if I shouldn’t stay on my own. I don’t even know what
marriage means. I don’t get what exchanging vows is going to do for me. Part of
me thinks marriage is archaic and bizarre, and the other part of me thinks it’s
the most precious thing. Some of my relatives are already asking me if we plan
to start a family right away or if we’re going to wait. Can you imagine? I
think that I would be fine doing yoga and hanging out with friends the rest of
my life.”

Tess looked away from the
window. Against the night sky, Dale’s green eyes reminded Tess of the water in
Jamaica Bay. Muddy, yet translucent in certain spots, as if a needle had passed
through them, pricking holes for the light to seep in.

“I left my job today,”
Dale said. “Actually, I took a three-month leave. You’re the first person I’m
telling.”

“What? Why? And you
haven’t told Kyle?” Tess said.

“I never said I wasn’t
crazy,” Dale said.

“What was going on with
your job?” Tess said.

“I don’t know if I’m cut
out to be a social worker. Or at least a social worker for runaway teens. I
felt useless, you know? One of the girls I was working with for months ran away
from her home again the other day. Now she’s missing. And the other ones…I’m
supposed to coax them to go back to their real homes, promise them that their
parents and guardians will be monitored from here on out, but if you heard the
stories they told me about their homes—I can’t tell them to go back. When I
bring it up to my supervisor, he tells me it’s my job to send them back. I’m
sorry, but I can’t send these kids back to hell. It’s even worse when I have to
find them foster homes. I start thinking about myself at 14, 15. I would have
rather lived on the street than go to live in some stranger’s house and have to
abide by their rules. And every time I make progress with one of the teens—find
them a decent family, get them set up in school, find them part time work, they
go and pull something else that I have to bail them out of: getting caught
buying drugs, drinking. I’m a wreck all the time. I never know when I’m going
to get a phone call telling me something terrible has happened to one of the
kids I’m dealing with. It makes me feel like I’m failing everyone. I asked for
a leave so that I can get my life together a bit and besides, I want to focus
on yoga teacher training.”

“And I thought I was the
only one that had stressful days. What’s Kyle going to say?”

“Kyle will probably be
relieved. He thinks my job is what’s keeping me from everything else in my
life. As in making the wedding arrangements and moving.”

“Is it?” Tess said.

“I don’t know,” Dale
said. She was folding the napkin in front of her into neat little triangles,
one folding into the other.

“Is counseling teens your
passion or is it something you just do?” Tess said.

“I want to help them, but
I don’t see how moving them around is helping them. I would love to teach yoga
to those teens—help them to build their self-confidence. I want to give them
something that they can always utilize, long after my time with them is up. To
answer your question, yes, I’m passionate about what I do, or I was.” She
paused and let out a sigh. “Have you ever just needed a break from your career?”
Dale said.

“I certainly have my melt
downs. But there’s also something about real estate that keeps me going—the
matchmaking aspect of it, the sell, I guess.”

“Maybe my true calling is
to be a yoga teacher,” Dale said.

“Or a wedding planner,”
Tess said.

They both laughed.

“Here’s the good news. If
you were able to walk away from your career without second guessing yourself,
don’t you think you would walk away from your relationship if it wasn’t right
for you, or at least put off moving ahead with wedding plans?” Tess said.

Dale studied her for a
few moments. “I guess?” she said.

“Dale, everyone is scared
of marriage. Or at least some people are. Or should be. Only when you break
down the fear, what is it really? Just not knowing what to expect, right? If
you knew what to expect, though, it would be a pretty boring life. I used to
dread going with the flow. I thought that I could plan everything—still do to
some extent, I suppose—but the truth is that I couldn't. No one can. Expect the
unexpected is probably the best advice anyone can ever give you,” Tess said.