From Comfortable Distances (3 page)

“Nap time is over,”
Michael said. He was leaning over her, on his elbows, so that Tess jumped up.
He smelt like sour milk. Everyone around Tess was moving, folding up their
mats, sipping from water bottles.

“I was asleep,” Tess
said. She popped up, not sure if she was back in her mother’s house or if it
was a dream.

“Really? No?” Michael
said.

Tess closed her eyes and
opened them. No, she wasn’t back at her mother’s. She felt as if she had slept
for days.

“I feel amazing,” she
said, and it surprised her that she did. A feeling of joy, serenity, displaced
the dread and fear she had felt coming to the studio, of returning to yoga.

“I’m glad one of us does.
I feel dead,” Michael said. “So much for me and yoga. While I was struggling
through one downward dog after the other, you were snoozing.”

 “You smell bad,” Tess
said.

“Thanks,” he said.

Tess folded up her mat,
placed it on the stack at the back of the classroom, and was about to follow
Michael out when the teacher stopped her.

“I hope you come back,”
she said.

Tess smiled at her. “I
will be back,” she said.

“You needed the rest.”

“I didn’t realize it, but
yes, I guess that I did,” she said. Tess felt as if she were floating.

“Namaste,” the teacher
said and Tess repeated, “Namaste.”

It was the way the girl
walking out in front of her swooped up her long locks in one instant and then
sorted through her bag, pulling off a chunk of something—from behind it looked
to Tess like a piece of cake— that caught Tess’s attention. When the girl
turned toward her, Tess could make out that it was a piece of a cookie that the
girl stuffed in her mouth. In a moment of mutual confusion and recognition,
their eyes locked.

 “The brownstone,” Dale
said and Tess nodded. Dale wiped her hands on her black yoga pants and smiled. “You
must think I’m awful,” she said.

Her demeanor, her
smile—it was as if she were a completely different person. She stood upright
and tall and there was a softness to her, a humorous side that Tess would have
never guessed existed in her.

“No, I don’t think—”

“I’m sorry,” the girl
said catching Tess’s forearm. “I don’t usually carry on like that. It’s just
that Kyle seems to have convinced himself that we need to move and is on a
mission to find us a place when there’s no reason for us not to stay in my
place.”

“I’m sure you two will
figure it out,” Tess said, her voice low. Talking business seemed like another
language to her right now. She felt as if she had overdosed on muscle relaxers.

Dale’s head moved back as
if she were trying to distance herself from Tess while she studied her. Her
lips were a straight line.

“I mean that you don’t
have to explain to me,” Tess said.

“Right. Thanks for your
vote of confidence. I’m sure we will figure it out,” Dale said.

Tess nodded. Michael was
standing beside her now. He and Dale nodded and smiled at one another, and then
the girl pulled open the door to the stairs and was gone. Tess was lost as to
what had just happened; she wished that she could transport herself from the
yoga studio into her bed. That was where she needed to be in her present
lost-in-space state of mind.

“Shall we go?” she said
to Michael.

“Cute girl,” Michael
said.

“She’s taken,” Tess said.

“So were you,” Michael
said, and with that Tess made her way to the elevator, grabbed a schedule from
the bulletin board, and pushed the down button.

Tess made a sharp turn
off of Avenue U onto 66
^th
street and hit the gas. Homeward bound. It
had been a long day, but a good one—she closed two houses and her two
top-producing agents had each closed one. It was like this each spring: real
estate deals closed with the steadiness of planes landing at the airport,
coming in one after the other. Spring and summer, Tess knew, was wedding time,
and the feeling of optimism in the air, the promise of new beginnings, the
desire to please future mates was contagious to house shoppers. Sometimes while
showing a home to a young, hopeful couple, Tess envisioned them down the road,
weathered, kids rushing through the house, noise, dirt, bills to be paid
scattering the counter, and she wanted to tell them it wasn’t worth it—that in
a dozen years, this home would become their jail cell.

Tess sighed and felt her
shoulders fall from their perches by her ears. She looked forward to drinking a
cup of chamomile tea and soaking in a bath. At the stop sign, she fiddled with
the radio. There never seemed to be anything on except for deejays talking to
people who were struggling with relationships. A woman was telling the deejay
that she was divorced, middle-aged, and that she wanted to find her soul mate.
For an instant, Tess wondered how many more days of her life she would zoom
down 66
^th
street at 8:00 pm on her way home to an empty house, and a
wave of something—sadness, despair—washed through her. But her day had been too
full and there was too much she had to accomplish tomorrow to feel anything
other than anticipation for her cup of tea and a bath.

In the darkness, she
spotted him, or rather his white shirt and shiny head, out of the corner of her
eye as she fiddled with the scan button on the radio, trying to stop it from
skipping from station to station. It was
him
, the guy with a death wish,
the middle-of-the-street walker. Only this time he was on a bicycle, on the
opposite side of the road, riding in the middle of the street in the darkness.
She beeped at him, and opened her window, ready to scream to him to get out of
the street, but he smiled and waved at her and at that moment, church bells
rang. A car behind her beeped at her and Tess pulled over to the curb. All
those years of living in Mill Basin and Tess couldn’t remember the last time
she had heard the church bells from St. Bernard’s Church over in Bergen Beach.
The chiming soothed her, took her back to the other night, the yoga room, the
bells chiming to invite them into class and then at the end of class, the
teacher using them to stir the class from their rest. Tess had been sleeping,
hadn’t heard them consciously, but somehow their sound had seeped into her.

She made a U-turn so that
she was behind him. He looked back at her and smiled, bobbing his head from
side to side, as if he were trying to get water out of his ears. She wasn’t
going to let this kook job freak her out. She was going to find out his story
and then be on her way. After all, if there was someone insane in the affluent
Mill Basin as she liked to call it when she was in her selling mode, she wanted
to know about it, if only to be able to acknowledge him when she was out with
potential buyers, explain his story and quell any anxiety that her customer’s
might feel.

She lost him at the light
at Avenue U, but then she was behind him again after the light changed, and
when he got to St. Bernard’s Church, he parked his bike on the side of the
building and went in. Tess sat in her car for a few moments, waiting, watching,
and suddenly, she was pulling into a parking spot and getting out of her car.
She wasn’t in the habit of following strangers, and yet she couldn’t seem to
quiet her curiosity.

Tess eased open the heavy
wooden door of the chapel and was hit with cool air and the smell of sharp
incense—a mix of frankincense and licorice—seeped into her throat and then her
chest, so that she felt heavier. She had never stepped foot in this church in
the 30-plus years that she lived in Mill Basin. The only temples she had
visited were the Buddhist ones her mother had dragged her into.

The chapel was sparsely
lit with long stemmed candles and a dim drop-down light in the center of the
room. In the back where she stood, there were rows intermixed with burning
votive candles and ones that were yet to be lit. Beside the table was a worn
wooden donation box with a chain and padlock around it. The stage was adorned
with candles, as was each of the window ledges, the dancing flames illuminating
the stained glass panels of Christ and Mary and men who Tess guessed where the
apostles. Their agonized faces glowed surreal so that from certain angles, they
looked as if they were about to fall out of the panels and land before Tess,
begging for help. 

There were rows of wooden
benches, all empty; a glistening hard wood floor, and a high ceiling that gave
the room a hollow feeling. If she focused on the crisp, white wall opposite the
windows, she noted the angels etched into it. They struck her as tacky, over
the top—the angels were too far away and out of reach to help anyone.

The backdrop of the stage
was an enormous cross with a worn and weary Mary holding a dying Jesus across
her lap. The image stilled Tess. To be a mother. To lose a son. To hold him
dying. Tears came to her eyes and she laughed at herself; she didn’t understand
where this emotion came from. Prakash was safe and well in San Francisco—she had
just talked to him that morning. On the stage was a pulpit with a microphone
and a table dead center with candles and some prayer books stacked on it. Tess
found a seat in a pew in the back of the room, took a daily prayer book on her
lap, dusting it off, and closed her eyes. It felt nice to be sitting in this
foreign place, the air cool and fragrant; she had grown accustomed to the smell
of the incense by this time. They were not sweet like the nag champa incense,
but harsher, more intense.

Tess didn’t know how long
she had zoned out when the door creaked shut. She felt refreshed, as if she had
awakened from a long, deep sleep, and she thought of the other night, the yoga
class. She didn’t think of herself as the type of person to fall asleep in
public places. She imagined that Michael would have a field day at her expense
over this new phenomenon.

The crazy man made his
way down the center aisle. He walked slowly and precisely, as if he were
balancing a book atop his head.  He stopped when he was a few feet from the
stage and made the sign of the cross.  

“Hail Mary, full of
grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the
fruit of your womb. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at
the hour of death.”

His voice was gentle,
soothing. Not what Tess expected to come out of him. His clean-shaven scalp
glistened in the flickering light. The way his chin jutted into his chest
reminded her of a child—shy, insecure—and she felt foolish for having yelled at
him, for following him this evening. She moved in the pew, sending the prayer
book to the floor with a thump and he looked up, slowly, as if he had been
caught.

“I’m sorry to disturb
you. I thought I was alone,” he said.

“You were,” Tess said.
She placed the prayer book back in its slot and stood up.

She followed his eyes and
looked down at herself. The way he was looking at her made her feel as if a
giant spider was crawling up her. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, excuse me, then,”
she said, preparing to leave.

He nodded and smiled at
her, taking all of her in, so that she wasn’t sure what to say or do next.

“You know, you ought to
be more careful where you walk or ride your bike. Someone will run you over if
you dally in the middle of the street.”

He smiled and nodded
again; he looked as if he was amused. Either that, or he was stupid.

“Well, I’m going,” she
said.

“Goodnight,” he said.

She pursed her lips.
There was something penetrating about him and kind and open at the same time.
If she were out selling a house to someone with those eyes, she guessed that he
wouldn’t be an easy customer, that he would do his homework on the house,
uncover whatever there was to uncover, and share his knowledge with her, a
smile on his face, his voice low and sure as he demanded a better price. She
would like to spar with him like that, settle once and for all who was made up
of what.

“I’m Tess,” she said,
holding out her hand. “Of Best Reality.”

The moment she said it
she felt stupid, ridiculous. He stared at her hand, and bowed his head again.
Tess retreated her hand, her eyes on him. Perhaps he had a disease and didn’t
want to touch her. He was attractive: smooth ski-slope nose, hollowed-out
cheekbones, soft, pool-blue eyes. He had the face of someone who never raised
his voice.

“You haven’t told me your
name.”

“Neal. Neal Clay.”

“So now when I see you
strutting in the middle of the street I can yell at you by your name.”

“You were on your way
out?” he said.

“Yes,” Tess said.

“After you,” he said,
following her. Neal opened a door of the chapel that led into the church’s
deserted hallway, so that for a moment Tess was disoriented. She had expected
to be back out in the street.

“You’re the woman on the
bus stop ad,” he said.

He watched her with an
intensity that made her uncomfortable. She shifted her weight from one foot to
another and jingled her car keys in her blazer pocket, wedging the sharp-edged
key in between her knuckles.

The hall was narrow and
long; Tess’s stilettos made a clicking sound against the pale ivory linoleum.

“Do you like what you do?”
he said.

 “I’ve been in the real
estate business for over thirty years now. It’s all I’ve ever done,” she said.

“Just because you do
something for a long time, doesn’t mean you like it.”

“No. I suppose it
doesn’t,” she said.

Neal stopped when they
got to the end of the hallway. “But then again, you might like what you do.
Blessed are those who love their work.” He looked up at the ceiling,
insinuating God. Tess couldn’t tell if he was in earnest or poking fun.

“I guess I do love my
work. Although I don’t always love how much I work,” she said.

He had a way of being
quiet after she spoke that made her unsure of what to do or say next.

 “Do you live in Mill
Basin?” Tess said.

“I’ve come to visit for a
while.” Then, as if it would shed some light on his visit, in a lower voice, “I’m
writing a book.”

The end of the hall led
to another hall with candelabra on the walls, illuminating the paintings in
their elaborate gold frames. She paused by the painting of a young, small girl
who held an abundance of roses in her hand. Draped in one of her elbows was a
wooden cross with Christ on it. Across the center bottom of the painting’s
frame there was a gold plaque with an inscription that read:

I have never given to the
good God anything but love. He will return that love. After my death I will let
fall a ceaseless shower of roses upon earth.
—St. Theresa of Lisieux

“She was a very strong
and beautiful soul,” Neal said.

“What did she do?”

“She became small for the
sake of God,” Neal said.

Tess envisioned her
shrinking, like the witch in the
Wizard of Oz
. “She became small?”

“Not physically. Her
becoming small had to do with how she lived her life. She was faithful to the
little things in her daily routine, doing everything for God’s honor and glory.
She lived a peaceful and more or less hidden existence in the Carmelite Order.
She became small so that she could lose herself and devote herself to Christ.”

Neal seemed to inhale the
painting. Tess couldn’t tell if he was deeply religious, or if he was truly
nuts.

Neal pointed to the last
line of the inscription: “Whenever you see a rose on the ground, think of St
Theresa.”        

“My last name is Rose,”
Tess said.

“Well, then you’re a sign
from St. Theresa—a reminder to live small and be faithful to the important
things in your life.”

Tess studied him for a
moment; she’d never come across anyone as over the top as this clown and yet there
was an earnestness about him that touched her. She recognized something of her
mother’s intensity and naivety in Neal that made her feel that he was for real,
that this wasn’t an act for him.

“What's your book about?”
she said.

 “Religion,” Neal said.

“That’s a broad subject,”
Tess said.

“I wouldn’t want to
offend your religious beliefs,” Neal said.

Tess laughed. The idea of
someone offending her religious beliefs, whatever they were, tickled her.

“Try me,” she said.

“My book unites all
religions; it breaks down the barriers humans create in the name of religion.
At least that’s what I hope it does when I finish writing it.”