From Comfortable Distances (30 page)

What the heck? When she recovered
from jutting forward, she held onto the wheel and in her rearview mirror there
was Michael waving at her. He motioned for her to pull alongside him.

“Are you crazy?” she said, their cars
parallel.

“I was just going to ask you the same
question,” he said. He held up his hand: “Wait. I’m coming with you.” Now he
was pulling his car over to the curb and then he was getting out of his car and
walking over to the passenger side of Tess's car.

“You could have beeped, you know,”
Tess said. “You didn't have to rear end me and scare the daylights out of me.”

“I was calling your name out the
window and waving at you—you were in a trance.”

“So you crash into me?” Tess said.

“You want to tell me what's going on?”
Michael said.

“If you have something that you want
to talk to me about, you're going to have to ask me about it,” Tess said.

“What's the story with your new
boyfriend?” Michael said.

“He's not my boyfriend,” Tess said.

Michael laughed. “You kill me, Tess.”

Tess looked in the rear-view mirror
and began to drive. One stop sign, two, three, and then through the
intersection of 66th street. She followed the arc of Whitman Drive. Michael
leaned back in his seat, his head firmly against the headrest, so that it
looked as if he was strapped in and ready for takeoff.

“Neal and I are friends, Michael.”

“He’s living with you now?” Michael
said.

“No, he is not living with me,” Tess
said. She ended up at the Dakota place and 66th street intersection: her house
stared back at her from here from across the street. Buddhi sat on the ledge of
the living room bay window. Both of the crazy neighbors were nowhere in sight.
That struck Tess as unusual: perhaps the cleaning lady neighbor was in the
midst of a big indoor clean session. She made a left turn and drove past the
house and up 66th street.

“You got a cat?” Michael asked.

“Buddhi. He was a stray; I've taken
him in,” Tess said.

“You take in all types now, don’t
you?” Michael said.

Tess stopped short. “Get out of my
car,” she said.

“Not until you tell me what the story
is with this Neal character.”

She was moving again; she made a
right at the corner of 66th and National Drive.

“What do you want to know, Michael?”

“You tell me,” Michael said.

“I told you that he was a monk for
over twenty years,” Tess said.

“You're having an affair with a man
that was a Roman Catholic monk and you think you’re normal?” Michael said.

“I'm friends with him,” Tess said.

“Hah,” Michael said, slamming the
dashboard. She was riding down 65th street now. “Tess Rose, you are a piece of
work.”

Tess stopped the car short again, put
it into park, and turned to Michael.

“What are you doing?” Michael said.

“What am I doing?” Tess said.

“Are you on a mission to erase all
sanity from your life?”

“Here it comes—Michael’s drama,” Tess
said.

“First you decide to become a yoga
teacher in your free time, and now you're caught up in a relationship with some
priest or monk or whatever he is,” Michael said. “And you call me dramatic?”

“Can't I just live my life without
having to answer to anyone?” Tess said. “No one has to
get
my life
except for me. And as for Neal, if he happens to be an ex-monk, so much the
better. At least he doesn’t try to change me or meddle in my life. I don't have
to be something that I'm not when I'm with him.”

“What are you trying to say, Tess?”

“Exactly what I said,” Tess said.

Michael shook his head and stared
straight ahead—his exacerbated look.

“Look,” Tess said. “No one ever knows
what life will bring.

Michael smoothed the dashboard back
and forth now, as if he was trying to erase it.

“You know you'll always be my friend,
Michael.”

He nodded. “We used to be so much
alike,” he said.

“Maybe,” Tess said. “Maybe not. What people
are on the surface and what they’re all about inside are two different things.”

“What's that mean?” Michael said.

“It means that knowing someone is a
complicated thing,” Tess said.

“Are you trying to say that he knows
you and that I never really did?” Michael said.

“Why is it that each time I talk to
you about life you bring up
you and me
? This isn’t about
us
,”
Tess said.

“I told you he was in love with you
when you first started spending time with him,” Michael said.

“There's a lot of different types of
love, Michael.” Tess fell back so that her head hit the seat rest. “You would
like Neal.”

Michael shook his head. “I wish you
could see this all objectively.”

“I wish you could, too!” Tess said.

Tess was driving again, heading back
to Michael's car. When she pulled up alongside it, she stopped and stared
straight ahead. Above, the clouds were forming a mass. It looked as though it
would start storming at any moment.

“The few times I passed your house in
the last week, there was a woman in a navy blue Honda watching your house with
binoculars.

“His mother,” Tess said. “She had
binoculars?”

He nodded.

She smiled at him. “Next thing I know
you’ll be out there joining her with your own binoculars.”

“I’m going to buy myself a pair right
now,” Michael said.

“I’m fine, Michael. Everything is
fine,” she said.

She turned to him and smiled before
she gave him a kiss on the cheek and then he was out of her car, situating
himself in his car and starting it up before he looked over at her. She waved.
The moment she drove away, the cloud broke, rain plummeting down, steam coming
off of her windshield. She opened her window and stuck her hand out and washed
her face with the wetness.

“Good morning,” Tess said. She had
been walking the perimeter of Lindower Park on Strickland Avenue and seen a man
by the swings. On her second time around, she was sure that it was Neal.

“We meet again,” Neal said in his
calm and collected way, as if seeing her in the park at 6:00 am were the most
natural thing.

“Okay if I join you?” she asked.

He nodded, his eyes not leaving hers.
He had a way of looking at her, his eyes intent, his lips not quite smiling but
showing amusement, that made her heart race; she was excited in his presence.

Tess moved to the swing beside him,
and sat down on it, its metal chain pulling tight.

“I haven’t been on these swings in
ages,” Tess said. “Not since Prakash was a little boy.” She pushed off with her
feet and glided through the air, swinging her feet in front of her to gain momentum.
She laughed. “I forgot how fun this was.”  Neal remained still beside her until
she paused.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she
said.

“Nothing could be further than the
truth,” he said. “It’s nice to see you.”

They sat beside one another, swaying
on the swings silently as first light began to illuminate the sky.

“It’s going to be a beautiful day,”
Tess said. She loved the month of June: warm air, sunshine, the promise of
summer ahead.

“Do you still like living here?” Neal
asked.

“For the most part,” she said. “I’m
used to it, I guess.”

“Would you ever leave?” he said.

She shrugged. “I suppose anything is
possible. Since my mom passed I’ve thought once or twice about going back to
Woodstock.”

“I thought coming back to Brooklyn
would be a big change for me,” Neal said.

“And – is it?”

“Sometimes it feels as if I’ve never
left, and other times it feels as if I’ve arrived on Mars.”

 “There’s no place like Mill Basin,”
she said.

“It certainly has its charm,” he
said.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it charm,”
Tess said. “Insanity is more like it. Where else could you get away with
parking in the middle of the road to run into a store? Or putting up spiked
gates around your house?”

“I’ve thought about you,” Neal said. “A
lot.”

Her initial reaction was to say
what
did you think?
But she didn’t.

“Our lives, Neal. They’re different.
You and I are different.”

“If you mean because I was in a
monastery all these years, sure, yes, they’re different. I believe that at the
core, though, people are the same. We both have to get through Mondays and
Wednesdays and all the other days.” 

 “You have different obligations.”

“We all have our obligations in life.
You own a business—”

“Neal, I haven’t been a nun all of
these years.”

“But if you were, you could change
your vocation just the way you could shut down your business and open up
another one.”

“Professions and vocations are two
different things. Best Reality wasn’t my calling. It’s something that I fell
into and enjoy. Being a monk is a calling. I assume it wasn’t something you
chose lightly.”

“People change, Tess. What I chose at
23 years old is not what I would choose at 45. I left the monastery for a
reason.”

“Neal, married 40-something men have
mid-life crises every day of the year and buy sports cars or dye their hair or
get a girlfriend.”

Neal laughed. “You’re equating my
leaving the monastery to a mid-life crisis?”

“It’s normal to get bored in one’s
life. God knows how many times I have,” she said.

“I may have been a monk, but my brain
is still intact. I know the difference between being bored and choosing a new
path in my life.”

“What is it that you want from me,
Neal?” Her eyes were fixed on him.

He laughed so that she turned her
body to face him on her swing seat, her knee stabilizing her sideways. He
stared down at the ground and shook his head.

 “What do I want,” he said. He shook
his head. “I like you,” he said. “And I think that you like me.”

“Neal—”

“And if you don’t, that’s okay. If
I’ve misread you, that’s okay.”

“It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s
that we’re different.”

“You’ve already told me that.”

“Your mother doesn’t want me near
you,” she said.

Neal focused on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean
to be disrespectful about your mother. I’m just not used to being berated by a
man’s mom at my age.”

“Tess, my mother is delusional; she’s
acting unreasonable and I’m sorry. It has nothing to do with you. She just
wants me to go back to the monastery,” he said. “Anything other than that is
problematic to her.”

“Well, right now, I’m the problem to
her,” Tess said.

“My mother will not bother you again
–I’ll talk to her.”

“You can’t control her, Neal. Plus,
you’re dependent on her right now. She knows that; she’s going to use that
against you.”

“Then I’ll get a job and move out.
This is about me –not my mom. I am not going to let her dictate my life.”

Tess bit her bottom lip and exhaled.

“You think I’m ridiculous,” he said.

“It’s not that I think you’re
ridiculous, Neal. I barely know you. Showing up at my house with your bag, and
your mother on your tail. Most people would think you’re nuts or I’m nuts for
having anything to do with you.”

“I’m harmless – I promise.”    

She swayed back and forth on the
swing.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

Tess stared up into the sky at the
birds congregated on a telephone wire.

“Yes,” Tess said.

“Did you come out walking today
hoping to run into me?”

Tess turned to him, her face pensive,
and then back up to the birds that skittered to the right then left, as if they
were doing a little tight rope dance. She put her feet firmly on the ground to
stop the swaying of her swing. In the distance, the sun was beginning to glare,
cutting through the clouds.

“It’s nice to see you,” she said.

“That wasn’t what I asked,” he said.

“I walked down by the water first.
When you weren’t there, I ended up here,” she said. “And there you were.”

“I came out walking this morning and
came to this specific spot hoping to see you,” Neal said.

“What are you saying? God willed us
to meet here?”

“I’m saying that sometimes things are
exactly as they’re supposed to be even if it doesn’t make complete sense to us.”

“Neal—” she was going to tell him
that they could only be friends, nothing more. She didn’t want anything more.
It was too complicated. 

“Sometimes you just have to trust and
have faith,” he said.

What am I to trust and have faith in?”
she said.

“Life. The universe,” he said.

She couldn’t read his expression – it
was somewhere between smug and smiling. She smiled back.

“That’s what I like to see,” he said.
“Tess smiling.”

She rolled her eyes and he laughed
good-naturedly.

“You like to come off all business
and tough, but I’ve seen the softy in you.”

“When? The time you arrived with your
bags, and I caved and let you stay? Frankly, I felt bad for you and gave you a
break.”

“I think you enjoyed your dinner with
me, though.”

“Didn’t you ever learn not to have
serious talks before 7:00 am?

“Is that a Tess rule?

“There’s a reason businesses
generally don’t open until 9:00 am – nothing makes sense before then.”

“Really?” he said, moving off of his
swing and standing in front her now.

He took her face in his hands and
leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Gently at first and then with more
force. “Nothing makes sense this early?” he asked and she nodded before he
kissed her again, holding her knees steady in his own as she sat on the swing.

“I should go,” she said, her lips
inches from his. “I should get ready for work.”

He kissed her again, his lips
pressing against hers, his hands massaging her neck, so that she felt herself
softening. He pulled away and took her in so that she had an urge to pull him
back to her.

“I don’t want to keep you,” he said.

“No,” she said, unsure of what she
was saying no to.

“Shall we walk?” he said. “I should
be going, too.”

“Yes,” she said. He held out his hand
to help her off of the swing. As they moved forward, she wiped the corners of
her lips with her pointer finger and thumb and traced her lips with her finger,
dropping her hand when Neal turned to her and gave her one of the mischievous
little smiles that she was beginning to enjoy. It was a smile that made her
feel as if they were in something together and she smiled back at him, her eyes
on the road ahead.