From Comfortable Distances (32 page)

“I think bald men can be
attractive,” Tess said, and a balding man behind her began to touch his hair
line so that she bit her lip and Dale clutched her arm, smirking.

They paid and made their
way to the table one by one.

“Remind me not to come
eat with you guys anymore,” Sara said at the table.

“Any divorce updates?”
Tess said.

“Listening to Luke I came
to the conclusion that I’m attached to the drama of it all. How did you make it
through four divorces, Tess?” Sara said.

“I suppose that while I
was going through each one it was consuming and rough, but looking back, I’d be
lying if I told you I really remembered the details,” Tess said.

“Well, you must be made
of stronger stuff than me. I guess I should feel lucky that we don’t have any
children to get caught up in this mess,” Sara said.

“Relationships are
headaches, if you ask me,” Dale said. “No matter what stage they’re at, there
are always issues.”

“Hello ladies.” It was Luke. The way
their table was squeezed into a corner, they hadn’t seen him coming.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt
anything,” he said.

“Just our normal Saturday
conversation,” Sara said. “Same stuff, different day.”

“Join us,” Kim said. “We'll find a
chair.”

“Oh, no, I'm fine. I wanted to take a
walk around the block before I head back. Get some tea. It’s wonderful outside,”
he said.

“It's raining,” Dale said.

“The rain is a glorious thing,” Luke
said. “It washes away our worries. I didn’t get to ask you if you’d be back up
in Woodstock any time soon,” Luke added, his eyes on Tess.

“I suppose so,” Tess said. “It’s been
pretty hectic.”

“I can imagine, with teacher training
and all,” Luke said. “Well, I’ll be keeping my eye on your mother’s home until
you can make it back up there.”

She tried to imagine herself in her
car, driving up on route 17, past Monticello, past Kingston. It was such a long
drive. So many miles to cover. And then she thought of the landscape in the
fall, her car climbing into the mountains, the evergreens a collage of burnt
red and forest green and mustard. The air cool, clear.

“I’ll be going back to visit before
the New Year,” she said.

“I look forward to seeing you up
there. A few folks were talking about what a shame it is that the house is
closed up. That house was an important sanctuary and refuge for a lot of folks
in the area. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to have us all over for a morning
meditation when you’re there.”

Tess smiled. “Possibly,” she said.
She couldn’t imagine sharing the house with anyone when she was up there.

“Do you think you'll sell it?” Luke
said.

“No, I don't think I'll sell it. Not
now, at least.” She looked around at the girls and cleared her throat. The
question made her feel unhinged.

“I'm sure that if you keep
meditating, your mother will transfuse the answer to you on whether to pass it
on or keep it,” Luke said.

Tess smiled. At other times in her
life she would have nearly vomited from such a comment, but now, it brought her
comfort, as she believed her mother would give her the answer when it was time.

“I suppose so,” Tess said.

“Well,” Luke said, “I'll see you all
back at the yoga shala in a bit.”

“The
yoga shala
,” Sara said
the moment he walked away. “Where does he think we are, in India? And your
mother transfusing the answer to you? Is it just me or is he a bit out there?”

“I actually do think my mother will
tell me what to do,” Tess said.

“I think all the meditation has
gotten to your brain,” Sara said.

“Isn’t the whole point of yoga to
unite with ourselves, become one with our soul, be open minded?” Dale said.

“You belong at the shala with him,”
Sara said.

“Guys, Luke
likes
Tess. Did
you see the way he was looking at her? I think he's a hot number,” Kim said.

Dale laughed. “I think you're sex
deprived.”

“Have a kid and then get back to me
about that one.”

“I’ll be right back,” Dale said.

“Is she going after him?” Sara said.

“She's going to get her cookie fix,”
Kim said.

“Do you
like
the yoga baldy?”
Sara said to Tess.

“No, I don't like him!” Tess said. “I
know him. For decads.”

“No need to get so defensive. You’ve
been single for a while now, right? Why not have a fling?”

“We went from divorce to
relationships suck, to flings in less than 45 minutes,” Kim said.

Dale put down a tray in the middle of
the table filled with three oversized cookies: chocolate chip,
chocolate-chocolate chip, and ginger snap. She had a bag in her hand that she
shook: “Dig in,” she said. “I've got more for later.”

The girls all took pieces of the
cookies, and while they were swallowing them down Tess said, “What’s the
strangest relationship you’ve ever been in?”

“Strange?” Kim said. “As in lesbian?”

“Nowadays lesbians are en vogue,”
Dale said. “All the teen girls I work with are into dating girls.”

“I married a guy twenty years older
than me. That’s as strange as I get,” Kim said.

“I dated a dead head once,” Sara
said. “He and I broke up when he opted to go follow the Dead for a summer.
Spill the beans, Tess. Who’s the strange guy in your life?”

“No one’s in my life,” Tess said. “I
was just curious.”

“Oh come on. Conservative you asking
us about strange relationships? I smell a story there. Someone has a secret,”
said Sara.

“I’m not that conservative,” Tess
said.

“You’re a realtor who rebelled from
your Woodstock roots,” Sara said.

“Who’s now in a yoga teacher training
program,” Dale said. “I highly doubt any of us would be labeled too
conservative. If you ask Kyle, he would say we’re all new-age freaks.”

Tess’s bravery was short lived – she
was definitely not going to let them know she had a crush on an ex-monk. She
couldn’t imagine having to deal with that discussion for the next few months.
No, her private life was just that: private, and better off so.

Sara continued to scrutinize Tess,
her lips a straight line until a strange smile came over her face that made
Tess know that this was not the last time Sara would press her about strange
relationships.

“Okay, you can have your secret,
Tess. That’s fine. Just because you spend most of your free time with us, you
don’t need to tell us details. No problem.”

Dale tapped on her watch and picked
up the last piece of the chocolate, chocolate chip cookie. “It’s time for us to
go back.” She winked at Tess. “Luke awaits,” she added, stuffing her mouth with
cookie.

“Thank you for inviting me to spend 4
^th
of July with you,” Neal said. He stood on her porch beside her, while Tess
locked up her front door.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Tess said. “We’re
just going to the Yacht Club, Neal—everyone in the neighborhood is welcome.”

His hair was growing in a sandy
blonde so that there was a bit of a surfer look to him with his blue eyes and
his tan chinos and white shirt. A surfer or a golfer, but not an ex monk.

“I wouldn’t have known about it if it
wasn’t for you,” Neal said.

She smiled at him. She was excited
that Neal was joining her; she’d been excited about it since she had crossed
his path on her way to work a week back and asked him to join her. In fact she
had been hoping to run into him to ask, but had been rushing off to work with
no time for a walk.

“Was your friend upset that you
aren’t going to her party in the Hamptons?”

“Dale understands,” Tess said. “July
4th traffic can be horrible—I didn't think it was worth it to drive all the way
out to the Hamptons for tonight.”

Neal nodded.  

Her second ex-husband, Brad, had
owned a house out there and for years Tess had spent every summer weekend out
in East Hampton. Aside from endearing memories of the twilights when she and a
young Prakash would take long walks along the beach and skit the waves as they
crawled up the shore, the Hamptons reminded her of her relationship with
Brad—all show, lots of wine, and too many social obligations.

“Well, do we have all we need?” Neal
asked, picking up the basket.

Tess had packed red wine, cheddar and
Jarlsberg cheese chunks, crackers, grapes, strawberries, plastic cups, and
napkins. In the canvas beach bag she carried, she had packed sheets for them to
sit on.

“I think so. We'll only be across the
street. We can always run back and get whatever we've forgotten.”

The Yacht Club was crowded. There
were senior citizens who summered in Brooklyn and spent the winters in Boca
Raton, Florida; there were life-long born and raised Brooklynites who were
likely to die in their forty-year old houses with vinyl upholstery—Tess was
usually the one called in to appraise their homes by their children once they
passed. There was a new wave of younger couples, too. Some recently married,
Brooklyn style, meaning they had graduated high school and gone to work for
their fathers. She thought of those wives as the young-and-restless-clan, as
they tended to dress provocatively, always had freshly made up faces, and loved
to flirt with anyone from the gardener to the UPS deliveryman. Then there were
the couples in their early thirties who were either pregnant or had young
children. Tess liked to think of the thirty-something women as the marmee
bunch: many of them had grown lazy with their looks, gaining weight, forgetting
about make-up, and always rushing to either drop off or pick up their kids from
somewhere. Tess usually saw the marmee husbands in the early mornings as they
waited at the bus stop in front of the Yacht Club for the Manhattan Express. It
was the women of the marmee group that generally discovered the powers of
plastic surgery once they hit the forty year-old mark.

Diversity was one of the things that
Tess had always loved about Mill Basin: the mix of young and old, the divide
between frumpy and slutty, the melting pot of Jewish folks living alongside
Italian and Russian mafia wise-guys. Just when realtors began pegging the
neighborhood as mafia haven or Israel in Brooklyn or Asian delight, a tribe of
new families of all sizes, shapes, and ethnicities would move in, shaking
things up. It had been that way for the last twenty years or so. The common
denominator for Mill Basin newbies was cash, as even a shabby two bedroom went
for $250,000 inland and if it was on the water, $300,000 minimum. When Tess had
first moved in, some three decades ago, every couple that bought a house in the
neighborhood was young and either had children or was about to have children.
Tess couldn't remember celebrating a Fourth of July at the Yacht Club since
back in those days when all the young families gathered, letting their children
run free, although Tess remembered that there was always at least one parent
who kept his or her eye on every child and brought the child back to a parent
if the child got too close to the water’s edge. Prakash had never gone too near
the water—he had been afraid of being pulled out to sea and getting eaten by
sharks. It had made Tess feel guilty that she used to wish that he were bolder
and braver. Something in his quiet, simple ways had reminded Tess of her
mother, and back then, she wanted to shake him up, make him more adventurous.

People were carrying handfuls of
shopping bags out to their boats, while others had already lined up blankets on
the beach. When they had first moved into the neighborhood, no one had boats.
Tess couldn't remember if the docks were even up at that time. There was
certainly no paved parking lot for cars as there was now.

Tess scanned the area. In the last
few years, she had moved in at least three-dozen families, but at a glance, she
didn’t see many folks that she knew. Not that them seeing her with Neal fazed
her too much; they didn’t know her life story the way she knew theirs. That was
one of her golden rules when working with clients—listen well to their details,
but don’t share anything about your life that could allow them to pass
judgment. Most of the old timers of the neighborhood, that is, the busy bodies
who would have just loved to see Tess with a new man, were likely to be at
their Hamptons houses or at their bungalow colony homes upstate. Once everyone’s
children had grown up and left the neighborhood, the old timers had slowly
drifted away from one another, their ties to the neighborhood’s events
disappearing as well.

“Where shall we sit?” Neal asked.

“You choose,” Tess said.

Neal picked a spot adjacent to a
family that had already broken out bottles of soda and bags of potato chips.
Tess and Neal settled down, laying their blanket down first, and then sorting
through the picnic basket and taking out the wine and strawberries.

Neal pulled the cork from the bottle
that Tess had already opened and poured Tess a glass before he poured himself
one.

“What was your mother doing tonight?”
Tess said.

“My mother doesn't like Fourth of
July. She thinks it's too noisy. She stays home.”

“Did your father like it?” Tess said.

Neal stared straight ahead as if he
was watching a movie screen. “I don’t remember,” he said. “But my father was
very compliant. He generally agreed with my mother.”

Tess still couldn't read him when it
came to his father. What she did gather, though, was that if Neal was anything
like his father, and his mother and father had a relationship like the one that
Neal had with his mother, his father had to have been a saint
—or insane—to
stay with her.

The wine was dense and fruity. She
took a few sips and then a few more before she reached for the grapes and ate a
few, putting one in Neal’s mouth. “Mmm,” he said. “So sweet.” She steadied her
glass beside the picnic basket and lied down on the blanket. She liked that her
head felt tingly. Above, the sky was opening up: white gave way to pool blue,
to a deeper, nautical blue. A flock of seagulls flew into view and trailed off,
forming a single file as if they were in a cha-cha line. Neal rested his head
beside her. Slowly, nightfall was overcoming them, as if a dimmer switch was
being turned. The sky turned a deeper shade of navy blue. A lone firework
launched, sending out a snap, crackle, pop as it exploded into a shower of
color and light in the sky.

Tess waved her fingers in the air. “Like
magic,” she said.

Another lone missile shot up into the
sky and Tess watched it explode: a shower of hot pink and royal blue light
scattered. 

The crowd launched into “Oohs and
aahs.” One after another now the fireworks took over the evening sky, their
colors streaking it and mesmerizing Tess as she squinted in the glare of the
falling light.

Neal sat up, sipping wine and eating
a strawberry before he dangled one in front of Tess’s mouth. She took a bite,
and then another, the fireworks falling steadily, and when she reached his
finger she gave it a playful bite. In a moment Tess sat up beside him and he
filled her glass with more wine.

“Remember what happened last time we
drank together,” Tess said.

“Remind me,” Neal said.

“Well,” she said. “We got ourselves
into a little trouble,” she said, scrunching up her face as she said the word
little
, so that he laughed.

“Trouble with whom?”

“Hmm. Your mother,” Tess said, so
that he laughed again.

Nightfall was quickly taking over the
sky, so that the fireworks illuminated it and the people and shapes around them
began to fade out.

“I’m happy to be here with you,” he
said.

“How come?”

“I like your wine. And your
strawberries.”

She laughed.

He traced her eyelashes to her
cheekbones to her lips with his pointer finger, moving around the perimeter in
slow, swooping movements, following each indent and peak.

“Can I ask you something?” she said
and he nodded.

“What do you want from me, Neal?” she
said.

“That question again,” he said. “I
don’t want anything.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said.

He began to brush her cheekbones with
his knuckles.

“I like your company,” he said.

“I can’t read you,” she said and he
laughed a deep belly laugh.

“That’s funny to you,” she said.

“People are not books. We’re not
meant to be read. We’re just living. Sometimes there’s nothing we need to know
other than just being here together.”

She studied him and for a moment he
stopped brushing her face with his knuckles as he took her in.

“What I should have said is that I
don’t understand you,” she said and before the laughter came out of him she
placed her palm over his lips so that he kissed her palm.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing
here, why I’m sitting next to you—”

“You like me,” he said.

“You’re so sure of that,” she said,
and he nodded.

“I’m a chapter in your book,” he said
and this time she laughed.

“Why is that funny to you?”

The whites of his eyes shone in the
darkness and she smoothed his face with the back of her palm. The light show
above sent colors cascading all around them so that they were in darkness and
then in light. There was something so innocent to him, so gentle and she took
it all in through those searching blue eyes of his.

“You still there?” Neal asked, taking
her in and she nodded.

“Don’t go away,” he said and she
smiled.

“I’m here,” she said.

Chapters had beginnings and endings.
She knew that all too well.

“But you’re thinking about something
that’s not here,” he said.

“No,” she said. “What’s it like for
you to be here with me now?”

“Natural,” he said.

He had never been romantic with a
woman like this ever before. Why her? Why now?

“Say what you’re thinking,” he said.

“I’m not thinking anything,” she
said.

Their lips were inches from one
another. From the continued noise from the crowd, she knew that everyone’s eyes
were still on the fireworks.

She kissed his lips intently, her
heart racing as she felt the smoothness of his lips against her own, felt them
taking over her lips and then his inching his body closer to her so that they
pressed against one another. She was not one for a public display of affection
so close to home, but the warm air, the fireworks, the blanket, she didn’t care
about anyone else around her as he kissed her. And then the people around them
were standing up, packing up their things – apparently the firework show was
over and she and Neal separated, Tess smoothing her shirt and wiping the
corners of her lips before she stood up and Neal was on his feet gathering
their things and putting them in the basket. Together they folded up the
blanket and put it back in Tess’s tote bag. They paused on her porch.

“I’ve had a wonderful night,” he
said.

“Me too,” she said. It couldn’t have
been later than 8:30.

“Thank you again for inviting me,” he
said. He made his little salute with his hand, as in so long, goodbye.

“You could come in for a bit,” Tess
said.

“That would be nice,” he said, and
Tess opened the front door.

What was she doing? She would tell
him it was a mistake, and that he should leave, only he was beside her then as
she attempted to unpack the items from the basket, and he was touching her face
again, and then he was kissing her, pulling her body to his.