From Comfortable Distances (36 page)

“Stay the night,” she whispered as
they drifted off to sleep. “I want to wake up next to you.” She felt vulnerable
once she said it, but almost beyond caring if she sounded needy. She was needy
of him right then.

“The cookies,” he said. “I have to
make the cookies,” he whispered, so that they both laughed.

“What if the folks at the nursing
home don’t have any cookies tomorrow?” Tess said.

“They have to have their cookies,
love,” he said and hearing that word,
love
, she felt a rush of
tenderness pass through her.
Love
. No one had ever called her that.

“Okay,” she said, her mind too tired
to think, to make sense anymore.

“Neal?” she called out, sitting up in
bed. She couldn’t tell if she had awoken due to him stirring or if he had left
hours before. 3:15 am. She got up, grabbed her white cotton nightgown from the
drawer beside her bed, slipped it on, and moved to check the front door – it
was locked. He was gone. On her kitchen table he had left her a note on a post
it: “Sleep tight, Tess. Until we meet again.” He had made a smiley face on the
bottom, and the thought of him drawing the smiley face made her smile.

She sat down at the kitchen table,
and rested her head on it, the cool glass soothing against her sleep-warmed
flesh. She laughed. It struck her as funny that her lover – her lover Neal,
because that is who and what he was in her life – had to go home so that his
mother wouldn’t get angry with him. Or maybe it was more than that; maybe he
had to go home because there was a fear in him that spending the night with a
woman would solidify his downfall. Did she think that his waking up next to her
would be a sign that he was going to stay away from the monastery? The
complexities of the mind. She often couldn’t figure out herself, so the
possibility of her figuring out Neal was slim. She could fight him, petition
him to stay the night, but was that what she really wanted? At this point in
her life, did it matter? No. She liked waking up alone, liked making her tea,
sitting with her yoga books. She could remember times in her life when having
to chit chat with her partner in the morning exacerbated her, how she had felt
desperate for some time to herself, some peace and quiet. This is what age and
experience had done to her: made her set in her ways.

She yawned. Who knew what came next?
Perhaps he was only hers to borrow; maybe this time she had with him was
limited. Maybe it was for the best that way. Tess had no way of knowing if he
would wear on her emotions, her heart, as the others had done. Not that she had
wanted it to be so, but she knew that time could transform things in mysterious
ways—that it could lead her to love what she had once despised and to despise
what she had loved. Or maybe it wasn’t time, maybe it was Tess who transformed
things; maybe she blocked others out when a relationship started to keep them
from getting close to her. Maybe she controlled the on/off switch in her mind
and heart and maybe it wasn’t any more mysterious than her trying to protect
herself. From what, though? Life? She couldn’t protect herself any more than
she could will Neal not to return to the monastery. She simply didn’t have the
control to master her universe. It was all larger than Tess, larger than her
thoughts and feelings. Her mother had always tried to instill that in her to no
effect and yet here, now, the night sounds thick outside her window, she felt
herself moving through some understanding, some membrane of thought, of logic,
and she felt herself closer to reaching a truth. Only she was tired. Her eyes
began to close, her eyelashes brushing against the glass table. She wanted to
stay excited about Neal, open to the possibility that maybe he was the one. The
one what though? She knew that no one could change her life or make her life
better. That was all her work, her role in life—she had to be her own savior
and inspiration. She had to take ownership of her life.

She knew all of this, and yet in the
darkness of this night, she wanted Neal to stay – she wanted him not to return
to the monastery. She knew that people didn’t belong to one another, that
everyone was on loan to one another.
I know Mom
, she spoke aloud.
I
know that
. She felt honored to have Neal in her life during this time of
change and tumult for him. For her. She knew that what she had with Neal may
only be temporary, but she still wanted it. All of it.

She moved into her bedroom, into her
closet, got up on the step stool and took down the urn, removing it from its
velvet case and placing it on the closet floor, pushing her black patent
leather pumps out of the way so that she could sit down beside it.

“I know you are trying to rest, Mom,”
she said. “But I needed to be near you. I needed to be in your presence. I
never realized how much I disliked ambiguity.” Tess laughed. “Isn’t this what
I’m struggling with? Ambiguity. I am not calling the shots and I don’t like it.”
She laughed again; a defeated, tired laugh. “I don’t like not being in control,”
she said. “Not one bit,” she whispered.

Tess yawned loud and stretched her
arms broad, before she nestled her way onto her closet floor, curling up in a
ball on her side, the wooden floor cool and smooth against her body, pushing a
shoe here and there out of the way with her feet.

“I miss you, Mom,” she said. “I miss
you.” She wished for a moment that a voice from above would say,
I’m right
here with you
. “Silly, silly me,” she whispered. “Good night, Mom. May we
both only know peace,” she said with a faint apprehension that life wouldn’t be
peaceful for her, that she had entered into a realm that included unrest. “Shhhh,”
she said to herself, “shhh,” quieting her mind, and closing her eyes.

In the distance, Tess saw
Mrs. Clay walking towards her. With each step forward, their intersection
became evident. Tess was on 56th drive, blocks from Neal's home. What in the
world was his mother doing out walking? The last thing Tess needed was an
encounter with Mrs. Clay to rile her up. Besides, Tess had to get home and get
ready for work. She shook her head —no, not going to deal with her today—and
the slight jolt aggravated the ache she had awoken with in her lower back.
Served her right for sleeping on her closet’s wooden floor.

There was no one on the
other side of the street—she could still cross over to avoid a direct
intersection, only she was sure that Mrs. Clay had already seen her. Anyway, if
Mrs. Clay wanted to avoid her, she could just as easily cross to the other
side. Tess was holding her ground—she wasn't going to let Mrs. Clay change her
course. She had been walking by herself for the past few days, or whenever it
was that Neal had taken up running, and she had never seen Mrs. Clay. This was
Tess’s turf. His mother had no business being out on her streets.

Tess bit her bottom lip
and hastened her pace, breezing past towering oaks and gardens filled with
blood red and vibrant pink and yellow
chrysanthemums
. When she whizzed by a
sweet smelling honeysuckle bush, she breathed in deep and long, letting its
sweetness fill her. In a moment, Mrs. Clay would be beside her. She breathed
out one, two, three, four.

“Mrs. Clay,” Tess said.

Mrs. Clay didn't move.

“Beautiful day, isn't it?”
Tess said.

Her eyes were not raging
today and with her hair growing out of its angular bob, she seemed duller,
harmless almost. Tess took a deep breath, as if she were bracing to blow up a
balloon.

“Why is it that you
despise me so?”

Mrs. Clay stared straight
into Tess's eyes so that Tess felt as if she were invisible.

“I'm not an evil woman,
Mrs. Clay. Your ill feelings for me are ungrounded. You don't even know me.”

“I know your type,” Mrs.
Clay said.

“And what type is that?”
Tess said.

“You're out to have a
good time. You don't realize or care that other people can get hurt from your
actions. You don’t realize that it's not always about you, that the world isn't
out to please you,” Mrs. Clay said.

“You've got me pegged as
someone that I'm not,” Tess said.

“You've been married four
times. This is a game for you—conquering a monk, making him fall in love with
you,” Mrs. Clay said.

“I respect your son and
whether or not he was, is, a monk, is not what this is about,” Tess said.

“There are so many single
men out there. I'm sure that you meet men all day while you’re out showing
houses. Why can’t you victimize one of them?” Mrs. Clay said.

Mrs. Clay began to walk
and Tess moved with her, trying to keep up with her.

“I am not looking to meet
any man. I'm fine on my own,” Tess said.

“Then let Neal go,” Mrs.
Clay said.

“You make it sound as if
I'm holding him hostage,” Tess said.

“You are. His heart is
with the monastery, not with you,” Mrs. Clay said.

“He can do as he pleases.
I’ve never asked him for any commitment.”

“Neal talks to me about
the monastery each day. It’s in his heart, always. If you think anything else,
you're kidding yourself. And he's not free to go while he's with you. Neal is
loyal. He won't walk away from anyone that he believes needs him. He'll come to
you until you tell him that it's okay for him to go,” Mrs. Clay said.

Tess didn't know if there
was any truth in this. Perhaps Neal did want to go back? Perhaps his mother was
right and he was with her now because he thought that she needed him.

“Neal is free to do as he
pleases,” Tess said.

Mrs. Clay turned down 64
^th
street and began to head up towards 56
^th
drive. Tess didn’t care for
this block, with its two family homes that reminded her of row houses. So out
of place in Mill Basin, so dated, and yet they sold quickly—grown and married
children who wanted to have their parents live downstairs seemed to swoop them
up and were willing to pay for them.

“How don’t you
understand?” Mrs. Clay asked. “This isn’t about what I want or what you want.
This is about Neal following his path in life. This is about what God wants,
not what we want. It’s about divine destiny, not selfish motivations.” She
stopped abruptly, as they neared the end of the block and were almost at the
intersection of 56
^th
drive, so that Tess almost stumbled into her,
the ache in her back jolting down her legs so that she grimaced. The home they
stood in front of had Halloween decorations – scaredy-cats and pumpkins – on
the windows and Tess wondered if they were still up from last year.

“Are you even listening
to me?” Mrs. Clay said. Her eyes were clouded with tears and for a moment, the
way she moved her hands, almost reaching out to Tess, Tess thought she was
going to start shaking her, so that she backed away an inch. “It's not about
what we want,” Mrs. Clay said again, and Tess nodded. Mrs. Clay could have been
saying the lawn is green at this point and Tess would have been nodding—Tess
had brought her to tears.

“Open your eyes,” Mrs.
Clay said; her face had grown softer. It was the face of a mother pleading for
her child. “He's my son, for Christ's sake. I've lost him for so many years and
believe me when I say that I wish he would stay here with me, but that's not up
to me. When a person has a vocation, it's not about what you want or I want—it's
about life and one’s duties to oneself and to powers that are larger than
oneself. When God asks you to live in his house, you can't decide that you want
to move out—there's no such thing as moving out. God chooses few, but those
that he chooses are not randomly chosen. There is a higher power to the world.
Whether or not you choose to acknowledge that, it's true. Do you understand me?”
Mrs. Clay asked and Tess nodded.

She understood, but
somehow couldn’t believe that she was involved in this drama. She glanced up at
the scaredy-cat arching his back with his bugged out eyes. Why was she involved
with Neal, with this drama? What was she doing?

“Because I’ll keep
talking until you hear me,” Mrs. Clay said.

“I hear you,” Tess said.
Tears dripped down Mrs. Clay’s face. Tess felt as if she was a statue, solid,
still, like she would fall over in one motion if the breeze were to blow a bit
harder.

Tears seeped from Mrs.
Clay’s chin onto her chest and Tess wanted to hug her, to comfort her. They
were both mothers. Tess could offer her that solace, that understanding.
Instead, Tess pulled a tissue from her sweatshirt pocket and handed it to Mrs.
Clay, who used it to dab at the corner pockets of her eyes before she cleared
her throat.

Mrs. Clay began to walk
now, faster, and like a dog clinging to its owner, Tess followed, close beside
her.

“Mrs. Clay,” Tess
started. She didn’t know what she was going to say, what there was to say.

“Lyla,” Mrs. Clay said. “My
name is Lyla.” She cleared her throat again, wiping away the last of her tears.

“Lyla,” Tess said. “I
never meant to cause any problems. I never meant to confuse Neal or to hurt
you. The day you called me into your car—I didn’t deserve that,” Tess said. “You’ve
made me into a monster, but I’m not. I’m just trying to live like you or anyone
else. My goal in life is not to go around hurting people.”

The sun had disappeared
behind the clouds, the sky a faint white. The trees were beginning to change to
hues of deeper forest green and brown. Tess had never noticed how quickly fall
set in, how in a matter of days, the rich, bright green leaves became
crunchier. She wasn’t ready for the summer to end. Fall always made her feel
lonely, as if everyone and everything was going to drift away.

 “If it weren’t for you,
Neal would have returned to the monastery long before his six month discernment
was up. But he likes you. He likes being with you,” Lyla said.

Everything inside of Tess
was shifting—she was a mix of indignation and anger and desperation. She wanted
to make things okay. As a mother herself, she wanted to set things right.

“You don’t know if he
would have returned. Maybe I’m just a distraction, and if it weren’t for me,
there would have been another distraction. You don’t know.”

“Look,” Lyla said, “If
you can be his friend and not be sexual, then I almost don’t mind your
friendship. I actually think you could help him find his way back to the
monastery.”

Tess was still trying to
digest the sex comment. Did Neal tell his mother that they were having sex, or
was this Lyla looking for confirmation? They were crossing the street now. She
surveyed Lyla, her worn out Ked sneakers, her navy polyester pants, her white
short-sleeved polo shirt, her black—no doubt freshly dyed—hair. Like Tess, she
was the mother of a grown man.  A mother who feared losing her son, or had
already lost him, without knowing where or why.

Lyla paused and put out
her arm, like a toll, so that there was no way around her unless Tess broke
through and pushed her arm away.

“I need you to stop the
sex,” Lyla said, her eyes intent on Tess, as if she were picking her out of a
line up. “Do you understand?”

Tess shook her head. “I,
I –” she said.

“You will,” Lyla said,
and then she was moving again, and in a moment or so, Tess began to move again,
too. They walked on alongside one another in silence, up 56
^th
drive,
past Tess’s house, her cleaning lady neighbor pausing in her task of raking
leaves from the driveway when Tess and Lyla approached, following Tess with her
eyes and nodding as they walked by. Tess and Lyla looped around National Drive,
and headed back down 66
^th
street, until they turned onto Barlow
Drive and stopped in front of number 56.

“There’s a reason he’s
running now,” Lyla said.

“He told me that he
always used to run,” Tess said.

“People run when they’re
trying to get away from something,” Lyla said.

You
, is what Tess thought.
He’s trying to get away from
you
.

“What is it that you
think he’s trying to get away from?” Tess asked.

Lyla’s eyes didn’t leave
Tess’s. “I’ll be walking tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m.,” Lyla said. “And I
trust you’ll consider what we’ve discussed.”

Tess stared at her, and
Lyla moved up her driveway, onto her porch, opened up her front door, and then
she was gone, letting the door slam shut gently behind her.