From Comfortable Distances (4 page)

“Sounds like you have
your work cut out for you,” Tess said. She paused in front a painting of Mary
holding the baby Jesus with a halo around his head. It could have been any
woman holding her son.

“I take it you’re not a
Catholic?” Neal said.

“No,” Tess said. She
turned to face him; his eyes were on the painting. There was something in the
way he took it in, as if he were looking for a clue. “Apparently you are,” Tess
said.

“Yes,” Neal said.

“I was raised
Buddhist—Tibetan Buddhist. The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path and all
that. My mother was from Thailand.”

“That’s interesting.”

“If you buy into it all,
I suppose,” Tess said.

One of the candles in the
hall flickered and for a moment it looked as if it was going to die out until
as if spurred on by a spirit, it burned brighter.

“And you don’t?” Neal
said.

He walked on and she
followed him, until they stood at the end of the corridor where there was a
sign that said:
NO ENTRY, Church Personnel Only.

“When I was a child, it
was hard for me. All that stuff about suffering and being on the path to end
suffering. I wanted to have fun. Suffering seemed like a drag. I rebelled,”
Tess said.

“Were there any turning
points?” Neal said.

Tess hugged her shoulders
and looked around to see where the draft was coming from. Neal walked slowly
beside her and she debated if it were time to go, to say goodnight. She wasn’t
one to share details of her life with a stranger and she still wasn’t sure if
she were talking to a crazy man or a sane one.

“Sometimes as we grow
older things we fought begin to make more sense,” Neal said in a low voice that
made her wonder if he were addressing her or himself.

“I don’t think I’ll ever
be a practicing Buddhist, but yes, now I can appreciate some of the concepts a
bit more,” Tess said.

“I admire you,” he said.

“Admire me? Why?” she
asked, her voice cracking. She felt his eyes on her, but when she turned to
him, he stared straight ahead.

“It’s easy to get
brainwashed as a child, to do as our parents say, but you seem to have had your
own ideas as a child and maintained them. That’s brave.”

“I don’t think it’s
brave. It was just how my mind worked—I questioned everything when I was a
child. If things didn’t make sense to me, I couldn’t just believe them.” She
stopped. “What is that?” she asked pointing to the necklace he wore.

Neal rubbed the
necklace’s centerpiece, which consisted of two squares of woolen cloth
connected with each other by two strings or bands; the front segment rested on
his chest, and she imagined that the other part of it hung down his back.

“It's a scapula,” Neal
said. “It’s supposed to help guide people. When you pray to it, you never say
Amen because the prayer is continuous. It doesn’t have an end.”

“For someone writing a
book that equates religions, you seem to be a pretty devout Catholic,” Tess
said.

“Religion has played a
big role in my life. The book is helping me to make sense of what my truth is,”
Neal said.

He rubbed his scapula and
glanced up at Tess and then down at the floor, as if he were checking to see if
it was still there. There was an innocence to him that she couldn’t place, a
shyness around her, and she wondered if he were gay.

“Are you far along with
your book?”

“I've had a lot of false
starts, but I think that I'm on the right path now. I’ve written a few chapters
in the past week.”

She couldn’t place his
accent: Midwest?

“Well that’s good news.
Hopefully you’ll figure out your truth in no time at all.”

They stood in front of a
painting of a young, bare-chested Jesus holding Mary's hand, pulling her along
a road. The sky in the painting was parting so that Jesus and Mary’s faces
radiated. Tess felt herself growing warm, and then they were moving on again.

“Are you from Brooklyn?”

Neal nodded. “I grew up
in Mill Basin.” They walked down another corridor. “It’s nice to be back in
Brooklyn,” he said.

“That depends on where
you’ve been.”

Neal stopped rubbing and
stared down at his hands, as if Tess had asked him to pull a frog from his
throat.  She envisioned a nasty divorce, his going bankrupt, an illicit affair.
She had learned that it was probably better that people didn’t know one
another’s secret lives.

“I’ve been up north,
Canada.”

“I’ve never made it to
Canada. Sometime you’ll have to tell me about your life there.”

He looked as if he was
about to hyperventilate and she would have said something witty- that Canada
could be his secret - but his hands on his chest made her lose her thought.
Smooth and strong, with fingers that were long and lean with well-kept nail
beds, glossy and pink-white. They were the hands of someone that was precise,
deliberate; they were the hands of someone who didn’t do manual labor.

What was that glow on his
head? Aside from dull lights overhead this end of the corridor, it was dim.
There was no stained glass where they were standing. She saw the way the red and
orange and yellow merged seamlessly from his forehead to the crown of his head.
A rainbow! It was a rainbow. Were you supposed to wish for something when you
saw rainbow? Just as she was about to tell him, the rainbow vanished.

“Are you okay? Is something
wrong?” he asked.

“Oh. No. I'm fine,” Tess
said. A rainbow on a man’s head? She smiled to herself.

“Did you grow up here?”
Neal said.

Tess shook her head. “Woodstock.
Upstate New York.”

“I’ve never been,” Neal
said.

“It's an interesting
little community. Eighteen years of my life there was enough for me. Living in
a small town is a small life,” Tess said.

“Your life is as big as
you make it,” Neal said.

The things he said and
the way he said them, matter-of-factly, made her feel as if his words were riddles
to be solved. Standing beside him, she felt as if she were a different
Tess—nicer, quieter, more receptive. Tess couldn’t remember the last time she
had felt this way in the presence of another person.

“Why are you here,
tonight?” Neal said.

She patted her wavy locks
and brushed the dangling wisps off her face. She felt her jutting collarbones,
and smoothed her black sweater. Her belly protruded—slight and compact, like a
mini sack meant to hold her lipstick or a pack of tissues. After being bone skinny
all of her life, this little bulge comforted her now. Her clasped hands rested
on it.

“I’m not really sure,”
Tess said. “I’d never come in here before tonight.”

Neal rubbed the scapula
between his hands, as if a genie would come out of it.

“Sometimes the things we
do are driven by a higher power.”

Tess was not going to
entertain his holy thoughts. No, she had limits.

“Why are you here
tonight?” she said.

“I used to go to this
church,” Neal said. “I went to elementary school and junior high school here.”
Neal looked around. “They’ve redone it quite a bit. It’s beautiful now.”

The narrow halls, the
glistening tiling, the high ceilings with etchings on them. The light was just
right—enough to seduce without overpowering the eyes.

“Yes. It’s quite lovely,”
she said.

The chiming church bells
startled Tess. They listened to the bells in silence as she followed him
outside.

The night air was dry and
crisp, the temperature had dropped. Spring. Tess shivered. Under the vast sky,
she felt small.

“Do you like your life?”
Neal said when the church bells grew silent.

Tess laughed. “That’s
quite a question to ask a stranger.”

Neal nodded and bowed his
head. There it was, that unexpected shyness.

“I suppose I do,” she
said. “It’s the only life I’ve ever lived.”

He smiled at her, his
eyes focused on hers, intent, full of what seemed to her curiosity, as if she
were some strange creature.

“Would you change
anything?” he asked.

“I wish there were more
hours in the day to get to all the things I’d like to get to,” she said. “But I
guess that everyone feels that way.”

“I've lived a long time
by the rule that you need to find time in your day for solitude, companionship,
food, reading, silence, noise, sleep.”

“Sounds like a 36-hour
day,” Tess said. 

In the moonlight, Neal's
eyes were a deep navy-blue with glimpses of white that made her think of the
ocean from a plane window.

“Look at all the stars,”
Tess said.

“Make a wish,” Neal said.

She couldn't remember the
last time that she had made a wish upon a star. She wished that she could keep
the feeling she felt now—peace, serenity—with her.

She turned to smile at
him and had an instinct to hug him as if she hadn't seen him for a while. He
smiled back at her and she felt as if they were in something together.

“I bid you, adieu, my new
friend. Goodnight and farewell. Don't worry, though, I won't sing you the song.”

“The song?”

“The one the children
sing in
The Sound of Music.
”

Neal shook his head.

“The movie—
The Sound
of Music.”

“I never saw it.”

“You have to. It’s a
beautiful movie,” Tess said.

“And you have to find
time in your days to get to the things you wish to get to.”

“Maybe in another life
time.” She made her way to her car.

“Good night, Tess,” Neal
called to her

“Good night,” Tess said
before she pulled her car door shut.

In her rearview mirror,
she could see Neal mounting his bike and riding away, his jacket flapping in
the cool April breeze, so that he looked as if he was about to take flight.

Tess scrolled down the list on her blackberry:

·
             
House
on Mill Avenue—to list? Follow up with Frank Landow/owner

·
             
Call
back the Weinstein’s re potential buyer—offer for $680K

·
             
Review
property taxes for Bergen Avenue corner property

·
             
Follow
up with Kyle on Brooklyn brownstone

·
             
Go
over contracts with Michael for 2 new closes

·
             
Interview
realtor from Podomeyer—what’s he looking for in terms of compensation? Run
background check on him if appropriate.

·
             
Touch
base with Best realtors to see where their deals are at—calculate how many
possible closes there are for the month and update forecast

·
             
Review
March’s numbers with the accountant; go over April’s numbers to date

How was it that so many
things to do accumulated each day? Hadn’t she just cleared off her to do list
last night before she left the office? It was only 7:00 am and already she felt
behind. She pulled out a wad of post it’s from her pocket book. Powder blue was
her shopping lists: soy milk, Tetley green tea bags, Stella Doro breakfast
treats, Dove soap. Orange was urgent—people she had to call back, deals
pending: call the Weinstein’s. Yellow were annoying tasks she hadn’t gotten to:
call the gardener to discuss last month’s bill (he had not planted the pansies
that he had billed her for and her evergreen trees looked like they were
wilting); pick up her dry cleaning.

Her cell phone was
ringing—an unknown number—and she hit ignore, sending it to voicemail.
Wednesday, hump day. She didn’t always understand why she had so many tasks to
do; she was the CEO, didn’t that count for anything? Wasn’t she supposed to
have her staff taking care of this and that for her? She was sure, though, that
the reason she was taking care of it all was because she chose to. She couldn’t
remember ever asking for help from her staff and not getting it. She was
looking for her favorite pen in her bag when she came upon the yoga schedule
that she had stuffed into her bag the other night. Her instinct was to toss it
away, and then she paused. Thinking about how light and free she had felt after
class, she studied the schedule—she couldn’t make the Wednesday or Thursday
night classes as she had houses to show tonight and tomorrow night. On Friday
there was an all-levels class at 4:30 pm and an all levels wind-down class at
6:30 pm. She could make the later one for sure. She pulled up her calendar on
her blackberry and booked herself from 5:00 pm on for Friday, inserting a
reminder to go off at 6:00 am Friday morning to put yoga clothes in her car.
Hmm. She’d try to get to the studio early to buy a yoga mat there—she was sure
she saw some for sale over in the corner; she couldn’t deal with smelling the
rental mat sweaty-feet smell again.

Michael stood in her
doorway. When their eyes met, he knocked, and she tossed the yoga schedule on
the floor.

“You dropped something,”
he said.

She swiveled her chair
closer to her desk to keep the schedule from his view. “It’s nothing,” she
said. “Is that your new technique? Wait until I see you and then knock?”

“You seemed to be busy
communicating with yourself and studying whatever it was that fell on the
floor. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“What’s up, Michael?”

“
Waz up Michael
.
Is that your home girl rap?”

“Don’t you have work to
do?”

“Just wanted to know when
you wanted to go over the contracts.”

“Is it complicated stuff?”
Tess asked.

“Complicated? No, I mean,
nothing too unusual.”

“Can we do it later? I
need to make some calls first.”

“Did you call your
gardener yet?” Michael asked.

Tess smiled. Michael had
dealt with the gardener when they lived together; that was one of his tasks. “No,
but I will.”

“The offer still stands;
I’m glad to call him on your behalf.”

“I can handle it just
fine, Michael, but thanks.”

“Call me when you’re
ready to go through the contracts.”

“Hey, do you think we
need another realtor?” Tess asked.

“It depends if you’re
talking about a producer or a newbie.”

“Not a newbie; he seems
to have some years in the industry. He had a blow out with Podomeyer, so he’s
looking to make a switch.”

“Worth talking to him,
but you know how those Podomeyer folks are. To use your words, ‘pushy
scheisters.’ I’d check on his licenses right away, too. Remember last time?
Turned out the guy you spoke to about a job didn’t even have a valid license.”

Tess laughed. “Pushy
scheisters. I came up with that? Not bad. I’ll give him a call at the least and
see what he’s about.”

“Anything else?” Michael
said.

“A cup of coffee would be
nice.”

“Sure would; I’d like
mine with milk and sugar,” Michael said.

“You’re always the
accommodator.”

“I took a look at the
house on Mill Avenue,” Michael said.

“What do you think?” she
asked.

“It needs work. I guess
it could sell as a starter home. Couldn’t see you getting more than $150K for
it.”

“They want to sell it for
$300K. They paid $95K for it about 10 years back,” Tess said.

“Yeah and since they let
it go and didn’t update it, it’s not worth much more than that. Knowing you,
you could push it for $200K, but I can’t see it going for more than that,”
Michael said.

“I’m not sure if it’s
worth the time and energy of an exclusive sell if I don’t know if I can push
it. The thing is, though, we don’t have many starter homes in Mill Basin and
you know that wedding time is in full bloom,” Tess said.

“You have a point, but
the folks who get married and want to move into Mill Basin generally have bucks,
and if they don’t, they move to Bergen Beach—all those starter homes there on
69
^th
street.”

“Bottom line: if I move
it for $250K say, I could cut a $50K commission. I’d give it to one of the
junior agents.”           

“Sounds like a plan,”
Michael said.

Tess nodded. “Oh, don’t
let me forget that I need to go over the property taxes with you for the house
on Bergen Avenue.”

Michael nodded. “Right, I
need to pull up that information.”

“Get to it sir; you don’t
have time to dawdle in my doorway.”

“You were talking to me.”

“You’re in my office.”

Her phone was ringing.

“Saved by the bell,”
Michael said and she nodded yes when he motioned to close her door.

“Contesta.”

“Hello, Mother.” Tess
shifted in her seat and took in a deep breath. Tess’s daily phone calls with her
mother had begun two years back, when her mother had been diagnosed with
Leukemia. Her mother’s ayurvedic doctor had been the first to notice the drop
in her mother’s energy levels and when he hadn’t been able to do anything about
it, he had sent her to a Western doctor—he had been the one to diagnose and
confirm that her mother had cancer. After a lifetime of dismissing Western
medicine and relying on Eastern remedies, her mother had acquiesced to
chemotherapy and cancer drugs; she had been in remission for six months.

“It’s a glorious day,
Tessy. Spring is in the air. The birds are alive with their songs. It’s the
type of day that you would love.”

There was a quality to
her mother's voice that stilled Tess, told her in the silences of their
conversations that her mother understood Tess's choices, accepted them—that she
always had. The prospect of losing her mother had filled Tess with a need to know
her mother, to be close to her. “Our differences are what enable you to be you
and me to be me. Our love is made up of differences and acceptance,” her mother
had told her one afternoon, and Tess had clung to those words, a lifeline
between them.

“You sound well, Mom.”

“We both woke up today.
We’re alive. What could be better?”

It was hard for Tess to
take her hectic, rushed life seriously when she heard her mother’s voice—so
free, so alive. Her mother’s tone had a way of slowing Tess down, of making
Tess feel silly for struggling so much to get it all in. Everything would get
done. It always did.

“What’s new and exciting
in the world of Woodstock?” Tess asked.

“I took a lovely walk
this morning—so many people outside. It’s always so nice when it thaws out,”
she said.

Tess breathed in deep and
swiveled in her chair so that the world outside was her backdrop: storm clouds
had formed above, tinting the world a hazed gray. The country seemed so far
away to her with its lush spring palette of yellows and greens and its crisp,
bright-blue skies.

“Tell me about you, Tess.
How is your life on this Wednesday?”

Tess’s reflection gazed
back at her in the glass. She adjusted some stray curls behind her ear. As a
child and adolescent, whenever anyone had said that Tess was beautiful in the
company of her mom, her mother had said that she was beautiful on the inside,
too.

“My life is the same as
yesterday. Busy. I’m working hard, Mom.” She had an urge to break down, to cry,
to tell her mother about anything, everything – to be a child.

“You were always a hard
worker.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s
true.”

“Try not to lose your
life in the work,” her mother said.

“Mom—”

“I know, you like to
work, but don’t lose all the other things in your life, Tess. That’s all that I
ask of you. Honor yourself.”

The lights on Tess’s
phone were lighting up, signaling another call coming in, and then another. 
The world would wait. That’s what her mom would say if she were to see the
calls coming in.

“I should get back to
work, Mom.”

“Of course, Tessy. I’ll
be praying for you.”

Tess smiled. “I love you,
Mom.”

“I love you, my daughter.”

Tess didn’t realize her
mother had hung up until the line went dead and the silence resonated in her
ear. It pained her to think that at times, like now, that she rushed her mother
off the phone. How could she be too busy that she didn’t have time to talk to
her? And yet, she had work to do; if she didn’t do it, there was no one else
that would. She picked up the phone to call her mother back and then paused.
No. What else was there to say? She could call her later, or tomorrow. As she
started to go through her emails, what came to her was that there would be a
time, not too far off, she imagined, when she would call her mother and not be
able to reach her—a time when silence would prevail on the other end of the
line.