From Comfortable Distances (62 page)

“I’ll think of you, Tess,”
he said, and then he broke their trance and looked down at his feet. He had on
his running sneakers. Seeing them broke her sorrow for a moment.

“I’ll miss you,” she
said, and he nodded. “You should go.”

“Yes,” he said. “Listen
for me,” he said.

The lump in her throat
was growing. “I’ll listen for you,” she said.

They held one another’s
eyes for another moment and then he was walking away, moving into the airport,
the sliding glass doors parting for him, so that she had a surreal image of him
walking into the monastery, the doors closing behind him, keeping all else out.
Keeping her out.  This was the image, she believed, that would always stay with
her: their paths a wishbone broken in two.

She peaked into the trunk
and saw again the bag with the picture – he had left it for her. Later, she
would study it. Now, she needed to move, to get away. She pulled away from the
curb and back onto the road, following the airport exit signs, the snow falling
furiously, coating the trees alongside the road and in her mind’s eye, she
envisioned the snow transforming Neal’s layman clothes into his monk robe. She
opened her window and stuck her hand out, the flakes damp on her flesh, like
kisses, before they vanished.

She felt as she did the
moment she had been handed her mother’s ashes and realized that she was never
going to be able to pick up the phone to call her ever again. “Silly silly
girl,” she said aloud. “Silly girl.” The snow fell steadily, its whiteness
covering the earth, erasing all that was, creating a new landscape. She was
going to be okay; she was okay. It was all part of the cycle—people came and
went. As messy as life was, as complicated as the journey was, Tess believed
that it was worth it. Perhaps that was what her mother had infused in her or
what she had come to believe on her own. What she sought more than anything at
that moment, was the courage to keep going.

When she turned on the
radio “I never promised you a rose garden,” belted out from the speakers. It
couldn’t be. She waited a moment, as if her mother was going to appear on the
side of the road or in the seat beside Tess. She pressed the station buttons
and on all the other stations, Christmas songs were playing. She went back to
the first station and there it was:

So smile for a while and
let's be jolly:

Love shouldn't be so
melancholy.

Come along and share the
good times while we can.

She smiled at the
impossibility of it all, and opened all of her car windows as she cruised along
the highway, the cool air rushing in, flakes of snow randomly landing and
dissolving on her arm and the car’s interior. She blasted the song and began to
sing along, softly at first and then louder, just as she had done that day
months back, with her mother, on the front lawn of her home in Woodstock.

Along with the sunshine,
there's gotta be a little rain sometime

I beg your pardon, I
never promised you a rose garden.

And finally, never lose
hope. —Rule of Benedict 4:74