From Comfortable Distances (9 page)

The church bells rang in
the distance.

“In Buddhism, the sound
of the bell is a reminder to come back to your heart. My son, Prakash, loved
that concept growing up. He rang the little bell my mother gave him all the
time. I’d hear him ringing it up in his room. It used to make me feel sad.”

“Why?” Neal said.

Tess shrugged.

“Maybe it made me wonder
why I didn’t fancy Buddhism the way he did. I don’t know.”

“What do you know, Tess?”

“I know that I’m walking
right now while I should probably be at my office.”

“Forgive me if this puts
me in the philosopher realm, but I’d say you’re exactly where you need to be by
essence of the fact that you’re here,” Neal said. “There are no coincidences in
life.”

“Well then that’s
something we agree on: I don’t believe in coincidences either,” Tess said.

“What do you believe in?”
Neal said.

“Action, doing, putting
your money where your mouth is,” Tess said.

Neal cradled the v of his
chin in the web of his thumb and pointer finger, moving his fingers back and
forth as if he were checking if he needed a shave. They were by the Key Food
down at the Avenue U intersection where traffic turned into Mill Basin. Tess
always felt ungrounded at this corner—cars turning, cars speeding past, the
B100 bus stop with her face plastered on the bus stop shelter, people boarding
the bus, people getting off, the bank there on the corner, the supermarket.
Everything at once.

“Does your son live
locally?” Neal asked.

“No. He went to college
on the west coast and made that his home. He’s out in San Francisco. An
architect.”

“Do you miss him?” Neal
said.

He certainly asked a lot
of questions, but Tess didn’t feel as if he was intruding on her life. For all
she knew, he was going to add in information on her and her Buddhist upbringing
to his book.

“I feel closer to him
while he’s away,” she said. “If that makes any sense. He’s off doing his thing
and I’m here doing my thing and I know that whenever I want I can pick up the
phone and call him,” she said.

They crossed the avenue U
intersection and kept walking down 66th street, towards Avenue T. The houses
were smaller here, closer together. It was considered Old Mill Basin. The row
of trees that lined the block right before the curb somehow made the houses
seem protected from the street. Tess had sold two houses on this block in the
past year. Not much money to be made, but they were seamless transactions—the
banks never hesitated to give loans to young families. Children were waiting on
the corner with parents for the school bus. Tess had never been one of those
parents that saw Prakash off to school. The school bus picked him up right on
the corner of her block. She couldn't remember now if Prakash had told her that
he could go alone, or if she told him it was fine for him to walk and wait
alone.

The light turned green at
the corner of Avenue T and they crossed the street.

“Do you have any
children?” Tess said.

“No,” Neal said.

“Why not?” she said, so
that Neal took her in with that expression of his that she was growing familiar
with. It seemed to say, it’s not that I don’t want to tell you my whole life
story, it’s just that it’s too involved. It was an endearing expression, one
that made the mystery of Neal inviting to her when she was near him versus
fearful.

“It just never fit into
my lifestyle, I suppose,” Neal said so that Tess smiled smugly. He’s gay.
Definitely gay. With that body, it all made sense. She would let him keep his
secret until he was ready to share, although she had an urge to tell him, it
was okay by her, that she wasn’t one to judge.

“Children change
everything. Your life becomes this other life once you have kids. I never
envisioned myself having kids. All through growing up and even when I first got
married, I didn’t imagine having kids,” Tess said.

“What changed your mind?”
Neal said.

“Getting pregnant,” Tess
said.

There were in front of
St. Bernard’s Church; it was hectic with children being dropped off for school.
Parents were beginning to congregate and chat as the children pulled open the
heavy church doors and disappeared inside. The church looked different to Tess
in the daytime than it did in the night. Tess shivered at the thought of
spending one’s days inside the church. It reminded her of an institution, until
she studied the stained glass windows, whose colors dazzled and sparkled under
the glare of the sunlight. Squinting, the colors melded into a rainbow. How
odd—it was the second time in one week that she’d seen a rainbow and it hadn't
even rained.

“Do you see it?” she
asked. She was afraid to look away and lose it. “There,” she said, pointing
ahead. “The rainbow.”

“My mother used to tell me
that the other half of the rainbow was beneath the surface. She said that there
was always two arcs to it – one I saw and one I didn’t, and that there was no
pot of gold,” Neal said.

Tess had never heard
that; it took her a moment to process. She couldn’t tell if it was a hopeful
comment or a sullen one. 

“Is your mother still
alive?” Tess asked.

“Yes.” He was silent for
a few moments. “Shall we head back?”

“Sure,” Tess said and
once they made the turnaround, “Is your father alive?”

“No,” Neal said. “My
father passed a few years back—he was sick.”

“I’m sorry,” Tess said.

“Death is a part of life,”
Neal said.

Tess couldn’t figure this
guy out; at moments he was tender and others he sounded robotic, like he was
giving her stock answers from some script in his brain.

 “What about you?” Neal
said.

“I don’t know where my
father is,” Tess said. “I haven’t had any contact with him in decades.”

She felt him looking at
her, but her eyes were transfixed on the waving tree limbs in the distance.

“My father was an
American business man who met my mother while he was in Thailand on business.
He brought her over to the US. I’m sure that they were in love, but the
Buddhist way was more important to my mother than bonds. She was an advocate of
nonattachment.”

“That mustn’t have been
easy for you as a child.”

“I didn’t understand it,”
Tess said. “My father packed up and went back to the Midwest when I was two,
and my mother stayed on in Woodstock. I think that was the beginning of my not
buying into Buddhism. My mother and her groupies were all about freedom and
liberation. They claimed that the road to bliss was all about non attachment,
and yet they were the ones who clung to their beliefs more than anyone I had
ever met.”

“Sometimes we get so
caught up in what we practice that it becomes hard to see the contradictions.”

“I resented my father for
leaving me with her. For not fighting for me. I blamed him.”

“Maybe he thought that
way of life would be best for you.”

“Maybe.”

Above, clouds were moving
in; a cool breeze had crept into the air. The trees’ limbs shimmied as if they
were swaying to a melody.

“I spent most of my
childhood hoping that one day when I woke up or when I came home from school,
my father was going to be there waiting for me. I don’t think that I ever
stopped hoping for that, but then suddenly I was older and I was going away to
college and I wasn’t waiting for him any longer.”

“You’ve never reconnected
with him?”

“No,” Tess said. “I guess
my sense of loss had something to do with my having four husbands.”

“Four?”

Tess smiled and nodded. “No
regrets. They all had their place in my life. Or at least that’s what I like to
tell myself.”

“What about your son’s
father?”

“Marc. My first husband.
He had an affair and left me to be with her. He was my college sweetheart. I
bought the house I live in now while I was married to him.”

The sky looked as if it
were about to burst. They were still a ways from her house, but she didn’t move
any faster.

“Marc had lots of issues,”
Tess said, her eyes still on the sky before she turned sideways to Neal. He
stared straight ahead; his eyelashes were long and thick; luscious was the word
that came to her.

“I think that the fact
that I was more successful than Marc killed him. Back then men were still
supposed to be the breadwinners. And of course he didn’t appreciate the fact
that I bought our house without consulting with him. But what was I supposed to
do? I loved that house—the first time I was out showing it to a couple, I had a
vision: I saw myself living there, and it wasn’t necessarily that I saw myself
living there with him, but I saw very clearly that I was meant to live there.
Does that make me crazy?”

“No,” Neal said. “Especially
since your vision came true. You’re still living in the house.”

“My son thinks I’m
clinging to the past in that house. If it were up to him, I’d be living on the
west coast. He can’t imagine why anyone would want to stay in Brooklyn when
there’s a whole world out there.”

 “Brooklyn isn’t so bad,”
Neal said.  He smiled at Tess. “We’ve got Jamaica Bay, trees, flowers.”

“We’ve got bagels,” she
said and Neal laughed.

“Were you really married
four times?” he asked.

“It’s hard for me to
believe myself. But every relationship was like a whole lifetime unto itself.
Each time one ended, I was so sure it was my last.”

“Do you have a favorite
relationship?”

“Brad. My second husband.”
Tess smiled. There was a joy in remembering phases of your life that you would
never have to repeat. “Brad adopted Prakash. That's who Prakash considers his
father. The two of them were close. I used to wonder if I married Brad for
Prakash’s sake.  Not that that’s an awful thing. Brad and I were the best of
friends and Prakash was nine at the time. It was important for him to have a
father.”

“What happened?”

“Brad made me nervous. I
was always anticipating his falling out of love with me. It made me feel
unhinged. I'd never felt that way with anyone else. I guess that I was tainted
from Marc's leaving me. Brad and I got married at the Bronx Zoo.”

“Were the animals invited?”
Neal said.

“We said our vows by the
chimpanzees. It was Brad’s first marriage. Once I got to know Brad better,
though, I realized that he wanted to get married at the zoo because it would be
another story to tell. Brad was all about stories—he was a nonstop show. I
guess you could say I got tired of watching Brad perform after a while.”

They were almost at her
house. She inhaled the hydrangeas that seeped out through the figure eight cut
outs in the cement fence on the house on her corner.

“What about your son?”

“I think Prakash began to
hate me. Brad was a toy designer. At night, when they played, he would make all
of these weapon contraptions with Brad and try them out on me. After eight
years of marriage I felt tired. So tired. I couldn't believe that you could
feel that tired at 41-years old. I didn’t want to lead the lifestyle that I was
living with Brad—it was as if he was always on stage. Something inside of me
told me to walk away, be alone. Prakash didn't speak to me for a while after
Brad and I split. I thought that Prakash was going to choose to go live with
him, but then he came to me one night. I was in my bedroom, reading, and he
told me that he wouldn’t leave me. Brad lives in Los Angeles now. He and
Prakash still see each other once a month or so.”

“Did you ever ask your
son what made him decide to stay with you?”

Tess shook her head. “I
didn’t. It didn’t seem to matter to me. I just felt relieved that he was going
to stay with me, even though he was to leave for college within a year. I
needed him with me. I believed that if we didn’t reconnect then, we might not
ever.”

Tess thought of her
mother, how once she had left for college, there was no going back, how if she
had been disconnected from her prior to leaving, being away from her mother had
only made her more disconnected. There was a loneliness she still associated
with leaving her or perhaps it was regret.

“Prakash and I managed to
bridge the gap between us. I’m not sure how we did it, but we did. We made
peace.”

“Peace is good,” Neal
said.

Tess nodded. They had
reached her house. The cherry orchid’s petals scattered the side lawn, so that
it looked like snow, and for a moment, Tess had an image of December, her
birthday, and she shivered.

“You’re cold?” Neal
asked.

“No,” Tess said.

Neal looked behind her,
as if an answer to why they stopped was there, waiting.

“This is home for me,”
Tess said.

The cleaning lady
neighbor was outside watering her lawn in tall black rubber boots, old sweat
pants, a matching top, and rubber gloves. In the sunlight, her bright red Afro
shone. Tess nodded to her and she nodded back, stopping her hosing for a
moment. Tess assumed she was wondering if yet another man would be moving into
Tess’s home. She had once asked Tess how many different men had lived in her
house; that was when her husband had still been alive and she hadn’t been a
cleaning freak.