A Single Eye (33 page)
“And Maureen?”
“Maureen.” He spoke her name as if gazing at an alabaster bowl. “Maureen.” The oil lamps drew long shadows down his face, transforming him into a charcoal drawing. “Everything changed when Maureen came. This place was so hardscrabble, so endlessly dirty, cold, slogging. But she was delicate, exquisite, so very beautiful that it transformed everything. In Zen we do the next thing and then the next. But it's hard, particularly for novices here, to escape. They would never have made it through the winter without Maureen. I don't know that I would have.
“There were three men and a woman resident then. They were all in love with her in their ways.”
The wind had stopped momentarily. The silence resounded. Leo's voice hadn't dropped as it should have to end a thought. He had simply stopped speaking.
His unspoken clause hung between us.
I swallowed and said, “And you?”
“And me. I was in love with her, too, in my way.” He took a deep breath. “But I was the teacher, and I had taken vows not to abuse sexuality. Sexual scandals had threatened to destroy Zen in America. Priests turning from guide to predator had done violence after violence to students: the assault itself, the loss of trust, and finally it had denied them the solace of their practice. I looked at Maureen's allure and I knew the dangers.
“And yet, I did not tell her to leave. Instead, I told myself I could handle the situation. I drew the group together and talked about the dangers of abusing sexuality, of unrecognized greed. I listened for hints in private discussions. I kept my eyes open. I watched them all. And I watched myself.
“Mostly I watched Maureen. I knew she had been in a prestigious ballet company, and that they had let her go, and she was devastated. I expected her to be like a whiff of incense, there and gone. I was surprised at how strong she was physically, how hard she worked, at how little she revealed. That reticence, the mystery of it, was part of her allure. She was like a poem, half created from the memories of the reader. I saw that in the eyes of everyone here.
“No matter how carefully I watched, the situation was kindling waiting for a match.”
“Was that what drove you back to drinking?” I asked.
“Not back to. I drank. I suspect everyone had their escape. I pretended that I could drink and still keep watch. Maybe I could.” He gave his head a shake as if annoyed with his introspection. “By the time of the opening, the tension had ground into our cells. It was like the mosquitoes buzzing around us.”
He reached for his cup, lifted it carefully, sipped, and replaced it.
“The opening itself was a huge event for us, and mostly for me. It was my acceptance back into the Zen community. All those who had discussed my disgraceâhad spoken against trusting me with even this remote piece of landâwere coming to acknowledge my success. There were some who would have been pleased to watch me fall on my face. I should have been sitting in meditation, seeing my thoughts, my reactions to all that, but I had been too busy building, worrying, drinking. In my mind the ceremony had to be perfect.”
“Was it?” I asked, unable to stand the tension.
“Until Aeneas took the Buddha. That delicate, porcelain Buddha. He might as well have grabbed Maureen and run off with her under his arm. Every bit of pent-up tension every resident had suppressed exploded. Even after Rob retrieved the Buddha all the residents were out of control. I got them all in this cabin, had them sit, talked, let them talkâI'm sure the guests heard the yelling. And in the end I did the worst thing. I told them it was us against them, and we couldn't let the guests see us fall on our faces like they expected.” He looked me in the eyes, but I didn't know what he was looking for. “I discarded the practice for the appearance of practice. I betrayed my students, to save the opening. You see that, don't you, Darcy?”
I ached to ameliorate, to comfort him, but there could be nothing but the truth between us now. I nodded.
“They knew it then, that they were attending the inaugural blessing of a sham. They went through with it . . . for me. And I thought that was the end of it.
“Afterwards, after the guests had all gone, I went to Maureen's cabin to try to explain. I had been drinking but I wasn't drunk. I was in that in-between stage where you think you're in control of your observations. You act on what you think you see.”
I sat unmoving; the draft fingered its way down my back inside my sweater.
He lifted the cup, held it next to his lips as if he had forgotten its purpose, as if he had shifted into the past, was facing Maureen's cabin door. I reached to take the cup from his hands. He jolted. Then he looked at the cup, but made no reference to his action, and put it down without drinking.
“She opened her door. I shifted to step inside. She didn't move; she was looking at me not just with fear but with dread. She gasped, moved back away from me. She didn't raise her hands, didn't try to fend me off. But I could see in her eyes the horror, the betrayal of every woman who has ever discovered her teacher just wants a piece of ass. I thought I had hidden my want of her; I'd been so careful. But I'd failed; all that time she had been walking in fear of me, of this moment, knowing it would come, knowing I would betray her.” He paused, stared directly at me, and said slowly, “I did not come for sex, but my betrayal that afternoon laid the groundwork for her to make that assumption.”
In the zendo the clappers hit twice, echoed by another set a half tone higher. The two pairs wove back and forth until one took the beat and clapped faster and faster and a bell marked their end. Feet slapped on the wood of the porch, rubber and leather smacked the steps, and then, muted, the macadam. The bathhouse door creaked open, thudded shut. Leo was still sitting in the same position, cross-legged, braced against the wall, gray blankets tucked around his still, gray form.
I shifted, about to ask if he wanted help to lie down. But he wasn't through speaking.
“Maureen and I never spoke of that. I made opportunities over the years, but I had intruded once and I didn't feel I could do that to her again. Not on that. For a long time she avoided me. Not easy out here. But possible. She made sure we weren't alone. Every time I saw her make a sharp turn and take a different path, it reminded me of my betrayal, and my responsibility to deal with the consequences. And so . . . and so we've gone on here, year after year, because neither of us could leave.”
We sat there, Leo and I. It was as if we were not in Leo's safe little cabin. The slap of shoes as people passed did not enter our ears. The clappers did not call to us. We were with Maureen, walking on the shard-strewn ground of betrayal, each with our own contribution to it. Inside my sweater the newspaper cut into my breast. I remembered hearing of Leo's words after Aeneas had taken the Buddha: There's nothing that can't be replaced, except what someone didn't want to tell you to begin with. But he'd been wrong there. Trust can't be replaced.
And yet something didn't fit. Something . . .
Leo coughed. His face was scarlet; his skin clammy, his breath suddenly ragged.
“Take me to the bathhouse. Quick.”
I scooped him up and into a coat, steadied him while he aimed feet into moccasins inadequate for soggy winter weather and steadied him as he moved across the path faster than he had any business doing. I listened to him retch, then I went back inside the men's bathroom.
“Help me brush my teeth,” he said in a thin, raspy voice.
I held him by the sink as he brushed. Watching him struggle with this mundane and messy task would have been the capping intrusion and I looked away, my arm around his ribs, listening to the scratching of the toothbrush.
He moved so slowly on the way back I was almost carrying him. He felt flimsy, as if he had vomited up all but this shell. How could he make it through the night?
From behind us metal rattled.
“The truck,” he said.
The truck! The doctor!
Leaving him on his futon I ran as if I were flying. It was there! The old yellow truck, more mud-laden than ever, pointed its round yellow bumpers, its round snout of a hood right at me. Dusk was passing into night now, but the yellow truck shone like the sun. I slammed into the front of it, pushed off to the left, and pulled open the passenger door.
The truck was empty.
I turned back, but the path was empty. Then I heard the men's voices behind the truck. I leapt forward, ready to grab the doctor by the arm.
Justin was propped against the rear bumper. His new winter jacket was spackled with mud, his hair was wet and stuck to his forehead, and even in the dark I could see his hand trembling. The man beside him was Barry.
“Where'sâ”
“He never made it to town, Darcy. The truck gave out. He tried to fix itâ”
“Right tools; didn't have,” Justin forced out.
“He did well to hike back here on that muddy puddle of a road and get me. We were lucky the truck gave out near the path; at least I could get back there and check under the hood before dark. Justin did the best he could,” he said, slapping the boy's shoulder. “It's an old truck; tricky. There was no way Justin could know the engine well enough. I had a devil of a time getting it back in shape.”
Never made it to town. No doctor
. I stumbled to the edge of the parking lot and for a moment thought I would throw up, too. But even that didn't happen. Finally I walked back to the truck and asked Barry the most ordinary question I could think of.
“Is there dinner to heat up for Justin?”
Barry nodded and the two headed up toward the kitchen. Barry hadn't said if I had asked him to check the engine this morning, instead of sending Justin out without telling him, the doctor would be here.
I walked back to the cabin where Leo was sleeping now and built a huge fire, not that it made any difference. He woke up only once to growl at me to go sit in the zendo. I went for the last period when we sit facing into the circle. Normally in sesshin that is my favorite period of the day, when, after a long, hard day alone facing the wall, facing the thoughts I don't want to see, feeling the fears I'm afraid to touch, all of us have turned and look toward the center of the zendo, toward the whole community, each person sitting still, calm in appearance, with an apparent serenity that wasn't there in the morning. Physical pain is manageable because the end is in sight. The lights are soft for the last period; the small flames of the candle and the oil lamps bring a coziness to the altar. The incense has burned all day and, by the end, whiffs no longer startle me; it has spread to a gentle spice that fills the air between us. When the final bell rings we bow to the altar and to each other and find ourselves holding those bows an instant longer, as if our fingers were touching across the room.
Tonight it all seemed a mockery.
When the alarm woke me at 4:10
A.M.
after another night of prodding dreams I understood what had niggled at me about Maureen's years here. Leo had said neither of them could leave. Him, I understood; this was his place, and he had to prove himself here. He had to provide a place for her in order to overcome his betrayal. But Maureen was the victim; why had she stayed year after year? Depression, inertia? It wasn't enough. Leo's story made no sense for her. Either he was seeing through his own eyes, or he wasn't telling me everything.