A Single Eye (42 page)

Barry stalked back to his truck. His shoes were thick with mud. He paid no attention, but swung himself into the truck, started the engine, and inched forward. The truck's bumper slid over the little green car's low and useless excuse for a bumper.

Knuckles white against the steering wheel, Barry looked ahead at the ten-foot rise on the north side of the narrow road, at the line of trees to the south. He got out of the truck and looked behind him, knowing he would see nothing different, knowing even if he could somehow jack the car up enough to get the truck's bumper under it and front tow it, there was no space big enough to push it off the road. No space ahead, no space behind.

The picture of the Chocolate Hall flashed in his mind, replaced by Luzotta's green rental car. Barry swung himself hard into the truck, turned on the engine, and gunned it. He backed up, floored the gas, and rammed the car again.

Then he took the lid off the top chocolate box, lifted the mold with his 72 percent criollo bars, and slammed it into the mud.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FIVE

I
was about five feet from the door when I heard Leo's voice.

“No! Wait! Don't!”

What I did next came from kindness, not fear. I stepped aside and let Maureen go to him first. Then I leapt up his stairs, and hit the porch as she burst in. The door banged hard. Inside, everything was a flurry of color, the green of the sweater flying right then left around the charcoal brown of the other coat, the green disappearing under the brown as they fell to the floor; the yellow wisps of Maureen's hair rising like steam as she pushed and scrambled and clawed on top and ended up staring down at Amber's golden brown hair and flushed face. And on the other side of the room, gray like a movie not yet brought to life, lay Roshi, mouth open, his eyes wide in anguish.

It was another moment before I spotted the fire poker on the floor by Roshi's futon, its sharp end inches from his face. Before I could ask him if he was okay, Roshi nodded and looked toward Amber, who had started struggling under Maureen.

“Bastard,” she hissed. “You fucking bastard.”

“Let Amber up,” he said.

Maureen didn't move. “Roshi, she would have killed you.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Probably not.” His voice had the same detached and yet wholly concerned tone I had come to expect from him. He might have been eyeing his cocoa cup and saying,
This should taste great
.

He pushed himself up with more vigor than he'd shown in the past two days. But when he looked down at Amber there was no detachment in his gaze. His eyes were creased with concern.

“Maureen?”

With a show of reluctance that didn't quite mask her exhaustion, Maureen eased herself off Amber's wriggling form.

“Take this cushion.” He pointed Amber to a large, almost luxurious zafu in the corner next to the fireplace. It was, I noted, far from the door. To me he said, “Make us tea?” as if he had never fired me from jishahood. “Maureen, you need to sit right there by the fire.”

A surreal few minutes followed, as if we were not here to cast blame for the murder of one woman's brother, one man's student. As if Maureen's life had not been derailed by it. The fire had gone out and even the ash was cold. I brought in wood but ended up creating a blaze mostly from newspaper and twigs, and hung my wet socks in front. The three of them sat in silence, while I poured the pale tea, not quite steeped, into four small glazed handleless cups. The cups, as always, were too hot to hold and the tea steamed between us four like the unanswered questions.

I sat in the only place left, in front of the door, a flesh and bone blockade against escape.

Roshi picked up his cup and sipped, his eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, it was clear he was ready.

“Amber,” he said, “your brother is dead and I am responsible. No words can alter that. If I could undo anything from the moment he thought of coming here to the day he died—”

“The day you murdered him!”

He gave a slow nod, of acknowledgment rather than agreement, and went on.

“What I'm going to tell you will be small comfort. No one dies without his death changing everything and everybody.”

“Don't! Don't you dare start lecturing me!”

Her hands were around her cup and she slammed it hard on the floor, slopping tea over the side. Her whole body was in angry motion, legs jiggling, torso rocking, teeth tapping impatiently, as if it was all she could do not to lunge at him.

“Bear with me just a moment, Amber. You have lived with questions about his death for many years. I want you to have answers.”

She nodded, suspiciously.

He was talking to Amber but he wasn't looking at her. In someone else that apparent rudeness might have been from nerves or habit. But when a roshi speaks to a student on serious matters he gives her his full attention. Amber was getting merely the fringe of it. His gaze was on Maureen. That seemed natural; she was sitting directly across from him, in front of the fire. But he had placed her there.

I shifted a bit toward him so I could watch her reaction, too.

“Amber, Aeneas's death changed everyone here. Even those of us who assumed he went to Japan—”

“What are you saying? You killed him!” Amber was on her knees halfway to him.

Maureen's face went pale. She started to shake and had to clamp her hands together to control them.

“Leo,” she said, so softly I had to lean forward, “you killed Aeneas. I saw you there.”

He sat silently, unmoving, his gaze never shifting from her. An entire minute passed slowly, as if each second were moving individually across our consciousnesses.

Still looking at Maureen, he said, “I am responsible for all that happened here. I should never have accepted Aeneas. That was greed and laziness on my part. We needed the help, and so as questions about him came up I pushed them aside. I wanted to believe he was a serious student, a bit strange, but strange in a way that would prosper here. If I hadn't been dwelling in the past, reliving events that happened before I came here, and planning for the future, I might have seen him more clearly. If I hadn't allowed myself the escape of liquor I might have seen the problems before they came to . . . death.”

“Dammit,” Amber slammed both hands on the floor, “don't beat around the bush. You put your hands on my brother and you threw him off the bridge. Admit it. Just admit it!”

Despite Amber's outburst, he was still looking at Maureen. “It wouldn't have happened if I had been aware. But, Amber, I did not throw him off the bridge.”

It was Maureen who gasped. “But I saw—”

“Saw what?”

“He was running down from the quad. He was wearing your robes, waving a manila envelope and a gin bottle. He was—” She swallowed, and again, and took a deep breath, and even with that it was a moment before she could go on. “You came running after him. I was in the woods beside the bridge. I saw you. I heard you yelling at him. You were calling him ‘a miserable self-centered lout.' You said, ‘How could you do this to me?' I heard you say that.”

Roshi nodded slowly, but this time it was the sign of agreement.

“I accused him of selfish ambition, but I was the ambitious one. That weekend meant everything to me. Fujimoto-roshi and Ogata-roshi were esteemed teachers in my lineage. They didn't come to this country just for the opening of this little country monastery, but they did extend their stay for an extra five days; they came a long way into the woods and they put up with primitive conditions.”

He paused, picked up his tea cup with both hands and with deliberation sipped twice, as if offering a tribute to the two roshis. As he put the cup down, Amber eased back onto the cushion, though she still looked able to spring.

“Their coming to the opening was a great honor for all of us, but particularly for me. Many of you were so new you didn't realize it was an honor.” He was talking to Maureen and now he waited for her to give a sign of agreement, but she stiffened and held her gaze steady. “But I knew. And I knew that their coming signified that I was accepted back into the fold. The long months of work we had done here, the hardships we had endured without complaint—” His wide lips curled in an ironic smile. “I mean, complaint to
them
; it all added up to a monastery under the guidance of a responsible teacher.” He nodded at Maureen and said, “As you could have told me, I was on shaky ground.”

Maureen's only response was to shiver more visibly. Even with her hands planted together in her lap her quivering arms shook the sleeves of the green sweater. Why was he tormenting her? He was playing directly to her, touching her most tender memories. With each shared memory he was beseeching her to trust again, to open to him the wound that hadn't begun to heal.

His smile faded and left a sadness in its place.

“I had been drinking a lot the whole time I was here. You probably never saw me entirely sober until then. Getting myself sober was about the hardest thing I'd ever done, and I was still shaky when the Japanese contingent arrived. But I was sober because I was so intent on everything going perfectly. I fussed at Barry to make food that would have required a hotel kitchen, at you to produce flowers when it was way too early for this climate. I checked and reorganized the seating in the zendo, spent hours making everyone practice the ceremony. I think now it was an alcoholic reaction, that brittle, almost superstitious need for perfection. Whatever, I needed it. And on the day of the opening everything was perfect, the weather, the food, the ceremony, everything, remember?”

A small miserable sound escaped Maureen's mouth. She lowered her gaze, then with obvious force of will made herself look back at him.

“And then, after all that, when the ceremony was over, I sat on the cabin steps, high from the success, still on pins and needles and desperate for a drink.” He inhaled slowly and said in a tone of disgust I hadn't heard since our drive in here in the truck, “I could not have handled things worse. Instead of sitting zazen with my fears and my needs, that whole year I walled them out. I had no business passing myself off as a teacher. You can sit facing the wall for decades and learn nothing if you try hard enough not to. I was a fraud, but a fraud who knew all the right words.”

Amber's angry intake of breath startled him momentarily, then he nodded to her.

“Right. Get on with it. Just when I thought everything had gone perfectly, I heard Aeneas. He was whooping, like kids do playing cowboys and Indians. I
heard
him first and then there he was loping past the zendo in my robes, waving a gin bottle. What did I think? I didn't think. All the tension of planning, all the suffering of drying out, all the anguish of my hopes came together. Something burst inside me. I ran after him, screaming. You remember what I said, Maureen; I don't. I was just in a rage. When I caught up with him by the bridge he turned and gave me that sweet, guileless look of his. You remember that expression, Amber,” he said, looking at her for the first time. “That must be how you see him in your mind.”

She bit her lip. She was shaking as much as Maureen.

“My bubble of rage popped and was gone. Or so I thought. I remember what I said to him then. ‘You'll have to wash that robe and iron it before you give it back to me.' Then I told him to stay there a few minutes and consider how he had insulted the visiting teachers, and me. I would leave him alone for ten minutes to think about what he had done, and then I would go with him to apologize to Ogata-roshi and Fujimoto-roshi. I walked up the road, five minutes up, five minutes back—I timed myself because I knew how literal Aeneas was. When I got back, he wasn't there. I thought he had gone on back to the zendo or the quad. Maybe he was already apologizing.”

He picked up his cup and sipped very slowly, glancing at Maureen between sips.

“Suddenly, I was angrier than ever. I thought: Aeneas is bowing in apology. Maybe he is explaining, maybe not. The Japanese barely know any English—so, same difference. What they see is Leo Garson's best student apologizing for the behavior of his teacher. You know how it is when you're angry: you don't want logic; you just want to be right.”