From Comfortable Distances (8 page)

Tess smiled. Her mother
was trying not to be overly eager, but it was clear in her voice that she was,
as if Tess told her that she was going to be moving back to Woodstock.

“I did enjoy them, Mom.
You see, everyone comes around, right? Maybe there’s hope for me yet.”

 “You were a wonderful
yogi as a child, Tess. So peaceful and so supple; I used to look at you and
wonder where you were inside when you practiced.”

They both paused.

“I’m not worried about
you coming around, Tess. I just want for you to be happy in your life. Yoga is
a wonderful tool. If it helps now, I’m thrilled for you.”

“Yes,” Tess said. She
felt the beginnings of a headache from the sun beating down on her and moved
her sunglasses further up on her nose. “I should let you get back to planting.”

“It’s always nice to hear
your voice. I love you, Tess,” she said.

“I love you, Mom.”

Tess rolled down her
window, the breeze lapping her face, and she wished, then and there, that she
could close her eyes, lose the world if only for a few moments. She felt
depleted and lost and suddenly cold, so that she put the window up and she
thought of calling someone else—her son, Michael—only it seemed too far to go
to reach out to anyone and besides, she knew better than to try to fill the
voids that traveled through her; the fillers only made her feel lonelier in the
end.

Cars passed her on the BQE
and she slowed down, moving into the right lane. She was tired of moving fast,
of trying to get there before everyone else. Where, after all, was she going in
such a hurry?

Tess got off at the first
exit without looking where she was. She needed to stop. To slow the pounding in
her heart. She eased into a parking spot under the train tracks and gripped the
steering wheel, focusing on her breath. A bunch of kids wearing jeans falling
too low on their waists whistled and waved at her Mercedes, screaming “Yo mama,”
so that in a moment her foot was on the gas again. That was life: even when you
needed to stop there were things that made you keep going, leaving you no
choice but to act without always having a minute to think. Where the heck was
she? Maybe Michael was right—maybe she was a total disaster. Maybe her mother’s
way of life was the better path. Maybe she should be at home working in her own
garden, but thinking of her mom, in her home, alone, a desperate energy flowed
through Tess, a loneliness that was familiar and dreaded. A thought washed
through her, a truth being formed, that for as much as she craved her
independence, sought it and carved it out in her life, she was afraid of
spending the rest of her days alone. What had been hardest for Tess growing up
was the feeling of being utterly alone in the world. Her mother had preached
about non-attachment as early on as Tess could remember and once she was old
enough to grasp the concepts of attachment and non-attachment in her early
teens, she had vowed to attach herself to anything and everything that she
could. She didn’t want to live her life feeling as if she was floating and that
everything around her was out of her grasp. She wanted to feel the ground
beneath her feet. She wanted the security of knowing that when she went to
sleep at night, she would awake to a day in which everyone and everything in
her life was intact. It didn’t matter to her back then if what she sought was
impossible—that life didn’t come with guarantees, that one day she would find
herself unhinged and alone. She had wanted what she wanted just the same.

One deep breath followed
by another. That’s what she focused on. She eased back onto the highway, her
foot on the gas, moving steadily and carefully alongside the cars. She waited
for an opening and then inched into the middle lane. That was how life worked:
you waited for an opening and then squeezed your way in. How many emotions she
was capable of in a five-minute span. She laughed at herself and glanced in the
rearview mirror to gauge her options. What she felt for her mother now was
love. A solid, impenetrable love. And the residue of guilt, she supposed, for
having fled. She couldn’t even say what she’d been running away from. The thing
about running away was that once she got started, it was addictive. She got
scared, felt out of her safety zone, she ran. How small a life could become,
how predictable. The running hadn’t gotten her any closer to knowing who she
was or what she was all about. She had struggled to find herself, as if she
were navigating a territory, failing to realize that all along she was the one
creating the map. All the struggling and wishing and wanting and trying so
desperately to differentiate herself from her mother, as if anyone cared. And
after all of it—her fear, her running—what did any of it matter?
What did
any of it matter?
She saw now, as if a banner hung before her, stating it,
that her only job in life was to be Tess, and all these years, she had avoided
it by one means or another. 

His back was to Tess as
she approached him by the water’s edge. Jamaica Bay. She remembered telling a
family once that the house she was taking them to see was on Jamaica Bay and
the young son had said that he didn’t want to move to Jamaica.

It wasn't until she was
up close that she was sure it was Neal.

“I don’t think this
neighborhood is big enough for the two of us,” Tess said.

Neal jumped, turning
around, so that the mass of pigeons he was feeding scattered in a multitude of
directions all at once.

“Oh, my. I'm so sorry.”
She started to laugh. “I didn't see what you were doing,” she said. “I didn't
mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine,” Neal said.
He smiled shyly and opened his palm full of birdseed once again until one of
the birds landed on his fingers and pecked at the food in his palm. Another one
landed while a troop of pigeons looked on, as if they were eager for their
chance to get closer to Neal.

Tess backed away—she
didn’t want any of those birds on her with their germs and diseases, and yet
witnessing their careful movements as they dipped their beaks into his palm and
then watched him as they swallowed, was one of the sweetest things she had ever
seen.

“I was expecting you,”
Neal said.

“You were?”

Neal flicked the rest of
the birdseed away, sending the birds back into flight and unzipped the front
pouch of his navy and yellow anorak, producing a Ziploc bag packed with
cookies.

“Oatmeal raisin and
gingersnap. I hope you like them.”

Tess took the bag from
him, pressing it to her nose. The cinnamon-sugar smell was intoxicating. She
couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, someone had baked her cookies. Her
mother had avoided sugar as if it was poison. A man who baked her cookies! She
imagined him mixing the ingredients, thinking of her as he did, hoping that
they would turn out just right, that he’d see her to give them to her. The more
she thought about it, the more nauseous the kindness of it made her. She didn’t
even know if she liked him. She hoped she wasn’t leading him on. It wasn’t like
she was home baking cookies especially for him.

“That was very sweet of
you, Neal.”

 She pulled a piece off
of one of the cookies and inhaled it before taking a nibble.

“Mmm. Delicious,” she
said before she ate the rest of the cookie. “Incredible. Thank you.
Unfortunately, I'll probably eat them all.”

“There’ll always be more,”
Neal said.

Tess tilted her head and
smiled at him with her best you-poor-fool face.

“You don’t have to bake
me cookies, Neal.”

Neal looked confused for
a moment, as if she had just asked him to count backwards from 100.

“I bake every morning.”

He was just being nice.
Neighborly. He had probably been planning to feed the batch he gave her to the
birds.

“Is that what you do for
a living?”

She could handle that – a
baker. That could explain why he was in Canada –French baking or something of
that nature.

Neal took her in for a
few minutes as if he were debating an answer. She wished that his lips and his
jawbone weren’t so commanding, so masculine. She wondered if he could see
desire in her eyes; she tried to straighten her lips, glanced down at the floor
to compose herself.  How in the world could she be attracted to a man sitting
on the sand feeding pigeons from his palm, wearing cheap tan chinos and a
zippered up yellow and navy anorak?

“No. I’m not a baker.”

“Do you have a career?”
Tess asked.

“I’m on what you could
call a leave of absence right now.”

Tess looked around; they
were all alone, not a soul in sight. She felt a thickness in her throat,
something like fear beginning to well up in her. The way he chose his words.
A
leave of absence
. Michael could be right – parole? She should probably run,
get away quickly, before he knew where she lived, although he already knew she
was with Best Reality and could find her. No, it was probably best for her to
treat this gently. To ease away from this conversation, from him.

“Like I mentioned, I’m
writing a book and I bake for a nursing home on Shore Road. Baking is just
something I like to do,” Neal said. “I’ve become famous for my cookies,” Neal
said.

A pigeon that he was
feeding was moving close to him until it was right there and Neal began to pet
its head. It made Tess smile. Bad people didn’t pet pigeons, did they? She
cleared her throat. She wanted to say, okay, look, what’s your story? Tell me
who you are and what you are doing here.

He looked up towards her
with a still face and those blue eyes—they were eyes that she knew could get
her in trouble, eyes that she wanted to look into, to be up close with. No, now
wasn’t the moment to ask him for his life story. After all, what had she shared
with him of herself? Tess fingered the cookies and put them in her jacket
pocket.

“You feed the birds once,
and they’ll always be expecting you to feed them,” Tess said.

“As long as I can, I
will.”

The sun was just about to
make its way over the horizon. Tess always thought of Humpty Dumpty when the
sun rose. If he could just get up over that wall. The glare was already cutting
the water in two. Tess sighed and stifled it as a yawn. As spring became more
of a presence each day, her winter—full of long hours at the office and nights
cuddled up alone under her blanket, updating her to do list on her blackberry
for the next day—faded like a dream.

Neal began to walk and
she moved alongside him, her shoulders falling, her breath easing. Neal’s soap,
a clean, peppermint aroma, filtered through her. There was an antiseptic quality
to it, yet amidst the sour smell of the bay, it was comforting. If he were a
mass murderer, his moment to make a move had come and gone.

“I never get tired of
looking into the water,” he said. “Every time I look, I see something
different.”

In the water's rippled
mirror, her image was disjointed: a snake like Tess, wiggling from top to
bottom, which made her feel momentarily unbalanced so that she looked away.

“What do you see today?”
Tess said.

“I see that what comes to
shore, leaves the shore.”

There was something about
him that made her smile in spite of herself.  Simplicity; no static.

“How’s your book coming
along?” Tess said.

“Writing is a slow
process. There’s never a shortage of distractions. And yet each day, whether
it’s for 10 minutes, an hour, I become totally engaged in it and lose the
distractions,” Neal said.

“Then I guess I’m always
engaged in my business, because I don’t seem to notice that days come and go
while I’m working. What do you like most about writing?” Tess said.

A pigeon crept up beside
them and then another one landed. The way they made their way closer to Tess
and Neal, carefully, looking around them before they made their next move; they
looked like they were ease dropping and Tess shooed them away with her feet.

“There's a truth that
comes through the writing each day—I may not always like what I discover, but
somehow once I face it on a page, I feel freer. Committing to the writing is
the hardest part—the rest just happens.”

“And what if you don’t
write one day?”

“As far as you would be
able to tell, nothing. But on the inside, I feel as if I’m at a distance from
myself, like my mind is sleeping and my legs are running. I start to
malfunction a bit, I suppose.”

He smiled at Tess and she
smiled back.

“I’ve learned that if I
don’t write, I’ll never get to know what I’m thinking or feeling. My mentor
used to tell me that if you disappear a bit, explore what’s going on inside,
the world will wait. Nothing will be lost or missed. It took me a while to be
comfortable with tucking myself away from all that’s going on.”

“I don’t know if I
believe that the world will wait,” Tess said. “Life is happening all the time.
While I’m out here taking some time for me, all the stuff I have to do piles
up.”

“No one is ever going to
give you permission to slow down and take time for you, Tess—you need to give
yourself permission. Trust me, though, the world
will
wait—it's only
going as fast as you want it to go. You are your speedometer.”

“If I’m my speedometer
than I’ve probably accumulated a lot of speeding tickets.” Tess laughed. “Do
you know that when I was younger, I used to day dream about walking out of my
office one day and not going back,” Tess said.

“Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. I guess
that’s why I never left,” she said.

“What made you want to
walk out?” Neal said.

“Too much to do. I’m
always rushing to get stuff done, and then there’s always more to do. I’m tired
of rushing,” Tess said.

“You’re not rushing now.”

“No, I suppose not.” Tess
focused on the water, the way it drifted from the shore, slowly, steadily, as
if it was in a trance.

“I think that if you
don’t know what you seek in life, you can spend a lot of time moving in place,
or worse yet, moving in the wrong direction,” he said.

“Is that what happened to
you?” Tess said.

The tide flowed onto the
shore, not crashing so much as arriving. The rhythm mesmerized Tess. She
thought of something her mother used to say about grace, how it had to do with
flowing versus force.

“Isn’t that what happens
to us all at some point?” Neal said. He stared straight ahead, his expression
calm, serene. He could have been saying anything with that face.

“Right now, if I granted
you the freedom to do anything that you wanted to do, what would you do?” he
said.

Tess looked into his eyes.
This man didn’t even know her. Why did he care what she wanted to do? His eyes
were so intensely focused on her that she wondered if he were trying to win her
over – or if he just sought conversation.

“I’d be here, where I am.”

Neal smiled.

“Ah,” Tess said. “Right
answer?”

“Only if it was the
truth.”

“Oh, Neal. Truth smuth.
We barely know one another and I’m not known for spilling out my dreams to
strangers. Besides, I’m weary of people who presume that they’ve got it all
figured out,” Tess said.

He smiled and cleared his
throat; she had amused him.

“I don’t presume any such
thing,” Neal said.

“What’s your story then?
You realize that you’re beginning to sound like a philosopher.”

“I’m a simple man trying
to live a simple life,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’ve
encountered in your life, but in my view, life isn’t simple, Neal.”

“People complicate their
lives. I see it as a choice.”

“People have jobs and
families and bills to pay and responsibilities—sick relatives, home
repairs—life is messy. I think that if you asked most people they would rather
not work or worry and prefer to rest on a hammock all day and live
uncomplicated lives. I don’t believe people try to complicate their lives,”
Tess said.

Neal was silent and Tess
wondered if she had gone too far; after all, he was a new acquaintance –he
didn’t know how outspoken she could be. And yet in the silence, she couldn’t
help wonder if she had chosen to complicate her life—between her leaving
Woodstock, her relationships, her career. She wasn’t sure what her life was
now, if it could be measured in terms of simple or complicated. It was more of
a routine: she went to work, kept busy, came home and worked some more and went
to sleep.

“We all have
responsibilities. It’s up to us to do them with a clear mind or to cloud our
minds and create drama around responsibilities. Look at the birds of the air,
Tess. You don’t see them worrying about where to live or their bank accounts.
They just coast about.”

“How do we know they
don’t worry? Tess said. “We can’t read their minds. For all we know, they’re
just as neurotic and screwed up as the rest of us.”

Neal laughed and smiled
at her and led the way from the docks out through the front entrance of the
yacht club and onto 66
^th
street. She wasn’t sure if she were
supposed to head back home, say goodbye, or follow.

“You’re an interesting
woman, Tess,” Neal said.

The alleys of Ohio walk
were filled with old oak and faint yellow leaves. She followed in silence,
everything inside of her easing; he could be playful. She liked that. Her
shoulders, which she hadn’t known had inched up to her neck in attack mode,
loosened. Up close, she could see that stubble was growing in on his head; it
reminded her of a Chia pet. She wondered if perhaps he had been in the hospital,
undergoing surgery—that would explain his leave of absence, why his head was
shaved and now growing in. Only he looked too healthy to be recovering, unless
months had passed.