From Comfortable Distances (2 page)

“It’s an incredible
property,” Tess said. “And you couldn’t ask for a better area. Brooklyn Heights
boasts some of the hottest real estate around. Great shopping, cafes,
restaurants. Some pretty good private schools, too, not to mention playgrounds
nearby.”

She guessed Kyle, the
prospective buyer, couldn’t be more than thirty. On his application form, he
had noted that he was a broker for Morgan Stanley, earning close to $500,000 a
year plus a substantial bonus. That had made her laugh.
Substantial.
Normally, his smugness would have turned her off, caused her to dismiss him as
a pretentious young punk, but something about him, perhaps it was his hair—Tess
connected with curly haired people—eased her up. He reminded her of her son,
with his penetrating, black eyes. They had the same quicksand quality as
Prakash’s eyes. The girl he was with, Dale, his fiancé, twirled her long, wavy,
chestnut hair over and over, so that Tess wanted to tie her hands down. The way
she coasted around in her tall, lanky body made Tess pause. There was a
floating quality to her that registered with Tess: this girl was not ready to
settle down and move in.

Tess leaned against the
kitchen counter. Charcoal gray and white granite. Nice touch. The three-floor,
eleven-room brownstone had just the right mix of old and new with its high
ceilings embellished with an intricate woven pattern at the corners and exposed
silver pipes. Charming was how she’d describe it to a more mature couple. She
was dying to take her shoes off, kick back and relax on the ivory leather sofa
that she had positioned adjacent to the fireplace. She had learned that the
best way to make a property that she was showing appealing, was to put some
comfortable couches in the living room and a coffee table that was the perfect
height to put papers on that needed signing. No reason to make the house-seeker
bend down too much. Pain and selling a house didn’t go together. Her colleagues
believed in baking pies in the oven of a property to make it smell “homey” and
inviting. Tess believed in sprinkling the plush ivory rugs she brought in with
baby powder to make the house smell fresh, clean. She’d certainly prefer to
move into a house that appealed to her sense of freedom rather than her
stomach.

Kyle looked up at her and
exhaled, as if he were a balloon losing air.

“When I saw this
property, I thought of you right away,” she said.

“It’s a great place,”
Kyle said. It sounded more like a question to Tess. He passed his hand through
his thick, black curly hair and shook his head as if he were waking himself up.

“But—” Tess said. There
was always a “but.”

“But, well.” He glanced
to his fiancé. When their eyes met, she shrugged her shoulders.

“I think we’re interested
in something smaller. Something more along the lines of a first house,” he
said.

“I see,” Tess said. She
had learned that the best approach when you were dealing with young people who
had a lot of money to spend but were confused how to spend it, was to
intimidate them.

“You’re interested in a
starter home?”

“Exactly,” he said.

Tess cleared her throat
and rolled her eyes, but not before she was sure that Kyle was watching her.

“Got it,” she said.

“Is there something wrong
with that?” Kyle said. He glanced toward his fiancé, but she was staring out
the window.

“No. It’s just that in my
experience starter homes become the only home you ever live in. Most people
think they’ll move after a few years, but then a few years come around and well
let’s face it—no one wants to pack up all their stuff again and move after that
first nightmare experience of an initial move. Not to mention if you have some
kids by then—packing up and moving with kids is a mess.”

He looked away from Tess
and moved his hands through his hair again.

“It’s not that I don’t
love this place—I do. It’s incredible.”

Tess opened her mouth to
say, “With a deposit down, it could be yours,” and then stopped. If there was a
chance that they would split up before the paperwork for the house sale went
through, then what was the point of going in for her killer close?

Dale sat at the window
seat, an octagon shaped wedge built into the dining room wall. The way she
pressed her head against the glass made her look just the right mix of lazy and
elegant—
ennui
was the word that came to Tess. Normally the look would
have annoyed Tess, but there was a lack of self-consciousness to Dale just then
that intrigued her. Dale turned abruptly and glanced at Tess, their eyes
locking for a long, but not uncomfortable instant, before she pulled her hair
up off her neck and twisted it into a bun with one sweep of her hands. Tess
cleared her throat and turned back to Kyle, her tone softer.

“Look, I can show you
starter homes in Brooklyn or Queens, but you’re not going to be this close to
the city, not to mention have an investment that’s most likely going to double
in less than two years’ time. Sure, it’s 2003 and 9/11 is still in the air, but
a few years from now, I predict this real estate is going to go through the
roof again.  Besides, brownstones like this rarely become available. The only
reason this one is on the market is because the woman who lived here had to
relocate to London for business.”

“I can’t imagine not
living in Manhattan,” Dale said. “I don’t know if I can do the Brooklyn thing.”

“Honey, Dale, it’s just a
few minutes outside of Manhattan. We’ve been through this already. For what
we’ll pay to buy an apartment in the city, we can buy a home elsewhere.”

Dale shook her head. “I
just don’t know if I want to live outside of the city, in a suburb. Suburbs
depress me.”

“Brooklyn Heights is just
like Manhattan,” he said.

“Says you,” she said. “To
me, Brooklyn Heights is like Brooklyn Heights. I feel far away from everything.”

“You work in downtown
Manhattan,” Kyle said. “You’re closer to your job living here than you are
living on the Upper East Side.”

“Yes, but I can’t walk to
work from here.”

“Sure you can—you can
walk across the bridge,” Kyle said.

Dale laughed. “Oh, right.
I’ll stroll across the bridge each morning. Sounds great. I’ll be sure to wear
my painter overalls so that my clothes don’t get full of traffic soot.”

“Perhaps we should meet
up again when you’re ready to talk seriously about a house,” Tess said.

“No! I mean, we are ready
to talk seriously now,” said Kyle.

“If you are, then I can’t
imagine having a better place than this to show you that’s close to the city
and this beautiful, not to mention in your price range.”

“I wouldn’t say this is
exactly in our price range,” Kyle said.

“Money,” Tess said, “is a
state of mind.”

“I’ll be sure to tell
that to my bank when I try to withdraw money that I don’t have,” Kyle said.

“How long have you been
living in Manhattan?” Tess said. She was facing Dale.

“Born and raised,” Dale
said. “All 27 years of my life.”

Tess believed that
decisions made before 30 weren’t to be taken seriously and she would have
shared that insight with Dale, only her son had drilled into her that free
advice wasn’t worth much.

“Aside from the location,
all of this space scares me,” Dale said.

Tess glanced at her
watch. Clearly consensus wasn’t one of this couple’s strong points.

“I don’t mean to rush
you, but I need to be on my way,” Tess said. “Why don’t you two discuss what
you’re looking for and get back to me?”

“We’re looking for a
place just like this,” Kyle said.

“You just said that you
wanted a starter house, and the space and location scares your lovely fiancé,”
Tess said.

Keep them real. That was
her way to avoid wasting time.

“I love this place,” Kyle
said.

Dale closed her eyes,
exhaled loud, and shook her head so that her hair scattered all about her
shoulders. “I need a cookie,” she said.

“A cookie?” Tess said.

“She’s got this cookie
thing,” Kyle said. “It’s how she deals.”

“Right,” Tess said. She
stifled a laugh and smiled. A girl who didn’t want a gorgeous home and dealt
with conflict by eating cookies. No, Tess didn’t have time for these two.

“Chances are that I’ll
get some bids on this place before the week is up,” Tess said.

“Dale, what do you say?
We’ve looked at over a dozen places already, baby. This place is incredible.”

This was the first place
she had showed them, so obviously the other realtors had gotten fed up with
them. Perhaps what was needed to help them focus their energy was to change the
subject.

“Where are you two
getting married?” Tess asked.

“To be decided,” he said.
“That’s Dale’s department. My job is to find a place to live. Right?” he said,
his eyes on Dale.

“Sure,” she said.

“Good luck,” Tess said.
And then, in answer to Dale’s off-center gaze. “With your marriage.” She had
meant to say with the planning.

Dale’s eyes were intent
on Tess, as if she were seeing her for the first time. It was a sharp glance,
and Tess recognized something in her eyes, but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly
what.

“Why don’t you two take
some time to think about where your dream house is located and what it looks
like, and get back to me? I’ll be glad to put you in touch with one of my
agents to help you when you know what you’re looking for.”

“Why can’t we work with
you?” Kyle said and Dale was standing behind him now, her eyes on Tess as if
they were both about to charge into her.

“My schedule is tight. My
agents are all good,” she said.

“I want to make a bid,”
Kyle said.

“Kyle!” Dale said. “Do
you even hear me?”

“Anyone would kill to
live here, Dale. I would kill to live here. I want to make a bid,” he said.

Dale got her jacket and
walked towards the door. When her eyes met Tess’s, Tess was able to say what it
was about them now that was familiar: she had the look of being a prisoner
waiting to be rescued.

“I’m going to find myself
a cookie,” Dale said and she was out the door.

Kyle looked up at the
ceiling and closed his eyes.

“She’ll come around,” he
said, as if he were trying to convince himself. “I want this place. If you can
hold off on letting someone else have it, I’ll be able to change her mind.”

The two of them made Tess
tired. She knew all about deceiving herself, but she never realized how
unpleasant it was to witness.

“You’ll hold it for me?
For at least a few days?” he said.

She nodded in return to
Kyle’s desperate glance.

“I’ll do what I can,” she
said.

“If someone else comes
through with an offer, will you contact me?” he said. “I’ll come up with the
down payment, and we can go through the paperwork whenever.”

He held out his hand for
Tess to shake it. It was a slight handshake, the handshake of someone whose
mind could be changed. Through the kitchen window, Tess had a full view of the
small front yard. In the corner, there was one small, frail tree that reminded
her of a fawn. She tried to imagine the young couple in the brownstone, but
couldn’t. When Tess had seen her home in Mill Basin, while she was out showing
it to another couple, she had fallen in love with it, and later that week, she
had bought it, making the down payment without even telling Marc, her first
husband, until the deal was almost complete. Tess believed that when you felt a
connection, you had to act on it. She doubted, though, that Kyle had felt a
connection with the brownstone. He was ready to buy it out of desperation,
perhaps to keep a forward motion to their relationship, or perhaps to keep Dale
tied to him, as if this house would ground them.  As long as he acted out of
desperation, their relationship would never have a chance. Tess was sure that
Dale smelled his fear of losing her, and that it made her want to run away. The
tree swayed in the breeze. It looked as if it was about to snap in two. Tess
would ask the groundkeeper to pull it out tomorrow.

When they walked outside,
Dale was sitting on the brownstone steps, her long legs stretched out before
her.

“You should get splints
to support that tree,” Dale said, still sitting. “Otherwise, it won’t make it.”

Tess nodded. “I suppose I
could do that,” she said.

Dale smiled for the first
time that day, and stood up, linking her arm in Kyle’s. It seemed that outside
of the brownstone, she was a whole different person—sweet almost.

“Goodbye then,” Tess
said, seeing them out the front gate.

“I’ll be in touch,” Kyle
said.

The scent of nag champa
incense—sweet and spicy—filtered through Tess as she made her way up the two
flights of stairs to the yoga studio. Michael had insisted that they beat the
crowd in the lobby waiting for the elevator by taking the stairs. For a moment,
just as she was reaching the top stair, she closed her eyes and thought of her
childhood home. Michael caught her from behind: “steady there, Tess. No
accidents before we make it into the studio.” He pulled the heavy steel door
open and suddenly the scent enveloped them full blast.

“Your shoes!” the girl
behind the counter screeched. “Please! Take them off before you walk in.”

“Oh,” Tess said, turning
to Michael and leaning on him for support. She pulled one black suede Gucci
loafer off and then the other, putting them in her tote bag.

“What are you doing?”
Michael said.

“What does it look like
I’m doing?”

He stuffed his sneakers into
the shoe-holder egg crates.

“Why don’t you put your
shoes next to the rest of them,” he said.

“Are you kidding me?”
Tess said. “These shoes cost $550.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Since
when did you become so paranoid?”

“If I were wearing a pair
of out-of-date sneakers like you, I’d gladly put them on the shoe rack or in
whatever that is—the shoe cubby thing.”

“Excuse me!” the girl
behind the desk whispered rather loudly. She pointed to a circular white plaque
that had the word
talking
on it in red caps with a line through it. “Please
obey the rules; we don’t speak while a class is in session.”

The studio was a mix of
light Danish wood benches and matching built-into-the-wall shelves filled with
precisely folded yoga clothes and books. Across from where the elevator let
out, there was an oversized semi-circle shaped wooden desk covered with sign-in
clipboards. Tess squinted up at the high ceiling. Exposed silver beams and
silver track lighting rods were interspersed with extra small light fixtures.
From their glow, she imagined they had used either hot pink or dim-orange
bulbs, which created a nice echo effect. Spacious is how Tess would have
described it. Sophisticated, airy, and spacious.

The girl behind the
counter smiled sugar sweet at Michael when they approached. That was all he
needed to be hooked: a twenty-something year old flirting with him the minute
he walked in. She looked like a cheerleader to Tess, with her tawny blonde
stick straight hair, and her red bra top that did nothing for her concave
chest, although her flat stomach was, Tess noted, rather appealingly
accentuated by her low wasted skin-tight black leggings that flared out at the
bottoms. Yoga clothes had come a long way from the oversized t-shirts and the
flowing bohemian tops that all the men and women who used to come to do yoga
with her mother wore.

“Have you been here
before?” the girl said.

“No, we haven’t,” Michael
said.

“You’ll have to fill out
a release,” the girl said. She handed Michael a clipboard with a form on it and
pushed one in front of Tess. “Let’s put your name into the system so we can at
least get you paid up,” she said, her eyes on the computer screen she was
tapping information into. “Will you be paying for your wife, too?” she said.

“I’m not his wife, but
yes, he’ll be paying for me, won’t you, Michael?”

“I dragged her here, so I
guess I have to pay,” he said. The girl grimaced at him, as if they were
sharing a secret, and Michael winked at her. Tess’s bullshit detector was
ringing at full volume.

“Will you need to rent
mats?” the girl asked Michael.

“Yes, we both need to
rent mats,” he said, handing her his credit card.

The girl smiled a cheesy
smile at Tess. “Splendid,” she said. “If you could just move to the side to
fill these out so that I can take care of the other people,” the girl said,
motioning to the line that had formed behind them. “I’ll give you your card
back when you return the forms.”

The people on line were
pulling yoga clothes out of their tote bags, unbuttoning their shirts, undoing
their belts. Tess sat down next to Michael on the bench adjacent to the counter
to fill out her forms.
Was she pregnant? Taking any medication? High blood
pressure? How many days a week did she exercise? The regularity of her yoga
practice. Was this her first yoga class? How’d she learn about the studio?
 
Tess tried to concentrate, but everyone around her seemed to be scrambling; the
activity was making her anxious. Some formed a line to use the bathroom, while
others waited on line to get into the dressing rooms. No one talked, which
magnified the sound of their movements.

“Can you believe how many
people are here? You need a valium just to deal with this chaos,” Tess said, a
bit too loudly she supposed, because two of the women on the bathroom line
turned and glared at her.

“Do you think I should be
wearing shorts?” Michael said. The man standing in front of him wore a short
fitted tank top and blank cotton spandex shorts so that nothing about his
tight, firm body was left to the imagination.

“I wouldn’t be seen with
you if you wore those shorts,” Tess said.

“Are you saying that I
don’t have the body for them?”

“I’m saying that I think
private parts are more appealing when you keep them private.”

The girl behind the
counter leaned over from her waist so that she was in full view of them. “I
wasn’t kidding about the talking,” she said. “Please, respect our rules. Are
you finished with the forms?”

Tess cleared her throat. “Bitch,”
she said loud enough for Michael to hear.

“Be nice,” Michael said,
holding out his hand for Tess to hand him her clipboard.

“Next time I let you drag
me somewhere, remind me to get my head examined.”

The girl grunted when
Michael handed her back the clipboards and shook her head at Tess. Tess had an
urge to stick out her tongue at her. The last thing she needed after a
stressful day was to be reprimanded by the yoga studio counter girl.

“The mats are in the back
of the room,” the girl said. “When you’re finished with class, fold them up
just how you found them and put them back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tess said.
Michael pulled her arm down before she was able to salute the girl.

“She’s just doing her
job,” he said close to her ear.

“I suppose she gets paid
extra for being a drill sergeant.”

When the doors of the
yoga room opened into the waiting area, herds of sweaty women and a few men
streamed out; most of them had sopping wet hair.

“Great. Just what I was
hoping for, a sauna. If I wanted to sweat, I could have turned on my oven full
blast and put on my flannel PJ's,” Tess said.

“Will you stop
complaining already?”

“Look who’s talking.”

The girl behind the
counter chimed a bell, and the yogi’s-in-waiting rushed into the yoga room.

“I guess that’s our sign
that it’s safe to enter,” Michael said, nudging her ahead of him. “After you.”

“If I have to.”

Michael pushed her into
the room, jabbing her back with his fist. She picked up a mat at the back of the
room; it smelled to her like feet, and a wave of nausea rushed through her.

“So sanitary,” she said,
handing Michael a mat. It was still streaked with sweat from the last person
who had used it.

The walls and ceiling of
the yoga room looked as if they’d been bleached. Optical white. That’s what
Tess would call it. If she focused on the whiteness, it overcame her, as if she
were staring into a cloud. Tess chose a spot near the wall, in the third row.
Michael set up behind her.

She lay down on her mat while
people settled themselves in around her. The ceilings were high and decorated
with ornate, swirly designs at the four corners of the room. Tess searched for
a way into the swirls, but each bend seemed to begin and end without leading
into the next. The night sky shone through the three large square windows on
the ceiling. Free. Quiet. Safe. That’s how the room made Tess feel, until the
nag champa incense filtered through her, unsettling her. Growing up, the smell
had permeated her house so that it was imbedded on her clothing, her skin.
Whenever she had walked into her classroom at school, the whole class had
started sniffing, reminding her that she was different. Some of the children
teased her and passed her notes that said that she smelt funny, and yet the
smell had always given her comfort, and often, in the middle of the school day,
she had brought her shirtsleeve to her nose and inhaled. In her mind’s eye, she
could see her mother’s devotees in her home in Woodstock practicing yoga each
morning before sunrise. The daily meditation sessions that her mother made her
take part in each day before she went to school. She could see herself walking
to the bus stop in the bright colored t-shirts and ponchos her mother dressed
her in. At lunchtime and after school the other kids called her a Hare Krishna,
chanting Hare Krishna and clapping whenever she was around. The incessant
teasing by her schoolmates, who would whisper within her hearing that she and
her mother were freaks, hadn’t bothered her much. She, too, had thought of her
mother as a freak for a while, wishing with all her heart and soul that she had
some other mother, that she lived in some other home in which she was allowed
to watch TV after school and eat cookies and junk food.

Her mind darted to her
son, Prakash. Unlike her, Prakash had been captivated by her mother. He had
bought into it all early on—yoga, meditation, Buddhism—so that by the time he
went off to college in, some dozen plus years back, his guiding principles were
of a Buddhist nature, although he wasn’t caught up with the need to look the
part. Tess had admired that about him: his ability to be his authentic self
without trying to impose his beliefs on anyone else. Prakash had always seemed
to her as if he were her mother’s child, with his Asian complexion and black
eyes. Tess’s red hair, blue eyes and fair complexion made her feel like an
outsider.

A hint of lavender
waffled through the room, and for a moment she smelled the pillow that she had
slept with as a child, the pillow that her mother had scented each night with
lavender oil before Tess got into bed. To Tess, it was the smell of sweet
dreams. Her shoulders fell until she felt herself folding up into herself.

 “Oh!” Tess jumped,
sitting up.

Michael had jabbed her.  “You
fell asleep,” he mouthed, to which she shook her head no.

The yoga teacher was
talking, instructing the class to find a comfortable seat. Her voice was like a
lily flower to Tess—delicate, distinct, and sweet. They were to begin class
with mediation.

“Close your eyes and
begin to go inward. Follow your inhales and your exhales. Begin to slow
everything down. Forget where you were today, where you need to be later, what
you’ll be doing tomorrow. All that matters is this moment. Listen to your
breath. It will let you see where you are inside. Focus on your inhales and
your exhales.”

By the time the teacher
instructed them to come to the front of their mats, standing tall and at
attention, the four corners of their feet firmly pressed into the earth, their
shoulders down, their neck lose and free on their head, their arms light and
long by their sides, Tess felt herself letting go, easing up. She breathed in
long and hard through her nose, and when she exhaled, it was as if everything
that had been sitting on her chest—things that she hadn’t known were there,
making her feel heavy and suffocated—drifted away from her. With the first
swoop of her hands upward and towards the sky, Tess felt as if she were flying.

As much as Tess tried to
focus on her movements, to modify her poses per the teacher’s directions—tuck
her tailbone, engage her abdomen—her mind continued to dart about. The
movements were so familiar to her, so that with each upward motion of her arms,
she felt as if she were diving into her past, exhaling her face up to see her
mother smiling at her; in downward facing dog she could feel her mother’s
gentle hands easing her shoulders down her back, away from her neck. She heard
her mother’s voice in the teacher’s voice, everything blurring, so that each time
she looked at the girl on the mat in front of her, she realized she was one
step behind what the rest of the class was doing.

“If you feel like you
need a rest,” the teacher was saying, “then by all means take child’s pose.”
After one more sun salute—arms coming around and up towards the sky, then
exhaling and folding down towards the floor, inhaling, her face up, and then
exhaling one foot back and then the other, lowering down towards the floor, her
upper body lifted as though she were at the top of a push up, her knees and
thighs lifted, and then exhaling into downward facing dog—Tess took child’s
pose. She needed to be quiet and small, to let go of everything that was going
on around her, shut down her mind. In a few moments, the rest of the class moved
onto standing poses, while the teacher bent down by Tess and whispered for her
to take rest, shavasana, on her back. The teacher massaged Tess’s neck,
loosening her up; the smell of lavender, on the teacher’s hands, soothing her,
helping her to further let go. There was so much tenderness, so much warmth in
the teacher’s fingers that Tess felt as if she were in mother’s care, safe in
her mother’s yoga room, her mother presiding over her. In this cocoon of the
present meshed with memory, it amazed her how easy it was to stop thinking, to
relax, to rest.