From Comfortable Distances (56 page)

It had been over two
weeks since Tess had made it to the yoga studio. She was immersed in her own
practice as of late, enjoying her time to experiment with all she had learned
in the early morning hours. The solitude had been a time of growth for her
practice, although the moment she walked into the studio she felt a sense of
relief, a sense of coming home. Now that all of the teacher trainer activities
were over, although she still owed the studio over twenty hours of assisting
classes or teaching her own classes to earn her 500-hour teacher training
certificate, there was a gaiety to being there. After all of the hugs and
kisses and carrying on with the mentors and some of her former teacher training
mates—”I miss you’s” and “How are you’s?” – she and Dale settled down in the
yoga room, their mats close to one another like old times. At the front podium
half a dozen tea candles flickered, casting shadows on the walls, while earthy
music played—a mix of flutes and light drums. The sweet, spicy scent of nag
champa incense filled the air, the aroma circulated throughout the heated room
by the white metal over-sized ceiling fans, which rocked gently, twelve feet
above. Lying with her back on the mat, the skylight directly above her, she
could make out the chalky sky, snowflakes lingering, like miniature parachutes
floating downwards. She lifted her legs to the ceiling, her feet flexed. Supta
dandasana. Her eyes grew heavy and for a moment she debated taking a nap, how
easy it would be to shut out the world and rest in this environment, only then
the teacher, one of her mentors, was in the room, asking everyone to come to a
cross-legged position, and Tess was following along, her legs in lotus, her
hands at her heart center in Namaste, readying her mind and body for the
journey ahead, her inhales and exhales balanced and calming. 

When they moved out of
shoulder stand, sarvangasana into fish pose, matsyasana, and the teacher eased
them slowly onto their backs, one last twist to the right and then left to open
up their thoracic and lumbar spines and release any pressure, everything inside
of Tess let go so that she felt as if she were floating and for a moment she
opened her eyes to look up at the snowflakes, still falling and then with her
eyes closed she imagined herself falling with them, lightly, gently, landing
right there onto her mat. In the moments before she drifted off, she felt
joyful and free. It was as if she were here again, in this classroom, this
sanctuary, for the first time. She felt the old familiar faith she experienced
each time she lost herself in a yoga class, in life. A faith that all that was
would pass, that her thoughts and feelings and the events of her life were all
in flow, constantly shifting, no feeling final, no thought a reality until she
was living it and even then, it would be replaced by new thoughts, new moments,
new realities. It was a play, an ongoing drama that was neither good nor bad,
but just was, like the sky, like the snowflakes, like her breath. Inhales
followed by exhales. The flow of life. Of peace. Of freedom.

“It’s really no problem
for me to drop you off,” Tess said. She felt lighter, as if she had left the
unpleasant parts of herself behind in the yoga class.

“I’m fine. I’m going all
the way uptown and you need to go downtown,” Dale said. She was hailing a cab.

When a cab stopped in
front of them, they hugged, tight and hard, until the cab driver beeped.

“I’m so glad we were able
to spend some time together,” Dale said.

“Me too,” Tess said. “I
needed this—thank you. And I’m very happy for you. I’ll wait to hear from Kyle
about the brownstone.”

“Saturday morning class?”
Dale said and Tess nodded.

“Absolutely.  Brunch at
The Bakery afterwards. Let’s invite the girls to join in.”

“Love you,” Dale said,
and in a moment she was off.

Tess tightened her scarf
around her neck and made her way across Fifth Avenue to Park, heading uptown.
She thought about hailing a cab for the twenty-block haul, but thought better
of it as she caught one green light after another. There was something to being
outside in the cold, taking in the people on the streets all bundled up in
their coats like snow people, the Christmas decorations adorning store windows,
the giant electrical snowflakes strung along the streetlights, connecting the
blocks and avenues. The sidewalk was slick from the snow, which had stopped for
the time being. The sky had grown lighter, hints of blue around the white edges
and Tess spied a sliver of the sun over by the West Side Highway, lingering in
the distance as if debating making an appearance.  She passed pretzel stands
with crowds around them, and stands with men selling roasted chestnuts and
peanuts, warming their hands over the roasting nuts and stuffing the nuts into
little paper bags. It reminded Tess of the days of Prakash’s early birthdays,
when she would hand out similar pouches as party favors to the little boys and
girls who came to Kash’s celebrations.

Time passed. People
changed. The older she grew, the more relief that sentiment gave her. Tess
changed. She hit one green light after another, they rhythm of her feet on the
pavement mesmerizing her so that she felt as if she could keep going forever,
keep passing it all by, taking in the manic energy that was New York City at
Christmas time. 

When she hit her first
red light, she was already at 48
^th
street. The lights of the
Christmas tree glared in the distance and she wove her way through Rockefeller
Center for one last look at the tree. The skating rink was packed now—children,
adults, groups, made their way around the ice, some stumbling while others
glided by. Endless movement. One little girl in a pink bubble jacket moved to
the center of the rink, weaving figure eights, first moving frontwards and then
skating backwards. As she gained speed, she seemed to be at one with the ice,
her movements so precise that they ceased to become movements and instead
became a dance. When she stopped dead center, Tess felt jarred until the little
girl began to spin in place, somewhat recklessly at first, her arms flailing
until she tucked them to her side and grew more and more compact and erect as
she twirled round and round, a torpedo spinning, so that Tess could no longer
make out her features. Sometimes she had moved so quickly in her life that
she’d felt like that little girl spinning, everything a blur, fast, furious and
yet somehow there had been grace and ease to it all. As quickly as the girl had
gained speed, she slowed, moving away from the spot she had launched from and
back into the flow, cutting figure eights in the center of the rink once again.
That was how life worked, Tess thought. We take off haphazardly, but come in
for a gentle landing. A seamless return was possible. 

In a few moments Tess was
standing beside the trunk of the looming Christmas tree, the boughs above her,
like a Grecian crown. She had never been so close, had never realized how
enormous the tree was, how small she was in comparison to it all. Your
little
me
is speaking is what her mother used to say whenever Tess was obstinate
and fought to get her way. “I only hear Tess when she speaks, not
little me
,”
her mother had said and it had made Tess furious. She smiled thinking back to
the countless times she had protested that it was Tess speaking, not
little
me
. She thought back to the postcard of Chagall’s “Me and My Village” that
her mother had given her after introducing that concept, pointing out the
shrunken people in the painting to give Tess a visual of
little me
, to
remind Tess that she was just a small part of the bigger picture that was
always going on at every moment, in each corner of the earth. Tess had used the
postcard as a bookmark for some time. As a young girl, she had thought the
painter was some follower of her mother’s that had given it to her, until years
later, when she had been in a museum and seen other paintings by Chagall, which
made her wonder how her mother had obtained the post card and what it meant to
her. So many memories tucked away that came and went, like hunger, like love,
like life. 

A plump middle aged
police man standing by the tree’s branches smiled at her, his red scarf wound
around his neck so snuggly that his face took on the same hue.

“Everything okay, Miss?”
he said.

Tess nodded and smiled
back, waiting until he turned away before she took off her gloves and touched
the limbs closest to her. It was hard to imagine that the tree surrounding her
had been alive at some point. She inhaled the rich pine scent and plucked a few
needles from a branch before she moved on, inhaling their spiced scent deeply
before she let them fall to the ground.

Her toes tingled and
ached with cold, so that it was becoming difficult for her to move quickly
because of the prickles that she felt with each step. She was eager for the
warmth of her car, to sit down, when she noticed the crowds clustered on the
steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and suddenly she was moving in that direction,
away from the parking lot where her car awaited her. She made her way up the
steps of the church and maneuvered her way through the crowds. Everyone around
her seemed to travel in extended groups of all ages, and she slipped into the
church via a door that was being held open. The muted darkness and the thick
scent of incense enveloped her—there was a somber aspect to the church. It felt
important, heavy. Tourists were clumped together at all corners of the church
lobby, some lighting candles, some taking in the elaborate arches of the dais
in the distance, while others moved along the perimeter of the church,
lingering over the art work adorning the walls as they made their way around.
Tess took in the high ceilings—over 20-feet she imagined, the walls strewn with
crypts and artwork. The center aisle, which led up to the altar, was roped off
with thick, red velvet ropes, which reminded Tess of a theater. The arches up
by the dais were sharp and commanding with their wrought iron tips, like
swords. They reminded her of miniature church steeples and she imagined that
Kash would be able to tell her all the details of the architecture.

Her shoes echoed as she
made her way across the marble floor, pausing at the red velvet rope blocking
her way. It felt old to her touch, the velvet rough. It was hard to imagine
that this setting was authentic, that priests and religious folks passed
through here each day and felt any real connection with God. There was a hollow
aspect to the church, a damp, cool, vacant aspect, so that she felt as if she
was on a movie set.  The setting was so unlike the warmth of St. Bernard’s
church in Mill Basin, so unlike the monastery in New Jersey she had visited,
which was mysterious in its way, but more accessible to her.

She walked the perimeter
of the church interior along with the others, not taking in the scenery so much
as trying to understand what this setting had meant to Neal, trying to imagine
what he had thought about, felt, when he was here that day over 23 years back,
when he had visited this very place the eve before he left for the monastery
for what he had anticipated would be the rest of his life. No one knew at the
beginning what the end would be. Her mother had told her that the only way
through something, the only way to get to the end, if there was such a thing as
an end, was to live through each of the moments. While Tess believed that to be
true intellectually, she couldn’t grasp it on an emotional level. She had tried
to force outcomes based on her agenda and in the end, she had felt betrayed and
disappointed when things didn’t go according to her plan.

When she came to an open
pew, she made her way to the middle of it and sat down. The people in the pew
in front of her were kneeling while others sat silently with prayer books on
their laps. A teenage girl and boy in front of her held hands and whispered in
one another’s ears. Tess smoothed the wood of the pew with her hands and knelt
for a moment on the wooden bench to see what it felt like before she scooted
back up onto the seat. No need to bruise her knees. She closed her eyes with
her hands folded on her lap, her pocketbook between her feet. She followed her
breath in and out, until everything inside of her slowed down and she felt
herself drifting away, the sounds of the church—hushed voices and a few young
children crying and carrying on—still vivid in her ears, but somehow distant, as
if she were underwater. She felt herself drifting in and out, and realized how
tired she was. So tired. It would be so easy to sleep here, to let go and rest
for a bit, but just then the organ started up so that her mind raced with the
deep-pitched dramatic overture. She thought of Neal running to this very church
on that day back in May after she had leaned over and kissed him in Central
Park in broad daylight. She imagined how different it would have been if he had
been wearing his monk robes—she wouldn’t have looked at him let alone touched
him if that had been the case. She doubted she would have even known him, would
have said more than one word to him if he had exposed himself as a monk from
the beginning.

And yet he had known who
and what he was and put himself into that situation. She wondered where he had
sat, where he had constructed his confession letter.  A monk. She wasn’t sure
if she felt the manner of his confession was brave or childish, looking back
now. He had to tell her at some point. There was only so long he could have
endured his secret if he intended to keep seeing her, keep getting to know her,
she supposed. Could he have told her face-to-face? It was a long story. He was
a writer. He felt more comfortable communicating on paper. He had done the best
he could.