From Comfortable Distances (60 page)

She made her way into the
house, stamping her feet on the mat before she sat down on one of the steps to
take off her sneakers and jacket, dust her hair with her hands, air drying it a
bit. The moment she pushed the front door shut, double bolted the Segal lock,
there it was, that impossible restlessness in Tess, a feeling of needing to
scream and cry, of needing to make something happen, only what was there to
make happen? What did she want to happen? She had an urge to go back outside
and pulled the door back open, only there was nothing out there that she wanted
right now. The desperation raging through her began to dissipate. Okay. She was
going to be okay. She was okay. She closed the door again. This passing lowness
was part of life. It was a wave.
I’m okay
, she whispered, leaning her
back against the door for support. She smiled. She was better than okay. It was
her life and there was so much yet ahead of her.

“Tess? You okay?” Neal
called, his eyes on her now as he stood in her kitchen. “I put on some hot
water for tea,” he said. “Hope that’s okay.”

“Sounds great,” she said,
making her way up the stairs. “Can I lend you some dry clothes?” she asked, and
Neal shook his head.

“I’m fine.” He stood by
the stove. “My clothes are still dry,” he said, checking his top with his hand
as if to show her all was dry.

Perhaps he was afraid of
going back; perhaps he feared how the brothers would react to him, if they
would see him as damaged in some way, if he would ever truly be a part of their
brotherhood again.

“It seems to be coming
down harder,” Neal said, his eyes on the window, before he shut off the stove,
the teakettle whistling. In a moment, he was opening her cabinet, taking down
two cups, filling them with water, taking out some tea bags – he held up the
green tea bags and Tess nodded.   

“Shall we sit?” Neal
said, and then he was making his way to the table, placing the teacups down.

Tess smiled at him. It
seemed so normal for him to be here with her.  “It’s nice, the snow,” Tess
said. Outside, the thick, sturdy branches of the cherry orchid had begun to
shelve the snow.

“It slows everything down
a bit,” he said, and Tess nodded.

She should be getting
into the shower for work—the last day the office was open before she was to
close it for a week—but she didn’t.

Neal stirred his tea
first one way and then the other. She closed her eyes to still herself; her
breath was slow and heavy.

“I don’t want you to go,”
she said. “I don’t want to lose you.” She had been thinking the words but
hadn’t intended to speak them aloud. And while she meant the words, she also
felt a sense of relief in knowing that he was leaving. Waiting for Neal to decide
if he was going to return to the monastery had hovered over Tess for months,
like an eagle, wings spread, casting a shadow.

He nodded, his eyes on
his hands on the teacup, as if he were considering her comment—as if staying
was an option.

“I wish it wasn’t all so
complicated,” he said.

“I know that you must go
back, or that you want to, or that you will. I understand that,” Tess said.

“I’ll think of you, Tess.”

“I’ll think of you, Neal.”

He was silent. He looked
tired. Tess wondered if he had been sleeping or if like her, he was restless.

“We each have our paths,”
he said. “Our duties. You’ve reminded me of that.”

Tess nodded, her eyes
fixated on his hands. The veins in them had risen to the surface so that they
looked like the hands of a man about to break free from his skin.

“Do they know that you’re
returning?” Tess said.

“Yes,” he said.

She nodded. “Your mother
must be relieved.”

“Yes,” he said again. He
looked up at Tess and paused before he looked back down at his hands on the
teacup. “She’s grateful to you, Tess.”

The clock ticked and the
wind slashed against the window. The snow seemed to be coming down with a
vengeance now. The first snowstorm of the season.

“Grateful to me?” Tess
said.

“For instigating my
return. For understanding,” Neal said.

“The day I saw you at the
church, I felt sure that you had made up your mind. That you were already
checking out.”

“It’s who I am, Tess.
It’s part of my make up.”

“You have to live your
life as you see fit,” she said.

Neal nodded.

She wished that she could
fast forward from this moment. That Neal was already back at the monastery,
that she was already in Woodstock. Somewhere in the house, she heard her
blackberry buzzing, and she thought of the paperwork she had to work through with
Michael today before she headed out of town. The people in her office now knew
that she would be gone for the month of January and already there was unrest
and Michael was anxious.

“I should get ready for
work,” she said. “Today is going to be my last day at the office for a while.”

“You have your trip to
get ready for, too. When do you leave?”

“Christmas Day,” she
said.

“You’ll be up there for
your birthday,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

The wind whipped harder
against the window, snow flinging against the glass, like pellets. There would
be snowdrifts. The drive to Woodstock would be treacherous if the weather
continued on this way.

“Would you take me to the
airport tomorrow, Tess?”

She swallowed deep. “If
you’d like me to,” she said.

“It would mean everything
to me,” he said.

“And your mother?”

“We’re eating dinner
together tonight,” he said. “I wanted you to be the last person I saw before I
left.”

“I’d like to take you,
Neal,” she said.

He stood up and she rose
with him. His beautiful blue eyes; his now lush sandy-colored hair. It didn’t
make sense to her, but her feelings were real.

He reached out for her
face and cupped her chin in his hands, his index finger tracing her lips and in
a moment her lips were on his, clinging to them, kissing them gently, and he
didn’t pull away. They stood, lips locked, inhaling one another before Tess
sucked his bottom lip in hers, and kissed him passionately, knowing that it was
to be the last kiss with this man. She felt the tears come down her face and
with his fingers, Neal wiped them away, his lips still on hers.

Tess awoke on Christmas
Eve morning sluggish, irritable. 6:30 a.m. and her bedroom was dark as midnight.
She was tired of this winter season before it even set in. She sunk back onto
her pillow. Her dreams had pulled her in, resisting her urge to wake up more
than once and yet when she tried to decipher them, her mind was blank. Her eyes
acclimated to the darkness, so that in a few moments the familiar shapes of her
room came into view: her teak bureau, the oversized rectangular mirror above
it, the picture frames lining the bureau: photographs of Prakash, her mother, a
younger Tess smiling for the camera. The events of her life on display,
although she couldn’t remember the last time she had really looked at those
pictures, thought about what she was feeling in the moments they were snapped.
That was the thing about photos—they were placeholders more than anything, a
dog-eared page in a chapter of life. Her fuchsia walls became visible now and
she smiled.

As predictable as she
often was even to herself, here, now, in the silence of her bedroom, there was
a joy in the fact that she had strayed at times, that she had allowed a
different side of Tess to break through—that her next moves were not always
scripted. Just when she had thought her life was slowing down, that all she had
to discover was before her, she had met Neal. She had become a yoga teacher.
She had decided to take some time away and go up to Woodstock.

The wind outside made
itself known, so that she pulled her blanket up closer to her chin. She didn’t
hear the snow. Soon she would get up and look outside her front window to see
if there had been any accumulation through the night. She wondered if Neal was
out running. She closed her eyes again and snuggled under her covers. It was
nice to rest. Yesterday had been so many things between Michael at the office
launching into yet another one of his tirades about her irresponsibility and
how it wasn’t fair that she was abandoning ship, leaving him to clean up her
messes. She smiled. Never in her career had anyone ever accused her of making “messes.”
In her personal life, yes, but never in her professional life.

Christmas Eve. She tried
to remember past Christmas Eves and her mind scattered to an array of parties,
mostly with her ex-husbands, to laughter and dinners and drinks. Nothing
memorable stood out. Just experiences. People, places. Had she been happy? She
couldn’t say—but there were no regrets she held onto. Everything, she believed,
had unfolded exactly as it was meant to. She had fun. And when the fun ended,
when she felt her life becoming a routine, when the tedium of everyday pulled
her under, she had found a way to unravel it, to start again.

The wind’s gusts picked
up ferocity, the trees crashing against her home. Her home. It sounded odd in
her mind. One day, it would belong to someone else, just as her mother’s home
now belonged to Tess. Time passed, things changed. That was the way of the
world. One phase of her life ending, the next year of her story beckoning: in
two days she would be 56-years old. She smoothed her arm with her palm, her
hands still weak from sleep. Her skin was soft. She wondered when she would
start to feel like an older woman to herself or if age was something that only
other people characterized one by. The idea of embarking on the next chapter of
her life in less than 48 hours sent shivers through her body. She didn’t know
what was next and then caught herself: no one did.  That was both the joy of
life and the fear—there were no guarantees, no maps to follow.

Neal’s departure. He was
leaving today. Her life would go on, it always had, and yet it seemed inconceivable
that tomorrow, and the next day, he wouldn’t be around. Neal would leave and
she was still going to be Tess.

It came back to her what
he had told her before they parted yesterday: that he couldn’t write to her
when he returned to the monastery, at least for the first few months. That his
superiors would keep a close eye on him, watch for any signs of weakness, any
desire to return to a layman’s life. It wasn’t that they wanted to keep him
prisoner. It was that they wanted to help him find his way—to help him know
what was right for him. If he were busy writing to her right away, they would
assume his heart wasn’t committed to God, to being back at the monastery. He
had told her that although he couldn’t reach out to her, he would speak to her
nonetheless. That each morning when he went out for his run, he would talk to
her in his mind. The thought made tears come to her eyes. She knew that in the
early morning hours, in the depths of her soul, she would be listening for
Neal. His words had made his departure more final, more rigid. At least she
wouldn’t be waiting around for a note from him, letting her mind run haywire if
she didn’t receive one.

In a few hours from now
she would drop him at the airport and say goodbye and then she’d come home and
get ready to leave for Woodstock first thing tomorrow morning.  He would wake
up in the monastery on Christmas morning. A resurrection of sorts, a rebirth.
She followed her breaths. Later today would come, tomorrow would come. Her mind
was too restless for her own good. Right now, this moment. That’s what she had
to focus on. 

Unfurling her blanket,
she reached for the fleece lined zip-up sweatshirt on her night table and
snuggled into it before she made her way out of her bed. The house was cool
even with the heat blasting. She moved into her closet and sat down on her
floor, pulling the door slightly closed and reaching behind her shoe racks for
the white and gold embroidered box that held the vase with her mother’s ashes
in it. She undid the latch, smoothing the magenta velvet interior, before she
took out the vase, shiny black, iridescent in the muted darkness, and held it
close to her heart before she put it down in the middle of the diamond shape
her legs formed.

“You were right, mother,”
she whispered. “About everything.”

She looked down into the
vase’s stem as if there was the chance that her mother would still rise up out
of it. She imagined her mother tapping her on the shoulder and asking why Tess
was speaking into a vase of ashes when she was right there with her, all around
her. That thought lifted her spirits—maybe she wasn’t as alone as she sometimes
felt she was.

“I think it’s time for us
both to move on,” she said. “Spread our wings a bit. See something new. That’s
what you always encouraged me to do. Thank you for teaching me to be
independent, for showing me in so many different ways that my happiness never
relied on anyone else—that my happiness was within me. I searched outside for
so long but all that I found, I lost over time. My life, Mother, has been very happy.
I am happy, although I may not have known that until now.” Tess held the vase
close again, as if infusing her heart with her mother’s aura one last time
before she packed it up and put it back in its box. 

To tell Neal her plan or
somehow place it in his bag? She hadn’t gotten that far yet, although having to
tell him seemed exhausting to her today. She moved to her night table, pulled
out a TR monogrammed note card and wrote:

Dear Neal:

Please set my mother free
where you see fit. My only wish is that her spirit explores new pastures and
knows peace. She would have loved you—I feel safe knowing that she’s in your
charge now.

Warmly,

Tess

She wedged the card into
the box, wrapped it in a towel, and ran down to her garage, where she placed it
in her trunk. She would be sure to have Neal place his bag in her trunk.

She pushed the inside
garage door closed and made her way upstairs at the moment the doorbell rang.
She made sure her sweatshirt was zipped up—she was still in her pajamas—and
felt her curls to see where they were before pulling down on the ends. She
hadn’t even brushed her teeth or looked in a mirror.

“Lyla,” she said, the
cool air rushing in at her so that she shivered and moved from one foot to the
other.

“You’re up,” she said. “I
didn’t know if you’d be up—you weren’t out walking.”

Lyla paused and pulled
off her snow boots by the front door. Her car was parked practically in the
middle of the street, in front of Tess’s house. Tess smiled and pushed the door
shut against the cold and wind and followed Lyla upstairs.

“Oh!” Lyla said, Buddhi
darting past her. He let out a long, whining yelp. “I can’t believe that
creature is still here!” He stared at Lyla and let out a few more yelps. “What
does he want from me?” Lyla said.

“He wants to go outside,”
Tess said, making her way back down the stairs to open the door and let Buddhi
out.

“Really, Tess, do you
think you should keep that cat? And what are you going to do with him when
you’re away?”

“Lyla, like everyone
else, he deserves a place to rest his head and food to eat. I’m planning to
take him up to Woodstock. I think he’ll like it there.”

“Well, I’m glad to know
he won’t be around your house anymore.”

“Tea?” Tess asked and
Lyla nodded. She moved to take out mugs to place on the table, when the
doorbell rang again.

“Are you expecting
company?” Lyla said. “It’s 7:30 in the morning.”

Tess shook her head and
made her way down the stairs.

“Oh, look, it’s Santa
Claus,” she said when she saw Michael at the door carrying a large shopping
bag.

“That freak of a cat of
yours is running up and down your front lawn, playing in the snow. Either that
or he’s searching for penguins to eat,” he said. Then, taking Tess in, “I’m
glad that you got all spiffy for my visit,” he said.

“Haven’t even brushed my
teeth yet,” Tess said, backing away and moving around him to close the front
door again. “Your shoes, Michael. Take off your shoes before you go upstairs.”

“It’s nice to see you in
drill sergeant mode,” Michael said.

“You can walk around your
house with your snowy, soppy shoes, but not here,” Tess said. He tossed her his
wool jacket and made his way up the stairs.

“I was passing by and saw
your car, Lyla, and couldn’t resist stopping by to wish you a Merry Christmas,”
Michael said, holding out his hand to take Lyla’s, which he kissed, before he
pulled a large fruitcake out of his bag and handed it to her.

“Oh, Michael,” Lyla said.
“Aren’t you a thoughtful boy?”

Tess smiled at him
curtly.  She dreaded him taking anything out of the bag to give to her in front
of Lyla. Knowing Michael, if he had gotten her anything, it would be
sentimental.

“I have something for
both of you,” Tess said. It wasn’t how she had planned to give out her
gifts—she had envisioned doing it privately, leaving her gift for Lyla later
today when she picked Neal up, but she felt desperate to take the attention off
of Michael and what he may have for her. She moved to her bedroom and pulled
out the bag of gifts from under her bed. She was never one for gifts, aside
from the yearly bonuses she gave her employees, and the random gifts she had
bought her ex-husbands, including Michael. Those had been spontaneous
gifts—ones that she saw and knew her partner would like.

She had gotten Lyla a
cookie cookbook, complete with a basket of cookie ingredients and an apron with
an oversized chocolate chip cookie on it. The thought of Lyla in that apron had
made her laugh out loud in the store. Lyla smiled shyly when she opened up Tess’s
gift and nodded before she looked up, her eyes meeting Tess’s, and thanked her.

“So that you can keep up
the cookie deliveries,” Tess said.

Lyla had something for
Tess, which she pulled out of her bag. It was wrapped in faded red and green
wrapping paper with little Santa Clauses and elves on it that looked as if it
had been lying around for 20 years. Out of it Tess pulled a hand-knitted rust
colored scarf. It was long enough so that Tess could wrap it around her neck a
few times. It felt luxurious against her skin. Her mother had always made her
scarves—something she had forgotten until this moment. Bright colored ones of
hot pinks and electric blues that had made Tess feel giddy to wear in the snow.

“I made it myself,” Lyla
said. “It’s a good color for you.”

Michael winked at Tess,
nodding in agreement.

“I love it,” Tess said.
She did. She was touched thinking about Lyla at home, working on her scarf for
hours on end.

“Thank you,” Tess said.

“I even have something
for you, Michael,” Tess said. They had certainly given one another gifts for
birthdays—she recalled a bracelet, a ring, he had given her, but she couldn’t
remember what she had given him for either of the two Christmases they spent
together.

“An hourglass,” he said,
setting it down on the table so that the sand instantly began to travel from
one side to the other.

Tess had seen the silver
and mahogany wood hourglass in the Bergdorf Goodman Christmas window display.
When she went back to the store to purchase it for Michael, the clerk had told
her that the hourglass was the only timepiece that represented the present as a
fluid movement between the past and the future.  He had said that it served as
a reminder that the present was fleeting.