Miss Buddha (20 page)

“Ruth,” she said in their shared internal
room

It was as if the eyes answered, while Ruth’s
lips only smiled. “Yes.”

“I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“Why me?”

This question, true and burning for her,
rose not only wordlessly within them both, but also, reflexively,
crossed her lips and into air.

“Because,” said Gotama Buddha, “I do not
terrify you.”

“I don’t understand,” said Melissa.

“Sit down,” said the Buddha. “Please.”

Melissa did, and Ruth rolled onto her side,
the better to see her mother, now sitting cross-legged by the side
of the crib, looking in.

“What man does not understand, frightens
him,” said Gotama Buddha.

“Always?” asked Melissa. Again, as if not
yet trusting her internal tongue to alone convey words, she also
said this aloud.

“On some level, yes. Always,” said Ruth,
who, if she noticed, did not wonder at, nor did she comment on the
words leaving her mother’s lips along with their shared
sister-thoughts.

“But man prefers ignorance to terror,”
continued Ruth.

When Melissa said nothing, Ruth elaborated.
“Numbness seems always preferable to pain. Sleep, if it shields
him, seems preferable to fears awake. At least so he acts.”

Melissa nodded, assimilating, understanding,
but said nothing.

“It is as if on some collective level man
has chosen, or created an unawareness so deep that it appears like
an ocean, or as a mist of oblivion covering this earth. And here he
spends lives, submerged, barely visible to the spirit, far below
the surface, among the deep-sea fishes and other creatures of
darkness.”

“That’s a grim picture,” said Melissa.

“Yes, it is,” said Ruth. “But true.”

“How does that explain your choice?”

“You, Melissa, are near the surface,
sometimes even breaking it.”

“I am?”

“Do you remember the night, when as a young
woman you pondered life? At college. You wrote it in your
daybook.”

“I pondered life often at college, and I
wrote in my daybook every day.”

“I am thinking of that one
evening you saw that the quality of life, what you thought of as
the
phenomenon
life, was and is very different from the quantity of life,
it’s physical aspect.”

This Melissa remembered. “Yes,” she said. “I
remember that.” Then wondered, “How come you know about that?”

Ruth did not answer her question, only
smiled. Then said:

“That was the evening you
saw, clearly and viscerally, the evening you experienced that life,
as an
event
, was
the same, regardless of physical size, whether a mouse or an
elephant. Unquantifiable.”

“Yes,” she was nodding now, remembering
quite vividly. “It was like an epiphany. I remember.”

“That’s breaking the surface,” said Ruth.
“That’s waking up, or refusing sleep at any rate.”

In her mind, Melissa returned to that
evening. The afternoon had seen snow, draping the world in white.
Evening had fallen now, and with it the darkness. Still, she could
sense a softness of a million, million flakes the other side of the
window, and in it her own reflection of short blond hair and
pondering eyes.

The soft breathing of her roommate, asleep
alongside her assignment, and shifting now to push the book onto
the floor with a soft thud, brought a sense of intimacy, a love for
her race.

And as she thought about
the in and out of Elizabeth’s breath, and wondered at the force—no,
not the force, but the motivation, the real cause, the motive
power—behind each intake of air, replete with oxygen, and each
expulsion of air, replete with carbon dioxide, a rush of
knowing
suddenly rose
within her like a geyser and leapt out upon paper. A shiver that
told her that life as phenomenon, as motivation, was different
from, and much larger than its manifestation, its tangible
result.

She had not been seeking
that answer specifically, she had simply been marveling onto paper
about the multitude of life on this planet, at the strange forms
life took to survive in this jungle of chemicals and motion. At the
soft in and out of Elizabeth’s breath, and suddenly the knowing
simply arrived as experience, as geyser (is how she put in then),
as irrefutable in and of itself: it is the
phenomenon
life that motivates and
animates. It is the unquantifiable non-thing that knows and thinks
that moves the fingers that write these words, that steers the feet
that wander, that grows the bodies that rise and play and fall,
only to grow again.

The epiphany had been brief. The following
morning, though still quite vivid as recollection, it did not ring
quite as immediately true. It had struck her as a little
presumptuous even. And a little more so a few days later.

Still, there was no denying the rush, the
geyser, rising and filling her, as the notion first appeared, as
truth. So real as it rose that doubt could find no footing.

“It was just a thought I had,” she said.
“Something that arrived as I was looking at things.”

“Yes. But you were looking above the
surface,” said Buddha Gotama.

“I don’t know about that.”

“I know about that,” he replied.

Melissa fell quiet for a moment. Then asked,
“How do you know? How can you see that I am near the surface?”

“You glow.”

“I do?”

“Faintly, but yes.”

“What do you mean, glow? Like an aura?”

“Not unlike an aura,” he said.

“And that is why you chose me as your
mother?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“You saw me, as aura?”

“Yes.”

“From where?” she asked.

“From the Tusita Heaven.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It is a place that is more frame of mind
than place.”

“And you saw me from there?”

“Just like I hear you from here, in this
frame of mind.”

“Were there other glows?”

“Yes.”

“Many?”

“No.”

“How many?”

“Here in Los Angeles? Or here in the
world?”

The question should have appeared odd, or
impossible, to Melissa, but it did not. It made perfect sense.
Define thy terms. “Here in Los Angeles.”

“Perhaps a hundred.”

“So why me?”

“Because you were, you are, right. Just like
your knowing about the phenomenon of life that evening in college
was right.”

Melissa, again briefly re-living that geyser
moment, said, “I can see that.”

“And communing like this, I know I chose you
well.”

“Good point,” she said, still into the
shared room as well as into the air.

Then she asked, “If that is why me, then why
you? Why are you here?”

“Ananda has not explained?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

That is when Charles, standing in the
doorway behind her and listening to a strange and impossible
one-way conversation, shifted his weight from one foot to the other
and so caught her ear.

::
44 :: (Pasadena)

What woke him were spoken words, drifting. A
soft breeze.

At first—even though he was now awake—they
seemed like so much dream, part of his lingering inner landscape,
but then (listening now) they were not. No, they came from
elsewhere. Not inside his head at all. Outside. In the house.
Somewhere.

Sitting up in bed now, the better to listen,
he recognized the voice: It was Melissa’s. Then nothing, and
nothing. Then he hears her again. Yes, talking, softly. Nearby.

Wide awake now, he heard her say, “What do
you mean, glow? Like an aura?”

He looked down at her empty pillow, who
seemed strangely eager to corroborate; then out through the bedroom
door, slightly ajar.

“And that is why you chose me as your
mother?” she said from the hallway outside, or from just beyond
it.

Placing his feet on the carpet, he heard,
“You saw me, as aura?”

Standing up now, unsure, a little afraid, he
heard her say, “From where?”

By the bedroom door now, he knew from where
the voice came: Ruth’s room. “What are you talking about?” Melissa
said.

And as he slowly, and silently, made his way
for his daughter’s door, “And you saw me from there?”

At this point Charles felt a rising terror.
There was someone else in that room with Melissa, and she was
talking to him, or her, in a conversation that held her interest—he
could tell by her voice: intent, even a little urgent. “Were there
other glows?” she said, and she really wanted to know.

He reached the door and pushed it slightly
more ajar to reveal Melissa sitting on the floor by Ruth’s cot,
looking at his daughter.

“Many?” said Melissa, as if addressing the
baby.

Then, “Here in Los Angeles.”

What now slowly rose, fueled by what could
not be, by what had no right to be—not Melissa, not this sick—was
an ice he knew as terror. He was afraid. Really, really afraid.

“So why me?” she said. Then, as if listening
to a silence replying, “I can see that.”

Then, again after a brief silence, as if
listening, “Good point,” she said.

Then, incomprehensibly, she asked the room,
the child, her demon, “If that is why me, then why you? Why are you
here?”

The she said, “I want to hear it from
you.”

Charles, unaware of legs and feet,
nonetheless shifted his weight from one foot to the other, making a
sound, catching her ear, spinning her head. Ruth, too, looked up at
him, and for the fleetest of moments her eyes, too, seemed to hold
alarm.

“Charles,” said Melissa, eyes wide.

:

“Charles,” she said again, less terrified
now—though he wasn’t sure whether it was his own feelings or hers
he sensed.

“What are you doing?” he heard himself
ask.

“How long,” she asked. And he knew precisely
what she meant, what she was hiding.

Two conflicting emotions swelled side by
side: briefly, compassion for his wife, his—yes, indeed, quite
crazy wife; and alongside it, the urge to run, to turn and flee
this madness, as if the demon that possessed her was contagious and
of immediate danger to himself. But as with so many conflicting
emotions, none truly gained the upper hand, so instead Charles
remained, looking at his wife looking up at him, still awaiting an
answer.

His compassion then shifted into the
practicality of the situation facing him and with that the lawyer
in him surfaced, annoyed at the obvious trouble ahead.

“Long enough,” he answered. Then he turned,
looked at his watch, twice, and headed for the shower.

::
45 :: (Pasadena)

Her first sensation was: this had not
happened. Could not, must not have happened.

No, not the conversation with Ruth, her
Buddha Gotama. That was as real as anything, was the most real
thing she’d ever experienced. What must not have happened was that
she had said her words not only directly to Ruth, in their shared
space, but also into the air, for Charles to hear and see—see his
wife talking to his infant daughter at no (obviously imaginary)
replies. She’d seen his face, and she’d venture that he had—in that
brief moment of eye contact—been more terrified than she.

“He heard you,” whispered Ruth.

“I know,” answered Melissa, quelling the
impulse to, again, also say this aloud. Succeeding.

“He is in turmoil.”

“I saw that.”

Yes, that is what she had seen in his face,
in his eyes. Terror at first, then turmoil—as if terror clashed
with some other equally potent force—and then, as he turned and
left, surrounding him, protecting him, a cloud—stiff and
impatient—of annoyance.

“He will pose a danger,” said Ruth.

The certainty of the statement shook her.
“How?”

“He thinks you mad.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Even so,” said Melissa—still consciously
suppressing the urge to again also voice the words. “He wouldn’t
harm me. I doubt that.”

“Perhaps he would not, but his father
might.”

“How?”

“Remember that man is terrified of what he
does not understand, and a terrified person never acts rationally,
and then only to preserve self.”

“And Charles does not understand.”

“No, he does not.”

“Nor will his father.”

“Even less so.”

:

She eased herself up from the floor and with
one last glance at Ruth she left her daughter’s room. Charles was
in the shower; she could hear the water sing the pipes. She checked
her watch and saw that Charles, for a change, would have plenty of
time for a real breakfast, and proceeded to the kitchen to prepare
it for him.

By the time he entered the kitchen, all
suited up, but without a “good morning,” breakfast was ready.
French toast, syrup, bacon, coffee. The way he liked it.

She turned to look at him, but he would not
meet her eyes. Instead he sat down by the table and looked first at
the plate, then out the window. She followed his gaze. Plate
overloaded, sky overcast, almost milky.

“Charles,” she began.

He shifted, and looked in her direction, but
would still not meet her eyes.

“Charles,” she said again. “I am not
crazy.”

Finally, their eyes met, but only briefly,
as if slipping off each other, twice.

“What do you mean?” said her husband.

“You saw me. You heard me,” she said.

He then loaded half a French toast on his
fork and transferred it to his mouth. Chewed for some time,
expressionlessly. Then he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”

“You saw me,” she said again.

“Saw what, Melissa?”

Could it actually be? she wondered. Could he
not have seen? No, she inwardly shook her head. He had seen, and
heard. The fear in his eyes had been proof enough. And he had
answered her. He had said “Long enough.” These were his words. He
had definitely said them. Only he did not want to admit that,
either to her, or to himself.