From Comfortable Distances (17 page)

Here and now, it seemed
such a simple thing: to have silence in her life, and yet experience had taught
Tess that it was one of the most difficult things to achieve. When she had
given birth to Prakash, she had given up hours of sleep in order to have time
alone. In those spaces void of sound, she had scripted possible routes for her
life. Later, when she grew bored with her own self-imposed dramas, she began
speaking to God. Not a God of religion, but a higher force that dwelled within
her. Growing up Buddhist, she had only known idols. She had never been able to
relate to them. She didn't understand the point of praying to things that were
plastic and rested on a table in her living room. To her, they were no
different than dolls, except for the fact that she was not allowed to play with
them. Once, when she was no more than ten-years old, she had knocked over a
mahogany-wood Buddha that had been on a table in the living room. She had
folded into herself on the floor, covering her head with her hands, closing her
eyes, and prayed to be saved in her next life; she had hoped that harming the
idol wouldn't send her too far back in her karma. Moments later, she had opened
her eyes to see that nothing in the room had changed. She was still there, the
idol still on the floor.  She could pick herself up while the idol that she was
asked to bow down to could not. Day after day, Tess would stop in the living
room before she left for school, and wait for the Buddha to say something to
her, reprimand her, wink, even nod. Nothing. It was wood through and through.

Although Tess's mother
had stopped trying to convert her by the time she reached high school, she had
continued to plant seeds in Tess. Through each of Tess's marriages, her mother
had reminded Tess that truly letting someone into your life meant that they
moved into your mind and heart and vice versa—there was no divorce from such a
connection if it was deep rooted. Her mother didn't understand connections of
any other nature. Tess believed that she had experienced deep connections with
each of the men she married; it was just that people changed, they grew apart,
and sometimes it was a good thing. Her mother preached to her that true
connections stopped being about what two people thought or felt in their daily
earthly life and took on a deeper life in the couples' souls—a selfless
connection that made being together an experience and a shared energy.

Tess’s eyes began to
close, exhaustion overcoming her, until her mother’s comment resurfaced:
what
you think you want is not always what you want
. What did Tess want? Did she
even know what she wanted? She wanted to live simply. Complication free.
Whatever that meant. Or maybe that wasn’t what she wanted because she thought
she wanted that. Maybe it wasn’t about knowing what she wanted or didn’t want,
but about being open. About following her instinct instead of having a plan
mapped out. Maybe that was it. To go with the flow a bit more. Her eyes were
growing heavier. Her mind was tired. Sleep began to take over, and she began to
lose words, thoughts, and to surrender.

The morning that Michael
and Prakash were to arrive—two days since her mother had died, although to her,
it felt like months—Tess remained in her old bedroom, wrapped up in her
mother’s thick, ivory afghan throw blanket. She remembered when her mother had
made that blanket.  It had taken her over a year; Tess couldn’t have been more
than 13-years old at the time. Now, she sat on the twin day bed, inhaling what
was left of her mother’s lavender and sandalwood scent. The trees outside
danced their yes/no dance and she smiled; that window had been her looking
glass as a child, the trees her private consultants.  And the chimes that hung
on the overhang of the window—replaced with new chimes over the years—to Tess,
their song was the hum of magic. It had been so long since she’d been lulled by
the music of the chimes.

There had been nights
when she was growing up that listening to the chime’s melody, which was both
haunting and soothing— sometimes she had felt that ghosts were out there
shaking it about—she had tried to connect the dots of her mother’s family tree,
tried to imagine her mother’s life when she was a young girl in Thailand. Her
mother’s parents had passed while her mother was a young girl and in turn,
relatives had raised her. Reaching over to the night table beside the day bed,
Tess traced the cool, smooth elbow and breasts of the intricate wood Thai
statue of the half girl, half creature that her mother had given Tess when she
was a young girl. It was one of the few childhood objects that her mother had
brought with her from Thailand. Tess's parents had settled in Woodstock due to
business opportunities—Tess remembered hearing once that her father had been
responsible for building many of the houses in the area, but Tess had never
bothered to ask her mother which ones, although she knew that the very house
she was in had been built long before they arrived, in 1924, as there was an
inscription plaque built into the bricks by the front door. She supposed that
if she did some research at the library, she could find out which homes her
father had been involved in building. She was curious to see if they were
houses she would have an interest in selling—she wondered if they would have a
connection in that way. Her mother had asked her father to leave. In her
mother’s words, he had tried Buddhism on, and when he didn’t find the fit
comfortable, he had tried to undo her way of living. Eventually, her father had
moved away from Woodstock and gone back to his family in the Midwest. Tess
couldn’t remember if it was Ohio or Indiana at this point.  Whenever she had
asked about him during her childhood, her mother had told her that her time was
better spent on learning about who Tess was than trying to know a man who was
absent. “We fool ourselves into believing we can actually know others, but
we’re lucky if we even glimpse who and what we are about,” her mother had said.
Still, Tess had often felt un-rooted and believed that if she knew her father,
she would somehow be more grounded in the universe. That, and the fact that she
often felt eerie traveling through life and not knowing if she was related to
the person who sat beside her. And now it was too late for her to ever know the
details of her father. That was how life worked: you went along believing that
there would be time down the road until life taught you otherwise.

Suki. That’s what her
mother had told her was the name of the statue. Suki, which meant
beloved
.
So many nights before Tess had drifted to sleep, she had studied Suki with her
elaborately detailed hat and scales and her feathered tail. She had closed her
eyes and tried to imagine what it would sound like if Suki played the guitar
that she held in her hands, tried to imagine what it would feel like if Suki
feathered Tess with her tail. Tess had imagined Suki coming to life and sharing
details of her mother’s childhood with her—things that her mother would never
have shared with Tess about herself. But night after night, Suki struck her
wavy pose, mute and lifeless. 

Tess picked Suki up carefully;
her old energy was still there. As a child, Tess had imagined that there was
something or someone living inside of Suki and that if she cracked her open,
the presence, like a genie, would emerge from Suki and grant Tess wishes. Tess
had never cracked her open, though. No matter how many times she had wanted to
disappear, vanish from her life, she had decided not to waste her wishes and
instead wait for a time when nothing less than a genie’s help would suffice.
Now, almost 50 years later, Tess wondered if she would ever meet her genie face
to face.

The sun was beginning to
make its way through the darkness. Her time alone in the house was running out.
Tess couldn’t say why she felt rushed, but she did, as if there was some secret
the house had yet to tell her that she wouldn’t be able to hear once visitors
arrived. Tea. She needed to go out and buy tea and milk and she supposed some
food for her guests. Tess inched open the window. The air, cool and damp,
filtered in and she shivered. There was a hint of summer in the air, a
lightness that the birds embellished with their inquisitive melodies.

Outside, the air lashed
so that Tess wrapped her mother’s orange gauze scarf tighter around her neck.
It felt nice to be moving after being cooped up in the house for the past few
days. In the distance the mountains rose as if they were breaking through the
sky. The foliage was almost in full spring bloom and the fragrant honeysuckled
air made Tess feel lighter. Although she had been in Woodstock for well over a
week now, this was the first day that she was able to notice her surroundings,
take them in. It was so easy for days to pass unnoticed when you were caught up
in the drama of your life. A peace was coming over Tess as she moved outside of
herself. She inhaled again, grateful to feel herself transcending the fog she
had resided in and becoming a part of life again.

Tess had envisioned
herself a city girl through her adolescence, although she had no significant
experiences with the city until she went off to college in New York. It was
just that in her mind, the city with its diversity and fast-pace and
money-oriented mentality, seemed to contradict Woodstock, and Tess had believed
that her views and thoughts were contrary to everything that Woodstock
exemplified. Only now, she wasn’t sure that the breeziness of Woodstock, the
quietness, the innate beauty of its peaks and valleys and open fields weren’t
what she had always sought in the rush of her life in New York. There was a
serenity to Woodstock, a rhythm that enabled her to breathe and be.

Tess had felt someone
pass her by, but she didn’t look up until she heard him coming back toward her.
“Excuse me,” the man said.

He registered the moment
she glimpsed his deep-set black eyes and dark, wavy hair that he brushed off
his face with a flick of his hand. His hair was shorter now, more manageable
than the locks that had grown down his back when they were teenagers. Tess
brushed the tendrils that hung by her face behind her ear, made sure her low
ponytail was still in place. She hadn’t thought of her own long hair for ages;
all through growing up, she had let it grow long and free until it nearly
touched her butt. Her unruly red curls had been her safety net, something to
hind behind. The first time she cut her hair to her shoulders, during her MBA
program, she had felt as if she had been stripped naked. Somehow, along the way
of becoming a businessperson, she had been duped into believing that long hair
wasn’t professional, and if she wanted to succeed in the business world, she
needed to play by the rules.

“Tess Rose.”

“Luke,” she said, and had
to stop herself from saying Skywalker; that’s what she and the other children
had called him.

“It’s been a long time,”
he said. He reached out to embrace her, but she met him halfway a minute too
late, so that they offered one another more of a pat on the shoulder.

 “I heard about your
mother. I’m sorry,” he said. “Really sorry.”

“Yes,” she said.

They stood nodding,
silent for a moment.

“It’s good to see you
back up here, Tess.”

“Have you ever left?” she
said.

Luke laughed. “Yes, I
found life outside of Woodstock,” he said.

“I didn’t mean—” Tess
paused.

“I’ve moved around a bit,
east coast, west, but somehow I always end up back here. I’ve yet to find a
community quite like this one,” he said.

“It’s nice to be here; of
course I wish the circumstances were different.”

“Your mother would say
‘It’s all exactly as it should be.”

Tess smiled, her eyes
falling. Her mother would not say anything anymore. That was still more of an
idea to her than a reality.

“You look wonderful,”
Luke said.

She observed her outfit:
black track pants and a black zip up sweat jacket with her mother’s bright
orange scarf; she imagined that she looked like a Halloween cat. She couldn’t
remember how many days in a row she’d been wearing this outfit and it wasn’t
until she took inventory of it that she realized she didn’t even have on a bra
underneath her white t-shirt; things like showers and bras hadn’t seemed to
matter over the last few days.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit of
a mess,” Tess said.

“No. The years have been
good to you.”

She smiled. “The years
have been long and hectic.”

Luke laughed a soft,
muted laugh that sound more like a grunt. There was something sexy about him
with his dark eyes: they made him look mysterious and then there were the
angles of his cheekbones and chin. Everything about him was masculine, from his
throaty voice to his penetrating eyes. Tess couldn’t remember how many years
younger than her he was—two or three she supposed. He’d been one of her
mother’s groupies along with the rest of Woodstock, so while she liked him well
enough as a child and teenager, she hadn’t ever shared any of her thoughts or
aspirations with him. Nevertheless, most folks in Woodstock felt that they knew
Tess by association with her mother. Of course there were those who had
considered her rebellious and difficult.

Tess didn’t know how long
they had been locked in a mutual stare, but she didn’t feel any awkwardness.

“I should get going. I
was on my way to pick up some supplies—my son and friend are coming today to
help me put my mother to rest.”

“Will there be a funeral?
Luke asked.

“She wanted to be
cremated so I suppose we’ll have a quiet ceremony beforehand. I haven’t made
preparations just yet,” she said, wondering what she had been doing since her
mother passed other than lying around the house. She didn’t recognize herself
as the sort of person to get lost in grief.

“Well, keep us posted.
There are a lot of folks in town who will want to pay their last respects to
your mother.”

“Sure.” Tess couldn’t
imagine having to entertain anyone, although she understood that she’d have to
offer some way for the town to say their farewells to her mother. She’d let
Michael and Prakash help her to figure that out and have it posted in the local
paper.

“It was great seeing you,
Tess,” Luke said, and this time he was leaning in to embrace her without her
fumbling.

She was trying to
remember if she had ever kissed him romantically. It was vaguely coming back to
her that she had; only she couldn’t place the details.

“Nice seeing you, Luke,”
she said, and then he released her and was on his way.

As he walked away she
realized that she hadn’t asked him about his family—how his mother or father
were doing. They had been good friends with her mother, as far as she
remembered. She didn’t even know if he was married and had a family of his own.
The church bells rang in the hour. Tess realized that she had heard those same
church bells all through growing up and thought of St. Bernard’s in Mill Basin.
Neal vaguely passed through her mind and then drifted away, like a wish flower.
The bells rang over and over. Was it 8:00 am? 9:00 am? She didn’t even know
where her watch was and then it dawned on her that she hadn’t even taken her
cell phone with her when she set out for the grocery store. How easy it was for
your life to transform once you checked out for a bit. 

Just as she climbed the
wooden porch and was about to enter Moe’s Country Market, the flyer came undone
from the bulletin board by the entrance and flew onto her leg so that she had
to bend to pick it up unless she was going to wear it.

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