From Comfortable Distances (52 page)

“You’re very observant,”
Michael said, holding the door open for Lyla and Tess to pass through. “It’s my
pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Clay.”

Lyla cleared her throat,
glanced at the shoes gathered by the door, glanced at Tess, and walked up the
stairs.

“It’s nice to meet you,”
Michael said, holding the door open for Neal, who was now on the porch. Tess
paused at the foot of the stairs, waiting to do damage control if necessary. “I’m
Michael. I’ve heard a lot about you, Neal,” he said, patting Neal on the back.
Neal smiled and nodded.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You have been cooking,”
Lyla said, inspecting each of the dishes that Tess had set about the kitchen
and in the oven. “I’ll need you to clear out the oven to warm up the turkey and
stuffing,” she said.

“I’m glad that someone
here cooks turkey,” Michael said.

“Well, that’s one of the
Thanksgiving rituals that most normal people follow,” Lyla said.

Seated around the dining
room table that Tess had taken much care to set and decorate, using the
winter-white china she had taken from her mother’s house—it was her way of
including her mother on this day—and red cloth napkins and candles, Tess
watched and waited for Lyla to eat a piece of the turkey that Michael had
carved and placed on her plate. She ate all of Tess’s food: her spinach salad,
tofu casserole, her sweet potato pudding, Michael’s spinach pie, and still not
a peck at the turkey.

“You haven’t touched your
turkey,” Tess said.

Michael, Lyla and Neal,
who had been caught up in a debate over court cases that they had all seen on court
television in the past week—was that what Neal did at his mother’s house? Watch
court TV? —all turned to Tess.

“You went to all the
trouble of making a turkey and you haven’t touched it,” Tess said.

 “Maybe she’s saving the
best for last,” Michael said, putting a piece of turkey in mouth.

“I don’t care for turkey,”
Lyla said and continued her conversation with Michael and Neal.

“How about the spinach
pie?” Michael said. “I made it.”

“It was my favorite dish,”
Lyla said.

Tess tried to make eye
contact with Michael, but his eyes didn’t budge from Lyla’s. Since they had sat
down, he seemed to be caught up in her. She was actually giggling from
Michael’s story about whatever the heck he was telling them about law
school—law school, what was that, 30 years ago? —and Tess tried to remember if
in all of their walks, Lyla had ever giggled from something she said.

“Tess, you never told me
how charming Mrs. Clay was,” Michael said.

Tess smiled. “Surely I
did, Michael. Must be your selective memory setting in,” she said. Michael
turned to her and gave her a cutting look, as in behave and play along.

“Neal, Tess has told me
that you’ve turned into quite the runner. We should go out running together
sometime,” Michael said.

“Since when do you run,
Michael?” Tess said.

“Just last week I did,”
Michael said. “I think you two even saw me when you were outside moon gazing.”

“In all the time I’ve
known you, I never remember you being much of a runner,” Tess said.

“Well that’s because my
boss is a work-hound who doesn’t leave me much time for leisure,” Michael said,
to which Lyla gave Tess a sharp, accusing look.

“I’m not much of a
runner, myself,” Neal said. “But you’re welcome to join me whenever you’d like.”

Tess stood up to clear
the table. “I’ll pack the turkey up for you, Lyla. That way you can take it to
the nursing home.”

Tess picked up the turkey
plate and made her way into the kitchen.

Neal joined her in the
kitchen a few moments later, bringing in some of the dishes, moving next to
Tess as she rinsed dishes and pans in the sink.

“Your food was delicious,”
he said.

“Thank you, Neal,” Tess
said. “Please, go back and sit down, enjoy yourself. I’ll take care of cleaning
up.”

Neal stood close to her,
their bodies practically touching. She felt Neal watching her and looked up at
him, their eyes meeting.

“Your mother seems to
like Michael,” she said.

“He’s very nice,” Neal
said and Tess stifled a laugh so that it sounded like a sigh. Neal and his
mother liked Michael. Why wouldn’t they? He was fun, charming. She had married
him after all. With all of her yoga and all of her trying to stay calm and
focused, Tess found it amusing that she could still revert to an angry woman
ready to lash out. Standing next to Neal, she felt herself ease up, her
shoulders drop, so that she felt lighter. There was something to him, to his
aura, that pacified her; she simply enjoyed being next to him. What she wanted
to say to Neal then and there was
what am I going to do without you
, and
then she remembered that before she met him, she had always done without him. 

“Tess,” he said, his eyes
focused on hers now.

He took her face in his
hands, his fingers smoothing her cheeks, tracing her cheekbones until all of
her was overcome with a tenderness and then his lips were on hers, warm and
plush, so unlike those first few kisses way back when his lips had felt to her
like those of a corpse. He moved from her lips to the crevice behind her ear
and then onto her neck and then he was pulling her close to him and she clung
to him as if they were in the midst of a slow dance that she didn’t want to
end. She brought her face back to his and her lips found his, planting small
kisses on him, slowly, and then she was grasping his bottom lip in between her
own before they were locked in a passionate kiss. Tess felt herself letting go,
becoming more involved in him, as he clutched her tighter. Tears that she
didn’t know had been building in her began to flow down her face and feeling
them with his fingertips, Neal eased away from the kiss, holding her close, his
hands smoothing her shoulders and then rubbing her back.

She pulled away to look
at him, to concrete this moment, as she understood that this exchange would
serve as one of the reference points in her life the way certain memories did.
She rested her head on his shoulder and he hugged her to him.

It was Michael and Lyla’s
laughter from the dining room that made them ease away from one another
abruptly and then Tess was facing the sink and Neal stood beside her, picking
up the dishtowel. At 55-years old, she was afraid of being caught kissing a
grown man by his mother and her ex-husband, who were in the next room in her
home. Sometimes life was stranger than fiction. She began to rinse off one of
the plates and handed it over to Neal, who dried it and then placed it on the
counter. Tess imagined that from an outsider’s perspective, they looked like
any other middle-aged couple. Her old feelings of domestic dread crept up on
her, the reminiscence of the walls of her house closing in on her at the
prospect of becoming a housewife and yet now, it seemed a calming thought, a
peaceful life. From the corner of her eye, she saw Neal smiling and she smiled
back. She moved on to the pots and pans.

What did anyone, at the
heart of life, know about anyone else? It was so hard to know one’s self—so
hard for Tess to know Tess. At points in her life she had believed that time
and proximity were the ingredients of getting to know another person, but now
she thought otherwise. She had been with herself for all of these years and
still didn’t know all of her selves, so how could time and proximity help her
to know anyone else? People got used to one another. That was true enough,
although she wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.  She didn’t even
know if getting to know another person had anything to do with the ability to
listen to another person, which she had always believed was crucial. After a
while, what did people really say to one another—what was there to be said? She
was sure that there had been more that she had kept inside over the years than
she had shared. She had not yet even admitted everything she felt and thought
to herself. The depressions, the joys, the sorrow, the excitement—it all passed
through in waves so that what dominated one day didn’t exist the next.  No,
talking wasn’t the way to know another person. Perhaps getting to know another
person was just an illusion. Perhaps one only got to know another if they were
sharing a journey, getting off and on at the same stops.

Michael popped his head
into the kitchen. “Dessert?” he said.

Tess pointed to the pies
and Neal’s cookies that she had gathered on the kitchen table.

“Right there,” she said.

“There are still lots of
dishes on the table,” he said.

“Well, here’s a thought:
you can stack them all up and bring them here to me, where I’ll wash them. Then
the table will be clear for you to serve the desserts to Mrs. Clay.”

“You won’t be joining us?”
Michael said.

“You and Mrs. Clay sit
and enjoy yourselves. I’m busy with the dishes for now.”

Michael lingered. He
cleared his throat, but neither Tess nor Neal turned around from their task. As
capable as he was in some respects, there was a helplessness to Michael that
irritated Tess. He had moved his cleaning lady from two visits a week to three
in the past month, which made Tess pause to wonder what there was to clean
three days a week for a man living on his own. When he had lived with her, he’d
been relatively neat or maybe it was that she was a compulsive cleaner.

“Go on and bring me the
dishes,” Tess said, and in that instant Lyla walked into the kitchen with
stacks of dishes and placed them on the kitchen table.

“That was Michael’s job,”
Tess said. “He was just going to clear the table.”

“Then the least I could
do was to help him,” Lyla said, to which he nodded his head and said, “Thank
you.”

Tess wiped her hands on a
dishtowel, steadied the cakes on her arms, grabbed the cookies, and brought
them into the dining room. “Come and get the desserts,” she said.

When she returned to the
kitchen, Michael and Lyla were still standing by the kitchen table chatting and
laughing. Tess stacked up some cake plates and made another trip to the dining
room to put them down before she was back at the sink with Neal, cleaning the
dishes.

“Can you put up some tea?”
Michael said, still in the kitchen with Lyla.

“My pleasure, Michael,”
Tess said. She caught Michael’s eyes and shook her head lightly at him.

“What? Is it too much to
ask for tea with my dessert?” he asked, Lyla already in the next room.

“Not at all, Michael
dear,” Tess said. “It’s my pleasure to serve you.”

Hours after Michael,
Lyla, and Neal had left, Tess lay in her bed and stared up at the ceiling. She
felt unstable and yet calm. She was relieved to have peace and quiet. She had
believed she had grown over the past few months, but now she felt otherwise.
She was smaller, weaker than she had believed. She was still reacting to
others, still struggling to keep her peace when confronted with other people’s
stuff. Her mother had been much more advanced than Tess had ever realized. Her
ability not to waver, to love regardless of what she faced. To show Tess
patience and kindness even when Tess opposed her mother’s ideas and beliefs
with a vengeance. She had never lost her cool on Tess. With all of her tantrums
and all of her teenage fear and hatred, her mother had not wavered in her
devotion and love for Tess. And yet, these were all Tess’s perceptions. What
did she know about her mother’s feelings, the thoughts that went through her
brain? That was the distance between people—she could only assume from outward
appearances and what another person told her, but she didn’t really know what
anyone else thought
or felt. All she could know
was what Tess thought and felt, and many times Tess wasn’t even accessible to
herself.

Was that the doorbell?
Tess sat up in bed. It rang again, and then she was making her way to look out
to see who was there before she opened the door.

“Neal,” Tess said. “Are
you okay?”

He nodded. “Did I wake
you?”

“I was resting, but
awake.”

“I hope it’s okay that I
came to see you,” he said.

“Of course. Come in,” she
said, and they made their way up the stairs into the kitchen. “Can I get you
anything?” she said.

“No,” he said, standing
beside the table. Tess was unsure if she should sit down or if this was going
to be a short visit.  He was in sweats and his black Nike windbreaker, and for
a moment, she wondered if he had been out running. His hair was a bit
disheveled. His face and hands were bright pink with cold.

“Can I give you something
warm?” she asked and he waved his hand no.

“My mother likes you,”
Neal said.

“Sometimes,” Tess said.

“I like you,” Neal said.

Tess looked down at her
bare feet. She nodded.

Neal moved closer to her
and studied her face. She wiped the crook of her lips. Neal took her hand in
his and held it.

“You look beautiful,” he
said. He leaned down to kiss her and his winter cold lips against her warm lips
excited her. One kiss led to two and then Tess felt her instincts take over and
she was kissing him as if there was nothing else in her life but this moment,
this man. He led her to the bedroom, where she pulled him onto the bed and held
him close to her and then he was taking off his windbreaker and she was taking
off his shirt and he was kissing the nape of her neck, her shoulders and she
felt herself melting into his passion so that it became her passion and she was
hungry for him—for his body, his love, for his warmth.