From Comfortable Distances (29 page)

The fan clocked round.
Its seamless motion soothed her. Michael had always turned the fan off when
they went to sleep at night. The stillness had made her feel suffocated. There
were nights when Michael fell asleep that she had walked into the living room
and peered out the window. She didn’t know who or what she was hoping to see. 
But that was in a different lifetime. Or so it seemed. She thought of her mom,
her gentle smile. She wondered where she was now. Why she hadn’t come to her
yet. With all of her mother’s spirituality, that was something she had counted
on—feeling her mother’s presence when she passed. She closed her eyes. “Mom,
I’m here. I’m waiting for you.” She could picture her mother’s face perfectly.
Her expressions, her hair. She thought of her hand, that icy hand.
I’m sorry
for your loss.
Tess shook her head. No one could ever be as sorry for her
loss as she was.

She couldn’t remember
ever sitting in this corner of her bedroom before. If someone were to walk in
on her, she supposed they would think she was trying to hide. Here, though, in
her house, there was nothing to hide from—not while she was alone at least. Her
mind could lead her on a merry-go-round. That was for sure. She searched for
what it was that unhinged her before she left the office. Ah yes, Max.
Convincing him to stay on working for Best by giving him a 10% raise. Did her
employees think that she was a bank? A 10% raise for no reason. When she had
proposed 5%, he had laughed. He was already earning more than the other
realtors. Sure, he was closing deals, but wasn’t that his job? One day she
wouldn’t be in the real estate business. This phase of her life wouldn’t last
forever. That she was sure of. Like all the other phases of her life, this
business-owner phase would end. The book that was in her lap fell shut. She
opened back up to the page where her highlighter marked her place. The yamas.

Continence was a yama. No
issues there—she hadn’t had any sexual relations for at least a year and
considering Neal’s situation, that didn’t seem to be on her top-ten list of
things to worry about.  Greed—she didn’t think she was greedy. She’d never been
accused of being greedy either in her personal life or in business. Sure, she
was out to make money, but why else was one in business? Some women would see
her as greedy in regards to having had so many husbands. She saw it as more
insecure than anything else. She was a different person now, or so she
believed. Hoped. She understood that another person could not complete her. In
fact, she had learned that another person could make her feel fragmented and
lonely. Experience had brought her that knowledge. Besides, with each divorce,
she hadn’t asked for a penny or a possession—she never liked to owe anyone
anything. The next yama was about lying. She wasn’t supposed to lie. Hmm. That
one shouldn’t have been too difficult, but just then the phone began to ring.
She was at home, so was not answering the phone a lie?

“I know you’re there,
Tess,” Michael said into the answering machine. “Please pick up. Tess?”

If she unplugged her
answering machine and turned off her phone when she didn’t feel like speaking,
then she wouldn’t be lying. That was easy enough to change. The phone, again.
Two rings. Three, and then the answering machine to the rescue.

“Tess? Call me later? Can
you do that? I have a simple question for you.”

For a moment Tess thought
about calling him back—it may be something important about work. Then she let
it go. It annoyed her that he was so sure she was home. What if she were out?
People were out at 9:00 pm on weeknights. Or what if she were busy doing something
with Neal? But of course he didn’t know that Neal being there with her could be
a possibility. She would have to remember to turn off the volume on her
answering machine when Neal was there, if he were ever there with her again.
She didn’t know what the future held, but she knew that if it held Neal, she
didn’t want to have to explain about not taking calls and for Neal to get
involved in the whole Michael insanity.

So much for her quiet
night. Her mind was on overdrive. She could try to meditate, but it was no
use—her mind was picking up random thoughts and spinning them here and there
like a spider’s web. She was confused about Neal. She sighed. How did her life
become so full of drama again? She pulled an oversized pillow off of her
bed—Michael had never understood why she had half a dozen pillows on her
bed—and nestled her head and neck onto it as she held the book in front of her.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had camped out on her floor. She felt
cozy, small, safe.

The niyamas, or the
observances, were easier for Tess to digest. Purity, contentment, accepting
pain and not causing pain, the
study of spiritual books, and self-study.
She was tired. Reclining, she closed her eyes and tried to hear her mother’s
voice. It came to her in waves: she’d catch it and then it would fade away. It
scared her—how someone could vanish from your life, bit by bit. It was hard to
imagine that she would never see her mother again. Loneliness overcame her, so
that she felt as if she was drifting far away from the shore. That’s what it
was to lose her mother: isolation, disconnection, only Tess couldn’t pinpoint
what she felt disconnected from—her past? Her heart? She regretted that she
hadn’t gone to visit her mother more. That she hadn’t been more available to
her. She supposed that she had thought that her mother would always be around,
that there would be opportunities in her life to spend time with her mother, to
get to know her, understand her better, and thinking that, she longed for
Prakash. When he had been a baby, she had held him wrapped up in her arms, safe
from all that was to come, rocking him as she walked through the house, this
very same house. There had been times she wished she was the baby and he was
the parent. She glanced at the clock. She could call Prakash. He would still be
at work. Only no, she wanted the quiet. Talking right now would require too
much work.

Tess reached with her
foot and maneuvered her mother’s afghan blanket at the edge of the bed to the
floor. She clasped it with her feet and brought it to her hands. She covered
herself and nestled onto the ground fully now, her head resting sideways on the
pillow as she moved her legs about, getting comfy. From where she lay, the bed
looked comfortable, but too far to go. She couldn’t remember having slept on
the floor in this house ever, although she could recall nights in her home
growing up in Woodstock when in her adolescence she’d hidden in her closet and
camped out on the floor at night on one of her mother’s thick, woolen Tibetan
blankets. She had felt hidden and safe those nights. In her closet, she was
able to hear herself think. Feel what she was feeling. Her secret corner of the
world. Perhaps that was what spurred her love for real estate: the search for
her own corner of the world. She wasn’t sure though if she’d know her special
spot when she found it. She had thought for a while this home she was living in
was her sacred spot, only now, with Prakash gone, with one man after another
moving in and then departing this house, it had become more of a shelter for
Tess than anything else, a place to distance herself from the world.

With her eyes closed, she
tried to imagine Neal at his house. She wondered if he were sleeping, if he
were up reading. She wondered what his bedroom looked like, if it had changed
in the 23 years since he had left home. She wondered if he thought of her while
he was at his home. She felt close to him. She barely knew him and yet she felt
closer to him than she had felt to most others in her life. It was nice to lay
thinking of him, Neal, her friend; nice that he had captured her imagination.
That’s what it came down to: one after the other, the men in her life had
captured her imagination. Something about them, or perhaps it was something
about her when she was in their presence, had fulfilled one of her fantasies
and off she went to explore it. Live out the fantasy until…she didn’t know
what. Until the fantasy shattered, she supposed. The ceiling fan spun round and
round, its movement mesmerizing Tess as she faded off, giving in to the
heaviness of her eyes, her mind, sleep encompassing her.

The ornamental engravings on the
ceiling of the ten-foot high yoga room seemed to uncoil and crawl around each
time Tess was in an inverted posture. All around her pairs of helpless feet
dangled in the air: shoulder stand,
sarvangasana
. There was something invigorating
to being upside down—it was hard to take the world serious from that point of
view. The teacher counted the final breathes and then they were in plow,
palasana
,
legs reaching beyond their heads, torsos on the ground. One more breath and
they would unwind their legs to the floor in front of them and tilt their heads
off the floor, chins reaching up towards the ceiling—fish,
malasana
.
Finally, they were moving into a deep forward bend, hands reaching towards
toes. Tess inhaled deep and with an exhale she inched her way closer to her
toes, careful to keep her abdomen on her thighs. The pulling forward motion
made the aches in her shoulders and upper back tingle. That’s what she got for
sleeping on the floor.

The teacher shut off the light
fixtures above. Sunlight beamed in through the sunroofs, shadows cutting the
glazed bamboo floor at random intervals, so that sections of it looked slick as
an ice skating rink.  In this room, Tess felt safe, sheltered from everything
that she had to do or be. Here, tucked away, the world would wait.

“Last sun salute,” the
teacher said. “Inhale, face looks up, arms reaching toward the ceiling. Exhale,
forward bend. Inhale face looks up, palms pressed into the earth, jump back,
exhale, chataranga. Inhale upward facing dog, exhale, downward facing dog. Five
breaths.”

“Finish up with an
inhale, and when you are ready, exhale and jump through. Lie on your backs and
let everything go. Corpse pose, shavasana. Rest.”

Tess spread her arms
beside her, palm up. Everything in her let go so that she felt as if she was
free falling. Freedom, peace, calmness. It wasn’t so much that Tess loved
practicing yoga, although she forgot that each time she was on her way to the
studio, but that she loved how her mind and body felt after she had practiced
yoga. Cleansed, focused, unafraid. After a lengthy shavasana, the group of
forty teacher trainers sat in a circle on the floor. Tess felt like she was at
a college sorority event, not that she had ever been in a sorority. There were
things she had done as a teenager as acts of rebellion against her mother, but
joining a sorority hadn’t appealed to her, not even as an act of rebellion. She
was her own girl, Tess. Even back then, when it was easy to be one of the
group, she had opted to find her own way.

The yoga lock-in weekends
went something like this: Friday night yoga classes, meditation, lecture.
Saturdays consisted of 9:00 am yoga class, group powwow, and afternoons spent
discussing their readings and lectures on a host of topics. Tess loved
Saturdays. Sundays were when they practice taught and spotted one another. Tess
didn’t love Sundays. She never felt as if she knew what she was doing, although
the mentors of the program were gentle with her, providing pointers and
assisting her until she would get a spot right. It was hard to get people to
move their bodies how you wanted them to move and to adjust them at the same
time, while you tried to advise them how to move into the pose utilizing all
the parts of their body. Sometimes while practice teaching, Tess wanted to run
out of the room. In all of her years of selling real estate, she had never once
felt afraid or insecure enough to want to run away.

When they all came out of
their rest, the mentors led a chant to get the group into the right mental
space. Today it was “Lokaha samasta sukhino bhavantu,” which meant, “May all
beings everywhere be happy and free.” Next was a ten minute meditation in which
they were instructed to focus on their inhales and exhales, elongating each
inhale and exhale up to eight counts. Tess couldn’t make her inhales longer
than six counts. Then it was time for “re-entry,” during which they went around
the circle and each of them had to talk for a few minutes, sharing where they
were in their yogic journeys now in regard to where they were last week. Tess
liked hearing everyone's confession. There was an intimacy in this room that
Tess had never before experienced in a group.

Dale nodded at Ganesha on
the stage and gave Tess a thumbs up. Her plan had been to go to the Ganesha
temple in downtown Brooklyn on Friday night since they had been given the night
off from teacher training. Ganesha, a Hindu God who was known as the remover of
obstacles, had become a favorite God of all the teacher trainees. Dale had
decided that it was Ganesha who she’d call on to get past her fear of marriage.
She told Tess that she had hung little Ganesha stickers and ornaments over all
of the doorways in her apartment, and carried some with her at all times. She
had gone so far as to put a Ganesha sticker on her compact mirror, and looked
at it whenever she opened her bag.

Dale was speaking to the group. She
was saying how she was beginning to feel herself open up and how she was a lot
more emotional these days. Sara shared how she noticed that she was a little
less anxious, that she was being gentler with herself. She said that she was
petrified of becoming a yoga teacher—that she couldn’t believe how much work it
was and that she didn’t know if she would be able to do it, and everyone
laughed—it seemed to be a collective fear. Then it was Tess’s turn to talk.
Tess looked around at everyone and smiled. She never knew what to say—a
two-sentence snippet made life seem trivial.

“I feel a little more open to new
possibilities,” Tess said, and Dale stifled a laugh.

“To The Bakery?” Kim asked when they
were set free for their 45-minute lunch break. She led the way down the block
and around the corner.

“I think Dale would have a coronary if
we didn’t go,” Sara said.

“Don’t blame it on me. Tess is
obsessed with the tortilla soup,” Dale said.

Dale had three cookies stacked on a
plate—chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal raisin—that she broke up into
morsels. She was in the midst of picking out the chocolate chips and putting
them in her mouth.

“What are you going to do with three
cookies?” Sara said. “Have a bake sale?”

“It was three cookies for $5 today. I
couldn’t pass up a bargain.”

“It’s always three cookies for $5,”
Kim said.

Tess blew on her tortilla soup before
she swallowed a spoonful down. Each Saturday she couldn’t wait to get her fix.

Sara dipped her bread flat into
Tess’s soup and winked at her as she took a bite. “I say we all open up our own
yoga studio.”

Sara was a well-off retired
investment broker that had just turned 40. She was in the midst of a divorce,
and on certain days, she was bitter, while on other days she was optimistic and
so alive that you felt her energy—manic, but hopeful and exciting—the moment
you were in her presence.

“I’m all for that,” Kim said. At 30,
she was married to a man twenty years her senior and had a five-year old son.
She was secure, calm, beautiful at a glance, although more than once, Tess had
noticed tears in her eyes during a yoga class.

“If we own a yoga studio, we may
become monsters like our mentors,” Dale said. “Sorry, but I opt not to become
an asshole.”

“They're good people,” Sara said. “They
just don't have a clue about how to run abusiness.”

Kim's eyebrows peaked.

“Good people? We're their yoga
slaves, and what's more, we’re paying them thousands of dollars to listen to
them get into cat fights during training and to work for them for free.”                     

Tess laughed. “Wow, I’m glad I’m off
working all day, although they did just ask me to help them look for new spaces
for studios.”

“Why shouldn’t they be looking for
new studio space—with all the money they make off of us, why not invest in
another studio? Think about it: there are 40 of us in the program, paying over
$8,000 each,” Sara said.

“Just make sure to clock those real
estate hours as part of your Karma yoga,” Dale said.

“I say that you use that time to look
for a yoga studio space for us,” Sara said. “I'm being serious. I think that
may be my next career move. Not a bad way to spend the extra cash I get from my
divorce settlement. Yoga without politics will be my logo.”

“I'll work for you,” Dale said.

“Do you want to teach yoga, Tess?”
Kim said.

“I have a business to run,” Tess
said. “I think I’d get fired if I left to teach yoga.”

Sara hmm-ed and moved on to Dale. “What’s
the wedding story?”

“I've decided to forget about it for
the next two weeks,” Dale said.

Kim laughed. “Did you tell that to
Kyle?”

“I told him that I need to air out,”
Dale said.

“So you're not going to talk to him
for two weeks?” Kim said.

Dale shrugged. “I’m taking a little
break. If we’re meant to be, then two weeks apart shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Trust me,” Sara said. “Marriage is
no fun. I would use these two weeks to plan your permanent exit strategy.”

“You make it sound like she’s
escaping from jail. Don’t listen to her,” Kim said. “It can be fun. Sometimes.”

“Ask Tess,” Sara said. “She's the
marriage expert.”

“If I were the marriage expert, I
suppose I’d still be married,” Tess said.

“Would you marry again, Tess?” Kim
said.

“Oh, who knows? If you would have
told me a few months back that I’d be in a yoga teacher training program I
would have said you were delusional, so I suppose anything is possible.”

“Well I won’t be marrying again
anytime soon,” Sara said.

“I think it’s that time,” Kim said
tidying up everyone’s plates and garbage onto her tray and standing up. “We
need to head back.”

Tess rolled down her car window at
the streetlight and breathed in the muggy June air. Others hated summers in the
city. She didn't mind them, although if she closed her eyes for a moment and
thought of the cool, airy breezes of Woodstock, she longed for those days and
nights when she walked around barefoot amidst the trees, the cool grass
tickling her feet, waking each morning to the song of the wind chimes that hung
outside her window. “Mom?” she said. “Are you there?” Perhaps her mother was
busy making rounds with others before she docked with Tess. This much Tess had
learned of life: you had your time with a person and then it was over.

She was on the West Side Highway
passing by Battery Park, waiting to make the sharp left turn, which would lead
her into the midtown tunnel. Each time she passed by the pit where the World
Trade Center had stood, a part of her sunk. It was almost two years since and
yet when she thought back to day, closing down Best, sending everyone home to
their families, staring at her television screen, watching the same scenes over
and over on CNN—the planes crashing into the towers, the flames, people jumping
from windows like birds with broken wings, the phone calls with her mother,
Prakash, it could have been yesterday. The grief that had overtaken the city
had been suffocating, as if everyone was caught under a tarp. She had driven up
to her mother’s house, her car searched at each toll bridge, and camped out in
Woodstock for a few days with Michael, while her mother and her followers had
meditated and prayed for peace.

Tess turned into the tunnel lanes.
Sometimes she would have horrible thoughts—the walls of the tunnel closing in
on her, a brick in the wall coming loose and water overcoming her. There was a
no-man's land quality to the tunnel, a hollow, no-way-out feeling. Riding
through it she held her breath. And then she was out of the tunnel, the
pool-blue sky broad and expansive, and she was thinking about the yoga girls
and how it was a job to let people into your life, to try and explain in words
what was in your mind and heart. People got frustrated when they couldn’t
understand you, but the truth was that they couldn’t even understand
themselves, so why would they think that understanding someone else was a
possibility?

There were random moments when she
was driving, like now, that Tess wished that she could keep going, no
destination in mind. She wondered where she would end up if she followed her
intuition, turning here and there. Would she know when she reached her
destination, or would she be unsure, always? Cars merged onto the Belt Parkway
while cars slowed down, switched lanes, and made their way toward the exit.
11N, her exit, was approaching, and all of her wishes to keep going faded away.
She was anxious to get home, to settle in and relax.

She passed Toys R Us, then Nick's
Lobster House, and when she approached King's Plaza Mall, she glided into the
right lane, maneuvering her way around buses and gypsy vans. She shook her head
in her rear-view mirror at a man in an orange Cadillac beeping at her and
giving her the finger, trying to cut her off. Brooklyn’s finest. Often, this
place was enough to give her a heart attack, and yet she couldn't really
imagine herself living anywhere else. Perhaps that was how things went in
life—you got comfortable and then you stayed. When she got to the 24-hour
one-stop on the corner of Mill Avenue, she made a right. Maybe, though, staying
in one place meant missing out on what other places had to offer. If Neal had
stayed where he was, they would have never met—he would never have known this
other, away-from-the-monastery life. It was a strange phenomenon, this
knowing-where-you-were-supposed-to-be aspect of life. How did anyone ever know?
Tess wondered what her life would have been like if she had never left
Woodstock.