From Comfortable Distances by Jodi Weiss Page B

my whole life
story, it’s just that it’s too involved. It was an endearing expression, one
that made the mystery of Neal inviting to her when she was near him versus
fearful.
    “It just never fit into
my lifestyle, I suppose,” Neal said so that Tess smiled smugly. He’s gay.
Definitely gay. With that body, it all made sense. She would let him keep his
secret until he was ready to share, although she had an urge to tell him, it
was okay by her, that she wasn’t one to judge.
    “Children change
everything. Your life becomes this other life once you have kids. I never
envisioned myself having kids. All through growing up and even when I first got
married, I didn’t imagine having kids,” Tess said.
    “What changed your mind?”
Neal said.
    “Getting pregnant,” Tess
said.
    There were in front of
St. Bernard’s Church; it was hectic with children being dropped off for school.
Parents were beginning to congregate and chat as the children pulled open the
heavy church doors and disappeared inside. The church looked different to Tess
in the daytime than it did in the night. Tess shivered at the thought of
spending one’s days inside the church. It reminded her of an institution, until
she studied the stained glass windows, whose colors dazzled and sparkled under
the glare of the sunlight. Squinting, the colors melded into a rainbow. How
odd—it was the second time in one week that she’d seen a rainbow and it hadn't
even rained.
    “Do you see it?” she
asked. She was afraid to look away and lose it. “There,” she said, pointing
ahead. “The rainbow.”
    “My mother used to tell me
that the other half of the rainbow was beneath the surface. She said that there
was always two arcs to it – one I saw and one I didn’t, and that there was no
pot of gold,” Neal said.
    Tess had never heard
that; it took her a moment to process. She couldn’t tell if it was a hopeful
comment or a sullen one. 
    “Is your mother still
alive?” Tess asked.
    “Yes.” He was silent for
a few moments. “Shall we head back?”
    “Sure,” Tess said and
once they made the turnaround, “Is your father alive?”
    “No,” Neal said. “My
father passed a few years back—he was sick.”
    “I’m sorry,” Tess said.
    “Death is a part of life,”
Neal said.
    Tess couldn’t figure this
guy out; at moments he was tender and others he sounded robotic, like he was
giving her stock answers from some script in his brain.
     “What about you?” Neal
said.
    “I don’t know where my
father is,” Tess said. “I haven’t had any contact with him in decades.”
    She felt him looking at
her, but her eyes were transfixed on the waving tree limbs in the distance.
    “My father was an
American business man who met my mother while he was in Thailand on business.
He brought her over to the US. I’m sure that they were in love, but the
Buddhist way was more important to my mother than bonds. She was an advocate of
nonattachment.”
    “That mustn’t have been
easy for you as a child.”
    “I didn’t understand it,”
Tess said. “My father packed up and went back to the Midwest when I was two,
and my mother stayed on in Woodstock. I think that was the beginning of my not
buying into Buddhism. My mother and her groupies were all about freedom and
liberation. They claimed that the road to bliss was all about non attachment,
and yet they were the ones who clung to their beliefs more than anyone I had
ever met.”
    “Sometimes we get so
caught up in what we practice that it becomes hard to see the contradictions.”
    “I resented my father for
leaving me with her. For not fighting for me. I blamed him.”
    “Maybe he thought that
way of life would be best for you.”
    “Maybe.”
    Above, clouds were moving
in; a cool breeze had crept into the air. The trees’ limbs shimmied as if they
were swaying to a melody.
    “I spent most of my
childhood hoping that one day when I woke up or when I came home from school,
my father was going to