by Marco Vassi
"Maybe it would be better to leave it alone in the first place," Larry said.
"Maybe," Alec replied. "But you've made the leap with your commitment to zen. And you're finding yourself up against that wall, aren't you?"
With Alec's words, Larry remembered a time he'd gone to sit in a zendo run by a different school than his, where everyone sat facing a wall instead of open space. He recalled the feeling that if he sat long enough the wall would disintegrate, dissolve before his eyes. And suddenly he was very glad he'd come to the workshop, to discover that Eleanor was working on the same problem he was, from an entirely different method and tradition.
But no sooner had he reached that resolution than Alec once again yanked the rug out from under him. "For all you know," the director went on, "Eleanor may actually be having an affair with Roger and their exercise was a sophisticated kind of camouflage, a purloined letter before your very eyes. That would be a wall that would mock any insight you think you've attained, wouldn't it?"
As he had earlier, when Alec had nailed him as lying when he told Eleanor he'd dropped by on a whim, Larry got a sense of how dangerous the edges were in the workshop. Alec's game was like zen in another way, that whenever it seemed there had been a breakthrough, it proved to be an escape into another chamber of the prison. In zen, only final enlightenment got one outside, and Larry wondered what the equivalent was in Alec's system.
"What about you?" Larry asked Alec, "Are you free of all the walls?"
"My wife left me a long time ago," he replied.
There was something in Alec's voice, a sadness that wasn't self-pitying, that touched Larry at the core, even as he struggled to remind himself that even intonations of sincerity were not necessarily anything more than tools of interaction for Alec. Larry glanced at the others to see how they responded to his words, and found that they were all looking down or off to one side. Except for Eleanor. She was looking at him fiercely, with an expression he could not label.
It was more than he could handle. "Well," he said, forcing himself to smile, "It's been fascinating." He stood up. "Thanks for the tea and the exercise." He walked over to Eleanor, bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips. "See you later," he said.
"See you later," she replied.
"Thanks for dropping by," Alec said. "It was valuable for us too."
The others said their goodbyes and Larry went outside. More than anything in the world, at that moment, he didn't want to think or to feel. He got on his motorcycle and headed back toward his house, and the meditation room that had once seemed a port in the storm of life, but now appeared more like the eye of a hurricane.
8
He spent the afternoon sitting, with the usual result. By the time Eleanor returned he felt stable, capable. She came back in a subdued mood, greeted him pleasantly, took a shower, and made dinner. The meal was a bit strained. They had to talk about the afternoon, but neither of them wanted to bring up any details that might lead to hostilities, so they kept the conversation general. Larry talked about the parallels he found between Alec's work and zen practice. Eleanor told stories about some of the experiments Alec had tried with them. From the outside, they would have seemed to be having an amiable evening, and on one level they were; but between them there was a map of the minefield that they had to negotiate in order to maintain any communication at all.
After dinner Larry did the dishes and Eleanor went into the living room. When he joined her he found that she'd built a fire and was sitting in the easy chair reading.
"Interested in t.v. tonight?" he asked.
"No, I'd rather get into this. Alec asked us all to read it. But you go ahead if you want, I can go into my room."
At the mention of her bedroom, Larry flinched inwardly, remembering how he'd gone through her clothing and searched the dresser and found the cigarettes and Polaroid. "No," he said, "I'm going to try to finish Letting Go."
"That's the one you said was so hard to read."
"It's like walking through wet cement."
Larry stretched out on the couch and picked up his book, and the two of them read for over an hour in comfortable silence, broken only by the crackle and occasional spit of the fire. Once Eleanor got up to stir the flame and throw on a few more logs, and when she moved again it was to ask Larry if he wanted tea.
"Love some," he said without looking up.
She came back a few minutes later holding a tray with a teapot and two cups. He sat up, and instead of going back to her chair, Eleanor sat on the couch next to him. She was wearing the white kaftan she usually put on in the evenings and the fabric was a palette of red and orange reflections from the fire. As she poured the tea her face was calm, inscrutable, and he was taken with the feeling that he didn't know her at all. She was familiar, but mysterious.
"How're you feeling?" he asked.
"Tired, I guess. And lonely."
"Lonely?"
"It's been such a long time since you've held me. I don't mean for sex, I mean just holding me." Her expression remained the same and there was no movement in her body, but tears welled from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
Larry was aghast. He had no sense now that she was acting, but only felt the sadness that emanated from her. In a flash, all of his suspicions, all of the distancing he'd done, struck him as cruel, a selfish scrambling for survival at the expense of his caring for Eleanor. He reached out and took her hands in his. "I ..." he began, but she shook her head. "Please," she said, "No words. I just need you to hold me."
He put his arms around her but their position was awkward and he slowly fell back on the couch, bringing her with him. They straightened their legs and shifted around until they fit perfectly, embracing one another, pressing their bodies together, faces cheek to cheek. Larry felt the wetness of her tears against his skin and he held her more tightly. She caught her breath, convulsed once, and then began sobbing, gently and almost soundlessly.
They lay like that for a long time, until Eleanor became still. He pulled back a few inches and kissed her eyes and wiped the moisture from her face. She blinked once and looked at him. "I'm sorry for breaking down like this," she said. "But I just felt lost."
Larry smiled. "I guess this is our week for having good cries."
"Our week," she repeated. "It seems forever since we talked about anything that was ours instead of yours and mine."
"Well, we've been pursuing different paths."
"Are we going to make it, Larry? Are we still going to be together in September?"
"Maybe. There are times when it doesn't look like it, but maybe our bond is stronger than we are."
"Boy, you sure can be romantic," she said, teasing.
"It's hard to talk mush when you've got a shaved head," he replied.
She nuzzled against him. "Can we just lie here for a while? It feels so good."
"Best idea I've heard all day."
They squirmed about until they were as close as they could get, as much of their bodies touching as possible, and when they were comfortably glued together they didn't move at all, but sank slowly into the soft cushions of the couch, the pull of gravity, and the breath rising and falling between them, until it seemed they were a single organism and could not distinguish where one left off and the other began.
Larry felt himself dozing, and was startled when Eleanor turned sharply, rolling first to her back and then to her other side, but he settled back into somnolence when she pressed herself against him again, wriggling a bit until concave and convex matched, her spine curved into his chest and belly, her buttocks in the hollow between his hips, knees aligned, and his toes sliding against the soles of her feet.
Her head rested on his left arm, and he put his right arm around her. But as he did so, his hand came to rest on her breasts. He felt a moment's hesitation, then cupped one breast in his palm, squeezed gently, and relaxed his fingers. The touch was one of sensuous reassurance, but not without its erotic undercurrent. At the same time, there was
a familiar warmth and tingling beginning in his thighs and belly, and finally a stirring of his penis as it nestled close to the promise between Eleanor's thighs.
For a few moments he wondered whether he should go with these promptings, but decided against it. Both of them had been rubbed raw recently and while sex would certainly feel good it might open up wounds that should be allowed to heal. The important thing, he reasoned, was that they remain affectionate and test the foundations of their life together. Given that, sex would flower in its proper time.
He took several deep breaths, his stomach ballooning against Eleanor's back, and shortly he began to drift toward sleep again. Eleanor was very still and he guessed she was already out. The fire burned down and the tea grew cold in its cups. "Maybe we'll just sleep here like this tonight," Larry thought as his consciousness shut down. "I'll have to get a blanket sometime during the night."
That was the last thing he remembered before being awakened by a sound he didn't recognize at first, and then located as coming from Eleanor. She was making noises in her sleep, obviously having a dream. At first there were whimpers, like those of a child who's lost its mother in a crowd. Then, as Larry became more alert, they changed into moans and gasps. He thought they were sounds of fear and that she was having a nightmare, but in a moment realized he was at the wrong end of the spectrum. Eleanor had begun to move her pelvis and was grinding against him. And with that, the sounds she was making lost all ambiguity and he recognized the unequivocal cadences of mounting desire.
Larry smiled in the dark, feeling privileged and protective, but his expression froze on his lips when Eleanor cried out softly, "Oh yes, Michael, oh yes." His body went stiff, as though someone had slid a long, thin, icy needle into the base of his spine.
"Hold on," he told himself. "It's just a dream. And maybe you didn't hear right. Don't start getting crazy again."
But his advice was shredded both by Eleanor's increasing frenzy and the erection that was rising of its own accord and rushing to meet the invitation of Eleanor's churning buttocks. Then she whispered, "Michael," once more, so distinctly that he could have no doubt about what he was hearing. Larry continued to lie there and hold her, but felt like a man who has just been pushed from a cliff. There was nothing he could do but wait until he hit bottom.
After a while, Eleanor stopped moving and talking. She smacked her lips several times, and then became completely still and silent. Larry waited a few minutes and, as delicately as he could, disentangled himself and slipped off the couch. When he stood up he was fiercely awake, burning with emotion. He wanted to shake Eleanor and question her, but realized how pointless and harsh that would be. Their lying together had revived feelings of closeness he'd put on the shelf, and having them not only yanked away but turned against him left him stunned and hurt.
"Maybe it's nothing," he said to himself, "But why am I trembling?" And, with an almost audible click in his brain, like that of a radio being switched on, the competing voices started their dialogue in his mind.
"What do you need," one said, "Handwriting on the wall? She's got another man, maybe more than one."
"You're off the deep end again," said a second voice. "She was having a dream. How many times have you dreamed about old girlfriends? How do you know what you've said in your sleep?"
"It isn't just that," replied the first voice. "What about the torn panties, and the night she came home late, and the bruise on her throat?"
"You call that evidence of something?" came the rejoinder. "None of that proves anything. It's just your imagination seeing patterns where there are none."
And as though on cue, the third voice cut in. "Why are you caught in this struggle at all?" it said. "This is all maya. There's nothing here but a woman asleep on a couch. Let her be whatever she is. Don't get involved in her actions and feelings. The true teaching is dispassion and universal friendliness. Stay away from intensity and entanglements."
"I can't just run away," Larry said to himself, blanking out the voices. "She isn't just a body lying there, and she isn't only my wife. She is the focus of all my meditation, the koan that life has given me. Loving her or hating her is not enough. I have to solve her."
He turned and left the room silently. He went into his bedroom and put on a sweater and socks and a woolen cap, then went outside and into the woodshed. The night was cold but he knew from experience that after a half hour of sitting he wouldn't feel the temperature. He lit a candle and a stick of incense, and lowered himself onto his pillow. He assumed the posture and with a great act of will hurled himself into his sitting, like a sweating man might dive into a cool lake.
He sat until dawn, moving only to light a second candle when the first burned out, and to put a new stick of incense in the holder from time to time. The woods all around were uncannily quiet, and all the houses for miles around were dark. Larry felt as though he were the only person awake in the world.
It took over an hour for his feelings to subside and his mind to empty, and then the magic took over once again, with all human complexity seen from a distance as a bizarre frenetic melodrama, and only the simple structure of the body itself and its ancient rhythms of heartbeat and circulation and breath as real. By the time the sun appeared, Larry had regained his center.
He got up and went into the bathroom to pee and wash his face, and then returned for the regular two sessions he ordinarily sat each morning. He realized that nothing had been resolved as far as his uncertainty about Eleanor's fidelity, but the entire problem had been put in perspective. And as he listened to the first birdsongs and watched the space get brighter with the day, he was sure he would see the matter through with the compassion and dignity that had become his ideals.
But his composure was rattled by the sound of the car starting up and moving off down the road. It wasn't yet seven o'clock and Eleanor had never left so early before. He frowned but did not move until the timer went off, indicating that the forty-five minutes was up. Then he stood, bowed, blew out the candle, and went into the house.
As he walked to the front door he noticed that the sky was grey and the rising sun had already disappeared behind a thick cloud cover. Rain seemed certain. He went into the kitchen and saw that Eleanor had not made coffee, and there was a note slipped under the napkin holder on the table.
"I'm sorry," it read, "But I just couldn't deal with my feelings this morning. I was afraid that if we had breakfast together I'd say things I'd regret later. I woke up in the middle of the night and found that you were gone. I was shivering with cold and wondered why you didn't at least put a blanket over me if you were going to leave me there. I went to the woodshed and peeked in and found you sitting on your pillow in the dark. It was too weird. The shaved head, the robe, staring at a statue, looking like a zombie. And not caring that we'd been holding each other. I still love you but I don't know how much more of this I can handle." It was signed, "E."
Larry flexed his brain to keep his mind empty. He refused to be drawn into Eleanor's reactions. The only part of her note that nicked his conscience was her reference to his not putting a blanket over her. That was definitely a lapse in common consideration, but then so was her calling out another man's name in her sleep. As to the rest, however weird she found his appearance in the meditation room, it was no stranger than the antics that went on in Alec's class.
"Where did she go at this hour?" he wondered. "To have coffee in town, or else to see her lover?" He waited for the fantasies that seized him when he began to think about Eleanor and another man, but this time there was nothing. He even tried to conjure an image, but found he couldn't even picture Eleanor's face much less what expressions she might produce making love to someone else. He felt relieved at first and then apprehensive. As disturbing as the erotic fantasies had been, at least he'd still felt a connection to her. Now, it was as though she'd been erased, or had erected some psychic shield so he couldn't even find her in his mind.
"Maybe it's really over between us,
" he thought, and with the idea felt a great loss and liberation. Without her there would be an imbalance for a while, a sense of having had a leg cut off. But then he would enter a new space, one in which he did not have to be concerned with her wants and needs, or have to modify his own course of action to coincide with her studies and career.
In any case, she was gone for the day, and he had to look after his own schedule. He made tea and ate breakfast, then shaved and showered, the hot water taking the stiffness of the all-night sit out of his muscles, and by the time he was in the living room, enjoying a second cup of tea and a cigarette, the day had begun to darken, promising not only rain but a storm.
9
The storm seized the earth and sky in its passionate embrace. Larry leaned against the thick trunk of a pine tree, his arms curved behind him to hug the rough bark. He was barefoot, and naked under the long slicker that covered him from ankles to head.
The air was water, for the rain had assumed command of the night and brought the other elements under its sway. The ground had turned to mud. Only the lightning vied for supremacy, exploding sporadically. Otherwise, there was only blackness, a thick dimensional blackness that went on into eternity, the mysterious emptiness in which the galaxies swam. But when the lightning did flash, creation occurred, and the woods was etched in brilliant detail for a jagged fraction of a second. Trees and shrubs and startled deer leapt from nothingness into being, held for an instant, poised, motionless, real beyond all imagining, and then lapsed back into primordial darkness.