by Blair Hurley
This was ’96 or ’97. Soon the lawyers bringing suits against the archdiocese of Boston would begin quietly building their cases, preparing to drain the accounts of Boston’s Catholic churches. Soon the churches with their rose and amber light would begin to shutter themselves, like the long string of strip malls along Route 9 (Candlepins, the retro bowling alley, with its warped wooden floors and cardboard pizza; Feng Shui, the Eastern-style furniture and rug outlet; Hearth and Home, your local fireplace fixture specialist), spooling out of Boston and westward, brightening the long forest road with their floodlit empty parking lots, tokens of failed enterprise.
THE NEW ROSHI
“I thought I was rid of you,” she told her Master on the phone.
The unperturbed silence on the other end made her sweat. “You didn’t really think that,” he said.
It was late; she’d just come back from dinner with Jocelyn. Her little kitchenette in the corner of the studio was still piled with unshelved dishes and pans. She opened the fridge, pressed a can of soda to her forehead, trying to breathe calmly.
“You can’t get rid of me,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you? Don’t you remember?”
It was almost plaintive, this simple call. Of course she remembered all the times he had told her that the master-student bond couldn’t be broken. How even across lifetimes, masters and students recognized each other in different bodies.
“How did you get my number?” she asked instead. They’d never spoken on the phone before. Theirs was the rare relationship that left almost no trace: no call histories or e-mails, only a scribbled number for the Zendo in her address book. But the traces were all over her anyway. Hearing his voice, she could feel the sound settling into the familiar grooves of her brain, turning round and round.
“If you are still dedicated to your education, then I can teach you for a while over the phone,” he said evenly, as if she had said nothing at all. “Is that how we will continue?”
She stood and paced a few steps, an old anger rising. “I left you, not Buddhism.”
“You didn’t leave me. I’m right here. I know what you’ve learned, and I know what you still need.”
“You don’t know me.” Now she sounded like a petulant child. But he didn’t know how or why she had converted; he didn’t know about Jules, or her mother. Those were her secrets. All she had that he hadn’t touched.
A long pause: Was he clearing his throat? Did he feel some emotion at this moment? Did he need her? Did he say to himself, Yes, I have this need?
“I know what we’ve promised each other,” he said. “I promised I would always be a home for you. Have you forgotten the vow you made? You promised your loyalty. Your service.”
“I know. I remember.” She did not say that she had already looked up the location of a new Zendo. She had spoken on the phone to a Japanese monk, who’d set up a meeting with her new roshi. The secret burned in her belly. If she closed her eyes—that was all it took—she’d be back in her Master’s private room, listening to his instruction.
In Zen, her Master tells her three years into her training, the wives of priests are called “tea ladies.” They are there to serve the men in their spiritual work. This job, her Master assures her, is no less important than the work of puncturing the wall of illusion and discovering the secret dharma. So she sits up straight and whisks the bright green matcha. She pours the tea and offers the hot cup in her burning hands. He takes it and sips, and then she is permitted to sip, too.
She pictures those tea ladies through the ages, greeting visitors at the door and taking their coats. Generating good karma as they poured the tea and backed away, knees together, taking tiny shuffling steps. What virtues were they storing up, squirreling away for their next, luckier lives?
Any protest she might make would necessarily take the form of I want. And in Zen, you had to want nothing. So she tells herself, I shall not. You make yourself happy with what you have.
Sometimes the ceremony feels like a wedding. As he drinks from the cup, he looks her full in the face, and she finds herself trembling and wet-eyed, as though they have committed to something larger, the bond of a lifetime. She knows he feels it, too. Often they reach for each other as soon as their cups are empty, and this, too, feels like part of the sacred rite.
What’s so wrong about what they do, anyway? Just sex? She’s long gotten over her Catholic horror of it. Jules, all the silly funny needy things they did together, took care of that. He taught her that a person could feed you in more ways than one. What’s so wrong with just feeling her Master’s hand in her hair, of responding to the voice of someone who knows her on the most intimate levels? You want someone who has an interest in your soul, don’t you?
On her day off from work, she went babysitting. Paul’s kids were June, eleven, and Charlie, eight. Nicole saw them only once every few months, but they loved her. She was strange and interesting to them, not yet a cliché as she was to adults. They liked to hear her stories: the one about the Indian prince who accidentally marries a snake. The old woman who was cruel to a pauper and was reborn as his donkey. The dragon who wanted to be human. Paul listened to the stories suspiciously, waiting for the moral.
Marion worked partly at home for a publishing imprint specializing in travel books. While she spoke on the phone in the kitchen, making plans for a business lunch, Nicole listened to June perform the latest German waltz she’d learned on the piano, lips pursed in concentration, her straight dark bangs hanging stylishly low over her eyes. Whenever Nicole came to her brother’s townhouse, there were signs of performance; last Thanksgiving, she’d been amazed by the many courses and the long rows of silverware at each plate, the piano gleaming darkly, the homemade pastries, the children presented in stiff little outfits that reminded her so much of her own childhood skirts and stockings.
June wanted her to play something; she hadn’t since middle school, when she and Paul would stumble through a minuet on a neighbor’s upright. But her fingers still knew how, she was sure of it. She let them move over the keys, remembering their relationship. It was like meditating—quieting the mind, listening to the body.
Somewhere in the middle of “Für Elise” she became aware that Marion had entered the room and was standing behind June, a hand on her shoulder. “Your aunt plays very nicely for someone who hasn’t played in years, doesn’t she?” said Marion.
There was something lightly galling in the way her sister-in-law had asked. There was, in fact, nearly always something abrasive about her, always at least one comment or arch look that made Nicole chew over the encounter for hours.
She figured Paul must have gone over the highlights of his sister’s life, the headaches she had caused, the roles she’d played: dropout, runaway. How she’d disappeared without a word for months. But had he told Marion what it was all about? Had he told her about the quest? Had he told her about the money he’d lent? And whether he was ashamed of her?
She thought, Someday I would like to sit down and tell you the whole story. I want you to understand what my life was like. Who I was trying to be.
“Where’s Paul?” Nicole asked.
“He’s back in Boston. Another medical sales convention. Well, I have to go. Have fun, everybody.” She swept her children up in rough hugs, and then she was gone, and suddenly the day felt lighter, full of possibility.
They splashed in their rubber boots to get bacon cheeseburgers at Zip Burger, a cheerful hole in the wall, then took the subway to Central Park. By then the rain was clearing. June and Charlie knew all the trails, but they were amused by her disorientation and let her navigate, looping back, dead-ending into ponds or statues or stone-walled bridges. Finally they reached the Egyptian obelisk and stared at the hieroglyphics, trying to make out characters long obscured by city smog. Then June nudged Charlie, and they darted away through the trees; it would be a little light hazing for the new babysitter. They knew Central Park better than she did and wanted to see whether she would panic and
call their mother. Was their tribe sacrosanct?
She was equal to that. She sat down on the steps and closed her eyes. Namu Amida butsu. Let her breathing take over.
She heard them returning before she had chanted three times. “You’re so weird,” said June. “How did you know we would come back?”
“I have my ways.”
That made her seem mysterious and wise. They drew in closer. June was scowling; she had serious concerns, questions on her mind. “You told us in Buddhism, there’s no soul,” she said.
“That’s right.” Dear Lord, I’ve become one of those people who relate everything back to accepting Jesus in your heart, she thought. But they wanted to hear, didn’t they? They had asked.
“But if you do something wrong, then whose sin is it?” June asked. “Shouldn’t you still feel guilty?”
Oh, you good Catholic girl, Nicole thought. “Buddhism says the person you are today might be a little different, but she depends on the person you were before. You choose every moment who to be next. Your mistakes are your own.”
June nodded, clenching and reclenching her fists. “But with no soul, who are you?”
She wanted to tell her, That part nearly broke me, too. There were the koans her Master had whispered to her over the years, challenging her to crack puzzles that had no answer, mazes with no entrance or exit. He told her the koan of the girl with two souls: a man fell in love with a girl against their parents’ wishes and married her and took her away. When he returned much later, he was shocked to find the girl sleeping in her parents’ house: she had been sleeping there as if enchanted all these years. Which is the real girl? her Master asked. Which one is you?
She and the children were standing above a great flight of stairs leading down to the rear of the Met. A strange feeling of vertigo overcame her, as if she might go flying down the steps. She said, “I’ll tell you a Zen koan. They’re like riddles with a lesson in them.” She paraphrased: “Two monks were walking together down a very muddy road. It was raining, and the road was beginning to flood. Soon they met a pretty young girl in a kimono, unable to get across the road because of the water.
“‘Come on, girl,’ said the first monk. He picked her up and carried her across the road.
“The monks went on, but eventually the second monk said, ‘We monks don’t go near females, especially young and pretty ones. It’s against the rules. Why did you do that?’
“‘I left the girl there,’ said the first monk. ‘Are you still carrying her?’”
The children were silent, working it out. Nicole remembered her Master giving her this koan near the beginning of their relationship, when she’d been so afraid of what they were doing, how wrong it was. He sent her these coded messages in reply. What did the koan mean? That to regret was the true sin. Love is an act, so let’s act.
She remembered the way his hands trailed over her body. The way time did not seem to pass in that windowless back room. It was like being insulated from time and memory.
Now that she was outside that space, the world seemed windy and dangerous.
They wandered down the stairs and looked at the artists selling paintings outside the Met, the canvases wrapped in plastic against the threat of rain. One table was offering little Indian statues, and she bought them each a bronze one, a female Buddha of wisdom, a male Buddha of compassion. As they climbed the stairs, taking the scenic route back through the park, Charlie and June started bickering. June said, “You never understand when I tell you things,” and Charlie insisted that he did. Nicole watched June’s face; she was carrying something heavy around with her today. Nicole wished she could help her with it, but could anyone, really? Had anyone been able to help when she was seventeen?
The next time she looked around, June pushed Charlie hard. He staggered, and one foot reached for purchase but missed. For a moment she saw that he was going to fall down the granite stairs. She lunged and caught his shirtsleeve, and he slammed to the ground, safely in her grip. June backed away, her face white.
Nicole crouched and hauled Charlie into her lap. He was crying; he had a scrape above his eyebrow. It was astonishing how much blood could pour from such a superficial wound. “You’re all right, you’re all right,” she told Charlie, and in the same breath, to June: “You could have really hurt him! Don’t ever, ever push someone on a flight of stairs!”
June burst into tears. Then Nicole had to pull them both together and comfort them, awkwardly, because she was their friend and not their mother.
They cleaned up in a café restroom and went home holding hands, all of them shaken. “Charlie had a bit of a fall,” she said when they walked in the door. Marion ran upstairs at once for Band-Aids, pulling Charlie with her. June followed slowly.
Nicole stood in the foyer for a while, listening to the running of the tap as Marion cleaned the scrape. “He tripped, Mom,” said June. Then quickly: “It wasn’t Aunt Nic’s fault.”
“We’ll see,” Marion said.
As she was putting her coat back on, Marion came downstairs holding the two Buddha figurines Nicole had bought for the children. “What are these?” Marion asked. Her voice was cold.
“They’re figurines from the Met,” said Nicole hesitantly, hating the way she so often felt like a disappointing child with Marion.
“No. What are these.” Marion pointed.
Nicole squinted. “Oh. They’re swastikas.” They were etched on the arms, unmistakable.
“Can you explain to me why you would want to give them toys with swastikas?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice them. They’re an ancient Indian symbol.” She fell silent, debating how much to say. The swastika was a symbol of peace, found on many Hindu and Buddhist statues and paintings; Nazi Germany had taken the spokes of the wheels and turned them in the opposite direction, to symbolize war. But whenever she had tried to tell Marion trivia, she’d failed to interest her. Her sister-in-law was not in a mood to hear it now, the small features of her face close and furious. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I didn’t see them there.”
Marion handed the figurines to her. “I just don’t think they’re appropriate.”
She got on the train for home, but a few stops down the line she got off and walked, needing the time to think, afraid that when she got there her Master would call, more afraid that she would listen. He’d been feeding her koans about monks and lovers, daring her to read between the lines of the story. “Listen to this one,” he’d said the night before.
The nun Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, asking for a private meeting.
Eshun did not reply. The next day the master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun rose. Addressing the one who had written her, she said, “If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.”
She dropped the statues in the trash.
On Saturday she was in the lobby of a sleek obsidian skyscraper on the Upper East Side, searching for her new Zendo. The listing said it was on the fourth floor, above a law firm and below a massage parlor.
In the whisper-quiet elevator, she took deep breaths and tried to remember the correct procedure for meeting a new master. She pressed her hands to her face, practicing the deep humble bow. She covered her mouth with her hand and made a soft sound, her last for a while, sucked up by the plush red pile of the carpeted space. The first moves, she knew, would be in silence.
The door opened on a long hall lined with rice-paper walls. A monk greeted her and took her shoes, and led her past open doorways; she saw the bare meditation rooms, along with a more modern reception area with a desk and computer, and a temple room, holding its shrine studded with incense sticks. The monk stopped at a closed door. “This is the private meeting room of our roshi,” he said gravely. “Do you know how to proceed?”
She nodded and entered the room, bowing deeply. The roshi was seated on an elevate
d wooden platform, the wide sleeves of his robe making him look like an equilateral triangle. The small room, covered in tatami mats, was bare except for a jade Buddha, a lone stick of incense, and a bronze bell at the roshi’s right hand. If a student tried to explain a koan and gave an unsatisfying answer, the roshi would ring the bell, sending him away for weeks of more work. At any moment he could lift the bell and send her bowing and scuttling away.
His hand rose; silently, he was gesturing to the space in front of him. She made a quick prostration, then tucked her legs under herself, pressing her thighs tightly together to still their quivering. In the dim honey-colored light, she couldn’t help thinking that the roshi looked like her Buddha statue from the Boston art museum’s meditation room, his skin flecked amber like old bronze, his face and body grave and still, his shaved head gleaming in the recessed lights.
“I hear from my assistant that you have studied for several years,” he said. His Japanese accent was strong, softening his r’s and blurring his o’s. “I would like to hear from you your understanding of the dharma. If you please, what are the Four Noble Truths?”
She sat up straighter and readied herself. So it was going to be a test. She had to show him her skill, the library of knowledge she had amassed, if she wanted to pick up where she’d left off with her Master and become one of this roshi’s private students. She began to recite, aware that her demeanor was being evaluated as much as her words. He was looking for signs of kensho in her, the spark of insight. She would have to tell him what she knew of suffering and its cessation, the complex cosmology of Buddhism, the vast scales of time and space, wheels turning within wheels. The lotus flower and the dragon daughter, the blood bowl and the Pure Land.
What are the steps of the Eightfold Path? the roshi asked. She struggled to remember the concepts she had seen when flipping through the paperbacks with rock gardens on their covers that her Master had rarely grilled her on, preferring gauzier sermons on existence, on dependent origination. “Right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration.”
