by Blair Hurley
Nicole watched the students get into their cars. And then the Master was walking down the sidewalk, his sash loose and his robe flapping, his arms wide in welcome. “Nicole. So very glad to have you back. I knew you’d return.” He took her hand in both of his own and pulled her gently down the street, talking all the time. “We’ll have to make up for lost time. You’ve endangered our mission, but we can refind the path together. We have so many things to discuss.”
“We do,” she said.
“Sometimes we must enter a great silence,” he said. “I understand. But we must then learn again to speak.”
That voice! Her body responded to it, like church bells, like the smell of incense or Jules’s leather jacket. It was imprinted on her, had worked its way deeply inside. He was leading her back into the Zen center, back through the meditation room, passing through the smoke of candles just snuffed. She couldn’t quite free herself from his tugging hand. Now they were in the narrow back hall. He was trying to lead her into the private meeting room. There she’d kneel and accept her punishment for her disappearance; there he’d take her head in his lap and slowly, slowly forgive her. He’d take his time, forgiving her.
She planted her feet. “No. I won’t go in there.”
“Nicole,” he said, full of tenderness. “You’re confused. You’re upset. Come with me. Tell me everything.”
“Not in there.”
“Fine.” He led her past the meeting room. Now they were going down another narrow hallway, one she’d never been down before, and he was opening a door into a tiny private apartment. Here was where the Master lived.
It was suitably austere: a sofa bed pulled out, the bed neatly made; a kitchenette with tiles of ivory and beige; a television in the corner, a dresser with a small cabinet shrine. A calendar on the wall with pictures of a Japanese rock garden. A cigar tin overflowing with receipts. It was not the velvet-rimmed den of a corrupt bishop, nor the barren cell of a monk. More like the garret of an aging pensioner: unmistakably humble, unspeakably sad.
The Master sat and patted the pulled-out sofa bed, the tidy hospital tuck of its worn blanket. “Come here. Come and tell me where you’ve been.”
She didn’t move.
His eyes narrowed. At last he seemed to understand that something had shifted between them that could not be rolled back into place. “It doesn’t matter if you won’t talk to me,” he said. “I already know everything. I know why you ran away, all those years ago. I know about Jules. There’s nothing you can hide from me; I know it all. I know what you’re ashamed of. And I know what you need.”
“That’s not true.” It came out breathlessly, not at all what she’d intended. “I have to leave. I know you think you have to save me. But nobody can save me. We can’t do this anymore.”
He rose, grasping her wrists. “I know what you were looking for, and I’m the only one who can give it to you. If you leave, I can take it away. I can take the living light. All the people you’ve loved, everything good you’ve ever thought or felt or done. Your silly little dreams and needs. They all come through me.”
“Why?” She was seventeen again, querulous and terrified.
“Because you gave it to me. That’s what you have to do, to achieve enlightenment. You have to give away everything. You have to offer yourself up.” He stroked her cheek, tucking her loose hair tenderly behind her ears. “And you have been very good. You have given me everything, and now I can do what I want with it.” He was kissing her brow gently, his voice soft. “Little theri. Little chick. I love you. Isn’t that what you want?”
His voice filled her, low but everywhere, like distant thunder. She looked at the cracker crumbs on the table, the veneer of dust on the Buddha statue, the scummy little window through which he saw his world. Then she pushed him away. “You’re full of shit,” she said, saying each word slowly, so he would understand.
He watched her, his eyes narrowing cunningly. “Don’t you want to learn? Don’t you want enlightenment?” And after a pause: “Don’t you love me?”
She thought about it. “Mu,” she said finally, and made for the door.
He knew what she meant, and that he was losing her, maybe that she was already lost. He lunged up at her, his arms around her. He was too strong, he was bearing her back to the bed, whispering sweet things in her ear, kissing her neck, making promises that he never would have made before. I love you, you will be my only, we will live together, I’ll be loyal. She reached out wildly, flailing for anything solid. Against the dresser leaned the keisaku, the teaching stick. She grabbed it and cracked it against the side of his face. He cried out and she whipped it again, saw blood running down his forehead. He fell to his knees, clutching his face. She stood swaying over him, a position she had never held in all the years of their intimacy.
Paul was in the front yard of the old house when she returned. He was standing by the FOR SALE sign, wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt, his hands jammed in the kangaroo pouch. She hadn’t seen him in such casual clothes since he was a teenager.
And Jennifer was with him. Of course, Jennifer: the girl he always seemed to refind. She was leaning on the sign in a belted trench coat, gazing stoically at the smashed windowpane. Her hair was long and straight and dark like it had been in high school, but it was a shock to see her with the lined, measured face of an adult. She’d had her own growing up to do, her own sadnesses to bear. She and Paul stood together but not touching, shy and distant.
Paul moved quickly, wrapping Nicole up in a long embrace. “You’re safe,” he said. “Dear Lord, you’re safe.”
“I’m safe,” she agreed.
They kicked at the mud, out of talk. “Where’s the cat?” he asked.
“Oh, Kukai! So you did go by my apartment.”
“Of course I did. I was looking for you, idiot.”
“I left him with a friend.” She’d given Jocelyn the spare key to her apartment and asked her to take him. She knew the cat was safe in her hands; the same qualities that had won Nicole’s trust would win over her stray, too.
“I thought you might have let him go,” said Paul. “You know, liberated him.”
“You would think that.”
“Well? Why didn’t you?”
She sighed. “Too much rabies out there.”
“I looked everywhere for you,” Paul said. “Where were you?”
“Around.” She didn’t tell him that the broken window was her responsibility, or that she’d been hiding right under his nose.
“I even thought you were with that old teacher of yours,” said Paul.
“Who?”
“He said he was your master.” Paul pointed to the object still clenched in her hand: a long, whiplike length of wood, like a yardstick, with Japanese kanji written on one side “What’s that?”
She’d almost forgotten about the keisaku.
“It’s my walking stick,” she said.
“Did you tell him you were leaving?” he asked.
“I told him—mu.”
“What does that mean?”
She could have explained that in the first koan of a Zen student, there was a question and mu was the answer, and all of Zen life is a struggle to figure out why mu was the answer. Mu was “no.” It was “nothing.” And it was “no more.”
But there were things he wasn’t about to understand. “It’s a joke. A Zen joke,” she said.
He was quiet for a while. “Listen, there’s something else. Marion and I—we’re going to separate. Marion wants a divorce.”
“Oh, Paul. I’m sorry.”
“I know.” She heard the cost of every word in his voice. “No one to blame but—you know,” he said, and took Jennifer’s hand.
“We talked to someone else,” said Jennifer. It was the first time she’d spoken. “He’s waiting for you to come back.”
“His name’s Sean,” said Paul.
Nicole nodded. “That’s where I have to go now. I’m going, okay?”
“He
y, don’t need my permission,” he said.
At Sean’s door she hesitated, watching her cab retreat. The curtains all were drawn; the house seemed to have slipped a little more into the mud. Spring snows had stained the walls.
She knocked, and Sean cracked the door open. Then he stepped outside and pulled her to him, squeezing her right through her puffy jacket. “You’re back,” he said.
“Of course I’m back.” Tears were coming down her cheeks.
“But listen.” She pushed him gently back. “Listen, I want to tell the truth. I want you to understand.”
He nodded, cleared his throat. “I want the same thing.”
“So, I—” She fumbled inside her jacket. “I haven’t told you much about where I’ve been or what I am. And you deserve to know.” She brought out a sheaf of papers. Letters she’d been writing since she’d met Sean. Scraps she’d been writing and adding to since she was a teenager. The fables and notes and stories. This one on the Fire Sermon; this one about the Buddha’s enlightenment. This one about the followers, this one about leaving home. Her life story. They were a diary of sorts, these stories she liked to tell. They were the things she’d wondered when she was afraid or joyful or lonely. “I want you to read these. All of them. It’ll explain—hopefully it’ll explain things. And I’ll fill in any gaps.”
He took the sheaf of papers, flipping through them. “Okay.” He blew out his cheeks. “Okay.” He pressed the papers to his chest. She loved how he wrinkled the papers that she’d kept so carefully. “And if fair’s fair, then I have to show you something, too. Can’t really put it off much longer.”
“What’s that?”
He gestured behind himself, to the waiting house. She’d wondered why they weren’t going in. “You’ve got to know—look, you’ve got to know what I’m about, too. I don’t let go of things that easy. I’m sorting through it. I’m still figuring it out. I want you to go in without me and take a good look around. And if it’s too much, then—you can go.”
She started to protest, then fell silent. She could tell by his eyes, by the way he wouldn’t look at her or the house, the way he gazed into the distance, that she would have to do this.
“All right,” she said. And with a heave she opened the door.
The house had become a rabbit warren, den upon den of antiques. She tried to get her bearings, figure out what all the stuff was. She floundered on the back of a sofa, slipping down. She craned her head back to see the tops of his skyscrapers, a miniature Manhattan of things: dark walnut card tables and French armoires. Nantucket baskets piled with vintage toys. Enamel beer mugs with wild geese etched on the sides. Whaling paintings and whale-oil lamps. Family Bibles. Handfuls of wartime Bazooka gum and old-timey cigarette ads. City blocks of Archie comics. Scattered everywhere, she saw as she began to climb and probe, were things that a child would like. Lead soldiers and blushing Kewpie dolls. G.I. Joes and cowboy sets. Threadbare Steiff animals. Halloween masks. Jars of colored marbles, the cat’s eyes and tiger’s eyes, the shimmering blue aggies and red devils.
She wondered, After the churches closed, where did men like Sean go? And where were the boys who had been abused? You couldn’t see it on their faces; you couldn’t know. Some of them had taken their own lives. Some of them were alcoholics. Some of them hadn’t told their wives and children and never would. Some of them, maybe, collected things. There was this Catholic way of thinking that you locked whatever sadness was yours away. But she had to reach out anyway. She’d love more.
Through the house’s narrow tunnels and dark labyrinths, she found a small corner of the living room that hadn’t been filled, under a rolltop desk. It was just big enough for her. She pulled herself into the little cavern and sat in a half-lotus, breathing in the dust.
“Sean,” she called. She was ready now. “Sean, come find me.”
EPILOGUE
The meditation space is a barn in a forgotten orchard that she’s renting, and Sean’s helping her to fix it up, insulate it, get the little families of mice out of the rafters. It still smells sweetly of years of apple stores. Her students come by word of mouth—friends of Buffy’s and, increasingly, college students that Helen sends her way. For a modest donation they’ll come for a class or a private session with her, a taste of ritual they miss from a former religious life, or a completely new exploration.
You take a breath. You turn something you love over and over in your hands, studying it. It could be your lover or your child or yourself, your mother or the way your mother makes you feel. You take a breath. You feel the fear of the thing’s loss; let it pass over you. Then you let it go. It doesn’t always work.
She remembers, most days, to be patient. With her students, she’s amazed at how much flustered anxiety, how much complaining she can bear. Now that she’s at the front of the room, leading the chant and lighting the candles, she can see how funny she must have looked in the early days, meditating with her eyes squeezed shut, the effort nakedly on her face. They’re both earnest and cantankerous sometimes, her students: they come to her with questions that they’ve looked up on the Internet; they challenge every point of doctrine that doesn’t make sense to them. And they try so hard not to glance at their phones or out the window. They want the secret knowledge at the heart of all things. They want science and mystery together, ritual and magic and cold, hard answers.
They’re here for her help, after all, even though she doesn’t tell them she’s just as hungry as they are. They demand excellence from her. But how can they possibly take her seriously, as she struggles to keep her sleeves away from the candle flame, as she trips over the pronunciation of “Tripitaka”? And she’s supposed to be some kind of master.
All she can do is tell her story. So she does, in fragments. She’s working on a book—Letters to the Buddha she’s calling it—and there’s the letter to her mother she finally sent, not asking for forgiveness or apology but saying I need you to not worry about me. And her mother’s surprising reply, in fragments too, offering details she never had before about her childhood in Boston, her secret dream of being a nun. But falling in love intrudes with the best-laid plans, she said. And then you have a family, and when things fall apart, you have someone to pray for. You want them to be safe and you want them to be happy, but safe more than happy if you must choose.
She can see, in what’s written and unwritten, that her mother’s faith has kept her alive. In that, they are very similar.
And every day there’s the challenge of the house, of helping Sean sort and let go of things. He’s selling his family’s pieces one by one so that they’ll have room for their own lives; every day is a difficult decision. They’ll fight bitterly over a rolltop desk or a rosewood chair until she hears herself, the threats and ultimatums she’s this close to delivering. Then she laughs. Sean does, too. They touch, sheepishly, and move on.
Sean has cleared a room for her, and she keeps nothing in it. It lets her breathe. Every now and then, she goes in and closes the door and thinks for a while about the rooms of her memory, places she’s left that she can’t reenter. When the Buddha attained enlightenment, it is said, he saw all his past lives, and relived them simultaneously. How painful that must have been, to live and die again and again. When her own meditation is right, she glides into some kind of no-time, when she is seventeen and thirty-two at once. She’s standing outside her childhood home. Her mother is in there; and her father, too, and Paul. She can hear the sound of their lives: dishes clinking in the sink, voices muted and friendly, rich with sorrow, reproach, all the textures and tones of love. She could join them or she could leave, but always she stands there for a while, feeling the cold earth under her boots.
Sean is reroofing the barn on weekends. When she’s sweeping the corners of their apple-scented dust, and he’s on a ladder somewhere, she stops and says to herself: There. There it is. There’s this moment, and then the next, happiness within it; and then it’s gone, and she is too, busy with the broom, prepari
ng for their first winter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my terrific agent Chris Clemans, my deeply insightful editor Jill Bialosky, and the rest of the wonderful team at Norton, for making this book a reality.
Thank you to Dad and Margot, for your unflagging love and support.
Thank you to Suze, for the gift of your friendship, and the inspiration of your life. The universe is energy dancing.
Thank you to my writing groupmates: Olivia Tandon, Sash Bischoff, and Daria Lavelle. You saw the earliest seeds of this story and told me to keep going.
Thank you to my teachers: Jeffrey Eugenides, Edmund White, Sheila Kohler, Darin Strauss, Zadie Smith, David Lipsky, and many others.
Thank you to other readers and supporters along the way: John Meyer, Olivia Cerrone, and the many amazing writers at NYU.
Thank you to the Worcester Review and A Bad Penny Review, in which early excerpts of this book were published.
Thank you to the residencies that allowed me time to write: Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, and Byrdcliffe. And thank you to the workshops that gave me the gumption to keep writing: Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Sewanee.
And thank you to Kamil, who knows all the many reasons.
Thank you to the authors and translators of the wonderful Buddhist literature I devoured, consulted, and cited.
The haiku:
Aston, William George, and Matsuo Basho. A History of Japanese Literature. Heinemann, 1899.
Basho, Matsuo. Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Translated by Makoto Ueda. Copyright © 1992 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. All rights reserved. Used by the permission of the publisher, Stanford University Press, sup.org.
