Jake Fades

by David Guy

  This muffin in any case was a brilliant invention, tart little berries finding a perfect home in dense, grainy cornbread. Along with their superb coffee and (alas) a tiny glass of Minute Maid orange juice, it made an excellent breakfast.

  Jake was still eating eggs but had the special muffin too. He liked a hearty breakfast.

  Lily stepped over. “What you eat at these retreats?” she asked. “Who do the cooking?”

  I hoped this wasn’t her way of telling us the Golden Donut catered.

  “The Japanese eat rice and pickled vegetables,” Jake said. “We have a soup and salad at lunch. Rice and vegetables at night. Oatmeal in the morning.”

  Meals in the zendo were ceremonial, people coming in to serve us as we sat on our cushions. The bowls were small, but you didn’t need much food just for sitting.

  “The cook is the most important person in a Japanese temple,” Jake said. “A senior monk.”

  “Food most important thing,” Lily said.

  In our case Madeleine’s cook, Darcy, would be the senior monk. Her only problem would be keeping it from being too good. Food should be simple and bland, not a distraction. You didn’t want people to focus on it.

  A soup of poor greens, Dogen said, was as important as a cream soup for the emperor.

  “You want maybe put out donuts in the morning? Give people treat?”

  I would like to think—and dearly hope—that Jake only considered this suggestion to be nice. Didn’t want to come down on Lily too hard.

  “We serve a treat in the afternoon,” he said.

  In the late afternoon, when people’s spirits and blood sugar flag, there was a ceremonial tea, along with a tea treat. It was one of my favorite moments of the day (you can be damn sure it was Jake’s). It was a remarkable experience to bring the concentration of a retreat onto that one little cookie, a small cup of tea. It was how you should eat everything.

  Double chocolate donuts would make the same point, but I wasn’t sure how the late afternoon would go.

  “We deliver donuts MIT every day,” Lily said.

  And those people were smart.

  “Let me think about it,” Jake said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  I fully expected to see a donut in my breakfast bowl the first morning.

  Before we left, without saying anything to me, Jake walked over and sat beside the scared woman in the overcoat. The omelet man wasn’t there that day. In all the times we’d come to the Golden Donut, I hadn’t seen any expression on that woman’s face except deep anxiety, desperate to catch a bus that never showed up.

  But Jake had a way with people. If he reminded me of anyone—others remarked on this too—it was the Chinese monk known as Hotei in Japan, the fat guy with a sack who has been made into a good luck charm. Supposedly there was such a man in ancient China, who pulled sweets out of his bag to give children but could also speak with monks and put them back on track with their practice.

  Jake wasn’t that fat (a few more weeks in Cambridge and he would be) but had that effect. He sat there talking for a few minutes and the woman actually smiled. A couple minutes more and Lily was over there taking her order, on Jake.

  “Turned out she was hungry,” he said, as he came back to me.

  The whole world is hungry.

  The donut of choice that day was a lemon jelly concoction, powdered sugar on the top. Jake always took Lily’s suggestion, never seemed disappointed.

  The weather had turned cold that morning, a slate gray sky, gusting winds. We wore our jackets, and Jake had on his beret. One of the things I liked most about New England was its extremes. You could go from balmy to bitterly cold within a few hours.

  We were walking to Madeleine’s to make final plans.

  “You get nervous before sesshin?” Jake asked.

  “Always.” No matter how many times I’d done it. It always surprised me.

  Though I had reason for nerves this time. The thought of those talks every day, no idea of the subject, loomed like a black hole.

  “I used to have a friend,” Jake said, “a teacher in Japan, who said good-bye to people before sesshin as if he might never see them again. Didn’t know if he’d come out.”

  My grandmother used to tell me always to do that. Say good-bye every time as if it’s the last. It may be.

  “Sesshin is like death,” Jake said.

  It was that kind of dread.

  On the one hand, it was a great relief to stop being yourself eighteen hours a day. That was hard work. At the same time, it was that abandonment of self that was so fearful. When you can’t talk, can’t write, can’t read, give up everything that makes you you, who are you? It’s terrifying.

  “That’s what I’ll be talking about, if you want a little preview,” Jake said.

  I’d take any preview I could get.

  “Death. It’s what keeps coming up.”

  I’d noticed. Jake had always taken the subject lightly, made casual reference to it, but I’d never heard him mention his own death so much as in the past few days.

  “Having this illness is like a preview. You keep falling into a hole. Like the time I was in a car accident when I was young and got amnesia. The strangest sensation. I came to on a hospital table and was clearly awake, looking around, but had no idea who I was.”

  “Good grief.”

  “That morning, it was funny, my girlfriend had given me bacon for breakfast. We almost never had bacon. But I had an aftertaste, lying there on that table. It was a little thread that pulled my whole life up.”

  Where does the memory go, when it isn’t there? How can it come back?

  “I’m not unhappy, Hank,” he said.

  It was one of the things I worried about the most, though he never seemed that way.

  “It’s scary, this illness. But I’ve been scared before. You fall into that hole and just watch things, let them be. I come back eventually, though I suppose there’ll be a day when I don’t. But it’s not a bad place, if you live as we have. The person you really are is there. It’s the small self that’s disappeared.”

  I knew that was true theoretically. I didn’t know how it felt.

  “But if I stop making sense,” he said. “If I’m still talking, but you can see I’m not there, you’ve got to step in.”

  “I will.”

  That assumed I’d know. Zen teachings in general don’t always make much sense.

  Madeleine looked thrilled when she came to the door; this day was the fruition of all her dreams, when she would finally have Jake teaching at this center she’d wanted for so long. She welcomed him effusively, actually went so far as to hug and kiss me. They went to the meditation hall to make sure it was the way he wanted. I went to the kitchen to see Darcy.

  She was a small dumpy woman in her sixties, had worked for Madeleine for years. She had a round face that was deeply wrinkled, sad eyes that never looked my way, but was a no-nonsense woman who seemed totally in charge, had cooked huge dinner parties through the years, elaborate menus. A little oatmeal every morning wouldn’t faze her.

  “Jake talked to you about the meals,” I said.

  “He said it should be bean soup at lunch every day. It’s not easy to cook seven bean soups. Make them all different.”

  Actually, according to Madeleine, she could have cooked thirty in a row. She was a wizard. But her eyes looked so sad I hardly knew what to say.

  “It doesn’t have to be bean,” I said. “Just a hearty soup. The main meal.”

  “Plain rice at night,” she said, looking forlorn. “Doesn’t make much of a supper.”

  “You can jazz it up a little. Jake won’t say so, but he’ll like it.”

  “A hambone would help those soups.”

  “That we can’t do. We’ve got some strict vegetarians.”

  “You hardly notice a little ham. It adds flavor.”

  “I’d love it myself. But some of these people would be horrified.”

  Jake had been over all this
with Darcy. She said the same things every time.

  “You can make a special dinner for me and Jake when it’s all over. Cook the whole ham if you want.”

  “I will.”

  She walked around tidying up, touching her knives and various utensils. She was dying to get started. Wished we’d start right then.

  “Plain oatmeal in the morning,” she said. “You can make it so much better with maple syrup. Raisins and dates. He doesn’t even want milk.”

  “If things show up in the oatmeal he’ll have to eat them.”

  “I never heard of such a thing. No milk.”

  “Jazz it up a little. But please do skip that hambone. You’ll have a bunch of hysterical lesbians out here.”

  For the first time she laughed. “We can’t have that.”

  I walked back into the main part of the house, the meditation hall. Jake was sitting in his place, trying it out. You wouldn’t have called his posture classic; he was a chunky little guy, and his torso just blobbed down on the cushion like a pile of mud. But beneath the robes he wore at sesshin—people didn’t see—his legs were in full lotus, and he could sit that way forever and then stand up as if he hadn’t been down. His legs were like rubber.

  He seemed to have settled into sitting, Madeleine to one side. I motioned her out.

  “You two having lunch today?” I asked.

  “Darcy’s fixing something. You’re welcome to stay.”

  She said that, but I knew what she wanted.

  “I’ve got plans. But we’ve got to hook up at the Y when you come back. Set a time.”

  I told her what had happened the day before, the way he’d wandered off.

  “He told me he’d be fine,” she said. “There were other men there. He joined right in.”

  Jake could blend in with any group, stand there and talk Red Sox baseball as if he were in the bleachers every day. He only read about it in the paper.

  “They don’t know to watch him,” I said. “Don’t know anything about him.”

  “I’m mortified. It was a last-minute thing.”

  “I’d have thought it was okay. Didn’t think he’d wander. Why don’t you show up around three. I’ll wait on the steps.”

  Jake and I were having an early dinner with Josh since sesshin began at eight thirty. I’d had the bright idea earlier that morning to make it at Green Street, so Jess could meet him. Josh said he’d pay, which made the whole thing doable. He liked treating the old man, now that he had money.

  “Jake told me about Olivia last night,” I said to Madeleine.

  “I thought you knew,” she said.

  “I never heard until yesterday.”

  “I thought you knew her in the old days. Would have gone after her. I mean, she was a woman.”

  “Jesus, Madeleine.”

  “Well?”

  “You weren’t just some woman to me.”

  She gave me her most skeptical frown.

  I felt we were friends, as close as two people can be after a romance. The association with Jake helped.

  “This is wonderful,” I said, “what you’re doing for Jake.”

  “I don’t know why it’s taken so long.”

  There was that question again: why had Jake, after all these years, decided finally to acquiesce and come to Cambridge? Just for me?

  I didn’t like that idea.

  “It’s a beautiful setup,” I said.

  “I hope things go well.”

  There was no way they could be too bad. Jake had a core of fifteen students whom he’d worked with for years and who knew the whole routine. There would be new people like Jess, but the veterans would take care of them. With a group together this long, a retreat ran itself.

  “Sesshins scare me,” she said.

  She wore a look of real anxiety. The problem wasn’t logistics.

  “They scare everybody,” I said.

  It was the people who had trouble—the vast majority—who were the real Zen students. They were being brave.

  “You two conspiring against me?” Jake suddenly appeared in the hall.

  “You were deep in samadhi,” I said. “We didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Taking a snooze,” he said. “That’s a nice room. Beautiful center.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  Madeleine was beaming. The fear had left her face.

  She was someone who made practice available, rather than doing it herself.

  “Don’t overdo it at lunch,” I said. “We’re meeting Josh early.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Jake said.

  “I’ll meet you at the Y.”

  I looked at Madeleine, and she nodded.

  It was an invigorating day for a walk. The wind was gusting, trees shaking and shedding their leaves. It didn’t look like rain, just a cold cloudy day. I walked to Harvard Yard, cut through to Mass. Ave., made it to Inman Square a few minutes before I was supposed to meet Jess. But she was in the restaurant waiting for me, just like before.

  I was glad she could be on time. She’d need to.

  She seemed to be dressed for me, a purple blouse and white skirt this time (not too short, thank God), no makeup or jewelry. I was stunned at how different the effect was.

  “You look great, Jess,” I said.

  “I feel like a job interview,” she said. “Not my usual. I thought you might bring Padre.”

  Maybe that’s who she was dressing for.

  “I still haven’t told him we have breakfast,” I said.

  “He saw me kiss you yesterday. He was just a block away.”

  That was the impression I’d had too; he couldn’t have missed.

  “I was just being sassy,” she said. “Giving you a hard time. Then when I saw him I was so embarrassed. He didn’t say anything?”

  I explained about Jake’s spells, that it had taken a while to bring him out of that one.

  “He saw, believe me,” Jess said. “He might not have known who we were, but he saw.”

  Our little waitress came and took our orders, brought coffee. The place was busier that morning, maybe two-thirds full.

  “I tried meditating,” she said. “Not a rousing success.”

  I smiled. “When?”

  “Right before I came. I figured it would be this time tomorrow.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this. I wanted to, and I tried, but I don’t know. I don’t think I followed a single breath.”

  I gave her the usual speech for beginners. Following the breath was a technique to let you see things. It didn’t matter how you did. Don’t think good or bad, Dogen said. Don’t judge right or wrong. What was important was seeing your body and mind. The mind usually dominates.

  “It really does,” Jess said. “My God. I’m nuts.”

  “No more than anybody else.”

  “I can’t believe my mother did this every day. Can’t believe you do it.”

  “It’s going to be different at retreat. People all around.”

  “What if I run from the room like a maniac?”

  “It happens. The important thing is to show up. Come when you say you will. That’s half the battle at least. More than half.”

  “How did you get started at this? How did Padre? I don’t get this.”

  “It’s different ways for different people.”

  “Like what?”

  I figured I’d tell about Jake, what I knew. His was a far more interesting story than mine.

  He had been an art student in the late fifties, out on the West Coast. Not a Beatnik exactly, but they influenced the atmosphere. He was too serious to identify with any movement. He really meant to devote his life to art.

  He loved Asian art, Chinese and Japanese, decided on a whim in his early thirties to go to Japan. He didn’t have a plan. A couple of years before he had hitchhiked around Europe, now he was heading for Asia. Something about that spare style, the use of space, appealed to him. He was a man with no particular responsibil
ities. He just took off.

  He got a job teaching English, which was easy to find, also began studying Japanese, looking for an artist to study with. The man he found was like no other teacher he’d ever had, even allowing for cultural differences. He painted landscapes, and Jake loved his work, but before Jake could do anything the man made him sit and stare at landscapes by the hour. “You look,” the man said. “Just look.” It was most of the English he knew.

  Jake also did lots of tasks like cleaning up, mixing paints, getting groceries; for a long time the man didn’t let him do any painting. He had to learn to sit in front of the canvas, pick up the brush, take the proper posture. He also had to learn to sit. The day began with a period of zazen, though Jake didn’t know what it was. “You just sit,” the man would say, another big speech for him. They sat until the teacher let him get up.

  Much of the communication was in the form of grunts, shoves, head-shaking, wordless shouts. The day began at dawn and was over by two; Jake taught his English lessons in the late afternoon and early evening. Finally, when he could communicate a little better, he asked about the sitting they were doing in the morning. The artist took him to his Zen teacher, a man named Kosho Uchiyama.

  By the time he met Uchiyama he was starting to get the idea. He’d come to Japan as an ambitious artist, wanting to accomplish things, make a name for himself, but here the emphasis was on life before art: learning to keep the place neat and be humble before your teacher, learning to observe and appreciate the landscape before you did something so presumptuous as painting it. You had to learn to walk, learn to stand, learn to sit. For weeks and months he resisted, but finally he gave in. He sat and stared at the landscape by the hour. He came to love it.

  Uchiyama was a disciple of a famously charismatic teacher named Kodo Sawaki, who had recently died. In the face of what they saw as widespread corruption in Zen—temples being passed down from father to son and existing primarily as places for weddings and funerals, monks who trained for a few years and then hardly sat again—they took over a ruined, abandoned temple and began to live as monks once had, living by begging, devoting themselves to sitting, doing retreats once a month. For years they only had a few adherents, but over time the sincerity of their practice drew attention.