Lunch with Buddha

by Merullo, Roland

  I don’t want to, I should have said. As much as I dislike eating alone now, I really don’t want the company of strangers tonight. The swim, the wine tasting, the text from my beloved daughter, this afternoon has been good to me, and I want to sit in the Jacuzzi of that good fortune and soak away the morning’s pain.

  But the man and woman seemed strangely eager to have me. “Please,” she said. “We’re on dessert and we’d just like to sit with you for a while and chat.”

  They were clean looking and normal seeming, well bred, well groomed, the man’s dirty-blond hair combed back neatly from his forehead, the woman in gold bracelets, perhaps a bit older than her husband, with blue eyes and a straight, longish nose. He sported an off-white linen jacket; she wore a dress—beige with black trim around a high neckline—that seemed to perfectly fit the mood of the Panorama: classy but not formal. I noticed all this in a glance, of course, and the message was: These are people like me. So I thanked them and joined them, ordered the fixed-price dinner and a glass of rosé, and settled in to what I expected would be an enjoyable conversation.

  For a few minutes it was. We exchanged bits of information. They were, it turned out, one of the couples I’d seen at the pool. When I asked after their young son, the husband—“Winch” he told me his name was—said, “Oh, he’s back in the room watching some TV. Marty and I wanted a little alone time, and Charlie’s fine on his own. What could happen?”

  What could happen? At that remark a small warning bell sounded in my inner ear. The boy was all of five. What could happen was he’d choke on the snack they’d left him, or he’d decide to go for a walk and wander down to the wide river through a landscape of snakes and darkness. What could happen was he’d feel his mother and father wanted some alone time after having spent one hour with him at the pool, on vacation, and a seed of bitterness would be planted in his brain. Jeannie and I knew people who went to Europe for three weeks and left their young kids behind in the care of a semi-stranger, and it was exactly, precisely, the opposite of our parenting style. But it is an unwritten law of our society that, excepting the most egregious cases, one parent cannot wander into another’s territory. We are, all of us, miniature kings and queens in our homes, the children our subjects. And the job is so difficult to do perfectly, or even well, and there are so many ways to do it. . . . I sipped my rosé—a poor choice; I should have gone with the vineyard’s own Syrah, which had been rich and full of flavor—and admired the view.

  Winch and Marty were from Omaha, Nebraska, they said. His family had a private investment business—of late, they’d done particularly well in gold—and she was a “completely fulfilled, stay-at-home mom.” They couldn’t have been more pleasant, really. They mentioned a health charity they supported—for children with birth defects. With their elegance and ease they reminded me of a latter-day Dick and Nicole from Tender Is the Night.

  But then, after I told them I was a New Yorker on a sort-of vacation road trip, Marty said, “We saw you at the pool with . . . your friend.”

  I was in good appetite, as the saying goes, and partly distracted by the arrival of the first course, a crostini with four cheeses and some kind of compote on top. Huckleberry, it might have been. Everything was huckleberry in Washington State, even the ice cream. The first taste. Overture to a fine symphony. I nodded at them and chewed.

  “You know,” Winch put in, “there are studies now that show it can be reversed.”

  Distracted again. The waiter, an affable Jerry, was there at my shoulder, removing the crostini dish and replacing it with steelhead tartare. I was not exactly, as Rinpoche might have put it, in the moment. Winch sensed my dissatisfaction with the rosé, kindly called for another glass, said “Try this,” and poured from his bottle of Viognier. Excellent manners!

  The previous remark wandered around the walls of the room, sneaked up behind and tapped me on the shoulder. I heard the word “reversed” and tried, as I ate, to make sense of it. The steelhead had no taste; the wine was really superb. I thanked them.

  Marty leaned toward me and spoke in a conspiratorial tone, “Yes. It’s completely forgivable and completely changeable.”

  “What is?” I asked. They had my attention then. I looked up from the pink remains of the raw fish and saw two sets of eyes attaching themselves to me with such intensity that I wanted to push my chair back an inch. It reminded me of a co-worker, Andrew, who put his face one nose-length from yours when he spoke to you and maintained the healthiest of eye contact at all times. Andrew was six foot four; it had always seemed to me an insecure tall man’s intimidation tactic. Shorter colleagues never tried it.

  “Your choice,” Marty said pleasantly.

  I was confused. I thought, for a few seconds, that he was referring to the meal I’d selected. Should I have ordered off the a la carte? Was it the rosé for which I was to be forgiven? Could it be reversed?

  “We saw you at the pool.”

  “Yes, I saw you, too. Your son’s a fine-looking boy.”

  With that comment some new cloud swept in over the table. Outside, the wind was making its presence known in sharp gusts, and there were one or two horizontal flashes of lightning above the far bank. I should have taken an umbrella, I thought. Jerry brought the rhubarb soup with a dollop of crème fraiche at the center.

  Winch looked at his wife. “Homosexuality is a grievous sin,” he said to me in the most somber of tones. Marty was nodding. Two men at the next table glanced over.

  From time to time we would have a minor mouse infestation in our home, and Jeannie and I, having lost faith in the nonlethal versions, would reluctantly set out real traps. The choice—easy, even for us—was between killing something we did not really want to kill or living with the tiny black turds behind the toaster. Still, I always felt a twinge when I picked up the trap with the soft gray creature in it, his or her head mashed by the metal. I found myself imagining what it must feel like, that first instant when you realize the morsel of food wasn’t worth it, the spring has sprung, you’re caught.

  “Excuse me?” I said. The soup was thick and bland. The kindest of Jeannie’s kind hospice workers had been Leah, an openly gay woman from White Plains. Leah had been a saint in our home, an angel. Perhaps this seems strange, but somehow, when she was cleaning the vomit from my wife’s lips, it didn’t matter one bit to Jeannie or me whom Leah chose to sleep with in her off hours.

  “We saw you with your friend,” Marty went on, “we had to explain to Charlie what was going on. It was part of the reason we wanted to be here alone tonight, just the two of us. We hoped we’d see you and that you’d be willing to talk.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. The words just slipped out. Jerry came by to ask if things were going well, and I said everything was fine. The couple beside us finished and paid and walked out together. I wanted Rinpoche to be there, my “friend.” I wanted to see how he would react.

  “Completely serious,” Winch said.

  Next came a plate of gnocchi in a white sauce, the best dish so far. Cooked al dente and seasoned well. If my children had been there I would have passed on to the chef an exaggerated compliment. But now I had an urge to carry my plate over to the empty table, the way Jasper carried off a T-bone on a summer night, taking it away from us and settling at the edge of the bushes, holding it between his paws and looking all around for signs of trouble. I remembered Leah, remembered her holding Jeannie’s fingers so gently in her own, staying long after she was scheduled to leave. . . . Another urge overtook me then. I make no excuses for it. I said, “We’ve been together six years, Volya and I. We’re family at this point.”

  “But it’s a grievous sin,” Winch persisted. He and his wife really seemed to care for my spiritual well-being. It was, in spite of everything, an effort to dislike them. “It keeps you from the Lord.”

  “He’s a great spiritual master. Revered around the world. I feel lucky to be in his presence, and I’m sure he’s closer to God than I’ll ever be.”<
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  Marty frowned. “We’re Christians,” she said.

  “So am I.”

  “Well, the Bible says everything that needs to be said on the subject, we think.”

  “My understanding is that Jesus said nothing on the subject. Zero. Zilch.”

  “We’d like to help you if you’d let us.”

  Now came the duck course, succulent if rubbery, set on a bed of couscous that needed spice. There were clean plates and bowls stacked in a kind of sideboard that separated diners from the cooking area. As the busboy tried to remove a few of the bowls, he somehow got himself into a position where a whole stack was tilted away from him, in his hands but leaning against the back wall of the shelf. One false move and they’d come crashing to the floor. He was stuck there, frozen between embarrassment and disaster. Winch got up immediately and went to his aid, and took some of the dishes until things got straightened out. “I apologize,” the busboy said.

  “No need. No need, brother.”

  He was back. They were watching me eat. The duck was a long time going down. “I have a son,” I said, when I was able to speak, “from a previous marriage. He’s nineteen, college football player. He and Volya were wrestling this morning on the lawn of the B and B. He’s a manly man, my Volya, despite the bathing suit and color choice and so on. Pinned my son in seconds.”

  I was being mean then. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I was a sinner, yes, though not in the way they thought. May God forgive me. I worked my way through the duck while Marty and Winch twirled wineglasses, and then Jerry came by with a tiny dish of lava cake. Tasty, but too small. I ordered a glass of port and offered to treat my dinner mates. They politely declined. I thought of an older friend at home who’d joked once that, when the time came, when he was in hospice and fading away, he wanted to be put on a port drip, rather than morphine. Bob Jasse was his name, a good man, a lifelong macho heterosexual who invited both straight and gay couples to dinner parties at his and his wife’s New Hampshire home and came to the defense of Jamaican orchard workers being mistreated by the local cops. A true Christian, it seemed to me, though he claimed to be agnostic. I’d visited him hours before he passed on. He was gasping for breath. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the port drip.

  “We’re really concerned,” was all Marty could think to say.

  From the deepest part of the big river of feeling in me, the cold, dark depths sliding toward the crash, these words came: “Your Christianity gives you solace,” I said, and if Winch and Marty had been in the moment they might have heard something in my voice, sensed something.

  “Yes, absolutely,” she said.

  “Then let other people alone, dammit!” I said, and as I said it I bumped the bottom of my fist down on the tabletop, fairly hard. Fortunately, there were only a handful of diners there as witnesses, no children. Winch and Marty leaned back away from me with identical movements. A flat, small smile cut the bottom of his face. His views had been confirmed. The sinner, firmly in Satan’s grasp, had shown himself for what he truly was.

  “Well, we’re sorry to have upset you,” Marty said after a pause. The tone hung just this side of sarcasm.

  “Just let other people alone,” I said, more calmly. “If they’re not hurting you, not hurting someone else, let them be, would you?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Winch said.

  “I think it is.”

  “Well,” Marty said, “one day we’ll find out who’s right.”

  “Forget the ‘one day’ stuff,” I said. “You’re obviously caring people—the charity, and so on. Just forget the sexual stuff. Just keep your minds out of other people’s bedrooms, won’t you? There are so many—”

  “It’s not about our minds,” Marty said. “It’s about God’s word.”

  I thought of telling them about Leah. I thought of citing other Biblical dictums—on slavery and stoning and ritual sacrifice. But I could see very clearly that it would be like speaking to the polished metal surface of my sink.

  They gave me identical looks of pity, pushed back their chairs, wished me a good evening and walked out into the rainless thunderstorm. I tucked my head down an inch, scraped absently at the last twirls of chocolate in the dish, stared at the glass of port. Jerry hovered at a safe distance, then approached and asked about coffee, and I sat there until everyone else had left, and I watched the storm flashing, wind batting the glass and pushing at the umbrellas on the patio. Christian, I kept thinking. Christian, Christian. In the news on that very day—I could not make this up—was a story about the president of the fast food chain Chick-fil-A, who’d famously said, “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes marriage’.” The comment caused a sales record to be set, millions of Chick-fil-A’s consumed in a righteous fury, the chicken, the Coke, the artery-choking fried potatoes. It made no sense to me. In addition to Leah and Clare, we knew a half-dozen gay couples, some of them parents. In exactly the same way as our straight friends, some were good parents; some, in my judgment, not so good. Some of the gay men and women I’d met in my life were fine human beings; some, in my judgment, not so fine. I was tired, then, of the labels, the sweeping generalizations, bigotry on the one hand, political correctness on the other. My sister was flaky, my son a jock, I was upper middle class and white and male. Marty and Winch were Christian. Natasha had gone from being a jock to an “alternative type,” and now had a sneaker in each camp. How had this happened to us, this putting of souls into boxes? What purpose did it serve? In what way did it make us better, holier, more at peace with each other?

  Part of me believed that eating at Chick-fil-A was the kind of thing that would invite God’s judgment on our nation. And another part saw, on my side of the battle lines, how easy it was to mentally plop Winch and Marty into a sack, tie the cord tight, and drop them over the gunwale into the mid-Atlantic.

  The storm had passed by the time I roused myself and walked back to the cliffhouse in the late northern dusk. What you could do, all you could really do, was try to clean the poison out of yourself in as honest a way as possible. The anger and self-pity and constant judgments, the urge to feel wiser and better, to belong to the group that was pleasing to God. You should speak the truth, yes, and stand up for the oppressed. But what you really had to do was more difficult than that, the type of thing Winch and Marty, in my judgment, would never risk. You had to look down into your own dark waters, unflinching, and trace the motivations there. First, as Rinpoche said, you had to see.

  The lights were out in his half of our lodging. I sat in the dark on the leather couch, said one Our Father, then offered up a Buddhist blessing for every soul in all the universes, every soul without exception. The Leahs and Clares, the Winches and Martys, the angry Otto Ringlings, the suffering, the lonely, the confused, the different and the dead. Then I sat there in my river of thoughts for a little while, and then I went to sleep.

  Duck Entrée

  Dinner at Cave B Inn Winery

  13

  I awoke, next morning, to an absolutely pristine silence. No road noise, no hotel AC, not even the chirping birds that pulled us out of sleep on a summer day in New York. The view through the bedroom’s glass door felt like a twin to that silence: still and striated gray-brown cliffs on the far side of the Columbia, and behind and beyond and above them an expanse of dry land slanting up and away. On the ridgeline there, north of the hundred windmills, ran a strip of green forest beneath an empty morning sky.

  It was early for me, in the sixes. I washed quietly so as not to wake Rinpoche behind his closed bedroom door, then went out and retraced the previous day’s steps. Near the pool enclosure was the start of a trail that led down to the river. Other hikers had left walking sticks there on the ground. I found one that suited me and started off. It was cool in the shade but you could feel that, once the sun climbed higher and swung around overhead, all this low area would turn into an o
ven. The young woman at the desk had said the summer temperatures sometimes reached 110 in these parts. It would be dry heat, yes, so it would be a dry oven. But an oven all the same.

  At first the path went steeply downhill, rocky, tough on the knees. But then, flattening out, it twisted through a prairie landscape of sagebrush, small tufts of grass, and low-to-the-ground flowers I couldn’t name. Just below and ahead of me lay the river, its surface a metal-blue sheet. I imagined that, had Rinpoche been there, he would have made a lesson out of that stillness, likened it to the perfected mind in meditation. That was a sticking point for me. During the years I’d been under his tutelage, if that is the word, I’d had moments of stillness. Just moments—he said that was the “beginning part. Good, Otto, good!” And there was certainly an ease and pleasure to be found there. Sometimes that pleasure echoed later in the day in unexpected periods of calm, or . . . reassurance would be a better word. I felt like I’d touched the frontier of a world beyond this world.

  At the same time, part of me kept wondering: if this is the goal of meditation, if, ultimately, all it leads to is a quiet as pure as this quiet, a stillness as still as a river surface on a windless morning, then what’s the point? It was like setting off on a trip and coming to a stop sign and sitting there. Was that the ultimate goal of the spiritual life? Stopping? A cessation? The end of thought and time? It didn’t draw me, I have to say, but I had not yet been able to admit that to Rinpoche.

  And then there he was, a red-robed miniature mountain sitting on a dry promontory that faced north toward the winding of the water. I suppose I should have expected him to be there. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so secretly proud of myself for rising early and making the walk instead of immediately turning on the TV to see if the Olympics had started, or opening the computer to check e-mails, or rushing over to the main lodge for coffee and something sweet. I walked quietly up to him and, when he didn’t stir, I sat beside him and tried to sink into meditation, too.