A Single Eye Page 13

  “Leo, Roshi, I don’t have the letter. How could I know?”

  He tapped his head.

  I shrugged.

  “Help me lie down.”

  I thought he meant: end of discussion. But when I shifted him back down he was dead weight and I realized how weak he really was. I tucked the blankets back around him, stoked the fire, dealt with the chamber pot, packed up the dishes, and started toward the kitchen.

  People were settled into their tasks now, shaking out the mats on the zendo porch, shoveling rivulets of mud that had overtaken the paths. Work period provides new and often foreign venues in which to observe one’s reactions. The path shoveler, a lawyer from Vermont, was having the opportunity to see his hour as not merely non-billable, but as a nuisance to everyone who needed to cart supplies along his path. As a member of the landscaping crew wheeled his barrow by, the shoveler was able to experience being the victim of a splashing with no recourse, legal or even verbal. In a similar position I had managed to nurture a rage for an impressive number of days, until, quite suddenly, I had realized that stopping work, stepping back, even being splashed were as much parts of the job as the shovelfuls of mud. After that, I’d viewed egotistical directors differently, taking their unnecessary demands and nuclear tantrums as all part of being a stunt double. In theory, anyway.

  The Vermont lawyer stepped aside silently as a gray-haired guy with a less lowly job bustled by with his supplies. But by the time I came abreast, he let out a mighty sigh and made a show of sweeping back his shovel, sending a spray of water over his feet.

  I didn’t laugh, not from virtue but because I was still fuming at Leo and his bizarre reaction to my letter. My feet were smacking the wet path with each step, sending angry sprays in their wakes. The bowls rattled on the tray. At the bathhouse I stopped, took a deep breath, and determined at least to appear under better control. Veering toward the kitchen I walked more slowly, listening to the rain tapping on my shoulders.

  Somewhere between bathhouse and kitchen it became clear just what Roshi meant about my letter. The letter could be anything! It could be an offer to change my long-distance phone coverage, to contribute to NOW, subscribe to Harpers for twelve dollars a year.

  That was all Roshi had meant.

  Or was it?

  Life is illusion.

  I stopped dead. A guy with his parka hood drooping low on his face smacked into my shoulder, mumbled, and rerouted himself. Life is illusion is one of the basic Zen tenets. I had created my own illusion, and now I was racing around acting on it. A better Zen student would have taken time to let this discovery sink in. I, alas, was not that student. I couldn’t resist trying to answer Roshi’s practical questions. Who did I think my letter was from? What did I think she was saying?

  She was saying.

  I started to laugh and then almost choked. She could only be my mother. Mom, why did I think it was from Mom?

  But the letter hadn’t come from San Francisco. Gabe had been sure of that.

  I smiled. Knowing Mom she would have figured a letter mailed in San Francisco would linger a day from box to post office to main post office before even crossing the Golden Gate. She’d have maneuvered to get it to a post office north of the Gate to give it a head start. There might have been a lunch in Sausalito with my sister, Katy, inasmuch as they were going there anyway.

  Two women squeezed by me on the path. I stepped off it into the mud. My running shoes squished into it; I ignored it. Mom was the only one who would worry about her tough stunt-double baby up here in this strange place. Mom worried about anyone who had to venture beyond the San Francisco city limits.

  No, wait, that wasn’t right. The letter in my illusion wasn’t filled with worry, it bubbled with urgency, something she could tell only to me. Mom had worked hard to be a good parent to my older siblings and their success had rewarded her. But I was her child of menopause, her “joke from God,” and lots of rules got jettisoned in my upbringing. Each of my sisters had had to cook one dinner a week solo. But I got to help Mom and grump and gossip and share secrets the other kids never guessed she had. What couldn’t she wait to tell me now? That, I didn’t have to ask myself twice. I was smiling again. She was telling me—again—about the Big Buddha Bakery on Irving Street. Thirteen or fourteen years ago, when I was living in Chicago, I’d said was I going to check out a Zen center and she had sent me a newspaper clipping with a picture of the green, big-bellied Buddha painted on the bakery window. I was twenty-five and outraged, and more so because I feared I would be sacrilegious to crumble up and toss a picture of the Buddha. When I flew to New York to sit my first sesshin with Yamana-roshi, Mom couldn’t resist a later shot of the Big Buddha, who had lost some of his paint by that time. I had barely moved to New York to become his daily student when a copy of the picture arrived with a note saying, “In case you don’t remember! Laugh.”

  I stepped back onto the path, squishing with each step now, still smiling at the memory—no matter what the letter really was, it couldn’t warm me as much—and yet, it left me out of focus. I was here smiling at the thought of Mom and her sweet idiosyncrasies, and at the same time, I burned with the same indignation I had when I was twenty-five. There had been some scandal about the bakery but Mom had only mentioned that in passing, because what amused her was the big-bellied olive green Buddha painted on the window of the bakery. Mom had remarked, dryly, “That shade of green is an unfortunate color for an eating establishment.”

  I washed out Roshi’s and my dishes in the kitchen, amidst students slipping in for shots of caffeine before the afternoon sit.

  “Did you find your letter?” Amber whispered as I was putting the bowls away.

  “No, but I can imagine what it was.”

  “What?”

  I could see in her face what Roshi must have seen in mine, the letter taking intriguing form in her mind. But his teaching was for me, not necessarily for her.

  I said, “A reminder about the Big Buddha Bakery.”

  “You mean the poisoning?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Poisoning in the Big Buddha Bakery?”

  Amber leaned toward me and grinned in a way that reminded me she wasn’t much older than a teenager. She looked about to divulge a really really cool piece of gossip about the scuddiest geek in the class, a piece of gossip her friends had already yanked and pulled in every direction till it was too old and thin to taste. But now, here was I, a new audience.

  “Yeah. It was in all the papers. Thing was it was a long time ago. I was in, lemme see, seventh grade, I think. ‘Cause when I heard it I was so freaked I dropped all my books and that was the year I had serious Spanish and world history, and that history book was so big I could’ve been carrying the whole world around and when I dropped it it just about broke my toe. It was sprained and I had to wear sandals for a month and this was January. I mean my feet were soaked. I mean I didn’t eat peanuts for a year after that.”

  “Peanuts?”

  “Shhhhh!”

  It must have come from as many directions as Amber’s answer was taking. Barry was tapping his mouth in the other end of the kitchen; Maureen was at the door, glaring; one of the cooks held his wooden spoon clear of his pot and stared, another chopped louder. Work period wasn’t quite over. Amber had no business being in the kitchen at all now, much less gossiping there. I put my palms together and bowed an apology to all of them. They were right. I nudged Amber and she bowed, too. But her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Outside,” I whispered to her and she followed me around the corner of the kitchen, onto the muddy thatch of weeds. Her face was flushed with excitement.

  “You didn’t eat peanuts for a year?” I prompted. “Tell me about the Big Buddha Bakery.”

  “Now?”

  “Quickly.”

  “You dragged me away from a chance at coffee for that?”

  “What else?” I said irritably.

  “Well, I mean, you know, you’ve got connections and a
ll here, I figured, well, that you’d have something for me, I mean, like chocolate.”

  Frustrating as she was, she was such a little kid I had to keep myself from smiling. And yet, I could see her point. I’d felt just like that about my letter.

  Amber hissed, “I’m tired of standing in the mud here when I could be—”

  I grabbed her arm.

  “The Big Buddha Bakery?”

  “Look, I told you what I know. I don’t remember anything else, except that peanuts grossed me out after that and I must have told my boyfriend and he must have told his friends because all the boys kept throwing peanuts at me in the halls and—”

  “Amber!”

  “Hey, stop bugging me. We’re supposed to be quiet here,” she said with such a tone of righteousness that I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. She started to giggle.

  “Amber, you must remember something.”

  She shook her head.

  “What about Justin? Or somebody. Somebody must know something.”

  “Ask Barry. He’s from San Francisco. He’ll know.”

  It was so obvious, I felt stupid for having missed it. Of course, Barry would know what happened, ingredient by ingredient. Dessert cooking was a small world, and word of whatever happened would spread fast. The bakery might well have no connection with Buddhism but its name. But friends of Barry, a Buddhist, would have made sure he was kept current on the affairs of the Big Buddha Bakery, particularly if they were silly or scandalous.

  But poison! I did not want to associate poison with Barry, even the idea of him knowing about another cook who had something to do with poison years ago.

  The clappers clacked on their third and final roll-down now. I ran to the zendo, crowded up onto the porch, and, like everyone else, balanced on one foot while pulling off the other boot and scanning the shoe rack for an empty space to store the pair.

  Inside the zendo, the sweet smoky smell of incense welcomed me. I bowed to the altar and walked to my seat, bowed to it, and to the room. Across from me, Gabe’s cushion was empty. This was the afternoon I’d given him permission to sleep, and even angry as he’d been in the shed, he’d probably be snoring by now. I glanced at the altar where the Buddha sat serenely, as if he had never been stolen. But it was Gabe’s use of the zendo that taunted me: He sat in here thinking about his story. I was sitting in the zendo thinking about Aeneas, about Barry, and the Big Buddha Bakery poison. I was no more sitting zazen here than he was. The zendo was a bit warmer now from the body heat. By tomorrow the bite of the cold would dissipate and only the early morning sittings would be icy.

  The tea servers walked smartly to the front of the zendo. One bowed to the sesshin director and held out a tray from which he could choose a cup. Other servers bowed to pairs of us, extending their trays to one and then the other. We chose among the small handleless mugs, and bowed with the server as she left to move on. She returned with the teapot, and finally, a tray of cookies, of which we were allotted one each. The cookies were warm, rich with chocolate chips. Here, in the silence, I nibbled, letting the warm chocolate coat my tongue with its lush sweetness. The batter I rubbed between tongue and roof of mouth, savoring the coarseness, the salt of the butter. Even the tea—green—I sloshed in near silence around my teeth. On my left, Marcus, a curly-haired guy in brown wool, sighed. Outside, leaves scraped against leaves, something tapped on the roof. For that moment I didn’t think about Aeneas or Mom or the Big Buddha Bakery or Leo or me. For that moment I was just aware of the taste and sounds, the air on my skin, the smell of damp wool. It was an unimportant interlude, but I did think of mentioning its clarity to Roshi as I went out to check on him in the walking meditation period that followed. But he was still asleep and I merely stoked the fire and headed back to the zendo, skirting a couple of guys coming out of the bath house.

  “Psst!”

  A ladder was leaning against the zendo. Hissing down at me from halfway up the ladder was Rob, black robe billowing out behind him like a pirate flag fluttering in the gray sky. Rob was pointing to the zendo roof.

  “Branches caught under the shingles. Flapping. Heard it in zendo. Can’t have it banging all afternoon and night. Use the broom. Stand on the third rung so you can reach the top.” An odd smile flickered on his mouth. “Be careful and you won’t fall. It’s only twelve feet up. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  If it’s so easy, why don’t you do it yourself? Why the smile before “you won’t fall?” I wanted to ask. But in sesshin we do what we’re asked to. So I flashed Rob a smile, trotted up the ladder, and onto the roof.

  “Don’t—”

  His wary tone jarred, and it reminded me who he thought I was—the terrified woman he’d pulled out of the cab yesterday. I took a step down the curve of the dome and I glanced down to savor his surprise.

  Rob was almost to the top of the ladder. He was wide-eyed, but not from shock; he was terrified. It was the same look that had passed across Kelly Rustin’s face when she’d first seen the depth of the canyon she’d be sailing across in the wire gag, before she knew the wire would snap. It must be the same rigid expression I had when I looked down at her from above the trees, the look I had every time I saw the woods. Before I had time to think, I had braced my feet, thrust out a hand and yanked Rob up onto the zendo roof with me. Too taken aback to resist, he lunged and landed on all fours, quite safe. He sunk to his knees, shaking. I could only wonder what people doing walking meditation in the zendo below imagined.

  Wedging the sides of my feet, I walked to the top of the dome. Rain sprayed. Wind blew it against my face. Leaves swirled up from the branches stuck in the roof; branches snapped at my legs. Rob cowered just beyond the top of the ladder. Everything was inside out. A week ago, when I was hanging onto the canyon wall staring down at the trees, my skin had gone clammy; sweat had coated my face, my neck, my back, I couldn’t breath, could hear only the deafening drumbeat of my heart. Now I was dead calm, but the panic swirled outside me, in the rushing wind, in the desperate thump of the trapped branches, in Rob’s blue-white face. I felt it, but it wasn’t mine. Here, on this curved roof, I was on my turf. I reached a hand to Rob.

  “Hey,” I said in a voice that sounded foreign to me, “we’ve both got rubber-soled shoes. If the branches stick, so will we. Shift your feet like this. Come on, up to the dome where it’s flat.”

  He didn’t move, looked like he couldn’t, like the twelve-foot drop was a hundred. The wind snapped his robe; in his mind it had to be on the verge of carrying him away. His taut face was sepulchral; in the afternoon light the sweat on his skin glowed. There was nothing I could say. I had no answer for him or for me. And yet I had to say something. This whole situation was mine to deal with.

  I said the first thing that occurred to me. “The photos of the opening, six years ago?”

  His head jerked in what I took to be the smallest of nods.

  “I recognized you, of course”—I was trying to keep my tone conversational, despite the snapping of the branches against the roof, the hiss of the wind. “You haven’t changed. But Aeneas looked so much like the Japanese roshis, it was like he was already in Japan.”

  “He was . . . in his mind.”

  “Really?”

  Sweat dripped off Rob’s nose and chin; the wind carried it off. His legs twitched spasmodically. The ladder was right behind him, but in his mind it could have been on the far side of Roshi’s cabin. Thoughts swirled in my mind. If I could show him how to walk down the ladder he would be free, I would be free. He knew about Aeneas; facts that could help me save Leo. Needs knotted my stomach: him, me, Leo, Aeneas. How ludicrous it was that we were standing on top of the zendo, right over the Buddha.

  Words left my mouth as if by their own accord. “Rob, about the opening? The Buddha? Who took it?”

  “Aeneas.”

  “Aeneas stole it?”

  “No, he didn’t steal it. He just assumed it was his.”

  “How could he—?”


  “Because—” Rob lifted himself like an arthritic cat, fear compressing each move, the straightening of a knee an inch by inch process, the moving of a foot requiring virtually an Environmental Impact Report, “—Aeneas figured he was the Sixth Patriarch.” He stood, leaning so far forward toward the curve of the roof he had to bend only a few inches to pick up one of the brooms. “But you knew that all along.”

  Knew that? “Rob, what makes you so sure Aeneas took the Buddha?”

  “I found it in his luggage, where I knew it would be.”

  “Wha—”

  He had the broom; he was standing, swinging it like a cudgel.

  “Watch out!” I yelled.

  Too late. My feet flew out from under me and I went flying off the roof. I grabbed for the ladder and held on; my momentum sent it sailing away from the zendo into the open grounds. Below, someone screamed. I shot a look down; the ground sloped away sharply. If the ladder flipped, it would fling me like a pea in a shooter.

  “Help her!” someone yelled. I twisted, pulling back. The ladder jerked. My other hand was on it now and I shifted forward. People were running toward me.

  “Get away!” I yelled.

  If I let go, the ladder would fly up into my stomach. In one last burst, I flung myself backwards. The ladder jolted; I slid down, landing hard on the ground, barely keeping the ladder from banging on top of me. Suddenly people were all around me, grabbing the ladder, asking if I was all right. The splatter of words resounded after the day of quiet, and for a minute the sense of aloneness that pervades sesshin transformed into a mesh of concern.

  It was another minute before I stood up, turned around, and noticed Rob, still standing on the zendo roof, still holding the handle of the broom. I couldn’t tell if he was shocked, sorry, or just too terrified to move. His expression revealed nothing. And when someone propped the ladder back up and held it for him, he clambered down so fast he jumped the last steps. He hurried over to me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”