“This is my youngest, Sweet Caroline,” Mom says.
“An apt name. I can feel the sweetness in your aura, little one,” the guru says.
Obviously, his powers of perception leave something to be desired.
Sweet Caroline smiles. I hope she’s not falling for it, but she’s been known to succumb to compliments, especially from men.
“What’s he doing in our house?” I say.
“He needed someplace to stay,” Mom says.
“Where did he sleep?” I say.
“Sanskrit. That’s rude,” Mom says.
“I understand why you would be concerned,” the guru says. “I slept right here.”
He points to the meditation area in our living room. He smiles at me. Which only makes me hate him more.
“He’s a visitor,” Mom says. “What does your religion say about visitors, Sanskrit?”
“You mean our religion,” I say.
“My point is he’s come a long way,” Mom says, “and it’s our responsibility to offer him hospitality.”
“That’s why they have hotels,” I say.
“He’s a guru,” Mom says.
“Gurus like hotels. When the Dalai Lama comes, he stays at a suite in the Ritz Carlton,” I say.
“No, he doesn’t,” Mom says.
“It’s true,” Sweet Caroline says. “I read it in the L.A. Times.”
“See that?” I say.
“I don’t think that’s the truth,” Mom says.
“Actually, his Holiness stays at the Montage,” the guru says. “He has a lot more money than I have.”
“I thought Buddhists took a vow of poverty,” I say.
“Individually, yes. But his organization raises money to spread the word of the dharma.”
I think about Rabbi Silberstein pushing High Holy Days tickets. Maybe Tibet and Brentwood aren’t so different.
“Why doesn’t your organization have money?” I say.
“We have nothing to spread. If people want what we have, they will find us. That’s what we believe. Therefore, money is not needed.”
“You can’t live without money,” I say. “Everyone knows that.”
“Dad lives without money,” Sweet Caroline says.
“Zadie had money,” I say. “You barely remember because you were so young.”
“I remember,” she says.
“I do not want to talk about your zadie,” Mom says. “Not when we have such interesting living people in the room.” She sits down at the table. “Let’s have breakfast and get to know each other.”
The three of us look at her.
“You can’t just push a guru on us at breakfast,” I say. “Right, Sweet Caroline?”
She sits down.
Traitor.
The guru and I stay standing, looking at each other.
“May I join you, Sanskrit?” the guru asks.
I can see what he’s doing. Trying to give me space, trying to win me over by being deferential. I’m not falling for it.
“You can eat, but then you have to go,” I say.
“Sanskrit!” Mom says.
“What? We don’t have enough space as it is. Much less enough food.”
Mom tenses like she’s about to get into it with me, then, just as quickly, she lets the anger drain from her. She makes one of those motions like she’s pulling an invisible string from her chest. She takes a deep breath, and her voice softens.
“It’s strange to have a new person here. I understand.”
“You don’t understand,” I say.
The guru and I are still standing, looking at each other.
“Can we just have breakfast like civilized people?” Mom says.
“Since when are we civilized?” I say.
I look to Sweet Caroline for support. I don’t get any.
“Please have breakfast with us,” Mom says. “I got you some organic breakfast bars. I know you like those.”
I look at the guru, all wrapped up in flowing orange robes. The man who believes in nothing, yet has followers wherever he goes.
He’s not going to add me to his list.
“I changed my mind,” I say. “I’m not hungry.”
I grab my backpack and storm out of the house.
“They will find us.”
That’s what the guru said earlier. The people who want what he has will find him. Is that what happened with Mom? She was looking for something, anything, and this is what she found?
The thought makes me sick inside. The idea that my mother is one of those people who jumps at any trend, believing she’s found the answer to life’s questions.
That gets me thinking about Herschel.
He’s at shul right now, sitting with everyone and praying. I consider going there to join him. I remember what that used to be like, the sound of voices in unison, calling out to God. The feeling of sitting in a group of believers. We would go as a family sometimes, drive to Zadie’s house, park the car, then walk from his place because he wouldn’t use the car on Shabbat. We’d show up at Zadie’s synagogue and everyone would greet him, pinch my cheeks, say how happy they were to see us and make space for us to sit down. Sometimes I’d even feel happy to be there.
I could go to shul with Herschel now, but it wouldn’t be the same. I’d just be taking up space because I don’t believe.
So I walk.
It’s a warm Saturday in April, and I walk down San Vicente west towards Santa Monica. The exercisers are out en masse. There are runners, bikers, speed walkers, uniformed teams of cyclists. It seems like when you turn forty in Brentwood you have to join a cycling team, put on one of those skin-tight colored uniforms, and wear funny shoes that click when you walk into the coffee shop.
I move in the same direction as the exercisers, west, towards the ocean. I read somewhere that there is a high rate of suicide in California because people who are trying to escape their lives head west, and when they get here and find that nothing has changed, that they’ve run out of choices, they jump into the ocean or drive off Pacific Coast Highway.
It’s an interesting theory, but what happens if your life starts here?
Where do you go?
“On your right!” a cyclist shouts, and goes flying by me, so close that I feel the wind blow the hairs on my arm.
“Watch it!” another one says.
I’ve wandered too close to the bike lane, and a riding team is shouting at me, territorial, ready to mow me down.
I jump to get out of one’s way, and I end up in front of another. I dodge that one and the next one comes. One cyclist after another shouts rude things at me. It’s like a hyena attack on one of those nature shows where they surround some defenseless animal and hound it until it collapses.
I’m that animal.
It seems to go on forever, the shouts and the wind and the rushing bikes. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I gather my courage, let out a roar, and spin around to face the pack.
But they’re gone.
There are no bikes. They’ve all passed me by.
I’m alone on the median on San Vicente, ready to fight something that’s not there.
“You’re off balance, Sanskrit.”
That’s what Mom says when I walk back into the house an hour later.
“I’m not off balance,” I say. I look around. The guru is gone. His stuff is out of the living room. “In fact, I’m feeling very balanced right now.”
“What do you call your little outburst this morning?” Mom says.
“I’d say that was an appropriate reaction upon finding a strange man in your kitchen.”
“Not so strange. You’d met him before.”
“Not in my kitchen.”
“First of all, it’s not your kitchen. You don’t pay the bills in this family.”