PENGUIN BOOKS
Rain Mitchell began practicing yoga as a teenager and is currently at work on the second novel in the series. Rain’s favourite pose is savasana.
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the United States of America by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011
First published in Great Britain in Penguin Books 2011
Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011
Photography by Sean Cook www.onephotographic.com
Design by nicandlou
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-96877-3
To Denise Roy – extraordinary editor and inspiration – I hereby dedicate all of my gratitude poses to you
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
It’s at moments like this – when she’s put the class through their paces and has them settled back onto their mats in a state of collective peace, contentment, and deep relaxation, when their bodies are glistening with a light sheen of sweat, when the afternoon sun is glinting off the end of the Silver Lake Reservoir, which she can see through the wall of windows she and Alan had installed on the southern side of the studio, when all seems temporarily right with the world – that Lee starts craving a cigarette.
‘Inhale through your nose into whatever traces of tension you’re still holding on to, and sigh it all out through your mouth,’ she says. ‘Let it go.’
The craving is just a ghost from the past that visits her from time to time, drops in from the years of misguided study and too much stress at Columbia University Medical Center, when, like a quarter of the students, she would rush out to 165th Street from a lecture on emphysema, abnormal cell growth, or heart disease, light up, and huddle against the buildings in the gray dampness of those New York afternoons.
‘One more long, luxurious inhalation, one more complete exhalation.’
And that wasn’t even the worst of her behavior. Thankfully, those days of rote memorization, trying to prove something to her impossible mother, always feeling as if she’d stepped onto the wrong flight and was hurtling toward an unknown destination, are long past and gone for good. No regrets, no second-guessing.
The fact that on the night Alan moved his stuff into a friend’s spare room, unannounced, explaining only that he needed some space to get his ‘head together,’ she stopped at the convenience store on her way home from the studio and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights was a blip on the radar screen. She’d rather give herself some slack and say she wasn’t in her right mind that night. ‘Om shanti, Yoga Lady,’ the Indian store clerk had said ironically, rubbing in the contradiction.
‘They’re for a friend,’ she’d lied, which made it even worse somehow.
She smoked only two and was about to throw the pack out before she considered how expensive cigarettes have become in the past ten years (who knew?) and told herself it was a horrible waste of money to dump them. She locked them in the glove compartment. Maybe she’d pass them out to a few homeless people. Except wasn’t that like handing out lung disease? Talk about bad karma. So now she didn’t know what to do with them except leave them safely out of reach until she figured out the best course of action.
How long has she had the class in savasana?
She watches fifteen rib cages rise and fall in unison in the beautiful golden afternoon light, ignores one awkwardly timed erection courtesy of Brian – ‘Boner,’ as Katherine and a few students refer to him, he of the white spandex yoga pants – and closes her own eyes. If she thinks herself into it, she can get a contact high from the class. A deep breath in, a long breath out, a reminder that even if life has suddenly gotten way more complicated in the past few weeks, even if for the moment – might as well face it – it kind of sucks, it’s still better than it was back in those dark New York, failing-med-student days in her twenties – before Alan, before the twins, before Los Angeles. Before yoga.
She opens her eyes and sees that she’s run seven minutes over. Fourth time this week. Or is it the fifth?
She brings the class back, has them sit up cross-legged, and then, with the sudden feeling of warmth and tenderness for all of them that inevitably comes over her at this point in class, she says, ‘Take this feeling with you, wherever you’re headed. This calm is there for you when you need it. If something totally unexpected comes up, don’t let it knock the wind out of you. You can’t control the other people in your life. But you can control your reactions to them. You can’t predict what the hell they’re going to do all of a sudden, out of nowhere, with no advance warning, just when you think everything is running so smoothly and perfectly, and then …’ Uh-oh. ‘Have a really great afternoon, folks. Don’t get bent out of shape. Namaste.’
‘Didn’t I tell you she was the best yoga teacher in L.A.?’
This is Stephanie, crowing in her loud and endearingly hyperbolic style to the friend she brought with her to the studio this afternoon. Stephanie can’t help it; brash hyperbole is what has made her successful in film development. Or so she’s told Lee. When it comes to the movie business, Lee has learned to filter out the superlatives, lop eighty-five percent off most claims, divide by two, and then believe any of it only when she’s seen the film on Netflix.
Stephanie’s friend, still on her back on the floor, stretching out her spine like a cat, is a young, dark-haired beauty with the long legs, perfect muscle tone, and unmistakable signs of injuries past and present that Lee knows all too well from observing students. A dancer, there’s no question about it.
‘You’re embarrassing me, Stephanie,’ Lee says.
‘Give me a break,’ Stephanie says. ‘You love it.’
‘You’re right, I do. But for my sake, try to be a little more subtle about it?’
‘Subtlety is so overrated. You’re fantastic.’
Lee stacks the purple Styrofoam blocks neatly on the shelves. Alan has held a couple of kirtan workshops at the studio, and in addition to the inexplicable injury of moving out two weeks ago, he’s added the insult of complaining to her about petty housekeeping chores. The mats aren’t neatly stacked; the blankets haven’t been properly folded; the straps are tangled. ‘I’m trying to create a sacred space with the music,’ he said the other day, ‘and it doesn’t help to have everything look so disorganized.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ she felt like screaming. ‘You think I’m worried about messy blankets right now? How about telling me what’s going on? How about talking about the mess you’re making of our marriage?’
Instead, she’s been breathing, tidying, and trying to give him some sacred space so he can get his fucking head together.
‘I mean, Chloe and Gianpaolo are great teachers, too,’ Stephanie says. ‘But you’ve got the magic, Lee. If I could convince Matthew to come out here one of these days, he’d get hooked, I guarantee it.’
Last week it was ‘Zac’ and the week before it was ‘Jen’ or some other single name that’s supposed to convey the impression that Stephanie is on a first-name basis – and carries clout – with the Hollywood A-list. Maybe she does.
Lee has no idea if Stephanie or any of the other regulars have heard whispers of what’s going on in her life. Alan practices at the studio, and he does a lot of fix-it projects around the place – he’s a good carpenter when he puts his mind to it, and pretty skilled at dealing with small plumbing problems – so with all that and his music workshops, everyone knows him. Lee’s asked Alan to keep their personal life between them (and anyway, the relocation is just temporary!) but ever since he read Eat, Pray, Love, he’s had this annoying new need to ‘process’ and ‘discuss’ his feelings, which might mean complaining about her to total strangers. She shouldn’t have suggested he read the book. It was like giving a loaded gun to a kid. She wanted him to understand her a little better, not to use it as an excuse to dodge the responsibilities of the studio and the twins and revisit the same old regrets about his songwriting and performing disappointments.
Stephanie, like a lot of the women who come to the studio, has idealized Lee’s marriage. Lee and Alan, perfect couple, perfectly coordinated schedules, perfect bodies, perfect kids. This was somewhat less embarrassing to Lee back when Alan and the marriage seemed more ideal. She’s pretty sure Stephanie comes to Edendale Yoga partly to soak up the aura of happiness and stability (in short supply in Stephanie’s own life, Lee would guess) that hovered over the studio until recently. Lee is doing her best to maintain some of that uplifting aura while making sure the classes don’t suffer at all. No more subtle references to her marriage in class! How did that happen?
Lee watches Stephanie walk out to the reception area. Before the door has closed behind her, she’s checking her BlackBerry. Lee worries about Stephanie. She gives off the air of someone who is working twenty-four/seven, making calls, arranging meetings, trying to set up something on a film project she frequently refers to, dropping way too many names. She often comes to class looking as if she needs a good night’s sleep, and it wouldn’t shock Lee if it turned out Stephanie does more than yoga to help her relax at the end of the workday, and maybe in the middle of it, too. She claims twenty-eight, but Lee has a feeling it’s more like thirty-three, that tricky in-between age. At least she hasn’t gone ‘freeze-frame,’ Lee’s expression for the faces in class that remain surprisingly immobile when Lee has them do lion pose and asks them to stick out their tongues and scrunch their eyes. Or try to, anyway.
It’s L.A. She’s not judging. The last time she went to a yoga conference, half the teachers over thirty were complaining that their gyms and studios were encouraging them to keep up appearances ‘at any cost,’ since students like to think yoga is going to keep them looking young from the outside in – and if it’s just the outside, that’s okay, too, at least for some.
In class, Stephanie pushes too hard. She’s fit but not naturally flexible, and one of these days, she’s going to hurt herself. She’s short, with a cropped haircut that seems to be more about getting out of the house quickly in the morning than flattering her face. When Lee looks at Stephanie struggling through class, she sees a body that would look more natural and comfortable draped in another five or ten pounds. She’s been coming for six months or so, and Lee has formulated a plan – not that she’d tell Stephanie. Her goal is to slow her down, calm the inner voices telling her she needs to push harder, talk louder, all in an effort to outrun age and whatever demons are hunting her down.
Lee has a plan for a lot of her students. Occupational hazard. Way easier than trying to formulate one for yourself.
When the dancer friend is up and rolling her mat, Lee introduces herself. The dark-haired girl is even more striking close up – emerald green eyes, a (naturally) lush mouth, silky brown skin, and an effortless grace in her every movement. Except when she winces.
‘When did you injure your Achilles tendon?’ Lee asks her.
The girl – Graciela – does a surprised double take. It always amazes Lee what people think they can get away with.
‘How did you know?’
‘I got suspicious during your first down dog. The right and left sides of your body are in two different universes. You’re not big on backing off from pain, are you?’ Lee says it with a smile. She’s learned how to make comments like this without having them sound like judgment or criticism.
‘Not my forte. I’m sure you know how it is; Stephanie told me you have a lot of dancers practicing here. We don’t exactly get points for backing off.’
‘Modern?’ Lee asks.
Graciela tips her hand side to side. ‘Contemporary. Hip-hop, mostly.’ This is what Lee suspected – the muscular arms, the strong shoulders – but because Graciela is obviously a Latina, she didn’t want to seem as if she was making assumptions. ‘I’ve got an audition for an important video shoot in three weeks. A Very Big Deal. I’m not even allowed to mention whose video.’
She pauses, a wicked grin on her face, obviously waiting for Lee to venture a guess.
‘Beyoncé?’ Lee asks.
Graciela squeals. ‘Oh, my God. Can you believe it? Do you know what a break this is for me?’ She does a little leap and winces again. ‘I have to either heal or … well, there is no “or.”’
Graciela’s trying for a light touch, but the false optimism in her voice is something Lee knows well and is yet another thing she’s happy to have left back at Columbia med school, along with the snow, the self-starvation, and the antidepressants.
‘Promise me you’re not doing anything crazy to “heal”?’ Lee says.
‘Yeah, well, I think you’re going to have to define “crazy.” I go to a psychic in Venice Beach who told me I’m going to be fine, so I’m running with that. My doctor’s an alarmist, anyway. I was doing some yoga at the gym, and I was about to try one of those superheated classes. That’s when Stephanie insisted I come up here. I sometimes work shifts at a coffee shop she goes to.’
‘Welcome aboard,’ Lee says.
Graciela slings her bag over her shoulder. She has truly gorgeous dark hair, all ringlets, bounce, and shine. As she’s gathering it back behind her head, she looks up at Lee and says, ‘Do you really think I’ll be ready for the audition? I’m not kidding myself, am I?’ The sparkle is gone from her voice, the cheery bravado. It’s been replaced by that dancer despair Lee knows so well from listening to some of her students.
She studies Graciela for a minute. Part of the hell of being a dancer is that all that strength and beauty Graciela has, all the hours of training and practice, can be rendered insignificant by a little tendon problem or something else equally small, painful, and vital.
‘Go out and make an appointment with Katherine,’ she says. ‘She’s our masseuse, and she’s got a million little tricks. And then I want to see you here at least four times a week. We’ll start you out in restorative poses. But I warn you, I’m going to keep my eye on you. I’m going to rein you in, and if I catch you pushing too hard, I’m calling you out.’
Lee gives Graciela a hug and holds it for longer than she meant to. When she pulls away, she sees a look of such intense anxiety and sadness on Graciela’s face, she wonders what else is going on that she’s not saying. There’s so much she never learns about her students’ lives outside the studio. ‘Oh, honey,’ Lee says. ‘I know. But trust me, you just have to slow down and stay focused and have a little faith. We’ll do our best, okay?’
‘My budget’s tight right now,’ Graciela says. ‘I’ll try to come as often as I can.’
Lee thinks about Alan, about his lectures on Lee’s soft spot, how the studio is not a nonprofit organization. But what’s one more person in class? And if Graciela can’t afford it, she just won’t come, and then, somehow or other, Lee loses out, too. She likes this girl. To hell with Alan. She founded the studio; she’s the owner.
‘Pay me what you can. And if that means nothing, that’s fine, too.’ Lee walks out to the reception area, then, having second thoughts, sticks her head back into the yoga room. ‘Just don’t tell anyone. Especially a handsome guy with long hair you’ll see around sometimes carrying either a tool chest or a harmonium. My husband.’
Among the improvements Alan has made at the studio is creating a lounge area, complete with room for retail, out of what had been a storage closet back when the studio was the showroom of a rug dealer. There are a couple of comfortable sofas and chairs where students hang out between classes and shelves that Tina keeps stocked with a growing collection of yoga-related products. The lounge is one of the best improvements they’ve ever made, as far as Lee is concerned. A little funky, admittedly (where would she be without the Furniture for Sale page on Craigslist?), but it’s gone a long way toward helping build the community feeling Lee always dreamed about creating at the studio. In addition to the friendships, people have used the space and spirit of the practice to organize fund-raisers for a handful of local causes and a couple of international disaster relief efforts.
The retail area is another matter. Lee hadn’t wanted to take on the responsibility of ordering and keeping track of the finances of what has become a small (very!) store, but Tina talked her into going ahead with it, claiming students need a convenient place to buy mats and headbands and a few other practical items. She would handle everything for Lee, split the profits with the studio, and get a free monthly pass for classes. The problem is that every product, no matter how mundane and seemingly straightforward, creates a controversy.
Tina is standing behind the counter when Lee walks into the lounge area, and she beckons Lee over.
‘I need to talk with you about something,’ Tina says.
‘I’m a little pressed for time. …’
‘It will only take a minute.’
Here we go, Lee thinks. Tina is one of those young, superfit yoginis with too much nervous energy and a tendency to get anxious if Lee asks the class to go into child’s pose or to modify a handstand or back off on one of the more extreme twists. She’s definitely competitive – mostly with herself. She was a platform diver in high school, and Lee is always reminding her that she’s not going to have her poses scored. ‘I’m not a judge,’ she keeps telling her. ‘I want you to work on enjoying it.’ So far, she’s seen lots of work and not much joy.
‘It’s about the tea,’ Tina says and maneuvers her body so that no one in the lounge can hear. ‘I ordered this new organic brand that everyone is raving about, and without thinking, I ordered five boxes of this along with the herbal.’
She holds up a package of Earl Grey.
‘Okay,’ Lee says, waiting to hear what kind of debate was inspired by a box of tea. Tina recently graduated from UCLA and is back living with her parents, so Lee suspects it’s a matter of too much time on her hands.
‘It’s caffeinated,’ she says. ‘Which I didn’t really think about at the time, but Isabella Carolina Paterlini – she was at Chloe’s seven a.m. class today – said she’s trying to get off coffee and that seeing a caffeinated tea on the shelf was a trigger for her. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I told her I’d ask you.’
‘Good thing you didn’t decide to go with Red Bull,’ Lee says.
Tina has a nervous, pinched face and, as far as Lee can tell, not much of a sense of humor. Although admittedly it wasn’t much of a joke. A lot of people seem to get self-righteous about things like diet and drinking when they get into a yoga studio, and Lee can’t tell if it’s coming from some genuine feeling or because they think it’s how they ought to behave. In the grand scheme of things, Lee is pretty abstemious, but she’s not above the occasional turkey burger and fries (and the very infrequent cigarette) and she thinks most people would be a whole lot happier and healthier if they relaxed around these issues instead of trying to adhere to a strict policy. What is ‘perfection’ anyway?
‘Have you tried it?’ Lee asks.
‘No. But all their teas are amazing.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Lee says. ‘I’ll buy the five boxes. I love Earl Grey, and I can always send my mother a box or two for her birthday.’
‘Oh, Lee. That’s so great. I’ll put them in the office. Have you got time to talk about something else?’
‘I have to get to school to pick up the twins,’ she says. ‘What is it?’
‘Someone asked if we’d stock Kegel exercisers. I didn’t even know what they were, and then I looked it up online. I was wondering …’
‘Let’s put that one off until tomorrow.’ If a box of tea is inspiring this much conversation, she can only guess what would come of this item. There are moments when she’d like to close down the retail section – too much trouble – but some of the students have expressed a real appreciation for it. Lee starts to walk to the office and then turns back. ‘You’re doing a great job, Tina,’ she says.
In most ways, she is, and it’s amazing to Lee how well people respond to a little much-needed praise. Positive reinforcement. Why, she wonders, hasn’t Alan figured that out yet?
It takes Lee twenty minutes to walk from Edendale Yoga to the school to pick up the twins. Alan dropped them there this morning and went downtown to work with his writing partner on a song they’re hoping to sell to another reality show about addiction on VH1. He was supposed to leave the car for her and walk back to his new digs. She’d bet anything it’s not in the lot. Fortunately, she’s not a gambler, so she’ll just stay focused on what’s right with the day.
Growing up in suburban Connecticut, Lee never imagined she’d live in a place as urban as Silver Lake. California had never been on her radar screen, period. She always dreamed she’d end up in Vermont, some pretty, small town where she could have a private practice as a GP, raise a family, and go pond skating a few months a year. Basically, the full Currier and Ives fantasy. The last time she was in Vermont, she got stuck in a traffic jam outside a strip mall of outlet shops. Oh, well. Now she can’t imagine leaving Silver Lake. It’s just the right mixture of fun and funky, boho and beautiful. And yes, people do walk in this neighborhood and ride bikes to work and sit around drinking coffee (caffeinated!) at sidewalk cafés. It’s probably in the low seventies today, and as she strolls down the street from the studio, she can see the reservoir spread out before her like a shimmering mirror framed by the green of palm trees and the stucco houses with their red tile rooftops.
She breathes it all in, trying to store up some of this calm (this feeling is there for you when you need it) before the twins storm back into her life and make every moment an exercise in accepting the unacceptable. Systems? Plans? No point with two eight-year-old boys steering the ship. Still, she couldn’t have picked a better place to raise kids, even if Silver Lake is a little scruffy around the edges once you take a good look, even if the air can be a little thicker up here. Her own path would have been a lot clearer a lot sooner if she’d grown up in someplace as diverse and fun as this instead of Darien.
As she steps onto the sidewalk around the reservoir, the breeze picks up, freshening the air and making her think, for one moment, that everything really is going to work out all right. Alan is just being moody and childish in the way he can be sometimes. It’s his most unappealing quality, but she’s dealing with it. At least he started working on some new songs. That will make him feel good about himself until there’s one of those rejections that always send him into a spiral of self-doubt expressed as anger at someone else. It was her idea for him to pick up the harmonium and start playing live music at a few of the classes in the studio. He has a surprising flair for it, and students love it. True, it’s not what he imagined doing with music, but it gives him an audience, and Lee has gotten him a couple of gigs at other small studios around town. If he needs a little time to look at what he’s doing and reevaluate, she can deal with it. He told her it’s not about her and it’s definitely not about an affair. For the moment, it’s easiest to believe he’s being honest. It’s all going to work out. It’s all going to be fine.
She rounds the corner and the school comes into view. The entire student body is lined up on the sidewalk, and there’s a fleet of police cruisers at the door, blue lights flashing, and the sound of fire trucks in the distance.
That’s when she starts to run.
‘The fast was incredible,’ the woman says as Katherine kneads her calves. ‘After the third day, I had absolutely no hunger whatsoever. I mean, what is that about? And for the ten days, ten whole days without a bite of food, I was still … you know … a few times a day. Amazing amounts. I’m so happy to have that out of my body.’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ Katherine says.
Cindy’s monologue, which began even before she lay down on Katherine’s table, has officially crossed into TMI territory. No surprise there. Katherine guessed what was coming as soon as Cindy told her when booking the appointment that she couldn’t wait to describe an ‘amazing experience’ she had during a ten-day cleanse. This is Cindy’s fifth massage with Katherine, and each time she comes, she has a new amazing experience to recount in detail; most of them involve getting something out of or off of her body. A new diet, sinus rinsing, high colonics, a sweat lodge.
What is always a surprise to Katherine is finding out yet again how boring it is to listen to someone’s dietary and digestive adventures. Katherine is no stranger to all this (flirting with ‘healthy’ fads helped her kick her more dangerous addictions), and she has to admit that Cindy looks good, her skin taut and glowing. But sometimes Katherine thinks she ought to post a sign reminding clients that she doesn’t need to know about their bathroom experiences in quite so much detail. She reaches over and turns up the music a few notches, hoping to send a subtle message.
‘You’re probably wondering what I ate to break the fast, right?’
Not really.
‘It’s usually the first thing everyone asks.’
Assuming they’re able to get in a word.
‘I was supposed to start off with a day of this green juice. I’m not sure what was in it, but it tasted like I was drinking hay and it made me so nauseated, I reached for the first thing I could get my hands on to try and get rid of the taste, and that happened to be a chocolate chip bagel that Henry had left on the counter in my kitchen.’
Here comes the requisite attack on Henry.
‘Thanks a lot, right? I mean, he knew I was going to break my fast that day. He’s into sabotage. But, hey, I love him anyway. Omigod, his ass is so beautiful, like a marble statue. I’m not thrilled about his wife, but at least he was kind enough not to tell her that there’s another woman in his life, which I think is kind of sweet of him. So the bagel wasn’t what was on my plan, but I figured since I’d already eaten it, I might as well enjoy it, and then – have you been to that new bakery on Hyperion? …’
There’s a weird disconnect Katherine has noticed among some of the people she works on. They talk about their bodies as if they’re temples of purity they want to honor by getting massage, doing yoga, eating only organic foods. But at the same time, they spend half their waking lives trying to empty out their systems and purge them of normal bodily fluids and effluvia, as if they’re at war with their most basic and healthy functions.
The good thing about the talkers is that you can tune them out and focus on your own obsessions, like, oh, let’s say figuring out a way to make a connection with the redheaded fireman who just started working at the station up the street. Big Red. Now there’s someone worth obsessing about.
When she’s finished with Cynthia, Katherine puts a scented eye pillow over her eyelids, tells her to take her time, and goes out to the reception area. She strolls behind the desk and nearly bumps into Alan. He’s kneeling behind the counter, going through the class sign-in sheets from last week. Lately, he’s gotten more and more insistent about checking the sign-in sheets against the receipts, trying to prove that Lee isn’t collecting from everyone or is offering a sliding scale to some students. Katherine is keeping her mouth shut on that.
‘Hey, babe,’ he says.
There are so many reasons that being referred to as ‘babe’ by Alan makes her slightly ill, Katherine wouldn’t know where to start complaining. Instead she says, ‘Heeeey,’ with exaggerated flirtiness she hopes he finds insulting.
She’s never entirely trusted Alan – the amazing body, the long hair, the too-handsome, chiseled face, the way he preens in front of classes when he’s playing live music – as if it’s all about him. Since Lee confided that he moved out on her and the boys, she trusts him even less. Lee is better off without Alan, but he hasn’t earned the right to walk out on her. As for the reasons behind that move, Katherine has a few suspicions of her own, but she’s keeping her mouth shut about that, too.
‘Do you know how many people are signed up for my kirtan workshop next week?’ he asks.
‘Three,’ Katherine says.
If Alan had his eye on his own business instead of counting up Lee’s receipts, he’d know this. Katherine rents her massage space at Edendale Yoga, and she ends up spending more time at the studio than anyone else, including Lee, waiting for clients and killing time between appointments. Out of fondness for Lee, she tries to keep her eyes on as many things as she can, but in a low-key way – she’s committed to not getting overly involved in anyone else’s life. Still, too many people have their unskilled hands on things around here – mostly studio assistants who trade front desk duty for free classes. In addition to having minimal knowledge of how to work the computer programs, they’re always in such a rush to get into class, they leave money on the counter, credit card receipts scattered around, and the computer screen littered with Post-it Notes with questions, requests, and assorted
details about unfinished business. Last week, Katherine saw one that said: ‘I cldn’t figger how 2 print rcpts, so let evry1 in free. Hope OK. 
Tara.’
‘Three,’ Alan says. ‘Perfect. I was hoping it would be a small group. That makes it so much easier to work with them.’
Katherine says nothing, the best way to let him know she isn’t buying that comment. He’s a good musician and has a nice voice, but after the last workshop he gave, she heard a lot of complaints from students that he mostly performed and didn’t let them sing much.
Katherine also knows that Alan was supposed to leave the car at the school for Lee today, but she can see it outside the studio. Classic passive-aggression and an issue she is not going to get in the middle of.
He walks into the studio, and through the glass doors Katherine can see him ‘stretching,’ a routine that involves a lot of preening and prancing, a few push-ups to get his biceps pumped, and a handstand that he holds for almost a minute. Supposedly he was a runner or something in college, and he does have a great practice, one that would be a lot more impressive if it wasn’t so obviously intended to impress.
Alan’s music career is the reason he and Lee moved out here. The fact that it didn’t work out as he planned doesn’t say anything about his talent; show business didn’t work out as planned for most residents of this city – herself included. Katherine has sat through enough of his coffeehouse and private performances to know that he’s a skilled musician and a capable songwriter. But sadly, he tends to oversell himself in front of an audience or let out a trace of bitterness about the disappointing size of the crowd, so you end up feeling like a jerk for having shown up. ‘I had confirmation from forty people that they were coming tonight,’ he once said from the stage to an audience of ten. ‘I guess they had something better to do.’
As far as Katherine’s concerned, Alan’s behavior toward Lee is just a lot of unattractive acting out. The spoiled boy who’s used to being the center of attention needs some space to lick his wounded ego. As for what she saw him doing in the office two weeks ago … more acting out.
She gathers up the sign-in sheets and goes back into Lee’s office, turns on the computer, and pulls up the receipts for the past week. Because she’s a body worker and a former junkie, everyone assumes her computer skills are basic. Sometimes it helps to keep expectations low.
The last thing Lee needs right now is to have Alan breathing down her neck about all the free passes she hands out and the bartering she does with some of the regulars and the sloppiness of the studio assistants. She tries, whenever she can, to get rid of the Post-it Notes and bring a little sanity to the accounting side of things. Alan would probably be upset if he knew, but it’s not like he’s going to handle the job himself.
Katherine is so absorbed in what she’s doing, she barely notices the sound of sirens. When they register, she heads out to the sidewalk and sees the fire trucks headed down the hill. Another brush fire somewhere, no doubt. And no sign of Big Red on the truck.
Lorraine Bentley intercepts Lee as she’s dashing across the street to the school.
‘Don’t freak,’ she says. ‘It’s just another false alarm.’
Lee isn’t having any of it. ‘Where are the twins? Have you seen them? What’s going on, Lorraine?’
The two of them jog down the line of kids, most of them in giddy recess mode. A little voice in Lee’s head is telling her everything’s fine and she’s overreacting, but a louder voice is shouting, Where are they? All the pent-up tension of the past couple of weeks is beginning to squeeze her in the chest.
Then she spots four boys off by themselves in the playground, clearly not where they’re supposed to be. She sees Michael push a boy off the jungle gym. Marcus dashes over and helps the boy get up.
Lorraine grabs her arm and says, ‘Don’t let them see fear on your face, Lee. Don’t get them worried.’
As she steps onto the playground, the boys rush over to her and grab her legs. Even Michael. ‘Someone tried to blow up the school,’ he says, proud rather than worried, but the fact that he’s clinging to her like this means he smelled trouble.
Miss Marquez appears from around the corner, looking even more harried and exhausted than she usually does. ‘I’m sorry, Lee,’ she says, trying to catch her breath. ‘They were all supposed to be on the sidewalk. I don’t know how the boys got over here. Didn’t you boys hear the announcement? Didn’t you hear me calling for you?’
They’re still clinging to Lee, not even bothering to respond. Miss Marquez has lost what little influence and control she had. ‘What happened?’ Lee asks her.
Miss Marquez can’t be more than twenty-five. Teachers use the school system here as a résumé builder. Two or three years and they’re out with a badge of honor, moving on to greener pastures. There’s sweat beading up on her forehead, like little blisters. She speaks quietly, so only Lee can hear. ‘A call about someone with a gun. This was just a precaution. They were pretty sure it was a prank right from the start.’
It’s the third unnerving ‘prank’ since January. And it’s only March. There was a bomb scare, rumors of a new superflu that caused a two-day closure, and now this. It’s just what happens these days, but what worries Lee most is that the overstressed faculty and administration don’t seem to be able to control the situation. For the past year, she’s been telling the principal that she’d love to come and give yoga classes for the staff, to help them deal with the stress, but there were objections from a couple of teachers that the practice conflicts with their ‘religious beliefs.’ Breathing, she asked, conflicts with their religion? This just renews her conviction that she’s got to keep pressing the issue. Maybe she could offer one week of free classes at the studio for teachers. Alan would love that.
Back on the sidewalk, Lorraine has Birdy’s hand. Birdy is a sweet little girl who seems to be living up to Lorraine’s odd choice of name. Pale, thin, and decidedly sparrowlike. Predictably, the twins call her ‘Turdy.’ Lee’s had no success getting them to stop, but at least they no longer do it to her face. And let’s face it, the kid is … unusual?
‘Garth and I are calling in all our chits,’ Lorraine tells Lee. She’s the only real California blonde Lee is friends with, and, with her Joni Mitchell coloring and cheekbones, Lorraine makes Lee hear strains of ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ every time they meet. ‘His parents, mine, every relative we can think of. I can’t do this anymore. I don’t care how expensive it is or how I’m supposed to support public education. One of these times it’s not going to be a false alarm.’
Birdy is staring at Lee with her preternatural gaze, her watery blue eyes too limpid and ethereal for an eight-year-old. She really doesn’t belong at this school. At least Michael is a tough kid. And even if Marcus isn’t, he has his twin around to (hopefully) help him out.
‘You look sad,’ Birdy says.
‘No, no, honey,’ Lee says. ‘I’m happy that everything’s okay here, that’s all.’
Birdy gives Lee one of her eerie silent stares, and Lee knows she understands that she’s being lied to.
Garth and Lorraine are both artists with a big studio behind their modern house by Shakespeare’s Bridge. They play an active role in the local gallery scene, and Lee’s lost count of the number of openings she’s gone to for them. They’re one of those couples who seem to spend all of their time together and to be constantly holding each other’s hands. She once heard Garth refer to Lorraine as ‘Mommy’ in a way that made Lee a little uneasy.
She finds Lorraine’s big, muddy canvases incomprehensible and unattractive, which makes them a lot more appealing than Garth’s embarrassingly homoerotic nude self-portraits. They claim to be struggling artists living hand-to-mouth, but it’s hand-to-mouth at a pretty high level. Lee guesses they call in their chits a few times a year.
‘Do you have another school in mind?’ Lee asks.
‘We’ve got applications in at three,’ Lorraine says. ‘They’re all interested, but we’re waiting to hear.’
In other words, they’ve been planning this for months, long before any of the recent incidents at the school. This makes Lee resent Lorraine in some inexplicable way and, at the same time, feel like a bad mother for not having investigated the same options herself. But she’s always been one to try to fix a situation instead of running from it.
She heads to the lot with the boys and searches for the car. As suspected, it isn’t there. She’s tempted to call Alan and start ranting, but it’s always best to just deal on your own, she’s found. Especially now. She’s afraid that showing Alan she needs him will only drive him farther away.
Michael is poking his brother, and as she walks back to Lorraine, she separates them a few times before they settle down. Lorraine has on a casual, slightly shredded, gauzy skirt and a crisp blue shirt. Lorraine has a look. Maybe Lee needs to acquire one, too.
‘I forgot that Alan has the car today,’ she says. ‘It’s been so busy at the studio, I’m more scattered than usual, which is saying something.’
‘Do you need a ride?’
‘If it’s not too inconvenient.’
Lorraine looks at the boys. ‘We’ll put Birdy up front,’ she says. ‘If you don’t mind riding in back.’
‘I insist.’
They get the kids arranged and strapped in, and Lee sits between the boys to keep them apart. Michael immediately starts swatting at Marcus and she gives him a look.
‘So I’ve been meaning to invite you to an opening Garth’s having in a couple of weeks.’ Lorraine names a date as she pulls out of the lot. Lorraine is one of the overly cautious drivers whose hesitation at every turn is meant to be safe but is actually a hazard. ‘He’s just finished some new work and the gallery is so excited about it, they shifted their schedule around to give him a show. We’d love it if you and Alan could come, if that’s possible?’
‘I’m pretty sure that week is open.’ Something about the way she asked the question makes Lee a little paranoid that she’s heard rumors about Alan’s move. They’ve told the kids he’s just staying with Benjamin so they can get some work done and they don’t need to talk with anyone about it, but you never know what’s going through their heads. As for the opening, the idea of standing around Garth’s paintings with a group of people talking about his technique while pretending not to see the garish depictions of his dick that are always front and center on his canvases is pretty excruciating. But there are a lot of things Lee likes and admires about the couple, and it might do her and Alan good to appear together in public.
‘I’ll send you an e-mail,’ Lorraine says. ‘It’ll have to wait until Thursday. Garth and I have Wednesdays as a techno-free day. No cell phones, no computers, no TV. You guys should really try it. It always ends up being our most romantic day of the week, if you see what I mean.’
‘Sounds good,’ Lee says. She starts playing with her hair nervously, thinking about Alan and the fire drill and the last time she and her husband had a romantic day of the week. (And ‘most’ implies there’s more than one day a week that’s passionate!) She’s always telling her students not to compete and to let go of ego, but sometimes Lorraine makes her feel as if her own life is going off the rails.
‘Are you okay, Mom?’ Marcus asks. He’s her worrier.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ she says. ‘Of course I am. I just got a little nervous when I didn’t see you on the sidewalk.’
Michael starts kicking the back of Birdy’s seat and chanting, ‘Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream.’
She reaches over and puts a hand on his thigh. Does Alan take them out for ice cream when he picks them up? She thought they had an agreement about the kids’ diet, but she thought a lot of things that aren’t turning out to be what she imagined.
‘We’ve got some tofu pops in the freezer at home,’ she says.
Even Marcus screams in protest at that suggestion and joins in with his brother’s chanting.
To hell with it, she thinks. She could use a little indulgence herself. ‘What do you think, Lorraine? My treat?’
‘Let’s go to the new gelato place,’ she says. ‘Birdy’s lactose intolerant and they have sorbet.’
Michael makes farting noises on the back of his hand, but hopefully not loudly enough for Lorraine to hear.
The thing that Katherine likes best about the new Dutch bike she bought online is that it’s pink. It’s true, she paid too much for it – and extra for the designer color – but her massage practice at the studio has really caught on in the past few months, and she figures she owes herself a little pampering, a treat. She ordered it on the second-year anniversary of her sobriety. Why not?
It’s sturdy, it’s solid, and she feels cool riding it around Silver Lake. Complete strangers sometimes wave at her. It has a great classic design, and she gets off on dressing to match the bike’s style, if not its color – a little more girly and retro-chic, a little Zooey Deschanel. She’s been getting back into sewing and has taken apart and restitched a couple of vintage dresses she had stored away in a closet. It’s true the bike is a target for thieves, but in her mind, that only confirms its value. She’s got a very good lock.
What she likes least about the bike is that it really doesn’t show off her ass.
Under most circumstances, she’d consider this a plus. She’s had way more than her fair share of wanted and unwanted attention all her life, and there’s no use pretending that thirty percent of her massage clients at Edendale Yoga aren’t guys (and one or two girls) who think she’s hot. Almost a year ago, after she put an end to her relationship (to be generous about what was in fact more like an exercise in low self-esteem) with Phil the Impossible, she decided to take a break from men and dating and sex altogether. It’s been among the most relaxing stretches of time she’s had in years and the most centering, but lately, as she’s biked down Hillhurst Avenue to the studio and past the station house and spotted the redhead – two days ago she chatted up one of the other firemen, who told her his name is Conor – she’s had a sudden desire to be leaning over the handlebars, flaunting the results of all those utkatasanas she’s been doing over the past couple of years.
The way she sees it, there’s a big fat connection between sex and yoga (well, sex and everything