by Leona Theis
“I’ve never seen inside your room,” he said.
Sylvie moved her hips in her chair, rising to his words. She twirled the thread once more and then again. “You won’t be seeing my bedroom anytime soon.” By now she had a tight band around her finger, and the tip swelled red.
“Be a sport, Sylvie.”
“I’m just on my way out.”
“Sure you are.”
“It’s true. Yoga.” She worked at the thread with her thumb, trying to roll it off the end of her finger. The more she pushed, the more it twisted around itself and held.
“Yo-ga. Well.”
“Bye, then.” She hung up. With her other hand free now she loosened the thread and slipped her finger out. The relief was out of all proportion, travelling across her palm and shivering along the inside of her forearm all the way to the crook of her elbow. She got up and locked the door, came back and lay on the couch. The pleasure she took as she moved against her own hand over the next minutes would remain her own; she’d no more get into bed with Dave than she’d give up a digit for a more intimate knowledge of her guillotine. Still — would he be rough, and would she like that? She wondered if she’d stumbled right past one of those moments that could send a life sideways. She wondered, if not for the foolishness with her swelling finger, whether she might have said, pretending innocence, Sure, let’s have a beer.
ON A SWEET-SMELLING EVENING, Will came by to pick up Sylvie, and they walked half a mile to City Park and found eight or nine people their own age or a little older sitting on the lawn of a bungalow painted powder blue. Peasant blouses and water buffalo sandals — the kind that are meant to be soaked in the sink overnight and worn wet into the day so as to take the impression of your sole.
“Hi,” Sylvie and Will both said, and the others smiled or nodded. Sylvie lit a smoke. A woman on the steps in a voluminous purple shirt said, “Such a yang thing, smoking.” What did it mean, for a thing to be yang? Two more puffs and Sylvie bent to grind what was left of her cigarette on the scrubby lawn, “the big ashtray,” as Will called it. After a moment the woman in purple extracted a pack of smokes from the drapery of her shirt and lit up. Soon the door opened and a young, blond-bearded man in loose white pyjamas looked past the others toward Will and Sylvie and introduced himself as Animesh and the woman at his side as Satya. The two of them shone in the dark doorway. “Come in!”
They met twice a week in Animesh and Satya’s rented house, sweating on the maplewood floor of the unfurnished living room, evening sunlight filtering through the philodendrons and spider plants on the windowsill. They engaged in a range of poses and stretches, but Sylvie could see that the chanting and the silences were just as important as the movements. One evening as she entered the room, Satya smiled and locked onto her eyes. Sylvie did her best to return the gaze. An itch built in her left eye. Satya’s gaze wouldn’t let go. Sylvie’s eyes began to water, momentary relief from the itch. She had the idea she was to look harder, past the brown-sugar irises and into Satya’s essential being. She managed not to giggle. A dozen pinpricks across her eye now, and she scrunched the outer corner to bring another tear. These people didn’t explain anything. The itch was too much, and she closed her eyes.
Later that evening as the group sat in silent meditation, Sylvie snuck a glance at Will, whose eyes remained closed, his expression steady, no twitch of his lips under his shaggy mustache. This gave Sylvie confidence that with time she might feel the way the other people in the room felt. Appeared to feel. Between one yoga session and the next she would sometimes think of Satya and Animesh as they’d looked that first evening, shining in the dark doorway. Followed, without apparent logic, by the thought that she hadn’t taken a five-finger discount on anything in months, not a magazine from the corner store, not a sweater from Eaton’s, not a pair of panties, not the change off Lisa’s dresser. Maybe she’d left that impulse back in her Jack life, and maybe it would stay there.
Yoga practice was routinely followed by Sharing of Food, which Satya called by a Sanskrit word Sylvie couldn’t pronounce. Leftovers stayed with Animesh and Satya, who looked as if they could use them. Raisins, dates, dried apricots, sliced apples. Will and Sylvie learned to add the suffix ji when they addressed the people in the group. Brian-ji, Marianne-ji. In Hindi, Animesh told them, this meant respected. It was clear most of these people had known each other for some time, and it was kind of them, the way they made Will-ji and Sylvie-ji welcome.
One night Earl-ji brought a fresh pineapple for Sharing of Food. Animesh went to the kitchen. He called out, “Brenda, where’s that knife with the red handle?”
Satya called back, “Look in the drawer by the stove.”
Sylvie whispered, “He calls you Brenda?”
“It’s an old name. Once in a while he forgets.”
“Does he have another name too?” Will said.
Satya’s neck reddened. “He’s Animesh now.”
“Where are you from?”
“Swift Current.”
“And Animesh?”
“Gimli. Manitoba.”
That night as Will walked Sylvie back to Bedford Road, she said, “Animesh could tell us the way to show respect in Hindi is to say ting and we’d say it. Marianne-ting, Earl-ting.” Will laughed and Sylvie let the back of her hand brush against his. Will moved to make a little more space between them on the sidewalk. “Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you get it? I mean, ‘the deep mysteries of yoga’?” Her voice mocked both her words and herself, but only lightly.
“Which?”
“Any of it.”
“I don’t know. We have the books at the store. The idea is, you get your mind and your body communicating with each other. You open up these,” he searched for a word, “these centres. Inside. So the life energy will flow through.”
“But do you get it?”
“Takes practice, I suppose.”
ANOTHER HOT BACKYARD DAY, and Sylvie lay on the beach towel with the big blue anchor; Lisa lay on the bath mat, a dishtowel overlapping it to make it longer.
Lisa said, “I need pop. D’you want anything?”
“Nah. Thanks.” Sylvie opened her eyes to see Lisa pull on her cut-offs and leave for the corner store. A few seconds later she heard a rattle. She propped herself on her elbow and looked next door and saw the screen on the basement window move. Fingers curled out and gripped one side of the frame, angled the screen and pulled it inside. From the cavity emerged a young man’s head — long dark hair, small moustache, happy eyes. People came and went from these houses.
“Hello,” they both said, their voices bumping each other.
“Want to come over?” he said.
“You could come here.” She lay back down.
He climbed out and sat cross-legged in his jeans on the bathmat. “I have come, My Lady, as you commanded.”
One of those. Almost forgivable, though, now that she saw his happy green eyes up close. His was not the sort of gaze that would try to see all the way inside her.
“But here under the sun,” he said, “it is hot and bright and —”
“That’s what makes a good day for sunbathing.”
“It is hot and bright, I was saying, and lacks … privacy.” His bare chest was smooth and skinny. His fingers played with the stray hairs that curled close to a nipple.
“So come with me, if it please you.” He stood and held out his hand.
She followed him to his basement window and through it, feet first and backward the way he showed her, and when her toes landed on the chair he’d placed below the window as a step, she felt his hands on her backside. Leaving at that point was a choice she was aware of, but the feel of those hands through her bikini roused her in the way she’d been missing.
In the heat, lying on a grandma quilt on a mattress on the floor, they had sweet, slippery sex. Their after-dozes overlapped, and then they both were awake once more. Sylvie placed a hand on the painted concrete floor to gather its coolness.
She set it on the guy’s chest, fingers spread, a gift. She asked him what he did for work, and he said he was presently without gainful employment, My Lady. She told him about her own job and how, when she pushed the button on her machine, the blade would descend and slice through the booklets without slowing down, and it would follow through right into the slot in the work table. “It’s a force. I get to start it up, and I get to turn it off.”
The guy raised himself on one elbow and took two of her fingers into his mouth. He said around her fingers, “Speaking of forces.”
Later, as she climbed back out, his hands boosted her backside and followed her legs all the way to her ankles. They gripped there, tight around bone and tendon, and Sylvie sensed she was about to be pulled back down, on his terms. She tensed. His grip slackened then, and she dared to look around. He smiled a My-Lady smile. She gave his chest the smallest kick as she shimmied out. It wasn’t the first time she’d crawled through a window to leave a man — or two — behind, but it was the first time she hadn’t even learned a name. He caught her toe and pinched, hard, and then he let go.
Lisa was lying, eyes closed, on the towel with the anchor, which she’d relocated to profit from the late-afternoon sun. An empty pop bottle lay under her limp hand. As Sylvie moved the dishtowel and the bath mat into the sun, Lisa lifted her head and squinted, then let her head fall again. Another month and Lisa would be married and gone, no longer there to see Sylvie climb in a window or out. Sylvie closed her eyes, the better to bask.
A YOUNG MAN, Bimal, arrived from Edmonton, and there was much excitement when he agreed to lead a chanting session at the powder-blue bungalow where Animesh and Satya lived in their pyjamas. They would create energy, the group of them, energy that hadn’t existed before, energy they would — and he emphasized the words — bring into being. As they sat on the hardwood in half lotus, he directed them to turn their heads to the left, shouting “Wah!” then to the right, “Guru!” They began slowly and sped up. “Wah guru! Wah guru!” Their shouts crescendoed, fell, crescendoed, fell. Sylvie grew dizzy from swinging her head. The vibration in her chest felt deep and rich, but the speed was frantic. She stopped and looked at Will, whose hair lashed his face with every turn. She resumed her head-swinging. Afterward, she had a job of it to stop her limbs from shaking.
During Sharing of Food, Bimal told them stories about his recent travels with beloved spiritual leader Mata-ji. “We were driving through the mountains, and suddenly Mata-ji held up her hands. ‘When The Deluge happens,’ she said, ‘the water will come this far, and no further.’ Then we got out of the van to see the very place where the water will stop. The very place.”
“You’re so lucky,” said one of the jis.
“Far out,” said another. Sylvie bit the insides of her cheeks. Later, as she and Will walked back to Bedford Road she said, “We’re just fucking tourists, aren’t we, with this yoga thing.”
“So far.”
LISA’S BROTHER PERRY hit town on a Thursday. He was moving back from Calgary, looking for his own place, but in the meantime he would crash on the couch. By the time Sylvie got home from work on the Friday, Lisa had already gone to meet Dave down at the bar. There was Perry alone on the couch, a bottle of Blue sweating on the coffee table. “I took the empties in for cash.” Grin. Sylvie looked toward the end of the counter and saw that the stack of cartons had been replaced by a new box with a couple of empties already inside.
“In the fridge,” he said.
Sylvie opened a bottle and turned so she was three-quarters facing him. She took a swig and felt his eyes.
“Too bad,” Perry said.
“Too bad what?”
“Nancy’s coming in from Calgary tonight. I’m not a free man.”
“You should be so lucky.” Sylvie walked toward the couch, moving her hips in a way she had, not too much, you don’t need much.
The phone rang. Will. “Are you coming to yoga?”
“You go ahead.”
“You missed Wednesday.”
“I know, but I’ve had a beer and I wouldn’t keep a straight face, and that would be rude.”
“Don’t want to be rude,” Perry said after she hung up.
When Lisa got back from drinks with Dave, who dropped her off and drove away to see a man about a dog, Sylvie and Perry were eating deep-fried shrimp from the takeout window down the block, and Sylvie was telling stories. She imitated the expression on Satya’s face as Satya had tried to tunnel through her pupils to find the essential Sylvie. She told Perry about Mata-ji and The Deluge and said she bet Mata-ji was from Moose Jaw. Lisa stood at the kitchen counter opening and closing doors, making noise with a cup and a spoon. She boiled the kettle and let it rise to a full shriek before taking it off the burner. She poured hot water and made a show of not looking their way. Squeezed her tea bag and plopped it in the sink. She looked at her brother. “Nancy’ll be here by nine, I suppose. You and her can have my bed, I’ll take the couch.” She went into her room and closed the door.
Nancy arrived within the hour. “Nance, sweetie,” Perry said. “This is Roommate Sylvie.” He stopped speaking and looked to be biting the insides of his cheeks. Sylvie offered Nancy the last of the battered shrimp, but Nancy said no, she and Perry would go out, thank you. The next day by four in the afternoon they’d found him an apartment to rent.
ON A SATURDAY MORNING, Sylvie walked up the outside staircase with her groceries and opened the door, and there was brother Perry on the couch with his arms around a sobbing Lisa. She was supposed to be out at the lake with Dave in his slant-floored trailer. Perry tilted her head forward so Sylvie could see the back of it, parted her hair here and here with his fingers to show the swollen places and the gashes and the confetti of dried blood. He gave her the story: early this morning while Dave was snoring off the booze, Lisa had snuck away. It took her hours to hitch the sixty miles to the city. “She called me half an hour ago. That asshole bashed her head against the cupboards. Bastard.” He said the word bastard tenderly, while stroking Lisa’s hair. “Four times,” he said. “Once for each cupboard door in that shit trailer of his.”
“Capital asshole,” Sylvie said. Lisa looked up, and Sylvie saw the dark bruise on her cheekbone, the red marks on her jaw. She pictured Dave’s fingers cupping that small face. The skin at the back of her neck pulled itself tight. She shuddered. Revulsion, chased by a fleeting twinge of arousal. She went to the fridge and opened the tiny, clogged freezer at the top and chipped at the frost with a knife until she’d freed a bag of frozen string beans. She slapped it twice on the counter to make it pliable, and handed it to Perry. “She needs to go to the hospital.”
Perry looked at Lisa, who shook her head. He left the beans on the couch and went to the bathroom and started to run a tub. Sylvie sat down beside Lisa and moved her hands awkwardly, trying to think how to touch her. She picked up the beans, steadied Lisa’s forehead with one hand, and used the other to hold the bag against the swelling at the back. The cold sucked at her fingers.
After a moment Lisa reached up and lifted away Sylvie’s hands. “It’s all right.” Perry came out of the bathroom and Lisa went in, her steps small. Sylvie brought from her own room the bulky cardigan that served as bathrobe for both of them and handed it around the door. The next morning she made a point of bundling the fabric she’d cut for her bridesmaid dress and stowing her sewing machine under the table.
Two weeks later Lisa was back out at the trailer with Dave for the weekend, and the wedding was on for the following Saturday. She hadn’t cancelled a thing, not the church, not the food, not the alterations to take in her whipped-meringue dress one more time at the hips. Sylvie wanted to tell her, I know it seems like you can’t stop a wedding in its tracks, but you can. Once you do, relief rushes in. She found Perry’s number on the list pinned to the wall and called him and asked, “What should we do?”
“Mind our own business.”
Own business, hell. Sunday night when Lisa returned from t
he lake, apparently unharmed, Sylvie sat her down on the end of the couch where the springs still held up. She told her about Dave on the phone that other day, how he’d suggested he come by with beers, what he’d said about wanting to see her room. “He’s a gold-medal jerk.”
“Don’t —” Lisa said, and she made a show of breathing in and out and in again — “Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because he said those things it means he likes you. He doesn’t like you. You should hear what he says about you.”
“Lisa! That’s not —”
“You haven’t got a frickin’ clue. And prancing around for Perry. He told me about that.”
Sylvie was the first to look away.
“I’ve had in mind,” Lisa said, “that actually Nancy should be maid of honour.”
“Oh.”
“She’s practically family.”
“True.”
“And maybe two bridesmaids instead of three. Simpler all around.”
IN THE DAYS LEADING up to the wedding, Lisa bunked over at Dave’s apartment, dropping by to pick things up or leave things off at times when Sylvie wasn’t in. Sylvie still felt sucker punched, nursed the sensation for days. At least she knew better than to marry one of these guys. The scatter of dried blood on Lisa’s scalp, the wince the next morning as she brushed her hair. The long baths in the evenings, Sylvie having to come in for a pee the one night and seeing how Lisa sat up quickly, steam rising, hair dripping, as if she’d been trying to scald shut the gashes.
On Friday morning she wrapped a wedding present, thinking, This will happen again to her. The gift was three brass candlesticks in graduated heights that she’d found at the Whole Earth Store. Almost a set. She’d enjoyed their lovely weight, a secret in the bottom of her purse, as she walked on past the smiling woman at the cash register who wore dangling silver earrings and a lustrous brown braid draped over her shoulder. Those earrings are the mint, she’d said to the woman. Thanks, yeah, I’m loving them. Candlesticks, because she remembered Lisa saying Dave’s basement suite was cold, and though a small flame doesn’t give off much heat, it might lend warmth of a different sort. Or. Push came to shove, she could use one to strike back. Sylvie tied a silver bow and left the gift on the table.
