by Alison Pace
She peeks up from her forward bend to see the placid-voiced, curly haired Gary slipping out the door. Alas. A moment later there’s a clicking sound and music begins piping into the room, coming through speakers hidden somewhere. Meredith tries to remember her focus, remember her breathing, and stay in sync, and then everyone’s standing again at the front of their mats, and so is she, and so is Gary.
As she hears the soft cha-cha of a snare drum, a tinkling, and a twang, an unmistakable country melody, Meredith loses focus on her breathing and tries to figure out if she knows the song, the endless game of Name That Tune she forever plays whenever she hears music. The summer air it was heavy and sweet, you and I on a crowded street . . .
Ha, Meredith thinks, Deanna Carter, and the song is “We Danced Anyway.” She feels a small triumph, the kind she often gets when she recognizes a song, or properly identifies a mysterious ingredient, an elusive spice, but along with that, there’s also a sharper feeling, she’s also a bit surprised. Because while Deanna Carter is one of her favorite country music singers, she thinks she’s only ever heard her on the Bose, the Bang & Olufsen, or the iPod. Deanna Carter, she doesn’t think, isn’t someone you come across very often in New York. Being a fan of country music in New York City is a solitary experience. And she has never once thought that in New York City there might exist a country music-loving doga instructor; and not only that, but one who is really very cute (albeit saddled with a rather unfortunate name). But then, what is it that people always say about New York? That you can find anything you want here? She thinks about that for a moment, and then something amazing happens.
The dogs, all of them, start parading. They fan out along the perimeter of the circle of yoga mats, all following Ellery in a remarkably straight line. Their tales swish and their eyes gleam and not one of them, not even Jessica, the rowdy Boston terrier, or Carlie, the face-smearing Westie, get out of the line. There at the end of the line, following closely behind the apricot poodle, is DB Sweeney. He is all the way across the room, graceful and independent and free, doing what looks like some swaying of his own, and looking remarkably rhythmic. In that instant, he looks back over his haunches at her quickly, and she has the sure sense he looks to check on her. She smiles at him, to let him know it’s fine, that she’s fine. And there’s something about the way he looks at her and holds her gaze for a moment longer that makes her think that was his plan all along.
Meredith looks quickly around and notices that all the people, they’re all now sitting back down on their mats in various degrees of cross-leggedness and swaying. And they’re all, each one of them, clapping. Meredith has no idea how they got there, or when. As DB Sweeney marches along, as the music plays, it’s clear, quite clear really, that the only thing to do is to get on the floor, the only thing to do is clap, and sway, and sing along. She starts singing softly and surprises herself as she hears her own voice getting louder, boldly singing the chorus along with everyone else. “And the band played songs that we had never heard, but we danced anyway.”
Later, after the parading has come to a finish, after Gary has once again led the people and dogs together in a rousing closing sequence of om/howl, the dogs all, almost magically, settle into what Gary calls “final relaxation.” Meredith lies on her back with her eyes closed thinking that G-Doga is not half-bad at all, thinking as she listens to Gary repeating “Inhale” and “Exhale” that his voice reminds her very much of an Elvis Costello song.
When the class has come to a close and the other people are rolling up their mats and nodding goodbyes and attaching leashes to the collars of their dogis, and Meredith is doing the same, Gary walks over to her.
“You did great today,” he says. She looks to see if the other new people, the people with the nice pug, are still here, if he could have been talking to them, too. But they’re already gone.
“Thanks,” she says, and she’s about to leave it at that, but doesn’t. “I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.” He smiles, his eyes shine so much in the way that DB Sweeney’s sometimes do. “I mean,” she continues, “not that I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it, it was just, it was great.” She would like to add on that she is a very smart person, always has been, is in fact leaps and bounds smarter than she sounds right now. But she doesn’t. “I love that Deanna Carter song, by the way. Great choice.”
“Thanks,” he says. “And DB Sweeney did wonderfully. It’s amazing how tuned in these guys are as soon as they arrive.”
“It is,” she says, nodding. She should have more to say, but yet, no.
“And you did beautifully with your first sun salutations.”
Beautifully, she thinks and says, “Thanks, thanks a lot.”
“Have you ever considered coming to yoga on your own?” he asks.
“Uh, not really, I don’t think.”
“You should,” he tells her. “I teach a class on Sunday afternoons at this great studio on Eighteenth Street. Right by Third.”
“Really,” she says, still forgetting that she knows so many more words.
“Well, then,” he says and again, he smiles at her. The smile shows more teeth this time but yet it is not one that gives any indication as to whether he thinks her smile is nice, too, or as to whether or not he has the ability to tell things about her personality from across a room. “Sunday at three thirty, it’d be nice to see you.” He takes a card out of his pocket, hands it to her.
She glances down at it, on one side there’s an address, a cell phone number, and an e-mail. His last name is Hugh, which doesn’t really help the Gary, at least she doesn’t think so. She flips the card over and there’s the name and address of a yoga studio on Eighteenth Street.
“Thanks,” she says. “I’ll definitely try.” She gets out her wallet and puts the card inside it. She thinks she really will try to make it to his yoga class. She actually doesn’t see a downside. She thinks she’ll try.
“Cool,” he says and turns to walk over to Ellery, who is peacefully waiting on his yoga mat.
She looks down at DB Sweeney, who seems to be smiling up at her. She smiles right back at him, gets a good grip on his leash, and together, they start to head home.
eighteen
join us
It was not the next day. Let it not be said that Stephanie Cunningham, née Isley, ran off like a lemming to a Weight Watchers meeting just because she heard Cher singing a (rather poignant) song on TV. But does anyone say that anymore? Does anyone actually say, with a straight face, without irony, née Isley? Stephanie thinks probably not. Probably, if she were going for inclusion of her maiden name, in this day and age, it would have to be Stephanie Isley Cunningham. And it should have been something she did from the start, from when they’d first gotten married, perhaps even with a hyphen. But she hadn’t. She’d just completely jettisoned Isley. And it wasn’t even a backlash against her father, the name of her father, who may or may not live in France (which is a story for another day), because Isley was actually her mother’s maiden name. (And that’s a story for the day after that.) She’d just become Stephanie Cunningham. She’d been, at the time, quite excited to be. She imagines that to start using Isley again now, even combined with Cunningham, either with or without a hyphen, might send certain messages, messages that, even with everything, she doesn’t think she should send.
It was a full three weeks later that she decided to go to the Weight Watchers meeting. Three weeks in which Aubrey seemed to be doing his best not to be a lying, disappointing pill popper, three weeks in which she had slowly started to think that she should consider going back on a diet, mostly because there was always something in them that she found hopeful. That none of them had worked so far seemed beside the point. It wasn’t so much the diet as it was the distant promise, the small chance out there, somewhere, a pinpoint on the horizon, that it would work. And she could use that right now, even if it was just a promise, even it was just a distant one. And she could also use to feel less like a beluga whale. She
saw a beluga whale once, in fifth grade, it was visiting the National Aquarium, and she drew a drawing of it that she doesn’t have anymore but wishes she still did. It was a beautiful drawing and a beautiful beluga whale, though less so now that she feels she so closely resembles it.
She leaves Ivy with Jenna, the nanny, the sitter, depending on your choice of phrase, and drives to the Ridgewood Elks Lodge on North Maple Avenue, the site of the Thursday at 5:30 Weight Watchers meeting. The concept of Stephanie leaving Ivy alone with Jenna is new. Very new. She left her once last week, too. It went okay, and so she’s decided to try it again. She doesn’t plan to do it constantly, not as a routine or anything—definitely not that. But just on occasion, just every now and then. She walks into the large main room of the Elks Lodge and it reminds her of a gym, and that makes her think of Aubrey. She wonders how many things will always remind her of him, no matter what happens. There are folded chairs lined up in rows. At the front of the room there is an easel with paper on it, like for Pictionary, she thinks, though most likely not as entertaining. There are women, women of all shapes and sizes, filing into the rows and taking their seats. There are more women forming a line in front of two makeshift tables set up along the far wall. She thinks she’s supposed to get in the line. She does, and as she slowly makes her way forward, there are so many things to buy. An electronic scale. A cookbook. A cookbook just about pizza. Pizza? Who would have thought? There are different brightly colored packages of snack bars called Two Points Bars, and other smaller ones called Mini Bars. A soup ladle. A Complete Food Companion. Stephanie picks up boxes and puts them back down as she goes. She backtracks, picking up the things she thinks have the highest likelihood of helping—the electronic scale, the Mini Bars, the Complete Food Companion—and carrying them with her.
By the time she reaches the front of the line, almost everyone is in one of the folding chairs, the lines and lines of folding chairs. She feels late. A woman has taken her place in front of the Pictionary easel and is writing across a page with black marker. You Bite It, You Write It, she writes, and underlines it with a thick, long line. Underneath the line, in all caps, big block letters stretching across the length of the page, she prints, ACCOUNTABILITY. Stephanie looks at the words written there, mostly at the last one. She takes off her shoes. She takes off her jacket, too, and sets it on the floor next to her shoes. She wonders what else she could take off, if the removal of socks, even lightweight spring wardrobe socks, would make a difference. Earrings? She thinks probably not, but she does take her sunglasses from the top of her head and places them neatly on top of her jacket. She reaches the front of the line, and a woman with a name tag, Maureen, smiles at her, and indicates with a sweeping gesture a small square scale set on the floor, right in front of the table. She steps on the scale, a scale without any display or numbers—really it’s more of a platform. Maureen has a computer and on it must be Stephanie’s weight, flashing in digital numbers for all the world to see, or at least for Maureen to see.
Maureen takes Stephanie’s other, less soul-destroying information, name and credit card, and types it all in. She hands Stephanie a booklet, it’s called a Membership Booklet and up at the top, there, written in ink, is her weight. It’s about four pounds higher than it was at home this morning. That could just be her clothes, or that could just be that it’s the end of the day instead of the beginning. She means that literally, not figuratively, even in light of everything that’s going on.
And four pounds, in the scheme of things, relative to the pounds that need to be lost, doesn’t really mean a lot. She studies her Membership Booklet a moment longer and she thinks the same thing she thinks whenever she gets on the scale, whenever she looks in the mirror, whenever she thinks about a lot of things these days: Will it ever get back to where it was before? And even though she’s here and that’s something, and even though Aubrey goes to see a therapist every week and says he doesn’t take pills and that’s something, too, she’d have to say that a lot of the time lately, she’s started to think the answer might be, Maybe not.
“Okay, Stephanie Cunningham,” Maureen says, reading from the screen. “First of all, welcome,” and the way she says it, it’s so friendly and warm that Stephanie does feel welcome, “and second of all, what we need to do is set a goal weight for you.”
“A goal weight?”
Maureen smiles reassuringly and nods. She lowers her voice conspiratorially, “Here’s a trick: set your goal weight a little higher than you’d like it to be, and then you can just lose the last four or five pounds once you’re on Maintenance.”
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to Stephanie and she imagines she’s far away from maintenance. She thinks of her scale, at home, at the beginning of the day as opposed to the end, and she takes Maureen’s advice and sets her goal weight four pounds higher than she would, ideally, like it to be.
“No wait,” she says right as Maureen is about to type it in, and she changes it to five pounds higher than she’d like it to be.
Maureen keys it all in and prints out a sticker, pastes it into Stephanie’s Membership Booklet, and gives it to her along with a Welcome Book, a slide rule called a Pointsfinder, and a small booklet called a QuikTrak daily planner. The Welcome Book has rainbow colors across the bottom and says Join in large white letters with Welcome, in smaller blue block letters, printed over it. There is a picture of eleven hands, all joining together in the center and resting on top of each other, like the game played in childhood, or a team rallying together before a game. Stephanie stares for a bit longer at that image, letting herself remember all the good memories it brings to mind.
Maureen points with her pen to the QuikTrak book. “Now, the most important thing,” she intones, “is to write everything down. They’ll be talking about it more in the meeting today, and your group leader will be able to answer any questions you might have, but just be sure to figure out what everything is worth and to keep track of it all.”
“Be sure to figure out what everything is worth and keep track of it all,” Stephanie says back to her, out loud, without actually intending to.
Maureen smiles warmly at her, and Stephanie notices that Maureen is wearing a necklace on which there is a large, round, gold pendant. It stands out against her white T-shirt, and Stephanie sees that across the pendant the word Faith is written in black letters. It looks familiar, and she thinks she’s seen a variation on Caryn, a silver one, though maybe hers said Hope, and not Faith. She can’t remember. She hadn’t exactly admired it on Caryn, hadn’t really felt like she could be a fan of inspirational word as fashion statement, but in this context it seems okay; in this context she doesn’t dislike it nearly as much.
“Okay,” Stephanie says, “And, thanks.”
“Have a great first week!” Maureen answers and smiles broadly, encouragingly, a smile that says, very clearly, without mistake, You can do it!
Stephanie gathers her white plastic Weight Watchers-logo bag with all her purchases, her jacket, her shoes, and her sunglasses and takes a seat toward the back in an empty folding chair. The woman seated in the next chair doesn’t look like she needs to lose that much weight, and Stephanie wonders if she’s been coming to meetings and counting her points for a long time, or if she just loses weight really easily, counts points really quickly.
Someone has just received a gold star, a sticker, for making her first goal. Five pounds. The leader explains that everyone gets a gold star with their first five pounds, because even though it may not sound like the biggest number, it counts for a lot. Stephanie watches the woman for whom now everyone is clapping smile as she pastes her gold star onto the back of her Membership Book.
Stephanie looks down at her QuikTrak diary, sees that there is a page for each day of the week, lines for each food’s description, and columns for points used and subtracted. She notices the boxes to be checked off for water, fruits, and vegetables. On the last page of the book, there is a section, across the top it says, This Week I
Commit To, and underneath there are lines and lines of empty space to fill in.
The leader goes to her Pictionary easel and reads, out loud, “You bite it, you write it.” She smiles and adds, “You nibble it, you scribble it. You snack it, you track it.” Everyone claps. The leader goes on to stress the importance of taking responsibility, of acknowledging everything and not sweeping things under the rug.
“In the end,” she says, “if you do that you’ll only be hurting yourself.” Stephanie wonders if she should be taking notes. She looks around; nobody else is. And then, slowly, one by one, hands are raised, and people are called upon.
A woman sitting close to the front, in a gray tracksuit raises her hand. “I wrote everything down this week. Everything. If I had a bite of a cracker, I gave it a half a point, or a quarter of a point if it was a small bite. I was really conscious of everything, of every nibble, every snack, much more so than I had been before. And I lost two point eight pounds.” Everyone claps, and the leader gives the woman a gold star.
“I lost point eight this week,” someone else says, to which there is a small smattering of applause. “I was disappointed, but since I went out to eat four times and drank three of those times, I guess it’s okay.”
“It is okay,” says the leader. “And what’s most important is that you’re being honest with yourself about your actions. What’s most important is that you’re being honest.” She nods wisely, right after the second time she says honest and hands out a gold star.
“And,” someone else says, “point eight pounds is almost one pound. If I could lose a pound going out to dinner four nights, I’d be really happy.”
