Tales from the Yoga Studio

by Rain Mitchell

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  A PLUME BOOK

  TALES FROM THE YOGA STUDIO

  RAIN MITCHELL began practicing yoga as a teenager and is currently at work on the second novel in the series. Rain’s favorite pose is corpse.

  PLUME

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Books (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, January 2011

  Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Mitchell, Rain.

  Tales from the yoga studio / Rain Mitchell.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47811-0

  1. Women personal trainers—Fiction. 2. Yoga—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.I8628T36 2011

  813’.6—dc22

  2010030045

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  To Denise Roy—extraordinary editor and inspiration—I hereby dedicate all of my gratitude poses to you

  PART ONE

  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 compete 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 an
y 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 mys
elf, 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.