Tales from the Yoga Studio

by Rain Mitchell

  “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, super-fit 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, i
t’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 receipt
s 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.