Enlightenment for Idiots

by Anne Cushman

  “Just promise me you aren’t going to bring him back here.”

  “I won’t. I promise. Now can we just get on with the packing?”

  She nodded, reluctantly, then began to brighten at the prospect of bringing order to chaos. “Okay. So over here in this corner we’ll put all the stuff that’s going to India with you. Everything else we’re going to pack into boxes. I picked up a bunch of empty ones at Safeway—they’re out in the hall. And I got packing tape. And a marker.”

  “You’re a goddess. I don’t know how I’d get through life without you.”

  “You wouldn’t. You’d have driven off the road into a ditch a long time ago.” She walked to my closet and began pulling clothes down off their hangers. “Grab me a box and I’ll start putting these into it.”

  “Wait. Shouldn’t I see if there’s anything there I want to bring?” I handed her a box, alarmed.

  “What, you’re going to wear a velvet miniskirt in Calcutta? You don’t even wear it here.” She began piling things into my box. “So what time are you meeting him?”

  “Actually, in just an hour and a half. I thought we could make a start on things here, then finish it up tomorrow.”

  She began pulling sweaters down off a shelf. “It’s better just to do it all at once. How about this: We’ll get started on the packing together, then I’ll keep going while you meet with Matt. I’ll finish faster without you anyway. You have exactly two hours with him, then meet me back here.”

  I sat down on the floor next to my backpack and began snipping off the tags on the things I’d bought, trying to look like I was matching her level of activity. “I see what you’re trying to do, Lori. What are you, my mother?”

  “No.” She grabbed a roll of packing tape, pulled it out with a crisp whirr, ripped it off, and sealed the first box. “I’m your best friend. And I’ve picked you up off the floor for this guy too many times.”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t been like that for a long time.”

  “I know you haven’t! Duh! Because you broke up with him!” She was working her way through my bureau now, relentlessly tossing clothes into another box. “I know you’ve missed him for the last few months. But you’ve also been happier and more focused on your own life than I’ve ever seen you. I don’t want you to backslide.”

  “I won’t backslide.” I looked around at the room, half torn apart, and was struck by how familiar the chaos felt. My mother had heralded each new move with bright excitement—Guess what, Amanda? I’ve found us a wonderful new home!—as if, in these new places, she and I would both become entirely different people. But inside me, there’d be a dropping feeling—my world annihilated, yet again.

  “Actually, I really think we should do this in stages,” I said to Lori. “Let’s find a good stopping point.”

  “Amanda, we’ve only just begun. You just want me to leave so you can bring him back here.” She sat down next to me on the floor.

  “You’re saying you don’t want to sleep with him. But I bet you ten bucks that after he called, you went in the bathroom and shaved your legs, just in case.” She leaned over and started tugging on my pants legs teasingly. “I’m right, aren’t I? Show me your legs!”

  “Keep away from my legs, you freak!” I rolled away and she began chasing me around the room on her hands and knees, both of us laughing, until we collapsed in a pile of unsorted clothes.

  “Not just my legs,” I admitted. “My bikini line, too.”

  “Well, don’t show me that. And you better not show him, either.”

  “Okay, okay. I give up. You stay here and pack.”

  She nodded. “Good. Don’t bother taking the bus—you can borrow my car. And by the time you’re back, I’ll have your whole life boxed up in numbered, labeled boxes.”

  She leaned over and gave me a hug. “Amanda. Just dump him. You won’t be sorry.”

  HE WAS LATE, of course.

  I waited at the edge of the parking lot at Ocean Beach for ten minutes or so, next to a warning sign: DANGER: RIP CURRENTS. PEOPLE SWIMMING AND WADING HAVE DROWNED HERE. Then, not wanting to look like I was waiting for him, I headed down the cement steps to the beach, which stretched flat and almost deserted in both directions. Out to sea, a few surfers were bobbing in the waves in black wet suits, like seals, ignoring the warnings. I sat down on a log, facing the water, and stared out at the waves. Just a few miles inland, at my house, it was sunny and warm, but here it was foggy and cold, a whole different weather system. A sharp wind bit at my cheeks. I hunched my shoulders and wished I had brought a warmer jacket. I heard the crunch of feet on sand behind me and looked around—too quickly—but it was just an older woman, a tangle of gray hair blowing in the wind, head down, shoulders hunched, walking fast.

  I ran my fingers through the coarse brown sand, which was littered with seagull feathers and blackened bits of half-burned driftwood, the remnants of past bonfires. I remembered something I’d once told Lori: that sometimes I thought I didn’t just want to make love with Matt, I wanted to become him—someone who lived untethered, letting the wind carry him into the future without looking back.

  Lori had looked at me like she thought I was crazy. “But he’s not coming back again and again because you’re like him,” she’d said. “He’s coming back because you’re different. You’re his taproot, his anchor. You’re the only thing that’s constant in his life.”

  About fifty feet away, tossed on the white foam, a guy in a black wet suit glided to the shore on a boogie board. He stood up and stepped out of the water, shaking his head like a puppy, and walked across the sand toward me. I didn’t realize who it was until he was just a few feet away.

  “The waves were so good, I couldn’t resist,” he said, grinning at me. He had cut off his ponytail and shaved his head; his skull was glistening with water. He dropped the board on the sand. “Afraid of getting wet?”

  “That’s the least of my fears,” I said. And then I was in his arms, my arms around thick wet rubber, my face against his chest.

  “I brought you a board, too,” he said. “And a wet suit.”

  “Matt, you’re insane. It’s freezing.”

  “No! It’s great once you’re in. The waves are unbelievable. Come on. Give it a try.”

  “But Matt, seriously. I haven’t boogie-boarded in years. And besides, we have to talk.”

  “Then it’s been too long. We’ll talk afterward, I promise.” He grabbed me by the hands. “Come on, Amanda. Look at it this way: We can sit in my truck and argue. At least one of us will yell. At least one of us will cry. Or we can get in the water and have a fabulous time together. Come on. What are you afraid of?”

  Danger. Rip currents. But I found myself standing behind his truck, pulling off my clothes and wiggling into the tight skin of a wet suit.

  He was right, of course. It was fantastic. I had forgotten what it was like to be in that wild rush of water. Again and again we fought our way through the surf, diving under the breaking waves until we were far enough out. Then I’d follow him in, swimming hard toward the shore just ahead of a wave until it swelled up underneath me and I was carried in, water surging under my belly. The cry of the seagulls, the roar of the surf—they drove everything else from my brain, for a while, including the little voices in the back of my mind that were still protesting. Weren’t you going to talk? Why does he have an extra boogie board and a woman’s wet suit lying around in the back of his car?

  Afterward, we toweled down in the cold wind, pulled on our clothes, and crawled into the back of his truck under the camper shell. The truck bed was covered with an old futon. I saw a cooler, a camping lantern, a pile of blankets, and a sleeping bag stuffed in a sack.

  “Been on the road?” I asked.

  “I drove my truck back down from Alaska.” He slung a blanket around his shoulders and held out part of it for me, so that I found myself snuggled up against him.

  I reached up and touched his skull, lightly, then pulled my hand away. “What’s
this? Joining a monastery?”

  “I’m sure you think that would be good for me. But no. I just got sick of dealing with hair every day. It’s just one less thing to take care of.”

  Like you’re taking care of so much. I didn’t say anything. Under the blanket, his arm slid around me. “Thanks for coming into the water. I really didn’t think you would. That’s what I love about you: the way you’ll go with whatever wild thing is going on with me.”

  “That’s what I love about you,” I said. “There’s always something wild going on.”

  There was an awkward silence. The word love sat between us like a small animal, unsure of its welcome.

  “How have you been?” I asked. My body still felt like I was riding the waves. I shut my eyes and saw water crashing all around.

  “Up and down. I finished the Greek dolphin series and exhibited it in a gallery in London, which is good. But only like three people saw it, which is not so good.”

  I picked at the fringe of the blanket. “Was one of them Cynthia’s daughter?”

  I felt his body tighten. “That didn’t last long. Predictably. And now Cynthia’s not so keen on me.”

  “That’s funny. My mother’s not too keen on you, either.”

  He reached for my hand under the blanket. “Look. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But that whole thing had nothing to do with you and me. Sometimes other women are just like another country to explore. Or a mountain to climb. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just another adventure.”

  I pulled my hand away. “And so what am I? A river to raft? A tree to chop down?”

  “You’re a whole different story. You should know that by now.”

  “Exactly what story is that? It would be good to know, so I could start rehearsing my part.”

  “Amanda. You know you have a place in my heart that no one else does. It’s just that there’s so much I want to explore out there in the world. I’m nowhere near ready to settle down.”

  “You say ‘settle down’ like it’s some sort of insult.” I slid out from under the blanket. “Boring. Restrictive. That’s not what I’m looking for, either.”

  “So what exactly are you looking for?”

  “Just—more than we have. What we have isn’t a relationship at all. It’s more like a semiannual train wreck on acid. I look around afterward and my whole life is in shambles. But boy, the colors look pretty.”

  “So instead what you want is a safe ride on a commuter train. Punch your ticket, get off, and go to work.”

  “You’re doing it again.” It was cold, away from the warmth of his body; I was beginning to shiver. “Can’t there be anything in between?”

  “There probably is. I just can’t figure out how to do it.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  He sighed. “I don’t want to be the one holding you back from getting what you want in your life. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’d be happier if we did take a break from each other.”

  “How would I be able to tell?”

  “Stop it. Just stop it.” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Look. I love you. I love you like I don’t love anybody else. And you love me. What more do we need, really?”

  More, I wanted to say. Less. But then his mouth was on mine, and the water was cresting over us, rough and wild and insistent. People swimming and wading have died here. But all I could do was either ride the wave wherever it took me, or go under.

  WHEN I GOT BACK to Lori, an hour and a half late, all the boxes were packed and sealed and stacked in a corner of my room. My backpack was out in the hall, packed as well. She had even rolled up my rugs and swept the floor bare. Stripped of all my possessions, the room looked bigger than I remembered, and curiously neutral. It could belong to anybody.

  “Wow.” I sat down on the edge of my bed.

  “All that’s left to do is carry away the boxes. Don’t worry about the sheets and blankets. I’ll come back after you’re gone and throw them in the laundry.”

  “Wow,” I said again, stupidly.

  She looked at me sharply. “Amanda. You did break up with him, didn’t you?”

  “We agreed not to have any contact for a year. Not till I come back from India, at least. To give us some time to sort out who we are to each other.” His mouth on mine had been insistent, intent. Our bodies had moved together, following a logic all their own. One last time, we had agreed. We’ll do this one last time, just to say good-bye.

  “Not even email?”

  “Not even email.” I wanted Lori to leave, so I could lie down in my empty room on my neatly made bed and cry.

  She sat down next to me and gave me a hug. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Downward-Facing Dog Pose

  (Adho Mukha Svanasana)

  Kneel on all fours and sweep your pelvis toward the sky. Grow your spine long as your heels root. Let your head dangle, a ripe fruit.

  A yoga pose is a journey, not a destination. Twine around its structure like a vine around a trellis. Disappear into the velvet darkness between each breath. Some days, you’ll pick your way through mossy forests that open into meadows dotted with wild iris. Others, you’ll slog through swamps that stink of rotted dreams. Down unmapped streets you’ll find jeweled pleasure palaces. In desert vaults you’ll uncover ancestral plutonium, its half-life measured in generations.

  If a pilgrim employs a conveyance, he will lose half of his merit. If he takes advantage of shoes or an umbrella, he will still further reduce his merit. If he carries on business on the way, three-fourths of the merit is gone, and by accepting a gift, he loses all merit.

  —Vaya Purana, ca. AD 800

  CHAPTER 5

  I WOKE UP with my face pressed into hard, vibrating plastic and my mouth open, drool trickling out the corner. Fragments of a dream still swirled around me: I’m sitting at a desk addressing wedding invitations. But I can’t remember who I’m marrying. Tom? I canceled that one. Matt? I’m not speaking to him. I try to open one of the envelopes to see whose name is in it, but when I rip open the flap, all that falls out is a handful of tiny radish seeds. The air was humming and throbbing; it was dark except for a little pool of light spilling onto my lap from an overhead socket. My feet were swollen and sweaty, but there was a jet of cold air blasting on my neck. It took me a few seconds to figure out where I was; thirty-three thousand feet in the air, somewhere between San Francisco and Delhi, with my head slumped against the airplane window and my arms clutching my tiny pillow like a teddy bear.

  I sat up, blinking and rubbing my aching neck. It felt as if I’d been on this plane for centuries—as if I’d fallen into some bardo between lifetimes, just like the Tibetan monk who’d spoken at The Blissful Body fund-raiser had told us about, and when the plane landed I would be reborn as an entirely different person: a sadhu with matted dreadlocks. A courtesan in a silk sari practicing the arts of love from the Kama Sutra. Actually, it struck me as strange that you could even get to India by plane. You should have to travel by elephant through a desert. Or you should just sit on your meditation cushion and say the right mantra. Instead here I was in this humming metal tube—where I’d been sitting, now, for almost thirteen hours—with a silent TV screen on the seatback in front of me playing a rerun of the Dr. Phil show.

  “Something to drink for you?” The flight attendant was wearing a green silk sari; a red dot glinted between her eyebrows.

  “Um…just apple juice, please.” I took the plastic cup and a small bag of honey-roasted peanuts. My head was throbbing. Lori and my housemates—including the subletter I’d found at the last minute, an aspiring DJ who worked in the meat department at Real Food—had thrown me a going-away party the night before, with take-out Indian food from Bombay Garden and too many bottles of cheap champagne. Sometime past midnight, Lori had handed me a sealed letter, with instructions to read it “when you feel the urge to do something you suspect might be really stupid.” Then she had insisted on driving me to the airport to catch my 5:00 a.m. plane. S
tanding outside the security checkpoint, she had flung her arms around me.

  “Don’t worry. If enlightenment doesn’t work out, you can always apply to graduate school.”

  In the seat next to me, an Indian man in a business suit was tapping away on a laptop, illuminated in a pool of bluish light. Somewhere in the back of the plane, a baby was wailing. In the seat in front of me, a Sikh in a blue turban was watching The Simpsons. I was amazed at how many people were on the move—hurtling through the airport, getting on planes and trains and buses, stuffing their belongings into bags and going somewhere else, anywhere else. I thought of my mother, yanking up roots and moving every couple of years. What kind of inner turmoil must she have been in, that tearing our whole life apart again and again had seemed like it might be a solution?

  I’D NEVER BEEN able to get my mother to talk to me about my father. What little I knew about him came from my mother’s younger sister, my aunt Elsie, whom my mother and I had stayed with in San Antonio, Texas, the long, sweltering summer that I turned twelve. She’d sat on her front porch with me all one evening while my mother was out waitressing, after my three little cousins were in bed, drinking Scotch and regaling me with stories she made me swear never to tell my mother she’d told me.

  My mother had been just a few months short of twenty-one years old when she met my father, Aunt Elsie had said: the former homecoming queen of Tumbleweed High School in College Station, charming and wild and ten times smarter than she let the Texas boys guess. She was still living at home at the time—waitressing at Denny’s, dating football players at Texas A&M, and sampling and dropping out of random classes at Valley Community College: Poetry. Ceramics. TV Production. Cosmetology. As she served up burgers and fries, she dreamed up ways to get out of Texas, which she told Aunt Elsie about every night as they fell asleep. Maybe she’d be a flight attendant. Maybe she’d write a screenplay. Maybe she’d be a lingerie model. Maybe she’d get a job on a cruise ship.