“Good to meet you, Lars,” Adam said. Mia couldn’t dissect the undertone of his words without looking at his face and by that time she was out the door.
21
Namasté
They stood on the front steps of Mia’s apartment building. Though just after ten in the morning, Mia felt a slow trickle of perspiration meander between her shoulder blades and down her back. The forecast called for highs in the mid-nineties with life-sapping humidity. Babs had already left for church with Silas and had moaned about the deplorable lack of ocean breezes to clear the air. Mia stood on the top stair, feeling her feet swelling in her flip-flops. She fiddled with her necklace, taking turns watching Lars’s face and glancing down the street for the cab he’d called.
“This was good,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes.
The act of tenderness made Mia’s head spin, though it could have been the heat bearing down on her dark hair.
“I’m glad you came,” she said.
She felt a bit like she did in junior high when Gina, the most popular girl in class and lead cheerleader, had invited her to a slumber party. She’d wanted to throw her skinny arms around the girl’s neck and bathe her in tears of gratitude, but had instead poured the depth of her affection into an overpriced birthday gift. Babs had been incensed at Mia’s spending and had made her forfeit her allowance for months to pay for the limited-edition, splatter-paint Jordache jeans.
The memory brought a stinging realization that she wouldn’t have been able to fit one calf into those jeans this particular morning, should they have made an appearance on the front stoop. Mia straightened her back and ventured, “We didn’t have time to talk about everything.”
“Don’t worry,” Lars said. He pulled her to him and enveloped her in a sticky hug. “We’ll get to all that. I just wanted to ease into this again, you know?”
Mia nodded into his armpit and then lifted her head to fresh, muggy air. She wanted to ease in again too, but felt a different kind of urgency as her ligaments expanded.
A cab rolled to a stop in front of the building and Lars pulled away from their embrace. He leaned over and kissed Mia briefly on her nose and forehead.
“I’ll call you, all right?” He smiled as he lifted his suitcase down the steps.
Mia merely nodded. She stood and waved as the cab pulled away. Lars flashed a grin and waved back, and within minutes they were miles apart.
Wednesday after work Mia met Frankie and Babs at yoga class. Delia was particularly focused on opening the hip muscles, so they spent a lot of time in various forms of pigeon pose. Mia could hear Babs grunt each time the stretch deepened. She thought she heard her mumble something about “birds that have no other purpose than public pooping,” but by the time she looked at Babs’s reflection in the mirror, the woman was the picture of calm. Her hair was swept away from her face, revealing a full palette of exuberant makeup. Though certainly not the only characteristic that caused her mother to stand out among other yoga enthusiasts, Babs’s predilection for caked-on foundation, eye shadow, liner, and lips allowed for a startling contrast among the chemical-free crowd.
“And now let us enjoy the rest our bodies deserve.” Delia wove among the class members, rubbing her hands together to release the scent of a sandalwood stick she held. “Please allow yourself to drift back on your mat, one vertebra at a time, until you are in corpse pose.”
The first time Babs had heard the name for this particular pose, she’d grimaced at Mia. Not a fan of mortality, Babs. Mia distinctly remembered a time in her early adolescence when her mother had refused to attend a funeral with Mia’s father, insisting that seeing the deceased “looking like Silly Putty” in a coffin would only erase the fond memories she had of the friend alive. To boot, Babs had not attended the funeral for her own ex-husband, opting instead to send an over-the-top floral arrangement that had received nearly as much attention as Mia and John in the receiving line.
No longer able to lie comfortably on her back, Mia turned her legs to one side and curled into a fetal position on her mat.
“Allow the strength of Mother Earth to pull you toward the ground,” Delia said.
Mia could hear Babs begin to hum what she swore was a hymn.
“You are the earth. Embrace heaviness. Release.”
Mia could hear a wobbly version of “How Great Thou Art” drifting quietly from Babs’s mat. When it appeared Delia was finished with her exhortations, Babs quit her own and Mia could see her mother’s body go still and relax. Mia’s mind drifted back and forth between her intention to clear it and a beehive of thoughts about Lars and his visit. She’d hoped to have more time to talk about the baby, but each time she tiptoed into that zone, either he had changed the subject or she had chickened out. Thinking now of her reticence made her disgusted with herself, but only until she remembered with gratitude how nice things had felt between them. No discord, no fighting, no anger. Lars is right, she thought. We’ll have time later to talk about the hard things. For now we should just enjoy getting back to our “normal.”
“Begin to awaken the body by wiggling your fingers and toes,” Delia said. Mia didn’t look, but she knew her teacher sat in full lotus at the front of the room, eyes closed.
“When you are ready, come to a seated position with eyelids softened.”
Mia saw Babs cross her legs with an excess of tired drama. Her mother made her eyes into slits but did not close them.
“Bring your hands to heart center and let us end our time together.” Delia bowed slightly and said, “Namasté.”
The class responded in kind and people began to rise from their mats and roll them up for the walk or ride home.
“Great class,” Frankie said. She had her mat slung over one bony shoulder.
“Frankie, I love the orange,” Babs said when she’d had a chance to take in Frankie’s newest hair color. “To be honest, I didn’t think I would, but you picked just the right hue for your skin tone. You must be a winter?”
“Oh, my gosh. I haven’t thought of that for years! My mom made me have my colors done in junior high and I thought she was insane.”
The three of them started for the door. Mia had to make a conscious effort to walk like a human, not a duck.
“I was a winter in fact,” Frankie continued. “Which meant I was supposed to wear all these happy, loud colors that did not go with my current obsession with Velvet Underground and Blue Oyster Cult.” She giggled.
“Well, I don’t know much about velvet oysters, but your mother was right. We usually are.” Babs elbowed Mia gently. “Did you have a good workout, Mia?”
Mia nodded. “I suppose. I feel tired today. Some of those hip openers were tough.”
“Heavenly days, yes,” Babs said. She sighed. “At my age my hips want to start closing for good, if you know what I mean.”
Frankie and Babs shared a laugh but Mia didn’t want to even approach thinking about her mother’s hips, open or closed.
“I’ve found lots of wonderful ways to get around the whole woo-woo thing,” Babs said. They’d reached the street and were making their way through a rush of after-work foot traffic.
“The woo-woo thing?” Frankie asked.
“You know, the ‘you are the earth,’ ‘be present’ garbage. All that drivel about reaching for the sun, feeling the warmth of our hearts connecting, blah, blah, blah.”
Frankie said nothing but Mia saw her smile at her shoes.
“Yoga, I’ve decided, is mostly about God. Heart center? God. Fingers stretching for the sky? Fingers stretching for God. And the most obvious one is that thing she does at the end. Everyone saying that Hindu prayer.”
“You mean namasté?”
“Yes. I just get around it by bowing my head and saying ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’ instead.”
“Mother, namasté is a greeting. It means hello. Or good-bye.”
“Well, which is it? Good-bye or hello?”
“Ooh, this is sounding like a Beatles song,” Frankie said.
“I don’t know. Maybe both.” Mia steered her mother through a herd of tourists and nearly lost her in a two-step with a man wearing ropes of gold jewelry.
Babs continued, undeterred. “I don’t buy that definition for a minute,” she said. “I’ve seen way too much of the world to believe that, Mia Rathbun. This is New Age brainwashing at its best. And just when you’re feeling all gooey and relaxed. Off your guard.”
“So you say Jesus instead?” Frankie asked.
Mia looked at Frankie’s face to stop her from any more encouragement, but her friend seemed genuinely interested.
“Yep. Just one more way I get to praisin’.”
Mia groaned softly, worrying that sometime soon her mother’s poor impersonations of an African-American worship service would get her into trouble.
“I like it,” Frankie said with conviction. “You’ve got spice, Mrs. Rathbun. I like that in a cruise ship hostess.” She hopped to the space in between them and slung her arms around Babs and Mia.
“And you have spice as well, Frankie,” Babs said. Her mascara had blurred under her eyes with the yoga workout and only the outline of her lipstick remained. “I like that in an orange-haired librarian.”
The three walked with arms linked, and Mia couldn’t help but smile at the annoyance of those who needed to move in order to let them pass.
Sunday morning Adam was sitting on the front step of her building when Mia arrived home from a leisurely breakfast at Lolo’s. She swallowed hard and willed her feet to move at a casual pace, rather than backing up slowly and rewinding her progress down the street. She caught his gaze and he stood quickly, waving awkwardly with one hand and brushing off the rump of his pants with the other.
“Hi, Adam,” Mia said breezily as she approached. “How are you?”
“Fine,” he said, nodding. His brow furrowed into a seriousness Mia hadn’t seen in him. “I have to talk with you.”
She chuckled, the nerves in her stomach betraying her by the shake of her voice. “What, no ‘How are you, Mia?’ No time for small talk?”
Adam looked confused, but complied. “Oh. Sorry. How are you, Mia?”
She smiled. “Fine, thank you.” She swept a glance over his clothes. “Pressed dress pants, crisp oxford, even a tie, though loosened at the neck. Hmmm … Odd time of day for a wedding … A funeral?”
One side of his mouth crept up into a smile and his shoulders relaxed a bit. “No, though there have been many times when a funeral might have been more exciting. I’m taking my dad to church.” He glanced at his watch. “In fact he’s going to go nuts if I’m not at the store in exactly seven minutes.”
“But,” she stammered, “how long did you wait here? How did you know I’d be coming home?” She hesitated to employ the word stalker, but there were warning signs.
He shrugged. “I didn’t. You had three more minutes before I bolted.” He put both hands on his hips and then let them drop to his sides. “I just want you to know I care about you.”
Her eyes darted past him for an escape route and he hurried to continue.
“No, no, not like that. Not that that would be such a horrible thing, but you don’t seem, well—” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Try to understand me here.” His eyes searched Mia’s face with an intensity that made her heart jump into her throat.
“You care about me,” she said.
“Right. I think you’re a great person and I like you. I’m saying, do you have an excess of friends right now?”
Mia bristled. “Adam, what are getting at?”
He groaned. “I am so bad at this kind of thing,” he said, almost to himself. He moved toward her and took one of her hands in both of his. “I want to be your friend, Mia. If you have no more room for extra friends, I understand, but if there’s space in your life right now, I want to help fill it.” He dropped her hand and looked uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “I know it’s none of my business, but it would really irk me if you settled for loser relationships just because you’re pregnant. Or if you thought you deserved to hang around with—” He stopped abruptly, his expression sheepish. “Please tell me I’ve made at least one tiny bit of sense.”
She squinted at his face. Mia noticed for the first time the crop of thick lashes that framed his hazel eyes. “Not with words, per se, but I think you’re trying to say that we should be friends.”
“Yes!” he said. Relief spilled out of the word. “It seemed like you were avoiding me after we ran out of chickens the day yerba mate was on special and then I saw you in the store but you were weird, no offense—”
She laughed. “All right. I get it. So I’ll stop being weird and you’ll stop worrying about me not having enough friends while I’m in the family way.”
He hugged her tightly and kissed her on the top of her head. “Great. A win-win for both of us. I’ll see you later. Gerry’s not one for patience.” He headed off at a clip but turned back to shout, “I left a bag of groceries with the super. Lamberti? He said he’d put the ice cream in his freezer until you made it home.” Adam grinned at her and began jogging toward the store.
She stared after him, shaking her head. He ran like an athlete, which surprised her for some reason. There is no way that shirt will make it to church without sweat and serious wrinkling, she thought, and felt flattered by the sacrifice.
22
Belly Flops 101
The lighting in the childbirth education room at St. Jude’s barely illumined the space, so much so that Flor and Mia stood motionless for several beats upon entering. When her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, Mia could see a splattering of couples seated on the carpet. People talked in hushed tones, so Mia lowered her voice as well.
“What do we do now?” she whispered to Flor, who stood beside her in a belly-hugging tank top that had printed on its front You Wish.
Flor shrugged. “I guess we sit.” She led the way to an empty spot only inches from the front of the room.
Mia lowered herself to the floor, barely preventing a moan from escaping her lips. At twenty-eight weeks she could not figure out how to balance the strange distribution of weight in her body. The previous week, she’d literally fallen into Carl’s arms at work. He’d been flustered beyond the point of conversation, no matter her assurances that pregnancy had made her a disaster in motion. She didn’t bother explaining how it felt to be toting around a beach ball inhabited by an aspiring Mary Lou Retton and that it could make a girl clumsy. Carl simply smiled and blushed, blushed and smiled. Now faced with the childbirth class, Mia hoped her training wouldn’t require any feats of balance, strength, coordination, or flexibility. Twelve weeks to go and she was already throwing herself at unsuspecting victims.
She glanced around the room and almost burst out laughing. About six other couples were scattered on the carpet, and every single one of them was canoodling. Some of the women rested their heads against their partners’ shoulders, whispering, giggling, appearing to bask in the soft lighting and the closeness that came with baby making and carrying. Others enjoyed backrubs offered by serious-looking men, one of them in a ball cap that proclaimed This Dad Does Diapers.
“I think I’m going to puke,” Mia said to Flor, whose eyes followed Mia’s gaze to the couple nearest them. The man was facing the woman, each of them with legs crossed and all twenty fingers entwined. Mia heard the man whisper, “I love you too, cupcake,” and the two leaned forward into a lengthy kiss.
Flor snickered. “I’d rather be alone than be called cupcake for the rest of my life.”
Mia laughed too, but wasn’t sure she agreed. Cynicism felt better than l
oneliness, though, so she decided anew to embrace her independence and the opportunity to share this experience with Flor.
“So why didn’t your mom come?” Flor smacked her gum as a percussive end to her question.
“She would have,” Mia said, “but I asked her not to. Hospitals make her even more high strung than normal. Plus I didn’t think she’d be a particularly good birth coach.”
Flor looked at Mia askance. “But you thought the teenager with no experience would be better? At least your mom has had kids.” She pulled her hair out of the elastic that held it in a low ponytail and went to work with rapid hands pulling it right back where it’d been. “And it’s not like we’ll be able to coach each other for real.”
“I know,” Mia said, shrugging. “I just couldn’t do this with her. What about your mom? Where is she?”
Flor snorted. “She thinks I’m nuts for wanting to know what’s going to happen. She says I’d be much better off just hooking myself up to an epidural in the parking lot and trying to survive.”
The girl fingered one earring and Mia saw again, sharply, how very young she was, despite the deepening maturation of her body with each week.
“I might put it up for adoption,” Flor said, not looking at Mia when she spoke. She busied her hands with picking invisible specks of lint off her pressed jeans.
“Really?” Mia tried to keep her voice level, knowing only Flor could make that choice and that her own input had to remain as neutral as possible.
Flor shrugged. “I saw Juno. That girl was cool.”
Mia nodded slowly and tried not to smile. “It’s a big decision. You’re smart to consider every option.”
The door to the room flew open with a clang when metal hit the cement wall behind it.
“Hello, hello, hello!” A woman who could have been blood sisters with Bette Midler floated into the room, a brightly colored caftan flowing behind her outstretched arms. “So very sorry I’m late. My acupuncture appointment ran over and that is hardly a thing one wants to rush.” She filled the room with loud, musical laughter.
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