No River Too Wide (22 page)

“Your other classes go okay?” he asked, in no hurry to leave.

“Smaller than I like, but the classes themselves were good. Some of my former students have started to sign up here, even though I’m trying not to cannibalize other studios. I’m hoping word of mouth will spread to Asheville newbies, or people who’ve never studied yoga. The tai chi class has three students, but the first class went well. With luck they’ll go home and tell their friends.”

“It takes time.”

“The renovation was such an undertaking. A real money hemorrhage. I need to stanch the flow.”

Adam knew the value of walking through an open door. “Those business loans can be awful.”

“It was family money, but that’s just as bad.”

He wanted to ask whose and why it was problematic, but he also knew the value of not walking too far inside when he hadn’t been invited. “All those expectations.”

“Just my own.”

He waited, but she didn’t go on. “Well, since we’re talking money, how would you like to spend a little more?”

“Absolutely not. On what?”

“A punching bag.”

“Really? Are we going to box?”

“Nope. But women are taught not to strike out, so a punching bag can be a good way to begin feeling comfortable as the aggressor.”

“I didn’t think you wanted your students to be aggressors.”

“I want them to be comfortable taking the initiative if they have no other choice. A bag also helps with reflexes and stamina. All important.”

“Are they expensive?”

“Depends. You could start smaller, maybe forty pounds, and cheaper to see how useful it is. You would probably want to invest in a freestanding bag and maybe begin with one you could store between classes, although that’s not the best option.” He could almost see her thinking. “And gloves, of course.”

“Are you saying you have to have this?”

“No. I’m thinking longer term—if self-defense becomes a serious part of your schedule.”

She looked interested but not convinced. “I’ll file that away.”

This evening Taylor was wearing shiny blue yoga pants and a T-shirt, oversize and bearing the Evolution logo, that had slipped down over one shoulder to reveal a thin purple strap. Adam didn’t want to notice more than he absolutely had to, but he couldn’t quite look away. He settled on an excuse. “I like the T-shirt. Did you design it yourself?”

“A friend. I should give you a T-shirt, too. They’re a great advertisement. I’ll bring it to class with me. Extra-large? Extra-extra?”

For a moment he couldn’t help himself. He imagined inviting Taylor to measure his chest. He pictured her arms around him as she slid the tape into place.

Bad move.

“Maybe you should bring both and I’ll check them out. I’ll see you upstairs.” He hesitated; then despite himself he added, “Want to come warm up with me? If you don’t mind, I’ll be asking your help tonight for demos until the other women are more confident.”

“Warm up? You’re kidding, right? I’m so warmed up after teaching today I might ignite.”

He didn’t want to think about
that,
either. She smiled again, and the smile stayed with him as he climbed the stairs.

* * *

Harmony was impressed with Evolution. She had stopped by to register on Tuesday, and Taylor had given her the grand tour. Now, ten minutes before class was to begin, she arrived to find that Jan had gotten here ahead of her as planned and was settling Maddie in the café area with snacks and homework.

For a moment as she watched them together, Jan’s dark hair swinging over her cheek as she bent over the table, Harmony was a child again back in Topeka, trying to keep a kitchen chair from scraping the wooden floor as she pulled it closer to the table so her mother could help with her homework. Scraping noises had been forbidden, as had talking in normal tones when her father and brother were watching television.

The vision evaporated as Jan straightened and saw her. “Just in time. How’s your Spanish?”

Harmony joined them and looked down at the book on the table. “Nonexistent.”

“You took Spanish in ninth grade.”

“Do you know how many years ago that was?”

Jan looked sheepish. “A million? A minute? It seems like both.”

“So, what do you need, Maddie?” Harmony asked the girl, who looked resigned, if not happy to be there. She was wearing an Evolution T-shirt, which seemed like a good sign.

Maddie pulled out two worksheets and laid them side by side. Worksheets had come a long way since Harmony’s childhood. These were brightly colored and filled with silly cartoons featuring a variety of characters in motion. A man driving a car. A woman pushing a child on a swing. A dog jumping over a fallen tree. Maddie pulled out a list of words and laid it beside the illustrations. “I’m supposed to figure out which word belongs where.”

“Did you learn the words in school?” Jan asked.

“Sorta.”

“When I was in school, ‘sorta’ meant I was supposed to learn them and ‘kinda’ forgot,” Harmony said.

“Sorta.”

“Is this vocabulary in your Spanish book?” Jan asked.

Maddie giggled. “Kinda.”

Harmony and Jan looked at each other. “Good luck,” they said together.

“I have a lot of homework. And the answers are scattered all through the chapter.” Maddie still looked hopeful.

“You have a lot of time.”

“Not as much as you think. I also have to write an essay for English class about what I’m going to do on Halloween this year.”

“That sounds like fun,” Jan said. “What
are
you going to do?”

“Edna and I want to be the Three Bears and trick-or-treat for the food bank. You get, like, cans and stuff to give them, and maybe Lottie could be baby bear. Would you let her?” She addressed the last part to Harmony. “We could pull her in my old wagon.”

“Bears, huh? That sounds like a nice warm costume.”

“I don’t know where we’ll get costumes, but if Lottie can be the baby bear, we can try. And she’s so cute we’ll get more cans.”

Harmony and Jan left Maddie to figure out the vocabulary words and the mystery of Halloween costumes on her own.

“She’s growing up,” Harmony said on the way upstairs to the classroom.

“I remember everything about you at that age. She’s older
and
younger than
you
were.”

“A million years and a minute?”

“Exactly.”

“For a moment when I came in, I flashed back to sitting at the kitchen table with you helping me every night. Buddy was always done before dinner.”

“He was done because he just scribbled whatever he felt like on his papers, and he never let me check to see if he had done the work correctly.”

“I remember the time you tried to make him.”

Both of them fell silent. Rex had taken Buddy’s side that long ago night, shouting that Buddy didn’t need a woman telling him what to do or how to do it. Harmony remembered that something had miraculously intervened at that point, a phone call, the doorbell. Whatever the miracle, that night Rex’s anger had been deflected before it turned to violence. But Jan had been careful never again to question her son about his homework in front of her husband.

“He came to me later that night, after his dad went to bed, and showed it to me,” Jan said. The words were halting, as if forming them brought pain. “He was just a boy arguing with his mother, like boys all over the world. He knew something was wrong with what had happened, and he felt bad about it and wanted me to know he did.”

Harmony couldn’t squelch a response. “Or he wanted something from you.”

“He never wanted anything from me other than what I gave him every day. My confidence he would straighten out and grow up to be a good man. My love.”

Arguing about Buddy was useless. Talking about him at all was useless. Like their father, Harmony’s brother had been a bully. In middle school and high school he had been suspended half a dozen times for fights—which were never his fault. At age twenty he had picked one fight too many in a crowded barroom where he never should have gone in the first place. When the fight was over Buddy was in the emergency room and his opponent was in jail. Buddy died and the other man went to prison. One life ended and one destroyed.

Score a big one for Rex Stoddard.

They reached the classroom, and Jan hesitated at the door.

“Don’t be nervous,” Harmony said.

“There’s nothing I could learn here that would stop your father.” Jan stared into the open doorway.

“What’s the alternative? We could buy guns and spend our evenings at the local firing range.”

“Could you really pull the trigger?”

Harmony considered, although she thought her mother had meant it as a rhetorical question.

“I don’t know,” she said, cutting off an onslaught of images of her father, some threatening, some the everyday images most girls carried around of the man who had raised them. “If he ever comes after either of us, I may wish I had one.”

Without another word they both went inside.

* * *

Adam sized up the women milling around the room taking off sweaters or changing into sneakers from the hard-soled shoes they had arrived in. The mixture was interesting. He was used to young women with buff, lean bodies, women who could march fifteen miles with eighty pounds on their backs. Those women had come to him for advanced training. By the end of the class they could flip or disable him while they chatted about where they hoped to go on their next assignment. These women were simply hoping to survive a hostile encounter long enough to seek help.

There were two students who were over fifty, both average weight, and while one looked a little soft around the edges, the other obviously worked out, probably Zumba or Pilates. There were two, including Jan, in their forties. Jan, who had positioned herself on the far end, looked as if a strong wind might send her soaring to the closest mountain peak, but the other woman was short and bulldog-broad. She had perfected a glare that was so fierce it might keep her safe without any help. Everyone else, like Taylor—who hadn’t yet joined them—was in her twenties or thirties, a range of body types and conditioning.

“It’s time to start,” he said, clapping his hands. “This class is about discipline, and that means we start and end on time. In between we work hard. But you wouldn’t have signed up if you didn’t agree with that philosophy, right?” He added a smile to soften his words just as Taylor slipped through the door and closed it behind her. He gave a brief nod before he asked the women to line up along the front.

He walked back and forth in front of them, meeting their eyes. “This is not an exercise class. And it’s not a physical conditioning class. It’s not karate or judo or anything close. You’re here to learn how to protect yourself, and that’s all. But let’s be honest. The stronger and faster you are, and the more stamina you develop, the better your chances, right? Because no matter what I teach you, you won’t be able to break free if somebody grabs you and you don’t have any strength in your arms.” He held up his own and made a fist to demonstrate what they might be up against.

“And you won’t be able to get away if you can’t run faster than your attacker for at least a block or two. And you’ll need stamina for both those things and others, because a lot of the time, the first thing you try may not work, and you’ll have to go from plan A to plan B. And you need stamina to keep trying.”

He smiled again and waited a few seconds for them to think that over. “So we’re going to warm up with some jumping jacks and crunches, plus a few other basics. It looks like some of you are no stranger to those, while some of you may not have done any recently. But this is your life on the line, so I don’t need to remind you that pushing beyond your comfort zone is to your benefit. Just don’t push yourself so hard we have to call the guys with the stretchers, okay?”

The next twenty minutes were painful to watch. Some of the women didn’t even break a sweat. Some looked ready to quit after five repetitions. He varied the exercises, making certain to give them a little time in between to catch their breath.

He reminded them to breathe. He reminded them that no attacker waited for them to warm up and stretch, so they needed to stay in good condition. He demonstrated better posture or placement when it was needed and occasionally smiled encouragement. But mostly, he stayed alert.

Crunches were the final exercise for the night. He asked for fifty and laughed at the groans. Then he watched Jan struggle with what looked like a sit-up before he squatted down beside her. She immediately slid away to put distance between them. He considered that, then moved closer. She slid sideways again.

“You’re going to hit the wall at that rate.” This time he didn’t move closer. Instead, he lay down on the floor in the space she had vacated. “Watch how I do it.” He pulled up his knees and did a half curl toward them, then uncurled until his back was flat on the floor again.

“You were doing sit-ups,” he explained, without looking at her. “You don’t need to come all the way up. This is easier on the back, and the abdominal muscles get a full workout. If you continue all the way up, they just act as stabilizers, and your hip flexors finish for them. We want to strengthen the abdominals, because they protect so many organs.”

He sat up and noted that Jan’s daughter had gotten to her feet and was now standing over him, her freckled face twisted with some barely suppressed emotion. “I’ll help her,” she said.

He considered Harmony’s expression for a moment and wondered exactly what to say. She was unhappy, but exactly why he wasn’t sure. “No. You need to work on your own fitness. This is my job.”

“I’m fine.” Jan waved a hand as Harmony began to argue, as if to shoo her back to her spot in line. “And thank you for the demonstration,” she told Adam. “I was doing them all wrong.”

He noticed that the hand she waved was trembling. He smiled in reassurance. “Why do more than you need to, right? If half a sit-up is better than a whole?”

“I’ll work on it.”

He got up and stood over her. “Let me see you do one.”

She looked as if she were considering flight, and then she seemed to realize how impossible it would be to get away. As if all her options had ended, she lay down flat and pulled herself into a perfect crunch, held it a second and flattened against the floor again.