On Grace (7 page)

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I know this is all going to get worked out on your terms. I know I deserve every ounce of anger you’re feeling toward me right now, Grace. And I know I deserve to feel frustrated that I have no control over what you decide. I just want you to know that I will do everything I can to show you that we belong together. I will be a better husband than I have ever been.”

“If I am everything to you, how could you have let this happen?” I ask, hoping that there’s an answer, although I know there can’t possibly be one.

“I ask myself that question every day. It’s so easy to blame it on alcohol, but it wasn’t like I was unconscious. I was there. I participated. I have actually been thinking that maybe I should go talk to someone and try to figure it out. Any excuse I can even try to think of sounds stupid and like a cop-out.”

“Was it something about me or our marriage that you weren’t happy with?” I don’t want to accept blame in this because I think that even if a marriage has problems, the answer is not straying, the answer is figuring it out, but I feel like I have to at least ask.

“No. Absolutely not,” Darren says fiercely. “I’ve been going over everything in my head, over and over, and there’s nothing about you or our marriage or our lives that was upsetting me. I know we’re not perfect, Gracie, but we’re pretty close.”

“I know we don’t have sex that often—”

“Stop,” Darren cuts me off. “You’re right. We don’t have sex as often as I’d like. But this has nothing to do with anything missing in our relationship.”

“I guess it explains why I feel like we’ve been disconnected over the past few months,” I say, and I suddenly realize I’m tired. Incredibly tired. And then, “Why didn’t you tell me right when it happened?”

“I just couldn’t. At first, I was trying to go through it in my mind. I kept trying to figure out why I did it. And I didn’t want to hurt you. I couldn’t imagine putting you through that pain. This pain,” he says, gesturing toward me and my spent tissues.

“Did you consider not telling me at all?”

“Yes. I did consider that it would be better for you if you didn’t know. But I just couldn’t lie to you anymore.”

“I’m tired, Darren. I need to go to sleep. And I need to think more. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to figure this out, but I just don’t know whether I can ever trust you again. How could we ever be us again?” I was bone tired, but my words were sharp, my thoughts were clear.

“I don’t know how to convince you of that. And that scares the hell out of me. That I could have done something that will take you and the boys away from me. I guess, if it’s okay with you, I’d just like to ask you to give it some time and not make any quick decisions. Please give me a chance. I love you, Grace. I love you so much.” I know he is sincere, but when he tries to give me a hug, I recoil. I’m not ready to touch him yet. He apologizes.

I ask Darren to sleep in the guest room. I think of the popular marriage advice ‘
Don’t go to bed angry,’
and I decide the person who coined that phrase was probably never cheated on. I wonder if I will ever go to bed happy again.

The next day I decide to test out the widely held notion that yoga has the ability to center a person, clear the mind, and cure every affliction known to humankind.

As I get the boys ready for school, I realize I’m pretty good at acting like there are not a million things wrong. It’s easy to act normally around children; they have no frame of reference to detect subtleties in their parents’ moods. So when I’m a little quieter than normal while whisking pancake batter—another favorite in my short-order-cook repertoire—they don’t even notice. Luckily, they are unable to see the sadness in my heart and the hollow pit in my stomach. To them I’m just Mommy, and that’s the way I want it.

I pour the batter onto the griddle and feel the familiar tinge of guilt. Guilt for even bemoaning my situation. There are people in this world with real problems. People who walk miles each day to access fresh water, people in third-world countries who die from diseases that are preventable with vaccines that our country has in plentiful supply, people who can’t express their beliefs for fear of being tortured, people who hold vigil in their children’s hospital rooms as doctors frown and say there’s nothing else to be done. Those are real problems. My dealing with my husband’s one-time dalliance doesn’t compare a lick. Still, in my reality, it is a problem, and I must give myself permission to feel upset. Just because other people’s problems are much bigger, much weightier, the fact that I acknowledge that should entitle me to feel distraught over my little problem in my little corner of the world.

Once I’ve given loads of kisses and hugs and said “I love you” to my adorable boys who are such troopers getting on the bus every morning without a complaint, I run upstairs and look for something I can wear to yoga.

I’ve devoted myself to yoga two different times in my life. The first time lasted one class. The second time lasted an impressive three. Each time, I became discouraged because I was unfamiliar with the poses and unable to hold said sad-looking poses for any respectable length of time. Yoga seemed to have the opposite effect on me that it was supposed to. It completely stressed me out. But, I owe it to myself to give it another try.

I joined the Rye YMCA last year mostly so the boys could take after-school classes. But I convinced myself I should opt for the “family” membership because I thought it would encourage me to take advantage of their fitness classes, gym, and pool. No such luck. Until now. As a member, I have access to the purportedly wonderful and free-for-members yoga classes offered nearby at the Wainwright House Yoga Center, housed in an historic, renovated carriage house overlooking the Long Island Sound.

I throw on black leggings and a T-shirt, pull on my Uggs, drain my coffee, and head to the 9:30 class. The room is buzzing and filling up as I grab a mat, two blocks, and one of those colorful yoga blankets and create my own little India in the back right corner of the studio. I choose the right side because in my vast experience with yoga, I’ve noticed the instructors always do the poses facing left first. So, if I’m all the way to the right, I will get a good view of the pose on the first side.

“Hey, Grace!” I hear a friendly voice and turn to my left. I had been engrossed in folding the yoga blanket just so.

“Hey, Callie!” I say. Callie Monroe is a petite brunette I have known for five years. She has a kind smile and espresso-colored eyes surrounded by thick, long eyelashes. The kind of eyes that looks better without makeup. Callie’s daughter Amelia and Henry were in the same pre-school class. She and I clicked the first time we met because we were the only two moms who thought a two-week separation program was overkill. But it was the school’s policy so we trudged it out, even though both of our kids separated easily by the third day. We lost touch over the years because the kids go to different elementary schools, but whenever we run into each other, it’s always warm.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

“It’s my first time in a very long time doing yoga. So don’t laugh at me,” I say with a smile. I’m relieved that I’m next to someone I like. The thought of doing yoga next to someone like Lorna, who would undoubtedly wear fuchsia Lululemon, have a perfect pedicure, and be able to effortlessly reach the floor in the forward-bend pose (my Sanskrit is dusty) is too taxing.

“I promise, I won’t. And Willow is an amazing instructor. She comes around a lot to make adjustments, and she’s great and patient with beginners.”

On cue, Willow enters the room. She looks like a sixty-year-old woman who can pass for forty, but you can tell she’s really sixty. Her black hair is long and curly and streaked with grey, and her blue eyes are shiny. She strikes me as the kind of woman who is proud, not ashamed, of the lines on her face. Over the next hour, Willow leads us in a yoga routine, er, practice, that is tough but not impossible. She dispenses clear instructions and poignant nuggets of wisdom.

“Sometimes when things seem really hard, just breathe, give in to the struggle, and open your heart to the possibility that the hard parts can be overcome,” Willow says in her soothing alto. She has a gift for making everything she says relate to both yoga poses and life. My life. I pay really close attention to her messages. I forget to breathe half the time, I feel nothing like a warrior despite all the poses done in a warrior’s honor, and I can’t “grow my tree,” but I listen. And Callie’s encouraging whispers throughout the class really make it the most pleasant experience I’ve ever had with yoga. I pledge to myself that I will do this every Friday.

After class, as we’re rolling our mats and refolding our blankets, Callie asks if I would like to join her and her friends for coffee.

“We go to Le Pain Quotidien in town. It’s a really nice group of women from this class. You should come. We can catch up.”

“Sure, I’d love it,” I say, before I can decide if I really want to. But I’m glad I blurted that out. It will be nice to get back in touch with Callie. Plus, I love Le Pain Quotidien, or LPQ in local parlance. It’s an outpost of a trendy and healthy Belgian restaurant-slash-bakery. They have the most delicious chocolate hazelnut spread that I love to slather generously on their fresh baguettes, but I have a feeling that with this crowd I’ll not be having any of that.

As the SUV parade leaves the Wainwright House parking lot, I realize I actually feel happy. It’s reassuring to know that despite the stress I’m feeling about Darren, I have the capacity to feel happy. Hmmm, maybe the yoga works after all! During the end-of-class
savasana
, when I was supposed to be thinking about nothing, I thought about some of the things Darren said last night.

I appreciate how kind and honest he was. It doesn’t change the fact that he did a really shitty thing, but he has said and done all the right things since he told me. I’m incredibly angry at what he did, although I’m not angry at the way he’s handling it. But yogic chanting or not, I still have no idea if I can remain married to a man who has the capacity to do what he did. Or am I just making a bigger deal out of something that may have been nothing? Would a divorce be like killing an ant with a sledgehammer?

I find Callie and her friends at the restaurant right away. They’re easy to spot by their hip after-yoga wear and glowing faces. Callie introduces me around and tells the group where I live, how old my kids are, and where they go to school—the standard mom CV. And by those three facts alone, these other women can surmise a hell of a lot about me. Or so they think.

After we place our orders, Callie asks about the boys and Darren and then fills me in on her kids, her husband, and her latest endeavor, which is designing and installing residential organic gardens. She’s so excited about her fledgling business and proudly tells me about her first two clients. When she asks me if I’m thinking about going back to work (Callie and I spent hours when our kids were little talking about the whole stay-at-home vs. working-mom issue), I tell her about the column I had been hired to write for the
Westchester Weekly
and how I lost that job before it even started.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of you!” Callie exclaims, turning away from me toward the other women at the table.

“Think of me for what?” I ask, startled by her outburst.

“Nicole,” Callie says to the woman across the table and to her left. “Are you still looking for someone for that email job?”

Of all the women in the group, Nicole seemed the most genuinely happy to welcome a newbie to their coffee klatch. I remember seeing her in class and noticing her long, auburn hair and strong arms; she was in the front row and did the poses effortlessly and elegantly. I actually watched and copied what she did because Willow would often just call out the pose and walk around the class helping pathetic beginners like me. Now, Callie was getting up from her seat, saying something I couldn’t hear to Nicole, and insisting that Nicole sit next to me.

“So, you’re a writer?” Nicole asks me, exchanging steaming mugs of tea across the table with Callie.

“Well, I was one in my past life, but, yes, I guess, technically I am a writer.”
Way to be confident, Grace
, I think. “What was Callie talking about?”

“I own an Internet company called
Well in Westchester
. It’s an advertising-supported online magazine filled with health and wellness content, social networking, an events calendar, listings, etc. Our new venture is creating a weekly email blast of short-form health and wellness content, and I’m looking for a freelancer to spearhead the project.” Nicole wraps her hands around her steaming mug and smiles at me. Nice people make me so happy.

“Wow, that sounds really interesting!” I say excitedly, taking a sip of my mint tea that’s made with fresh mint leaves instead of a tea bag.

“I told these ladies about the job last Friday, hoping one of them might know someone. I’ve placed ads, but it’s always nicer to hire someone through a personal recommendation. And I don’t know if you just heard what Callie told me about you, but it was quite a recommendation!”

Nicole and I spend the next half hour discussing the job and my experience. She says the emails will be about things such as a new yoga studio in the county, holistic suggestions for the changing of seasons, farmer’s market recipes, etc. The job really appeals to me as it brings me back to my roots in health and fitness media, it’s part time but enough time, and it might even motivate me to get in better shape and take better care of myself.

“Why don’t we do this,” Nicole says. “Here’s my card. Over the weekend email me your resume and some clips of your past work, and we’ll take it from there. I have a couple other people I’m talking to, but I’m planning on making a decision by the end of next week.”

Nicole hands me her card, shakes my hand, and gets up to leave, saying she’s got to get to the office. She had told me that she always blocks out Friday mornings for yoga and a quick tea with this group before she heads to work. Sure sounds like the type of boss I’d like to have! I finish my tea and get up to leave, too.