Tales from the Yoga Studio (29 page)

The message on her phone starts out slow and solemn. It's Mickey Michaelson, the little woman with her face tucked up into her beret. It turns out she is the assistant to the choreographer and an indispensable part of the team assembled for the video shoot.

“Graciela,” she says and then pauses. She has one of those peculiar accents that have a little Britain, a little France, a bit of the South, and a whole lot of affectation. A common accent in the sovereign country of the Entertainment Industry. “I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but someone has to do it, right? Starting next week, you're going to be working your
ass
off, young lady. You're Dancer Number Five, baby. Call me.”

Graciela catches sight of her reflection in the window above the kitchen sink. If Mickey could see her now, she'd probably retract the offer. Her hair is matted, and her T-shirt is filthy. Well, nothing like a little reality check to bring her down to earth, just in case she was at risk of getting a swollen ego.

She goes out to the glassed-in room where her mother is ensconced in front of the TV. There's a loud commercial on, some kind of antacid represented by a cartoon character routing out the digestive system of a poor overindulgent soul.

“Mama,” she says.
“¿Puedo bajar el volumen, Mama?”

Her mother frowns, but mutes the TV.

“I fixed the leak under the sink, and I threw out all the mess down there.”

“I got rid of as much mildew as I could. I think it's all gone.”

“Buena chica,”
her mother says.

It's not that it's such a great compliment, really. It's the kind of thing you might say to someone you hired to clean for you. Probably something her mother heard from her employers when she
was
cleaning houses.
Good girl
. But it's something. And at the moment, Graciela is so happy for even this small bit of praise, she feels her cheeks getting warm with happiness.

“I just got a call, Mama. You won't believe it. I'm going to be in a new video. With Beyoncé, Mama. The one from
Dreamgirls
, you remember?”

“No, the one who looks like Diana Ross. She's gorgeous. It's a really big break for me, Mama. There were about a thousand girls who auditioned.”

Her mother smiles and nods her head, although not with any particular happiness. The commercial finishes up and she turns on the sound again.

“Make sure you wash your hair before your ‘big break.' You look like a witch. And wear a different shirt. I can see your nipples. Big.
Como una animala
.”

Graciela feels as if the wind has been knocked out of her. A witch? An animal? Did her mother just say that? She walks out of the glassed-in room, goes back into the kitchen, ties up the trash bags she's filled with junk, and puts them in a barrel outside the kitchen door. She's about to put her blouse back on, when she spots her phone on the table. She should call Daryl; she probably should have called him first. But what if she hears that little catch in his voice, that tone that she knows means he feels threatened and worried that any success of hers will threaten their relationship somehow or make her love him less? What she needs right now is some unqualified enthusiasm. She picks up the phone and dials.

“Lee,” she says, “it's Graciela. I wanted to tell you. . . . I got the job. I just got a message and—”

Lee screams so loudly and with so much excitement, Graciela thinks for a minute that her mother might hear, TV or not. “I am so happy for you, sweetheart! I'm so proud of you! We have to celebrate.”

“Honestly, it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't—”

“It's
you
. It's your talent. Your hard work.
You
did it. You earned it. You deserve it.”

A few minutes later, she drapes her shirt over her arm and goes out into the glassed-in room. The sun has come out again, and the room is stifling. There's an air conditioner, but her mother never uses it while Graciela is there, claiming she doesn't want to use the electricity. But more than once, Graciela has heard her switch it on as she's walking out of the house.

“I'm leaving, Mama,” she says.

“What about the kitchen closet?”

“What about it, Mama?”

“You said you were doing that today, too.”

“The next time . . . ,” she begins. But no, she can't keep coming back like this and putting her whole self on the line. “You can do it yourself, Mama. You can do it yourself or you can hire someone to do it or you can call your sons. Call Manuel or Eddie. Tell them to come clean your closets.”

“Too good to help me out now?
Eso es todo?
”

“I've never once disrespected you. I've never done anything but love you and try to help. I won't let you insult me anymore. I can't. Okay, Mama? When you want to call and apologize, you have my number. Until then, don't bother.”

Outside, Graciela puts on her blouse, but her hands are shaking too badly to do up the buttons. She looks back at her mother's house and half expects to see her mother racing out the front door, chasing her in anger. But of course, the house is quiet, except for the sudden clatter of the air conditioner being turned on and the sunlight glinting off the windows. She takes a deep breath and starts down the walk, realizing that her hands have stopped shaking. She buttons up her blouse partway. She feels a little buzzing in the back of her head that isn't anger or anxiety or nervousness or guilt: it's the thrill of excitement. She did it.
She
made it happen. She got her dream job. It doesn't matter if her mother calls her and apologizes or not. She'll always be there for her mother, but she doesn't need her. Her mother's opinion of her own daughter doesn't alter the fact that Graciela's life is in a very different place than it was an hour ago.

W
hen Lee met Alan, he'd recently graduated from NYU with a degree in American studies, one of those vague majors that incorporates literature and pop culture, a bit of politics, and a whole lot of personal opinion. “
Me
studies,” as some of their friends called it. He'd wanted to study music, but he'd been forbidden by his parents in Chicago. After school, he'd had an entry-level job at Fidelity and an internship at a law firm, but nothing really suited him professionally. He was not, he explained to Lee, the kind of guy who could work under other people. “I'm too rebellious,” he'd explained. “Too independent. I'm too creative to be tied down to an office.” She admired his spirit.

He was living in Brooklyn and working as an assistant to a handyman, a job that paid pretty well and left him plenty of time to pursue his real love.

The first time Lee heard Alan play and sing was at his place in Brooklyn. They'd had dinner together, had several glasses of wine, had made love, and then he'd pulled out his guitar and sang to her. “If I Had You,” a song from the 1920s with a sweet, simple melody that he sang in a soft voice, accompanied by plucking a few basic chords on the guitar.
There is nothing I couldn't do, if I had you.

It was a warm night; the peeling paint on Alan's bedroom walls was hidden by the flickering candlelight. He was naked, and his summer-colored skin was glowing. A single lock of dark hair hung down over his forehead as he sang to her.
If I had you
. He was smiling, sweetly, the whole time.

By the end of the song, he
had
her. Body and soul.

That performance was what convinced her he had genius. So clear, so pure, so effortless.

It was a shock when she saw him perform in front of an audience at a small restaurant in the East Village. The effortlessness was gone, replaced by a hard-edged drive that made his voice sound raw and his playing a little too assertive. But she was crazy in love with him then, and any doubts she felt were quickly banished by her infatuation. The stakes were so different when they were in their twenties. Everyone she knew was casting about for something, chasing a dream, and it was understood, even if unexpressed, that eventually they'd put aside their unrealistic, unrealizable fantasies and find a career that would at least pay the bills.

A lot of her early relationship with Alan was assuring him that he had the talent and only needed the right opportunities. That's what you did when you loved someone. You believed in them and you supported them. Right? And when Alan said that the opportunities for
his kind of music
and
his kind of songwriting
were better in L.A., she'd believed him and supported him and packed up and moved. She never regretted that part of it.

When they first met in New York, she'd billed herself as a waitress, which was true at the time. She only revealed that she was learning about yoga when she was sure he wouldn't laugh at her or think she was a flake.

Lee started seriously studying (versus practicing) yoga with Rosa Gianelli, an older woman who'd moved to Paris in the sixties to study with B. K. S. Iyengar. Iyengar had been brought to Europe by Yehudi Menuhin to spread the gospel of yoga. And Rosa had uprooted herself and left her family for months to train with him. Lee had been sent to Rosa by one of her earliest teachers, and Rosa had seen something in Lee that she felt Iyengar would approve of—her compassion, her sincerity, and her eye for detail. She took it upon herself to train her, free of charge, as she'd been taught, step by step. Rosa instructed Lee in the asanas with a meticulousness that was at times maddening. They'd work for hours, sometimes days, on one pose, just as Iyengar had done with her. Rosa taught by positioning Lee's body, but also through language, beautiful, precise metaphors to describe every movement that made each gesture come alive—the “dome” at the arch of her foot, the “head of the cobra” when she pulled back her shoulders. Rosa's language and intensity made Lee forget that she was in the most ordinary of ordinary suburban houses on Long Island. She'd take the train from the city and walk to Rosa's house each morning, have a cup of Folgers instant coffee and a Stella D'oro anisette toast with her, and then allow herself to be transported to a different world. Rosa made Lee study the yoga sutras, too, so thoroughly that at times Lee thought it might have been easier to finish medical school. Sometimes they fought. Rosa pushed too hard, could be mean, and was stingy with praise. Still . . .

Lee has a great deal of respect for the training that a lot of the teachers she knows have received, but she can't help thinking at times that their workshops and crowded seminars are like skimmed milk compared with the heavy cream of the days she spent with Rosa.

Alan was skeptical of yoga at first. He was a gym fanatic. Lee knows he would never admit it to anyone, but what really got him hooked on yoga was mula bandha. That much-discussed little “lock” that's supposed to control the flow of energy between the upper and lower halves of the body and, ultimately, the energy between earth and sky. Alan certainly wasn't the first man in history to discover that if you could truly master the mysteries of that subtle inner lifting of the pelvic floor, there were a
whole lot
of energy flows you could control in your body. The benefits sure outweighed those of free weights. Indeed.

She wasn't complaining. She'd never really wanted to go on birth control anyway, and once Alan had his bandhas disciplined, they didn't need to worry about pills or condoms. And back before the twins and before the studio became so demanding, back when they had what seemed like unlimited time . . . well, there are worse ways to spend one, two, sometimes three hours than exploring the limits of Alan's self-control.
Indeed
.

Back then, when everything in their lives seemed to be going so well, the performative aspects of Alan's lovemaking didn't bother Lee so much. “Watch this,” he'd say. “Look at me, Lee,” he'd say, and she'd happily oblige.
Mula bandha, baby. Go for it.
Because they felt so connected, because she felt as if he was
hers
and she was
his
, it was all part of their intimate connection. It wasn't about her and him, it was about
them
.

But now, Alan's little stunts and impeccable timing seem different somehow, and on the afternoons he comes by the house, as he's started to do again, she feels less as if it's about
them
than about him having an audience. Any innocent bystander would do.

Lee is actually mulling all this over as they're having sex, and if that's what's on her mind, it can't be a particularly good sign.

“Watch this,” he says as he pulls out. “On the count of ten. Watch me.”

But really, when you come down to it, it's all self-appreciation more than anything else, at least this part of it.