Through Thick and Thin (22 page)

Next, Ellery, who clearly seems to have this down, presses his two front feet into the floor and scoots down, his hindquarters reaching upwards.

“Downward facing dog!” Gary says happily. He looks out at the assembled circle and repeats, “Downward facing dog.” He nods and then in a more imploring tone, “Guys? Want to give it a try?” To Gary’s credit, or perhaps it is to Ellery’s credit, the apricot poodle crouches down and gets into a position somewhat resembling the one Ellery is in, though she keeps her head up.

“Kind of an upward facing dog, great job, Cassie,” Gary praises. Jessica the Boston terrier gets down on her belly and begins crouching toward him as if she were stalking her prey. Gary nods seriously at her. The sheepdog mix sits down, the pug is sitting on his haunches contentedly, and the Westie is heading determinedly for the door.

“Okay, people,” Gary says clapping, the Westie stopping midstride to see what the clapping is about, “let’s join in here with a sun salutation. Person of DB Sweeney? You’re gonna want to take off your shoes.”

“My shoes?” Meredith says, even though she heard him. Suddenly she feels nervous. It’s not really about the shoes, it’s more about the fact that it does seem that the people will be participating in the yoga, and she’s never done yoga.

“You got it,” he says with a grin, it’s a very lovely grin. DB Sweeney is standing on his mat. He’s not doing doga per se, but in the scheme of things, he might be closer than some of the other dogs.

“Um, Gary,” she says to his back, as he has now turned around and is heading back to his own mat. He turns around again and she motions him toward her. She would like to think the motion is subtle. He walks a few steps toward her, a look of casual concern on his face. She angles her head down, lowers her voice, “It’s just that I haven’t ever done yoga. I thought, you know, just DB Sweeney was going to do the yoga.”

“Not a problem,” he says, smiling. His smile is so warm. “Just hang out. Watch everyone else and join in when you feel comfortable. Yoga is about going at your own pace and doing what feels right to you.”

“Uh, okay,” she says, looking down at her sneakers and thinking to herself,
You will unlace them.
“Any pointers?”

“Sure thing, two: try to say
practicing
yoga rather than
doing
yoga. It’s an ongoing thing, it’s a practice not an action.” She nods her head, taking it in. “And if you look at them closely enough, you’ll notice dogs are always practicing their yoga. And have fun,” he finishes with another grin. “I guess that’s three things.”

“Thanks,” she says, and bends down to unlace her sneakers. She makes an effort not to think too much about how many other people’s bare feet have been on her borrowed yoga mat, too.

“Let’s all come to the front of our mats,” he says next from the front of his own mat. She takes her place right behind DB Sweeney and watches and listens as everyone begins their sun salutation.

“Look up, reach up, inhale. Bring your hands through your chest center and look down. Fold down, and set your hands to the floor and then lift halfway up here.” As everyone, in unison, looks up to the sky and reaches their hands above them, and then swan dives down, all extremely flexibly she notices, she sees how each of the dogs gets so excited—so really puppyish is how she would describe it, even though she’s never had a puppy. Their tails all wag quickly and they excitedly circle their mats, even DB Sweeney, except he is tail-wagging and circling over on the next mat with the happy couple and he is circling along with the now quite zealous black pug.

DB Sweeney,
she thinks,
really?
And she thinks DB Sweeney does not know from happy couples and it must be very novel to him, as novel as doga. Except of course for the fact that Gary did say that dogs are always practicing yoga.

“Now you should come into your high push-up position. And you should be able to see your ankles here. Can you see your ankles here?”

Even though she is not in the push-up position, Meredith tries not to think about if she can or cannot see her ankles.

“Gently lift your chin and take a deep breath in and then hover, and now, to your low push-up.”

Meredith is starting to feel a bit dumb listening to the yoga practice and not doing it. Or practicing it. But yet the dogs are so excited, and so cute, and so charming, and so fetching really, every last one, that she feels a bit less dumb than she would in other circumstances.

“Upward facing dog,” Gary says next, and everyone arches forward, “and downward facing dog,” and everyone is now in an inverted triangle pose, and breathing, and then Meredith thinks she can do that, and she gets herself into the position and it’s really not hard. She stays and she breathes and DB Sweeney hustles right back over to her, and together they listen to Gary’s velvet voice as he says over and over, “Inhale. Exhale.” She winks at DB Sweeney, who has situated himself right underneath her, and she can feel everyone breathing in and out with her. She gets the strangest feeling, one that she doesn’t think she’s had before. She doesn’t have a name for it, but she suspects it might suffice to call it being part of something. She smiles, an upside down smile, at the thought of really being part of something.

And so with Gary’s next direction, “Walk or jump forward,” she decides to follow right along, though admittedly she makes the decision to walk, rather than jump forward. She wonders if maybe G-Doga class is really just people
practicing
yoga with their dogs around them. Except of course for the thing that he said about dogs always practicing yoga, which could be a bit of a brain scramble if you let it. But even so, even if they just do these sun salutations, she thinks that would be okay.

She peeks up from her forward bend to see the placid-voiced, curly haired Gary slipping out the door. Alas. A moment later there’s a clicking sound and music begins piping into the room, coming through speakers hidden somewhere. Meredith tries to remember her focus, remember her breathing, and stay in sync, and then everyone’s standing again at the front of their mats, and so is she, and so is Gary.

As she hears the soft
cha-cha
of a snare drum, a tinkling, and a twang, an unmistakable country melody, Meredith loses focus on her breathing and tries to figure out if she knows the song, the endless game of Name That Tune she forever plays whenever she hears music.
The summer air it was heavy and sweet, you and I on a crowded street . . .

Ha,
Meredith thinks,
Deanna Carter,
and the song is “We Danced Anyway.” She feels a small triumph, the kind she often gets when she recognizes a song, or properly identifies a mysterious ingredient, an elusive spice, but along with that, there’s also a sharper feeling, she’s also a bit surprised. Because while Deanna Carter is one of her favorite country music singers, she thinks she’s only ever heard her on the Bose, the Bang & Olufsen, or the iPod. Deanna Carter, she doesn’t think, isn’t someone you come across very often in New York. Being a fan of country music in New York City is a solitary experience. And she has never once thought that in New York City there might exist a country music-loving doga instructor; and not only that, but one who is really very cute (albeit saddled with a rather unfortunate name). But then, what is it that people always say about New York? That you can find anything you want here? She thinks about that for a moment, and then something amazing happens.

The dogs, all of them, start parading. They fan out along the perimeter of the circle of yoga mats, all following Ellery in a remarkably straight line. Their tales swish and their eyes gleam and not one of them, not even Jessica, the rowdy Boston terrier, or Carlie, the face-smearing Westie, get out of the line. There at the end of the line, following closely behind the apricot poodle, is DB Sweeney. He is all the way across the room, graceful and independent and free, doing what looks like some swaying of his own, and looking remarkably rhythmic. In that instant, he looks back over his haunches at her quickly, and she has the sure sense he looks to check on her. She smiles at him, to let him know it’s fine, that she’s fine. And there’s something about the way he looks at her and holds her gaze for a moment longer that makes her think that was his plan all along.

Meredith looks quickly around and notices that all the people, they’re all now sitting back down on their mats in various degrees of cross-leggedness and swaying. And they’re all, each one of them, clapping. Meredith has no idea how they got there, or when. As DB Sweeney marches along, as the music plays, it’s clear, quite clear really, that the only thing to do is to get on the floor, the only thing to do is clap, and sway, and sing along. She starts singing softly and surprises herself as she hears her own voice getting louder, boldly singing the chorus along with everyone else. “And the band played songs that we had never heard, but we danced anyway.”

Later, after the parading has come to a finish, after Gary has once again led the people and dogs together in a rousing closing sequence of
om
/howl, the dogs all, almost magically, settle into what Gary calls “final relaxation.” Meredith lies on her back with her eyes closed thinking that G-Doga is not half-bad at all, thinking as she listens to Gary repeating “Inhale” and “Exhale” that his voice reminds her very much of an Elvis Costello song.

When the class has come to a close and the other people are rolling up their mats and nodding goodbyes and attaching leashes to the collars of their dogis, and Meredith is doing the same, Gary walks over to her.

“You did great today,” he says. She looks to see if the other new people, the people with the nice pug, are still here, if he could have been talking to them, too. But they’re already gone.

“Thanks,” she says, and she’s about to leave it at that, but doesn’t. “I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.” He smiles, his eyes shine so much in the way that DB Sweeney’s sometimes do. “I mean,” she continues, “not that I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it, it was just, it was great.” She would like to add on that she is a very smart person, always has been, is in fact leaps and bounds smarter than she sounds right now. But she doesn’t. “I love that Deanna Carter song, by the way. Great choice.”

“Thanks,” he says. “And DB Sweeney did wonderfully. It’s amazing how tuned in these guys are as soon as they arrive.”

“It is,” she says, nodding. She should have more to say, but yet, no.

“And you did beautifully with your first sun salutations.”

Beautifully,
she thinks and says, “Thanks, thanks a lot.”

“Have you ever considered coming to yoga on your own?” he asks.

“Uh, not really, I don’t think.”

“You should,” he tells her. “I teach a class on Sunday afternoons at this great studio on Eighteenth Street. Right by Third.”

“Really,” she says, still forgetting that she knows so many more words.

“Well, then,” he says and again, he smiles at her. The smile shows more teeth this time but yet it is not one that gives any indication as to whether he thinks her smile is nice, too, or as to whether or not he has the ability to tell things about her personality from across a room. “Sunday at three thirty, it’d be nice to see you.” He takes a card out of his pocket, hands it to her.

She glances down at it, on one side there’s an address, a cell phone number, and an e-mail. His last name is Hugh, which doesn’t really help the Gary, at least she doesn’t think so. She flips the card over and there’s the name and address of a yoga studio on Eighteenth Street.

“Thanks,” she says. “I’ll definitely try.” She gets out her wallet and puts the card inside it. She thinks she really will try to make it to his yoga class. She actually doesn’t see a downside. She thinks she’ll try.

“Cool,” he says and turns to walk over to Ellery, who is peacefully waiting on his yoga mat.

She looks down at DB Sweeney, who seems to be smiling up at her. She smiles right back at him, gets a good grip on his leash, and together, they start to head home.

It was not the next day. Let it not be said that Stephanie Cunningham, née Isley, ran off like a lemming to a Weight Watchers meeting just because she heard Cher singing a (rather poignant) song on TV. But does anyone say that anymore? Does anyone actually say, with a straight face, without irony,
née Isley
? Stephanie thinks probably not. Probably, if she were going for inclusion of her maiden name, in this day and age, it would have to be Stephanie Isley Cunningham. And it should have been something she did from the start, from when they’d first gotten married, perhaps even with a hyphen. But she hadn’t. She’d just completely jettisoned Isley. And it wasn’t even a backlash against her father, the name of her father, who may or may not live in France (which is a story for another day), because Isley was actually her mother’s maiden name. (And that’s a story for the day after that.) She’d just become Stephanie Cunningham. She’d been, at the time, quite excited to be. She imagines that to start using Isley again now, even combined with Cunningham, either with or without a hyphen, might send certain messages, messages that, even with everything, she doesn’t think she should send.