The heat now seemed even more intense, and sweat was streaming down my back. The people around me had moved to the middle of the room, where they sprawled on their backs, their legs doubled backwards over their heads and their arms twisted together. I had no idea how they’d accomplished this feat, or for what purpose. Even Harold had managed to contort himself into a semblance of the appropriate position. His T-shirt had slipped up, revealing a broad expanse of his starkly white skin, and sweat was puddled around him. Some people were twisted so far around that they were now looking back in my direction, their cheeks flushed and eyes eerily unfocused, their breathing labored.
The perfect muscles of the instructor were folded in on themselves like origami. “Hold it,” he was saying. “Hold it.”
How he could speak from within the pretzeled confines of his body was beyond me. I couldn’t even make out where his head was. My own legs, though I was trying to extend them over my back like the others, refused to go any higher than my ears, and my stomach was killing me.
“Feel the toxins of the day draining away. From your heart, your liver, your kidneys. From your tongue, your teeth, your throat. Feel everything letting go.”
Throughout the room, the breathing eased and quieted. People were actually taking the opportunity to ruminate while remaining in their positions. My legs mutinied and crashed onto the floor with a slap that broke the mood. The woman I’d taken to be Eva Kent turned her head and stared at me. She couldn’t have been older than I was.
“Close your eyes. Feel the worries of the day leaving your heart.” The instructor’s voice was light and pleasant, with a chime almost, like a musical instrument. “Your heart is a feather in your chest.”
I tried picturing this, and couldn’t. Then I felt a hand touching my knee, and when I looked up, the yoga instructor was kneeling by my side.
“Feel the toxins draining from your system in your sweat,” he said in his chiming voice. Then he hissed in my ear, in a distinctly unpleasant tone, “This isn’t a beginners’ class. Didn’t you consult the schedule?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to check it out.”
“Inside your body purity is emerging,” he said sweetly, still glowering at me, and then whispered, “Level one meets on Tuesdays. Today’s Wednesday!”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“This happens all the time,” he said, no longer bothering to keep his voice down. “It drives me completely freaking insane.”
I stood up. “I’m going now.” Everybody in the room was looking at me, all in various stages of unfurling, like fronds in spring. I gave Harold what I hoped was a nonchalant, vaguely surprised “Oh, you’re here too?” wave. He just sat up and stared at me.
“I don’t know why I bother to make these schedules when nobody reads them,” the instructor said. “This is advanced Ashtanga, for crying out loud. Put your blanket back. Don’t leave here without putting your blanket back.”
I did as I was told.
“Folded!” he said.
The drive back from Santa Fe passed quickly, borne on the tide of my absolute embarrassment — Harold’s face looming always before me, along with the rest of the unfurling yogis. What the hell was I thinking? I wished very much that the whole day had never happened.
I hit town at five o’clock, when Albuquerque’s offices were evacuated as if in a sudden panic. So far as I could tell, nobody in this town ever worked a minute later. Fleeing employees stalled the roads in every direction, one per car, heads lolling in boredom, staring straight ahead. I rolled down the windows and got a lungful of exhaust-redolent air. The two interstates that met in the city arched and crossed, bridges above air, in the center of the sky. Over everything in my view lay the pallor of dust. I exited and drove the back streets instead, recognizing in my desire to keep the car moving, even if the route ultimately proved far longer, a tendency of my father’s. Wylie had it too. Waiting at a red light behind two other cars, I thought I saw the eggplant-colored Plumbarama van drive past in the opposite direction. I made a quick right, but by the time I got turned around the van was nowhere in sight. Probably I had just imagined it.
I cruised through residential neighborhoods, at a speed that felt more like walking than anything gasoline-powered. Dogs lay still and panting in the shade of trees. Cats were in hiding. In someone’s yard two small children were playing a game that seemed to involve the simulation of vomiting. As I drove past, one of them lifted his arm and shook his fist at me.
Threatened by children, humiliated by yoga instructors, and sticking sweatily to the vinyl front seat, I finally pulled into my mother’s driveway. Nobody was home. I tossed my sweaty clothes onto a pile and took a quick, cold shower. Then I found a beer in the back of the fridge and sat in the backyard, the sweet relief of alcohol slipping down my throat, the wafting suburban smells comforting me: the charcoal smoke of backyard grills, the first hints of citronella, the gasoline putter of lawnmowers and weed whackers. I was half-asleep by the time a car door slammed shut out front and my mother and David came around the back.
“Hey, it’s Lynnie!” David said, holding out his hand. “We saw that fearsome contraption of your brother’s in the driveway and guessed you were back.”
I nodded. My mother, without meeting my eyes, gestured toward the back door. I held it open for her and she stepped inside, carrying a brown paper bag of groceries.
“You’ll join us for dinner, I hope,” David said.
In the kitchen my mother was making short work of the groceries. Into the crisper flew the broccoli and green beans. Up into cupboards went the cereal. The breadbox, of course, was the destination of bread. Plastic bags, empty, folded, and creaseless, met their fate in the recycling bin she kept beneath the sink. David and I stood on opposite sides of the kitchen, watching her.
“Nobody puts away a load of groceries like your mother,” he said fondly. Crouched down on the floor, rearranging some delinquent items on the lower shelf of the fridge, my mother blushed and glanced at him briefly, a swift, demure look that made me feel like an intruder. I was about to go back outside when she straightened up and held out a bottle of beer in my direction, still not looking at me. I opened it by covering it with the hem of my T-shirt and twisting, which David seemed to interpret as a sign of weakness.
“Let me do that for you,” he said, holding out his large hand.
“That’s okay. I’ve got it, thanks.”
“If you’re sure,” he said. I was already drinking from the bottle. He smiled down at my mother.
“Excuse me for a second,” I said. I walked down the hallway to my room, which in every respect contrasted poorly with the rest of the house: the bed was unmade, the floor littered with clothes that had a faint but unmistakably organic scent. I was becoming one of the great unwashed. Eva Kent’s paintings sat on the dresser, their thick layers of paint as violent and mysterious as ever. I sat down on the bed. In a pine tree just outside the window, a bird — I didn’t know what kind — cackled and squawked. The world was densely populated with things I did not know. There was a soft knock on the door, and my mother came in. She’d changed from her office clothes into shorts and a loose-fitting shirt, and looked comfortable but fatigued, very fine lines etched everywhere on her skin. “Everything all right?” she said.