taken yoga classes for over a year, from a gentle woman about our mother’s age, with shining silver hair and a body both soft and limber, combining a grandmother’s warmth with an athlete’s musculature. The instructor, Carol, seemed so at home in herself that it had made Rose feel more comfortable with her own body, which she hid in billowy T-shirts, hanging to her knees over loose-fitting sweatpants, despite the way they restricted her movements.
Our mother’s ancestors were Russian, sort of, from that small area of Poland that had been annexed so many times by so many different conquerors the residents had entirely ceded their nationality and stopped bothering with any such appellations. So we were what you might call sturdy peasant stock, built for farming, for breeding, for work. Rose en-vied Carol’s slim-hipped elegance as the instructor shifted from pose to pose, but she found, in time, the legs she had hated for so long allowed her to do much the same things. This period had coincided with the most passionate lovemaking she had ever had, with anyone, even Jonathan, and she wondered sometimes if she had agreed to marry him partly because of the yoga. It had made her feel beautiful, luxuriant, pliant.
But then a few months ago Carol had announced that she and her husband were retiring, to Florida of all places—and the new instructor, a bleached blonde named Heidi, who wore kitten heels with her yoga pants, terrified Rose. Heidi had come in for the first class and turned the heat up fifteen degrees, so Rose found herself red-faced and sweating, clumsy in a space where she had learned to feel so lovely. As Heidi moved around the class, correcting Rose’s stances repeatedly, Rose’s heart had begun to pound, and she gasped for air. Finally, she had grabbed her mat and stuffed her feet, swollen from the heat, into her flip-flops.
“Leaving, dear?” Heidi had asked, coming up beside Rose, her hands icy on Rose’s fevered skin. She looked at Rose pityingly, as though she had known Rose would not be able to make it through.
Rose nodded, blinking back tears, and escaped.
She had not gone back since. She could feel the difference in her body, the tightness in her muscles where there once had been flexibility, the hitches in her heartbeats becoming more frequent, but Rose had not even considered going back to such a painful failure.
But the breathing still worked, she noticed, checking her heart with her palm once more before she pushed the sheets away, sliding her legs over the side of the bed and sitting for a moment before pushing herself away from the protesting mattress. Her knees popped, an auditory reminder of her unstoppable slide toward forty, and she moved gingerly until the muscles warmed. She padded down the hallway to the stairs. Our parents would sleep through any noise, she was fairly sure of that, but she didn’t want to wake Bean, asleep next door.
She was nearly to the kitchen, guided by the light our mother always left on over the sink, when she heard the sound of the screen door slapping open, and then the rattle of the doorknob. Her heart pounding again from a shot of adrenaline, Rose leaped inside the kitchen door, peering out at the interloper. Outside, a car gunned its engine and tore into the night, the sounds nearly buried under another clap of thunder.
The light from the lamps at the foot of the front steps illuminated Cordy from behind, transforming her into a shadowy outline smelling of rain and wet grass.
“Hey, Rose,” Cordy said, stepping inside as though it were a perfectly natural thing for her to arrive home at two o’clock in the morning, and just as natural for Rose to be standing by the door to greet her. Last time we had seen Cordy, her hair was black and she wore a pleated school uniform skirt with a slew of rotating band T-shirts. Tonight her hair was back to our deep brown. She wore a white peasant top with puffed short sleeves, spattered with thick raindrops,
Our mother’s ancestors were Russian, sort of, from that small area of Poland that had been annexed so many times by so many different conquerors the residents had entirely ceded their nationality and stopped bothering with any such appellations. So we were what you might call sturdy peasant stock, built for farming, for breeding, for work. Rose en-vied Carol’s slim-hipped elegance as the instructor shifted from pose to pose, but she found, in time, the legs she had hated for so long allowed her to do much the same things. This period had coincided with the most passionate lovemaking she had ever had, with anyone, even Jonathan, and she wondered sometimes if she had agreed to marry him partly because of the yoga. It had made her feel beautiful, luxuriant, pliant.
But then a few months ago Carol had announced that she and her husband were retiring, to Florida of all places—and the new instructor, a bleached blonde named Heidi, who wore kitten heels with her yoga pants, terrified Rose. Heidi had come in for the first class and turned the heat up fifteen degrees, so Rose found herself red-faced and sweating, clumsy in a space where she had learned to feel so lovely. As Heidi moved around the class, correcting Rose’s stances repeatedly, Rose’s heart had begun to pound, and she gasped for air. Finally, she had grabbed her mat and stuffed her feet, swollen from the heat, into her flip-flops.
“Leaving, dear?” Heidi had asked, coming up beside Rose, her hands icy on Rose’s fevered skin. She looked at Rose pityingly, as though she had known Rose would not be able to make it through.
Rose nodded, blinking back tears, and escaped.
She had not gone back since. She could feel the difference in her body, the tightness in her muscles where there once had been flexibility, the hitches in her heartbeats becoming more frequent, but Rose had not even considered going back to such a painful failure.
But the breathing still worked, she noticed, checking her heart with her palm once more before she pushed the sheets away, sliding her legs over the side of the bed and sitting for a moment before pushing herself away from the protesting mattress. Her knees popped, an auditory reminder of her unstoppable slide toward forty, and she moved gingerly until the muscles warmed. She padded down the hallway to the stairs. Our parents would sleep through any noise, she was fairly sure of that, but she didn’t want to wake Bean, asleep next door.
She was nearly to the kitchen, guided by the light our mother always left on over the sink, when she heard the sound of the screen door slapping open, and then the rattle of the doorknob. Her heart pounding again from a shot of adrenaline, Rose leaped inside the kitchen door, peering out at the interloper. Outside, a car gunned its engine and tore into the night, the sounds nearly buried under another clap of thunder.
The light from the lamps at the foot of the front steps illuminated Cordy from behind, transforming her into a shadowy outline smelling of rain and wet grass.
“Hey, Rose,” Cordy said, stepping inside as though it were a perfectly natural thing for her to arrive home at two o’clock in the morning, and just as natural for Rose to be standing by the door to greet her. Last time we had seen Cordy, her hair was black and she wore a pleated school uniform skirt with a slew of rotating band T-shirts. Tonight her hair was back to our deep brown. She wore a white peasant top with puffed short sleeves, spattered with thick raindrops,
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