Grown-Up Pose

by Sonya Lalli

  chapter ten

  IMOGEN: ANU! How you feeling, girl? Your Tupac rapping skills have inspired me. We’re going to this club I know on Saturday. Dress hot.

  ANUSHA: Ugh, all right.

  ANUSHA: Wait. What do you mean by hot?

  IMOGEN: Backup-dancer-in-a-music-video hot.

  She heard the rap music from across the parking lot where Monica, now home from her honeymoon, had dropped her off. Anusha had canceled her plans with Ms. Finch to go into the school and finish building the set for Kanika’s holiday play, and instead had spent that afternoon with her two best friends.

  Shivering, Anu zipped up Monica’s leather jacket and flipped up the collar to cover her neck from the wind, and she regetted wearing Jenny’s miniskirt. It was almost December and the first time she had left the house so ill-equipped for the weather.

  “Hot damn, Anusha,” she heard Imogen say as she appeared around the street corner. “I barely recognized you.”

  Imogen was wearing her thigh-high boots and fur coat again. Tonight, her hair was in a high ponytail, long red tendrils hanging straight down her back. Her lips were painted red.

  “Thanks.” Anu grinned. “You look great, too. Wait. Did you walk over? We could have given you a ride.”

  “It’s no bother,” Imogen said, taking her by the arm. “I don’t live far from here.”

  A hundred feet away from the club, Imogen stopped short, shook her head. “I’m too sober to go in there.”

  “Were you out somewhere before?”

  “No.” Imogen smiled and let go of Anu’s arm, then pulled a joint out of her bag. “Just me, my indie depression playlist, and a few bottles of wine . . .”

  A few? How exactly was she sober, then?

  She watched Imogen expertly light the joint, inhale until the end glowed amber, and then blow the smoke out of her nose.

  Anu’s stomach clenched as she watched her. She had hated the smell growing up, the way it seemed to stink up every parking garage, alley, and party. But still, for the first time, she wondered why she’d never tried it.

  “Here, give me that.”

  Imogen smiled, took another inhale, and then passed the joint over. Anu tonged it with two fingers. Taking a deep breath, she summoned all the courage she could muster and stuck it in her mouth.

  “Ow!”

  Something sizzled and popped, and suddenly the joint was laying on the ground. Her lip was throbbing, pulsating like all hell. She could hear Imogen laughing, in near hysteria, as she picked up the joint from the ground.

  “You stuck the wrong end in your mouth! You are too cute, Anusha.”

  Anu’s cheeks heated up as she nursed her raw lip.

  “Have you ever smoked before?”

  Anu shook her head.

  “Not even a cigarette?”

  Again, Anu shook her head.

  Imogen giggled, a new sort of giggle, and Anu couldn’t tell if the weed had hit her already—or if Anu’s inexperience was really that funny.

  “Here, let me try again.” Anu took the joint and carefully placed it on a part of her lip that wasn’t sore. As Imogen relit the end of it, she sucked hard and fierce until she burst into a coughing fit.

  “Not bad. Not bad.” Imogen held on to the joint until Anu composed herself and then handed it back. “Now, try again. Breathe in like you do in my class. Ujjayi breathing. Come on now.”

  This time, Anu didn’t cough so much, and they passed the joint back and forth until there was nothing left. Imogen let the butt fall to the ground and then slowly stamped it out with the heel of her boot.

  “Did you go to Charlie’s class this morning? Vinyasa two?”

  Anu nodded. “I like yours better, but she’s pretty good, actually. I’ve been to two of her classes now.”

  Imogen kicked at a loose rock. “And you’re doing OK?” She paused. “About Ryan, I mean.”

  “We weren’t dating that long.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  The rap music throbbed in the background, and Anu glanced toward the club. “I’m doing OK, yeah. Thanks for asking.”

  There were a few people smoking outside, a big guy with a clipboard hovering by the entrance. Anu wasn’t standing that far away, but oddly, it felt like those other people were in a different universe.

  “You should buy it,” she heard Imogen say. “It would be good for you.”

  “I told you, I don’t know the first thing about running a yoga studio.”

  “Yeah, but I do. I’ve worked there for a year and a half. I just don’t have any money, so I can’t buy it. Do you have any money?”

  “Some.” Anu nodded. “And I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about it, but . . .”

  “But what? What’s holding you back?”

  There was nothing holding her back, except that dreadful, aching throb of responsibility.

  Yoga is a hobby, Anu, not a profession.

  Don’t you want a job that will give you health benefits?

  What kind of wife and mother teaches yoga?

  Teaching yoga—one day running her own studio—was the only dream she had ever had, and her parents had crushed it right out of her. Could she run a yoga studio if she wanted to?

  She could change the name, repaint the walls, give the studio more ambience. She imagined the front room flooded with twinkle lights, ferns, and basketry—from ideas she’d found and filed away on a secret Pinterest board. She had saved them for a time when she and Neil could afford to renovate the basement, but they were even more suited to a yoga studio.

  “There’s a lot holding me back,” Anu said finally, because objectively, the idea was preposterous. She had a daughter and a mortgage, and a husband from whom in the new year she’d need a divorce.

  Without realizing it, she found herself telling Imogen all of this, every thought flowing in and out her head. How her life was chock-full to the brim, but with what? Working twenty-six hours a week like a robot, her mind always elsewhere? Tiptoeing around Neil, and now Ryan, too? With carting her daughter back and forth from extracurricular activities? Building the set for her school play?

  “This is what I spend my days thinking about, you know?” Anu’s eyes were focused somewhere off in the distance, past the parking lot, on a nondescript warehouse. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my daughter . . .”

  “But she isn’t enough.”

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to say it.”

  Anu pressed her lips together and let the haze she was feeling absorb her.

  A new question appeared in a distant quadrant of her brain, seeping its way to the front. She wanted to be free to do what, exactly? Live life on her own terms? Be the sort of woman she admired or was even envious of?

  To be a stupid kid and not a grown-up at all and ready to embrace whatever the world threw at her.

  “All right,” Imogen said after a while, and when Anu turned to look at her, she realized she couldn’t see straight. That Imogen’s face had morphed all out of proportion. “I’m feeling good. Let’s go inside.”

  chapter eleven

  ANUSHA: I smidked a jomnt

  JENNY: Is that . . . Punjabi?

  MONICA: No . . . No, it’s not. You OK, Anu?

  Everyone inside seemed to be a mix of ages. Some Anu swore looked young enough to be in high school, while there were others who seemed far too old to be there.

  Everything was a blur by the time they stumbled to a corner of the dance floor where Haruto and his friends were dancing, some of whom she recognized from the week before.

  Had it only been a week since she was out last, catching Ryan with his bloody associate? It might have been the weed, but it felt like an eternity had passed.

  Haruto and Imogen disappeared, but Anu was f
eeling too good to care. Someone, one of the women, passed her a bottle of beer, and she let her eyes close as she swayed to the beat. She liked the bass, the way it sent shock waves up her arms and down her legs, reverberating through the base of her spine.

  “Having fun?”

  She opened her eyes and spotted a familiar face standing just in front of her. He was bobbing up and down, perhaps in an attempt to dance.

  “I’m Jake, remember?” he shouted over the music, stepping in a bit closer to her. Big green eyes, a round face. Like a Ken doll. “I met you last week. At my brother’s birthday.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Anu nodded in recognition and closed her eyes again. They felt so heavy. It felt so good. “Nice to see you.”

  “You can’t see me. Your eyes are closed.”

  Anu burst out laughing. She had never found anything funnier in her entire life. When she stopped, she found Jake’s hands heavy on her hips, and she didn’t move them. Instead, she turned around and set her hands on his.

  “I like this song,” he said into her ear. She felt him breathing hard, nudging closer with each step as they danced until his body pressed against hers. The lights were harsh on her eyes, but she kept them open.

  When the song changed again, she glanced back toward the group to find they’d all disappeared. How long had they been dancing? How many times had the songs changed? She turned around. Jake was smiling at her lazily. She wondered if he was high, too.

  “Where did everyone go?”

  He shrugged. “To get a drink, I think.”

  “You didn’t want one?”

  He hesitated and then shook his head. “I wanted to stay here with you.”

  Again, this made her laugh. He moved his hands up from her hips to her forearms.

  “Do you wanna go somewhere quieter?” he screamed into her ear, and she winced from the pain. Still, she nodded and let him lead her away from the dance floor by the hand. “That’s better,” Jake said, sitting down on a ledge. They were near the toilets, but suddenly her feet were tired, and so she sat down. Jake put his arm around her, and it felt nice. Weird but nice. His face was so close to hers that she tried not to look at him. She knew if she did, he’d kiss her.

  He was stroking the outside of her thigh, massaging it. Was that normal? Was that how guys tried to hook up with girls? The thought of it made her giggle.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She pressed her hand over her mouth to suppress the laughter, and the edge of her lips began to throb. “Ouch!”

  “What happened?”

  She stuck out her lower lip and crossed her eyes, just revealing a dark red lump on the end of it.

  “You don’t have mouth herpes, do you?” His hand was on her chin now, tilting her face upward. “Not that I would care.”

  “You’re cute,” she said unexpectedly without thinking, because he wasn’t even her type. She kept her eyes down and gazed at the stamp of an X on the back of his hand.

  He turned it over. His palm looked sweaty, glistening in the strobe lights. “You’re cute, too.”

  She was mere inches away from kissing him and was surprised by the fact that she wanted to. She wanted him to lean in. Oddly, she wanted those small hands all over her.

  His eyes closed, and then hers. Neil’s face appeared. His naughty grin. His leather jacket. She didn’t want him there. She pushed him away.

  Jake kissed her, and her lip throbbed from the burn, but in a good way, and she let her mind and limbs spin away from her as they made out on that ledge in the club by the toilets.

  It didn’t feel good necessarily, but different. Surreal. Like it wasn’t really her. After a while his lips moved from her lips to her ears and her neck, and she opened her eyes.

  Jake was probing, but without confidence. Anu glanced down, and she became conscious that his hands, with large black X’s crossed over the length of them, were sliding higher and higher up her thighs.

  The haze was clearing. His mouth moved all over the place, making her whole neck extremely wet. Disgustingly wet.

  “You have a different stamp than I do,” she heard herself say. Hers was small, illegible red ink, and his was . . .

  Another song change, a song she must have heard earlier that evening, and all too suddenly she was conscious of the terrible music, her slippery neck, the smell wafting over from the toilets. She pulled away. His lips were glistening, like he’d just taken a sip from a water fountain.

  “Jake.” Her voice caught. “How old are you?”

  He stared down at her meekly. She dropped his hands.

  “You said Tim’s your brother, right? And he turned twenty-seven last week?”

  Jake nodded and shifted his knees away. “Tim’s my older brother.”

  Older brother.

  “So you’re . . . what? Twenty-six? Twenty-four?” She shook his arm until he looked at her. “Twenty-one?”

  He dropped his gaze.

  “Jake, tell me right now. How old are you?”

  He sighed, audibly. “I’m . . . eighteen. Fine, I’m eighteen.”

  He was eighteen?

  Eighteen?

  Her head throbbed as she dropped it into her hands. “Oh . . . my . . . God . . .”

  “Anusha—”

  “You were in a bar last week. You’re in a bar now.”

  “I snuck in last week. Tim helped me,” he said, his voice improbably high and rushed. “And here . . . well, here they let you in underage but . . .” From the corner of her eye, she saw him tap one of the X’s on his hand. “It’s so the bartenders don’t serve you.”

  Her mouth gaping, Anu stood up, suddenly sober. Incredibly sober. Jake was eighteen? She had made out with a teenager?

  She felt him stand up beside her, and he tentatively rested his hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry. . . .”

  “It’s not your fault,” Anu said, pressing her hands over her mouth. It wasn’t his fault. He was a boy who had seized an opportunity.

  She was the opportunity.

  “So this means you were born in . . . what year, exactly?”

  “Two thousand one.”

  Anu felt like she was going to be sick. In 2001, she had been twelve years old. She and Monica were learning how to apply mascara, stalking the boys they had crushes on on instant messenger, and had just gotten their periods.

  She was overcome with nausea when it came to her: Technically, she was old enough to be Jake’s mother.

  She couldn’t find Imogen, so she texted her to tell her she was leaving. What had she been thinking, going out? Why had she smoked a joint and then bloody kissed Jake?

  There were no cabs in sight, so she called one—but the operator said it would be at least fifteen minutes.

  “Do you mind if I wait with you?” Jake asked tentatively. He hadn’t brought his coat outside with him, and he was shivering in just a T-shirt.

  “Sure.”

  They waited in silence, an awkward silence, for several long minutes. Anu couldn’t bring herself to look at him, see him in the sobering light of the streetlamp.

  “It’s really not a big deal,” he said after a while. “I’m an adult. If you’re old enough to vote, you should be old enough to drink.”

  She couldn’t remember if she’d told him how old she was or that she had a daughter. Surely, she had. Maybe he didn’t care.

  “I’m going traveling for a while,” he said, after another minute passed. “I leave in the spring. Europe first. I’ve never been. Maybe Southeast Asia after that. I’ll be gone for six months.”

  She forced out a smile and glanced down at the pavement. Her boots were covered in muck, the black now appearing almost brown.

  “I’ve seen all these pictures on Instagram from everyone’s travels, thought maybe it’s about time I see it for myself.”<
br />
  “That’s nice.” Her voice was curt, and she felt bad. He was trying to be nice, trying to make conversation; it wasn’t his fault Anu had acted like a fool tonight.

  She cleared her throat and then looked over at him. “Europe. Awesome. You’ll have fun.”

  He smiled widely, baring his teeth, and Anu felt rather tender toward him, oddly almost motherly.

  “Have you been?”

  She shook her head.

  “I bet you’d have fun, too.”

  She shrugged and wiped her nose, which had started to run, with the back of her hand. They’d been looking up flights to Paris when Anu threw up on Neil’s laptop, and she figured out she was pregnant. They were always planning to go after they’d had another child, when the kids were old enough to leave with the grandparents while they had a romantic holiday. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen now.

  But it wasn’t like she hadn’t traveled. As a kid she’d flown with her parents to India every second summer like clockwork—a few weeks in Chandigarh with Lakshmi’s side of the family and then another few in Ludhiana with all of her dad’s relatives.

  Over the years, she’d traveled around Canada a bit—especially the beautiful western coastline. Hiking. Camping. Skiing. Anu went to Las Vegas the year she and Monica had both turned twenty-one, although they’d blown all their money shopping and couldn’t afford to go out in the evenings. And Neil had taken her to Mexico for their honeymoon. Since then, they had been back to the same resort twice, both times with their parents and Kanika.

  Despite being invited along, each time she’d turned Jenny down on her exotic monthlong trips abroad. Now she wasn’t sure why. Because it would have worried her parents? Because Neil would be home with Priya, working and missing out?

  It was Anu who had missed out.

  She couldn’t look Jake in the eye when he awkwardly hugged her goodbye. Resting her head against the glass, she kept her eyes inside the car. On her skirt, sticky from beer and sweat. Her grimy boots. The pink swell of gum stuck on the passenger seat.

  Should she feel ashamed? Wasn’t this—what happened tonight—the definition of being some reckless adolescent?