Through Thick and Thin

by Alison Pace

  “Going out to dinner is really hard,” another woman says, and Stephanie tries hard not to hear that, or at least not to think too much about it, and that’s easy enough because someone else has raised her hand and the leader has called on her.

  “I took a water pill and lost four pounds.” She doesn’t get a star.

  “You know how we talked last week about the Laughing Cow cheese and tomato on the multigrain English muffin?” asks another one from the front row. The talkers are always up in the front. “I added alfalfa sprouts to it, and it really added some substance. It’s an excellent two-point lunch.”

  “I gained,” someone else confesses, “and I was very frustrated because I felt like I was doing everything right. But now I see a lot of it could be that I wasn’t being as honest with myself as I could be.”

  The leader nods at her sympathetically and says very seriously, “It’s very hard. But it really, truly, is never too late to stop believing the little lies we tell ourselves. Like how that cookie doesn’t really count when it does, or that eating an entire tub of fat-free Cool Whip isn’t any points. You just have to learn to recognize the lies.”

  “It’s never too late to start being honest, to start telling the truth!” Maureen of the Scale calls up from her post at the back of the room.

  Stephanie looks around the room at everyone. She’s sure that this meeting, that Weight Watchers, must mean different things to different people, but in this very instant, to her it’s like group therapy and AA and dieting all rolled into one. To her, for a moment, it’s like a special Elk Lodge gathering for people who might have lied, who maybe fell short of being honest with themselves and with a few other people, too.

  She looks at her QuikTrak book and thinks how she will write down every single thing. She feels very strongly that “Kumbaya, My Love” is going to start playing through some hidden speaker at any moment. She feels very strongly that she will lose the weight, that she will follow this plan, that Weight Watchers could in fact be the answer to the question she has been, for almost nine months now, asking. And she feels something else, too. She hasn’t felt this way in forever. She looks around the room again, at all the people who have to do what she has to do, at all these people. She feels like she’s home.

  nineteen

  try easy

  Sundays are different now. Sundays used to be drinking coffee at her desk, as opposed to the table by the kitchen. Sundays used to be reading everyone else’s magazine, everyone else’s restaurant reviews and as much of the New York Times Sunday edition as she could muster before she (a) felt brain dead, (b) felt that any second the onslaught of world events would send her over the edge, or (c) got the needling, unpleasant feeling that she was endeavoring to read every article in the Sunday edition because Josh had told her once that she could spend more time reading the newspaper. Whichever came first. Sundays used to be for planning out the meals she would have, and for sometimes taking the train to Ridgewood to see Stephanie. And Meredith thinks that whoever said, “The more things change, the more things stay the same,” should reconsider.

  Sundays are now for walking DB Sweeney around the neighborhood and to the park, though not quite yet to the dog run because even though, as Gary said, dogs are always practicing doga, Meredith has concerns that DB Sweeney might not be Zen enough for the dog run. Sundays are still for planning out her meals, but now not only the ones in restaurants, but also the ones she’ll eat at home, the ones in which she will endeavor to know the exact point values. And in some cases that will be easy because many of those meals will come in frozen cardboard boxes containing little black plastic trays filled (though filled may be too enthusiastic a word) with tiny portions of fettuccine Alfredo, and macaroni and cheese, and three-cheese lasagna. And all three of them, to Meredith, taste the same. And yet, Meredith doesn’t mind this as much as she thought she would because these Weight Watchers dinners and snacks and dessert treats that now line her shelves, allow her for the first time in recent memory, the few months now that she’s been “on a diet,” to eat processed flour without breaking rules.

  She has, so you know, lost two pounds in the past two weeks. She has sacrificed for these two pounds and wonders still if she gave the butter-poached lobster at Perry Street a fair shake, since she mostly pushed it around her plate, unable to fathom how many points all the butter used in the butter-poaching part could actually be. Her review did include close to a paragraph on the candlelight—she thinks Perry Street has got candlelight down, along with excellent service—and perhaps too lengthy a debate on how she feels about eating with the West Side Highway right there. When she thinks of that review, she’s not completely sure if the two pounds are really any victory at all. And she’s also not sure, as she stares at all the cardboard boxes on her shelf, that it isn’t a very bad sign indeed that cheese, in the case of these one-point cheese crackers of which she is fond, is spelled not with the traditional and proper -eese, but rather with an -eeZ. She imagines it has to be.

  She turns away from her cupboard to look at the clock on her kitchen wall. It’s already 2:45, time to get going. Sundays are now also for yoga. She heads into her room to change into the Be Present yoga pants, the intriguing ones with the slits up the back, worn by the woman with the apricot poodle (she ordered them online and had them FedExed). As she steps into them, flowy and soft and quick drying (or so it said, she hasn’t yet gotten them wet), she wonders if people wear makeup to yoga class, when it’s just for people and not for dogs. She’d worn makeup to the G-Doga class, but then she hadn’t actually planned on exercise, had not planned on saluting the sun, though she imagines this time she will. She decides on a little bit of makeup, waterproof mascara and lip gloss at least. That sounds good.

  She walks over to DB Sweeney, who looks up at her a bit forlornly, the way he does when she leaves. She tries not to feel guilty that she is in fact going to see the G-Doga master without the dogi, but it doesn’t work. She still feels guilty. She reminds herself that it’s been weeks since she’s been to the office, weeks that she’s been e-mailing her reviews in. She tries not to think that she’s been phoning them in, too. But really, she’s been with DB Sweeney so much more than other people, people who have offices to go to (well, who actually go to the offices they have to go to) get to be with their dogs, and so the yoga class isn’t so bad. Really, it isn’t.

  “Okay, sweetie, sweetie dahling,” she says to him. She has taken to speaking to DB Sweeney in an accent she can’t quite identify but thinks might be Swedish. She does not know why. “Be a good mini mini! Mommy will be back sooon. So soon, so soon!” She says this all with quite a lot of enthusiasm, even though she read in MetroDog: The Essential Guide to Raising Your Dog in the City that you’re not supposed to do that, that you’re just supposed to leave your dog as if you’re leaving someone for the afternoon, someone you’ve been with for five years. It’s not Meredith’s fault that she can’t follow those directions, she’s never been with anyone for five years. She has no idea how she’d leave them.

  “Bye, DB Sweeney,” she says again, this time with as much composure as she can muster. She takes out Gary’s card and flips it over to double-check the address of the studio and she thinks, studio. Stu-di-o. There’s something so artistic about the word; she feels there’s something about it, too, that sounds very slimming. DB Sweeney shifts his position, lies on his stomach with his back legs out behind him. Meredith recognizes the position from the Doga book that she picked up. “Oh, hip opening pose!” she says to DB Sweeney without any irony at all. “Well done!” And then she heads out the door.

  Meredith checks in with a woman wearing a tank top and two braids, more Laura Ingalls than Pippi Longstocking.

  “Would you like to get a package?” she inquires, indicating with a swish of her wrist, more Vanna White than Laura Ingalls, a lucite stand with shiny cardboard rate cards displayed. Meredith takes a quick look, but even as pro-yoga (and pro-yoga instructor) as she’s feeling at present
, she resists the urge to buy a ten-class package, though it would be, in the end, more economical. She has a theory that as soon as you buy a nonrefundable package of any sort, bad things will happen. She acknowledges the propensity her back has had to go out in the past, which ultimately results in a lot of staying in. And while staying home all the time with DB Sweeney certainly holds its appeal, it would make it even harder for her to be a diligent and dedicated restaurant critic. It’s not the first time lately that she has, albeit briefly, considered the merits of packing it up and becoming a television critic instead. She wouldn’t have to try so hard to diet were she, let’s say, the television critic at the New York Times. And she does think she’s been trying hard, even though it might not seem like that to anyone else.

  “No thanks,” she says. “I’ll just get the one class. But can I buy a bottle of water from you?”

  “Absolutely,” comes the cheerful reply.

  Meredith leaves her socks and sneakers in a cubby up front, rededicates herself to her not getting all wound up over the foot fungus that could be lurking everywhere (hiding out and waiting, just waiting for the right moment to pounce), and heads into the actual classroom to unroll her mat. She thinks she’ll pick a spot in the back, that for a few reasons it’ll just be better that way.

  “Hey, Meredith, you made it,” Gary greets her as she walks in the door.

  “Yeah, hey,” she says, and wishes there had been more.

  She takes her mat to a spot in the back right corner, trying as she does to ignore the slightly heated feeling in her cheeks. She notices the person next to her is sitting slumped over her knees with her head on the floor, her arms lying loosely beside her. Meredith decides that now is a fine time to assume that exact same position, and flops herself down just so. It is, admittedly, not the best position for further conversation with Gary, but perhaps that is not so bad, as further conversation with Gary is making her a bit hot under the collar, and that’s saying something as she’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt over a spandex top, neither of which have any collar to speak of. She inhales and exhales. She thinks that could help. She waits, and it’s such a strange phenomenon for her, and stranger still that lying here on a borrowed rubber mat, waiting isn’t driving her slowly to despair. Not even a little bit.

  “Alright, guys. Welcome. Great to see you all here on this almost springlike afternoon,” Gary says to the room. His voice still sounds to her like an Elvis Costello song, and she hears the people around her rustling. She turns her head to the side, and the others appear to be setting themselves up at the front of their mats, standing straight and at attention, their palms in prayer position. Om time, she thinks and hurries to her feet.

  She catches Gary’s eye on the way up, and just as his voice is the same as it was in G-Doga class, his eyes are still so green, but she notices something else, too. His eyes look so kind, and she thinks that’s not something very often seen in people’s eyes. Eyes can often be sparkly, and sometimes even they’re nice, but kind is so much harder to come by. As Gary’s first om fills the room, deep and resonating, she makes a mental note to remember that, or to at least try. Everyone joins in and says om, too, and it’s not as fun as it was with the dogs, but it’s still very energizing and focusing.

  Soon the class has moved into sun salutations, and Meredith is actually following easily along. It’s hot and it’s sweaty and she’s somewhat winded easily enough, but she can follow from her vantage point in the back of the room. As Gary gives instructions, as the sun salutations continue and they move on to other poses, things she understands and can (kind of) do, poses called warrior one and warrior two, nothing seems impossible. There’s something about this, she realizes, that seems very athletic indeed. If that’s correct and she’s quite sure it is, then it’s the first time in her entire life that she’s been involved in something athletic without wanting nothing more in the world than to be able to pack everything up and go home. As she gets sweatier, and even as she has to concentrate more and more in order to be able to breathe, she thinks she’s actually enjoying herself.

  As they move through more poses, stopping in each one to inhale and exhale, as she’s trying not to think (because Gary said not to) but thinking anyway, because if you’ve ever tried not to think, it’s really hard, she sees Gary out of the corner of her eye, slipping out the door. And the music begins to pipe in. She thinks it’s okay that she can’t do the more advanced poses that the group is moving on to now, because the music is piping in, and she does so love the music. They go as a group, or the group goes and she tries her best to keep up, all the while not giving herself too hard a time (but tempted to). She listens to The Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow,” followed by Ben Harper and Jack Johnson singing “My Own Two Hands.” And she thinks, if nothing else, she should ask Gary if she could see his playlist.

  “Okay, guys,” he says after a while, “let’s try dancer.” She thinks instantly that she probably can’t do dancer, and then, even though he’s addressing the class, it’s as if Gary is speaking only to her. “If you’re new, if you’ve never tried dancer before, just follow along as best you can. Remember to stay connected to your breath and the rest will come.”

  The rest will come, Meredith thinks, and as Anne Murray sings, “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life,” she listens to Gary’s instructions. She bends her right leg back and at the same time puts her left arm up straight in the air. She concentrates, she focuses. She grabs her right ankle with her right hand and begins to stretch in each direction, and she feels graceful and free, even though she’s only stretching a little bit, not fully and swanlike like some of the people around, who she shouldn’t be looking at, she should only be concentrating on herself.

  “Come forward a bit more if you can,” Gary says, and again it’s like he’s only talking to her, as if she’s the only person, the only graceful dancer in the room.

  “Confidence,” he says deeply, “strength and stability.” And she gets a little thinky right here, even though thinky is not what you’re supposed to get in the midst of a yoga class, but she thinks, Confidence, strength, and stability, and she repeats it to herself. She’d been worried that yoga would never be for her, because she’s always been a bit too type A, about a bit too many things, but confidence, strength, stability? No kidding? It’s like a type A mantra in a way, isn’t it? And who said yoga wasn’t for the type A? Who said it, because they were wrong! And then she gets so enthusiastic about that thought, about the thought that yoga is for her, that maybe yoga could be the answer, that she falls right out of her dancer (well, truth be told it wasn’t quite a dancer) and onto her mat.

  She looks right over to Gary, but he doesn’t single her out. He looks out at the room, at the yogis in various stages of dancer, some are fully extended, some are stumbling, too. One or two people are in the position from before with their heads on the floor and their arms behind them, and so Meredith gets into that position, too, and she listens to the music (Dave Matthews Band, “The Space Between”) and to Gary’s voice.

  “Don’t try too hard,” he says. “Try easy.”

  Meredith takes her head off the floor and sits back on her heels and looks right at him. He looks right at her, and he says it again, “Try easy,” and as he does he reminds her once again of DB Sweeney, because she suspects he might be a brilliant sage, too.

  She stands up again. She grabs her left ankle with her left hand this time, and she kicks her foot back into her hand and stretches her other arm forward, and she looks at her reflection, and her dancer, she thinks, is beautiful. Try easy, she thinks, and she lets herself think, because not thinking, well that’s just really hard. What she thinks is, This might be a really important moment.

  And even though you’re supposed to relax and give in to svivasana, the pose at the end of the class where everyone lies on the floor corpselike, pretty much Meredith can’t wait for it to be over so that she can go to him. She wants to hug him, she wants to hold o
n to him, she wants to tell him that what he said before, it just might have been what’s she’s been waiting a long time—maybe her whole life—to hear.

  As soon as the last closing om has been om-ed, Gary says, “Namaste.”

  “Namaste,” he explains, “it translates to, ‘the divine in me recognizes the divine in you.’ ”

  Namaste, she thinks, and then says, as everyone else in the room says, “Namaste,” too. She rolls her mat up and places it in the bin in the corner of the room. A few other people are talking to Gary, asking why he didn’t do a shoulder stand with them today and he’s saying something else about inversions, and so she lingers, she waits. And then the people talking to Gary are gone, actually all the people in the room are gone.

  “Gary?” she says. He turns.

  “Hey.”

  “Gary,” she begins, and she thinks she can feel herself blushing, and she thinks she might be too old for blushing. “I just wanted to say, that what you just said before, ‘Try easy’? I know this might sound weird, or like I’m getting a little carried away, but it meant a lot to me. It was a really good thing for me to hear right now.”

  “It means a lot to me, too,” he tells her. “I first heard that from Baron Baptiste, who was my first yoga teacher. It’s actually one of the things that made me want to teach yoga. And doga,” he adds. “I’m so glad I could pass it on to you.” He smiles, so dewy and fresh and new, even if he’s only, what, two years younger than her, at most three. She thinks about the restaurants she’ll be eating at this week, does a quick weekly rundown in her head. She’s doing all Japaneses this week (a sushi roll? Only three points! And one more survey never hurt anyone). Monday is Jewel Bako, Tuesday is Morimoto, Wednesday is G-Doga class at the Y, of course, and Thursday is a small Japanese restaurant that an involved reader, a tipster, has recommended she visit time and again. She remembers the description he wrote in about it: “Peaceful, thoughtful, kind.” She thinks it could be a description of Gary.