Em's Awful Good Fortune

by Marcie Maxfield

  “I thought I was gonna pass out.”

  Aho.

  “It felt so good to be supported by the group.”

  Aho.

  “My mantra made me cry.”

  Aho.

  And I say, “I feel like I’ve been called out for playing it safe.”

  Silence. Oh, man. You could feel the hush. You could hear the waves crashing. Couldn’t I have just said it was awesome? But no, I dig in to my position. “Sometimes, playing it safe is an acquired skill,” I tell the group. “It’s a self-protective reaction to the dangers of life,” I say, “a practical response to unnecessary risk.” And then I shut up. Even I was beginning to hear how much bullshit comes out of my mouth sometimes.

  During the day, after yoga and breakfast, which is a yummy vegan spread of tofu eggs and chia seed pudding, we have Vedanta lessons. It’s all very Socratic method. Everyone lies around on cushions in comfy clothes, listening to Yogaman teach the principles underlying the practice of yoga. It’s a lot like what I imagine an AA meeting to be, or Sunday morning services at a Baptist church—all the sharing and testifying to your demons. The mind at war with the intellect.

  In yoga-speak, the mind is ruled by emotion but the intellect is rational. According to Yogaman, most of us are just crazy ids running around, looking for a quick hit, a fix that can come in any form: sex, drugs, alcohol. Pretty much everyone at this yoga training is in bed with some form of addiction.

  The next morning at breakfast, a guy gets up and clinks his juice glass with his spoon, like you would at a wedding if you wanted to get everyone’s attention before toasting the bride and groom.

  “I just want to share my story,” he announces. I don’t know his name, but he is one of the guys who caught me when I fell off the ladder. (Yes, of course I did it; it was either fall off the ladder or pack my bags.)

  He pauses for a moment, as if having second thoughts, and then his story pours out of him. Only the shaky tone in his voice lets on how hard it is for him to talk about his battle with gaming in public. His demeanor is awkward, not so much shy as lacking the self-confidence needed to state his struggle with Yogaman’s swagger—Yogaman’s mesmerizing ability to turn shit into schtick. Maybe because this guy is in pain, he’s in the vortex, he isn’t drawing on the distant memory of despair. He is talking about how he felt last week, holed up in his room with his laptop, when he couldn’t be bothered to eat or shower, when he felt like life was happening online and real people were an interruption.

  “And then I came here,” he says, “and I feel surrounded by love. You guys. Every one of you, you’ve been there for me with a hug or a smile; we’ve been tied up and dropped from ladders, and always there is someone standing right next to me, every step of the way. This is so amazing. I don’t ever want it to end.”

  What trip is this guy on? I wonder. Because I have been dreading every minute of every day here, except the actual yoga, counting the hours until the van comes to take me back to the airport. After he sits down, a sort of spontaneous burst of support comes forth. One at a time, yogis stand up and share their stories.

  “I abuse cigarettes and drugs,” someone says, wiping her nose, her eyes, smearing mascara across her face. “I’m only twenty-nine, and I feel like I’ve already completely fucked up my body and ruined my life. I don’t know if I can ever get back on track, and it scares me. I’m scared shitless, but I’m here and I’m clean. Five days sober. It’s not easy. Thank you.”

  “I abuse meth,” the girl next to her says in a show of solidarity, a girl so pretty and thin she must be a model-slash-actress, both of them crying and holding each other’s hands.

  “I abuse money,” Lorca stands up and announces. And then she kicks my shin under the table, like it’s my turn to confess. So I stand up and say, “I’m married, with two kids and a dog; plus, I abuse chardonnay.” I leave out Xanax. How I brought Xanax here with me, just in case, because I don’t want Yogaman to confiscate my crutch.

  Here’s the setup: We’re in the yoga room, and we break into pairs. One person speaks for five minutes uninterrupted, and the other must remain silent; we can communicate only via energy, nonverbal cues.

  “Use your eyes,” Yogaman says. “Open your hearts.”

  “I’ll start,” Lorca says. “I’m in a postsex marriage. My husband and I haven’t had sex for years. So I came here because Yogaman said he could help me sort out my life and make a decision, but so far it hasn’t been all that helpful. Falling off a ladder. Big deal. I’m not seeing the point in these challenges. Sorry, Em, I guess you had trouble with the ladder. Should I go or should I stay? That’s my dilemma.”

  Mine, too! I think, squeezing her hand.

  Then she goes on for five minutes about how her husband is a weak link, a loser, a stay-at-home dad who’s outlived his usefulness now that their kid can get to and fro on his own. That’s cold, I think. But I sort of get it. Gee offered to be a stay-at-home dad once, when he came back from a gig that lasted eight months in Italy and I threw a hissy fit about his needing to get a job in LA.

  “You go balls-out, Em,” he said.

  And I said, “Then what would I need you for?” But what I meant to say was, Why is it always either/or?

  Okay, focus—Lorca’s story.

  “I come home,” she complains, “and dinner is made and the kid is asleep, and all we do is sit on the couch and watch TV. Every time someone on my staff says they had a long night—wink, wink—I want to cry.”

  I’ve been looking at this woman the whole time we’re on this retreat, on the hike and the ladder and the swim to the cove, eating basil-hummus burritos with her, listening to her talk about her fabulous career, feeling bad about my choices, thinking she’s the woman I was meant to become, that this woman has the life I wanted. She has it all. And now I come to find out it’s all a mirage.

  No one has the best life. That’s another thing Andra and I always say. We say it, but we don’t really believe it. We said “no one has the best life” as a way of excusing ourselves for not having become everything we hoped when her career was booming and I was breeding. We say it to comfort each other for falling short, but we don’t believe it, not for a second. Secretly, we both think having it all is possible and that we’re fuck-ups for settling for less. For tagging along or going it alone.

  Okay, my turn. Unzip and let it all out. “I don’t even know where to start. I could hardly breathe when I rolled out my mat for our first yoga class in Mexico. Scared I couldn’t keep up. Intellectually I know yoga is not a competitive sport. It’s not about young hot bodies. It’s not about them,” I say, scanning the room full of toned and fearless yogis half my age. “I know this in the same way that I know I don’t really have a brain tumor just because I passed out at airport security, which is to say—only partially, rationally but not emotionally. Yep, that was me: I’m the girl who passed out in the TSA line at the airport. People assume that I travel well because we do it so much, but I don’t like to fly. I read somewhere there’s a finite number of times you should go under anesthesia, and I worry that it’s like that with flying, too, like I’m pushing my luck. But that’s not why I passed out. I passed out because coming to Mexico makes me that much closer to going to Shanghai.

  “Also, I was afraid to come on this yoga training, afraid I couldn’t keep up or my back would go out; I packed three knee braces just in case. Speaking of packing, instead of actually preparing for this trip, I’ve spent the past few months nonstop nattering on about ‘embracing change.’ Mexico. The yoga retreat. Finding peace. Don’t try to stop me. Lots of talk. Not much embracing. No packing whatsoever.

  “Two days before our departure, in a total panic, I opened up a slew of emails from Shana that had been sitting in my inbox and finally started to pack my bag. Going to Mexico. There was that disclaimer; in case anything happened, I would be the only one responsible, which must be standard, but it freaked me out anyway. And then the packing list from hell: sunscreen, bug repe
llent, antibiotic cream, anti-itch spray, something for diarrhea, sunburn relief, muscle rubs, water trekking shoes, rash guard (my idea). And Xanax. I added that—I mean, I just don’t travel without it. I learned that the hard way. A person with this much anxiety should probably not move to China. The list of things that scares me is getting longer by the day. I’m afraid of sharks. I’m afraid of losing my words. Sometimes when I’m walking the dog, I say the name of every object I see, out loud, counting the words until I screw up and call the trash can an ashtray or something. I can’t watch movies where something bad happens to the mother. I’m afraid of every pimple, canker sore, lump, and bump on my body. I’m afraid of losing my teeth. And I panic in small elevators like they have in Paris, the ones with iron gates that close manually and look great in photos but fit only two people comfortably and are always jammed and get stuck all the time. Instead, I take the stairs, even if it means I’ll arrive sweaty. I’m afraid of being the adjumani—that’s Korean for ‘oldest woman in the room’—only in Asia it’s a term of respect.

  “OMG, listen to me. I hate that about being an expat: If you open your mouth and speak from personal experience, it sounds like you’re bragging. As if. Like anyone would brag about being a tagalong wife. Hello, I’m attached to my husband’s career. Not exactly impressive. And now I’ve got Shanghai looming over my head. Yogaman thinks I ‘play it safe,’ he thinks I’m afraid to leave Los Angeles, but he’s wrong. I’m not afraid to move overseas. I’ve lived lots of places. France. Japan. Korea (South, of course). China, though. That scares me.”

  The end of the retreat is so close, I can almost taste the bus ride back to the airport in Puerto Vallarta. Bumpy and dusty, like summer camp. We’ll be singing songs and recapping the highlights of the trip: Someone got a concussion surfing, Bear admitted to smuggling in coffee and cigarettes, and someone had a total meltdown and got kicked out of training. And the best part, the shocker is, it wasn’t me! It was a hippie chick named Rain. All I have to do is make it through tonight’s activity, and tomorrow we pack up, and then, finally, it will all be in the rearview mirror.

  It’s pitch black outside. Inside the yoga studio is flickering, the walls lined with candles. We are arranged in small groups on cushions surrounding a yoga mat. Yogaman floats in, wearing all white and carrying a guitar. Everything is communicated via eye contact. “Respect the silence,” teachers whisper to us on our way into the space. Shana is our group leader; she nods to Lorca and points to the mat, indicating that she should lie down. We all put our hands on Lorca, gently pressing her legs, rubbing her feet, stroking her arms. Yogaman plays “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt; then we silently absorb Lorca back into the group, rotating positions. It’s all very somber and loving, Into the Mystic. When my turn comes, I’m biting my lip, trying not to crack up like a kid at a funeral.

  I lower my body onto the mat, silently chanting, Do not laugh, do not laugh. Whatever you do, Em, do not fucking laugh. Close my eyes and feel my body covered by hands, blanketed, smothered. I’m still biting my lip when the first chord breaks and Yogaman launches into “I Shall Be Released.” That’s when I dissolve into a million little pieces, floating high above the room. This is the song I play when I’m sad, bruised, brokenhearted. It’s the song I play when I’m alone and need something to soothe my soul. This is the song that I want played at my funeral, the first song on my memorial mix.

  I wonder if that means I’m going to die. In Mexico. There’s still one day to go. The thought doesn’t even scare me, doesn’t speed my pulse; it’s actually sort of peaceful. It feels so good to get a foot and head massage at the same time. It feels timeless, out of body; it feels loving and supportive; it feels like … if this is dying, it might not be so bad; it might not be something to be so afraid of. What if dying is a candlelight massage, a peaceful send-off with “I Shall Be Released” playing in the background? Yogaman’s comment from a year ago comes back to me. When I told him I was afraid I might have a heart attack if I took his Explosion Power Yoga class, he said, “Yes, you might, and wouldn’t that be a sweet way to go?”

  AQI RISING

  Shanghai is like that bad boy in high school, the one who’s smokin’ hot and drives a beat-up muscle car, a gas guzzler, leaking fumes; it’s a death trap, and you know you should walk away, but damn—those arms, that hair, the way he makes you feel nervous inside but also revved up. It’s hard not to be seduced by so much eye candy, street fashion trendier than you see in Paris, pimped-out Chinese girls in see-through gauzy skirts strutting in mile-high sneakers, the mishmash of old and new, bamboo construction fences next to mega-high-rises; it’s wacky and dirty, possibly dangerous, but also the epicenter of the universe. Shanghai is so right now, so très branche. Plugged in. And really, so far, the air hasn’t been all that bad. My eyes sting, but that’s about it. It’s summer, hot and humid. I’m more worried about my hair frizzing than my lungs.

  We live here now. Found our dream apartment in the French Concession, walking distance from Green & Safe, which is like Joan’s on Third, which everyone in LA says is just like Manhattan. I tell people Shanghai is like New York on steroids, only instead of having a Chinatown, the locals are Chinese and it’s the Westerners who cluster together in certain neighborhoods. Upscale ones. The expat bubble. Two floors. A circular staircase. And four air purifiers. Gee’s company bought them for us as a move-in gift. Just for the sake of comparison, when we were on assignment in Paris, our move-in gift was a magnum of French champagne. If Shanghai is the bad boy of relocations, that makes me the good wife for tagging along.

  AQI: 0–50

  Code: Green (Good)

  Air quality is satisfactory.

  First order of business is to get my paperwork straight. The man behind the counter eyes me suspiciously before speaking to Jake at length, in Chinese, gesturing first at my marriage certificate, then at my passport, and finally landing his finger on the residency permit application I just filled out, shaking his head emphatically no.

  “Your signatures don’t match,” Jake says.

  This is the first time I’ve seen him since the look-see and that awkward apartment search when Gee and I got up in his face and forced him to drop his kick-back guanxi scheme and find us the apartment of our dreams in the French Concession. So I worry that Jake doesn’t like me, but he arrived clean, pressed, and professionally chatty, as always—bygones, no hard feelings.

  “Nihao,” I said, giving him a proper French greeting, air kisses on both cheeks. Let’s get my residency status rubber-stamped. It’s supposed to be a slam-dunk formality, since my living in Shanghai is attached to Gee’s working papers, which have already been approved. All I have to do is show up with the necessary documents and swear to be married. But I’m learning that in China, nothing is easy. The signature on the form I just filled out does not match the one I used on my marriage certificate, so my identity is now in question.

  This morning, Gee reminded me that we need to use up our furniture budget. He said “we,” but he meant me; I need to finish decorating the apartment. I’ve ordered the essentials—beds, of course. And a hot-pink Egg chair that swivels. Like the one in Sleepless in Seattle that the two kids are squished in together, their feet tapping in unison as they turn toward the dad and say “H and G.” Hi and goodbye. My kids would love this chair, but they won’t be living with us. Rio is in college, and Ruby is house (and pet) sitting for us in LA.

  I’ve always wanted one of those chairs. “Is it real?” I asked the store owner, whose name was Chad. Another American here for the gold rush, like everyone else. Or, to be more specific, his store sold disposable household furniture and knickknacks to the booming corporate-expat/tagalong market. Gee’s company alone has hundreds of families temporarily posted here.

  “This is China.” Chad laughed. “Nothing is real. Have fun.”

  So I ordered the fake Egg chair and a fake-fur cube in shades of pink and purple to go with it, going with a sort of mid-’50s modern-boho
vibe. Added a Chinese fainting couch in yellow bird print—that chaise is the definition of something you don’t need and would buy only if you weren’t paying for it. And, the pièce de résistance: an antique mantel to lean against the wall in the living room where there ought to be a fireplace but for some reason isn’t one. I haven’t gotten around to a dining table and chairs; that might imply that I have to cook, and I’m quite happy eating on the floor. Sherpa takeout from T for Thai.

  “We need a dining room table,” Gee insisted.

  I laughed. “You bring out the Donna Reed in me.”

  You bring out the avocado counters, the fabric swatches, the T-shirt-folding, sock-matching, grocery-shopping wifey-poo in me. You bring out the blonde, the Gosh, gee whiz, there’s so much to do and I can’t keep it straight, in me. You bring out the Dorothy in me—click my heels, and where is home this time? You bring out the Who am I in all of this?

  It’s no wonder my signatures don’t match.

  I’m wearing the black-and-white-checked designer wrap skirt and matching sleeveless top I bought during the Paris sales. Why? Because in my mind I’m living in a movie, and that’s the only way my life works: I dress up like a French movie star, and the driver takes me to the American consulate in Puxi before I go furniture shopping in Pudong on the company dime. The sunglasses are totally unnecessary; the sky is opaque, although there is glare. The driver, sadly, is for today only and specifically hired by Jake just to make sure I get to the consulate on time. So I’ll have to find my way to the furniture warehouse on my own, which in itself is daunting. Still, who knows what the day might bring if I’m swaddled in agnès b.?

  Jake hands me a blank copy of the application to fill out, which I do, this time using my optimistic just-married signature, thus forging my way into China. Yes, I swear, raising my right hand, I’m Mrs. Gee, and then I pay the guy fifty dollars. Don’t forget to get a receipt, doll, Gee’s voice replays in my head. That’s what he said when he kissed me goodbye this morning—an uncomfortable, married-to-the-boss, daddy kind of kiss that made me bristle. He has this way of turning me into his assistant whenever we move overseas. And I feel like I can’t complain because I’m not really working.