Soulmates (7 page)

Dana straightened up and shot daggers at me. “I'm sorry I was working hard all day and then the fuckups at the MTA ‘disrupted' Yoni's energy.”

This was not off to a good start. “It's okay. Why don't you change into your yoga clothes and we'll tiptoe in.”

“Fine,” Dana said before storming off into the women's wing of the ashram. She came back out a few minutes later and seemed to have collected herself a little more.

Yoni noticed Dana straightaway when we took our places in the back of the classroom. He kept making eye contact with her as we went through our opening poses. She was trying to deflect his gaze by looking in the mirror and correcting her form—she's a perfectionist in everything—but I could tell she was unsettled by his attention. When Yoni placed his hands on her hips to adjust one of her poses, she flinched like his hands were on fire.

During savasana, I kept my eyes half-open and watched as Yoni knelt behind Dana's head and massaged her temples while her eyes were squeezed shut. He started telling a parable about a burdened goat who was resigned to his life of servitude in Afghanistan.

“The goat was old, he was tired, but he knew he had to keep doing the job of dragging water up the mountain so that his owner's family could stay alive,” Yoni said. I saw Dana's body tense.

“One day, the goat broke his leg. The owner sent his small son to put the goat down. But just as the boy was about to hack
the goat's head off with a machete, he hesitated. This goat had served his family well—and now he was just going to die? Was this really the ending this noble animal deserved?” Yoni took a long, dramatic breath. “Yes, the boy decided. This was how the goat deserved to die. He stuck the knife right through the animal's back.” Yoni thumped his hand on Dana's chest when he said this, pantomiming the goat's death. I heard Dana gasp.

Yoni smiled. “You will never get what you want in life by doing a job purely out of duty, rather than desire. Desire is the engine that runs the world. Namaste.” He shuffled quietly out of the room.

As soon as the accordion door shut quietly behind Yoni, Dana sat up as if shocked by a cattle prod. She gathered up her stuff with such haste that she kept dropping her yoga mat. She ran out of the building before I had a chance to put my things away.

I caught up with her a block away. “What did you think?” I asked cautiously.

“I want to go home,” she said. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Tell me what's wrong. What happened?” I wanted my voice to project comfort and loving kindness, but I ended up making her defensive.

“I don't want to talk about it. I want to get the fuck away from this place and I don't ever want to come back. Promise me I never have to go back.”

“Okay, okay, I promise.” I saw how shaken she was, and we rode in silence back to our apartment. I was so disappointed that she would never be returning to the ashram, I had nothing to say. Instead, I held her hand.

I hadn't thought about my interaction with Yoni since it happened, because at the time, it didn't seem like that big a deal. I had no idea until a few days ago that Ethan had run off to teach at Yoni's retreat, or that Yoni had been the leader of some bizarre commune before he became a slightly respectable yoga teacher. I just thought Yoni was your garden-variety creepy older yoga dude.

Furthermore, Ethan completely misread my reaction. I was angry at
him,
not shaken by Yoni's energy or whatever. That's why I ran off. I was not about to cry. I was pissed that he made me leave work early to meet him, and that he had given me a hard time about being late when I had made such a big effort. And I gasped when Yoni struck my chest because it was surprising. You don't expect someone to thump you in the middle of a yoga class. I had barely been listening to his weird goat story in the first place. I was zoned out thinking about the case I was working on.

Ethan's spiritual boner for Amaya became slightly less painful to read about as I went on. But not because I became inured to it. It was because learning his feelings about our marriage
became more painful. I knew we hadn't been seeing that much of each other in the year before he left, but I thought we were just coasting along reasonably happily in the paths we had set early on in the marriage: I was the one who made the decisions, and Ethan was happy to go along with them. If I didn't take charge, it would take Ethan forty-five minutes to choose what kind of takeout we were having for dinner. He joked that my decisiveness kept him from starving.

But according to his book, those paths had become rutted, filled with potholes and cracks. He was right about the yoga. In the back of my head I knew he had been going a lot, but I dismissed it as unimportant, because I thought yoga was kind of silly. I didn't mind doing the hour-long classes at the gym that had zero spirituality and a lot of movement. That seemed physically useful. But spending at least ninety minutes every day listening to spiritual yakking and being forced to say “om”? I had no interest in that.

What's more, I barely thought about what Ethan did when we were apart. At work I thought only about work. At home I usually thought about work, too. If Ethan wasn't directly in my sight line, it was like he didn't exist.

My dismissiveness had started to get mean. I could see that now. And I could also see how I had stopped making him, or our marriage, a priority. I had been so angry with Ethan for leaving for so long, but I had never thought about my own culpability. Of course he should have gone to couples therapy with me instead of running off with Amaya to some yoga paradise. I didn't deserve to be left the way Ethan left me. But it was unreasonable to say my behavior had no role in our relationship's demise.

Sylvia wasn't in the room when I returned to it after Lo's class. I was still shaken by my unexpected outpouring. It was terrifying to think that my emotions were still so close to the surface that an old hippie could bring them out with just a tiny bit of prodding. I thought I had dealt with everything in therapy. That period of my life was supposed to be a discrete moment, now over. It had been put in a clear plastic storage box, appropriately labeled
Ethan,
and organized properly back on a shelf.

Trying to shake off the emotional tremors from class, I checked my phone. There were more texts from Beth, which I continued to ignore. There was also a voice mail from a number with a 575 area code, which I assumed correctly was from Sheriff Lewis.

“Hi, Dana,” he said in a clear voice. “I'm glad you could make it here. I have some time to see you tomorrow afternoon. Please come by the station at three
P
.
M
. Call me back if that doesn't work and we can figure something else out.” Then he gave me directions from the retreat.

I was glad the sheriff had finally gotten back to me. I only had one day left at Zuni after tomorrow, and I didn't think Phil would tolerate me missing any more work than I already had. I wanted to be able to help the sheriff when I saw him, too. So I resolved to work Ethan and Amaya into a conversation with Sylvia before the sun set this evening.

At dinner I sat with Sylvia and her friends again and listened to them chatter. I had learned their names by this point: the extrafit seventy-year-old was Mae; the one who liked to wear her
salt-and-pepper hair in two short pigtails was Raina; and the one with gargantuan, droopy breasts who nonetheless enjoyed going braless was Patty.

Their banter was soothing and funny. I pushed a chickpea around on my plate while listening to them talk about their husbands, children, and pets. Mae had three kids, two girls and a boy, all of whom were hard-charging professionals and none of whom called her enough. Raina had a daughter and a son, both in their midtwenties, and two cats that hated each other. Patty had one son and a beagle with testicular cancer. “He's only got one ball left!” she exclaimed, delighted by his perseverance.

I learned that Sylvia was on her second husband, and that she had four grown children. Most of her conversation at dinner had been about a particularly ungrateful son, who was in college. He wouldn't even open her e-mails, so she had taken to putting the entire body of the e-mail in the subject line so he would be forced to read it. Not that he wrote back anyway. “Have daughters, my dear,” Sylvia said as she reached over and patted my hand. “They might cause you grief in other ways, but at least they respond to your e-mails.”

I smiled wanly at her. It didn't feel like the time to get into my damaged relationship with my own mother, which seemed to have gone badly from the start. I gave her horrid morning sickness that left her dashing to the toilet all day, every day for the full nine months, a fact she never ceased to remind me of when she was irritated with me. No matter what a good girl I was—or continued to be—it was never quite up to snuff. When I brought home a ninety-eight on my math homework, the response was “Where are the other two points?” When I got engaged to Ethan,
she gave me pursed lips and fake smiles. “He's a very nice boy,” she said, “but is he really good enough for you?” I didn't speak to her for three months after that, and thought about eloping so I wouldn't have to mar my wedding day with her criticism. But I couldn't bring myself to do it.

“My daughter wants to come here with me next time,” Raina said, beaming, interrupting my self-absorption. “Now that she's twenty-five, she gets it. When she was younger she just thought it was some dumb old thing Mom was doing.”

“How long have you been coming here?” I asked.

“Five years, since the retreat started. Same with these other old bags.” She smiled. I must have looked horrified, because she added, “I'm kidding. That's how we joke with each other. You'll understand when you're our age. We met the first year of the retreat and kept in touch, and we arrange our visits to overlap when we can.”

“Sometimes life interrupts,” Mae said, her eyes glossy.

“Mae's husband died last year,” Sylvia stage-whispered to me.

“Jesus, Syl. We can still hear you.” Mae's eyes went matte again.

“All Mae is saying is this place is really important to us,” Patty said, her voice a lot more serious than it had been when she was talking earlier about Barney's one ball. “We've all had some real spiritual breakthroughs. It's a true testament to the staff. They're so much better than at any other retreat I've been to.”

“That's good to hear,” I said. Since we were on the subject of the Zuni staffers already, I knew this was my moment to ask about Ethan. “I was a little worried, because I overheard something strange about some of the staff members here.”

All four of their faces dropped when I said that. Mae looked down at her plate and Patty shifted around on the bench. Finally Sylvia said, “Are you talking about the deaths?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard something about two teachers dying. It sounded scary.” I tried to sound ignorant and a little simple.

“You shouldn't be scared,” Raina said firmly. “The teachers don't live here at the retreat, and I heard the two instructors who passed on had perverted Yoni's teachings. They were trying some very dangerous ancient indigenous rituals.”

“Like what?” I tried to keep that touch of innocence in my tone.

There was an uncomfortable silence before Sylvia said, “It's really a shame.” She shook her head gently. “I didn't know Kai, but many people I care about really respected his teachings. Amaya, on the other hand, she was a real gem.”

“Oh,” I said. I wanted to hear more about who Ethan had become. I didn't want to hear Sylvia say something nice about Amaya.

“I don't know how I would have gotten through Albert's death without Amaya,” Mae added, solemn. “We worked through so much in her workshop on resilience, and she even called me and e-mailed me every day for a month after I got home from the retreat.” Her eyes got glossy again. “Amaya was a true healer. She knew what to say and what to do with grief in a way my friends and family couldn't touch. My kids did their best, but Amaya really went above and beyond.”

“Wow,” I said, because that was all I could muster.

DAILY AFFIRMATION
:

New experiences create abundance in our lives.

I had been successfully avoiding Amaya, but shortly after Dana's bad experience with Yoni we ran into each other in the break room at work. She was sitting at the table, zoning out on a poster of Georges Seurat's
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
. I considered trying to creep out backward without her noticing, but she looked up and smiled at me. “Hey, stranger. Where have you been?”

“Around,” I said. I wanted it to come out as terse but I think it sounded flirty instead.

“Lama Yoni can't stop talking about you.”

“Really?” I said, pulling up a chair. “What's he saying?”

“He told me he was really impressed with your focus and dedication. And that he wanted to see more of you at the ashram.”

“Wow.” I sat down next to Amaya to take it all in. “I'm really flattered. I didn't even realize Yoni noticed me.”

“He wants to see more of you. I want to see more of you, too.”
Amaya smiled at me again. And then she kissed me. I guess I should take partial responsibility for it. Maybe my body language was inviting her in. Yoni's always telling us we need to use all of our senses to communicate, after all.

I pulled off her gauzy poncho so that I could feel the beating of her heart pressing against mine. I felt our bodies merge for a moment, because I knew we were connecting on every metaphysical level in a way that Dana and I were not. I melted into this new consciousness, forgetting my physical self. Until Amaya started unbuttoning my jeans and it jarred me out of the spirit world and back into the natural world.

I came up for air and to my senses. “Stop. We can't do this.”

“You're right,” she said, pulling back from me. As entwined as we had been just a moment ago, she seemed unruffled by our souls' connection. I figured she was used to this kind of depth in her interactions. “You have already made a worldly commitment to your wife.”

“Dana.”

“Dana,” Amaya said. She said my wife's name like it was a word in another language that she was learning phonetically. It made me feel even guiltier.

“I have to get back to work now,” I said, more firmly than I felt.

“Me, too.” Amaya leaned over and picked up her poncho. It floated back over her head, giving me time to admire her half-clothed body, and the fierce-looking butterfly tattoo on her left flank. It was black and red with sharp wings. “But Yoni really did say that. We would like to see more of you at the studio.”

“I'm not sure if that's such a good idea.”

“What happened between us just now is already forgotten,”
Amaya said. “Don't let our physical attraction get in the way of your spiritual progress.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but I wanted to give what Amaya said full consideration. My time at the Urban Ashram had made me feel much better about my place in the world, and I didn't know if I was ready to give that up.

Amaya left the room before I did. I counted fifteen Mississippis before I followed her back out into the cubicle farm. I didn't want any of our coworkers to suspect the impropriety.

Even though she told me to, I could not forget what had happened. I kept smelling her on me, a musky, lovely scent. I decided to seek counsel outside the ashram for advice on the situation.

I hadn't seen Jason in at least six months. I guess I didn't realize how consuming my time at the ashram had been. So I was pretty psyched when he e-mailed me about having lunch. It felt like my plea for someone neutral to talk to about Amaya was answered.

I met him at P.J. Clarke's, which is near Jason's insurance office. He's always been a levelheaded guy. Even when we were in college he was doing risk assessments of different bars, based on prior experience. “If we go to Fitzy's, there's a three-in-five chance we will get carded and turned away,” he'd say. I thought he would be the ideal person to weigh in on my
situation with Dana, since he's also known both of us since we were nineteen.

He was already there when I arrived, three minutes late. “Hey, man,” he said, standing to give me a bro hug, with a requisite pound on the back.

I sat down at the table. “Hey. You're looking well.” And he was: trim and bright.

“It's all this CrossFit I've been doing. You know about it? You have to flip tires over and shit. I love it.” He paused to take me in. “You're looking pretty fit yourself,” he said. “CrossFit? Biking?”

“Nah. A lot of yoga, actually.”

Jason gave me a small, possibly mocking smile. “Yoga? Really?”

“Yes, yoga. It cleanses the body and soul.”

“Okay,” Jason said, his smirk lingering. The waiter came up and asked us for our drink order. Jason ordered a beer. “It's a Friday!” he said brightly. I could tell he wanted me to do the same, but instead I ordered a mineral water.

As soon as the waiter left, Jason seemed eager to plunge into the usual catch-up, small talk conversation, the kind we'd had so many times before. “So how you been, man?” Jason said. “It's been an age.”

“I know. I've been really busy.”

“Are you writing a new play? I loved the last one,
Elk Crossing
. I thought it was really your strongest work.” I momentarily regretted putting my writing aside. Jason wasn't the kind of person who was into false praise, so I figured he actually meant it. But getting that burst of pride from Jason's compliment made me realize how ultimately empty my entire writing career had been—I was dependent on the praise and acceptance
of other people to feel good about my work. With my work at the ashram, all my good feelings and confidence came from inside.

“Not really working on anything special,” I said. “I've been taking other classes at the yoga studio. It's this place called the Urban Ashram. It's very time consuming. I'm learning a lot about the cosmos and myself.”

“That's cool,” Jason said. “Wouldn't have expected that from you.”

“What do you mean?” I tried not to sound defensive. I concentrated on my yogic breathing.

Jason backpedaled rapidly. “Nothing, man. Just you never seemed particularly interested in that kind of stuff. How's Dana?”

“Well, that's part of what I wanted to talk to you about.” I folded my hands in front of me to offset a twinge of anxiety.

“She breaking your balls about work again?” He leaned in, prepared to listen to the same old complaints from me.

“Not really. But this is kind of about work. Or I guess, a person at work.” I met Jason's eye so I wouldn't look so guilty.

Jason was about to say something, but the waiter returned with our drinks and took our lunch order. He got a Cadillac burger with extra bacon. I got a market vegetable salad. Jason gave me considerable side-eye about this order but held his tongue.

When the waiter left he said, “Okay, so who's this ‘person at work'?”

“This woman, Amaya. She's actually the one who got me into all the classes at the Urban Ashram. I've been learning about Buddhism, and ancient Indian rituals, and the seasons,
and the importance of karma in our lives. It was a strictly platonic and spiritual thing at first with Amaya, but we ended up making out in the break room last week.” Admitting it made me feel a little lighter, especially to Jason, who had always had a flexible moral fiber.

Jason's mouth dropped open. “Shit, dude. That's messed up.”

“Really?” I said. “I thought you'd be into it. You were never Dana's biggest fan.”

“Yeah, Dana can be a bitch sometimes—pardon my French—but she's your wife, man. And she's not a bad person. You took a vow. I was there when you did it.”

“I know, I know. But she's been so cold to me lately. She doesn't seem to have any interest in my classes at the Urban Ashram, or in my feelings.” I wanted to tell him how disconnected I felt from Dana on a spiritual level, and how connected I felt to Amaya, but I wasn't sure he'd get it.

“‘Doesn't have any interest in my feelings'?” Jason mimicked. “Christ, dude, you've got to nut up. She's working ninety-hour weeks. Dana doesn't have time for your feelings. The last time I saw her she was barely sleeping, supporting your ass, and trying to make her career happen.” His eyes were bright with anger.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I thought you'd be a little more understanding,” I said. I wasn't sure if Jason could comprehend my spiritual development, but I thought he'd get that I was emotionally bereft and needed a brother-in-arms. This is one of Yoni's most important teachings: we are all only as strong as our least supportive comrades. “You know how hard she's been on me in the past.”

Jason leaned back and the anger in his eyes dimmed. “Okay.
I know. She can be a bitch, like I said. But you know, she doesn't deserve this.”

“But you cheated on Becca!” Even I could hear that my voice was rising.

“That was in college, and we were kids,” Jason said, shaking his head like he couldn't believe I was bringing up Becca almost a decade later. “It's a whole different thing. You should know that.”

I didn't say anything for a few seconds. The waiter came back with our food and Jason started in on his burger. “This Urban Ashram shit sounds weird, I'll be honest with you,” he said.

“You don't know anything about it,” I said. My yogic breathing was getting more intense.

“You're right, I don't,” Jason said. “But I know lots about you, and the Ethan I've known doesn't talk about his ‘spirituality' or cheat on his wife.” He put the burger down and stared at me, hard.

“Okay,” I said, digging into my salad. My commitment to nonviolence prevented me from really engaging here. Jason was obviously a nonbeliever. Lama Yoni always says that when you spot a nonbeliever, the only option is to go into neutral stance. “How's things going with you?” I asked.

Jason looked relieved at the change of subject. “Things have been pretty good, man. I started seeing this woman, Lily. Met her through my sister. She's super smart.” He started describing their relationship and I tried to listen as best I could. But for the rest of our lunch I could feel the distance between us grow. We still bro-hugged at the end, though, like nothing had happened.

I walked down Third Avenue away from the restaurant and felt lonelier than I had in weeks.

At this point I started wondering if I should quit my job. I hated it, and I would be more easily able to avoid Amaya if I found something else. In a moment of distracted contemplation, I floated the idea to Dana.

“What would you say if I wanted to quit my job?” I leaned over and asked her after her alarm went off. I had been awake since three in the morning thinking about everything. She hadn't had her coffee yet, so I knew she would give me her unvarnished opinion.

“I would tell you to go fuck yourself,” Dana said. It was so over-the-top harsh, at first I couldn't tell if she was joking.

“Are you serious?”

Dana sat bolt upright, her face expressionless. “I'm completely serious. I'm not about to be married to some no-job loser. We're too old for this shit, Ethan. Grow. Up. Stop being such a pussy.” She threw a pillow into my stomach, got up, stomped to the bathroom, and slammed the door.

I sat in bed, my mouth agape. When did she become so soulnegative? I just sat there until I heard her come out five minutes later. She'd washed her face, but her eyes were red.

“Ethan, I'm sorry I snapped at you. But I don't know where this is coming from. I thought we had a plan for our future.”

I wanted to say
You mean
you
have a plan for our future,
but instead I told her, “It's okay. You're going to be late for work. We can pick this up later.”

“Okay,” Dana croaked, her voice shaky. “I am just really sick
of going through this with you. We're at a good place to settle down, and I feel like you keep wanting to unsettle us.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I was fundamentally unsettled in a way I didn't think she cared to understand. So I just gave her a hug and said, “I'll go make you some coffee.”

My mind was ricocheting back and forth from week to week. After I saw Jason I was more determined about my study with Yoni—my problem was unsupportive brethren like him, not my newfound knowledge. Then, after Dana freaked out, I thought I wasn't going to go back to the ashram. Ever. I really wasn't. That week I thought, even though I had been learning so much from Yoni, I
had
made a commitment to Dana, and that commitment still meant something deep and abiding. When I thought more about Jason's reaction to my recent life changes, I went from defensiveness to ambivalence. Was my spiritual fulfillment worth making a break from everyone I knew and loved?

Amaya could sense my evasiveness; it was like she saw the chaos in my soul from afar. She cornered me in the break room on a Friday. I was reaching into the fridge for a Coke—one of the few perks of our fluorescent nighttime prison was free beverages. I was usually able to resist them because of my commitment to clean eating, but that night my spiritual mess drew me to all that sugar. Amaya caught me and poked me in the ribs.
“Indulging in a little high-fructose corn syrup? Not very Zen,” she said, smiling at me.

“Well, we all have our vices,” I said, guilty. “How are you?”

“Fine. Missing you at the ashram. Yoni keeps asking where you are.”