Emma's Table (21 page)

“And deeper,” the teacher purred.

Benjamin heard the sound of wings beating.

It was coming from the stereo: no music or lyrics, just the sound of beating wings, and an occasional bird cawing in the distance. He rolled his eyes, but he didn't bother with that sound track for long. The teacher was roaming all through the room, doling out little compliments and complaints. Benjamin strained to hear them all, like a boy with a drinking glass pressed up against the door. He made sure he knew the recipients too, begrudging every last one of them. Every word of
encouragement to someone else was one less word of praise in the world, one fewer that he might win for himself. He knew it didn't make any rational sense, but resources were finite, in Benjamin's experience, and the world had a way of being miserly.

But in a yoga class even? he wondered.

There was just no avoiding himself, sometimes.

“That's beautiful, Melora,” the teacher called, wandering over to their side of the room. It was only fair, he supposed. A blind man could see how good she was. Benjamin felt a little aggrieved all the same, longing for a word of praise himself, but the rough-looking man didn't have one to spare.

The birds don't caw for me here, he thought, sneering past his hurt feelings. He muscled his fingers farther down, until he felt a strain slicing through his lower back. He pushed straight through it—for as long as the teacher was in sight anyway. There was very little Benjamin wouldn't have done for the attention of that tattooed man. It was all he ever wanted really: for the person in charge to approve. He looked up from his stretch to find the man. It crimped his neck looking up like that, and made his back feel even worse. He watched the teacher walking away, his own heart sinking in perfect time.

“Why didn't you return my calls?” Melora whispered, breaking free of her perfect pose for just long enough to catch Benjamin's eye, then returning to it as effortlessly as before, as if laying her head and feet on the very same plane was her preferred posture.

She might have bent down deeper still.

“I told you I was busy,” he replied, whispering back.

He heard the ice in his voice. Benjamin was annoyed with her for making him come to this yoga class.

“Remember to breathe,” the teacher called.

In fairness, of course, he knew that Melora hadn't
made
him do anything. She'd only asked him if he wanted to come, but to Benjamin, it came down to the same thing.

It does, he thought, if I want to please her.

So he didn't return either of her calls—in a silent blaze of annoyance—then met her at the yoga studio at quarter to six.

“Listen for the sound of your breath,” the teacher told them.

It was called
Ujjayi
breathing. Benjamin closed his mouth and breathed through his nose. He heard the raspy commotion at the back of his throat. It sounded like the sea, he thought, like the peaceful roar of distant waves. He could feel himself floating off—listening to the sound of his breath, nothing but that.

What if I did this always? he wondered.

He began to settle down, his heart beating slower with every breath.

“You're obviously upset about something,” Melora hissed.

A bird squawked loudly on the stereo.

So much for seaside breathing, he thought. Benjamin wished she could be quiet. None of the other couples was making a peep.

“Now place your hands on the floor and kick back to Plank,” the instructor called. “Gently, please. Beginners, walk back.”

Benjamin was a beginner; there was no doubt about that. He felt a little stab of shame. He heard his classmates jumping their legs back behind them, landing heavily on the floor like so many sacks of potatoes. He knew they hadn't done it right, but he envied them all the same. Benjamin had to scuttle his
own legs back: He didn't know how to jump. Still, he made his back as straight as a board—that plank of wood they were meant to emulate.

Just the beginning of a push-up, he thought.

He heard the teacher moving close. Benjamin locked his arms in place. The man stood above him, straddling his hips: “Just a little higher,” the teacher whispered, lifting Benjamin's midsection from above. “Now relax your neck,” he said, rubbing it gently, “and keep on breathing.”

Benjamin exaggerated the sound of the sea.

He kept his stomach high and his neck down low. He tried so hard to keep it all straight.

“Very nice,” the teacher said.

Benjamin felt a flush of pride.

See
, he thought, that's all it takes. But he knew better than that: that's what it took, in fact, twenty-four hours a day. He was ever vigilant for that mumble of approval—hungry for it all day long—from Dick Spooner Monday to Friday, and Emma all weekend long. He turned to strangers in yoga rooms when no one better was around.

“Did you not want to come tonight?” Melora asked him.

The teacher had barely walked away, and here she was, ruining his moment in the sun.

Benjamin shushed her.

He knew he ought to stand up for himself, tell her that he didn't like yoga under the best of circumstances, much less after a long day at school. He felt his arms trembling as he clung to his push-up pose.

It didn't look as if it was taking Melora any effort at all.

Benjamin was reticent about speaking up. He'd always been extremely talented at figuring out what other people
wanted, and frightened at the prospect of not giving it to them. That was his source of value in the world, he supposed—his utility.

The smallest lapse might cause a terrible rift.

“Now fold your left leg under your body,” the teacher called, in his hushed voice, “as you lower yourself into Pigeon pose.”

Benjamin hated this one. He bent his knee and jerked his ankle beneath his hips. When his leg was nearly in place, he began to lower his body down. He felt a searing pain spread through his buttocks and back.

“Remember to breathe,” the teacher called.

Benjamin tried to, but his back and shoulders were too seized up for that. He flexed every muscle in his body instead, as if he might will himself straight through the pain. He was sweating profusely, and panicked that this moment would never end.

I can't, he thought finally, cheating his left leg lower down.

The pain subsided, and the sweating too; his leg was scarcely bent at all.

He looked over at Melora, folded into a compact little shape. More like a bug, he thought, than any kind of pigeon. She looked back at him, a question mark all over her face.

“I hate this,” he said, surprising himself.

“What?” she asked.

“I hate yoga,” he told her—from the bottom of his heart—“and I hate this couples class even more.”

She smiled back at him.

“I'm serious,” he said, resting his head onto folded arms. He was exhausted already, only twenty minutes in.

“I believe you,” she replied.

It gave him a thrill to be so difficult. He waited for the fallout.

“Will you two be quiet, please?” It was the woman next to them. Her “please” didn't sound sincere at all.

“Let's get out of here,” he said, with authority to spare. Their pissy neighbor was the very last straw.

Melora unfolded herself from her perfect pose and stood up just as gracefully as she did everything else. “Okay,” she said.

Benjamin rolled up their yoga mats and walked to the door, with a fleeting glance at the yoga teacher. He couldn't help it. The two of them started down the narrow hallway, back to the lockers at the very end.

He supposed she'd be annoyed with him. “I'm sorry,” he said. He really was.

“For what?” she asked. Melora didn't seem upset in the least.

“Leaving class,” he replied.

“It's fine with me,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

Shouldn't she be upset? he wondered.

Benjamin felt confused. It was one of the extraordinary things about working so hard to please people, failing so rarely: he was always much more frightened of the consequences than he needed to be—as if the mountains might crumble down to the sea because of an aborted yoga class.

Melora didn't even care.

They kept walking down the hallway. Benjamin looked into an open classroom, at a bunch of women with babies in their arms.

“What's that?” he asked.

Melora peeked in. “It's new,” she told him. “It's called Mommy and Me—a class for newborns.”

“But they're just babies,” he said. “They can't
do
anything.”

Melora shrugged her shoulders. “It's very popular.”

“They can't even sit up,” he said, brimming over with frustration.

There couldn't be anything in it for those babies. It was all for the mothers, he suspected, with a flash of resentment.

“You're so funny,” Melora said, turning away from the classroom and the women with babies in their arms.

Benjamin looked at her. He wasn't sure what she meant.

“What are you really upset about?” she asked.

Benjamin looked down at the ground, at his naked feet, so bony and fragile. He felt a bright flash of fear, as if those awful yoga mothers might come barreling out, their beanbag babies in their muscular arms, and trample his feet with their sensible shoes.

Benjamin didn't know what he was so upset about.

Melora reached out and touched his arm, the cotton sleeve of his sweaty yoga shirt. He thought he felt his eyes welling up.

Water everywhere, he thought.

He tried to locate that seaside breath again, somewhere at the very back of his throat. He needed to stay quiet for a minute. He was sure that the next word out of his mouth would slide into a sob.

They walked in silence to the locker rooms: the men's on the left side, the women's on the right.

“Are you taking a shower?” she asked.

“Is this working?” Benjamin blurted back, looking straight into Melora's bright blue eyes.

“Is what working?” she asked him.

“
This
,” he said, moving his index finger back and forth between them. “Us.” He was more surprised than when he told her he wanted to leave the yoga class.

He hadn't meant to say anything so big.

“What do you think?” Melora asked softly.

She didn't sound upset at all.

Unfortunately, Benjamin didn't have the vaguest idea. It was why he'd asked her: he didn't begin to know himself. He was so busy trying to make her happy that he hadn't a clue whether their relationship was working for him.

He knew he felt terribly burdened.

Melora stood still as a stone, as if it were another yoga pose.

“I don't know,” he said, a moment later. “It feels like too much for me sometimes—a complete disaster if I can't figure out what you want, and somehow even worse if I do. Then it's just on to the next thing,” he told her.

It's true, he thought. He hadn't sugarcoated it for her. He felt as if he were walking on a treadmill with her, shifting always into higher gear.

“Maybe you should think about what
you
want,” she told him. “Every once in a while, anyway,” she added, after a pause. She smiled back at him.

It sounded like a tall order to Benjamin though. How could he possibly figure out what he wanted at this late date?

He didn't have much experience in that department.

They stood in silence for a moment longer.

“I feel like a kid sometimes,” he said. “Just waiting to be told.”

Melora looked back at him, a broad stripe of confusion painted across her face. “I'm not your mother,” she told him. “And you're not eight years old anymore.”

“I know that,” he said, snapping back at her.

But Benjamin didn't know anything of the kind.

He didn't know what he knew anymore. “There's so much child in me still,” he mumbled.

Melora looked at him kindly. “Well, I don't think you'll ever be eight again, Benny,” she said, wrapping her arm around him, sweaty shirt and all.

Benjamin nodded heavily.

 

EMMA WALKED OUT OF THE FURNITURE SHOP, HER
Japanese cohort in tow.

It was almost closing time—just before six.

They'd concluded all their business inside: they were both proud owners of Nakashima tables then, waving good-bye to the shopkeeper and sixty thousand of Mr. Tanaguchi's hard-earned dollars.

“
Adiós
,” Christina called—Spanish to the very end.

“I'm glad it worked out,” Emma said, extending her hand to Tanaguchi.

Something in his formal mien had her shaking hands with him far more often than she would have thought strictly necessary. She was careful when she shook—marveling, again, over his tiny fingers, the bones as slim as a hummingbird's neck. Emma knew her strength; she knew to be frightened of it—but Tanaguchi didn't, pumping his gray-flanneled arm
energetically, thanking her for going to so much trouble on his behalf.

“No trouble at all,” she said, spotting her car over his left shoulder.

The driver had kept the engine idling.

In fact, it was a fair bit of trouble, beginning with her foolishness at the auction house. Emma was glad she'd put things right, or somewhat right, at least. The two tables were about a wash, she hoped—and once she figured in the auction premium, she realized, with a small flush of pleasure, that she'd actually ended up paying a little more for hers.

Still, correcting the problem hadn't erased the sting entirely.

I deserve what I get, she thought, pulling stunts like that.

She wondered if she'd learned her lesson at last, having repeated this mistake ten thousand times before: driven to win at any cost, only to find the price so high, her self-regard trampled underfoot.

And all for a stupid table, she thought, hoping against hope that there wouldn't need to be ten thousand errors more.