Soulmates (19 page)

God help me, even if I did want to listen to a lecture on orgasmic nutrition, I knew I would never find the Pima yurt on my own. “Is there a map of the grounds or something that I can look at?”

Willow shook her head. “No, I'm sorry. You need to follow your inner compass. Once you are more open to your surroundings, you will be able to access that compass.” She said this as if I were so painfully misguided, it hurt her to explain it to me.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “I am going to walk the grounds to open my airways.”

She didn't invite me, but she didn't explicitly tell me not to come with her, so I trotted along after her like a pesky kid sister. We walked in silence for fifteen minutes. It was getting dark, so I focused on my feet and the path in front of me. The air was clear and crisp, and I could feel the temperature drop as the sun slid farther and farther behind the mountains.

Finally, Willow turned to me and asked, “What brought you here?”

“I, uh, I was feeling really empty,” I said, caught off guard. “I needed something big to change. Then I got a call out of the blue that I had been recommended for this next-level retreat, and it seemed like everything was falling into place.” As soon as I finished speaking, I felt exposed. Because it was true.

Willow nodded, looking vaguely sympathetic for the first time. “I relate to that completely,” she said. “I, too, am a refugee from the outside world. I wanted to go someplace where I would not be monitored by our Big Brother government.” She gestured up to the sky.

I thought she sounded bonkers, but I smiled anyway. “I'm really looking forward to disconnecting from negative energy.”

She smiled and nodded. “We have a lot in common, sister. I feel as if it is fate that we have been joined. When we get back to the room, I will do our charts and we can figure out how we can best compliment each other on our respective spiritual journeys.”

“That sounds lovely,” I said. Willow led me back to our room, and I tried to take in my surroundings so that I would be able to find my way on my own. I'm not sure it sank in, though; each bush looked like every other bush, and there weren't many man-made landmarks to help me along.

Back in the room, Willow pulled out a complex chart that looked like a wheel with many, many spokes. I gave her my birth date and year and found I was genuinely curious about what she would say. She examined the chart for several minutes, making
light grunting noises as if this was a major intellectual effort, then started flipping between the chart and a book she had with her. I couldn't see the title when she opened it, but it had a huge, groovy sun on the cover.

At last she murmured, “You are a Taurus with a moon in Cancer, and I am a Gemini with a moon in Virgo.” She said this with a little hesitation, like she was a doctor telling me I had a slightly suspicious-looking mole.

“Is that bad?”

“It's complex. You are good at accepting different viewpoints, but you sometimes lack conviction and can be negative. Also, your chart says you will have a rough time transitioning to new experiences, because your major source of stability is your family.”

At first I was mildly offended. But then I remembered that it was total mumbo jumbo. Me, lack conviction? What nonsense. I masked my negativity, though, because I didn't want to conform to the stereotypical Taurus. “How fascinating. What are the qualities of a Gemini with a Virgo moon?”

“I can be extremely bossy, and I have trouble listening to other people.” Normally, this would be a nightmare in a roommate, but in this case, I thought, it could be a blessing. She'd get off on being the knowledgeable one, and would be excited to teach me things about the Homestead. I could pretend to be far meeker than I actually am.

“That seems like something you could work on here,” I said, trying to sound supportive.

“But what's good about this combination is that as long as we call on Mercury to help us communicate, we can learn a lot
from each other.” She smiled, looking more secure now that she had me figured out. Then she closed the book and folded up her chart. “I'm going to do some solo energy work before I get ready for bed. I am going to need the bathroom for forty-five minutes, because that's where the energy is most positive in this room.” She got up and walked briskly to the bathroom before I could ask to brush my teeth first.

I took out my phone to see if I had any messages. There weren't any, and for a second I was hurt. Where were Beth's creative insults? Why hadn't she told me she was going to “cooter stomp” me if I didn't text her back? Why hadn't Katie left another nervous voice mail? Didn't anyone in the real world care about me?

But then I looked at my phone more closely and realized I didn't have any bars. I went to the settings and tried to see if my phone could pick up a Wi-Fi network, but there weren't any. I only had 10 percent charge left, so I looked around the room in case there was a place to plug it in. But there wasn't an outlet anywhere.

I started feeling hot all over, and my trusty left armpit sprang a leak. If I needed to reach Ray or Beth, I simply couldn't. If I wanted to talk to Sheriff Lewis, my best bet would probably be finding my way back to the main road and hitching a ride into Ranchero with some potentially methed-out local loner.

I lay down on my bed and started to take deep breaths to calm myself. “You're okay,” I said quietly, over and over again. “It's only a month. People survive torture in third-world prisons for years. I can survive a creepy guru and essential oils for a few
weeks.” I breathed in and out, in and out, in and out, until my pulse stopped racing and my armpit dried.

Once I was calm, I realized the other downside to having no phone. I had no distractions. There was no Internet or prattling of local newscasters or bitching of the Real Housewives. I had to sit with my thoughts.

It was painful at first. I couldn't stop my mind from racing. How was I going to find out more about Ethan and Amaya? I'd have to learn how to speak these people's language a little better before broaching the subject. I also had to reconnect with Lo as soon as possible. She saw something special in me, or else she wouldn't have invited me to this place.

What I tried not to think about was how I was trapped here, miles away from anything or anyone I knew, with a bunch of gullible, stunted freaks. And I really couldn't think about what the fuck I was going to do with my life after all this was over. Was I really going to go back to my old job? Working ninety-hour weeks with zero balance, in an emotionally bereft atmosphere? It didn't really seem possible.

But I didn't think I was done with law entirely. I had worked so hard to get my degree and build a career. Maybe I would go into family law and save children from situations like the one Ethan would have been trapped in had Rosemary not fled the commune decades ago.

I took one more deep breath. For the time being, I just had to stay positive and in the moment, put on some mask of warm energy like everyone else here. And who knew, I might as well try to benefit from some of these woo-woo classes. It couldn't
be all bad—the people here seemed happy, and they certainly looked great. Maybe if I just circumvented Yoni's evil and took the parts that were positive, I could emerge from this experience not just having cleared Ethan's name, but in a better place and with super-toned shoulders.

The whole place woke with the sun. I wondered if someone looked at the almanac to see when the sun was supposed to rise, because it seemed like the minute it peeked above the horizon, I opened my eyes to a whirring sound and saw the bamboo shades gathering and the light streaming in. The shades must have been set with a timer.

Willow got out of bed. I knew by this point not to speak first, and to follow her lead. So I got out of bed, too. She got dressed, so I did, too. Then she pulled out a yoga mat from under her bed. I looked under my bed and found an identical mat. She positioned her mat facing the window and sat with her legs crossed, her mouth open, her eyes closed, and her hands resting palm up on her knees. I placed my mat right behind her and did the same.

For a while—what felt like fifteen minutes, but who knows—I hated sitting there. I kept opening one eye to see if Willow was stirring, but she remained still. So I tried to lean into the silence.

Though I didn't want to be thinking about Ethan, it was impossible not to do so here, surrounded by all the stuff he had believed in when he left me. It occurred to me as I sat there that I still loved him. Reading his book and going on this journey had helped me make sense of that residual love. I'd numbed myself out when he left, but now that he was back in the forefront of
my mind, I realized that I didn't love him like a man anymore. I loved him like a relic, an immovable piece of the past that was still dear to me, that still mattered in a historical sense.

My mind flitted to one particular moment, shortly after we'd graduated from college. We had no money, but we wanted to take a vacation. So we took a camping trip out to Glacier National Park in Montana. Ethan knew it well because he'd hiked there so much as a kid, and because he spent so much of his childhood poring over nature books. He knew that there were sixty different kinds of ferns in Glacier, and could tell me which ones were moonworts and which ones were horsetails.

One morning we went on a very early hike. We didn't see a single soul while we were walking, and we found a little waterfall with a small pool below it. We stripped off our clothes and jumped in. I remembered the chill of the water on my skin—so cold that we shrieked and gasped. After we swam, we found a flat rock near the pool and lay down on it. The smooth rock caught the July sun. We held hands and touched feet and giggled. I remembered thinking,
This is just the beginning of our beautiful life together
.

Before Ethan died, I thought of that moment as a tragic memory, because our marriage ended the way it did. But as I sat there I began to realize the memory was actually beautiful in its own way. It could stand alone as a perfect moment, because we really felt that happy at that time. What came afterward didn't have to mar what was real and true.

I was so deeply inside the memory that Willow had to tap me on the shoulder to snap me out of it. She beckoned for me to follow her to breakfast. She sat in the same place she had the
previous evening, so I did, too. A vat of porridge went around and was slopped into our bowls. It seemed to be made of quinoa and tasted like sawdust.

We were finishing up our gruel when rough brown pieces of recycled paper were handed to each of us. I looked down at mine and saw that it was a class schedule. My morning class was called Inner Child Workshop, it was in the Owl Lodge, and the instructor was Lo.

I wandered around the grounds looking for the classroom. Every time I saw someone new, I would follow them, in hopes that they'd bring me to the Owl Lodge. After several fruitless follows, I arrived at a building with a giant golden-winged owl statue out front—I figured this was the place. I worried I'd be late, but since there were no clocks anywhere, I also wondered what
late
meant.

When I walked by other classrooms en route to Lo's, I saw rooms filled with five or ten students and a teacher. But when I arrived at the classroom I'd been assigned, I saw Lo there alone. I couldn't tell whether it was good or bad that I seemed to be getting individual attention, but before I could complete the thought, Lo embraced me. She was wearing a Peruvian woven poncho over her purple robe. The poncho was red with purple stripes and fraying fringe, and it smelled grandmotherly, a particular nose-twitching combination of decay and perfume. It was the first time I'd thought of Lo as old.

“I'm so happy you came back,” Lo said. “Inner child work is such an essential building block to making spiritual progress. I'm not surprised that this is what they've assigned you to do.
Not that I had a hand in that decision.” She winked at me, and I smiled back. Her earnestness was contagious.

“I am in serious need of some progress,” I said confidently.

“Good. Normally inner child work goes better in a group setting, but since it's just us we will have to muddle through. The upside is you will get one-on-one counseling.”

I shifted and felt the warm wooden floor with the balls of my feet. There must have been some heating system under the floorboards. Lo took off the poncho and folded it before placing it gently next to her. She offered me a fringed pillow to sit on and put another pillow on the floor a few feet away from it. “We're going to start off by facing each other and connecting through eye contact and matching breaths. I want you to follow my lead as we take deep, soothing breaths together. I don't want shallow breaths, I want these to come from here.” She reached over and grabbed my diaphragm. I giggled like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

“That's good!” Lo said. “That sounds like your inner child is ready to come out to play. Now breathe in . . . out . . . in . . . out.” We breathed together. I settled into the pillow. By the time she told me we were finished with our breathing exercises, I did feel really calm.

“I think of this as an ongoing process,” Lo explained. “There's always a lot to unpack, even if you had a happy childhood. I want to tell you a story from my past. I think this process only works when spiritual communication is a two-way street. Even though I have been here a long time, I have so much to learn from you.” She smiled at me warmly.

“I like to begin with our first memory, which says a lot about how much work needs to be done. My first memory is of ringing
a stranger's doorbell.” The ease with which she launched into this narrative suggested that she'd told the story many times before. “I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, and I went door-to-door with my family starting when I was six weeks old.

“When I was seven, my mother sent me out on my own to proselytize. I had six brothers and sisters, and it was too hard to bring all of us with her when she went door-to-door, so she sent us off on our own as soon as she thought we'd be able to find our way home. I don't remember who answered the door at the first house I approached. It must have been a housewife. I just remember the feeling of abandonment. For me, the first step in my healing process was to live in that feeling of abandonment for a fortnight, and then let it go with a special ceremony in which I released a dove into the heavens. It is pretty difficult to get doves around here—believe me, I tried—but we can find other ceremonies to help you shed unwanted baggage during your journey.”