CHAPTER 23

“Hey, any chance you feel like grabbing a bite?”

“Oh, uh . . .”

“It’s all right if you’re busy. I just thought I’d give it a shot.”

“No, I’d like to.” But Rebecca was clearly hesitant. “I just need to . . . there’s some stuff I have to do first. How’s seven?”

“Great! I’ll swing by and grab you then.”

She seemed about to say something, but then there was some sort of commotion in the background, and she muttered, “Okay,” and hung up. Seven would give him plenty of time to pick up groceries, prepare dinner for Kevin and Aunt Viv, and make sure no one needed anything before he headed to Rebecca’s. He’d become ­increasingly aware of checking things like stove burners, reminding Kevin to brush his teeth, and seeing his aunt safely ensconced in her room with her henchman-dog before he left the house these days.

Still, seven felt like a long time to wait to unload his mounting anxiety about Aunt Vivvy and Kevin, his aggravation with Deirdre, even his unaccountably mixed feelings about Chrissy. He wished he could head to The Pal with Cormac and get it all off his chest. But it wasn’t Tuesday, and he was hesitant to bother Cormac. Sean could still see the look of despair on Barb’s face when Chrissy had asked if they were planning to have kids.

He had a sudden inclination to fire off a letter to his old friend Yasmin Chaudhry, the doctor he’d befriended in Kenya. They had sat countless times discussing just this sort of thing—her family’s dismay over her decision to go to medical school instead of submitting to an arranged marriage, his father’s disappearance, both families’ inability to understand the choices they had each made to spend their lives among the poorest of the poor. Yasmin had an astute eye for the absurdity of trying to make anyone understand it, and they shared the comfort—now so starkly missing in his life—of mutual commiseration.

The last he’d heard from her she was in Haiti. Who knew if the mail even got through these days, and if so, whether she was still there to receive it? Nevertheless, once Kevin and Aunt Vivian were seated at the kitchen table with their barbecued chicken and baked potatoes, he took a pad of paper and wrote a few lines to Yasmin.

* * *

When he drove over to meet Rebecca, her house was dark. After fifteen minutes, he was about to drive to the nearest gas station and call her when she pulled into the driveway, her car coming to an abrupt stop just before hitting the garage door. She didn’t get out ­immediately. Sean waited a moment, then he opened her passenger-side door and got in. “What’s up?” he said.

She pushed a clump of wavy brown hair back off her face. “I don’t think it’s going to work out tonight, Sean. I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”

Rebecca stared out the windshield. “Eden came in.”

“Your boss?”

“Yeah. We were locking up, and she wanted a massage.”

“Man, that must have been annoying—you said she’s pretty awful.”

“She’s Satan.”

“Oh, Beck, I’m sorry. That sucks. Let’s go grab a beer and some food and you can relax.”

She closed her eyes for a second, then looked over at him. “I need to meditate.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry. I would’ve been done by the time you came if she hadn’t shown up. And now I really need to. She’s a completely destabilizing person.”

“No, it’s fine. Should I come back later? Or I could just hang out till you’re ready.”

“Well, I usually do some yoga first, so it might be a while.”

“Yoga.”

She smiled. “Yeah, Sean, yoga. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Like half the world does it.”

“I’ve heard of it, smart aleck. I’ve even done it a couple of times.”

She surveyed him skeptically. “Really.”

“Yeah, really. Maybe I’m not one of those guys who says ‘Namaste’ in casual conversation and owns his own mat, but I did live in India for a couple of years. Can you top that, little miss yoga girl?”

She laughed her clear melodious laugh. “Nope,” she said. “I cannot top that. So, you want to do some yoga with me?”

“Oh, ah . . . okay. I mean, it’s been a while. You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

They went into the house, and Rebecca put her wavy hair into a short ponytail and changed into a pair of stretchy black leggings and a tank top. Sean would have preferred running shorts to the khaki shorts he was wearing, but they were loose, and he felt he could manage.

She took him down to the basement, which was cool and dark, the waning summer light sifting in through small casement windows near the ceiling. There was an old Ping-Pong table folded up against one wall next to an enormous teak entertainment center. A couch and a rolled-up rug had been pushed to one side.

“Hey, we used to play Ping-Pong down here. Is that the same table?”

“Of course it is.” She smiled. “You don’t replace things in a shrine. The only new thing is the rug.” It was a flat, pale Berber with flecks of tan. “Yoga on a shag carpet is just so wrong.”

They lay down on their backs, hands palm-up by their sides, and began by concentrating on their breathing. “Now, as you inhale, arch your back. As you exhale, curl your back, pelvis tipping upward.” Her voice was quiet and soothing. He arched and curled, happy to follow her lead, the anxiety of the day’s events slipping away as he concentrated on her simple instructions.

He kept her in sight so he could see the positions she described. In the simple, stretchy outfit, her shape was more evident. She was petite, as she’d always been, but there was a muscularity to her now. Her upper arms were firm and defined—from years of giving ­massages, he supposed. Her legs also seemed strong, and she could balance on one leg in the Tree pose without quivering at all. Sean fell over immediately. He let out a grunt of annoyance.

She glanced over at him. “There’s a saying in yoga: ‘Find the repose in the pose.’ Don’t try so hard. Let your body find its own balance in its own time.” With a little grin she added, “And stop competing with me.”

“I’m not!”

“Oh no, not in the least.” She came around behind him and placed her hands on his hips. “Shift your weight onto one foot. Okay, now slowly, slowly raise the other foot and rest it against the inside of your opposite thigh. Keep breathing. Let the breath calm your muscles.”

He did as she said, and though he was still quivery and unstable, he got his foot planted against the other leg, her strong hands buttressing him from either side. As she guided him to raise his arms upward, his mind remained focused on her hands gripping his hips. He was used to the feel of her touch from the massages she’d given him, but this seemed different somehow.

“You’re doing it,” she murmured near his ear. “You’re a tree.”

“Yeah, well, my roots are pretty shallow. A light breeze would blow me over.”

“Your roots are fine. You just have to believe in them a little more and let them do their job.” She let him go, and he held it for a few seconds before tipping again.

They continued on, his muscles straining to hold him in precarious positions. And when he realized he was competing with her, he was able to relax and simply marvel at her gracefulness. When they had finished and were lying on their backs again, Sean still breathing a little harder than he liked, she said, “Meditation?”

“If it doesn’t involve being a downward dog or a proud warrior, I’m in.”

She laughed. “For a guy who’s spent most of his life living in squalor, you’re kind of demanding.”

He looked over at her and grinned. “Sean Doran, Diva Bush Nurse.”

As they gazed at each other and laughed, Sean felt a surge, like his nervous system had just gone turbo. A strange array of impulses crackled across his brain in a mental ticker tape: kiss her . . . squeeze her hand . . . laugh uncontrollably . . . run like hell . . .

“Gotta pee,” he said, and rose and went to the bathroom.

When he came back she had put a cotton sweater over her tank top. She didn’t look at him. “Ready?” she said.

“Yup. What do I do? Just sit quietly?” He lowered himself onto the carpet several feet away from her.

“Um, yeah, basically. Wait—you said you’ve done this before.”

“Yoga, not meditating.”

“Oh. Well, do you want me to do a guided meditation, sort of helping you along?”

“Sure.”

She began to talk quietly about clearing the mental chatter, focusing only on each breath coming in and out, counting them to guide attention away from thought. He tried to do as she said, but Sean could not make himself focus on his breathing for more than about six seconds. He wondered momentarily if it was an early sign of dementia, an uncontrollable mind. By the count of four he was starting to see images between each number—Kevin chtching at George, how had he learned that so fast? And then five—where was the tape Hugh had given him, had it gotten thrown out with the tape player? Sometimes he got to six but he never got to seven. He was a meditation failure.

“If you find your mind wandering, be forgiving with yourself,” Rebecca murmured. “Scolding is the opposite of what meditation is about. When you find thoughts drifting in, release them like a feather into the breeze.” The softness of her voice wooed him toward acquiescence. “There is no failure in meditation. It is a practice, not an ­accomplishment.”

Stop scolding yourself, he scolded himself. The thought made him smile. And then he let it go like a feather. He did the same for the next thought, and the next . . . And then there came a moment when he felt . . . suspended . . . a soft nothingness . . . peaceful . . . whole . . . graced.

Then his scalp felt itchy and he tried not to scratch, because wouldn’t that break the spell? But of course by the time he was thinking those thoughts, questioning the rectitude of scratching, it was already broken.

He opened his eyes and glanced over at her. She sat cross-legged, back straight, face relaxed. And for a moment he wanted desperately to know what she was seeing behind those olive-skinned eyelids. Was he in the scene? Would that be a good thing or a bad one? Did he even want to be there? Her eyes began to open slowly, and he quickly looked away.

“So?” she said.

He shrugged and gave his scalp a good hard scratch.

* * *

They couldn’t decide where to have dinner. Neither one would commit to a place they actually wanted to go. “Milano?” she said. It was where he’d had lunch with Chrissy.

“Sure, if you want to.” But his tone was unenthusiastic.

“I don’t really care.”

“How about Country Squire?”

“Great,” she said. “If I were elderly and had a yen for creamed corn.”

By process of apathetic elimination they ended up at The Pal, plates loaded with fries and bacon cheeseburgers.

“I’m surprised you’d eat this.” He wiped a drop of grease from his lips. “It’s not exactly healthy.”

“Yeah, I can’t do all-healthy, all-the-time. It makes me cranky.”

He nodded. Of course, he thought. Why can’t everyone be so normal? But suddenly that weird ticker-tapey thing started again and he found himself saying, “So did I tell you I got together with Chrissy Stillman last week?”

The burger in her hands ceased its ascent toward her mouth. “No,” she said, studying the burger. “I don’t think you mentioned it.”

“She came into the Confectionary a couple of weeks ago, then we went out for lunch. She’s training George.”

Rebecca put the burger down. She reached for the salt shaker and sprinkled some on her fries. “I heard she went to law school.”

“Yeah, she was a lawyer, then she got married and had kids. Guess who she married.”

“I have no idea.” Still salting.

“Ricky Cavicchio.”

She glanced up at him, set the shaker down. “Come on.”

“I am not making this up. She married that jerk.”

Rebecca’s face warmed almost imperceptibly with some unspoken appreciation.

“They split up, though.” He took a bite out of his burger.

Her eyes flicked back to him, the warmth gone.

“You never really liked her,” said Sean.

Her gaze tightened like a vise, as if to clamp down on something unpleasant.

“Come on, admit it—you know you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Rebecca. “She wasn’t very nice.”

“How can you say that? If anything she was Little Suzie Sunshine.”

The look on her usually inscrutable face was unmistakable. She was incredulous. “Seriously,” he said, “what could possibly make you think she wasn’t nice?”

Rebecca didn’t answer for a minute, seeming to weigh her options. Finally she said, “She called me Becky Bubble.”

“Bubble?”

She pointed to the right side of her face, the part that bowed out in that strange way. “Bubble,” she said.

It took a moment for the gravity of this to sink in; when it did, Sean felt mildly ill. He knew Chrissy could be kind of self-involved, but this was heartless. She must not have realized how cruel it was. “God, that’s awful,” he said. “When did she say it?”

“What do you mean when? She said it a lot.”

“More than once?”

“All the time.”

“How old were we? Are we talking elementary school? Because kids that age can be really mean without seeing how much they’re hurting people.”

Rebecca looked at him, and there was a sadness, almost a pity there. She didn’t answer.

“Okay, what—junior high?” he asked.

Still she didn’t say anything. She crossed her arms over her chest.

“When?” he demanded. “When was the last time?”

“Remember that party at Dougie Shaw’s the summer before we left for college?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Remember how I wanted to leave early and you convinced me to stay? Why do you think that was, Sean—because I was having such a good time?”

“Then? She called you Becky Bubble in high school? Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would you have done?”

“I would’ve told her to shut the hell up!”

Rebecca looked away. “I did tell you once. Junior year. She taunted me in the lunchroom, in front of half our class. You weren’t there, but I told you afterward.”

“Are you sure? I don’t remember that.”

“You told me to ignore it.” Rebecca’s voice got tight, as if she could still feel the sting of humiliation. “You said Chrissy was just playing, and I shouldn’t take it so personally.”

And then he remembered.

Becky had come out of the lunch room looking pale and shaken. He had asked her what was wrong, and she’d told him. He remembered feeling slightly annoyed by her thin-skinned-ness, and told her to brush it off . . . as if a public humiliation about your facial birth defect could be taken any way other than personally.

“Oh, Beck,” he murmured, shaking his head. “God, what an ass.”

She gave a little shrug. “You didn’t get it. No one ever called you names like that.”

He was still reeling from retroactive guilt. “Lucky, I guess,” he muttered.

“It wasn’t just luck. You had this sort of . . . it was like a protective coating. People knew they couldn’t get to you, so they didn’t bother.”

“I was basically an orphan with a terminal disease, what more could they do to me?”

“Plus you made it clear you had one foot out the door—things didn’t affect you.”

“But they did.”

She chuckled. “I’m not talking about things like Chrissy Stillman.”

She was more relaxed now. His admission of guilt seemed to have irradiated the little ball of cancerous anger she’d obviously been carrying around all these years. “You know, in a way I should thank you—both of you,” she said. “People can be mean, whether you’ve got a funny-looking face or not. Part of growing up is learning how not to internalize it. And your reaction helped me realize that I did take things too personally.”

“Who wouldn’t take something like that personally!”

“No, but see, Becky Bubble wasn’t me. That was Chrissy’s creation, not mine. I had to get better at not accepting other people’s definitions.”

“Like your parents’.”

“Like anyone’s.”

He studied her for a moment, the warm brown eyes, the mildly uncontrollable wavy hair . . . the bubble. He had stopped seeing it, he realized, had stopped registering it when he looked at her, and forgot that every time she met someone new they might reject or pity her. And if they were repulsed, she would know it. Her strength wasn’t only in her limbs.

“You hate when I call you Becky, don’t you?” he said.

She smiled. “No, it’s fine. I just decided I like Rebecca better. It’s pretty.”

“I’ll try to call you Rebecca, but I might slip sometimes.”

“It doesn’t matter what you call me, Sean. We’re friends—I’ll love you either way.”

Yes, he thought. Me, too. Either way.

And he wanted to reach over and touch her shoulder or squeeze her hand. But instead he pushed his plate toward her and said, “Here, eat my fries. Yours have enough salt to make you hypertensive.”