“Only one?” Ana asked. “Don’t you want more than that?”
I didn’t argue, so she plucked out three more, and without hesitation I took them. A flash of understanding seemed to pass across Ana’s face then—just a flash, so quick—and she blinked her big, serene eyelids, as if to mark her understanding, and I wondered what it was that she had just understood about me. And then I wondered why I felt like this woman I’d only just met somehow knew me better than I knew myself.
She winked. “Don’t hold yourself back.”
?
What was it about her? In the hours that followed, I kept asking. It wasn’t until dark that I realized what it was.
Ana reminded me of my mother’s friends: women who spoke their mind, women who were completely themselves all the time, even when it wasn’t beautiful. Women who lived without apology. They were brash and brazen and full of grace all at once. Hard edges and big hearts, hearts so big that if you stood close enough, you could hear the blood pumping. Those women, like Ana, were alive, truly alive. Every moment was lived full beyond the brim; every moment overflowed. Many of my mother’s friends had been drug addicts. Many had been their husband’s victims. There was always a chance of police. The police could appear unannounced at any time, like rain.
That was one reason for the way they approached life with their arms outstretched and their legs spread wide and their chests cast forward, asking for their hearts to be ripped out or soothed or just heard. Asking for anything. They were ready for anything.
I remembered these women fondly. Some of them I thought of as second mothers. Most of them, like my mother, had died too young. Bad choices stacked together, stacked high, stacked against them since before they’d been born.
But the particular way they seized every second like it was about to tick by—Ana had that way about her. It was under the surface, but I could feel it from the start.
4
I started a new routine. After the boys left for school and Chuck left for work, I laid out my purple mat on the lanai and stretched. When I couldn’t remember the poses from class, I found pictures online and printed them out. I reminded myself to breathe. I came to know the sounds outside and then I came to expect them: the kissing noise of geckos, the rumble of the water heater, the cars on the road, the squawking birds and the singing birds and the one bird that seemed to be laughing. The hum of crickets was constant and soothing. I did an hour every day. I always wanted to stop early but I didn’t, and when the hour had passed I felt better.
I made hot oatmeal for breakfast the old-fashioned way on the stove. I had been meaning to do this for years. I added tart apple and banana slices and a few of my raw almonds from the giant bag. I googled “Healthy food that tastes good” and got inspired. I bought kale at the store and actually cooked it. I also googled the name Ana had mentioned, Pema, and found out her last name was Ch?dr?n and she was kind of famous. I bought her book about falling apart, which I hoped was about how to put yourself back together. Again.
I bought spandex at Target and a yoga block I wasn’t quite sure what to do with, but I would figure it out. I switched the boys’ towels with our towels. They would have yellow now. We would have brown. We didn’t have enough money to throw everything we owned away and start from zero, but I did make a few smart purchases. I bought three green pillows for the couch, a stainless-steel trash can you could open with your foot, and a new bedspread patterned with luscious magenta hibiscus flowers for Chuck and me. Chuck liked its tropical look. He also liked the new healthy food I was cooking for dinner. The boys did not. “Can we have sloppy joes tomorrow night?” Cam asked, moving his salad around his plate with disdain.
“If you want to cook them, be my guest,” I said.
Chuck nodded enthusiastically at me then, as if to say: go, Team Parents!
The biggest change I made was outside. I planted a garden in our yard. My new favorite health food blogger said that if you had good weather and enough room, there was absolutely no excuse not to grow your own food. I measured a rectangular space and tilled the soil. The soil was dark and rich and there were worms. I felt outdoorsy and adventurous. I added fertilizer to the rectangle. The guy at Lowe’s had told me to do that. I dug holes with my new shovel. I was having a whole fantasy in my head about sustainable living. The money we could save doing this. The quality of these vegetables. Our connection to the earth.
I added my seedlings into the holes. All the healthy things I planned to eat: lettuces and broccoli and tomatoes and bell peppers. When I was done I stepped back and felt proud of my work. I was sweaty and accomplished. The birds were chirping. The crickets were humming. The sun was low in the sky. The boys would be home from practice soon.
The Lowe’s guy had told me an orange tree would take years. I didn’t know if we’d be here for years, but I had bought the seed packet anyway. It was on sale. I took it out of my pocket then. Near the mailbox was a bald spot in the grass. I dug there. I thought: I am blessing this house by digging this hole. Or: I can use it as leverage later. “We can’t leave, Chuck, the orange tree needs us!” I filled the hole up and tapped the earth with the back of my shovel, and then I was filled with a thought that barely seemed like my own. Hope, Nancy, this is about hope.
5
I hadn’t returned Marcy’s calls so one day she just showed up at the house. “I was worried you might be a lonely little Nancy up here.” She held out the familiar pie in her hands. “Mulberry again. It’s really the best one they have.”
I thanked her and invited her in because I had to.
“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt you,” she said when she saw my clothes strewn all over the couch. I was going through them to see what I could give to Salvation Army.
I was polite. “No, no, it’s fine. I was just getting ready to donate this stuff.”
She touched the pair of khaki pants I had just decided were hideous. “Can I look through it?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
I made sugar-free lemonade while Marcy picked through my unwanted clothes with such joy. “And this? You’re getting rid of this? Are you sure?” She held up a San Diego Zoo shirt I had bought in the ’80s. “This is probably a collector’s item. You could sell it on eBay.”