Memoir In Progress

A BRIEF WORD OF INTRODUCTION/EXPLANATION

2011-08-31T10:18:00.000-04:00

I began writing this memoir in the Spring of 2010 and finished it in late July 2011. It is an important story to me, one I have been trying to tell in its entirety for a long time.

I posted each chapter as it was written so that when you came to the blog you saw the most recent chapter. This worked for those who were reading along, but for those who needed to start from the beginning, it was a little tricky.

It’s still a little tricky, but I have now re-ordered the chapters so that the beginning is at the top and you work your way down.

I am reviewing all the chapters now and making small changes, adding in a few forgotten scenes and hope by early 2012 to release this in paperback and as an e-book. With a title!

I hope you enjoy what you read. Thanks for coming by.

PROLOGUE: Something Begins

2011-08-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

Alyssa was a few years older than me. Not many. Just enough to put her over the edge into the next category. She had short dark hair and a serious face. She didn’t laugh or talk much. There was something serious and self-contained about her, almost sometimes disapproving so that being with her was sometimes a little bit of hard work.

She moved into the white cottage across the walkway from us and I pursued a friendship. She interested me. She seemed to know things I didn’t and I wanted to push past the usual boundaries that exist when people don’t know each other so that maybe she would share with me that secret knowledge.

I went over to visit her in her cottage, stepping across the few feet of concrete from my shady stoop to her identical one. She did not come over to my cottage because Geoffrey was there and it was as obvious as weather that we could not have our conversations there. In fact, Alyssa – visiting Alyssa – talking to Alyssa was a way of creating or trying to create a small island to which I could go, an independent place.

Alyssa talked of things I had never heard of – reincarnation, tarot, and astrology as if it were a science not just something dumb in the newspaper. And she was so poised and adult that I listened to her.

Alyssa took me to a bookstore called The Bodhi Tree, shelves upon shelves of books all covering these subjects I hadn’t known existed. I had spent so many years in bookstores, and yet here was one that I had never entered or known about. It was like stepping into an alternate universe. “Where do I begin?” I asked Alyssa, and she suggested a thick red paperback.

It was slow going, but I did not stop, chopping my way through its humorless prose about ancient Egypt, hunting for clues.

Alyssa and I came up with a plan to drive up to Eureka together for a weekend. I had heard about the beauty of this northernmost tip of California and Alyssa said she had a friend up there we could stay with. I wanted to get out of the smog and concrete of summertime L.A. and Eureka promised to be almost virgin land and forest.

We drove all day, arriving in the evening at a small house on a river bank, set amidst dense forest. Her friend was a man, living alone, handsome and friendly. They were old friends, it seemed, who had not seen each other for awhile, and I left them to be alone and catch up for awhile. I sat out on a rock overlooking the water. There was no sound of traffic or people or industry. This is where I had so wanted to be, but still I felt on edge, not sure how long I should leave them.

I waited for a half hour and then joined them inside where we sat together and ate. Eventually they drifted into the bedroom. I slept in the living room.

Not much was said in the morning. The handsome rugged man drove us around a bit, showing us the small town, and I filled up any empty moments with Remembrance of Things Past which I had brought along, drinking in every succulent word from its thick pages.

Back in L.A., it was Alyssa who told me about yoga, which sounded as mysterious and remote as ancient Egypt. I looked up schools in the yellow pages and went to one in a part of town I didn’t know well, an area of large mansions and wide lawns. My first class was in a stately but slightly gone-to-seed white building, in a large hall with a high ceiling. We stood in rows in front of a teacher who looked about my age but who I assumed was older because she was already doing something she really wanted to do.

This was a place Geoffrey would never come to, and so it felt more authentic, more like a place where I would go. It wasn’t a place just for TV and pot and food and movies and shopping and chats with friends on the phone – none of that had ever found its way comfortably or permanently into my life. Those were the things Geoffrey was content to do for the rest of his life, things that seemed empty to me, like the scripts he wrote about handsome men falling in love with witty beautiful women.

The yoga class wasn’t like that. I liked the way the other teachers looked – the men handsome and the women confident, and all of them at ease with one another. They talked about who was going to India and who was coming back, and it felt like a community inside the white mansion, people having a good time.

I did not miss a class, driving to the white mansion two or three times a week. And after every class I felt good in a way I had never felt good before. I had never found anything that so reliably made me feel better – in body, in mind.

Chapter One: Leaving L.A.

2011-08-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

I said good-bye to Geoffrey on the terra-cotta tiled stoop of the white stucco cottage, a bright Los Angeles February day, three years after we’d arrived.

We said good-bye as if I were just going on a trip. I had spent the night. He had offered to make whatever I wanted for dinner and I had asked for pot roast. His sister was driving me to the airport.

Geoffrey and I said good-bye, not knowing what the next step was. I was just glad to be headed back to Manhattan, all of it paid for by my job. I was ready for wonderful new things to happen in the city where things happened. I had no lingering love for Los Angeles, the biggest suburb in the world.

On the airplane I read The French Lieutenant’s Woman and saw a young woman sitting, her eyes down, small headphones on her head, a small black cassette player in her hands. Wow, I thought. Very cool.

I took the bus and subway to the West Village, to Stella’s empty studio apartment. Stella, a friend from college, had inexplicably become a model and was often out of town.

I put the key in the lock, opened the door, put my things down. There was not much light in the apartment. The main room was empty except for Thea’s large loom with a piece of weaving in its strings, dark purples, blues and greens.

When Stella and I spent time together it was always at some little place for dinner where we talked about how our writing was going or not going. This was the topic that held us together. We both had a tortured sense that we weren’t making enough art and that life was useless if you weren’t an artist. During those conversations we felt like best friends, but then there were huge pieces of her life she kept hidden from me – all her other friends, for instance. Her boyfriend who I imagined as dark and ultra-cool since I never met him and his name was Milo. The art gallery crowd she worked and hung out with. I knew I couldn’t make it with those Soho sophisticates. Stella’s keeping me out confirmed it.

But I liked her, I thought. And I liked her unusual face – wide, and almost Oriental-flat with blue eyes that could become almost slits. She wasn’t tall and she wasn’t thin, but they’d made her a model. Salvatore Dali wanted to paint her.

There was one time that Stella invited me to Fire Island, to a small house she was renting with two men. They were pretty boys of some kind. I was aware of my plain navy blue one-piece bathing suit and my unmade-up face, something in me refusing to put on a show for people who obviously were all about show. I was confident that I was beautiful anyway and if the two boys didn’t see it, it would just confirm how lightweight they were.

“They said you were beautiful but that you didn’t know it,” Stella said later. I pretended not to care. I wondered if she did.

Her single bed was stuffed into a small closet-room with no door, a few feet from the loom. The kitchen was a hot-plate and a coffee pot.

Outside I could hear the roar of Sixth Avenue and the whole city. I felt the huge impossible distance between what was happening, who I was, what I was capable of – and what I wanted. There was no way to get from one to the other. Like they were on two different cliffs with an abyss in between. This was going to fail.

And though it felt like going backwards or standing still, I called Geoffrey, settling for the comfort of his gravelly voice. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. But I knew he never felt this way – desperate, at the end of the line – that it was easy for him to say, sitting on his couch, watching TV and smoking pot, that it would be all right. “Why don’t you go live in the apartment?” he asked. “It’s empty. No one is staying there.”

His family’s apartment on Washington Square Park. The one we’d lived in before L.A.

Chapter Two: YOGA IN THE CITY

2011-08-18T07:55:00.000-04:00

I did move into the apartment on Washington Square, which is the nice way of describing that place. The ugly, more accurate way of describing the apartment is to say that it was on the 13^th floor, but was called 14D. It was on a floor that didn’t exist in a bland skyscraper that did not deserve its romantic setting, inches from the arch of Washington Square.

The doormen and elevator men were always at hand, dressed in green uniforms. Only one of them was black and he was called Curly. His job was to stand in the elevator and press the button of your floor for you and talk amiably about weather or sports, your choice.

And yet it was spacious, the apartment. Two bedrooms. Two full bathrooms. Much more space than a 23-year-old in Manhattan was supposed to have. Not to mention that it was free.

I had lived here with Geoffrey and his father and sometimes his sister in my last couple of college years before we’d gone to L.A. Though “living with” is a stretch. People cycled through the apartment and right now it was empty. There were bits of furniture, things people had left behind. I didn’t want to be there long. I hated the ugliness of the apartment – the dark salmon of the living room walls, the bright blue bedroom walls. But there were times too when I showed the place off, acting as casually about wealth as Geoffrey did, wearing the apartment like an expensive piece of jewelry.

I brought Roy, the guy from the party in the East Village, there and didn’t say anything about the place, just let it be a mystery that I lived with a balcony over Washington Square Park.

When people at work asked where I lived, I answered either vaguely, “in the Village,” or, if more detail was needed, I’d explain what I was doing in an expensive old-people’s building.

I put sneakers on and walked to work every morning – 40 blocks – feeling like I was riding the wind, feeling invincible in the power of my stride. Our New York offices were pokier than the luxurious L.A. ones, but I didn’t mind. I was in New York.

I had to get a lover quick. Mostly to protect myself from the memory and presence of Geoffrey of whom I was still so conscious. I promised myself I would not call him for six months, and slept in our old bed, with his childhood furniture that smelled the way it always had.

The only thing I knew for sure that I wanted and knew how to get was a yoga class. I wanted to find the classes that would make me feel as perfect as those L.A. ones. I made a list from the yellow pages and began systematically visiting each school.

One was on 23^rd Street with a shiny wooden floor, lots of mirrors and green plants. The class felt more like a dance class. One place was too dark and burned too much incense. That wasn’t it. I went from class to class and none of them recreated the big hall in the white mansion.

I knew three women from college in New York – Anna, Sara and Meg. Once or twice they came to the apartment. Once they even slept over. Though they’d known me for years they hadn’t been there before. I could not have friends over when Geoffrey was there because he didn’t like my friends. Or my family. And when I looked at these people through his eyes I saw what he saw. Geoffrey’s family took us on vacations, out to fancy Manhattan restaurants. His stepmother gave us hash and his stepbrother was a bona fide schizophrenic. His friends had vast record collections and made him laugh. My friends and my family couldn’t begin to compete.

Anna and Sara persuaded me to take a weekend workshop that promised breakthrough via a system they swore by. I took the weekend and did not have the promised breakthrough, could not join in the party afterwards where everyone celebrated having gotten it. I felt as disconnected there as at any other party.

I brought one boy home to the apartment after meeting him at a brunch on the upper West Side, identifying him early on and bringing him home, hoping that he would be the next Geoffrey, that we would melt into each other, but it was like trying to get something to stick with cheap glue.

Chapter Three: DANDELIONS

2011-08-18T07:50:00.000-04:00

I was back in New York and I wanted to be busy. It was not easy. I did have yoga classes to sample. And I had the three college friends. Sometimes there was Stella. My parents and two sisters took up some of the remaining space.

My mother and father were selling the house they had owned since I was three years old, a house that though we had not always lived in it – moving in and out several times – had always defined us as a family. It was a part of us.

I remembered the house from when I was little and it was the very beginning. My mother spackled the walls of the kitchen and painted them white. Workmen sat around in a circle at the bottom of the hill and ate thick sandwiches of meat and cheese. There was glass in the dirt near the house.

It was an old house, my parents said, and my mother showed me how a road used to go right by the house, a road that was now just a grassy open passage, cutting through woods. The house – white clapboard – stood on a slope overlooking the new road. There was always something ragged about it, more rough-edged than the smooth suburban homes where other people lived.

By the time I finished high school and we had returned to the house for the last time, my father had refined some of the rough edges so that when you drew up to the front door now the house looked more luxurious than it actually was, a rose trellis leading to a two-car garage. He left the huge spreading maple from which my mother had hung a swing for me in the early years. By the end, the swing was long gone, but a path of white gravel led you to the front door.

And now they had to sell the house. I knew it was because my father could not pay his bills. He was declaring bankruptcy. I received the news as lightly as if he were mentioning that he was getting a tooth removed. We did not react to things. Feelings were embarrassing. We left each other’s inner worlds very much alone.

The house was within easy commuting distance from the city, easy to get on a train at Grand Central and get there in less than an hour. I was glad to have a place to go to on a warm Spring weekend.

My sisters were at the house that weekend – Basil had come down from Boston, and Esther was still in high school, living at home. It was the first time in years that all five of us – two parents, three daughters – had been together, and here, in this house.

It was exhilaratingly summery. The dandelions were blooming. My sisters and I – all between 15 and 23 – played music loudly from the stereo inside, loud enough so that we could hear it outside on the grass.

Our spread of grass was too irregularly shaped to be called a lawn. It sloped downhill and faded into woods on two sides. I remembered doing my first somersaults on this grass, demanding that my father watch as he passed by, pushing a weekend wheelbarrow. I remembered my mother and grandmother carrying the body of our German Shepherd, each of them holding two paws while his body dangled between, across the grass one morning to the hole they had dug. I remembered the blow-up wading pool on this grass and the game of red-light/green-light that a woman, the wife of a businessman who had come for dinner, generously played with us. The big lilac had always bloomed purple.

On this Saturday my sisters and I blasted reggae or Van Morrison and we danced, the three of us, on the grass. We had never done this when we all lived here. We had stayed alone in our rooms, reading, listening to radio privately.

But there was a new freedom that morning, a sense of power, and we danced almost as if we were taking over now. I felt it, a sense of flaunting – our beautiful flexible bodies that could do anything.

My mother prepared lunch in the kitchen. My father watched from a picnic table as he waited for the real estate agent who had said she would drop by. I put a dandelion behind my ear.

Chapter Four: FIRST VISIT

2011-08-18T07:45:00.000-04:00

I read the Village Voice carefully, turning its thick square pages at the long wooden unpolished dining room table by the window that overlooked Washington Square park and straight downtown to the two World Trade Center towers.

When I lived here with Geoffrey we didn’t use this cut-out part of the living room, but it had my favorite furniture in it – the gray wood table and the big set of shelves and cupboards, both of which looked like they came out of an Italian farmhouse. I cleared the table of the junk mail and scrap that had been tossed on it over the years and sat there in the mornings before work with organic grapefruit and wholegrain toast, foods I never ate when I was with Geoffrey, foods that he would never eat and a meal that he was never up for.

This kind of food went along with the other new things I was exploring, the things Geoffrey didn’t want to go near – the yoga, the astrology, the meditation – all of which were well represented in the Village Voice – ads and classes and talks. The Village Voice would lead me into the city, I thought, provide me a path into the maze.

I went to a meditation class at East West Books, a place that appeared permanently established in secret knowledge, and came home determined to practice as the teacher had advised. I sat in the living room on one of Geoffrey’s stepmother’s chairs, the only object that resembled a straight-backed chair – a shiny chrome frame with spongy blue fabric, artificially soft. I sat in the evening after work, eyes closed for as long as I could stand nothing happening.

I saw an ad for a free introductory yoga class at a school I had not yet visited. I walked over on Sunday afternoon, arriving a few minutes late to the Eighth Avenue address. I opened the door from the street and climbed the straight flight of stairs to the door at the top. A sign read The New York Institute of Classical Yoga. There was a window in the door covered by a curtain on the inside of yellow cotton. I pressed the buzzer. Someone pushed aside the cloth, glanced out and opened the door.

He was lovely – tall and handsome with a big smile, dressed in white yoga clothes and bare feet. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Kevin, come on in!” He pointed to a small cluster of shoes on the black and white linoleum floor and said, “You can leave your shoes here.”

“Very strange,” I thought, pulling off my sneakers. I had never been asked to take off my shoes before. It seemed as random and odd as being asked to hop.

I followed Kevin from the narrow front hall a few steps into a small but bright open room with olive-green wall-to-wall carpeting. There were a few colorful pictures on the walls and some shelves displaying yoga books. “You can change in there,” Kevin pointed me towards a door that led into a changing room that was tiny but tidy and cared for.

Kevin was waiting for me back out in the main room. “We’ll be starting in a few minutes,” he smiled. “Come on, I’ll show you into the hall.” Again I followed him back towards the front door, into the narrow hall with its black and white tiles where Kevin slid open a door I hadn’t noticed before. “Just go on in,” he whispered, “and sit on the left side.”

The room was almost completely dark with just enough light to make out the shapes of six or seven people sitting and facing the front of the room. I picked my way carefully over to the left side, noticing a narrow aisle had been marked out that cut through the center of the long room. I spread my towel and sat cross-legged like everyone else. The women were on this side of the aisle and the men were on the other side. How strange. There was some kind of music playing and the people in the room had their eyes closed and were murmuring along in a practiced way, uttering words I did not understand, as if they were a secret code. This didn’t feel like any place I could ever be a part of. The party had gotten started too long ago.

I heard the door slide open at the back and someone stride up the aisle to the front of the room where there was a little more light. It was a man. He stooped for a moment over something in the corner, bringing down the sound of the music and then sat down back in the center of the room, facing us as the lights in the whole room came up slowly and gently.

The man was smiling. His hair was brown though bald on top. His face was young though he was older than me. In his thirties, I thought. Behind him was a strange oversize chair with a framed photograph of an Indian man placed upon it. There was a little table to the side with a rose in a vase. I just wanted a good exercise class.

The man began to talk to us. He said his name was Natvar, a name that seemed to match the unusual accent he had – it wasn’t French or German or Spanish, none of the ones I was familiar with. His English though came easily. He didn’t give us a lecture on yoga. Instead, he spoke of things he had noticed on his ride over on the subway – an old woman, a young boy with a skateboard. He made them seem important. I liked the way he described the subway, the walk up Eighth Avenue. He had vigor and energy and seemed really happy to be talking to us and about to teach a yoga class.

I listened to every word. I had never heard anyone talk like this before. Not like a teacher. Not like a friend. I felt I knew this man from the inside, like he knew me. That we were relatives in some way, that our inner worlds were similar. It was like finding a book by an author who speaks for you. This man was putting into words pieces of myself I didn’t know could be voiced.

Chapter Five: RETURNING

2011-08-18T07:40:00.000-04:00

I liked East West Books, but even better, because it felt less mass-produced, was Sam Weiser’s Bookstore, the Bodhi Tree of Manhattan, an eclectic clutch of weird books in a corner of downtown that felt to me like a treasure trove of information. I couldn’t afford to buy hardly any of its books, but I liked spending time there, my head tilted to read the shelves of spines, picking out some rainbow-colored book about rising signs, or Tibet, or how to grow sprouts. It felt good inside of Sam Weiser’s, cozy and fraternal.

I looked at its noticeboard, assured that whoever posted something there was a friend. It was the usual scramble of fliers and things for sale. Roommate Wanted, the notice said, Upper West Side. I took down the number and called. I had been staying in Geoffrey’s apartment for three months and I was restless to get away from a place that –though rent-free – would never really be mine, a place that wasn’t much more than a fancy hotel suite.

Scott was tall and gangly and going bald early. He wore glasses and kept his 10-speed in the hall and sprouts in jars in the kitchen. In his apartment – that had the high ceilings and random layout of a house – I could have a corner room. I signed up and moved.

Spring was just coming to New York City, I was just steps from Riverside Park and the new warmth, the new beauty of trees and plants, the newness promised by my new address lifted my spirits. I walked the 50 blocks to work in the bright mornings now straight down Broadway in my sneakers and skirt, proud to break glamour rules, and feeling like an elastic Superwoman.

I had liked meeting that man, Natvar at that yoga school on Eighth Avenue, but I hadn’t liked his class very much. It wasn’t hard enough. He talked a lot about following your breath as you moved, but I wanted something more demanding, something guaranteed to keep me skinny and young. I continued going to one yoga school and then another, hoping to find the perfection that had been the L.A. school.

But I returned to Natvar’s class. He was very happy to see me. He remembered my name. I was not surprised. I knew he had noticed me that first time just like I had noticed him.

After his class, I accepted the invitation of a petite dark-skinned woman, who seemed to be helping there, to linger and have some tea. She spoke softly and shyly. Her hair was gray and pinned into a bun. She wore baggy white yoga clothes and though I would have guessed she was in her 60s or 70s her face was still very pretty.

There were three or four other people lingering with styrofoam cups. The older woman ladled tea from a saucepan on a hotplate. I looked into the pot and saw simply steaming water with chunks of raw ginger inside, a recipe I had never heard of. The others kew each other and chatted easily, sitting on the couch and floor. I looked at the books in the little bookstore, an elegant set of 3 shelves built into the wall. The same man whose picture sat in the big chair in the hall looked out from the covers of the books that lay flat on display. I didn’t reach for them. I liked the curved wooden incense burner though. I wanted to buy it. I wanted to send it to Geoffrey as a gift. I thought he would like it. I wanted to send him something that would help him miss me. But I couldn’t afford it.

I walked a few steps over to the typed paragraph that was framed, hanging below the picture of a plump Indian goddess with many arms. The paragraph said something about how the blessings you receive are in proportion to the blessings you give, and right beside it was a small wooden box with a slot in the top.

I squirmed inside and moved away.

I returned again for another class, and this time the older woman smiled when I appeared and told me her name in a low, quiet voice. Anjani. Her old face held wisdom and warmth.

When I went to the other yoga schools you never saw who ran them or who had opened them in the first place. Those people were invisible. Here though Natvar was always present, teaching all the classes. Anjani was always at his side or in the background, helping out. Eve was there too, a painter with long hair and a nose ring. And a boy called Mark, a dancer with high arched feet and a ready smile.

Natvar loomed larger than anyone though. When he strode into class or stepped into the lobby afterwards it was always with great energy and purpose as if he could never be idle, as if he were enjoying every moment and wanted everyone else to too.

After class, he disappeared into the back and then joined us in the lobby for Anjani’s ginger tea. “Aha!” he’d say. ‘What great company,” as he drank his tea, leaning back on the couch now, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his white yoga pants ironed with a crisp crease. And though it seemed it should be a place of ease I stayed alert in these small gatherings, aware that Natvar’s standards were high.

When he saw me he greeted me with tremendous joy and vigor. “Marta!” he’d call. He greeted all of us with this kind of unabating enthusiasm, and bade farewell to each of us after class with strong hugs, yet I never felt part of a crowd. I felt selected. I felt like I stood out to him as someone special – for my brains, my looks, my sensitivity. He saw me the way I wanted to be seen. Perhaps, I thought, he will be my next lover.

Chapter Six: A REALLY GOOD IDEA

2011-08-18T07:35:00.000-04:00

Mariah was in town, a film student type I knew from L.A. Her short hair was brown and she had a quiet air about her until you knew her better and realized how smart, warm and funny she was. I had tried to be friends with her, and though we’d left our boyfriends to have dinner a few times, had smoked pot and the attendant long rambling personal talks, something had never quite clicked to make our friendship a given.

Still, when she called that she was in NY, I looked forward to our evening together, most of which we spent in her mother’s apartment, drinking ouzo and talking. As I drank and talked a beautiful plan took shape in my head. I would quit my job. That’s what I needed to do to make things better. The certainty of it, the splendor of this ripe possibility rose up in me with joy.

I had been with the paperback publishing house for almost three years. I had begun as a secretary and been promoted to editor – my first private office, my first set of business cards. I could take manuscripts that I liked to my boss, a short round gay middle-aged ballet-loving boss, and persuade him to publish them. I had gotten Geoffrey a job to write a novel based on a movie. He had two days to write it in and got $1,000 for it. I wrote copy that I could read months later on paperback covers at B. Daltons. Lately, I’d been going to cocktail parties for book people after work though I often showed up in cut-offs and hiking boots, confident I was the youngest and prettiest girl in the room.

But always, weaving in and out of my days was the dread of being trapped in a 9 to 5 job, and lately – even with the parties – I had the sense that I was in a prison, a large one, but still, a very confined space. And the words of an old boss rang in my head, “All editors once aspired to be writers.” I couldn’t let that happen.

I left Mariah’s apartment, having talked it all out with her. I would quit. I would get odd jobs. I would sit at my desk in my new corner room and I would write, just the way I imagined Virginia Woolf had done it, the way Susan Sontag surely did it. Yes, I thought, yes. I had hit on the answer to everything.

As I bounded down Broadway in my sneakers in the morning, everything sparkled. I couldn’t wait to be in my new life.

I knocked on my boss’s door and sat down across from him at his desk. “I’d like to leave in two weeks,” I said.

He looked at me, his wide bespectacled face. “But why?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

all my reasons collided, causing a pile-up that stifled my voice for a moment. I wanted to give him an honest answer, and it brought tears to my throat because it all seemed so important. “I just want a life that means something,” I managed to say.

His expression didn’t change. Though my words meant everything to me I could see they didn’t mean much to him. “All right,” he said.

“You must not quit your job!” my father called me at my office two days later, his voice urgent.

Nothing he said touched me at all. His worries about disaster if I quit were nothing more than the annoying buzz of a mosquito. I was doing this.

The Managing Editor said she would send me manuscripts to copyedit. that seemed like an appealing writerly way to make money. For the rest of it I would figure something out. Other people did it. I would get my writing life.

Chapter Seven: CRAMMING

2011-08-18T07:30:00.000-04:00

I wanted to be writing. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted to go find large patches of nature to be in.

The boyfriend part wasn’t going to well. I had pinned some hopes on Roy, put a lot of energy into that one, gave him a lovely night of sex before he’d even asked for it and in the morning I felt nothing and, worse, neither did he. I had imagined he’d fall right into love with me the way Geoffrey had.

I tried other men – the acceptably cute boy I’d known a little in college who now lived in Brooklyn and took me to hear Talking Heads. I liked him well enough, but though I showed up looking my best he never reached for me. Nor did Jack the filmmaker I’d known from Geoffrey years who I’d always assumed was just waiting for me to be a free agent. And all of this was important, was a race, because I had to make Geoffrey my history, had to prove that he was not needed, that my foray into Manhattan was a blossoming success.

Bill called to say he’d moved back from San Francisco. Bill had been my high school boyfriend – tall, gangly, a blonde boy I went out with because he asked me to. At school I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t want other people to know I made out with him on Saturday nights – he was over-tall, a clumsy mover, bespectacled and shy – not at all the dark sophisticate I should have been with. Worst of all, Bill didn’t have the muscle to get me across the intimidating border into non-virginity.

Later, when I needed a quick lover to counter Geoffrey’s wanderings, I looked up Bill in California where he was growing up, doing acid and riding a Harley. Now, he said, he lived in the East Village, had become an artist and earned his keep as a waiter on St. Mark’s Place. I went down to meet him in a turquoise cotton dress with spaghetti straps and knew right away he would sleep with me any time I wanted. But not yet. His girlfriend Laura had come East with him – a pale, dark, quiet girl who I knew was no contest. I pretended I didn’t know though, inviting them both to my apartment for dinner, cooking a cheesecake made from tofu because we were all getting into health food.

In the mornings I sat down at my white wooden desk, the one my mother had bought for me when I was nine to do homework at. I sat in the corner room with its two windows, my bookshelves behind me – mostly books from all the English college courses, and I forced out the words onto paper.

There were brief moments when I liked what I got and read it to Ruth or the Talking Heads guy or my father, read it with pride and pleasure. Though every page seemed fragile, a wisp anchoring me to the possibility of being a writer.

I went to a feminist meeting and got a job working for two middle-aged lesbians who were breaking up after 20 years and needed help sorting out their apartment. I could tell they both loved me – my spirit, my youth, my long dark hair and thin elastic body. It was easy to look good before their admiring eyes. They introduced me to two carpenters who said I could apprentice with them. I thought that would be a great way to make money and be independent, but I got tired of sanding, which is all they asked me to do the two or three times I joined them for jobs in other people’s apartments.

By late summer – now six months since I’d returned to New York – my father had sold the family house and now he, my mother and my youngest sister were living in someone’s spare room, someone my father knew from the church he had just started going to. My jet-setting father with his custom-made suits and leather luggage was working as a night security guard. These things happened and when I talked to my parents on the phone or when I visited, we talked as we always had, as if none of this were happening.

Chapter Eight: NOT FAR ENOUGH

2011-08-18T07:25:00.000-04:00

I would have a party. I wanted to dance. I borrowed records from Roy and my sisters and began taping strings of my favorite dance songs. Taping and stringing songs together was something I’d learned from watching Geoffrey for years. Making such tapes was his main art form – tape covers he made from color coded construction paper, typing the lists of songs on his Selectric, titling each “album,” each having a fast and a slow side. Each song segued into the next precisely, timed to the split second. He’d sit on the bed where the stereo was set up, his earphones on, the bed not made, he often naked, his finger hovering on the pause switch, listening for the instant when he want the next song – cued up – to begin, then – pow – hit the switch. If the segue came out wrong, he’d do it over until it was right.

I didn’t go to so much trouble. I wanted a few hours of great dance music, no bad songs to sit through. As I sat on the floor, adding The Harder They Come to Twist and Shout I tried not to think of Geoffrey and how well he would do this and was I living my own life or still trying to do things that he would like. “Put on the Ramones!” Esther, my little sister, yelled from the bathroom – that felt new and my own. Geoffrey didn’t listen to the Ramones.

My sisters both came in for the party. Esther had turned into a teenager with black-rimmed eyes and multiple earrings who made us laugh with stories of drinking and parties. Basil – in purple cotton baggy pants -- helped me to roll joints for the party. She had brought copper rings, one for each of us. We would each have a matching ring, our sister rings. I wore mine, proud to have a relationship this important. Even if I couldn’t find friends to fill what felt like an immense hole, at least I had my two sisters.

And after the party I would go hitchhiking in Nova Scotia. Surely, that would be far away enough to really feel like I was in wide open space. I was reading Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” where she described moment after moment of herself and what she sees in the water and grasses around her house. I wanted to write like that and took the subway one day as far north as it would go to Van Cortlandt park and walked – in the long flowing apple-green skirt that I loved. No one else was there. I could feel the woods and the earth there. A junked car lay abandoned and a young man approached, glowering in a black tee-shirt. A few steps away I realized it was a woman. She passed without speaking.

I came home and wrote about the walk, calling the piece Small Runaway. Nova Scotia, I thought, would be a bigger runaway. I would hitchhike like I had when I was 16, and I would camp, which I’d never done alone. Basil would lend me a tent she said. She’d done a lot of camping.

But first the party. I invited everyone I could think of – people from the old job, the lesbians, the carpenters, the different men I tried to sleep with, Geoffrey’s sister who was in town. I put out bowls of blueberries and bowls of joints, and I wore the white cotton dress that looked like a slip. I moved the glass-topped table to make a dance floor.

I did dance. Almost all the party. I saw the Brooklyn guy sitting by himself. I saw Cynthia the copyeditor sitting by herself. Charles from the office roared in at midnight with a woman bearing flowers and bottles of liquor.

I danced alone and with my sisters, the music loud, past midnight. I felt beautiful, but no man came to join me.

Basil showed me how to put up her tent in her living room in Boston. Hiking boots, pack, sleeping bag. She lent me a little cook stove and told me lentils were good for camping trips because they cooked fast. So I took a bag of brown lentils. Basil spoke with assurance about everything she did.

The first night in Nova Scotia I put up the tent in someone’s field, which is how I’d imagined things – putting up the tent wherever I felt like it. But I hadn’t realized this meant not having a bathroom. The next night I gave in and accepted a campsite. The tent fell on me while I slept.

I got a ride with a man who gave me his card and said if I needed a place to stay on my way back to call him and his wife. I found my way out to raw landscape, what I had been imagining but I could only look at it for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do with it. I slept in a church that night, on a pew, frightened but least inside. The lentils tasted awful.

At the far end of Novia Scotia I saw you could take a boat to Northumberland. I wanted so much to buy a ticket and keep going, go further, not stop, never stop, but I didn’t have the money. I turned back, reluctant. I could never go as far as I wanted. I called the man who’d given me his card. “Sure,” he said. “You can stay here though my wife and I are leaving for the weekend.” He picked me up, drove me to their simple two-story home and a warm bed. In the morning I was left alone. I stayed for two days. I ate all their food, returning to the fridge then the freezer all day long and left them a thank-you note on the counter.

I found my way back to Halifax and the ferry to Portland. The plan was to hitch a few hours inland and Bill would come pick me up. He was staying a few weeks with his parents in their Maine cabin.

One man drove me off the main road to a clearing in the woods. He said he wanted to show me the land he was buying. He wore a suit and was older than me. We stood on the edge of the cleared land, pretending this was normal. I played along, pretending the land was interesting, wanting to keep his focus on the charade of show me real estate, not thinking about what was at stake, just knowing I had to keep the conversation going.

Chapter Nine: STILL TRYING

2011-08-18T07:20:00.000-04:00

Bill picks me up late in the afternoon. I have just had my backpack searched by a cop who found the little red leather drawstring purse that my father brought me from Morocco when I was ten and which I had used for years to carry my pot and pipe. I was sorry to see the quirky little bag disappear into the police officer’s back seat.

Bill drove me out to the log cabin on the lake where he was staying with his two elderly parents. He and I slept upstairs that night in a loft with a slanting ceiling in separate beds. Laura was still his girlfriend, but she wasn’t there and I could feel Bill’s pull towards me. It had always been there, one of the few things I could count on.

“You could come over here,” I whispered from my cot on the other side of the room, certain of his yielding. It would feel good to have his arms around me, to feel the unchecked rush of his attraction.

“Oh, Marta, I can’t,” he groaned from his cot. “I can’t. Because of Laura.” His refusal was a punch in the stomach.

In the morning his mother had turned icy, her welcome smile had disappeared. I was startled. I had never felt so thrown out by someone’s parents, usually such an easy group of people to please. She must have heard me last night, I thought.

It was September now back in New York and back at the yoga school Natvar greeted me with the same bear hug and enthusiasm. “You look thin,” he said, eyeing me closely, his brown eyes concerned. “Are you eating enough protein?” He knew I had just become a vegetarian, had seen my snacks of carrot sticks and peanut butter. “Make sure you eat some cheese after class,” he said with conviction, and I said I would even though Bill had just read to me that dairy was an unhealthy thing to eat.

On Monday nights Natvar substituted his regular yoga class with a chanting night, but I had never gone. I had been politely ignoring the pictures on the wall of the old man they called Baba. I just wanted Natvar’s yoga class, the string of movements he led us through every time, always the same movements in the same order.

It was becoming so comfortably familiar – Natvar standing in front of us in the narrow darkened hall, a soft light illuminating him. He stood in his creased white cotton pants, barefoot, without a shirt when it was warm, and as soft bamboo flute music played – always the same tape – he performed the different stretches and poses, guiding us with his voice, but always absolutely absorbed in his own practice.

“Follow your breath,” his deep, accented voice intoned, and his own breath changed in sound and speed, so that sometimes he snorted, often shaking as if ridding himself of unwanted inner spirits. Sometimes other people in the class snorted or shook, and I wondered if anything that spontaneous and uncontrolled could happen for me.

And always the class ended with a long relaxation, everyone lying on their backs in complete darkness with Natvar’s voice guiding us to relax our toes, our feet – all the way up and through until I disappeared – to emerge blinking ten minutes later into the tidy, well lit lobby, to accept Anjani’s ginger tea sit on the carpeted floor and listen to Natvar entertain us with stories from his life.

“I call it Classical Yoga,” he said one night, “because it revealed itself to me when I was in India. I didn’t learn from anyone that it’s all about the breath. I know the yoga I teach is the essential, true, original yoga. And I named it Classical Yoga – ancient and classical like ancient Greece.”

That’s where he was from, Greece. When the war came, he said, they’d taken him to a village on a small island where relatives took care of him .”I saw the icons speaking to me in church,” he said in all seriousness. “The villagers spoke of me as a spirit child, a child with spirit gifts.” He laughed as if this was a little silly and added, “and when I was a little older back in Athens I found I could rub shoe polish on an icon and make it look ancient and people would pay money for them, thinking they were antiques.”

His life had some kind of magic to it – theater, travel, survival. I listened to his stories, amazed at what he had accomplished. I didn’t speak at all during these small gatherings. Eve sometimes teased him as if he were a peer, an ordinary person. She was a painter a few years older than me with a stud in her nose. She knew the Baba who Natvar sometimes talked about. It made me uncomfortable to hear Eve talk to Natvar so casually, watching her inadvertently revealing her own lack of awareness.

Natvar was not ordinary. I kept quiet because any words I thought of to say sounded pretentious and empty, floating in my head. He was sure of himself in a way I hadn’t seen before, in a way I longed to be. And he loved all of us – the five or six people who always seemed to be there for class. He loved us with bear hugs, and earlobe-pulls of affection, and we began to love each other in the same way, adopting his terms of endearment and enthusiasm.

“Okay,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll give his chanting night a go.” I knew Basil, my sister up in Boston, whose life was so appealing, had done some chanting and said it was great. Maybe, I thought, surveying again my New York City life that now, nine months since my return had still refused to flower in any way, I am too much in my head, maybe I need to find my way into something that isn’t about thinking.

Chapter Ten: MONDAY NIGHT

2011-08-18T07:15:00.000-04:00

Though he had turned me down up in Maine, within a few weeks of my return to the city Bill and Laura had broken up as I'd been so confident they would, and Bill and I picked up where we'd left off in San Francisco though now it carried more charge. Bill was a much more exciting person with his scrappy apartment and late nights of mad-man painting plus we both were falling upon our growing knowledge of health food as if we'd unearthed a new language, sharing new scraps of information back and forth.

Becoming a carpenter hadn't worked out, copyediting was proving not very interesting, and Scott had forbidden my idea of rehabilitating and reselling furniture I found in the street, saying he didn’t want his living room to look like a junk yard, so I started babysitting for a sweet Chinese American baby with the unlikely name of Christopher while his single stylish young mother went to work in the cosmetics industry. Their small apartment with a good address held almost no furniture as if Christopher's mother had just been caught unawares by motherhood and I felt called upon to inject as much life into my hours with Christopher as I could, pushing his carriage through the Rambles so that we both could pretend we were in the woods and talking to him as he sat in his high chair, accepting the spoonfuls of banana and baby food I offered. He rewarded my attentions by screaming with delight every time I showed up, bewildering his mother who was always in a rush to leave.

And I went to Natvar's Monday night chant, something I'd been avoiding for nine months. I hadn't wanted to chant. I had only wanted Natvar's school for its yoga classes, a place that would keep me young and beautiful and thin. I was afraid these things would fade and then what would I have? Geoffrey had once wondered out loud whether if I were in a disfiguring accident if he would still love me. He wasn't sure. It seemed like honest inquiry at the time, not less than I could expect. Looking good was the only currency I was sure of, something I traced back to my father because he knew how to look good too – in double-breasted suits and cravats and laced leather shoes. Looking good was the only thing about me that he liked. He didn't say it out loud, but the only time I saw his eyes light up was when in high school I dressed up to go with him to the city on a Saturday night to the Metropolitan Opera where he had subscription tickets. We were perfectly paired as the two in the family who knew how to glide through any crowd as if we belonged there, and yet within minutes of leaving the house in the car, I felt a speechless fury descend on me, fury that was not allowed to speak, was not allowed to hurt anyone else.

But Natvar's place had begun to feel like home, and I wanted to explore this unknown corner of this new home, chanting night.

On a Monday in late September I slipped into the meditation hall where normally we did our classes. This evening the lights were up higher than usual. The room was long and narrow with an aisle marked on the flat dark grey carpet with perfectly straight strips of what I now saw was simply masking tape. I sat cross-legged on the women's side of the aisle, just room for a couple of us to sit in each row, with the same amount of space for the men on the other side. There were about five of us there, sitting near the front, the long hall stretching empty behind us.

Natvar strode in from the sliding door, down the aisle and sat, facing forward, on the women's side on a thick colored carpet that lay in front of the wide elaborate purple velvet chair with the picture of the old Indian man propped up in its seat. That was Baba, the man Natvar and some of the others went to see in the Catskills on weekends. I had heard them talking about these visits with insider jokes and had stayed away from those conversations. I didn't like the word “guru.” It made me squirm. It was an embarrassing word, one that did not have a place in the Manhattan picture I wanted to be part of.

I wanted to get a scrappy apartment like Bill's in the East Village to write in, like my friend Meg with her darkroom had, but I couldn't think of a way to do that. It felt like all the buildings I walked by were locked with no way to penetrate. Other people had done it, but I knew I didn’t have the magic formula that would get me off the sidewalk and into an apartment of my own. But I cut my long hippy hair punk-short so it stood up in brazen tufts.

My father was in the hospital when I cut my hair. Not for any illness, more for a sort of resting cure. He'd come up with a reason to be in the fancy Manhattan hospital for a few days, and he seemed happy when I went to visit him. He could lie in bed. There were people to wait on him. And for a few days he didn't have to think about how he didn't have any money and really no home anymore. Although polite, I could tell he didn't like the short hair, but again I did not care. I was tired of my father's criteria for beautiful women. I felt strong in my short hair, my long loose lavender pants and spaghetti strap camisole, strong in a way that my father had never helped me find.

I didn’t figure out a way to make much money, but I thought of a way to spend less. I came up with the idea of moving into the tiny loft room off the kitchen in the apartment I shared with Scott. I'd give up my spacious corner room for the sake of a lower rent. Scott hadn't like the idea much. He'd rather have my higher rent – something I hadn't thought of – but I persuaded him easily and we put up a notice for a third roommate to take over my old room.

Scott and I, after six months of apartment sharing, were pretty easy buddies though his monochromatic life was almost as frustrating to me as my own. I hated how he moped about the girl who had left him a year before and complained about his mundane 9-5 job without quitting it. With his balding head and glasses, his long skinny body, 10-speed bike and dusty meditation shelf he looked to me like someone who would never accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish. One evening we were arguing in the living room, the kind of argument where I was trying to convince him of something, trying to get him to be different. He stubbornly refused to burst into flame or into blossom, just sat there flat and ordinary and in exasperation I picked up a cup and threw it at the wall behind him. “Wow,” he said, ducking. “No one’s ever thrown anything at me before.” He liked the excitement.

Chapter Eleven: ONE ANSWER

2011-08-18T07:10:00.001-04:00

In front of Natvar on the floor was a shiny wooden rectangular box with a short keyboard – black and white keys like a small piano. On the other side of the masking-tape aisle sat Mark cross legged in front of an oblong drum, the kind with two circles of stretched skin on either side and an oval of wood in between.

Anjani, in her quiet white clothes, had handed me a white laminated card when I had entered. I set it beside me on the floor. Natvar, his back to us, began to play the strange instrument in front of him, his left hand pumping a bellows, his right hand playing the black and white keys. The instrument had a haunting, plaintive sound, more like an organ than a piano. Mark began to gently tap the drum in rhythm. Eve, the woman with the stud in her nose, picked up a tambourine.

Mark was a regular, like me, but I had started to notice that he was almost always there when I arrived, helping Natvar in the little office off the lobby. And now here he was, playing the drum. I felt a little nudge of jealousy that he was perhaps closer to Natvar than I was. Natvar was always so enthusiastic and responsive when I was around it was hard for me to imagine that he might prefer Mark. But Mark was one of the people who visited Baba and joined in the conversations about how great the last weekend had been up in the Catskills. Maybe he'd been around Natvar's school for longer than I knew.

Mark was a couple of years older than me, in his mid-twenties, a boy with a sweet, wide face, round, pale-lashed blue eyes and a blonde head that was already half-bald. It didn't make him look any older. The first time I'd seen him after class a few months ago, lounging on the couch with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, I had thought, “That man is gay.” It was in his casual, fluid body, his sometimes half-closed eyes and lazy, easy smile. And I noticed his wide beautiful feet with their strong high arches. Sometimes as he sat on the floor or couch he'd absent-mindedly point them into curved white-socked parentheses. He was a dancer, he said without pride, studying with Merce Cunningham.

When I saw other people pick up their white laminated cards, I did the same. There was a column of words on the left in a foreign language and a column on the right, the English translation. People began singing the foreign language words. I liked the melody. It moved fast, and I liked Mark's spirited drumming and Eve's rustling tambourine.

The song reminded me of the Hungarian songs that my father sang in the car. Every time he drove he launched into these songs. I didn’t remember a time when I didn’t know his songs well enough to sing with him. He told me what each song was about – a soldier returning from the war, a pretty girl, a mother with nine daughters – and I sang, mimicking the words he strung together, not knowing when one word ended and the next began, but it didn't matter. I liked the fast ones, not the slow, sad ones in minor keys that my father was also so fond of.

That night at Natvar's, not knowing the melody or the strange words people were effortlessly singing, my eyes strayed over to the English translation and while everyone sang the hearty chant around me, I read that.

It was a prayer sung to the guru by the devotee. It spoke of how the singer was incomplete, only partially alive, like an unlit flame. It asked the guru to kindle my heart with your flame – jump start me. The song said that I contained everything I needed inside of me, but I just needed the guru's special touch to unlock that secret chamber and release all the power that has been stored up inside of me, waiting to come out. And that the only reason the guru existed was to help those who reached out to him.

I read the words silently, the music soaring around me. The words described how I felt better than any words I'd ever read before. I'd been in New York now for nine months and nothing had happened the way it was supposed to. I had nothing to show for it – no real new love to obliterate Geoffrey, no passion for a project, no hoards of friends calling me, asking me out, no parties to go to. I had strung together the people I knew, stretching them into a fabric of friendship, but I knew it couldn't hold much weight. I had quit my job to write, but those pathetic little things I wrote did not convince me that I was a real writer, a real artist. I was probably just another vapid dilettante.

Since I was twelve years old when everything had collapsed, I had sat on the sidelines and watched other people succeed – have friends, do things they loved doing, have faith in themselves as filmmakers or writers or painters or ceramicists – while it seemed that all I did was try and fail, try and fail.

But the song said I had something special and powerful inside of me. That sounded right. I did have something inside of me, and it was true that I did not know how to bring it out. Nothing and no one had ever said that to me before with so much conviction. This song knew how I felt. It reached out to me as if I were a member of a secret, underground society of people who had something so deep and important inside of them that it could only be given expression through very special means. For you, the song said, there is only one answer.

Chapter Twelve: IT FEELS NEW

2011-08-18T07:05:00.000-04:00

I felt different after the chant, in the days following. Maybe, I thought, maybe I could look into all this guru stuff more closely. Maybe this is what has been missing. Maybe I have been wrong about what a guru is.

I had been feeling like I’d been wrong about a lot of things for awhile. Peeling away from Geoffrey had meant stepping into waters I had not before included as important. Alyssa had told me they were and I had listened. And the images of my sister Liz’s happy new life in Boston was strong evidence that I had been focusing on the wrong things – I’d been too intellectual, too cold, too superficial. I must try to become different.

Liz was four years younger than me and from the moment she was born people pointed out our differences. The grown-ups who visited our house consistently remarked that I was “just like” my father, and Liz was like my mother. I liked the comparison. My father was the life of our party, the one who brought pleasure and fun into the room, the one who went on business trips and came back with presents, the one who other people liked. My mother was the awkward one who embarrassed me with the way she was plainer than other women, never dressed as prettily as they, and was always out of place in gatherings. My sister and my mother seemed well matched to me. I wanted to be like my father and until I was 12 it was easy to be with other kids most of the time even though I changed schools every year.

My confidence snapped in two overnight when I was 12. It happened in boarding school, a place I had gone to when I was 9 when we moved to England. I had loved it there the first few years – loved my friends and our games, loved the old building with its smells of floor wax, the nuns we could make fun of behind their backs. Until I accidentally befriended the wrong people and upset my social network and my friends openly turned against me. I asked my mother then if I could leave the school and without asking questions she readily enrolled me in the neighborhood school my sister attended. Boarding school, after all, had been my father’s plan, not hers.

When I entered the new school – not as special as my boarding school just because it was close to home – it was like my legs had been broken. A strength, a talent I used to have and take for granted, had deserted me and I found myself stuck on the sidelines of every group – any class, any conversation. It was like a shawl had been thrown over me and I couldn’t get out from under it. With real terror, I thought I had turned into my mother.

I fought it with every ounce of strength I had. I pretended nothing bothered me, while everything bothered me. I pretended I wanted to be alone. Every day through 12, 13, 14 – the return to the U.S. and American high school -- 15, 16, 17 – was living with the gross difference between how it should be and how it was, living with the secret burden of unrelenting failure.

Then came the night when I was 18, home from college for Christmas, and my sister swallowed a bottle of pills from my father’s medicine cabinet. It was such a large act, impossible even for my family to ignore though we did our best to right ourselves quickly and pretend it hadn’t happened. But my sister changed after that. No longer a wallflower, she began to have friends, a life outside the four walls of our quiet family. I watched her get boyfriends – boys she really liked, who liked her -- go to art classes and on camping trips, have huge enthusiasms and opinions, make dandelion wine in the kitchen. This while no boy called me, while I spent most days at school in silence, watching others talk and laugh, my company in the afternoons and evenings radio DJ’s and books.

And now, a few years later, still so sharply aware that my life felt far away from me, like a science project that would not behave, I watched my sister in her Boston life, in the house full of women who laughed and ate together. While I watched my sister make an animated film and cycle into the city to sell felt toys at a flea market – I had the nagging feeling that I’d been wrong and she’d been right. I’d been wrong to be popular and confidant and my father’s favorite. She’d been right to be shy and quiet and on the edge of things.

I had begun to try and soften the side of me that didn’t like softness, to do the things I was not drawn to. My own tastes became suspect. Maybe, I thought, coming out of the chant at Natvar’s school that night, maybe this is another thing I need to do. It doesn’t suit my plan, my Manhattan picture: I want to be Suzanne in the Leonard Cohen song. I want to be Bob Dylan’s woman who’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back.

But maybe I have to look back. Be softer. Not gag when I hear the word “guru.”

The words I’d read during the chant still pounded inside of me: you have something within you that is unique and special, strong and true. Despite the complete failure of my months in New York – it was pretty obvious that I was not really a writer, there were no lovers when there should have been many, no apartment in a cool part of town, no phone ringing off the hook – I felt the truth of the chant’s words. But the way to ignite that hidden time-bomb was news.

The prayer had said that that’s what a guru was for. Really? I had never thought of guru’s that way. I wanted to know more. If there was really something I could do that would bring me to life, I would do it.

I bought a book from Natvar’s bookstore, written by Baba, the man they liked to talk about. And as I read, it was as though Baba was whispering in my ear. Yes, he said, I know who you really are. I was once just like you, burning inside. I wanted a life that really meant something, and I have found my way there simply by serving my guru. Yes, that is all you need. A guru to serve. A guru is simply someone who has walked the path all the way to the end. You are at the beginning of the path. You have found a true guru. You are lucky.

Serving a guru? It was the last thing I wanted to do. Virginia Woolf had never done that. Woody Guthrie had never done that. So maybe I should.

I brought my friends one by one to Natvar’s school. As early fall became late fall I watched as my friends visited once and felt no need to return. I was shocked by their apathy. Hadn’t this always been – underneath it all – what each of us wanted? But none of them did. They were busy with other things.

My last few nights with Bill had been lack-luster. It was time to end it, I thought. At dinner in late November, just a couple of months after we had gotten going, I told him gently that I thought we should stop sleeping together. “I’m glad you said that,” he said with some relief, “I’ve actually gotten really interested in Stella.” I had introduced them, thinking that Stella with all her art connections might be able to give Bill some ideas about where to go with his paintings. Sitting in the restaurant I pretended that it didn’t matter to me who Bill wanted to sleep with.

A few days later I was sitting with a few others in the small, neat lobby of Natvar’s school after class. “The Institute needs someone to rent the back room,” said Natvar. “We could make it nice for someone. If you know of anyone who needs a place to live, please let me know. If we don’t find someone soon I don’t know how we’ll make the rent.”

The rent for the back room, I thought, would be even lower than what I was paying Scott for the little room off the kitchen. And I would be helping the Institute. I would be the only other person living there besides Natvar. We’d be the two hardcore meditators. If I was to have what Baba’s book promised, didn’t I have to not hold back? I wanted to be the solution to Natvar’s problem. I wanted to see the flash of pleasure in his eyes as I volunteered myself.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll move in.”

Chapter Thirteen: NEW HOME

2011-08-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

I packed to move into Natvar’s school. It didn’t take long. I threw out every letter Geoffrey had ever sent me, from the very first one declaring his love for me, and put a few boxes of books in storage with my mother. My parents and youngest sister, Agnes, had found a small cottage to rent by the month and weren’t living in someone’s spare room anymore. My mother was working a few jobs she found in the local paper – taking care of babies or old people. Although she had once worked as a biochemist, decades away from the field had left her obsolete, she said. My father too had a job from the local paper, a few hours of bookkeeping and some night work as a security guard.

There was no city work anymore for him it seemed. No more office in a skyscraper. No more secretary and business lunches. No more international business trips. My mother said he had to do something. I knew he hated doing anything for an hourly wage. He was supposed to be a great statesman, a great writer, a wealthy, recognized man.

A few months before he’d made one last stab at reviving his old self. It smelled of failure from the moment he showed me the three-ring binder he had assembled – black and white photographs of houses for sale. He’d gotten his real estate license. With the last couple thousand dollars left from the sale of the house, he said, he was going to the Arab Emirates for a week. He knew a couple of people there from the golden years of his career and he’d try and make a sale.

“How about I go pick up Dad?” I had said to my mother on the phone when the day of his return arrived. Whoever picked him up from the airport would have to also deliver the news that the one good car they had, the only thing of value, a fairly new Suburu, had just been totaled by Agnes. She hadn’t been hurt.

I volunteered, knowing how fragile my father was going to feel, returning from this doomed junket to learn that he didn’t have that car anymore. How were they to get another? I had no idea. There was no money anywhere. My mother had been going to work on a motorized bicycle until she’d had an accident just after my return from Nova Scotia. She’d been in the hospital for days, her jaw wired shut.

I was used to that feeling of no money anywhere -- the sense of lack and not enough and everything desirable being beyond reach – since we had returned from England when I was in high school. That was the first time my father didn’t have a job. But the sense of lack had gone into the red zone with my father’s sale of the house to pay his credit card debt.

And I was used to the sense that my father needed comforting and that, in the family, I was the best qualified. I knew I was the person he’d be happiest to see.

I picked him up that day, surmising immediately from his downcast expression and rumpled suit that the black and white photographs had produced nothing, and I had broken the news about the car. As we pulled out of JFK, my father spoke grimly from the passenger seat, “I have not felt this low since I was in New Haven,” and I knew he was talking about when he had been a young immigrant with no English, forced to take menial work, and of the suicide attempt that landed him in the hospital where my mother visited in the earliest days of their courtship. No one had ever said that my father tried to overdose on pills, but the hospital stay had been spoken of, and his deep depression at the time, and I just knew what the missing piece was.

When Natvar had told me how much rent I’d pay for the back room at the Institute, it was about $25 more than I had expected. But I didn’t complain. That would have been embarrassing. And probably wrong. Baba in his book always talked about how the good disciple did not try to change things, but was accepting of what came his way.

Natvar and Mark were waiting for me at the Institute on the January night when I moved in. They were hanging a bright saffron-colored curtain across the opening to my new room. Mark was up on a stepladder, Natvar handing him nails. The little room did not have a window. “This is your monk’s room!” Natvar called out with his brightest, warmest smile. “Baba must love you very much to want you under this roof!”

I smiled. I felt the warmth and welcome of Mark and Natvar. The lights were bright in the Institute, and the thought that Baba, even though we couldn’t see him could tell I was special felt very real. When I looked at the picture of Baba on the cover of the book I was reading it felt like a real person was looking back at me with a gentle, encouraging smile. My friends didn’t know this side of me, but Baba did.

I would be here for awhile, I thought, like I’d been everywhere else. I would do everything Baba said to do: repeat that mantra, meditate, serve, serve, serve, and then something would happen – that freedom would be unleashed. If he had done it, so could I. And this was more important than writing. And I hadn’t been a real writer anyway. This though – this yoga path – I was certain I could succeed at that.

Chapter 14: DO THE RIGHT THING

2011-08-18T06:55:00.000-04:00

“Now that you are here with me,” said Natvar that night, ruffling my hair after Mark had left to walk back to his apartment, “we can meditate together before breakfast. There’s nothing like it.”

This was just what I wanted – a real yogic life, just like Baba talked about in his book. Baba said that before dawn was the best time to meditate, the richest time, the time when you would reap the most benefits. And I’d be doing it alone with Natvar. I would be sharing his life. He would let me into it. We would become friends. The thought of becoming his lover had receded. He was too far away, too accomplished. He had a wife and two little daughters that he left every Friday evening to spend the weekend with on Staten Island, a secret life it seemed to me. So much of him was a mystery.

My alarm rang viciously in the dark the next morning, tearing me away from deep sleep, but I rose with determination from the piece of foam I had rolled out on the floor of my curtained-off back room and walked through the small shadowy lobby so different now from the bright people-filled place I knew it as. I stepped into the empty, dark meditation hall and sat near the front, near Baba’s chair.

I heard Natvar slide open the door, close it gently behind him and click the soft, dim spotlight on the photo of Baba’s face that sat in the chair. There were Baba’s soft, kind eyes, looking at me. He had brought me here, and I had come, doing just what he had told me to do. He looked pleased.

I heard Natvar’s feet softly on the carpet as he approached the chair. He knelt, touched his forehead to the floor then struck a match and lit the small candle on the side table next to the chair. He sat, closer to the chair than me, and then silence settled in, dark and heavy.

I sat with my eyes closed on the floor and repeated the mantra that Baba had said was the most powerful mantra in the world. All you had to do, he said, was say this mantra and you would be changed. But it was hard. One repetition, Om Namah Shivaya. Two repetition, Om Namah Shivaya. I just wanted to lie down and sleep. I straightened my back again. Third repetition.

I peeked through my closed lids to the illumined red numerals showing the time. I’d been there seven minutes. Om Namah Shivaya. Peek. Eight minutes. We had said we would sit for an hour. And then we’d go meet Mark for breakfast. Fourteen minutes. I was not going to make it. But I had to stay and sit. I couldn’t leave, not with Natvar sitting right there.

I had learned not to leave the room without kneeling and touching my forehead to the floor. It was a strange posture to take, even for a moment, but Baba said you weren’t bowing down to him, an old Indian man, but to your own true self, the self you wanted to become without restriction. Baba had managed that. He had merged with the divine so he represented it and to bow to him was to remind yourself what this was really all about.

I had never thought of God being inside of me. I had thrown God out with everything else when I was a teenager even though I had grown used to talking to him, asking him for things, begging sometimes, thanking sometimes. Five years with nuns and scattered attendance at Mass throughout childhood had left its imprint, which I had found pretty easy to erase.

But this was incredible and new. To think that God was actually that force inside of me that I could not find a way to express! And that the way to unstop the genie was to bow down, surrender, repeat a mantra, meditate. It felt so good to know what to do.

As we left the room together Natvar smiled with triumph. “That,” he said, “is money in the bank!”

I felt shy, walking with Natvar down the stairs to the street and the few blocks to the coffee shop where Mark was waiting with his huge smile and soft blue eyes. I waited in all moments for Natvar to take the lead so that I could follow, safe in his shadow.

“I’ll have a toasted bagel with a schmear!” said Natvar, laughing as we sat at the small table in the cramped morning coffee shop. “A schmear! Don’t you love that word?” And he repeated it slowly with all the vowels rounded on his tongue.

Natvar had been an actor back in Athens. He’d told us how he’d been chosen for the Greek National Theater and described his years there as stellar. He’d been lauded as a fresh young talent and then he’d given it all up and gone to London. “I didn’t want anyone to know I was Greek,” he laughed as he remembered. “I practiced my English in my room over and over to get the accent right. And I got a job in the smartest shop on Saville Row. Can you imagine? Me? A kid from the Greek islands selling silk shirts to the British aristocracy? They loved me! I sold ten times what anyone else did.” And he was right. He didn’t sound at all like the Greek waiters with their harsh vowels. His voice was deep, the accent British with an added unique flavor.

Mark, wrapped in an oversized gray woolen overcoat he’d bought at the Salvation Army, was already nursing a mug of black coffee. “Marta and I have been meditating!” Natvar enthused. “You should join us one morning!” He teasingly tugged on Mark’s earlobe then opened a menu and called to the waiter in Greek.

Bagels and cream cheese. All three of us ordered the same. It was cheap and Natvar said that because we were vegetarian we needed the protein. Natvar joined Mark in ordering coffee, but I abstained, still trying to follow all the rules and regulations about food that I’d been picking up over the last year. Natvar scoffed at my bags of raw carrots and celery. “You don’t need that,” he said. “I’ll show you how to eat.” And I was starting to believe that he knew what was best in that area too.

I had a new job by then. I was working part-time in a clinic for people who stuttered. Not really a clinic. A doctor had developed a technique that he said cured stuttering. He taught stutterers the technique which they had to practice at home and then send in their taped efforts for feedback.

My job was to listen to the cassette tapes, tape a response and send it back to them. I worked alone in a barren apartment that had been lightly furnished as an office. I sat at a desk and listened to the tapes of people struggling.

I didn’t trust this doctor. He lived next door to the house my father had just sold. He was balding, rich and overweight and I had never liked him.

The people on the tapes struggled to follow the doctor’s technique. He had told them it worked. He even had a book out about it. And I spoke into a small microphone, responding to the men and women I couldn’t see. I wanted to be kind to them. Give them some kind of hope. Make up for the make-believe doctor. The money was good though.

And in the evening I was home for Natvar’s yoga class.

“We should start to chant in the morning,” said Natvar. “Baba would like that.” We were gathered as usual after class, drinking ginger tea. “Anjani, you could get down from the upper East side, right? And Eve, it’s not far for you. And Marta, you would just need to get up a few minutes earlier to prepare the hall for everyone.”

Natvar had started sleeping at Mark’s apartment. He liked it, he said, because he could take a bath there. I went over once a day to bathe in Mark’s tub that sat in an enclosed space off the kitchen, his apartment a ratty walk-up.

Natvar showed me how he liked the candles lit for the morning chant. “Use these,” he said, “not those tacky wax things.” And he showed me how to thread the wick with a pair of tweezers through a special piece of cork that bobbed on top of oil in a dark blue glass votive candle holder. Sometimes it took a long time. The wax candles would have been so much easier. But Natvar liked these candles. They reminded him of the war, he said.

Chapter 15: THE HARD KIND OF EASY

2011-08-18T06:50:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I stayed in the Institute during the day. I had sort of hoped that there would be things for me to do there, but Natvar wasn’t around as much as I had expected. He often went out – to have coffee with Mark or to teach a private yoga class to his friend, Prince Michael.

Prince Michael was a real prince, one who had had to escape from Greece. He had loaned Natvar a lot of money in the past and Natvar was paying it off by giving Prince Michael two private classes every week. Sometimes Natvar would return with his Greek friend, Eva, a cheerful, blonde, red-cheeked woman, short and a little round. She treated him as if he were a buddy, a regular person. She even called him “Yanni,” his Greek name – Johnny. They’d known each other since theater days in Athens. They laughed and joked easily back and forth, and sometimes they stood on the street so Eva could smoke a cigarette. None of us talked to Natvar the way Eva did.

I felt out of place unless I was cleaning. It seemed the only way to fit into the picture, the best way I could be useful, helpful.

Natvar had been teaching us how to clean, first by insisting that we clean even the most remote places. The baseboards throughout the Institute had to be wiped down once a week. I had never noticed baseboards existed. We vacuumed every day and dusted and Natvar showed me how to flip the ends of the carpet near Baba’s chair in the meditation hall so that the fringes lay straight and in order. I had never paid attention to cleaning or what a room looked like. Not like that anyway.

“Who left the lights on in the hall?” he demanded one afternoon, striding into the lobby. “Anjani?” he barked. “You unconscious old woman, you?”

“Actually,” I said, feeling like I was offering my head onto the chopping block. “It was me.”

Immediately, Natvar softened. “Oh, well,” he said. “Try to remember. We have to keep the bill down.” I knew it was because I was new that he spared me. I wished for the time when he would no longer hold me at this distance, when he would know me long enough to not hold back. I hated the feeling I had when we were anywhere alone. It didn’t happen often, but if it did, even for a moment, I was uncomfortable, as if no matter what I did I was offending him, as if I were the most clumsy idiot physically and mentally.

From the right size rag to use and how to spread it wide instead of balling it up, I was learning from Natvar that there was a right way to do everything. Like the rose I bought every few days so there would always be a fresh one next to Baba’s chair. There was no money in the Institute. Natvar seemed to exist from one dollar to the next so I was happy to volunteer to cover the roses’ cost. My gesture pleased Natvar the first few times, but one day he didn’t like the rose I brought. “Look,” he said, grumbling, “this is no good. Look at this petal. It’s brown. Try the other shop. It’s a little more expensive, but I think their flowers are better.”

Now when I went to buy the rose I was nervous. I could get the wrong one. I examined each rose at the florist carefully, not sure what I was looking for. Sometimes I’d walk back and forth between the two neighborhood stores, weighing my options. Natvar had once run a florist in midtown so he could tell the difference instantly. He showed me how to snap the end off the rose’s stem – not cut it with a scissor or knife – and to immerse a good deal of the stem in water, not just the last inch or two. And to pull off any leaves that were underwater. What I thought of as a simple task -- one I could do with my eyes shut -- became an obstacle course.

But that was okay. Baba had gently warned in his books that the yogic path was not simple. Well, sometimes he said it was simple, but he also said that a dedicated yoga student had to be purified. He said not everyone was up for the task. Most people, he said, just got distracted by things like sex and parties or material wealth and gave up. I wasn’t going to do that. If I hung in, I’d become happy and free. The way Natvar was.

Chapter 16: THE NEW, THE FAMILIAR

2011-08-18T06:45:00.000-04:00

We chanted now early in the mornings every day during the week before breakfast in mid-winter New York City before the sun had even started to think about coming up. I didn’t like having to get up 45 minutes before everyone arrived to light candles, wave incense, set out the instruments and chanting books, but the fact that I didn’t like it was only something I had to overcome. I felt that to do things I did not like was what this path of yoga was all about, like eating food you didn’t like but which you knew was good for you.

And somehow it was familiar. Doing things you didn’t like to do seemed the measure of being an adult, of being tough enough. If my mother thought we were getting soft at home she called us “city slickers.” She was tough. She’d grown up tough on a farm in depression-era British Columbia, way out on the frontier. Comfort was never something I had gotten used to or even sought. Comfort had always seemed suspect to me.

Anjani made it down in the early mornings from her apartment, Mark and Natvar arrived from a few blocks away, Eve showed up and one or two others. And we chanted. For an hour and a half. A long slow chant in Sanskrit with Natvar playing the harmonium and Mark the drum. And then we flew down the block to the coffee shop and had our bagels and cream cheese and listened to Natvar and drank coffee.

I liked being with these people. I liked traveling in a small swarm. It was new to me, not to be alone. And I liked the notion that I was part of some small thunderous movement that had its finger on something novel, alive and meaningful.

“The people in Baba’s ashrams don’t understand Baba,” said Natvar. “But I do, and he knows that.” And he made faces, showing us how uptight Baba’s devotees were, how pious and self-important. With a puckered-up face he showed how they ate their food, repeating the mantra and not tasting anything. “We are different!” declared Natvar. “Plato said ‘Give me an army of lovers and I will conquer the world!’ That’s who you all are – my army of lovers!”

One night as we sat in the Institute’s lobby, Natvar picked up Anjani’s purse. “Why is this so heavy?” he demanded, half-teasing.

“Oh, just my things,” said Anjani in her wavering, self-deprecating voice. She had taken to spending the entire day at the Institute, leaving late at night to return to her apartment.

“What does an old woman like you need with so much stuff?” Natvar said, and dumped the contents of her purse out onto the floor. “Look at all this nonsense you cannot let go of. You’re afraid of death, that’s what it is.” His voice was forceful and strong.

“Oh,” Anjani tried vaguely to justify the pile of bits and pieces on the carpet. “You never know when you’re going to need a little something.”

“A little something,” mimicked Natvar. “A little something. That’s all you want out of life, isn’t it, Anjani? Just a little something, and that will keep you happy. I hate small-mindedness. You Americans are so small-minded. Not me! I started with nothing – a kid from the village – and look at me – I am conquering Manhattan!”

And he was, it seemed. I didn’t know anyone who had done so many things.

I sat and listened and watched. I could not speak in such charged moments as these. I didn’t qualify. None of us did. The best thing was not to be foolish enough to fight back. I had seen Mark and Anjani try once or twice and they just sounded pathetic compared to him. I didn’t want to make that mistake. And when he dismissed us as “Americans” this too sounded familiar. Both my parents had come to the States and never considered themselves Americans. “Americans” to them were usually people who were loud, chewed gum, were uncultured, ungraceful – the works. So Natvar’s similar put-down fell right into place. I had room for it.

“Mark’s apartment will now be our official annex!” announced Natvar one morning. “We can start cooking there since we are all spending so much time together. We will save money and eat better!” That Friday evening, instead of leaving us in a mad dash of fast kisses and running for the last ferry to Staten Island as he did at the end of each week, he called his wife to say he could not come, and we spent the weekend breaking down the wall between Mark’s kitchen and the next room so that now eight people could sit comfortably around Mark’s table, a long piece of white marble broken in two pieces but pushed together, something he had found in the street. I had never broken a wall down, didn’t know it could be done. It was thrilling to see you could change things like that if you wanted to.

The floor sloped a little. The stairway up to his apartment was dark, winding and slum-like. We scrubbed the kitchen that weekend in the ways Natvar had taught us. I never looked past the kitchen, down into the next two rooms. Somewhere back there Natvar and Mark slept. I was curious, but I tamped that down. It was none of my business.

Chapter 17: NEW ARRIVAL

2011-08-18T06:40:00.000-04:00

One Saturday afternoon after class, as we were vacuuming and washing tea cups in the tiny, spotless bathroom the front door bell rang. This didn’t happen often. We were trying to get more people to come to Natvar’s classes so there would be more money, but rarely did someone new come.

A young couple was at the door. They’d been passing by and had seen the display window downstairs with Natvar’s colorful flyers and the photo of Baba, and the young woman wanted to ask about the yoga classes.

They were newly-weds, they said, and seemed very in love. Tracy was about 20, petite and pretty in an all-American, freckled way. Her husband had a dark moustache and was studying to be chiropractor. She hung on his arm and smiled up at him with pride, and he thought she was the cutest little girl on earth. You could see all this in an instant.

The next Saturday Todd and Tracy showed up for class. Natvar had taken to staying in the city now til Saturday night, postponing his Staten Island home visit by a day and adding the Saturday morning class. As always, he led us through the routine set of postures that I knew by heart now in the low light of the meditation hall, bamboo flute music playing softly in the background. I could see that Tracy had a body like a rubber band that could bend easily in any direction. I wished I had that kind of effortless agility. She could probably do the splits, I thought.

At the end of class as we were all lying on our backs in the dark and Natvar’s deep voice was leading us through the deep, deep meditation that ended every class, I heard Tracy’s breathing erupt. I was pretty used to that in Natvar’s classes. Natvar often spoke about how yoga was about breath, not muscle, and his own breathing during the class sometimes shook his whole body as he snorted or made strange noises. He said it was the “shakti” moving through him. “Shakti” was a word that came from Baba and it meant – as best I could tell – the invisible yogic energy in the body and in the world, the energy that made things happen. Often in class other people would start making noise as they breathed and did the postures as if they were being overtaken by a force they could not control. But it didn’t happen to me.

Tracy though was huffing and puffing and snorting like a pro. In the lobby afterwards she seemed completely out of control, her arms sticking straight out in front of her with her fingers all pointing straight down. “It’s just a kriya!” Natvar was saying with delight, “just walk her up and down,” and Todd began to walk her up and down in the small square of lobby.

I’d heard about kriyas too. They were basically another name for the spontaneous movements that took over when the shakti was very strong in a yoga class or during meditation. Tracy was the most undeniable evidence I’d ever seen that these things could really happen, and they could happen in Natvar’s class.

I busied myself with the usual after-class tasks while Todd and Tracy paced up and down and Mark gave Tracy some chocolate to eat, which Natvar also said would quiet things down. How could this have happened to a girl who only just got here, who didn’t know anything about Baba? She must be a very special person.

Tracy finally was sitting down, her arms had relaxed and she seemed to be back on earth. “Come, both of you,” said Natvar to the pair, “come into my room for a few minutes,” and the three of them disappeared into Natvar’s room, the one he used to sleep in when he slept at the Institute, the one that was now his private study. I had never been in there. Anjani was allowed in to clean it and Mark was often in there. Mark was now our official “manager” of the Institute. Natvar had announced this pretty recently. He was going to help Natvar run the Institute and was our second in command.

Mark had something I did not. Natvar liked being with him, even slept at his apartment, went out often for coffee with him alone. I guess Mark managed not to be tongue-tied when he was alone with Natvar, something I could not manage. But that’s why I was doing all this. So that the fingers around my throat would loosen finally once and for all and I’d have that freedom that Baba promised, the kind of freedom Natvar so easily expressed.

When Tracy and Todd came out of Natvar’s room, Tracy’s face was shining. She came up to me with a huge smile and hugged me fiercely. “I LOVE it here!” she cried. “I can’t wait to come back!”

“Great!” I said, playing my role as warm hostess. Of course, I had to be happy that Tracy would be back, that she liked it so much. Everybody loved her so much. She had an innocence and eagerness about her. But she was new and I liked things the way they had been.

Chapter 18: FAMILY

2011-08-18T06:35:00.000-04:00

I go to visit my parents. They are living now in a nice two-story house, a small grey house with history on a plush estate. It’s a pretty good deal. They are renting it – again from someone my father met in church – this church-going having started as his financial world crumbled -- and it almost feels like home. We can pretend to be at home here. My parents work their strange little hourly jobs, but we sit in the kitchen and eat, and my sisters and I loll outside on the grass when it’s warm. Our family can resurrect here, reenact its usual patterns. I go for the weekend.

On Sunday afternoon, as I am about to leave, my parents sit me down alone in the kitchen. “We are barely making it,” they confide. “Would it be possible for you to get a full-time job again and help us out?”

“Sure!” I say. Sure. Of course I say “sure.” There is no other answer. The thought of my parents suffering or in need bends my heart and I must spring into action. I must say yes. It will mean an end to my life the way it is at the Institute, but that is of no consequence.

On the train back into the city I develop a migraine. I get them sometimes. This one is full-blown, piercing my temple and creating deep waves of nausea. I get back to the Institute and lie down behind my saffron curtain in the back. I am thinking how I must just sleep and wait for the pain to subside.

Mark whispers from the other side of the curtain. “Marta, do you want to join Natvar and me over at the annex? We’re going over for dinner.”

“No, thanks,” I groan. I briefly explain the migraine. The thought of food is worse than the thought of moving and conversation.

I hear Mark go into Natvar’s room. Then he comes back and whispers again. “Natvar says to come see him. He wants to talk to you.”

For this, I rouse myself. I walk the few steps to Natvar’s door and knock. “Come in,” he calls, and I enter for the first time.

Natvar is sitting with his legs outstretched on a single bed in the corner. He is barefoot and seems relaxed and also debonair in white yoga pants and a bright blue cotton shirt, a little like a fashion shot. It smells good. A lamp burns next to him on a nightstand where a pile of books is neatly stacked. There is very little else in the room, no seating. The walls are white. I notice this because I have heard how he and Anjani painted the dark paneling.

Natvar pats the side of his bed and invites me to sit. I sit not too close, out of respect. “What’s the matter, Marta? You should eat with us. It’s not good to miss a meal,” he says, his voice tender and inviting.

“Oh, I can’t,” I say. “My head is killing me and I feel sick. I can’t eat anything right now. I just have to try and sleep it off.”

“How did your visit home go?” Natvar asks.

I start to tell him. I start to tell him how they have asked me to get a full-time job and within a few words I have burst into tears. I am not one to cry easily, and certainly not in front of Natvar, but these tears will not be held back.

Natvar listens and then says gently, “Don’t worry. You will not have to go to work. Baba will take care of your parents. Invite them to come stay with us for the weekend. They can take the Intensive for free. Maybe they can sleep at Eve’s apartment.”

I am astonished at this offer. Natvar has been planning what he calls this “Intensive” for some time, a whole weekend of chanting and meditation and yoga. He says it will be very special – and he will let my parents come for free!

I thank him with all my heart.

“And now you must eat something,” Natvar repeats. Again, I say this is impossible.

“Just some dry toast,” Natvar urges, “and then some aspirin. Come on, it will help.”

Just the thought of it stirs up the nausea. But an hour later Mark returns from the annex with the dry toast and brings it to where I am once again lying down. “Here,” he says, handing me the plate and a glass of water with two aspirin.

I take a few bites of the toast. It is not as bad as I had thought it would be. I swallow the aspirin. I lie back in the darkness. I relax. I soften. I sleep. The migraine is gone.

Chapter 19: Confirmation

2011-08-18T06:30:00.000-04:00

My parents readily accepted Natvar’s invitation. They drove into the city and found their way to Eve’s artist apartment. I had never been there, but my parents said it was perfectly comfortable.

I had high hopes for the Intensive. Natvar had spoken of it with great promise. I had stood out on Central Park South, handing out fliers, inviting people to come. Natvar said we must each do whatever we could to bring people to the Institute, even if it meant standing out on the street. So I volunteered. I was always volunteering, trying to pick the jobs that no one else wanted. I wanted to be the gutsiest, the bravest, the one who didn’t let anything hold her back.

I told myself that I picked Central Park South because rich people walked on those sidewalks, people who could afford the $150 for a weekend Intensive. But as I stood on the pavement, braced for rejection, my hand outstretched to strangers who ignored me, I took comfort in being in a place that was familiar. I had walked here many times with Geoffrey. The wealthy side of his family lived on this street and it made me feel like I was back in my old life for a moment, one I still craved. I searched the passing faces for Geoffrey’s stepmother or father, but no one I knew was out that day.

My parents sat in the meditation hall with the rest of us – every candle and stick of incense in place, every picture on the wall dusted, the carpet sprayed with Jean Naté to give it the special scent that Natvar said Baba loved. No new people had come besides my parents, so there were about 10 of us there. I had been up late the night before with Natvar, Mark and Anjani, preparing special foods we would be serving for lunch in the lobby.

Mark was the M.C. He stood and spoke into the microphone, being his friendly, buoyant self, welcoming everyone and pointing to Baba’s picture on the big chair, explaining who Baba was and how everything that was to take place this weekend was all because of Baba’s grace. That even though Baba was far away in India, he was also very present with us. “So, just relax,” said Mark. “Let your hair down, so to speak, and Baba’s grace will take care of everything.”

“What is wrong with you?” I could hear Natvar bellowing at Mark from the inner sanctum of his room during the break. “Telling them to ‘let their hair down?’ What kind of stupid American nonsense is this?” My parents didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary as they sipped their tea in the lobby. I wondered how they had received all that stuff about Baba, the guru. They were smiling and acting like polite house guests, and it seemed to me that pretty much anything would be a relief to them after the months of almost-homelessness and no money. Natvar was treating them as if they were royalty and I felt like the Institute was a calm shelter in the jarring storm that had become their lives.

We spent most of the weekend in the semi-darkness of the meditation hall – chanting, meditating, doing Natvar’s series of yoga movements. At one point, while we were meditating, Natvar walked around, going from one person to the next, lightly swatting us with a bunch of long peacock feathers wrapped together at one end with a band of turquoise velvet. Usually the feathers stood next to Baba’s chair. I knew Baba used them to bestow special blessings. Now Natvar was doing it for him. When he came round to each of us he pressed the spot between our eyebrows hard. As he made these rounds I could hear Natvar’s breathing becoming very strong, the way it did during his class, but even stronger. I could smell the musky heena oil he had put on for the Intensive, an oil he said was very special, something else he had brought from India. I could hear Eve whooping, as if the yogic energy had taken her over. Again, I wondered how my parents were doing.

At the end of the weekend Natvar passed the microphone around, asking people to describe their experiences. When the mic came to me I spoke about how much the Institute meant to me. I spoke in superlatives so that there would be no doubt anywhere. I wanted my parents to hear me, to know I was in another place now, a place separate from them.

“Thank you,” both my parents said as they were leaving. “Thank you for a lovely time.”

Then Liz wanted to come see my yoga school. I had been up visiting her a few weeks before I moved into the Institute and she had held a talent show in her house for all her friends. I had brought her an old tambourine that I’d found in a flea market as a gift, and for the show I had played it and sung them the fast, jolly Sanskrit chant that I had learned that first time I’d gone to Natvar’s chanting night.

The crowd and both my sisters had loved it. It was the first time I felt like I’d made any mark at all in my sister’s Boston world and now she was expressing interest in seeing the place I’d been talking about for so long.

Liz came and spent a weekend, taking Natvar’s yoga class, eating with us and sleeping next to me in the lobby. She sent us a card afterwards, describing a dream she had had while she was with us, a dream about a mantra. It seemed sacred and profound, and further proof that the Institute was an important place. I took the card to Natvar where he was sitting at the desk in the small office, carefully lettrasetting that week’s ad for the Village Voice, pasting down one letter at a time onto graph paper. “Ahh,” he said, with approval, “she’s one of us.” And I was proud and soothed – proud that I had a sister who could please Natvar, proud too that I had dropped all those silly intellectual pretensions I used to have, my old cynicism and critical attitude and had managed to connect with Liz, the sister who always seemed a mile away from me no matter how close we were. My friends had fallen away, but I had managed to forge something meaningful with my sister.

Agnes too came up for a visit from North Carolina where she was living in a trailer in the woods with a boyfriend. She too seemed to take in every detail of the Institute and even bought one of Baba’s chanting tapes from our bookstore. I was glad she did. We really needed the money.

Chapter 20: SHAKEN

2011-08-18T06:25:00.000-04:00

Liz wrote to me again, saying that she had liked Natvar’s yoga place so much that she had looked up Baba’s ashram in Boston and was going there once a week. “Oh, those idiots don’t know what they are doing,” scoffed Natvar when I told him, and I remembered how one evening that past fall, a few days after I’d been to my first chanting night, I’d visited Baba’s ashram on the Upper West side near the apartment I had shared with Scott. I had reported my visit to Natvar the next day, expecting his pleasure at my enthusiasm. “What did you waste your time there for?” he had demanded. “We are much closer to Baba here.” And I had never returned.

I felt lucky that I was with Natvar, with someone who really understood yoga and Baba, someone who didn’t just do what other people told him to do, but who had a direct and authentic experience of yoga. I was close to a real source! Natvar spoke of Baba’s ashrams as if they muffled the true experience of yoga. I wondered, briefly, how Baba could allow this in his own ashrams, but it didn’t really matter. Baba had given me Natvar to learn from. I read a few lines of Baba’s book every night before I slept, certain that his words of hope and encouragement were spoken directly to me.

Tracy and Todd were coming every weekend now as spring moved into summer. It was really Tracy who was passionate about the place. I could tell that Todd was there just because she was so insistent. Whenever Tracy arrived she gave us all body-squeezing hugs. Her smile was always huge and she, like me, wanted to do all the hard jobs. I felt like I had a new little sister.

A quiet gentle woman from Bolivia had also started coming almost every evening when she got off work at an import/export office. Natvar liked Carmen’s cooking – “Ah, finally, someone who understands food!” he exclaimed while Carmen smiled shyly behind her big glasses. She began making dinner for all of us several nights a week, shopping while we did the yoga class and having a hot meal ready as we tramped in at 9:30.

We sat now for hours around the broken marble table in the kitchen of Mark’s dumpy apartment that we had cleaned so thoroughly. After we ate, Carmen took up her place behind Natvar’s chair and massaged his shoulders. She was short and had a middle-aged, maternal quality though she was probably not more than 30 I guessed.

All evening Natvar talked. Nothing anyone else said could compare. Who of us could talk about being a child in the war in a village on a Greek island, or becoming a star in the Greek Theater in Athens, or living in London and learning English so well no one guessed he was Greek, or becoming a brilliantly successful yoga teacher and teaching in the Bahamas, or running a juice bar on the Upper East side so well that even Greta Garbo began to come and ask him to walk with her and said he was the only person she could talk to.

I washed the dishes each night in the deep, cracked porcelain sink, my back to the group, Mark often helping. And then we rejoined the group at the table, staying often til midnight. I walked back to the Institute afterwards alone and slept just a few hours before getting up in the dark to light the candles and prepare the hall for the morning chant.

Each day I felt fatigue hanging over me, but I fought it back, a weakness to overcome.

One night Tracy and I were preparing to sleep on the floor of the lobby. Tracy had taken to spending a night with us whenever she could steal away from her Long Island home, and I had long since given up on sleeping in the back room. It was much cooler in the larger space of the lobby.

Tracy and I had just lain down when the phone rang in the small office. I jumped up to answer. I wasn’t used to answering the phone at the Institute. That was Natvar and Mark’s job. It was Sonya, Natvar’s wife. I was instantly wary.

I had never met Sonya nor spoken with her. All I had were Natvar’s stories of her.

I had heard how Natvar had met her in the Bahamas, how he had seen her for the first time, coming up out of the ocean onto the sand, her long hair wet. “She looked like a Botticelli,” Natvar had told us. I had heard how they had married though she was only 17, and how they had gone first to live with her parents in Staten Island. Natvar didn’t like her parents and he began not to like her. “Can you imagine,” he’d said to us, “the first morning, she puts her feet up on the table and says, ‘What’s for breakfast, Ma?’”

I didn’t quite understand what had disgusted Natvar about that scene, but I did not question him. It was my job to catch up with him, not ask him to slow down for me.

Natvar had long since stopped his old routine of catching the last ferry on Friday night to spend the weekend with his wife and two daughters. “You are all my family now,” he said, embracing us with his words. I loved it when he said things like that. Sometimes the little girls came to stay with us for a day or two on weekends.

“Natvar isn’t who you think he is,” Sonya was saying to me on the phone, her voice grave and humorless. “He is having an affair with Mark, you know. They are sleeping together. They are lovers.”

Her words hit me in the gut, but I was not going to give in to her. I didn’t like her voice, the way she was calling me behind Natvar’s back. She was trying to break us up. I wasn’t going to let it happen. “Thank you,” I said. “Good night.”

“Who was it?” asked Tracy from the darkness.

“No one,” I said. Tracy was too new. She couldn’t know this. I would save it for the morning. I would talk to Natvar and Mark about it. It would bring us closer together. I held my secret close.

So Natvar and Mark were lovers, I thought. This was one more thing I would just have to bear. He had chosen Mark over me. It was official. I must not let that bother me. What would that be but stupid vanity.

In the morning, after yoga class I asked to speak with Natvar and Mark alone. I told them about Sonya’s call, and as I spoke I allowed a few tears to creep into my voice. They weren’t completely honest tears. I wanted to be comforted. Surely, I deserved to be.

“That bitch,” said Natvar decisively. “What did you say to her?” His eyes were unconcerned.

“I didn’t say anything. I pretty much hung up on her,” I said.

“That’s my girl,” said Natvar, laughing. I had pleased him. I’d been strong. I hadn’t let Sonya shake my faith.

Chapter 21: OBEDIENCE

2011-08-18T06:20:00.000-04:00

Sometimes Natvar’s two little daughters came to stay on weekends. Soon, they came every weekend. Electra was about seven. She had a strong face with dark eyes and straight, dirty-blonde hair. There was something tough about her as if she was born to be an older sister whose job it was to protect younger, weaker people.

Iolanthe was the little one. About four or five. A lisping blonde bundle of cuteness and prettiness.

I still hadn’t met Sonya, their mysterious mother, but it was my job to walk with the girls back to the Institute after lunch for their naps. Natvar had started calling for post-lunch naps, saying the girls needed them, he needed them. I longed for a nap. The summer was creeping in with heat, and after a lunch of rice and black-eyed peas salad I wanted nothing more than to lie down on the floor of the lobby alone and sleep. I slept so little at night these days.

Natvar had started evening chants now in addition to the Guru Gita chant in the mornings. When there wasn’t a yoga class we set up the drum and harmonium in front of Baba’s chair, and the chanting cards with all the strange Sanskirt words. We set the hall perfectly as always with candles and incense and sat in tidy rows, the five or six of us.

I liked the rousing melody of this evening chant. And then too Natvar had said that we should do a special chant for half an hour every day at 5:30. It was a loud chant for which we had to light about eight little cotton wicks in a brass holder that Natvar waved in front of Baba’s chair while ringing a bell with his other hand – the rest of us standing behind him, chanting cards in hand.

My voice had become hoarse from all the chanting. But I didn’t stop. The hoarseness was a badge of my effort, proof that I was giving this yoga every ounce of strength I had. I was sure it would be worth it. In a year or so, I’d see a difference, maybe any minute. Baba said in his books it wouldn’t take long, but I knew there was something wrong in wanting to measure enlightenment in time. “Just trust the guru,” said Baba. Said Natvar.

Fine. It was easy to trust the guru. I liked having that as my only instruction.

The girls walked back with me the few hot blocks to the Institute. Now that their Dad wasn’t present they were bolder. They didn’t want to take those naps that Natvar had told me sternly they must have, the naps to which they had solemnly agreed ten minutes before.

“Let’s play with our Barbies!” squealed Iolanthe.

“How about I tell you a story?” I countered, lying down beside them in the lobby, watching the clock, mourning every minute that I had to remain awake. “Once there was a beautiful princess…”

I wove the story for weeks. Sometimes they fell asleep quickly, sometimes not at all. On those days I’d pull myself up at 4 o’clock to prepare the Arati chant. I just had to do my job perfectly, not misstep, not make Natvar angry. That’s what I had to do. There were no choices.

Once as we sat in the lobby on a Sunday, Electra said something to her father. Said something. Not something meant to incite. A careless comment. Natvar’s hand was swift, striking her hard on the head.

The child did not move. Her face froze, the tears held at bay by sheer will. I watched. Natvar did not make mistakes. Natvar always knew what he was doing. Natvar only acted out of love. No one said anything.

Chapter 22: WHERE I AM

2011-08-18T06:15:00.001-04:00

One evening I came into the Institute after working a few hours at the stutter clinic. Mark and Natvar had clearly been on a project all afternoon by themselves. They had taken the sliding door off the closet in the narrow hall that led from the front door into the lobby. They had taken everything out of the closet and, using one of the old closet doors, built a counter top across the opening.

“Now we can keep vigil,” Natvar declared. “There must always be someone sitting here, ready in case anyone stops by for information.”

It was beautiful, the new counter, so clean and neatly done. I never would have thought of such a thing, and even if I had thought of it, I never could have executed it so deftly. Mark and Natvar could do things like this. It was one of the reasons Natvar liked Mark so much.

I had never been able to build or sew or manipulate materials with my hands so that they came out the way they were supposed to. It felt like a family trait, impossible to escape. I came from a clan of people who made messes and pretended they didn’t matter – my mother’s stews didn’t come out quite right, the sleeves in her handmade dresses were bunchy when they should have been smooth, and my bangs when she trimmed them slanted steeply across my forehead. “Oh, well,” my mother said when things did not come out right. When I tried to make things – when I began anything that seemed important -- I had the sense of giving up almost before I started, as if I was fooling myself that I could outrun failure.

But when Mark or Natvar made something it came out perfect.

The vigil schedule that Natvar insisted upon felt like another mythic task to endure. Vigil shifts meant sitting at the counter, doing nothing. No one came to our door, or very rarely. I felt though that this was part of the challenge. To sit there anyway, and I pretended to be enthusiastic.

I made the schedule and put me, Anjani, Carmen, Eve and Tracy on it. Sometimes David, a vain boy who hoped to be an actor. I gave us all shifts “on vigil.” Without asking, I did not put Mark on the schedule. Mark felt too special. He was too much part of Natvar’s private world. He got to meet Natvar for coffee, sometimes with Eva joining them, a threesome I would have been so uncomfortable with I was almost glad I was not invited. Almost. I wished I were someone they wanted to be with, a person who found it easy to chat in a coffee shop.

I was used to being quiet. Used and not used at the same time. It had hit when I was twelve years old. An almost-real muteness had descended on me. I’d been a popular, easy kid until then. We had moved around a lot, I’d been in a different school every year or two, but I had always found friends quickly. Something snapped when I changed schools when I was twelve.

From then on I felt out of place amongst people and was never at ease again. I stopped talking almost completely. Any words I thought of to say seemed stupid, wooden. And when I did speak it was only to fake it, to pretend this was not happening, to pretend that I didn’t feel like a gag had been wrapped around my face.

One day at lunch in Mark’s apartment, the “Annex,” Anjani, in her old woman’s voice, said, “Oh, listen. How lovely, the sound of children laughing.”

Natvar’s roar jolted us all. “Shut up, Anjani,” he boomed. “When will you stop talking such utter nonsense? ‘The sound of children laughing,’” he mimicked her in a high sing-song voice. “What kind of old woman nonsense is this?” He continued, his voice loud and strong, while Anjani sat silent. I stayed quiet too. I could sort of see what Natvar was talking about though I wouldn’t have noticed anything if he hadn’t said anything. Probably Anjani was just making empty small talk. And I would have let her. I would have probably answered her in similar small talk. It was so easy to make a mistake.

One evening, right before class, a young African-American man stopped by the Institute. He was younger than me, still a teenager, slightly heavy set, brooding, and very dark-skinned. He said his name was Kenny and he wanted to take a yoga class. He was shy and found it hard to look you in the eye.

I didn’t think we'd see him again. He didn’t look like someone who was going to get into yoga, but he started coming around, and when he did Natvar greeted him with the huge hello, the bear hug, the making much of. I was always friendly, always welcomed Kenny as was my duty, but he made me a little uncomfortable. He scared me a little, and I never really wanted to add that extra chair to the marble table in Mark’s kitchen. For anyone. But Kenny soon qualified.

For one thing, he was strong. When Natvar needed a mattress brought up from the street, or the stove moved so we could clean behind it – Kenny was there. “Kenny!” Natvar would cry, “Kenny-mou,” adding the Greek suffix of affection. Natvar called him Kenny-mou so often, Kenny soon had a nickname. We called him Mou-Lou. It made Kenny laugh softly to hear his new name.

When he could, Kenny slipped into the meditation hall by himself. I knew he liked to sit at the back in front of the small altar set up for Baba’s guru, Nityananda. A tabletop black statue of Nityananda dominated the small altar. Kenny told me solemnly several times how the statue spoke to him, how he saw bright light emanating from it, how he had experiences of levitating in front of that statue so that he was looking down on the room from the ceiling. I said nice, encouraging things, the kind of things a school teacher or a big sister would say.

But I was jealous. Why was a kid from Harlem who hadn’t even read Baba’s books – why was he having the kind of experiences Baba described having?

A month or two after Kenny first appeared Natvar told him to start wearing deodorant. Kenny stormed out of the Institute and disappeared for three days. "That's it," I thought. But Kenny came back. He found a tiny black kitten in the stairwell of Mark’s apartment building. He brought it to the Institute, cuddling it against his chest. “His name is Nityananda,” said Kenny.

I watched how soft Kenny was with the little kitten, saw a gentleness and sensitivity in him that I was not sure I possessed.

Not A Chapter, An Interlude

2011-08-18T06:10:00.000-04:00

This morning I got a call from one of the characters in the memoir I am currently writing and posting at Memoir In Progress.

She is not someone I am regularly in touch with. She said she was “livid” that I am using her real name in the book. “I can’t tell you not to write this story,” she said, “because it’s your story, but you have no right to use my name or my sister’s.”

I said, fine, I would change the names. They’ve only just appeared in the book. I would only have to review one chapter to make the changes.

“You’re quite the memoir writer, aren’t you,” she sneered, wanting to continue the conversation.

I said that I had gotten the message, would change the names and hung up.

I was shaking. Her fury was so apparent. Just like when the ashram called me and told me to take down my blog.

I don’t mind changing the names. I can even sympathize with a request to change them. But her fury was an add-on. I knew I had touched a nerve. My writing must have some life in it.

I do not write to hurt other people. I am not mean. And the only reason I hadn’t changed this character’s name is because she is a child in the story, absolutely blame-free, a victim of the menace at the center of my story, not a perpetrator.

I don’t think her anger has anything to do with the names. It’s an excuse. Now that the names are changed (I did it right away, it was easy) I don’t think she’ll be any less furious.

She’s trying to protect something. She’d rather I didn’t write at all. It is not herself she is trying to protect. She is only a child in the story, one that readers will sympathize with. I believe she wants to protect the version of the story that she believes in.

It’s interesting. That's really the definition of a cult. People sign up to protect a story that they all agree on is true though they have not examined it, have not tested it. When that story is threatened, people in cults get very angry. They do all they can to squelch the alternate version.

This is why cults are so dangerous, and evidence of how cult-like thinking is much more pervasive than most people imagine. This is why I think it is crucial to write. It is the best weapon – perhaps the only one – against cults and the erasure of individuality that they insist upon.

Chapter 23: TIGHT ROPE

2011-08-18T06:05:00.000-04:00

The sweetest moments were when we walked through the streets with Natvar, usually from the Institute to the Annex, all of us in a knot. I strained to hear what he was saying, trying to find ways to participate and respond though still it felt like he was speaking a language for which I had almost no vocabulary. I loved the fleeting moments when he held my arm as we walked. The intimacy of his grip made everything – the endless work, the short nights, the precise schedules we had to keep and the stormy lectures – all worthwhile. I knew Tracy loved it too when he chose her arm to hold. I knew by the way her small body almost melted into his, how she looked up at him with her wide childish smile, her charm turned on to its highest wattage. Most often though, Natvar chose Mark to walk with and Mark smiled at such times, at ease, not melting like me or Tracy, strong and confidant in being the chosen one.

One evening Natvar and the others walked me back to the Institute, a warm summer night. Natvar stood at our door on the street. He faced the hardware store next door. “Our landlord,” he sneered, looking at the metal gate that had been pulled across the entrance for the night. “How many times have we asked him to put a light in down here? Bums are pissing here because it’s dark, but he doesn’t do anything. Hah! I’ll show him!” And then Natvar was pissing in the dark, spraying back and forth, up and down, and laughing.

I laughed too. He was going against everything the way I knew it to be, changing everything, hurling things I had assumed were nailed down. This is why he hated the pious faces he said were in Baba’s ashrams. If you practiced yoga you weren’t supposed to make your point by pissing in the street. This was why I was glad I was with him. I wanted to go against the grain too.

“That should show him,” said Natvar. “Now if only we could put a nice big turd on his doorstep in the morning. Then maybe we’d get our light.”

“I’ll do it,” I piped up. I wanted to cross the border, get into the country where Natvar lived, where you could make your own rules and be stronger than everybody else.

I slept as usual alone in the Institute and awoke before dawn to set the hall for the chant. But first I laid my offering on a piece of newspaper in front of the hardware store door.

“I did it!” I told Natvar, shrugging off the shame. I knew Mark wouldn’t have done it, nor Anjani, nor Eve. This was something I could do though. I could be daring. I could make a fool of myself.

“That’s my Marta!” said Natvar with a shout of delight and I felt the exquisite warmth of his arms around me, the perfect temperature of his approval and praise. “She’s the only one I can count on!” he added, and in the moment his words sounded true as if despite Mark, his wife, the others, he and I had an invisible fundamental bond that he knew about and I knew about no matter how often he seemed not to notice.

“I know how it was when you first met Todd,” mused Natvar one late night as we sat around the marble table, Carmen standing behind him with her big round glasses and a gentle maternal smile on her lips as she massaged Natvar’s shoulders. Tracy was with us and Todd was not that night. He had to study for his chiropractic exams. “ I bet you couldn’t stop fucking, could you?” Natvar had a smile on his face. “You fucked all night and then you’d go to school and you’d fuck all afternoon, right?” Now he was laughing. “You thought Todd was a movie star, right? Every afternoon you tied a big bow on his prick, right? And then you got married, two little country mice!” He roughed up her hair as if she were a puppy dog and Tracy giggled.

“It was just like that!” she said.

It was as if Tracey and Natvar shared something I didn’t know about. I would never have guessed that Todd and Tracy had screwed so much and so joyfully. Afternoons like that hadn’t happened in my life. I had seen Tracy’s perfect little home on Long Island when she invited us all to lunch, had seen the macramé, the houseplants, the cute furniture and hooked rugs, and eaten the perfect meal that she had prepared. Natvar had showered her with praise for her home and her food, and sex hadn’t seemed to have much to do with any of it, but again Natvar had seen what I could not see.

It was deep summer now, six months since I’d moved in, and finally Natvar said what I had been hoping he would say for a long time. “I think Mark and Marta are ready to teach classes.” Become a yoga teacher in Natvar’s school! This was progress! I was proud. Maybe my life really was taking shape.

“Come,” he said, “teach me a class and let me see how you do.” We went to the meditation hall and I took my place at the front of the hall in Natvar’s usual spot, facing him the way for the last year and a half he had been facing me.

I moved through the poses just as I had learned them from him in the same precise sequence, doing my best with my words to convey not only what movement to take, but how to go more deeply into it. I kept my focus inside, paying almost all my attention on the movement of my breath, letting it guide me, letting it define how far I stretched. I gave myself to that experience as I auditioned as fully as I could.

“She will be a great teacher,” Natvar declared when it was over. I had passed.

I began to teach the Saturday morning classes. There were only two or three people at a time who came, stragglers, people who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. But they paid and we needed every penny to buy groceries that night, to buy the fresh rose, the next box of incense, the Village Voice ad for the week. I didn’t think too much about the rent and the electric bill. Mark took care of those big bills somehow.

Geoffrey wrote to me. He was going to be in town, he said. I hadn’t seen him since I’d left L.A. 18 months before. I had a new life now, one that was strong enough to show him. I felt the lure of Geoffrey and could not wait to be with him again. I told Natvar he was coming. “Invite him to your class,” he suggested, “and then why not take the afternoon to be with him?”

Geoffrey agreed. He arrived at the door and I let him in – his dear face, his dear voice, my whole life that I had left behind – all of it – the pot, the late night TV, the steaks and ice cream sundaes. It was all there as Geoffrey stepped inside, his jeans drooping, his tee shirt wrinkled. “Hi,” he said out of one side of his mouth, half friendly, half ready to be unimpressed. Our kiss was light and businesslike.

“We take off our shoes,” I said, fearing his scorn.

“Okay,” he said, pulling off his sneakers, still willing to go down this strange trail that I had pioneered.

That he was even here was brand new, something he never would have done two years ago. Maybe he did love me, I dared to hope. Maybe something can happen. Because the draw to him was as strong as ever. I wanted just to go home with him, but of course I could not. I didn’t even think about it.

Instead I stood before him and two other people in the darkened meditation hall and taught class. I was conscious of the huge velvet chair behind me with Baba’s picture on it, the candle burning, the incense, the flute music – all things that indicated how independent from Geoffrey I was now, how I had found a new life. Even the clothes I wore – the baggy cotton pants instead of Levi’s – told him I had found new things he had not shown me.

After, we drifted out to the lobby. The other two students sat for tea. Geoffrey walked into the tiny bathroom and began to pee, loudly, leaving the door wide open. I snatched the door closed, humiliated, confused, his action so out of place in this pristine place.

Elektra and Iolanthe were playing alone in the lobby while I changed out of yoga clothes in the back and when I came out Geoffrey was playing with them. Iolanthe was giggling and asking him to color in her coloring book and he was picking up the crayon with his left hand and coloring in the dragon. I didn’t have moments like this with the kids. My moments were mostly about getting them to nap on time, or to walk more quickly so we wouldn’t be late for lunch, Natvar’s shadow always hanging over me, ready to tell me I was falling short. I envied the playfulness that seemed to come easily to Geoffrey. I envied it and also felt relieved by it. Maybe we wouldn’t fight. Maybe things would be all right.

“He’s cute,” whispered Natvar in the office. “Go! Have a nice time.”

Chapter 24: SHORT LEASH

2011-08-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

I chose the dress I’d bought the year before, a Laura Ashley sleeveless white shift with tiny red polka dots. It was the high ruffled neckline that I liked so much. I wore it even though Roy, my short-lived boyfriend last summer, had said clearly when I took him to the shop to show it to him that he hated the dress. But I felt pretty in it and I wore it for my afternoon with Geoffrey.

Geoffrey and I clumped down the stairs outside the Institute’s front door and out onto Eighth Avenue. It felt strange, like being underwater, in a different atmospheric pressure to be out, alone, with a boy, one who had an electric hold on me. “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Let’s just walk,” I answered, and we did, ambling until we came to a small, empty playground behind some apartment buildings. It reminded me of a playground I had gone to with him one night almost ten years previous, our first summer. I remembered a light rain falling. I remembered crying in his arms, just for the sweet relief of crying in someone’s arms. I wasn't crying about anything in particular. It felt like tears that had been held back for a long time.

Geoffrey talked about the job he had now back in L.A. A job? He’d never had a job for all the years I’d been with him. And it was in a health food store, no less. This boy who refused to eat anything green, who liked his steaks rare, his fries greasy, his ice cream with hot fudge. Maybe, I thought, maybe he is changing a little.

I tried to explain what a wonderful thing I was doing now, being part of this small, underground movement. It was hard to define what our purpose was, but I knew Natvar’s purpose was pure and straight. We were getting rid of bullshit, we were after truth, and we were about love, real love, sometimes tough love, but always love. I kept my voice upbeat and excited. Geoffrey had to believe I was happy, that I was doing something enviable, something he might talk to his friends about. I had to survive his instinctive put-down of everything I did.

“I’ve heard of Muktananda, of Baba,” he said. “I think one of Kitty’s friends goes up to that place in the Catskilss.” Kitty was his glamorous stepmother. It felt good to hear her name again.

“Oh, we’re not like them at all,” I rushed to say. “We’re very different. They’re kind of phony in the ashram, but Natvar has a real understanding of Baba and yoga – he learned it himself – so we don’t follow all those ashram rules and regulations.”

I wanted it to sound like we were exciting and rebellious, the kind of people Dylan might be interested in or Kerouac or Patti Smith.

“Oh, so you’re kind of like the Protestants?” joked Geoffrey. I only just got the reference. Geoffrey used to do that to me a lot. Use words I didn’t know, mention things I’d only barely heard of. He was smart like that, could remember things and bring them into conversation with ease.

We sat on the swings in the empty afternoon. “It’s a pretty sexless place, that Institute,” Geoffrey mused.

“No, it’s not,” I said quickly, thinking of Natvar and Mark and the way Natvar had talked to Tracy. I couldn’t tell Geoffrey all that – it was private – but I didn’t want him to think we were chaste – that would damn us in his eyes. I wanted him to like what I was doing, even want to be a part of it.

“So, you want to grab some diner and get back to the apartment?” asked Geoffrey finally.

Grab dinner? Go to the apartment? I hadn’t even thought about these things. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave the Institute that much. Even though it would take only 15 minutes to walk the few blocks down to my old home, the thought of going that far beyond the pale was terrifying. Natvar would scream at me. I was expected back at the Annex for dinner, just like always.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“I just can’t.” I knew I wasn’t answering his question, but it felt like there wasn’t language to answer that question. Tracy would know why I couldn’t. Anjani would know. I wanted to be back with the people to whom I didn’t have to explain things, people who spoke my language. A long dusty silence stretched out between us, the familiar tension and anger that always creeped in between us.

“I assumed you’d be spending the night with me,” Geoffrey said.

My mind froze. Baba said in his books to always say the mantra to yourself – Om Namah Shivaya. Say it all the time, he advised, and it will save you. I began to repeat Baba’s mantra over and over in my mind. It will save me, I thought, get me out of this impossible knot. You can’t make a mistake if you’re repeating the mantra.

“What?” asked Geoffrey finally, impatiently. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m saying the mantra,” I answered.

The afternoon ended in this ragged, angry state. Geoffrey said good-bye. I walked over to the Annex where everyone was just sitting down, and I took my place, slipping back in where I had left off.

“Did you have a good time?” asked Natvar from his seat at the head of the table. He seemed in a good mood.

“Not really,” I responded, my eyes seeking his and finding comfort there. The waters of the Institute closed over me again, warm and impervious.

Chapter 25: NEW HOME

2011-08-18T05:55:00.000-04:00

We were chanting our evening chant in the meditation hall when bang, bang, bang came a pounding from upstairs. Bang, bang, bang it came again, someone banging from upstairs on their floorboards above our heads.

It had happened once or twice before. We had started to realize that the upstairs neighbors wanted us to stop chanting, that it was bothering them. I had never seen or met them. Their banging made Natvar angry and we had been ignoring them.

Bang, bang, bang they beat their floorboards again. We finished the chant. Mark closed the harmonium quietly. He had begun to play it now instead of Natvar and again I was impressed at how musical he was. Playing came naturally to him as it did to Kenny who had taken over the drum with no one showing him how.

And Natvar exploded out of the hall, pounding up the stairs in his barefeet and white, ironed cotton pants. I could hear him shouting up the stairs, then pounding on the upstairs door. He was furious and the words were streaming out of his mouth like hot lava. The neighbors did not open their door. I waited downstairs in the doorway of the Institute, wishing I knew how to be angry so eloquently. I envied Natvar his fury, his passion, his effortless release of language that hit its target every time.

I didn’t know how to be angry. I knew how to pretend I wasn’t angry. Like the time I sat at the kitchen table years before. My mother was moving about the kitchen, making breakfast. My father sat with me at the table. He and I were about to leave for the city that day – my father to his job, and me to a temp job my father had found for me in a corporate office with one of his friends. My mother was berating my father, over and over. Her voice would not stop. One insult after another, one needling after another. My father pretended he did not hear. Steadfastly, he buttered his toast, slurped his instant coffee. I too said nothing, clenching my insides so as to let not one drop of feeling escape. As my father and I pulled out of the driveway he spoke. “You did very well in there,” he said.

A few days after the chanting incident I sat with Natvar and a couple of the others on the floor of a back room. We were taking a break, Natvar leaning against a wall. He had just received some kind of eviction notice from the landlord. “Well,” said Natvar thoughtfully, “I guess that’s it. We’ll have to close the Institute.”

Close the Institute? No, I thought. That is not possible. This is my life. It can’t end. It can’t stop. The Institute was as real to me as air. It was everything.

“No,” I said out loud to Natvar. “The Institute can’t close.”

Natvar looked at me, his large brown eyes soft, his mouth curling into its familiar smile. “Ah,” he said, “that’s my Marta. If Marta says we must continue, -- if she believes in us – then let us continue. We will find another home.”

And so it began, our Sunday walks to find a new home. Elektra and Iolanthe came, holding their daddy’s hands – Iolanthe being cute, Elektra more solemn. Her face reflected her father’s features and he paid more attention to her. Iolanthe he treated like a little kitten. Mark, Anjani, Kenny, Tracy, Todd and I followed. Eve and David no longer came to the Institute. They had disappeared. Each of them had fallen into some huge fight with Natvar and he had thrown them out in fury. I’d seen David running out, yelling, “Don’t you hit me, you bastard,” in his wimpy voice. I didn’t miss him.

We walked north from the Institute up 8th Avenue, sometimes cutting west, sometimes east through the fur district, then the flower district. We strolled. I didn’t know what we were looking for or what might happen, but Natvar said we must find a new place and that this was how we’d do it.

We walked one Sunday, then another, taking note of “For Rent” signs and then returning to the Annex where Carmen had prepared a hot lunch. We sat for long hours at the marble table, then maybe a nap, the girls returning home, Tracy and Todd returning home, even Anjani and Kenny returning for a few hours from where they came, leaving Mark, Natvar and I to go alone to the more expensive diner on 7th Avenue for omelettes.

One Sunday though we stopped at a small shop on 29th Street. When I caught up, Natvar was already deep in conversation with a middle-aged man, the proprietor of the dark, dusty shop. They were speaking Greek with the glorious animation I envied, having heard Natvar speak it often with Eva.

The two men talked, the rest of us stood silently. I paid attention, watching their faces, trying to follow and be part of what was happening. “He has something to show us!” said Natvar over his shoulder. “Come on!”

We followed the two men up four flights of wide metal stairs. On each floor there was one door. The man took us to the top floor and unlocked the door. We stepped in.

It was a long open, empty space. To our right tall windows framed in white wood over looked the street. From there it was one long windowless stretch to the back. The floor was narrow, rough, gray boards. There were two small toilet stalls and a utility sink.

“Interesting, right, Mark?” Natvar was saying. His face shone with excitement.

We said polite good-byes and returned to the Annex for lunch. “What do you think Markey Boy?” Natvar was saying. “It’s wonderful isn’t it? The rent is half what we’re paying now and it’s ten times the space!”

I put a smile on my face when Natvar glanced in my direction. I must keep up. How could this new place become our new home? It was a ragged hole. But Natvar loved it. Natvar wanted it. Yes, I said, adding my voice to the contagion. Natvar said we could make it beautiful and I was ready.

Chapter 26: LOST BOY

2011-08-18T05:50:00.000-04:00

“My parents aren’t rich,” Mark was protesting, his tone a little sulky, a little uncertain compared to Natvar’s undiluted assurance.

“Of course they’re rich!” answered Natvar. “They have their Ithaca house with that lovely lawn they mow every week, and they have that summer place in Canada. I saw how they live – two cars, refrigerators big enough to feed a village, sending you to dance classes.”

We were sitting around the marble table late at night. All of us were silent, witnessing the embarrassingly uneven struggle between Mark and Natvar.

“They have plenty of money and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t ask for your inheritance now when you need it. You damn Americans, you’re just babies, all of you. You’re afraid of your parents, that’s what it is. You’re afraid of Doris and Burt, aren’t you, Markey Boy?” Natvar sneered.

“No, I’m not,” said Mark. He was almost thirty. But he sounded like the baby Natvar said he was.

I slid easily into Natvar’s picture of “Americans.” Both of my parents – one Canadian, one Hungarian -- had spoken of “Americans” like that. When I was a child, “Americans” were people who wore curlers to the supermarket, painted their nails, complained, chewed gum, watched sports and behaved like children. They were graceless. “You sound so American,” my mother said when she wanted to shut us up. It was an insult. It meant we were whining. So when Natvar painted Americans – us – with a harsh brush, it was easy to believe him.

“All these people here can see how scared you are,” Natvar continued. “They’d do it for me, they’d face their parents – look at Marta, look how she brought her parents right into the eye of the hurricane – but you, the one I sleep with, the one I confide in – he’s the lily-livered one in the end.” Natvar looked tired and disgusted.

I soaked up his praise like honey. I sat straighter in my chair, and wondered why Mark had to be so difficult. Couldn’t he just do what Natvar wanted? Call his parents? Ask for his inheritance? What was the big deal?

A few days went by. We had said yes to the loft on 29th Street. We were packing up the little Institute, getting ready to move.

And then I came into dinner one evening and Natvar and Mark were already at the table, both of their faces glowing. “He did it!” crowed Natvar. “He got the money!” Mark was smiling shyly, his eyes happy. “Oh, my Markey Boy, he fought the dragon and he won!” Natvar planted a kiss on Mark’s bald pate.

Natvar said the check would be for $10,000. Mark and Natvar went to the hardware store. They ordered aluminum studs, boxes of screws, sheetrock, plaster and paint. It was all delivered one afternoon up the four flights of metal stairs and we stacked the supplies at the front door of the loft. I didn’t know what we were going to do with all this stuff. Mark, Kenny and I carried the leaden rectangles of sheetrock up from the street, piece by piece. I had never heard of sheetrock before.

And we cleaned the loft. We cleaned and we cleaned with brooms, mops, buckets of cold water from the utility sink, Tracy joining us most evenings as soon as she got off from work, Carmen coming on weekends. We swept up dirt and the thousands of tiny sparkling sequins jammed in between the narrow floorboards. We washed the walls. And washed them again. Still, it was impossible to make the place shine the way the first Institute shone.

“Have you seen Mark?” Natvar asked me, two days after the supplies had been delivered? It was lunchtime. I hadn’t seen Mark since the night before. “That’s funny,” said Natvar. “He was supposed to meet me here.”

Anjani and I were scrubbing down the big white window frames that overlooked the street. We continued our work through the afternoon, but there was a tension in the air. Mark’s absence was impossible to ignore.

He didn’t appear for dinner. “Didn’t we do everything for him?” Natvar asked us. “That he should disappear like this. Unforgivable.”

“He was our Crown Prince,” I said, feeling Natvar’s attention focusing on me in Mark’s absence. I must be strong, his perfect support now that Mark was gone.

“Yes, he was. So capable. So broken,” replied Natvar, his gaze moving past me now.

Another day passed and still no sign of Mark. A pall fell over our group. Anjani and I finished packing up the office – its files and books – but we didn’t talk or joke, as if that would be irreverent at such a time. We kept the tape of Baba chanting the mantra playing in the background over and over, like a constant prayer. It was like someone had died. Like we were holding our breath.

How had Mark dared to evaporate like this, I wondered. How had he dared to go off on his own? And why would he want to? He really had been the crown prince.

That night when I entered the kitchen of the Annex, Mark and Natvar were at the marble table. Carmen was busy at the stove. Mark was looking down.

“Our prince is back,” Natvar announced to me drily. “With a dirty dick, but he’s back.”

“Our prince is back,” Natvar announced to me drily. “With a dirty dick, but he’s back.”

I looked at Mark, but he didn’t look back.

“After all we have done for him, this is how he says thank you. He goes out to the streets. He goes out to the public lavatories. He mingles with filth. We raise him up, but he insists he is only scum.”

Carmen set bowls of rice and vegetables on the table. Kenny, Anjani and I did not move.

“Come on, for God’s sake eat. This isn’t a funeral,” Natvar demanded, and obediently we passed the bowls, began to eat.

Mark took a small amount, but I could feel all of us drawing away from him as if he had leprosy.

“You are scum, Mark. You punish yourself, you punish all of us. You know, when a gardener uses a new shovel in his garden, it never is clean again. Like your dick. You’ve made it filthy, and it will never be clean again.”

Mark ate, his eyes still downcast.

“Look at these people. Look at Carmen, coming here every day after work to cook for you. She doesn’t complain. She works hard at her office and then she comes and she shops and she cooks. Look at Marta, Anjani. Everyone doing their part. But you. You have to be different.”

I gathered the plates and took them to the deep, old sink, turning my back to the table. It sounded so gross what Mark had done. I didn’t want to know about it. But I must listen, stay tuned to Natvar. He was my measure, how I calibrated how well I was doing. Because I must do well. This whole way of life – this rigorous attempt to stay out of ordinary life – was about doing well. Nothing else. Doing well.

Chapter 27: ON THE MOVE

2011-08-18T05:45:00.001-04:00

And then came the day when we carried everything from the old Institute to the new one, just a few blocks away. In the late summer heat we carried the boxes of supplies, the paintings of the charkas that Natvar’s Greek friend, Eva, had made for him years before, the stereo from the meditation hall, the items from our tiny bookstore and, of course, we carried the carved wooden frame of Baba’s enormous chair and the large purple velvet cushions that went with it. Tracy and Carmen took the day off from work. Kennjoined Mark, Natvar and I, carrying everything up the four flights of wide industrial metal steps to the raw, empty new Institute.

“Put the harmonium, the drum and the carpet from the meditation hall here, near the windows,” instructed Natvar, pointing to the most attractive part of the cavernous space. “We will continue our morning Guru Gita chant here. Now, look, we will cover them with a clean sheet when they are not in use. Everything else, stack it neatly against the wall. Not like that, Kenny. Don’t be such a slob. Here, let me show you.”

We tucked everything in front of the loft nearest the tall windows that overlooked the street.

“And Marta, you can roll out this piece of carpet to sleep on at night,” said Natvar, pointing to a space between three boxes of office supplies and the chakra paintings, which had been neatly stacked and covered.

It didn’t feel quite right. It occurred to me that I was paying rent to the Institute. That the deal had been made when at least I had a little back room at the nice, clean, furnished Institute. No mention had been made that perhaps my rent payment could be lessened for these months when really there was no Institute and only floor space on a construction site.

I still worked at the stuttering clinic for several hours every day. I had taken to tucking in little pictures of Baba when I sent back the tapes to my clients. I thought Baba and his mantra offered much more to them than these impossible exercises demanded by the doctor I worked for who I suspected was an absolute charlatan.

I would have to say something to Natvar. After all, we talked so often about the importance of truth. If I didn’t say anything it would feel like I was lying. Because I really did feel like something was wrong. I had hoped Natvar would say something, but he hadn’t and I couldn’t get my thoughts to go away.

As I walked down the stairs with Natvar to pick up more items from the street where Kenny was waiting, I spoke. “Natvar,” I said, “perhaps I could pay a little less rent for awhile. I mean, I don’t really have a room any more.”

Natvar stopped on one of the landings and stood to face me, his face darkening. I wished already I could take my words back.

“Pay ‘a little less rent?’” he quoted my words back to me in a mocking, high-pitched tone. “You want to pay ‘a little less rent?’” He turned his head and called up to Mark who was following us. “Mark, this woman wants to pay a little less rent. She doesn’t think she’s getting her money’s worth. So it’s all about a trade, is it?” He had turned back to me. “You give me this, I’ll give you that? Look at you,” he scoffed. “Who else would have you? It is a real privilege to live here – in a place of real yoga, real meditation. You don’t want to work – that’s it. You want everything the easy way. Like all women. Look at her, Mark, just another woman who wants the men to do it all for her. Give her a pretty abode to live in, fuck her brains out at night and then sit down in the sunny yellow breakfast nook and call her sweetheart.”

Mark didn’t speak. He stood beside Natvar and just looked at me. He was like an echo, standing there, doubling Natvar’s strength. Mark understands Natvar so much better than me, I thought. It’s as if they live in a different world and I don’t think I’ll ever qualify to live in it too.

I had been wrong to bring up my concern. It was selfish. I absorbed Natvar’s words and felt them course through my bloodstream as I followed him silently down to the street, my eyes lowered.

A boy was waiting for us at the bottom of the steps. He had shaggy dirty-blonde hair and wore a flannel shirt and old jeans with hiking boots. “Do you need a hand?” he asked, bright and full of happy energy. “My name is Quince.” He stuck out his hand to shake Natvar’s. He wasn’t afraid of him at all.

“Quince!” Natvar greeted him heartily. “Of course. Come upstairs. There is plenty to do!”

Quince grabbed the two heaviest boxes and began climbing the stairs two at a time ahead of us. “Yeah, I noticed you guys moving all this stuff,” Quince called down as we trooped up behind him. “I’m just in from Montreal, passing through. I just finished a construction job up there, on my way to another. Maybe I can help you while I’m in town.”

Natvar showed him the whole loft and Quince nodded and looked excited. “You could stick up three walls right here,” he started suggesting. “What kind of sheetrock did you get?”

He talked to Natvar as if they were peers, and Natvar treated him as a long-lost son, throwing his arm across his shoulders from time to time, laughing at his jokes. Natvar seemed to love Quince. It must be because Quince was so strong, so unafraid of him. I liked Quince too. He had a rough edge to him, like a person who had been on the road for a long time. He looked about 25, like me, and already I had felt his eyes on me, and could feel a pull between us.

Quince ate dinner with us at the Annex and then disappeared, saying he had things to do. As soon as he closed the door behind him Natvar spoke. “Mark and I need a holiday,” he said. “We will go up to Ithaca, just for a few days, see Markey Boy’s parents. Marta, we’re leaving you in charge. You and Kenny can put a coat of primer on the walls. But be careful. I don’t want to see your careless spots on the floor, and be very careful with the paintbrushes. Clean them thoroughly each day when you are done. And Quince can help. He knows what he’s doing. But you’re in charge, Marta. You’ll have the key. Be vigilant.”

Mark and Natvar were gone within a day. I felt frightened without them. What if we did something wrong? What did being vigilant mean? I felt like Natvar was still present, watching me, watching us, ready to pounce.

Tracy set Natvar’s place at the table even though he wasn’t there. it seemed a little childish tome, but I knew what she meant. Just because Natvar was gone was no reason to forget him, to loosen our standards. That would mean that we only did things so conscientiously because we were afraid of him. But that wasn’t true, I thought. I do these things because I really know how important it is not to slip, and I want the others to know that just because Natvar isn’t here we have to behave and speak as if he were.

Chapter 28: NEVER SURE

2011-08-18T05:40:00.000-04:00

Kenny and I were painting at the far end of the loft. Natvar and Mark had been gone for three days. I hated them gone. Everything was frightening without them. The way Kenny quit early and said he’d be back sometime soon. He’d never have done that if Natvar were here. I felt it was my fault, that Natvar would return and see that the rules hadn’t been followed, that our standards had slipped, that we couldn’t do it without him. My stomach was so anxious could not eat. And then there was Quince, scaring me all the time the way he acted as if there were no rules at all.

Right now he was up in the rafters of the skylight. There were only two small frosted windows at the end of the loft, but there was a large rectangular skylight – the size of a small room -- that let in extra light. Five beams stretched across the breadth of the skylight and if you stood up on them you could stand up into the skylight that had a peaked glass roof all its own. Quince was enjoying the view.

“Marta,” he called down. “This is incredible. Underneath the tin that wraps around these beams is beautiful solid wood! I think we should peel off this old tin.”

I looked up. Natvar had praised Quince warmly and convincingly before he’d left. And Quince had spoken with such assurance about all the construction he’d done in the past. I was completely out of my element.

“I think Natvar would like the raw wood,” continued Quince. “It’ll give the place an authentic rustic look.” I could tell he really wanted to pull away the antique stamped tin that had been painted the same dirty cream color as the whole tin ceiling of the loft. And I wanted him to be able to do what he wanted, to try something new. And I wanted to be part of his crazy adventures. And I wanted him to want me along. I didn’t want him to think of me as some awful staid governess.

But it was terrifying. Natvar hadn’t authorized this trashing of the tin from the beams. What if he didn’t like it? But there was a chance that he’d praise our inventiveness – he was always saying what pathetic little rabbits we all were and perhaps this was one of those moments to try something different.

“Okay,” called up and went back to painting.

I kept rolling Quince’s words over again in my mind. The word “rustic” stuck in my mind. I thought of what I knew of Natvar’s taste. I thought of what our last little Institute had looked like: the tidy shelves, the tiny glistening bathroom, the carpet that was vacuumed every day. There was nothing “rustic” about it. Quince was tearing at the tin with a hammer. He’d already uncovered two beams.

“Stop, Quince!” I called up to him. He paused, this cute blonde ragamuffin.

“What?” he asked.

“Don’t do any more,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure that’s what Natvar wants. We have to wait and ask him.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, of course he’ll love it,” Quince argued for awhile and though I thought he might well be right I held him back. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was stifling creativity. maybe Natvar would return and blast me for not listening to Quince.

“Marta, if you give me the key to the loft, I can finish up the painting while you go for dinner,” Quince said later in the afternoon. “We’ll be so much farther along when Natvar gets back.”

Quince looked at me with his sweet face. I wanted to trust him. I could tell he liked something about me, but it had stayed unspoken. I didn’t want to say no again, but again, it was scary. Natvar had been so firm about me being the only one to have the key. And it felt like anything could happen if I gave Quince the key.

I wondered if what he really wanted was a place to sleep. I should offer to let him sleep in the loft. I thought of lying in his arms. But the most important thing was to protect the loft and the Institute. “No,” I said. “Come have dinner with us instead.”

Talk during meals without Natvar was stilted. He usually filled the conversation gap and without him we were uncertain. Carmen cooked then went home quickly. anjani took advantage of the early night since we wouldn’t be sitting around, unable to tear ourselves away from Natvar’s company – how could we say to him that we were tired and wanted to sleep when he was talking, when his talking seemed so important and not to be missed? Now, though, we were released.

I returned to the Institute alone, the bare ugly loft. Our paintbrushes that we had cleaned scrupulously were lined up, drying on sheets of newspaper. Our boxes and belongings filled the font of the loft. There was the small cleared area where every morning before the sun came up we continued to meet and chant, unrolling the carpet so as to have a clean place to sit.

I lay down amongst the boxes, and slept.

Mark and Natvar returned the next day. Natvar thought we were imbeciles for having taken the tin off the two beams, and I was just relieved that at least I had not let Quince finish his plan. And Quince faded back into his on-the-road life. We didn’t see him again, but now the building of the Institute began in earnest.

Natvar strode to the far end of the loft. “Here,” he said to Mark, “we will put up the first wall.” They laid a long silver aluminum stud along the floor and screwed a matching one to the ceiling above. Natvar stood on a tall ladder with a screw gun in his hands. when the two studs were fixed in place, they screwed a few vertical studs into place, set up a piece of sheetrock and screwed it to the frame while Kenny and I watched, jumping to hold a screw or be useful in any small way.

I was amazed to see the wall go up. there it was. a floor-to-ceiling wall. It did not reach to both sides of the loft, but stood independently in the center of the room, just a yard or two from the far wall. it screened out the two small ugly back windows, the red Exit sign and the ugly door that led to the fire escape.

“Gamoto mouni mou,” Natvar screamed in Greek from the top of the ladder when the screw gun mal-functioned or a screw dropped to the floor. “Gamoto mouni mou,” we began to say to each other when things went wrong. It made Natvar laugh to hear us curse in Greek. I felt at peace when he laughed, his eyes gentle and not stormy. Something in me softened to know that he was happy to be with us, the yogis who knew how to say “fuck my cunt” in Greek.

My father didn’t always come home when I was little. He was not reliable that way, as if he preferred other places. My mother stayed home. She was always there. But I didn’t really feel safe unless my father was home too. he was the one I trusted, the one who knew how to navigate the world well. My mother was too uncertain with other people, as if she was sure they knew better.

I wished my father would come home every night like other fathers. I wished he would sit in the living room while my mother cooked dinner, and I imagined myself, how I would sit on a rug and play with a toy car. A toy car, I thought, fit the scene well, though I didn’t own one. I would play on the rug, I thought, with them in the background while soft lamplight kept out the night.

Chapter 29: UNEVEN PATCHES

2011-08-18T05:35:00.000-04:00

Carlos came by one day as we were working on the first wall. We hadn’t seen him for a long time, months. Carlos was from South America and he looked like a very solemn, very skinny Jesus. His dark hair and beard were long. He was an artist. He never smiled. Natvar always spoke to him politely and never talked to him the way he talked to the rest of us. And Carlos seemed to take Natvar’s respect for granted, as if they were grown-ups and the rest of us were not.

Immediately Natvar sought Carlos’s expert advice on how to paint the walls of the meditation hall – what color, what paint. “Carlos, stay an dpaint our walls with us,” said Natvar as we sat for lunch up front by the windows, eating bagels and cream cheese and sliced tomatoes. “Then we will know it is done properly.”

Natvar wanted a pale blue for the walls of the far end of the loft where the meditation hall would be. He wanted the meditation hall to look like the Blue Pearl that Baba wrote about in his books. The Blue Pearl was a light you were supposed to see in meditation. I’d never seen it, but I was sure I would. One day.

But as Carlos began to apply the pale blue color they had chosen across the walls, solemnly sweeping a roller up and down, making sure there were no uneven patches, Natvar decided he didn’t like the color. It didn’t look the way he’d imagined, so they switched back to white. Carlos stayed three days, finished the job, and disappeared.

It was fall now. Every morning I woke up on the floor of the loft, which, although every evening we spent an hour or so just cleaning up, sweeping up shceetrock dust and washing the floors, was still a barren construction site. I hastened in the dark the eight blocks or so to Mark’s apartment, our Annex, and ate breakfast with mark and Natvar before dashing back to meet Anjani and Kenny, Carmen and sometimes Tracy, to sit on the small carpet before Baba’s framed photograph, mark playing the harmonium, Kenny drumming, while we chanted the Guru Gita, the long chant that Baba said over and over was crucial, ending in time for Carmen to run out and get to work on time.

And then it began. Hours of handing screws up to Natvar as he stood on the ladder, or holding sheetrock in place while he cut it with the jig saw, or taping over the screws so that we’d be able to paint over them.

Natvar had it all planned out in his head and walls began to go up. I watched the wall that separated the meditation hall from the rest of the space go up, a long wall across the width of the loft with a doorway cut out in the middle. And always the tape of Baba chanting the mantra droned in the background, infusing the space with the grace that it very much needed.

Always, Natvar was the main builder, cursing in Greek when things went wrong. Always Mark at his side, then maybe me or Kenny. Anjani in the background, doing something that he strong, agile, but elderly body could handle.

We broke for lunch, washing our hands at the utility sink, eating bagels and cream cheese by the windows, still the most civilized area because we hadn’t started any work there yet.

“Look at you, look how you eat, taking the second bite before you’ve chewed the first, who am I eating with, barbarians?” Kenny looked down. Today he was the target. And I made a mental note to never take more than one bite at a time. it was amazing what Natvar noticed. So many things were important that I had never thought of before.

“Axe him?” Natvar mocked another day, still focusing on Kenny. “You’re gong to axe him?”

“Ask him,” Kenny corrected himself, enunciating this time but keeping a smile on his face that said he didn't take this too seriously, that he couldn't be pushed around. He was a big man and he was taking the exam that would get him a job at the Post Office. He wanted that job.

Agnes, my younger sister wrote to me. She and her boyfriend were coming into town from North Carolina where she was working as a waitress. My father hadn’t been able to send her to college, a shock to our family that took college for granted. Agnes’s boyfriend’s father had invited them to New York to see a gun show. They’d have their own hotel room. In the old days this would have been a no-brainer, time to hang out with my sister. But now I knew I had to bring it up with Natvar first.

“Tell her to come and offer a few hours of seva first,” said Natvar. “Then you can go off for awhile.” Seva is what we called our work at the Institute. It was Baba’s word, a word that meant service in Sanskrit. Baba said seva was a crucial part of the yogic journey. Natvar didn’t like the way people in Baba’s ashrams pronounced the word. “It’s not SAY-VA,” he told us. “It should be pronounced SE-VA. That’s how a Greek would say it.” So that’s how we said the word. We used it a lot.

Agnes readily agreed to the plan and she and Natvar hugged at the front door like old friends. “I’ve been chanting the Guru Gita every morning since I was here last,” said Agnes with pride. “That’s my girl!” said Natvar with delight.

I waited for the morning to be over so I could prance off with Agnes though I felt a little guilty, leaving everyone else to continue, and a little sad, as if I might miss something. It felt almost too easy to spend a few hours doing nothing with Agnes. Nice in a way, but I knew nothing of any real import would happen while I laughed with her and her boyfriend. Being with Natvar gave me the feeling that I was in the eye of the hurricane, on the cutting edge, though I wished I could stay in that hotel room forever. Instead, I returned dutifully that day in time for dinner as I had promised.

Typically we worked til about 8 at night, spending the last hour rinsing and rinsing paintbrushes in cold, cold water until the water ran perfectly clean, lining them up to dry on newspaper, because nothing should be wasted or used inappropriately. I was hungry and exhausted when finally we could leave and walk to the Annex where Carmen had a shy smile for us and dinner ready.

Chapter 30: SHOCK

2011-08-18T05:30:00.000-04:00

It was a Saturday so we were having lunch in the Annex instead of at the Institute when the phone rang. It was Sonya. She wanted to speak to Natvar, she said. Natvar stood and went to the black wall phone and listened for a moment and hung up. “Baba has died,” he said without looking at us, and went into the next room and began to sob.

I had never been into the next room of Mark's railroad apartment. I knew it was not the room in which Mark and Natvar slept. That lay beyond, completely veiled in secrecy.

Baba was dead, but Natvar was sobbing. I had never heard him like this before. I did not know what to do. I imagined going in there to try and offer comfort, but he would only be disgusted. I would do it wrong. He would call me a phony and an idiot who didn't understand grief. So I stayed in the kitchen, frozen, hearing his voice in my head, berating me for not knowing how to comfort someone I loved.

Mark did not move either. But Anjani did. She slipped without hesitation into the next room, out of sight, and I could hear her gentle murmurings.

I thought of all the scorn Natvar heaped on her, all the verbal thrashings. But she knew what to do here, and he was accepting her gesture, as if all those scenes really meant nothing. Deep down, I thought with surprise, they must be connected in a way perhaps he was not connected to any of the rest of us.

Natvar came back out into the kitchen. “Come,” he said quietly. “Baba would not want us to cry. Let us return to our Institute. And we will chant the Guru Gita for Baba. They are chanting in Ganeshpuri, Sonya says.”

I had never met Baba. I tried to feel the gravity of the moment. Anjani and Mark had both visited Baba, just like Natvar had, many times up in that ashram in the Catskills. I remembered Mark describing how after weekends of street life and nights in the public baths of the city, he would shave and shower and put on clean clothes and go up and see Baba and feel restored.

As we walked solemnly back up 8th Avenue, I could feel Baba inside me just like I had always been able to. We unlocked the heavy Institute door, unrolled the carpet, uncovered Baba's framed photograph, took out our chanting books and began.

When we were finished Natvar said that they were chanting already in the ashram on 86th Street. “I never thought I'd step foot in that place again,” he said. “But in a day or two they will be showing the video of Baba's burial and I think we must see this.”

Two or three nights later we went to the small, narrow brownstone on West 86th Street that I had visited once before. We left our shoes downstairs neatly stacked on the shelves along with hundreds of others, and walked up the narrow carpeted staircase to the next floor. The corridor was lined with people standing and sitting with their eyes closed, chanting the mantra. They looked to me the way Natvar said they were. They looked like a bunch of tight-ass pious nobodies. I liked our version of Baba's yoga, the kind where we yelled Fuck My Cunt in Greek and practiced a real kind of love that had to do with correcting our faults and telling the real truth. I was glad to be aligned with Natvar, a fierce force who could chop up all these pious people in one second if he wanted to. Although they looked so holy, I thought, I wonder how long they’d last under Natvar’s laser watch.

I watched the video. I saw Baba's brown body sitting up, his legs crossed, his eyes closed. He looked like a statue, not a corpse. I saw people pour oil and other sacred things on his body, treating it as something holy. I saw the face of Malti in the crowd, looking desperately sad and lost.

Malti was the girl who was often in the photographs of Baba when Natvar showed us the ashram magazine. She always looked very dutiful, her long black hair pulled back in a bun, glasses on her nose, usually a long skirt covering her legs. A few months ago Natvar reported with disgust that Baba had said that Malti and her brother would be his successors. “They're just kids,” Natvar had snorted. “I remember watching them play in Ganeshpuri. What do they know?” But I always looked at the pictures of Malti, the way she was always at Baba's side, helping him. I wanted to be Natvar's Malti.

And we continued the endless work of the loft. Now it was November. We had built a corridor leading from the meditation hall to the front area by the windows. We were starting to call the front area “the lobby.” We built the corridor and on one side a room that Natvar said would be his room. It was small, with a loft bed, and right across from it, on the other side of the corridor we built another room with bunkbeds. “This will be for Marta and Anjani,” Natvar declared. I loved that my room shared a wall with the meditation hall.

We built another tiny windowless bedroom along the corridor and then a fourth small room, Mark's office, with a loft bed. Across from the office, next to Natvar's small room we built a larger room, next to the utility sink. “This,” said Natvar with delight, “will be our kitchen!”

Our new Institute was taking shape. A kitchen, Natvar's room, the meditation hall – I imagined how it would be to have our entire life under one roof. We still had to go to the Annex to bathe in Mark's big old tub. I knew the loft was not zoned for living, but George our Greek furrier landlord was happy to turn a blind eye as long as we paid the rent.

The building and construction went on and on. We added two small changing rooms because soon we would have students coming to our yoga classes. The studs being screwed in. The sheet rock being cut and screwed to the studs. Tape over the screws. Plaster. Paint. And at night, cleaning the floors, the paintbrushes. “This will never end,” I thought wearily.

One morning, as we finished chanting in “the lobby” Natvar said with excitement that he'd had an idea. “Come,” he said to Mark. “We can put up an arch here,” and the two of them sketched out a curving Arabian-seeming arch, first on paper and then on sheetrock. All day they worked, cutting the elaborate shape out of sheetrock, creating a frame out of aluminum studs and by the end of the day it was up – a glorious white archway, leading from the sunny lobby to the narrow corridor that stretched into darkness and the door of the meditation hall. It made me proud.

Chapter 31: MORE SEEDS PLANTED

2011-08-18T05:25:00.000-04:00

It was time to hang doors, Natvar said, doors where now there were only rectangular openings cut in the sheetrock – one for each of the rooms we had created. Natvar said that doors were very difficult to hang, that supposedly only experts could do it. “They have to be hung perfectly,” Natvar said. “Otherwise there are gaps around the edges and they don’t latch. But we will do it.” His face was bright with confidence. Mark and Natvar went out to the hardware store and bought several doors, unpainted raw wood with holes where the doorknobs would go. They bought brass doorknobs and hinges and for a couple of days they talked back and forth about the right color of stain. Really, it was Natvar thinking out loud and Mark supplying the kind of response that didn’t anger Natvar. Mark could listen and offer ideas. Somehow, when the rest of us tried this it just irritated him. I listened in the background, almost participating, on the verge of participating, confidant that one day I would have the strength and wisdom to participate as an equal with Natvar.

Natvar chose a reddish stain. He and Mark brushed it onto the doors. He didn’t want any of us to touch them. Staining, he said, was delicate. Then one by one Mark and Natvar hung the five doors, each one a triumph. Yes, I thought, we can do anything. With Natvar we can do anything.

Still, all during the months of construction, two mornings a week Natvar went out to teach the private class to Prince Michael. Always he returned invigorated with stories of the prince's wonderful household – how good the coffee was, how stimulating the conversation, how much the prince enjoyed his time with Natvar and never failed to tell him so. Usually Mark met him after the class on the Upper East Side, sometimes Eva joining them. “We window shopped at Bloomingdales,” sometimes Natvar would say with delight, making everything sound like high adventure. Like fun. As if the only times he had fun were with the prince, or with Eva. Sometimes with Mark.

One afternoon he returned with Mark a little later than usual. He burst through the front door into the lobby that was bright with December light, wearing his brown wool coat, navy scarf and tweed cap. “It's a miracle!” he declared as we sat with him on folding chairs. “Einstein Moomjy is the best carpet shop in the world. Everybody knows that. The shop is close to Bloomingdales and Mark and I went in this morning. I talked my way right into the office of Mr. Moomjy himself. What a gentleman. I told him about our work and about the Institute, and he agreed immediately to carpet the Institute at cost – no charge for labor. Markey Boy was wonderful, of course, weren't you, Mark?” Natvar chucked Mark under the chin and tugged his ear. Mark smiled shyly. He was dressed to meet Natvar, wearing pressed pants, leather shoes and a shirt that Natvar had passed down to him. I knew he had never dressed like this before he met Natvar.

The following week the carpet men came. It took them two days to cover the floors with wall to wall thick burgundy carpet – the entire meditation hall was covered and Natvar’s room, then down the corridor and into the lobby. The Institute instantly transformed. It was no longer the raw, unyielding construction site it had been for the last four months. Suddenly it was soft and elegant, beautiful and inviting. At least, the carpeted areas were. The ugly gray boards were still there in the kitchen and the little bedrooms and the office.

We brought the broken marble table from the Annex and placed it at an angle in a corner of the lobby near the windows. This is where people will check in for classes, Natvar said. Because we were going to be a yoga school, giving yoga classes.

“Everyone should bring a plant for the lobby,” said Natvar one day after the Guru Gita. He often had new ideas during the chant. “Bring a plant that will represent you,” he said. “For instance, this plant Mark and I brought yesterday. That’s Mark’s plant. It’s a tree! So pick something that will stand for you.”

Tracy brought back a tree like Mark’s at the end of the day after her day at the office. It cost almost $100. Natvar embraced her. “Now, that’s what I mean!” he cried. “Here, let’s put it right by the window!” Tracy beamed with pleasure. She had gotten it right.

I thought about it. What plant would represent me? I didn't want to just go out and buy something. It had to have more meaning than that. And besides, I had no money at all. I couldn’t buy a tree like Tracy did. I worked part-time at the stutter clinic, and all my money went to covering my monthly rent payment. If anything was left over I bought us groceries because still, there was never any money.

I thought of an avocado plant I had seen once in Northern California in the home of a exemplary hippie. Its glorious foliage trailed throughout the room and I remembered that you could grow it right from an avocado pit. That's what I wanted. It wouldn't cost me anything and it would be fun to grow and watch, and its beautiful trail of leaves would be just like I'd seen in that hippy house.

I stopped by a bookstore to read about how to get the plant going and saved the pit from an avocado that week. The pit was large, round and hard, about the size of a tangerine. As the book instructed, I supported it in a jar of water with four toothpicks and set it on the window sill. There it was, I thought, a perfect representation of me: a seed, something that would burst into foliage in time.

I showed my creation to Natvar. “Oh, so that's you,” he said. I had so thought he would love the idea, would respond as a person who understood me, who connected with me, who knew me. But he was not interested in the avocado pit in the jar on the window sill.

Chapter 32: MAXIMUM SECURITY

2011-08-18T05:20:00.000-04:00

The carpet was brand new. It was all any of us could think about, that thick, lush wall-to-wall burgundy carpet – the kind of thing you’d see in a palace – was now gracing our rough, gray loft, suddenly making the white walls shine, the tall windows of the lobby glisten.

We set up Baba’s chair at the far end of the meditation hall in front of the first wall we had built, the wall that hid the ugly Exit sign, the small, dirty back windows and the door to the fire escape. The graceful wall looked smooth and marble-like, as if it had been there forever. We placed the chair on the platform that Natvar had thought to build, the platform that as now swathed in the same burgundy carpet.

Now, in the early mornings before dawn, we sat grouped around Baba’s throne, chanting the Guru Gita, chanting books held high in our right hands, our backs straight. We had a refrigerator for the kitchen now and two hotplates for cooking. Natvar said we’d be cooking for people now – for an extra $5, he said, they could stay for dinner after their yoga class. “Soup, salad and bread, served on a tray, that will be plenty,” he said and showed us how to date all the leftovers with masking tape on their containers.

Carmen had melted away so Tracy would be the evening’s cook. One weekend while construction was still on full force Carmen had not shown up. She had just started to joke a little about there being too much work, but then she just stopped coming. I was shocked. Where did she go? How could she leave us, her dearest friends? I knew I could never leave like that, that I never would. Nothing was more important to me than this life, making it to the finish line, to that place where I could hold my own with Natvar, where I would not make him angry. It was rough going now, but Baba said in his books that yoga was not easy. Only strong people can manage it, he said. I was going to endure.

I volunteered to go get the plastic trays Natvar called for and looked through the yellow pages to find the cheapest source, restaurant supply stores way down on First Avenue, places I had never heard of. And I picked out a big plastic tub while I was down there that Natvar said we would need so that when his little daughters came to stay they would have a place to bathe.

I was nervous, picking out the tub and trays, as I usually was when I was out alone and had to make these choices. Natvar examined every purchase and I knew he could always have done better. Still, I kept volunteering to go and get things. Though it usually meant being forcefully corrected afterwards, I liked making my journeys about town alone, always starting out hopeful that I would get it right.

I did the grocery shopping every day now. I never had more than a few dollars to spend and it was impossible to buy what we needed and please Natvar without shoplifting. I had never shoplifted before, but now I found I could bring home caviar or Camembert if I stole it. And these treats delighted Natvar. They made him smile and laugh, and I felt like I was a success, that he loved me for being brave and irreverent. I could not imagine Mark stealing, or Tracy. But I could do it.

One evening a few days after the carpet went down I was vacuuming closing the meditation hall for the night. I knelt at the small table to the left of Baba’s big chair where a small vase of flowers always stood, by a votive candle and a picture of Baba’s own guru.

In this, the new Institute, Natvar had said we could use wax votive candles. We didn’t have to float those wicks on cork in oil, the way he had liked it in the first Institute. It felt luxurious and modern to slip the white wax candle out of the box and straight into the blue glass holder, always making sure there was some water at the bottom of the glass so it would be easy to remove when the candle burned down.

Somehow I knocked the candle on the small table and watched in horror as a wide splash of white wax spilled onto the new carpet. There was no hiding it. Melted wax couldn’t be mopped up. If I tried, I’d make it worse. I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, not say a word, but I knew it was useless, and much better to face the music. That’s what I was here for. Not to run for the easy way out, but to face up to who I was and what my shortcomings were. Truth was the only way I’d make it on this yoga path.

I knocked on Natvar’s door. “Come in,” called out his deep voice.

Natvar had started to sleep in and inhabit the small room we had built for him. He had made a colorful couch with cushions underneath the sleeping loft. He had put down a small carpet on top of the burgundy wall-to-wall, made a small altar with fresh flowers to Baba and hung two pictures brought from India years before. The room was tiny but colorful and pretty.

Tracy and Anjani were sitting on the floor opposite the little couch where Natvar was leaning back. It looked like a warm, cheerful gathering. “What is it, my love?” Natvar asked, looking up.

“I’ve spilled wax on the carpet,” I said. I saw his face darken immediately, as I knew it would. There was no way to avoid this.

“You idiot,” he said. “You had to ruin it, didn’t you? Show me.”

I walked with him back to the spill, feeling heavy and broken, like a clumsy leaden creature out of synch with other people. “Get newspaper and a hot iron,” Natvar said quickly, and I ran to get both, glad to be busy. “Now put the paper over the wax and gently – I said gently – iron over the paper. The iron will melt the wax. The paper will absorb it. If you do it properly.”

I did exactly as he told me, my mind amazed as I watched the paper take on the stain. How did he know this? how did he know the answer to every single thing? Only a small, pale stain remained.

I returned to Natvar’s room to let him know I was finished. The other were still in there. mark had joined them. Alejandro and Tilio were there too, two beautiful young boys from Colombia, friends from the first institute who had somehow found us again. I stood in the doorway.

Natvar looked up at me. “Did you see what she did?” Natvar asked the others. “She has no grace. She spilled wax on the carpet, but she took her soul in her teeth and she came and told me.” And there it was, my comfort, the warm blanket of Natvar’s assurance. I smiled and retreated, not wanting to bask or take any pride in his words.

I slept in the small room across the narrow corridor from Natvar. Anjani took the bottom bunk one or two nights a week. Natvar had built an old wardrobe into the corner and then a short counter to serve as my desk. I liked the efficient use of space. There was no window, just the door with its dark reddish stain and bright brass door knob.

On the other side of the wall against which I slept was our huge meditation hall. I liked being so close. And under my pillow I kept one of Baba’s books so that before I put out the light – no matter how late it was – I could read a few sentences and connect with those words that rang so true, that seemed to be written just for me.

Chapter 33: ARRIVAL

2011-08-18T05:15:00.000-04:00

It is January, cold and dark. It’s been a year since I moved into the Institute, the little one that we left behind about five months ago. And it’s been almost two years since I left Geoffrey and Los Angeles, and I still think about him every day and try not to.

Tracy appears one evening after dinner with a suitcase. She has left Todd, she says. She is breathless with excitement, her small pixie face lit up like a child’s.

I sit with her, Natvar and Mark in the lobby, the lobby that doubles as our living room after hours. We sit on the crushed silver velvet couch that I have recently retrieved from my parents. It is half of a couch my father bought when he was living by himself in a Washington DC suburb where he had gone to become a consultant. The only thing he had managed, that I could see, was to furnish an apartment with a stereo, dishes and an el-shaped silver velvet couch.

My father moved back in, bringing his couch, as I started tenth grade. The living room wasn’t big enough for both halves of the el-shape, so my father put one half in his office, the screened in porch, and the other piece disappeared.

Now my parents had no room at all for furniture of any kind. They had found another renting situation, a furnished cottage in a wealthy suburb so that when I visited them on a weekend we could still pretend that nothing had really happened. They were still living within miles of the house they had bought when I was a toddler, the one they had fixed up, inhabited off and on for twenty years, and recently sold in a fire-sale to pay my father’s credit card debt. “Going bankrupt,” my father had joked, “was the quickest 50,000 I ever made.”

Tracy described how for the last few weeks she had been awakening in bed to hear Todd whispering in her ear, “Don’t go back to Natvar. Don’t go back to Natvar,” and we laughed to think of her hapless husband, now abandoned, a man who had once been our friend, but had turned against us as his wife came to enjoy our company more than his.

“I want to live here,” said Tracy firmly. She was petite, but she was strong. She smiled up at Natvar with her wide grin that made a business out of looking innocent.

“Of course,” said Natvar expansively. “You can sleep in the loft in the office.”

And so it began, our winter rhythm in the new Institute.

Tracy, breakfast cook, rose first. She cooked in our makeshift kitchen – alternating oatmeal and fried eggs as Natvar had determined the best breakfasts to be. She made coffee. I could hear her from my top bunk in the darkness. I got up soon after, set the table in the lobby and the four of us ate before heading down the corridor to the meditation hall for the Guru Gita where Anjani and Kenny joined us, coming in from their homes in other parts of the city.

After a week or two I could feel Tracy’s fury. I could hear it in the slamming of the pots in the darkness, her tight mouth at breakfast. I knew she hated having to be the first one up. And I felt my own anger rise up. What right did she have to be mad? As soon as I felt the anger I felt it sink down into me, an ugly poison, trapping me.

“I won’t have this,” Natvar smashed his fist down on the table at breakfast finally one morning. “You’re a bitch, Tracy. You have the face of a child, but you are a full-grown bitch. Now you don’t have that wimp of a husband to dump on you think you can bring your small-town tight lips to my table. I’m not your husband. I already have one wife, and I certainly have no need for another.”

His words went on and on in crystal clear fury, each one sounding so accurate, taking the unspoken and giving it shape. Tracy sat, watching him, muted. As Natvar spoke I could feel myself and Mark line up behind him, a team, while Tracy stood on the outside, the miscreant suddenly, the way Mark had been when he ran away, the way I so often was. It felt so much better to be on the Natvar side in a fight.

Natvar’s words were like a thunderstorm breaking through dense August humidity. Tracy no longer walked around in the morning as if she wanted to hit someone. When, I wondered, would I be able to take my anger and make something good out of it, the way Natvar did? I’d never seen someone who could do this. My mother’s anger was the kind that slammed doors and shouted. My father’s was the kind that controlled itself no matter how much iron that took, and looked down on my mother's lack of control. I wanted my words to fly out and sing the way Natvar’s did. I was sure that if I ever let my words out I’d be slammed, killed, mocked. I listened to my words in my own head and saw right through them, saw where the enemy would attack.

Chapter 34: TO GIVE

2011-08-18T05:10:00.000-04:00

Natvar began to teach the 6 o’clock yoga class just as he had in the old days and students began to return. Not nearly enough to even begin to fill our huge meditation hall. And now they stayed for dinner afterwards – the soup, salad and bread for $5 that Natvar had said would be the menu, cooked by Tracy during the class on hotplates. She didn’t like missing the classes, but now that Carmen was gone, Natvar didn’t want anyone else touching food.

We had people sit on the floor in the lobby and they ate off the hard yellow plastic trays that I had bought down on the Lower East Side. Natvar didn’t want to eat with everyone else in the lobby, so we brought his tray down the corridor to his room.

“We will make more money teaching more private classes,” Natvar mused one evening after everyone had gone. “Mark and Marta, you two should start getting private clients.”

People sometimes called on the phone to get information. Sometimes they stopped by because they saw our sign downstairs. If they spoke to Natvar they always signed up. I was always nervous when I spoke to someone making inquiries. What if I said the wrong thing? If they didn’t sign up it meant I had done it wrong. I tried to copy Natvar’s tone and attitude, but never felt I was convincing. And we needed their money so badly. All the time.

I thought I would try putting flyers in fancy apartment buildings where rich people ived, offering them private classes in their homes. That’s what Natvar did for Prince Michael. If only I could have a gig like that. But how to find someone rich enough to afford such a thing? I didn’t know anyone in that world.

I made small flyers and went to Central Park West one evening, a stately street lined with stolid apartment buildings, their windows overlooking the park. I was surprised when the doormen in the lobbies stopped me and turned me away. I hadn’t thought of that. I continued, plastering a particularly bland expression on my face as if I walked in and out of this building every day. I made it to the elevator a few times and took it up to some random floor, where I walked up and down, slipping my flyer under doors.

I bought myself a teaching outfit, white tights and a dark fucia leotard – red and white because I had read that these were the colors of Shiva and Shakti – the two elemental forces of the universe – and I thought that by wearing those colors I would align myself with Baba more. It was a gesture of friendship towards Baba, soliciting his assistance.

I got one call. It was from a man. He didn’t live in a fancy apartment. It was near the Institute. I made the appointment and went to his apartment. I stood in his plain living room in my new leotard and demonstrated the postures with him following along just as I did in classes back at the Institute. It didn’t have the shine and polish that Natvar always talked about when he returned from his classes. I knew I was not safe here. I smiled my way through, pretending I did these classes all over town.

I was glad to have the extra $10 for groceries that day, but I told Natvar that it had been scary and he agreed that we should be more careful.

But we still needed money. After Natvar’s evening yoga class, before dinner, we had the ceremony called darshan. Everyone lined up down the center of the meditation hall with the soft flute music in the background, and one by one walked up to Baba’s elaborate chair with its burgundy velvet cushions supporting the large framed photograph of Baba’s smiling face. One by one we knelt down, touching our forehead to the floor.

Natvar had taught us that it was traditional to offer the guru something during darshan. You could just offer yourself, or you could put something tangible in the waiting basket – a flower, a piece of fruit, or some nice cold cash. I loved darshan. When I knelt before Baba’s photograph I felt a communion with him, with my own innermost self, something that could sustain me no matter how difficult the days were. I liked to put something in the basket, and I tried to put something there that we needed – some incense or a box of tea.

I got the idea that I could have a darshan shop and sell the items that we used in the Institute and that people could buy them and have something to offer during darshan. Natvar approved the idea and I set up a small folding table near the entrance of the corridor that led from the lobby down to the meditation hall. I had the white wax votive candles, a couple of roses, an avocado – everything marked up a little.

It brought in a handful of dollars each night and to me, who did the daily shopping, these few dollars made a little difference. But it was not enough.

“People should give us more money!” Natvar stewed one morning as he was preparing to go out. “They get something here they cannot get anywhere else! What is wrong with you that you can’t create more income? You’re afraid of affluence, that’s what it is! Look what I have done with nothing – created this beautiful Institute. Look at you, dumb Americans, you have no life force!”

He stood at the door, on his way to Prince Michael’s, his white yoga clothes in a clean white canvas bag to change when he got there. He looked elegant in his wool coat, cap and scarf, the same ones I had seen him in now for two winters.

Natvar was careful with his clothes. He didn’t yank the sleeves of his sweaters to the elbow like I did without thinking. “It stretches them out,” he scolded me. I had never thought about it. I knew his clothes weren’t new and yet they always looked fresh when he wore them. He wore them as if they were new and they obeyed him.

Natvar left, but his words stayed with me as I gathered the dishes from the table. No life force, he had said, and it felt true. Why couldn’t I come alive, the way he was? Why did I feel so handicapped, so mute, so unfree? My thoughts tumbled one over the other as I stood at the big ugly utility sink. I had heated the water on the hotplate and had the dishes in a plastic tub, moving them to a second one to rinse, then laying them out to dry on a towel.

Tracy had gone to work. She still had her dull 9-5 job. She wanted to quit and be at the Institute full-time, but Natvar advised her not to. “You do so much good for us out there,” he said. “It’s good that you earn your living.” It got her off the hook as far as thinking of ways to bring in money. Mark had disappeared as usual into the office. I wasn’t sure what he did in there, but I knew it was important. He was filling out paperwork so we could be an official nonprofit organization. I would rather do things like dishes than big scary things like that. And he paid the bills – the rent, the electric – and managed the bank account. I didn’t think I could do those things either.

I had to think of something to inspire people to give more money.

I came up with two donation baskets. With brightly colored construction paper I created what I hoped were signs that hid our desperation and placed my two creations in strategic spots in the lobby.

In the evening people began to arrive for the class, walking up to the white marble table by the windows where I sat, taking people’s payments, smiling and greeting, trying to be friendly and charming the way Natvar was. Natvar arrived as people were gathering. He entered the lobby from the door, wearing his coat and cap, and immediately spied my two additions.

He stormed up to the first, snatched it in his hand and grabbed the second, crumpling them both and looking at me as if I were his most hated enemy. “You are crass and ugly,” he spat at me. “You don’t understand a word I say,” and he stormed down the corridor to his room.

I smiled as I handed the student in front of me her change for the small package of incense she had just purchased, pretending that nothing worthy of note had happened.

Chapter 35: CLENCH

2011-08-18T05:05:00.000-04:00

Mark dragged some paneling that he'd found on the street back to the Institute one day. Both he and Natvar thought he had made a real find, but all I could see was a sheet of beat-up old wood. I didn't say anything, but watched as Mark painted it the same cream color as the walls and fastened it to a wall in the lobby over the silver crushed velvet couch. It was old-fashioned molding, delicately carved, and with its new coat of paint it added texture to the lobby which was already my favorite part of the Institute. I loved the light that poured through the large windows, the deep rich red of the carpet, the tall green trees that Tracy, Mark and Kenny had each brought. And now this unlikely piece of paneling added another touch of beauty.

I had done my taxes and a $1,000 refund check – the biggest chunk of money I'd ever held in my hand, had arrived. The year before my check had been for $800 and I had given it over to my parents to cover one month of their rent. When I thought about my parents I felt sad in a crushing, uncureable, familiar kind of way. Sad that they didn't really have a home anymore, sad that my proud, confident father had to take menial jobs from the local classified ads.

But Natvar had started talking a lot about our parents – mine, Mark's, Tracy's. He said we were pathetic for caring so much about our parents. He said we were scared of them. Mark's parents had come to visit one afternoon from Ithaca. They had climbed the four flights of stairs from the street and Doris, his mother, a small plain unimpressive woman, had had to lie down on the burgundy carpet during the whole visit because of her back. The whole visit centered around her lying down as the rest of us made small talk.

“So this is the woman who runs your life?” Natvar had said later, after dinner as we sat in the lobby-slash-living-room. “This little mouse of a woman who can't even sit up? You Americans--”

I had never heard anyone talk about parents as if they were regular people you could talk about and question. It had never occurred to me to see my parents as anyone but my mother and father – people I could only defy by going behind their back. Face to face, they set the law, they determined the walls and boundaries of what the limits could be and I had to abide by them. And though I ran from their restrictions as much as I could I still thought that if anyone else met or saw them they would instantly see them as I saw them, people apart, people who could not be confused with anyone else.

But to Natvar they were no one special. Parents were no one special.

But now I had $1,000. $1,000 was the equivalent of ten months rent, the rent I was paying to Natvar. I could give it all to the Institute now – the whole one thousand dollars – what a huge gift that would be, and I could quit my part-time job at the stuttering clinic because now my rent would be paid for the next 10 months, and I could be at the Institute full-time. Like Mark. Like Natvar.

To not have to go out to an office would feel like an accomplishment, I thought. I had always been searching for a way to live without having to work for someone else. I had admired people who didn't have real jobs, people who could survive and flourish without having to go to an office. I was 25 now and I had never found a way to do that. I had tried a few things – like sewing huge corduroy pillows one summer and going down to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk to sell them. Within a few minutes a cop had closed me down because he said I needed a license. Ever since college I had been making most of my money from typing in offices –which three years ago had thrillingly led to becoming an editor in a paperback publishing house. But even being an editor meant going to an office every day and that too had ultimately felt like a failure of imagination. Virginia Woolf never did anything like that.

It was morning when I told Natvar of my $1,000 plan. He was on his way out. “Okay,” he said, though his face did not light up. I thought he'd be happy to know I'd be there full-time, able to do so much more. “Okay,” he said as if he were thinking about something else. “Why don't you have lunch ready for us all when I get back? Just do something simple.” And he left and I stayed behind, wondering for a moment why he had not celebrated at all, But that wasn't why I had offered myself, I reminded myself. That wasn't the point.

Right now I had to think about lunch. My insides froze. “Come on,” I told myself. “Don't be a baby. Just make the rice, steam the vegetables.” But I was nervous. Natvar never liked anything I made. Up til now he only wanted Tracy cooking. But I pushed myself forward, thinking I had to try, I had to do my best.

I measured the brown rice carefully and the water, putting both on the big pot on the hot plate in the windowless square kitchen we had built. I had seen Natvar do this a hundred times, quickly, without thinking. Last time he had said I had used too much water so I added a little less this time. Maybe I should have used even less. Maybe I should have waited to start it so that it won't be cold when he gets back. It would be worse though if it weren't ready on time. I cut the broccoli as Natvar had taught us, peeling away the tough outer skin, something my mother had never done. But Natvar was teaching me many things my mother had never known.

I set the table – everything in its place – the four blue plates, the cloth napkins, the glasses Natvar liked, the brown wooden bread basket. It looked pretty. I tried to be light as I cooked, knowing that there was supposed to be some sort of creative spirit in the food too, trying to pretend I couldn't hear Natvar's angry voice in my head.

Natvar took one bite, sitting at the head of the table and set down his fork. I felt the dread sink down. We were in for a scene. Mark and Anjani watched him from their seats. “You call this food? This rice is hardly soft,” Natvar said. “You're supposedly an adult and you can't make rice properly?” He sighed. “You are warped, not well. I don't know if there is any hope for you. I don't know what happened, but your ignorant parents twisted you until there is nothing left. You’re dangerous. You can’t be trusted with anything.”

I hadn’t noticed that the rice was that bad. My mother had made rice like this all the time. She always told us not to fuss. But Natvar was teaching me that it was important to do things right, to not make mistakes. I must sharpen myself, like a pencil, sharper and sharper and sharper. I must not allow myself to become like my parents, the people who had been setting the standard until now. I must rise higher.

Chapter 36: COMING AND GOING

2011-08-18T05:00:00.000-04:00

I had now a few private students, one or two in the afternoons, who came to the Institute to take a class with me in the giant, darkened meditation hall. Just recently Natvar had brought home the cassette tape of Chariots of Fire and had started playing it during his yoga classes. I had thought he would never change the flute music that I had been listening to during classes for two years now, doing the series of postures I had learned from Natvar to the sound of that bamboo flute. I had thought that would never change. But Natvar loved the Chariots of Fire music and I loved it too, especially the surging power of the title track. As I stood in front of my lone student, as we performed the hour-long sequence together, I could let the music pulse through my body, helping it stretch and reach further and further.

I did the class just as Natvar did, in low light, with a spotlight on Baba’s framed photo, and another one on me so the student could follow along. I learned to sometimes go over to the student as she sat on the floor, reaching towards her outstretched feet and gently support and move her a little more deeply into the pose with my hands and weight. And the class still ended with a long, quiet time on our backs, eyes closed, and then an emerging into the light of the corridor and the bright lobby.

For the most part, I took the female private students, and Mark took the male ones. Just before summer Natvar announced that he had discovered that Mark had been fucking one of his students in the meditation hall instead of giving them a yoga class. Once again, Mark became our outcast as Natvar lashed him with his tongue for often hours at a time while I sat and listened, while Tracy sat and listened. I fought the urge to feel better than Mark, but I did not know how he had pulled this off. I didn’t know how to be that bad, that wrong, in this place where it was all I could do to survive by being every moment as good as I could possibly be.

I saw no room for sex in my Institute life. I knew it was out of the question, much too free, too on-my-own. Natvar even made an example out of me as he poured his scorn over Mark. “Look at Marta,” he said. “She could have gone off with that Quince, but she did not.” I was surprised that Natvar had even noticed Quince and I had had a connection. I hadn’t known I’d scored a point on Natvar’s scorecard by not letting anything happen. Not that I could have done it any differently. Something had held me back from Quince, a fear that hoped the other could overcome. But Quince had never insisted and we had not stuck.

It took a week or two before normal life gently washed Mark back into shore, shaping him back into our manager, my big brother, Natvar’s partner.

The students continued to come in the evenings for Natvar’s class, to stay for the simple dinner served on plastic trays, all of us sitting cross-legged on the burgundy carpet except Natvar who ate in his room during the group dinners, Tracy knocking at his door to bring him his tray.

After everyone had left, clattering down the stairs, Mark and I washed the trays, silverware and plastic glasses in the big, gray utility sink, heating water on the hot plates, standing side by side in the small walled-in space where the sink was housed between the two toilet stalls and the kitchen. On the good evenings we joked and laughed. On the harder evenings we worked in silence.

Tracy, relieved of dinner duties, often used this time to massage Natvar’s shoulders out in the lobby or to iron a shirt for him to wear the next day. She had these wifely duties that Natvar would not entrust to me. Somehow Tracy had something I didn’t have when it came to domestic arts. I wondered why he would not let me in closer. I felt clumsy, as if I didn’t have the delicacy needed. I hadn’t learned the feminine touch from my mother. She didn’t have it either.

My mother was a frontier woman who’d grown up on a farm in British Columbia during the Depression in a house that had a library of leather-bound books and the only indoor plumbing in the town. She had worked since she was five, had walked barefoot to a one-room schoolhouse. It was not a gentle place and though she was not mean, my mother was not soft. She felt better gardening or hauling brush than sitting through a cocktail party.

When the dishes are done Mark and I join Tracy and Natvar in the lobby, now a living room at the end of the day. Natvar and Mark have just discovered the Lincoln Center library where you can borrow records for free. The first record Natvar brings home is a recording of the actress, Ruth Draper – skits she wrote and performed, playing all the characters herself. Natvar’s favorite is “The Italian Lesson” in which a rich woman sits in her bedroom, trying to study Dante with her tutor while being constantly interrupted by children, servants, her lover, her husband. Natvar says his favorite lines out loud with Ruth and laughs and I listen and laugh when he does.

Anjani isn’t with us anymore. It happened just two weeks ago. Anjani has left. I don’t know what happened exactly. I wasn’t around, but it is something to do with her credit card. She wants Natvar to pay some amount that he borrowed from her years ago. One day I go down to the mailbox and see that Anjani has been there. She has left her VISA bill with an angry red circle around the amount owed.

Soft-spoken, pretty, white-haired Anjani, who I thought would be here forever, who has been with Natvar since before my time, since before Mark’s time, has left. Natvar talks about her now that she is gone, saying what a rigid old woman she was, how ridiculous she is for demanding her pound of flesh. “Ingrid Bergman got it right,” says Natvar. “Someone came to her after the war, asking her to pay back some money she had borrowed. And she just told him to get lost. ‘That was before the war,’ she said. Ha! Anjani, that was before the war!” Natvar said the last few words with gusto and laughter, as if he were beating the bullies, the people who were demanding their rights, the losers, the conventional people stuck in ordinary things.

I thought about how he used to entreat Anjani to stay more often at the Institute, to spend the night in the bunk bed beneath mine, even to move in. And how she steadfastly, almost every night, returned, no matter how late it was, to her apartment on the Upper East Side in the same building where her sister and brother-in-law lived, all of them from the West Indies. I remembered how Natvar made fun of how tied she was to her sister, always rushing to return her calls. She had spent every day with us, though, and now she was gone.

Kenny had gotten his job at the big main Post Office, which was just a block or two away from us. He was proud. And he had some money now. He never slept at the Institute. His bulky body didn't quite fit in. But he came by almost every day and three weeks after getting the job he brought home what he knew Natvar wanted more than anything: an IBM Selectric typewriter, top of the line.

He unveiled it with a shy proud smile and Natvar hugged him tightly. We placed the typewriter in the windowless office on the desk below the loft in which Tracy slept, next to the tall filing cabinet. It was beautiful. “Marta should now take notes when I speak,” said Natvar. “And type them up on our lovely new Selectric. There are so many times when I have wished we could document what I say. We can make a book!”

I liked my new duty. I had so much more time at the Institute now that I wasn’t working outside. I liked sitting with my notebook as Natvar spoke, scribbling down his words in the speedwriting I had learned in high school, and then typing it up. It was funny though. Even though Natvar had asked me to do this, I felt guilty as I typed. I knew the vacuuming came first, the meals, the tasks. Typing felt too luxurious and I rushed to be done quickly.

On paper his words didn’t have the same power as they did when he spoke them. It was hard to follow his connections when reading his words, though when I heard them they had a kind of magical logic, and if they didn’t I was willing to make whatever leaps were required. I worried that on paper the brilliance was not as apparent, at least not right away. It had to be there. A sharp mind would see it.

Chapter 37: NEW FRIEND, NEW WORLD

2011-08-18T04:55:00.000-04:00

One day Natvar came home with big news. Prince Michael wanted him to meet a Greek woman who wanted private yoga lessons. A new client! “She’s very rich,” Natvar said with excitement and made an appointment to see her right away.

He returned glowing, beaming, talking non-stop about the morning he had spent with Ileana. “She said she had never had such a transformative experience! She wants me to come three times a week and she paid for six sessions in advance!” Natvar handed over the check to Mark. “Our ship has come in, Markey Boy!” he declared. “After the class we sat and talked for two hours. She showed me her whole apartment. I met her mother – an incredible woman. Americans just never have this kind of depth. She told me about her whole life as if we had known each other for years.”

I envied how everyone opened up to Natvar right away, how immediately he made friends with people, how much he admired them, and how much they admired him.

Within a couple of weeks we were all invited to tea on a Sunday afternoon. Natvar rang the bell of the Upper East Side apartment, Mark at his side, Tracy and I standing just behind. We had all dressed purposefully for the event: Natvar as always looking fresh and well-dressed, Mark almost a mirror-image, a younger version of casual elegance. I was surprised at how well Mark could follow Natvar’s lead. I remembered the jeans and oversized overcoat he used to slouch around in, the cigarette that hung from his mouth in the very earliest days. Now his laced leather shoes shone, his button-down shirt had a crisp crease down each sleeve.

Tracy had dressed up in a colorful peasant skirt and a white cotton blouse, the clothes, she said, with a mischievous giggle, that she’d been married in. She looked sweet, young and pretty. I didn’t have new clothes or shoes. I had cobbled something together. It had been over a year since I’d even thought about buying myself something new to wear. I had determined that until I learned to take better care of the clothes I had, new clothes would not come to me. That must be the reason I had so little. I didn’t take good enough care of what I had.

Ileana opened the door with a flourish. She was tall, even taller than me, and dark-haired, about Natvar’s age. I knew she had published books and was working on one about Picasso.“Ah, my dear, you are here!” she cried, kissing Natvar on both cheeks, her Greek accent present in every syllable. Her accent was the harsh accent I heard in Greek coffee shops, not the soft British-sounding voice that Natvar had created for himself. “Thank you so much for bringing your family!”

We stepped into a cathedral-ceilinged living room with dark paneling on the walls and baby grand piano in the corner. It looked almost Elizabethan, with heavy drapery, carpets and a worn brown leather couch. A big vase of fresh flowers stood on the piano.

“This is Mark,” Natvar was saying, “our manager. And Tracy, and Marta, my secretary.”

I smiled and shook Ileana’s hand, wondering who she was and what she thought, and wondering who I was supposed to be here. It was hard to convey to people who we were. Not many people traveled with managers and secretaries, but then Natvar was unique, and Ileana seemed to understand that.

I sat on the edge of a chair, my back straight. I must be a professional here although Natvar and Ileana by now were talking and laughing in Greek. Their voices and gestures were energized as if they were talking about important opinions. Natvar managed to be completely controlled and professional and yet completely at ease at the same time. I knew if I relaxed and starting trying to be friends with Ileana, I would make some horrible gaffe in the professional department. I would let Natvar down in some way. And so I kept myself alert and polite, the way I used to when my father brought someone home from his office for lunch on Sundays, someone whom we would never see again, someone who just came once to drink the wine my father had gone out and bought, from the new glasses he had bought that morning because he felt that the old ones weren’t good enough, to eat the roast beef my mother made, to listen to me play a piano piece because my father insisted, to eat the fancy pastries my father had also brought home that morning, spending money my mother knew we didn’t have. I knew when these guests came that I must behave in a certain way, and it felt like that a little as I sat in Ileana’s living room.

“Who have we here,” an older woman – round and short with gray, straight, bushy hair shuffled into the room in pink bedroom slippers and a long thick velvet robe that tied with a tassled cord. She had a cigar going in one hand. She stood looking at each of us, her eyes narrowed as if she were taking our measure. “Yanni,” she said, using Natvar’s Greek name, “where did you find such lovely people?” Natvar was on his feet, kissing her on each cheek.

Sometimes I heard Eva, Natvar’s Greek friend, call him Yanni, but no one else did. I could tell that this woman would not be corrected. Her name was Annie and she was Ileana’s mother.

“I am back in the kitchen,” said Annie. “I am cooking.” She said the word “cooking” as if it meant something mysterious and important, lingering on the word, drawing it out to give people a chance to understand what she meant. I didn’t know what she meant, but I wanted to. She took a draw on her cigar and looked at me. “Why don’t you come with me? I will show you things.”

“I’d love to,” I said brightly, playing the good guest, but very willing to have something to do.

Annie turned and walked slowly out of the room and down a dark corridor with me following. At the end of the corridor was a large kitchen with pots hanging from the ceiling and a big gas range at the back. A tall soup pot was bubbling over a flame.

Annie sat down at a counter where a worn wooden chopping board lay with several carrots waiting by a broad knife. “I am chopping the carrots,” said Annie, putting down her cigar in a saucer. “I don’t know what will come next. Recipes are for people with none of the imagination.” Her accent was strong, her voice harsh with smoke. “When you cook you are making life. To be alive is to be open. You can’t force things. I remember once they put me in an asylum and I stood on the balcony and unrolled toilet paper for days and days and days. Life is this unrolling.” She was standing by the pot now, letting the slices of carrot slide into the pot.

She kept talking as I sat, listening, following and not following at the same time, like when I listened to Natvar talk. I liked that she talked about things people didn’t usually talk about. She seemed to exist on a different plane, one that was more important, one I wanted to be part of, but one I had no idea how to reach. I couldn’t converse with her. All I could do was listen and she kept talking, drawing now and then on the cigar, shuffling over to her spice cabinet, crumbling a piece of cheese into the pot. “My food is more than food,” she said. “Food must be more than food or there is no nourishment.”

Natvar came into the kitchen, saying that we must be leaving. “Come, Yanni, smell my soup,” called Annie with a smile. She had not smiled for me. And Natvar came to the stove, lifted the lid, and took a long, appreciate inhalation of steam.

“Ah,” he said. “Now that is the real cooking.” And Annie kissed his cheek as if he were her son and the two began to talk in the Greek way with gestures and exclamations and I saw that Natvar had no trouble keeping up with Annie and that Annie enjoyed being with someone who could talk with her and not just listen and smile and nod. I could almost hear them thinking, “Americans. They have no spirit. No gumption. Americans are lifeless.”

Chapter 38: GUESSWORK

2011-08-18T04:50:00.000-04:00

Ileana gave Natvar a cloth bag in which to carry his yoga clothes. It was woven from strips of different color cloth. Natvar treated it as if it were made of delicate gold, preserving its newness. He left every morning now with his white yoga clothes folded in the pretty cloth bag, on his way to teach a private yoga class to Prince Michael or Ileana, and she had promised to introduce him to her friends. When he returned from visits to her home he always had plenty to say.

“This morning a glorious bunch of lilies arrived,” Natvar told us one afternoon, his eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “They were from Barbara Walters! They’d met the night before at some dinner. And you know what Ileana did?” Here, he giggled. “She took out the note from Barbara, wrote a new one, and sent the flowers on to someone else! Brilliant! And twenty minutes later the jeweler arrived to take back the diamonds that Ileana had rented for the evening.”

Barbara Walters, rented diamonds, published books.

One evening all four of us were again in Ileana’s grand apartment. She had invited Natvar to stop by, and he had arrived with all of us. I could tell this surprised Ileana, that she didn’t really know what to do with all of us, and I was sure that Natvar was the only one she wanted to see.

“I wonder,” said Ileana after a few minutes, looking over at me, “if you might be able to help me to type up some of this manuscript I’m working on. I promised my editor I’d have something to them in the morning.” She had a smile on her face. Natvar looked over at me as if I had just been offered a wonderful opportunity.

“I’d love to,” I said with appropriate eagerness and followed Ileana into the office where I knew she and Natvar had spent so much time over the last month, drinking coffee and talking.

Her desk was broad and heavy, covered with stacks of papers, files and books, everything orderly. A Selectric typewriter stood on a small separate table.

“Here you go. I think it’s pretty legible. Thank you so much.” Ileana passed me a file of handwritten pages. “Let me know if you need anything.”

I began to type alone in her office. It was already after 9pm. One hour passed, and then a second. As I typed, I wondered if I was supposed to be paid for this, or was I doing it for free?

Natvar never did anything for free. He was paid, and paid well. He would know how to handle this. He would say the right thing and come home with a big check and an invitation to dinner.

I kept typing. Natvar would think I was so stupid if I came home empty-handed. I must get some money for this. “People shouldn’t take us for granted!” He had said that a lot. But maybe he will be furious if I ask Ileana for money. What am I supposed to do?

I typed until after midnight. “You must be exhausted,” Ileana said as I handed her the typed chapters. “Thank you so much. You really saved me.” She was putting the file away in a drawer and turning off her desk lamp. It didn’t look she was going to volunteer anything.

I did the scariest thing. “Can you pay me for those hours?” I asked her.

“Oh,” said Ileana, startled. “Of course.” She opened a drawer and brought out an envelope. “How much do you want?”

The moment was ugly. I knew Natvar never created such awkward exchanges. That’s why people loved him so much. “How about $30?” I suggested. Maybe I should have asked for more. After all, Ileana was so rich. But maybe I shouldn’t be asking for anything. But we needed money so badly.

Ileana gave me the money silently, without the laughter that was present in all her conversations with Natvar.

The four of us rode home on the subway. We sat in the harsh light of the subway car. I didn’t think Ileana or her mother ever rode the subway.

“And so you got to type Ileana’s manuscript!” said Natvar. He looked proud.

“I did ask her to pay me,” I said hesitantly.

“You what?” Natvar said, his smile dropping.

“She paid me $30,” I said. $30 was the equivalent of three private classes at the Institute. I wasn’t used to making that much money so quickly. Wasn’t that what he wanted? That we each learn to earn good money? He had said so often that we didn’t know how to earn, that we undervalued him by undervaluing ourselves.

But I had done it wrong. I should never have asked Ileana for money. Didn’t I know anything? Natvar's words were like acid.

And the shroud descended again, the black heavy shroud that sank over me, that I had to carry, dragging it, until I learned what everyone else already knew.

Chapter 39: BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY

2011-08-18T04:45:00.000-04:00

There were some hot, thick, muggy days and nights that summer. The air inside the Institute did not move. “Let’s walk outside,” Natvar said at the end of the day when usually we sat together in the lobby. All four of us walked slowly through the hot summer streets over to F.I.T., the small college campus almost next door where there was more of a sense of spaciousness. We sat on steps there, hoping for breeze, sometimes with the delicious extravagance of ice cream cones, listening to Natvar.

“I pretended once to be insane,” he told us with delight. “It was the only way to avoid the army in Greece. And don’t think it was easy. For one month I was under observation in the mental hospital. Every single second they watched me. But I did it. I played that role 24 hours a day for one whole month, and they bought it. They declared me insane and I did not have to join the army.”

On a Sunday afternoon sometimes we walked west to the docks. I liked it out there, sitting on the plain wooden dock, smelling the salt, feeling the wind hit my face, watching the waves just a few feet below me. Nature felt close in those moments and the air was cooler. Natvar was lighter outside and the pressure all round seemed to ease.

“We have to go on vacation,” Natvar said finally. “In Europe they are civilized. No one works all summer. In Athens people go to the islands. What are we – third-rate citizens that we have to stay and scrub floors? We can go to that house your family owns, Mark – that one up in Canada. I need time to read and think and write.”

How could we go on vacation? I wondered. How could we leave New York, stop teaching classes when we needed every single dollar? It looked impossible to me and I wondered what Natvar was even thinking about.

“Come,” said Natvar a few days later to Mark and me. “Let’s get this going.” He had paper and pen in front of him. We were in the lobby, sitting on the plush burgundy carpet. “All right, Mark, what bills are waiting to be paid?”

Mark went into the small dark office and brought back a handful of white business envelopes. He went through them one by one – the electric bill, the rent, the phone bill, the Village Voice ad. Natvar wrote the amounts down in a column. “And what other money do we need?” he asked. We made more lists: food, gas for the trip, subways.

We were planning on using the small brown Dodge Dart my mother had passed on to me. She had bought it from an ad in the newspaper a few years before.

“Now what money do we have coming in?” Natvar asked, and again we made a list – how much we could expect over the next couple of weeks from the yoga classes and from Natvar’s private clients.

Then Natvar totaled up the columns. The money needed was not hugely different from the money expected. “Perhaps Kenny could pay the electric bill this month,” mused Natvar. “And Ileana can pay a little in advance.” He juggled the numbers until there was a match.

I had never looked at money like this before. I had only looked at what I had right at the moment, tried not to spend it, tried to make it last, and watched it vanish. But on Natvar’s page money had some kind of substance. It was something you could hold onto and move around.

We drove first to Ithaca and spent the night in the predictable suburban home of Mark’s parents. In the morning, as we gathered to leave, I pulled on my ear lobe. It was a gesture Natvar employed often as he was thinking or talking. Natvar smiled and said, “Look, she is truly imbibing me. She is taking on my habits.” He laughed with warmth, pleased, and I smiled in response, happy in the brief circle of his embrace.

On the way out of town we stopped for lunch. It was a small restaurant. Inside, the walls were covered with framed black and white photographs of local luminaries: soccer coaches, mayors, Rotary Club presidents. We sat in a booth.

“What’s wrong, Mark?” asked Natvar halfway through the meal. I looked up. I hadn’t noticed anything. Mark did not answer. “What’s the matter?” repeated Natvar. “You spend a night in your parents’ house and now you’re a dead person?” Again, Mark did not answer. I could see he didn’t know the answer.

“Is it these photographs?” asked Natvar. “Is it these damn small-town photographs? Is that what’s getting to you? All these people you grew up with? All these tiny minds? Come on, they don’t have to rule you, Mark.”

We had finished eating by now. We were paying the check. “Come on, Mark, we’ll steal a photo, that’ll show them.” Natvar slipped one of the photos into his bag and we began walking out to the car, laughing.

“Excuse me,” came a voice behind us, calling from the restaurant’s front door. We kept walking.

“Excuse me!” the voice came again, louder. “Sir!”

Natvar turned around and responded, “Yes?” He was the picture of dignity and elegance.

“Did you take a picture just now, sir?” It was the man from inside who had seated us, the proprietor.

“Take a picture?” Natvar asked, looking blank. “No, we don’t even have a camera.”

We quickly piled into the car and drove off. We were all laughing. “Did you hear me? Wasn’t that brilliant? ‘Take a picture? No, we don’t have a camera?’” We had fooled the bosses, we had gotten away with it. “Don’t you feel better now, Markey Boy?” asked Natvar, and I could tell Mark did feel better.

Ten minutes later a cop car pulled us over. The cop came up to the window where Mark sat in the driver’s seat.

“We believe you may have stolen a photograph from the restaurant in town,” the cop began, his voice deep, serious, administrative.

We all got out of the car. There were two cops and I knew if they looked they would find the photo. We were cornered now, I thought.

But Natvar was talking. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I don’t understand. We are just visiting your town. It’s so beautiful here. We are on our way to Canada. You are welcome to search everything, but you will find no picture. Why would anyone steal a picture?” His voice was smooth, the accent undetectable but with its British overtone. Natvar stood before them, his pants perfectly creased, his leather shoes shining. He kept talking. The cops listened. I could see they did not know what to make of him.

“All right, sir,” they said finally. “We’re sorry to have troubled you. Enjoy your vacation.” And once again we were on our way.

I didn’t know how he did it. I didn’t know. I could not figure it out. It separated him from everyone else I knew. He could conquer anyone.

The house in Canada was the summer home of Mark’s family, but we were to have it to ourselves: two cottages on a lake. We walked into the first one, exploring. The house was furnished with what looked like leftovers, shabby summer lakeside things, nothing unusual to my eye. “Oh, the claustrophobia,” Natvar said instantly, pointing at the gingham pillows lined up on a couch. “Is this what you had to grow up with, Mark?” Upstairs were two small bedrooms, each with two single beds. There was the typical musty odor.

We walked across the grass to the second cottage. It had a better kitchen, a cozy living room with a few books and a fireplace and a screened-in porch with a good-sized table. “We can use the first house for sleeping,” said Natvar, “and this one for meals.” We unpacked and headed out in the car again to explore the surrounding small roads and towns. We stopped at a farmstand and bought fresh eggs and filled up our water jugs since Mark had said the water at the cottages was not for drinking. The fresh eggs seemed to embody all that the vacation promised: country life, rest, leisure, good food. “I will read by the fire,” said Natvar. “I will write and breathe the fresh air here. We will all recover.”

But Tracy was not happy. We could feel it, something inside of her twisting and going sour. Finally, at the end of the day as we sat before a small fire in the living room Natvar turned on her and demanded to know what her complaint was. “I don’t know,” was all Tracy could manage, and Natvar began his assault while Mark and I listened. Tracy didn’t say anything. She just kept her eyes on Natvar, taking in every word, looking completely defeated as he told her what a country bumpkin she was, how she came from a family that didn’t know anything, that she had so little education that she’d thought her idiot husband was a god.

We went to bed late that night, after Tracy had cracked and admitted that she felt left out, that Natvar loved Mark and me more. It was like a fight with a lover, I thought, when after all the drama some core emotion is revealed and the tension goes out of the room. After Tracy’s admission, Natvar began to talk about how we were one unit. “It’s come down to us four,” he said. “This Institute has four wheels, and we’re moving forward.”

Us four. Anjani had left. Carmen had left. We were the core. We were the serious ones.

Chapter 40: CORRECTNESS IS A NARROW PATH

2011-08-18T04:40:00.000-04:00

I knew it was supposed to be a peaceful vacation – a time when we could leave city life behind and Natvar could read and write. He liked to read poetry by a Greek man called Cavafy. Sometimes, back in the city, he had read lines of Cavafy out loud to us, praising the poet for his beauty. The poems themselves did not move me deeply, but I loved when Natvar shared poetry or music with us. It made me feel close to him, as if we were kindred spirits.

I knew that anything in the arts was new for Tracy. Mark had been a dancer and music came naturally to him and he liked to draw strange doodles. Mark’s doodles were unique. They looked like real artwork to me – so strangely his own -- but Natvar made fun of them, calling them not real art, just cartoon-art. But Mark didn’t seem to know much about art beyond what he himself could do. And so when it came to books or Beethoven symphonies I felt like Natvar and me alone shared these things, just as my father and I had shared these them.

It was my father who took me to concerts, bought me records and gave me Thomas Mann to read. Both my parents were always reading, but I gravitated towards my father, using him as a sort of North Star for a long time. When I first read Mrs. Dalloway I bought a copy for my father, and I had a fight with him in high school when he said that rock music was not as good as classical music. I didn’t hold up my side of the argument very well – I couldn’t put into words very well why rock music had merit, but I knew it did.

On the drive up to Canada Natvar had said, “We will leave the chanting for now.” It felt strange, almost empty, not to have Baba’s photo set up anywhere and to have no schedule to obey. I enjoyed breakfast because what to do was clear: we met in the screened-in porch and ate together at the square table. But when the coffee cups had been emptied, I felt uncertain. What was I supposed to do next? Just go off and read? That did not feel right. What was the correct thing?

Natvar had started talking a lot about correctness. It had become a very important word. Things that were out of line with the universe, things that were unconscious were incorrect. I had figured out that imposing things upon yourself instead of letting things unfold was also incorrect.

It was Annie and Krishnamurti who had started it. Annie had loaned Natvar some books by Krishnamurti, a philosopher. I had started to read one of them. I liked Krishnamurti’s face on the cover – a gray-haired, handsome, serious, sensitive face. The book was an interview with him and a nuclear scientist and they were both talking about the nature of reality.

It was not easy to read, but I wanted very much to understand what they were saying. Natvar and Annie thought that every word of this book was brilliant.

I sort of understood some of it. It seemed that they were talking about interfering with the natural flow of things. To interfere was incorrect. I found that I had to watch myself very closely to make sure I wasn’t doing or saying something for the wrong reasons, that I wasn’t imposing some kind of concept on myself.

Annie seemed like someone who never imposed anything upon herself. She had come down once to spend the night with us in the Institute. She had come down in a cab, wearing her nightgown with a mink coat on top that reached the floor. She climbed the four flights of stairs from the street, huffing and puffing to the top floor where I held the door open for her. Natvar was right behind her, smiling broadly.

“Here,” she said as she reached me, “candies, sweetness,” and she pulled from her pockets handfuls of chocolates and candy, piling them into my cupped palms.

“She gives them to everyone!” Natvar was saying. “The cab driver, some kids on the street downstairs!”

Annie came into our lobby and looked at everything – the plants, the silver couch, the white marble table on its wooden legs. “Can I smoke?” she asked Natvar with a grin.

“Here,” said Natvar, “sit by the window. You can smoke if we open the window.” And she plopped herself down at the end of the couch and lit up her cigar. We grouped ourselves around her as she talked.

“Yes, it is alive here, I think,” said Annie, “because there must always be aliveness, not death, aliveness, life, the growth,” and she talked and Natvar talked and I listened and I knew what they were saying, but not enough to add anything, only to listen. We had prepared for her visit as if the queen were coming. I had stolen caviar and three cheeses from Balducci’s. We had a cake. Tracy had made a bean stew. And when it was time, finally, to sleep, we made her a bed on the couch though in the morning it did not seem as if she had slept.

But we did not take her down the corridor to the meditation hall. Somehow I could tell that Baba wouldn’t fit in Annie’s world. And I had read that Krishnamurti didn’t believe in guru’s.

Chapter 41: WAYWARD

2011-08-18T04:35:00.000-04:00

On the first day Natvar wanted to go to the large neighboring town to stock up on food for our two-week stay. We found a big box discount store and Natvar led us through its aisles, comparing prices and choosing the foods we would need. And then we returned and put things away. “This place is filthy,” Natvar said, running his finger across a counter, and I knew we had to clean before we could have the peaceful vacation. I volunteered and Tracy helped me. We cleaned the kitchen all afternoon. I wondered if we would have to clean as much as we did back at the Institute. Because there was the living room and the porch. Nothing was as clean as we were used to.

One morning there was something wrong in the air. Natvar was down on the dock, reading. But I had noticed Mark was not anywhere. I hoped Natvar knew where he was, but I didn’t want to ask him or bother him in any way. There he was, finally, doing the reading he wanted so much to do. Let me leave him be. And was my wanting to ask him correct or incorrect, an imposition of my thinking brain over my feeling one?

I decided to bake bread. It would be fun. It would absorb time, and I would have something to offer back to the group. I thought Natvar would approve. Tracy said she’d do it with me. We opened a recipe book and followed the directions. We didn’t talk much. It was as though Natvar were in the room with us, and I was careful with my words, careful with everything – careful to keep the counter tidy as we worked, not to waste anything.

There was a frightening emptiness in the air that I kept trying to ignore. Mark was missing. Where was he? Surely Natvar knew and everything was fine, but I wished I knew for sure.

Tracy made a soup and a salad and I went down to the dock to let Natvar know that lunch was ready. Now I’d have to let him know that Mark was missing.

Natvar was sitting on the bare wooden boards with a book. He looked up as I approached. “Lunch is ready,” I said.

“Good,” responded Natvar and stood up. He began to walk with me up to the house.

“Do you know where Mark is?” I asked.

“No, why should I know where Mark is?” Natvar responded, pausing.

“He’s been missing all morning,” I said. “I thought you knew.”

“Missing all morning? And you wait until now to tell me?” He spoke in the voice I dreaded, dark and angry.

We checked both houses again, calling Mark’s name. He was clearly not here. “We have to find him,” Natvar said. “Come on, we’ll drive to the town. Perhaps he hitched a ride,” and we drove the twenty miles into the next town. “You see,” said Natvar from the passenger seat, “this is what you do when a friend is missing. You two don’t seem to know the simplest things about friendship, about relationship.”

I drove up and down the streets and the three of us scanned the sidewalks. Nothing. We returned home. We ate almost in silence. Mark had disappeared.

It wasn’t dark yet, but a thunderstorm began to rumble. We were sitting on the front steps, looking away from the lake, across a wide stretch of grass towards the tree-lined road.

As the rain began, I perceived mark stepping in from the road, beginning to cross the grass towards us. I stood up immediately and ran across the grass in the rain to hug him with relief. I wasn’t angry with him. I was just overjoyed to see him. No matter what, Tracy and I couldn’t not be with Natvar alone. We were not enough for him. Mark’s presence eased the pressure.

We gathered gravely in the small living room with its plaid couch. Mark looked defeated. He mumbled his story. He’d hitched into town. He’d come on to a boy in a bathroom. The cops had come after him, then let him go when he’d told them his family had been coming here for years.

We stayed up well past midnight, Natvar talking until the friction was spent. “And Marta, you looked so silly, like a romantic movie, running through the rain,” taunted Natvar, but he didn’t say it in his harsh voice. I knew it wasn’t so bad, a little embarrassing, but not a crime.

At 2 in the morning, finally, we walked in the darkness to the other cottage, the one where our bedrooms were. As we walked through the night the sky lit up with huge flashes of green, cascades of strange light falling and rising. “It’s Northern Lights,” said Mark, and we watched together, standing beneath as the light washed across the sky. I had never seen the Northern Lights before. I felt like I was living on the edge of the universe, in a place where special, real, important things were taking place.

Chapter 42: UNABLE TO REACH

2011-08-18T04:30:00.000-04:00

There were long talks at the table in the screened-in porch. There was some time for reading. I continued to try and understand the Krishnamurti book, and I picked up a battered copy of Women In Love. One character in the book makes reference in conversation to “meretricious persiflage,” words I had to look up, and I brought the phrase to the table where I made Natvar laugh as I repeated it.

“Is there anyone you longed to become when you were young?” Natvar asked us one afternoon. He had never asked us a question like that before, had never welcomed us with a probing, non-rhetorical question. “Virginia Woolf,” I said without hesitation while Mark and Tracy had no answer at all. My answer linked us. Yes, I had had someone I had wanted to become. He must have had someone too.

Within a few days Natvar complained that he wasn’t feeling well. “It must be the water we’ve been getting from the farmstand,” he said. “My mother always said that when you are ill you should change the water you are drinking.” I imagined his mother, a woman back in Greece in another time, a woman of hard won wisdom. He often quoted her or his grandmother.

The next time we passed the farmstand we stopped to buy more eggs. The old farmer came out and began to talk with Natvar. People always talked to Natvar, ignoring us. “Yup,” he said, “we’ve been here for almost fifty years. Used to be a gas station, but we dug up the tanks a good twenty or so years ago.”

“You see!” said Natvar with excitement as Mark pulled the car back onto the road. “I knew it. The water isn’t good here because of the old gas tanks. It’s polluted and I could tell.” It was more evidence that Natvar had access to more information than I did, was tuned into something more subtle than I could define.

We bought Evian water in glass bottles for Natvar to drink. It was too expensive to even think of buying for all of us.

“We will return to the city soon,” said Natvar. “It is time for us to succeed. We have the Institute. People are beginning to find out about me. My work will get some recognition. We must be ready.”

I didn’t know what Natvar meant about being ready and what was coming, but I thought if I just paid as much attention as I could I would hopefully be part of this wondrous new wave.

We returned to the city, the small brown Dodge Dark leaking a mysterious liquid, and immediately Natvar was drawn into a swirl of private classes. Ileana had recommended him to a number of her friends, all of whom began to call, wanting to make an appointment for Natvar to come to their apartment for a private yoga class.

Natvar came back one day with leatherbound spiral book, about the size of a paperback. Inside were pale beige tissue-paper ruled pages, one for each day of the year. Ileana had given him this stately appointment book.

“Marta, when the people call they should speak with you to make the appointments, and in the evening you can type them up into my book. Do you think you can do that?”

“Of course,” I said with confidence, but as soon as I spoke to the first client I knew my confidence was hollow. These people came from another world, one in which Natvar seemed to fit beautifully. They met him once and were happy to pay to have him come back.

I spoke with each new client, feeling like I was in the way. They didn’t want to talk to me. They just wanted their special friend, Natvar. But I labored. When they asked if Natvar could come at 10, I didn’t know if I was allowed to say no. What would Natvar say? I knew he would get it the way he wanted it, and that they would never feel slighted. When I offered someone a time, it felt like throwing a dart at a dartboard. Who would I make more angry – Natvar or the client?

After several days, Natvar snatched the appointment-making duties back from me. “For God’s sake, do you want to kill me? How am I supposed to get from East 68th St. over to West 77th in twenty minutes? Don’t put them back to back like this! Leave breathing room. That’s the trouble – you aren’t alive so how can I expect you to understand about breathing room. I’ll make my own appointments from now on.”

But in the evenings I typed them up in the small office, my back to the door, facing a wall, typing on the fancy Selectric typewriter that Kenny had bought, typing the names onto the tissue-sheets of paper, making sure to align the typing just above the ruled lines – and if there were changes, using the lightest brushes of Liquid Paper.

It was every day now, Natvar leaving in the morning in his cap and woolen coat, his brightly colored cloth bag, everything looking brand new – and he’d return later in the day with tales of what the famous fashion designer had said, or how the rich widow had poured her heart out for two hours, serving him Italian coffee on delicate china, or of the Senator with Lew Gehrig’s disease who said Natvar was the only person who gave him relief.

Each person he met with was exceptional, each one held his interest. I wondered how they did it. How they could talk to him for hours at a time, and he to them, as if they were people from a foreign land who had finally found each other.

Chapter 43: STRENGTH IS NOT DOING WHAT YOU WANT

2011-08-18T04:25:00.000-04:00

Sonya, Natvar’s wife, was back. She had gone away for a year or so with the two girls to live in Baba’s ashram in upstate New York, but they were back again, living in their Staten Island home. And she began to visit us. She began to drop by around dinner time. She was friendly, but never offered to help serving the food or cleaning up. I wondered about this. Why didn’t she help when the rest of us were working so hard? I understood why Natvar didn’t do these things – the cleaning, the vacuuming, the cooking – but she wasn’t Natvar.

Things were a little different now after the summer vacation. We weren’t serving dinner to the public anymore. Natvar didn’t have time to do his evening class anymore. Mark and I were teaching private classes in the Institute and Natvar was teaching private classes in people’s homes. The money was better all round though still tight tight tight.

Sonya had long dark blonde hair and light eyes. She was tall with a thick, heavy body, but she wasn’t fat. She had prominent teeth and wore simple clothes – jeans and sweaters – and was a few years older than me. I didn’t know exactly how many. She was friendly. She smiled. But something separated her from us. I wasn’t sure why she was coming around, but Natvar was friendly to her and always invited her to stay for dinner. He showed her every corner of the Institute and she oohed and ahhed, complimenting us on our work. One day she arrived bearing a soft toilet seat, saying that someone had given it to her and she didn’t need it. Was she going to become one of us? I wondered.

One evening she arrived dressed and made up. Natvar met her at the door and took her out for dinner. They stayed out late. She came by a few days later with her massage table and disappeared with Natvar back into the meditation hall. They stayed for over three hours.

Images of them screwing crept into myhead. What else could be going on in the quiet darkness of the mediation hall? But it was none of my business. I made myself think of something else. But how could Natvar be giving Sonya all this attention, this woman he had so often derided, calling her a spoiled American brat, a failed mother, a manipulating bitch. I thought he hated her.

One afternoon I was walking with Mark and Natvar and we passed by Macy’s. “Let’s go in!” said Natvar. Mark and I followed him in through the revolving doors into the bright lights of the cosmetics counters. “Come on, Marta, sit down and let’s see what they can do for you.”

I was horrified. I was 26. I had almost never worn make-up. Make-up was for old people and secretaries and bank tellers. Up until a year or two ago I had always felt beautiful, no need for anything fake, confident of my ability to turn heads. But Natvar had been talking lately about women, saying, “Men are the truly beautiful half of the species. Look at nature – it’s the males who have the gorgeous feathers, the beautiful manes. That’s why women need make-up, because they are not naturally beautiful.” I didn’t feel beautiful anymore, but I didn’t think Macy’s could help me. I did not want to sit down at the tacky cosmetic counter, but I did it. I sat down.

A woman brightly made up in fake eyelashes, long red nails with powder I could easily see in the pores of her nose began fussing over me with brushes and palettes, patting and smearing all sorts of things onto my face. I looked into the mirror when she was done and saw an old, painted person looking back.

“Much better!” crowed Natvar. “Isn’t that better, Mark?”

“You look great, Marta!” said Mark cheerfully.

Natvar was buying the package the woman was selling, a plastic case about the size of a coffee table book, filled with different colors of eye shadow, lipstick, blushes and powders. I hated the pale peach plastic case. It looked cheap and ugly to me. Its contents had nothing to with me. They were for other people. I didn’t know what to do with them.

But Tracy was delighted when she saw the box that Natvar said we were to share. Every morning now I applied the paints as if I were doing exercises. It was something you just had to do.

Chapter 44: DROP DEAD

2011-08-18T04:20:00.000-04:00

One morning I dashed out to pick up something from the store. I didn't bother with the make-up. It was just a quick errand, I can get away with this, I thought. On the street I ran into Manuel, someone from my years with Geoffrey, someone with whom I'd often had dinner in New York and LA, someone whose ex-girlfriend I knew well, a man I had even tried to sleep with a couple of times when Geoffrey was not on the scene. Manuel was a big part of my past and there he was on the street. We stopped and said hello. All I could think of was that I didn't have the make-up on. I must look terrible. “God,” I said, “I just dashed out without make-up or anything!” Manuel had never seen me with make-up. It wasn't something he would miss. But by now I was pretty sure that everyone had to wear it when they left the house.

I told Mark about the episode when I got back, how the one time I don't put the stuff on I run into someone I know. “You see,” said Mark with an arch expression, reminding me that I had to be vigilant about all of it every moment.

My mother came to spend the afternoon with me. We went out into the city together. “Come on,” she said. “Let's go get you something.” I knew she had no money. “I'll put it on a credit card,” she said. I took her to Bloomingdales because that was where Natvar had started to like to go. He saw it as a shimmering palace that held all the things that people who could afford things could buy. I took my mother there because Natvar said to get anything less was to fall prey to the demeaning forces of poverty consciousness.

“I don't want to just 'get by,'” Natvar had said recently. “I don't want to 'make do.' I loathe that expression you Americans use. Life is expansive and rich. Go into a store and dare to get the best.” And so I took my mother to Bloomingdales. I wanted to get it right. I felt like I was pushing her far beyond where she was used to going. I imagined how she must have been expecting to stop by the Dress Barn or Bolton’s, some modest place I knew would not meet Natvar's standards. So I forced us up to the fourth floor of Bloomingdales where the women's clothes were and began to walk through the carpeted designer rooms as if I were at home there.

I felt like I was swimming upstream. My mother was quiet, allowing me to lead. I chose a simple cotton blouse and skirt that somehow didn't make me too uncomfortable but which I hoped would also pass Natvar's scrutiny. They were fresh and new and I felt good in them. And as we were walking out of the store I picked up a big extravagant red cotton umbrella. It was expensive, but my mother urged me to get it.

“Keep the credit card,” she said as we made our way back to the Institute. “You might need it.”

For an hour or so upon our return my mother sat with all of us, drinking tea, Natvar being warm and friendly. “The only flowers I don't like,” said Natvar at one point, “are gladiolas.”

“Me neither,” my mother responded. “They remind me of funerals.”

“Exactly!” cried Natvar. I didn't know of any releationship between gladiolas and funerals, but my mother and Natvar did. I enjoyed their moments of connection, Natvar's hospitality towards her. It felt good to have my mother there, holding her own.

And when she left the conversation continued, Natvar asking me a few questions about my parents and I, in the glow of his attention, described how I had been my father's child originally – his favorite and he mine. But how things had changed, how I had long ago started to draw away from my father, and how I was starting to appreciate my mother's independent spirit. Natvar listened to the story and paid particular attention to the part about my father. “He lost you,” he said thoughtfully, looking at me.

“Yes,” I answered, feeling understood, appreciated, released for a moment from the scullery.

Two days later Attilio and Alejandro stopped by, on their way to a concert. I loved them both, especially Attilio. I had known them for years, young men who had come up from Colombia and were living under the radar in the city. They got by selling Chipwiches under an umbrella on the edge of Central Park in the summer and other odd jobs. I envied them the Chipwich job. It looked like fun, the kind of job I had never known how to get. Attilio – with Alejandro on his heels – was always out in the streets having adventures, and when they had time they stopped by to see how we were, to chant with us, to help if they could. Attilio was a big guy, tall and broad, with long curly brown hair and a bright, open face, a gentle giant. Alejandro was smaller, shyer, but always sweet.

“It's supposed to rain,” said Attilio. “Marta, do you have an umbrella I can borrow?”

“Sure,” I said and handed him the glorious new red umbrella.

“Thanks!” he said, giving me a hug and the two of them disappeared down the stairs.

I saw him a day or two later. The concert had been great. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “I left your umbrella somewhere.”

It was gone. I felt my mother's poverty, her gesture to buy me something, the purchases sitting on her credit card. And now the umbrella was gone, wasted, and the familiar dart of pain I associated with my mother – with both my parents – hit home again. My parents who seemed to live in a sadness I would never be able to fix.

“Come on,” said Natvar a week or two later on a Sunday. “Let's go to Bloomingdales,” and the four of us made our way crosstown and into the treasure trove of luxury. Natvar made a beeline to the men's department. “What are we doing here?” I wondered. This was a place for rich people, not people with no money at all, like us. But Natvar was trying on coats.

He tried on a long camel's hair winter coat. He looked dashing in it. I couldn't believe the transformation. Natvar always looked good, but in this luxurious swirl of soft wool he looked like a movie star. “Let's put it on your mother's card!” suggested Natvar. “We can pay her back little by little.”

We bought the coat and Natvar was jubilant. It was so easy and painless to proffer that little piece of plastic and make him so happy. To make us all so happy – because when Natvar was laughing and teasing us and squeezing our arms, we all smiled.

“Ileana calls it my 'drop-dead' coat!” said Natvar the next day, returning triumphant from his classes. The coat had made its mark.

Chapter 45: THE SENATOR'S WIFE

2011-08-18T04:15:00.000-04:00

The senator’s wife had agreed to come to dinner. It was a really big deal. She came and sat at our wooden dining room table in the lobby and we served her the fanciest meal we could put together. Natvar even said we should have a bottle of wine. We had never had a bottle of wine in the Institute before.

She was not a beautiful woman and she didn’t smile. Her attention was taken completely by Natvar who sat in his usual spot at the head of the table. As always, I felt only part of the background along with Tracy and even Mark. I felt the bond that connected us four, but I didn’t think anyone else could see it. They must wonder what we’re doing here, I thought.

After dinner Natvar and Marian sat on the couch. It was her husband who was Natvar’s client. The senator had Lou Gehrig’s disease. He could not move. He said Natvar’s touch and company gave him relief like nothing else. Natvar had been going there twice a week and getting into conversation with the wife as he came and went.

They were sitting on the couch. It was dark outside, but the lobby, softly lit -- all its rough, unfinished edges blurred by gentle shadowsf -- felt cozy, even luxurious. I sat on the edge of their conversation, making sure my face looked engaged, but not able to say a word, feeling like it was my job to be present as if I were participating, but not to say anything that could ruin things. The senator’s wife was showing an interest in Natvar’s Institute, in us. It could lead perhaps to something. Maybe she could do something for us.

The phone on the white marble table by the windows rang and I stood to answer it. It was my youngest sister, Agnes, calling from North Carolina where she lived to say she was coming to visit the city soon. Her voice was exuberant and excited. She wanted to goof around the way we usually did, but I had to keep my voice low and even. “I can’t really talk now,” I murmured.

There was something she wanted from me – to stay on the phone, or to make plans for her city visit. I could feel the tug of someone wanting someone from me, and it seemed impossible at that moment to give her what she wanted.

I had just been to Madison Square Garden with Annie and Natvar and the others to hear Krishnamurti speak. He had walked out onto the empty stage, wearing a suit and tie, and had sat down in a straight-backed chair, facing us, his feet planted side by side, his hands in his lap. Without changing position or expression, he spoke to us in a steady tone for over an hour. It had been impossible not to nod off.

I had discerned from the teachings of his books and his lecture that day how you need to watch the movements of the mind and not leap to fix everything, not leap to change things, but just see if you could let things be and develop naturally. It was hard, but I had been trying.

Agnes had been my baby sister, the little one, the cute one with curly hair who looked up to me and was so easy to love. I had always wanted to coddle her. Tonight I felt like I had to choose between her and our familiar way of being with each other, and this path that Krishnamurti kept talking about, the one that Annie talked about as she sat by the open window in the lobby, smoking her cigars, the one Natvar seemed to understand so easily.

Whatever it was that my sister was wanting from me that evening, I said no. I pulled away. Gently, but resolutely, I put down the phone without apologizing and returned to the conversation around the couch.

And when the senator’s wife had left and we were preparing for bed, taking our turns with toothbrushes at the utility sink, Natvar looked around at the framed photographs of Baba, at the big stained wooden box with its glass front that he made when we were building the Institute and had mounted on the wall under the colorful framed poster of the Hindu goddess Laxmi who promised abundance to those who gave. “You know what Marian said to me tonight?” he said thoughfully. “She said, ‘Natvar, I never would have expected to find you in a place like this.’” He let the comment hang as if it were self-explanatory.

But I wasn’t sure what she had meant and why Natvar was so struck by it. Did it mean that she liked our Institute, or that she thought it strange and backward, a place that did not suit someone so bright and cosmopolitan? I was not sure and I did not ask. It frightened me a little, the way it separated Natvar from the Institute. I wanted to wrap the Institute around me, wrap Natvar’s love around me, be safe in a world where nothing was going to change.

Chapter 46: NOT WHAT I THOUGHT

2011-08-18T04:10:00.000-04:00

One afternoon my father visited us. It was still fall, a month or two after we’d returned from Canada. Tracy had quit her job to go and work for Ileana every day as her personal secretary – a coup, we all thought! Now one of us was right in there, in Ileana’s office. Natvar urged her to keep her ears and eyes open. “Learn from her!” he said, and Tracy vowed she would.

My father took the train into the city on some errand during the week and stopped by. Mark, Natvar and I served him tea on the couch and my father sat for two hours, basking in the attention. Natvar was attentive and as my father was leaving he offered to return each week and help Mark balance the Institute’s books.

My father was not an accountant, but for the last few years, since he had lost his last real job and had started answering ads in the local paper and doing whatever he could find, he had started doing some accounting for local businesses.

I had never thought of my father as having even any particular proficiency in math. Once a month, when I was little, he sometimes sat me down with him on a Saturday morning at his desk as he paid his bills. One by one he methodically opened each long white envelope, noted the amount due, reached for his check book, unscrewed his Mont Blanc fountain pen, and wrote out the amount carefully. Everything took a long time. I got to lick the stamps. When I expressed impatience he urged me not to be a cry baby and to simply watch how these things were done.

My father was orderly in a slow-moving way. Although he was quick-witted, when it came to accomplishing anything on the physical plane, he moved slowly and deliberately as if afraid of making a mistake. And he did nothing unless the surface of his desk was tidy and clear. No task could begin unless he “made order,” words he said with pride.

These were my only clues that he could do anyone’s accounting.

Mark accepted my father’s offer and he began to come regularly each week. After climbing the four flights of stairs, he worked on our books for an hour or two, joined us for lunch, then took a nap on the silver crushed-velvet couch that he had bought years ago for an apartment that was now long gone, before returning to the small rented house out in the suburbs where my mother was waiting.

One afternoon Annie, Ileana’s mother, was visiting when my father arrived. I introduced them – Annie in her flat bedroom slippers and shapeless smock that covered most of her short, stocky body, her stiff, gray bushy hair bursting away from her face, her squinting, curious blue eyes taking my father’s measure – and my father who greeted her with a smile and a small, formal bow.

The conversation got going. An hour or two passed. We were standing. My father was describing to Natvar and Annie what Hungarian folk music was like – the songs and the dances. It was one of his favorite subjects. These were songs I had grown up with and learned. My father liked to sing in the car, and he liked to tell me how when he was a teenager he had loved to leave Budapest and go out into the country and hike and sing and learn new songs from the peasants. Now he was talking about the Hungarian folk dances. I hadn’t heard him talk about those much before.

My father began to hum the melody of one of the dances and stepped up to Annie who gracefully accepted his invitation without missing a beat and the two began to dance slowly as my father continued to hum the melody. Suddenly my father whipped up the tempo and spun Annie around at double speed. She laughed and kept up. The rest of us laughed and cheered and my father looked like a flushed and joyful hero.

But there was another time when he got up to leave and I handed him his coat. As I passed it to him I noticed how worn and frayed it was, a trench coat bought years ago from Abercrombie and Fitch. The sight of the frayed threads hurt my heart. They looked shabby, defeated, especially on my father who loved clothes and fabrics and polished leather shoes. Again, I felt his lostness and wished hard that things were different, that he had things he could show off to me the way he used to.

After my father had left Natvar emerged from one of the two old toilet stalls. “Look, he said scornfully, pointing to the linoleum around the bowl, “your father pees on the floor. He doesn’t even get it into the bowl.”

And again my father – the handsome, dashing man of my childhood, who lit up the house when he came home, the one who had a life of business trips and luggage and telex machines and secretaries and custom made suits and concert tickets, the one who told me how things were – what was good and what was bad and who – he was nobody now, or at least just very, very ordinary. Another truth that my life with Natvar was revealing to me.

Chapter 47: ALL SMILES

2011-08-18T04:00:00.000-04:00

Ileana invited us all to her Christmas party. Annie invited my father and he said he would stop by. I knew he would. This was the biggest invitation he had received in a long time. He had heard of Ileana and her books and was eager to meet this successful, glamorous woman.

I stepped into the familiar high-ceilinged living room with its shaded lamps, brown leather and wood hues and the steady buzz of party conversation. I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to, wondering as always how other people managed to look busy during a party. I wandered down the corridor to the kitchen where Annie was standing before another big pot of soup, stirring and holding court before three or four young men perched on stools, each with a drink in his hand, listening attentively with small smiles on their faces. Annie held her cigar in one hand which she waved for emphasis as she spoke about life with a capital “L” and “relationship” with a capital “R.” Nothing was more important to her than Life, Life must be in everything, the universe, in Relationship. The cigar swirled and I almost knew what she was talking about.

“Come with me,” she said after a few minutes and guided me out of the kitchen and up the stairs to a small alcove with a built-in wooden seat. “You see,” she said in her deep, raspy, thickly-accented voice, “from here we can see everything,” and she parted very slightly the thick velvet drapes behind the seat, revealing the living room below. “I like to spy,” she winked at me. “Look!” she whispered and pointed. “That’s Norman Mailer!” and I looked down and recognized his thick gray hair and square face. An author, a real writer, a famous person. He was sitting on the couch, telling stories and entertaining a handful of rapt listeners. Annie watched him without saying anything, drawing on the cigar.

I liked being up in the secret alcove with Annie. I felt privileged and chosen to be ushered into her private world, and happy to have something to do during the party.

My father arrived some time later and I went down to greet him. He smiled, kissed my cheek and said something hearty and cheerful. That was how he always began an encounter, with words and a tone that fought back sadness, depression or complaint, that demanded a smile in return and an upbeat response.

His time at the party was short. He had to catch his train. Somehow I knew that he had not penetrated the party, had not had the gay, successful time we both hoped he would, as if this party was just too high a fence for him to scale.

I had thought he was so good at parties. He always had been. He was the one who could do parties, my mother was the one who shied away from such things, a shy and awkward wallflower. Not that we’d had a lot of parties growing up, but the ones we did have always had my father at the center, keeping the ball in the air for everyone.

Tonight, as he put his trench coat back on at the door, he passed me a small box. It fit in the palm of my hand. “It’s not much,” he said, still with half a smile on his face, “just a small something for Christmas.” I was not supposed to take it too seriously.

I opened the box. Inside was a small glass cube with a depression on one side that held a round green candle about the size of a golf ball. I imagined my father at some cash register, counting out a few dollar bills so that he would have something to bring me.

I thanked him. I said all the right things as I sent him on his way, but inside I heard Natvar’s voice, shouting about how small the gift was, how small and impoverished, how my parents had always been small-minded, living in a small world that kept me down, that kept us all down, a smallness that I must resist, must not encourage or by sympathetic to. How dangerous it was. If I let it find shelter in me it could ruin Natvar’s work. I might hold him back. I must fight any sense of smallness so that we could bloom and succeed, the way Ileana was succeeding, Norman Mailer sitting right there, on her couch.

Chapter 48: PARTY DRESSES

2011-08-18T03:55:00.000-04:00

Ever since Sonia had started visiting the two children, Elektra and Iolanthe, had resumed their weekend visits. Elektra tough and strong, clearly visually her father's daughter with a soft brush of her mother's features blended in. And Iolanthe, so cute and blonde. I watched how it was Elektra, about 8 years old, whom Natvar took the most seriously, demanded the most from. With the little one, he mostly ruffled her hair, chucked her under the chin and squeezed her to his chest, calling her pet names and lisping the way she did.

And then the arrangement reversed: the children were moving in and on weekends going out to Staten Island to be with their mother. Natvar said they could have the windowless little room between my windowless room and the windowless office, all of us lined up along the dark corridor connecting the meditation hall and the bright lobby.

And I would home school them until Natvar found places for them in a school. He was determined to get them into one of the private schools his clients talked about – Chapin or Dalton or Spence. One client or another promised to help. There were waiting lists to be vaulted over, but they would speak to the director, they would pull strings.

I looked up the rules for home schooling in a book. It was all quite technical. There were specific tasks, subjects I had to cover in a particular way if we were to do it by the book. I wanted to do it as correctly as possible. After all, these were Natvar's children. There was no room for error. I got Natvar's permission to spend a sum equal to a week's worth of groceries on official texts. They looked overwhelming. They were cold and almost impossible to follow, but this, I felt, was what I must do. Crack the code. Become a star home tutor. My meager skills for storytelling and school games were not enough.

Within a few days of the girls' arrival Natvar led us all on a Sunday afternoon outing to Bloomingdales. The girls hanging on their father's arm, he lavishing them with affection, wearing his camel hair drop-dead coat, with Mark, Tracy and I trailing in the background. I convinced myself I had a role here, that no matter what it looked like Natvar wanted me here, that he loved me.

We found our way to the childrens department. Within minutes, Natvar was going briskly through the racks of party dresses as if he'd been here before. These were dresses I had never worn as a child. These were silks and satins, bows and ruffles, petticoats and velvet, and chic. “Ooh, Daddy,” breathed Elektra, as she watched his arms fill with fanciness I knew had not been part of her Staten Island life.

“Why not?” demanded Natvar. “Why should my children be shabby? Your mother insists on dressing you the way she was dressed as a child. She's turning you into little yokels. But we can change all that. Here, try these on.”

I remembered the day my mother sent me with my father to visit his office for the day, a big event. I wore my best dress. It had smocking across the chest and tied behind at the waist. The sleeves were short and puffed and the skirt full and to my knees. It was made of cotton, white with a small blue floral pattern, like the pattern you might see on china.

I got in the car with my father for the drive into London. It was during the England years. I hated the big gray car with its red leather seats. The car had a sweet smell that intensified my propensity for car sickness.

Without saying anything, my father stopped first at a big city department store. We rode the elevator up to a carpeted floor where my father found a kind-looking elderly saleswoman and asked her to find me something. He chose a straight sleeveless dark blue velvet dress with a double row of white buttons down the front and a white blouse to go underneath.

He bought me a paperback copy of David Copperfield. He introduced me around his office and left me for most of the day in a conference room, at a long shiny wooden table with seating for twenty people. It was a rich-looking room and office. I had never read such a thick book before with such small print and no pictures. But there was nothing else to do so I labored through the first few pages.

Elektra and Iolanthe modeled their dresses. They looked like princesses. Natvar chose two for each of them and put them on my mother's credit card. The girls were in heaven. Everyone was so happy.

All evening Natvar talked about the dresses, how we all always needed to dress well, that there was never an excuse not to dress well, how his clients always appeared poised and well dressed. I was determined to get it right. I no longer ever wore the baggy cotton pants I used to wear when I was just Natvar's student, coming three times a week for a class, then climbing onto my bike to head uptown with knapsack and helmet.

Now I wore a narrow navy wool skirt that Ileanna had passed on to me. Even her old shoes fit me and Natvar had brought me her hand-me-downs with great excitement. What a wonderful way to improve my look – to have a real glamorous almost-celebrity's no longer wanted clothes.

I was left alone in the mornings to get the girls up after Tracy and Natvar and sometimes Mark had left for the day. If Mark had no reason to go out he disappeared into the office.

It was my job, dressed in narrow skirt and blouse, to give the girls breakfast when they woke up, make sure they ate, get them dressed, teach them school and have lunch ready in a clean and tidy lobby when Natvar returned.

From the moment I was left alone I was nervous. From the moment the girls appeared, blinking, in their pyjamas, I was nervous. Would I get the food right? Would they eat it? How could I get everything accomplished as Natvar expected without having the girls hate me? There had to be a way to get through all this relaxed and light. It was my responsibility what my mood was, no one else's. I couldn't blame anyone for anything. This much I knew.

Natvar was strict with his daughters, sometimes yelling at them, and yet they loved him, fawned upon him. There had to be a way that I could be strict enough that they would respect me, and still love me like that. There had to be a way and if I couldn't find it, that was my work, no one else's.

The girls didn't like to eat. It was one of the things Natvar was always pressing on them, to eat more, to eat everything, to eat enough protein. They had been raised vegetarian, had never tasted meat. I tried to get them to eat breakfast as I knew Natvar would insist, the way they would eat if he were there, but he was not there and the girls knew it. Iolanthe giggled and tried to hide her toast behind a couch cushion. “I hate soft boiled eggs,” wailed Elektra. “You can't make me eat this.”

The clock kept moving. I could feel it, every moment bringing me closer to the moment when Natvar would arrive, declare me useless for having accomplished nothing. “Come on,” I finally say. “How about you brush your teeth.” And the girls obediently stand at the utility sink. They want to wear their new dresses, and, yes, they probably should. Natvar had made such a strong point yesterday.

They put on their finery and we sit at the dining room table where I have prepared math questions for Elektra and a story for Iolanthe to read.

I wash the breakfast dishes and get lunch going, nervous. It is already almost noon. If Natvar were doing all this the dishes would be washed, the girls studying, lunch almost ready, the lobby sparkling.

Natvar arrives home while I am in the kitchen. I can hear his voice booming. “What is this?” He is furious, screaming. “These clothes are not for every day! Marta, you imbecile. You stupid cunt, how can you be so thick, so stupid? Is your brain made of cement? Do I have to do every single thing myself? Girls, go change.”

The girls ran to their room without hesitation while I stood and listened, Natvar's words roiling, drenching me in hopelessness. How silly it would be to try and fight them off. Better to accept them, not pretend they were not true.

Chapter 49: MOVING TARGETS

2011-08-18T03:50:00.000-04:00

My parents had moved again, this time to a beautifully refurbished barn that stood near the entrance to an estate in an old-time established wealthy neighborhood a short drive from the house they had sold to pay the bills. I knew the little town of Bedford since early childhood and it had not changed in the last twenty-five years. But I had never noticed this posh estate.

It was an empty place now, the owners with a well-known last name, were off in the city dying of old age. My father had heard through a friend at the church he had started attending that the estate was looking for someone to live in the barn and keep an eye on the place.

I liked the barn – its high, two-story ceiling, the big fireplace, the walls lined with old books, the deep window seat. The little bedrooms off the main room were furnished in spartan New England style; the kitchen was up a flight of open stairs and overlooked the living room. It seemed like another lucky rent-free landing place for my parents. And my father could pretend he was rich, living there.

My father had always liked pretending he was rich, driving twice as far to do errands in the upscale town rather than the nearby village. Once he had driven us all to look at a mansion that was for sale. We had gone through all the rooms, my father entertaining for the day the possibility of being the lord of a manor.

Natvar liked it out there too and we began, as the winter progressed, to go out on weekends. The fields and the fireplace were peaceful after the city. All the burdens and tasks and housework disappeared in my parents’ borrowed living room. Elektra and Iolanthe came with us, and sometimes Annie too in her fur coat and cigar.

My parents received us warmly, my mother offering tea, soup, cheese and crackers. Annie talked with them easily, sharing stories from before the war, things my parents could follow and connect with. Sometimes the girls made cards for my parents, almost as if they had found a new set of grandparents. By 4 o’clock Natvar was often dozing on the couch. I liked to take the girls out to the deserted stables. Mark browsed the bookshelves, found a book inscribed by Edith Sitwell and slipped it into his pocket.

We had put more on my mother’s credit card. Natvar had taken Tracy one afternoon out shopping alone, something that had never happened before, and she had returned happy, with two pairs of slender high heels that suited her perfectly. Even I had been the focus of a group trip to Bloomingdales where Natvar took me to the designer area and chose two dresses for me, both of them far beyond anything I had ever spent, but in them I looked the part of the dashing ingénue. “That’s it,” said Natvar, eyeing me with satisfaction, and I knew I never would have these clothes on if it weren’t for him who could imagine me in them.

The children of some of Natvar’s clients sometimes came now to play with Elektra and Iolanthe. once one of these playmates came out with us to the country to spend the night. Upon arrival though the girl said she didn’t want to stay. Each person – including Iolanthe – tried to talk her out of it, but she was adamant until finally the parents were called and they drove out from the city to pick her up.

As a child I would never have asked to be taken back home. I would never have asked for anything. I wasn’t used to seeing children asking for something, something unreasonable, something that would change everyone’s plans. I knew I would have been quiet, not told anyone, waited for it – whatever it was – to be over. And when they asked if I’d had a good time I would have nodded.

In first grade one morning I had been invited to go into the second grade classroom and sit there. I sat in the different classroom. This one was chaotic. The children – distinctly older than me, were shouting at each other and the teacher was shouting harshly at them. The next day I returned to my first grade desk. Again, someone came and told me to come sit in the second grade room. I did as I was told.

The next day I had diarrhea and stayed home for two or three days. My mother asked me during that time if would rather stay in first grade. “Yes,” I answered, relieved, surprised that a door had opened that I hadn’t seen was there.

My mother called me one evening. “Annie asked me for a loan,” she said. “She said she needed $2,000 and would pay it back next month. So I gave it to her. Do you think it’s all right? Can you make sure I get it back?” Her voice was tentative.

My mother had a small pocket of money from a lawsuit that had recently come out in her favor. My father had sued the owners of the dog that had run out one morning as my mother was going to work on a motorized bicycle, her way of cutting costs. The accident had put her in the hospital for a couple of weeks, her jaw wired shut. And then this chunk of money had come through, the only money they’d had in a few years, the only money they were likely to see all at once.

I could picture Annie asking for a piece of this money. It existed, therefore it was fair game. I knew $2,000 was the rent Ileana paid each month for her glamorous apartment and that each month they had a hard time pulling it together. How on earth could I make sure she paid it back?

The girls had been living with us now for about three months, and we hadn’t yet succeeded in getting them into one of the schools Natvar was determined to have them be part of. I could feel the pressure – after all, they were out of school. All they had was my morning class with them and I wasn’t at all sure that that counted. Natvar had met with a number of headmistresses, always wearing the drop-dead coat. They had all promised to do what they could. Natvar returned from every interview certain that he’d charmed them, that everything was working and one morning it was time for Iolanthe to try out a second grade classroom.

Mark, Natvar and I accompanied her – all of us dressed in our best. We were supposed to look wealthy and sophisticated. “When you go to a bank for a loan,” Annie had once said, “you wear the fur coat.”

The classroom was bright and modern, children reading, coloring, drawing. “No,” said Iolanthe after a few minutes of hanging back. “I don’t want to stay. No, I don’t want to leave Daddy.” Nothing could persuade her to stay, and finally we left.

“Well, that was not the right place for my little one,” said Natvar, hugging her close. I wondered what she hadn’t liked. I wondered if we had just left her if she would have started liking it. To me, the classroom had looked about as nice as a classroom can look. But Iolanthe got her way. Her dad could not turn his back on her.

It had been happening a lot during these months. While before it had been Elektra who had the focus of Natvar’s attention, more and more I saw him noticing the little one. I saw an affection growing between them that had not been there before. Elektra was still the one in front, but Iolanthe, the cute little doll, was starting to insist that her father pay attention to her.

Chapter 50: APRIL FOOLS DAY

2011-08-18T03:45:00.000-04:00

It was Sunday, April 1. Elektra and Iolanthe had gone as usual for the weekend to be with their mother in their old home on Staten Island. Sonia was to bring them back as she always did that evening and join us for dinner.

The table was set in the lobby as usual. Tracy was cooking. Sonia and the girls arrived and we all sat down. The meal got going.

Within a few moments Sonia said that actually she had changed her mind. She wanted the girls to come back and live with her. She didn’t like them staying with their dad, buying fancy clothes, going to fancy schools with rich people. She wanted the girls back.

I could feel the tension rise at the table, could feel Natvar’s focus zero in on Sonia who seemed calm and sure of herself, blithe even, as if she had no idea that she was walking through a minefield. “Go on, Elektra,” she said, “finish up and go pack up your things.”

“My children are not going anywhere,” said Natvar in a low voice, burning with fury. “I am the one who can offer them a life that will get them somewhere. What can you do, what can you do in little Staten Island? What can you do for my children? With you, they become ordinary. Look at them. Look what they are becoming as they stay with me.”

“I don’t want them to stay with you. I have my rights,” demanded Sonia stiffly.

“Your rights,” sneered Natvar, making the word sound pathetic and empty. “Your rights. Is that what your daddy the policeman told you to say? You have no rights over my children, no right to bring them up in the backwaters. You can’t even earn your own living. Look at Tracy. She works in an office every single day. She doesn’t whine and complain like you. She does her duty.”

Tracy’s face didn’t move as if it made no difference to her what Natvar said, but I could see her back straighten just a little in response to the sweetness of Natvar’s praise. He hadn’t said anything kind about Tracy in a long time. I hadn’t known that all along he had admired her.

I was quiet, watchful. The food was forgotten. The evening was stretching out. Everything was off schedule. Iolanthe sat close to her father. Elektra maintained a solemn independent stance. Mark was standing, watching Natvar. I didn’t know what was going to happen. How stupid of Sonia to take on Natvar, I thought. It just made her look bad, like Mark when he tried to talk back.

We had gone into one of those evenings. There was no time.

Sonia was standing now. Tracy still sat at the table with both the girls.

“I’m their mother,” Sonia was shouting, shrilly, as if she didn’t fully believe it herself. She had her back to the corridor that led to the meditation hall. “And what are you going to do about it?” She was taunting and cheeky, a brat, refusing the formal way we behaved around Natvar. “And you, Mark, what are you going to do about it, gay boy?”

Mark strode towards her. I could tell he was furious, that he had been looking for an opening and now he had one.

So often Natvar had spoken about how we never did anything, that we were dead Americans with no blood, no pulse of passion. And seeing the way he talked with Eva and Annie and Ileana, the way their Greek language poured out of them vigorously, with gestures and certainty, it was easy to believe him.

We had to act tonight. I had to act tonight. I couldn’t stand by as if I didn’t care what Sonia was saying. I had to prove I was alive, that I could act and speak without calculation and planning. And as I saw Mark stride towards Sonia I knew he felt the same way, that he must involve himself, not just sit by and watch Natvar do all the work.

To see Mark stride purposefully was a relief. At least one of us was moving.

Mark strode towards Sonia who reached out and grabbed the burning votive candle flickering on the large stained wood altar that Natvar had made, the altar to the multi-armed goddess of abundance, the altar with the big box for donations and the panel of glass so you could see the money inside.

Sonia grabbed the candle and threw it at Mark.

Chapter 51: BURST

2011-08-18T03:40:00.000-04:00

It was like throwing a match on gasoline. It was just noise and movement. Sonia running down the corridor towards the meditation hall. The girls screaming. Mark and Natvar running. I hear feet, running. The corridor.

I must run too, must stay by Natvar’s side. I can’t sit here as if I don’t care. I must move. I must prove I am someone, that I have strength, conviction. I run, I follow them down the corridor to the meditation hall.

The lights are on in the hall, the big wide room, the ocean of thick burgundy-red carpet. Up front, to the left of Baba’s big chair, Sonia is on the ground. Natvar is kicking her. He is yelling, “Putana! Putana!” Mark stands at his side, tense and threatening, but not moving.

I grip my mind, force it to focus and look and see. Where can I be part of this? I refuse to be left out. I must play a role. I must be important. I cannot bear to be an insignificant side-figure anymore. I cannot bear Natvar’s scorn. I cannot bear to be the one always gripped by silence, numbness, paralyzed. I must fight the force that holds me back, the force that clamps my tongue, paralyzes me day after day. If I don’t fight it, I am nothing. This is my battle – to prove I am alive, a living force, someone Natvar can count on, someone who deserves to be here.

Sonia stands. Her long blonde hair is loose. She comes moving across the yards of carpeting towards me. She is furious, I am furious. I don’t have to be nice to her now. Things can just be as they are. Sonia runs up to me, her arm lifts. She wants to hurt me. I can see it. I have my excuse, my permission to let loose and I spring forward. I want to hurt her too, this woman who has forced her way in, who doesn’t understand what we are doing, who is not humbled by it, this woman who insists on not fitting in with what we do. I let my fury loose. I am biting her shoulder as hard as I can.

There. I have done it. I have given everything to the moment. This is how it is supposed to be. Life without constant consideration and control. Life lived freely and therefore correctly. There. I have done it.

We are in the kitchen now. Sonia sits on a stool. Natvar dabs at the broken skin on her shoulder with warm water, a soft cloth. He is the gentle, competent doctor now, the one you can have absolute faith in. He is the only person who truly knows how to care for another. I stand silently a few steps away, part of the scene but with no role. Mark too hovers, but convinces me that he knows why he is here, that this is his home, Natvar his lover. He is really supposed to be here.

Tracy and the girls trickle in from the lobby. Iolanthe runs and grabs her father’s legs, burying her face between his thighs.

“Is that my little one?” says Natvar soothingly in his honey voice. He dabs at Sonia’s shoulder. “There, there,” he murmurs. “I think it’s going to be all right. Would you like some tea? Here, you must drink something.” I fill the kettle from the utility sink, glad to have something to do. Sonia drinks some water from a glass.

“Why don’t you sleep here,” urges Natvar. “It’s too long a drive back to the island. It’s too late.”

“No,” says Sonia, her tone is gentle. “I’ll make it. I’m all right.”

We feel like family now, like we have all been through this many times. We don’t have to explain things to each other.

There's a knock at the door. It's a cop. "Having some trouble here?" he asks. "We got a 911 call from a child. Elektra?"

"No, no," we say. "Everything is all right. A little squabble, but everything is all right now."

"All right then," says the cop and disappears back down the stairs.

I stand at the front door with Tracy, Mark and Natvar. Sonia and Electra are putting on their coats. “I’m staying with Daddy,” says Iolanthe defiantly. She is holding his hand. Elektra is by her mother’s side, her face solemn, resigned.

We wave to Sonia and Elektra as they walk down the wide, industrial metal stairs, that we painted a royal blue, the walls bright clean white, colors that make Natvar happy. They remind him of Greece.

Chapter 52: COLD FACTS

2011-08-18T03:35:00.002-04:00

The morning after the fight everyone was out early – Natvar off to his daily string of appointments with wealthy women, Mark with errands, Tracy to her job at Ileana's. I was alone. I was washing the breakfast dishes.

I heard the door from the corridor open. I knew it was Iolanthe, waking up. I left the dishes and went out to meet her. She was coming through the doorway, a small soft bundle of blonde hair and warm pyjamas. She came to me and crumpled, reaching for me, breaking into tears. Iolanthe had never reached for me before. Far from it. Both girls liked Tracy better. She was younger. She played with them. I was their schoolteacher, the one who had to make sure they ate their breakfast. But now she had no choice. I was the only one there. I held the little crying girl in my arms.

I had done this once before for another little girl, my little sister, the night our other sister swallowed pills and my parents took her to the hospital. My little sister, Agnes, had come to me that evening in her nightgown and tiny gold-framed glasses, had walked into my arms, crying, something without precedent in my family where we pretended nothing much mattered.

A day or two later Derek came by in the evening for his private class with Natvar. We liked Derek. He was a gay designer, part of the new wave of successful New Yorkers who were finding their way to Natvar. He was rich. He paid cash. He had invited us to his apartment on the Upper East Side once for dinner and had plied us with delicacies.

We stood at the front door as Derek buttoned his coat, preparing to leave. There was a knock at the door, unusual at any hour, but especially so in the evening. Mark opened the door.

It was two cops. They said they had an arrest warrant.

“Well, I'll see you next week,” said Derek tactfully, as if arrest warrants were all in a day's work. “Call me if you need anything,” and he was gone. How decent, I thought.

The two cops came in. They said they had warrants to arrest all four of us – Mark, Tracy, me and Natvar. For assault.

“My tummy hurts,” said Iolanthe, standing by Natvar's side. It was something she complained of often.

“My daughter isn't well,” said Natvar to the cops, his body languid and dignified in his white yoga clothes. “I cannot leave her.” He spoke with gentlemanly calm. “I'd love to help you, but she cannot be left alone. The others, of course, they can go.”

“All right, sir,” said one of the cops, “how about we come back tomorrow for you. We'll take these three down to the station now.”

They took us to a police station, treating us as completely normal human beings, people who did not frighten or intimidate them at all though all three of us were using everything we had learned from Natvar, Ileanna, Annie. We had our straight-laced clothes on, we were careful with our speech – surely these people could see we were special? No, we could have been anybody. How to break through that? I wondered. Should I be pushier, or sweeter? How did Natvar manage to lord it over every single person he came in contact with? I wanted to be treated like that, like someone special, but they pushed me through the filling out of forms, the finger-printing as if I were invisible.

Back at the Institute Natvar was on fire. He could not stop talking. “That bitch. It's her father, the cop. He pushed her to do this.” At breakfast he was still talking. “Your mother is a brute,” he said to Iolanthe who sat beside him at the table, pretending to eat half a grapefruit. “I know,” she said, and leaned her body into her father's. “My little one,” he said, squeezing her closer.

I was away in the afternoon of the next day. When I returned in the evening Mark told me how the cops had come back, that Natvar and Iolanthe had gone up into the skylight above the meditation hall, the one that was boarded up and almost invisible from below. Above the boards was a skylit space like a little greenhouse that you could stand up in. The cops had searched every room, but hadn't found them, hidden above the ceiling.

“We tricked them, didn't we!” Natvar hugged his little girl who beamed in his arms. “We wrapped you up in an eiderdown to keep you warm, and we took books, and the two of us were like smugglers, weren't we, little one? You were the perfect hideaway, you didn't make a sound!” The two of them were wrapped in the pleasure of their success.

“But let's get out of here right now,” said Natvar. “Let's get in the car and go out to your parents' place, Marta. We have to figure out our next move.” A couple of hours later we were there, in the barn-cottage that was now my parents' home. We said nothing to them of what was happening. They went to bed, Iolanthe too and by 10pm we sat by the fire.

“I could go to Greece,” said Natvar. “I could take Iolanthe. We can stay in Eva's apartment in Athens. Just for awhile, til things quiet down. Mark, you take over my classes with the clients. You'll do fine. Just tell them I had to leave town, that I'll be back in a couple of weeks. We'll need some money. Plane tickets. Iolanthe will need a passport. We should leave in a day or two.”

Chapter 53: GONE

2011-08-18T03:30:00.000-04:00

Tickets. Passport. Money. The clients. Natvar was taking Iolanthe to Greece and it all had to happen fast. Before the cops came back.

Money. Airplane tickets cost a lot of money, but we figured something out. Asked a couple of clients to pay in advance, let the electric bill slide. Iolanthe’s passport. We had to get one for her quickly.

Mark and I went with her to the huge government passport office, a high-ceilinged lineoleumed space with counters and forms and long lines of people. Mark and I saw that it would take us hours to wind our way to the front of the line. I picked up Iolanthe and whispered to her, “Play sick.” Instantly, she went limp, her head dropped to my shoulder, a woeful expression spread across her face.

“Our child isn’t well,” Mark and I said gently to the people in the line who allowed us to take the front spot. We were out the door in record time. We had succeeded! We’d have the passport in time and we had beat the system. I didn’t think Natvar could have done it much better.

The only clients Natvar told the truth to the day before he left were Prince Michael and Ileana. The others didn’t know that he wouldn’t be making their next appointment, that Mark would be showing up in his place.

I could see Mark’s reluctance to have to stand in for Natvar. I wouldn’t have wanted to knock on those women’s doors when it was Natvar they wanted to see. “You’ll do fine,” Natvar said. “Just tell them I’ll be back in a couple of weeks and give them a good class. You know how to do that.”

It was true that in some ways Mark looked a lot like Natvar. Mostly in that they were both going bald in the same pattern. But where Natvar was dark, Mark was blonde. Where Natvar was narrow, Mark had a broad face, broad hands and feet. But Mark had learned his manners from Natvar, and he dressed now like Natvar – shoes polished, shirts ironed. But Mark could not be Natvar. No one could. And I knew those women would not be fooled for long.

Tracy stayed home to handwash and iron all of Natvar’s and Iolanthe’s clothes. We packed their bags. They did not take much. And then they were gone.

It was Tracy, Mark and me back at the Institute. Here we were. There was going to be a court case. Sonia had brought charges. Mark, Tracy and me needed a lawyer. We had to find someone who would get us out of this. Lawyers were expensive. This was all impossible.

I felt a little like an automaton. I got up at the same time as we always did and together with Mark and Tracy went through the motions of setting the table and eating breakfast. We must do things just as if Natvar were here. This is what we had established. This was the way we wanted to live, right? We did these things because we wanted to. Not because Natvar wanted things this way and we were afraid of him. We watched each other.

The long Guru Gita morning chant had been set aside some time ago. Somewhere between the appointments with wealthy clients and the children moving in, between Krishnamurti books and Annie’s cigars, between allowing the wealthy women to visit and keep their shoes on and putting a bottle of wine on the table there was a shift away from the way we used to do things. Maybe there was another way, a way that would appeal to more people, that wouldn’t keep us in yoga-land forever.

Natvar called a day or two after they’d arrived. He called from Eva’s apartment, the one she had said he was free to use as long as he needed it. He spoke to us one at a time, Tracy and I allowing Mark the lion’s share of the call. But to each of us he said more or less the same thing. How beautiful it was. How Athens and Greece were another world. “I bought fresh oranges in the market this morning,” he said. “You can’t get oranges like this in New York. And the people here. They have such soul. Iolanthe loves it. She’s already speaking Greek! You must come. Take care of all that court stuff and come. New York was getting to be too much. Here we will have leisure.”