“That’s right,” Amelie cooed. “Just breeaaaathe into the stretch.”
I tried to remember the last time I’d been touched in such a prolonged, meaningful way. I often held clients’ hands to comfort them, or helped them in and out of chairs and beds, but that was all in their service.
This was the first time in years that I’d been touched with such an expression of care and energy meant only for me.
* * *
The class concluded with a guided meditation in which Amelie managed to make her voice even more monotone and breathy.
“Imagine yourself surrounded by beauuuuuutiful healing light, like a golden co-coon.”
Sylvie snorted.
“That co-coon is your safe, healing space, where nothing can harm you.”
I opened one eye to look over at Sylvie holding her nose to stifle her laughter. Her entire body shook.
Amelie’s staccato inflection on the word “cocoon” was a little peculiar. Like it belonged in a chorus sung by the von Trapp children as they bade everyone “So Long, Farewell.” I tried to resist succumbing to Sylvie’s giggle contagion. But the more I knew it was forbidden, the stronger the urge became. Tears trickled, then streamed down my face.
Amelie cleared her throat pointedly. “Let us aaaallllll remember that peace begins within ourselves, inside our golden co-coon.”
It was too much for Sylvie. She sat up and touched my shoulder, which was still shuddering with laughter. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.
Avoiding eye contact with each other—and Amelie—we rolled our mats, then tiptoed through the maze of prone, meditating bodies. As we quickly retrieved our belongings and made a break for freedom, I felt the warmth of complicity spill over my guilt for disrupting the class. We jog-walked down the block, as if there was a threat of Amelie pursuing us in a meditative rage.
Once we’d turned the corner, Sylvie slowed to a stroll.
“So, what are you up to this week?” she asked, pulling her hair out of its ponytail and smoothing it back into a new one. “Are you still on ‘vacation’?”
“I have a new client I’m going to see tomorrow.”
“Oooooh, tell me more.”
“It’s an old woman on the Upper West Side. She was a photojournalist back in the fifties.”
“What? So cool! I’d love to meet her—I bet she’d have to be a feisty old broad if she did that.” Sylvie adjusted the strap of her yoga mat across her chest. “How’d you find her? Come to think of it, how exactly does a death doula find her clients?”
“I met her grandson. Apparently no one really visits her except for him.”
“Geez, that’s so sad.” Sylvie’s expression morphed from morose to sly. “Grandson, huh? Is he cute?”
My cheeks flamed. “Maybe a little?”
“Maybe? Girl, in my experience, he’s either cute or he’s not.”
I’d considered it, of course. But I’d quickly nipped the thought in the bud when I realized how unprofessional it was to be objectifying my new employer.
I flailed for a conversation shift. “So … how’s your new job at the Frick going?”
“Oh, you know, good for the most part. Starting a new job is always weird, getting to know the personalities and all that. And there are all the office politics to navigate—the art history field is pretty cutthroat.” Sylvie waved at a dachshund walking past, but ignored its owner.
“Yeah, my grandpa was a college science professor and he used to tell me how conniving some of those academics could be.”
“Totally. And the worst thing is they’re all so passive-aggressive. I’m always one for airing it all out versus bottling it up, but I’m not sure my colleagues could handle my brutal honesty just yet.”
I liked Sylvie’s frankness because it took the pressure off having to guess what she was thinking. It made it easy to be in her company. I was even a little disappointed when we reached our stoop.
“Thanks for dragging yourself out of bed to come with me to yoga. It was super fun!” Sylvie slid her key into her front door. “I seriously haven’t laughed that hard in so long. Let’s do it again soon—if Amelie lets us in.”
“That would be great,” I said, surprised that I meant it.
As I walked up the stairs, my thighs burned from the newly awakened muscles and my cheekbones were still sticky from crying with laughter. It occurred to me that this was the longest I’d spent socializing outside of my job with someone who wasn’t Leo.
I thought about Olive and her perfume advice. I still hadn’t found a scent that I liked, but for the first time in years, my life felt like it was beginning to shift.
22
The sunrise of my twentieth birthday spilled across the volcanoes that towered over Antigua, Guatemala, amplifying the deep ochre tones of the city’s baroque architecture. My footsteps echoed on the cool cobblestones until I stopped at the ornate iron gate of an interior courtyard where lush foliage surrounded a dilapidated tile fountain. Seated around the courtyard’s perimeter were the building’s residents—the elderly folk, or abuelos, who, with no money or family to care for them, were passing the twilight of their lives in this community nursing home. Some gazed into the distance, while others snoozed in the sun’s warmth. As always, the rhythm was slow, the atmosphere peaceful.
I was halfway through a two-month stay between my sophomore and junior years of college, volunteering at the scarcely funded nursing home while lodging with a local family a few blocks away. It was the first birthday I hadn’t spent with Grandpa since I’d moved in with him. For the past two years I’d been studying sociology at McGill University in Montreal—a way to stretch my wings a little and experience a new culture while still being within a short flight of New York City. My plan was to follow in Grandpa’s academic footsteps, except that instead of biology, I would travel the world studying the different cultural traditions surrounding death.
“Good morning, Clover!” Felicity, the volunteer who unlocked the gate for me, was a med student from Vancouver. She had been volunteering for an entire semester at the nursing home and loved the residents so much that she decided to spend her entire summer vacation here, assisting the nurses.
“Hello, Felicity! You look lovely today,” I said as she locked the gate behind me.
Even her off-white scrubs and rubber clogs did nothing to distract from her natural beauty—shiny black hair, glowing skin, and a bright smile. But because her personality was so disarmingly generous and genuine, it was impossible for me to resent any of it.
“Oh,” she said, looking down sheepishly. “You’re so kind, Clover. You look really pretty too.” Though I knew she meant it, it felt like a wild embellishment in comparison.
Felicity looked at her watch. “I’d better go start giving everyone their meds—I’ll see you in there,” she said and headed inside.
As I walked through the courtyard, a few of the abuelos clustered around me excitedly. Since I was still a relatively new face in their monotonous daily existences, my presence was a welcome novelty. The most buoyant welcome came, as usual, from Rosita—a delicate-framed woman no more than five feet tall—who danced toward me, eyes sparkling and toothless grin radiating joy. Though she was deaf and couldn’t speak, Rosita had no trouble communicating her enduring zest for life. She wrapped her frail arms around my waist in greeting and I felt my heart swell. I cherished her daily hugs—if only she knew that the thing she so readily offered had been so scarce in my life.