2018
I do not receive the sort of mail that comes in thick ivory envelopes. Sometimes junk might mimic the size, the color of personal correspondence, but the envelope is never linen. The cursive address block is always black, always slightly pixelated. If it wasn't for the violet calligraphy looping into a name few people call me anymore, I'd think this delivery was a mistake on the part of the mail carrier.
I ease the envelope flap open with a pearl-handled letter opener. I paid someone to clean out my parents' house after my mother died, and she sent me a box of things she thought I might like to have. Jewelry, mostly, but also some truly ridiculous items like opera glasses, a Christmas card from Pat Nixon, who my mother adored, and this letter opener, which I use in tribute not to my mother but to Barb, who spent forty-six meticulously accounted-for hours sorting through drawers neglected over the rise and decline of several technologies. I imagine how she must have seen me: This woman who'd rather pay someone to clean up her past seems like the sort who wouldn't want to risk a paper cut opening her mail.
The letter opener does its job, revealing, of course, an invitation. A startling thing, given that I've cultivated a life that does not require x-ing little cards with my preference for meat or fish. My friend Bobby's wedding three years ago was the first one I'd attended since the '90s, and it will probably be the last.
Fifty years of glamour, the invitation declares. You are cordially invited to join us as we celebrate Harriet Goldman and the careers she launched. And a smaller card, separated from the invitation by vellum yet still bound to it with a gold cord: As one of Harriet's Girls, you will be a special part of this gala event. And finally, a handwritten note: Hope to see you there! Therese.
Therese! My god. How is she still around? Even Debi retired to Prince Edward Island with her wife and is having the time of her life, which she has completely extracted from any tentacle of the industry.
At the time, I admired Debi for this. I still do. Then again, if she were here, she would have warned me.
* * *
Pilates stance: heels together, toes apart. The same as first position in ballet, not so different from the Y position one would take at the end of a runway before the turn, or in a photo to angle the hips just so. Nearly every reformer class begins the same way. Lying on the machine, pelvis neutral, heels touching with the balls of the feet on the foot bar, knees as wide as the hips. We'll move into other foot positions, other movements, but it always comes back to Pilates stance. The pose of my life.
Today, though, is jump board class. I hadn't realized the Wednesday afternoon session had switched from the regular sculpt class when I booked, wasn't paying much attention to anything but the gala invitation. "You're going to have so much fun with this," the instructor, Caro, says as she shimmies the board into the end of the reformer.
It's been years since I've taken a jump class; I am fairly certain I will not have fun. All the defined, elegant movement—the return to my body, the escape—that I can retreat into during a regular class is off the table with a jump board. There's something unsettling about being on your back and bouncing up and down on a tiny trampoline, two movements that do not go together. It feels like an illusion.
That's a lie.
It feels like a loss of control.
I try to keep my mind on my core, on my pelvic floor, on the flexibility in my ankles as we warm up our bodies and joints for the jumps. I try to enjoy the weightlessness as I spring off the board, try to remind myself I will come back down. Caro walks us through a series with our feet parallel, with our feet in Pilates stance, with one leg raised.
"Now when you push back," she says, "I want you to scissor one ankle over the other three times, starting with the right. I know, it's a lot. You'll have to move fast to fully articulate your foot position at the bottom."
I look up to watch her demonstrate with her arms and I keep my chest raised to ensure my own proper positioning. My legs, long and lifted, toes pointed as one ankle crosses over the other.
Like a good girl. Like a memory.
The feeling crashes over me as quickly as the reformer bed jolts back home. The sound of the machine, the sound of my knees hitting the board. Everyone is looking; everyone is always looking. I am here but not, and still, it is the same silent stares as before.
