Balancing Acts (27 page)

Sabine clapped her hands in excitement. “Thoga! That's excellent. What about Yogapy?”

“Also good,” said Bess.

Naomi interrupted their conversation. It was now or never. “You guys, I need to tell you about something.”

Sabine, Bess, and Charlie turned to face her, noting the seriousness of her tone. “Naomi, sure. Go ahead,” said Bess.

Naomi took a deep breath and rehashed her MS-or-maybe-not-MS story. She had gotten much better at telling it. Practice was a natural editor. She no longer battled her own sobs when she spoke about it, either. The more she told her tale, the more rational she became.

“What a shitty break,” said Bess when she was finished. “Wow, Naomi. I am so sorry.”

“Me, too,” agreed Sabine. She fought back her own tears. Why did things like this have to happen?

“When do you get your MRI results?” asked Charlie. She had been wondering about Naomi's health since their subway ride together, but hadn't wanted to intrude on her privacy. She had been hoping and hoping that Naomi's tingling was nothing; just stress-related moments of weirdness, but something inside her knew better.

“Monday. I'm nervous, of course, but I'm also looking forward to some sort of news. This limbo business is tough for a control freak like me!” Naomi laughed. “I can't believe that I can joke around about it now. A couple of weeks ago, I couldn't even say hello to someone without bursting into tears.”

“Naomi, do you want me to come with you on Monday?” asked Sabine. “I'll take off of work.”

“You're sweet. No, that's okay. I can handle it.”

“Naomi, whatever you need, please just ask,” said Bess. “I mean it.” The reporter in her had immediately thought about how interesting the MS angle would be in her article. The friend in her had put the kibosh on the idea before it grew any bigger.

“Thanks, guys, I will. Right now, it just feels good to talk about it.” She smiled at them. “Can you guys believe that next week is our last class? Is that nuts or what?!”

“I really can't,” replied Charlie. “The time has flown. It makes me a little bit sad.”

“Me, too,” agreed Sabine. “You know what? We should have a brunch party after class next week!”

“That is a great idea!” said Charlie. “I like that. Everybody could bring something. Bagels, lox. . .”

“Danish!” added Bess. “I love it.”

“And I'll unveil the website!” added Naomi. She looked to Sabine. “Sabine, do you think you could have the copy to me by Tuesday?”

“No problem,” said Sabine. “I'll get cracking this afternoon.”

“Really?!” exclaimed Charlie. “The website is going to be ready next week? Naomi, are you sure? With all that you have going on?”

“Positive. It's a great distraction, actually.”

“Okay, but only if you're sure. I'll have Felicity and Julian come.”

“And George and Michael,” added Sabine.

“The whole family,” said Bess. Her article was running in Saturday's paper. It was perfect—or was it? Suddenly, she was scared. She thought it was something they all would love, but was she being naïve? Should she tell them all about it ahead of time or let it be a surprise? She made a mental note to consult with Dan. He would know the right thing to do.

“Great plan,” said Charlie. “I'm really looking forward to it.” She paused and then, to everyone's surprise, hugged each one of them separately.

Slightly stunned, they hugged her back. In five weeks, their ice queen teacher had melted into a snow bunny. Call it what you want—thoga, yogapy, whatever—it was working.

S
abine exited the train with her head down, lost in thought.

How could Naomi have MS? How does a healthy woman just go about her business and then—pow—wake up totally numb?
To think that whatever it was that was hurting Naomi had been lurking in her body; silently waiting for its moment, was terrifying. And so unfair.
I have to get a physical, immediately
. Sabine cringed, realizing that she didn't even have a doctor doctor—just a gyno.
Stupid.

Suddenly on the street, she looked up to get her bearings. Was that? Sabine's heart plummeted in a mix of excitement and nausea. It was Zach. Well, the back of his head anyway. And he was with a woman. Sabine quickened her pace.

She wanted to get a better look at the back of their two heads. Could she really be trusted to pick out the back of his head in a lineup? Naturally, she knew the answer to that question before she even finished it. Thanks to months of subway stalking, she could pick out his backpack in a lineup if need be. She would know him anywhere—front, back, side to side. She peered at the shoulders, the thin hips, the corduroys, the peacoat. . .the brown sneakers, the hair. It was Zach.

Sabine watched him interact, or at least his back interact, with the woman beside him. She was blond and petite.
Two strikes
. Her hair was longish, reaching just below her shoulders, and wavy. Her jacket was of the puffy variety, in a soft gray color. It covered most of her, but Sabine could make out her legs, clad in dark, skinny jeans and a pair of ankle boots. Sabine considered the outfit. It was Saturday morning. She pulled her phone out of her bag to confirm the time. Around 11
AM.
Who wore ankle boots and skinny jeans to go for a casual walk on a Saturday morning? No one, that's who.
This is a morning-after situation
. Sabine's heart crumpled like a lunch bag. She stopped in her tracks and watched them as they continued down the street. They made a right on Fourth Street. Brunch, no doubt.

Sabine suddenly wanted, more than anything in the world, to be in her bed. This was way too much emotional drainage for a Saturday morning. She ran/walked the rest of the way, practically knocking over a baby stroller the size of a small SUV and an old lady. In the door, up the stairs, out of the jacket, into bed.

“Ahhhh,” she murmured, pulling the comforter over her head. She felt Lassie's tiny paws tiptoeing around her body. He was certainly familiar with Sabine's hiding under the covers after a shitty day, but the fact that the sun was up threw his tiny cat brain for a loop.

Sabine closed her eyes inside her cocoon. She tried to make sense of how she felt about what she had seen. She wasn't exactly sad. . .it was more a mixture of disappointment and anger. And not necessarily anger toward Zach—he was certainly allowed to date and sleep with other women, especially considering how she was treating him—it was more anger toward the predictability of the whole system. The dating system and, furthermore, the whole men/women/New York City dynamic.

If you were single here, you just had to accept certain codes. There was always going to be someone who was better looking, smarter, funnier, cooler, better dressed than you. That was a given. This was New York City, after all. Because of said code, a single person really had no firm ground on which to stand. Dating someone insured nothing in terms of exclusivity, and actually could be further fuel to the skirt-chasing fire. If a guy could “get” you, why couldn't he “get” the hot chick at the bar? Or the girl at Starbucks?

Sabine's head emerged from her fortress of solitude. She knew single women could, and often did, behave similarly, but somehow it wasn't as gross when they did it. Well, actually no, it could be very gross, but it was never as maddening. Sabine wondered why. It just wasn't as animalistic, somehow, when women made sex a sport. It seemed more to be about female empowerment than sex for the sake of sex. Sabine sat up. Nothing made sense, especially if he was not sleeping with her, but he was sleeping with this blond person. She felt like Carrie Bradshaw on crack. All she needed was a laptop and a ridiculous outfit and she would be all set. Maybe some men's boxers, suspenders, and a pair of stilettos. With a sports bra. Lassie approached her, cocking his head in concern.

“Don't worry, I'm not losing my mind, Lassie,” said Sabine, as she scooped him into her arms and buried her face in his calico fur.
I wonder if they met on the subway
. Sabine hated to admit this, but maybe part of her was secretly relieved that Subway Crush a.k.a. Raisin Jewels a.k.a. Zach was a cad. Believing that he was actually someone with potential was somehow scarier than thinking he was a penis-driven jerk.
I can't believe that I am obsessing about this when a good friend of mine just told me she might have MS. Jesus, what is wrong with me?! Am I the most self-centered person on the planet? Who cares?
She sat up abruptly and threw her covers off, startling an annoyed Lassie. “Enough already, Sabine!” she said aloud.

She eyed her phone, picked it up, and dialed her mother. Sabine wasn't sure if she would even tell her about what was going on with Zach or with Naomi, but she knew that just the sound of her voice would make her feel better.

“Saby!” her mother cooed into the phone, picking it up on the fourth ring.

“Hi, Mama.”

“What's wrong?”

“What do you mean, ‘what's wrong'?” asked Sabine defensively. Even though her mother was right, something about her self-assuredness was irritating.

“You sound like someone ran over that damn cat. Wait, did someone run over that damn cat?!” Sabine's irritation meter was officially at its limit. Her mother's chipperness about the prospect of Lassie's death was the last thing she wanted to hear right now.

“Listen, I'm gonna go, Mom.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Honey, I'm sorry. Forgive me. Hold on a minute.” Sabine heard her speaking to what was no doubt a table filled with her girlfriends for Saturday brunch. “Gladys, order me the fruit plate and a side of Canadian bacon,” she commanded. “I'm going outside to talk to my
shana maidela
.” Sabine smiled, thinking of her mother's friends nodding sagely in response to her announcement.

“Doesn't the bacon cancel out the fruit?” asked Sabine, when her mother was safely outside the restaurant and she had her full attention.

“Don't be fresh. I like the combination. I just have a couple bites of the bacon. Sabine, you should see my thighs, by the way. This Pilates business really works.”

“So, what's doing?” asked Sabine.

“Me, I'm fine. Same Saturday as always. Saby, are you okay? You sound down. And you rarely call me on a Saturday morning. Did some schmuck do something stupid?”

“Not really. Well, at least not intentionally.”

“Is this Subway Crush?”

“Maybe.”

“You don't want to tell me, but you call me to talk about it? Sounds a little silly, Sabine.”

“Sorry, I sort of just wanted to hear your voice, Mom.”

“Sweetie, I understand. If you want my voice, that's what you'll get. If you don't want to talk about whatever this idiot did, we don't have to.” She paused. “Although, if he isn't treating you like the goddess you are, kick him to the curb. You know, we get all these reruns of that talk show, what's it called?
Ricki Lake
? From the nineties? Anyway, we get them here on channel eleven, and every single one of her episodes is about these women ‘kicking men to the curb.' I had never heard that expression before! I like it. And between you and me, Ricki needs to kick her stylist to the curb. Her clothes do nothing for her figure!”

Sabine laughed. “Mom, it was the nineties. Nobody wore anything flattering.”

“Oh, right! That was when you came home from college wearing that frosted brown lipstick that made you look like a corpse! That was terrible, Sabine.”

“He's not treating me badly,” Sabine offered, changing the subject before it spiraled into a discussion about the wherefores and whys of Sabine's fashion history. “He's treating me sweetly. . .but I don't know what to do with it, I guess. Or, at least he
was
treating me sweetly.”

“Are you pulling this ‘tough girl' business?” asked her mother. “God forbid a man should treat you with some respect, Sabine.”

“Well, maybe a little ‘tough girl,' but not really. We're supposed to go out tonight. . .”

“Saby, I don't know the whole spiel obviously, but I'm wondering if you're still pulling this ‘bad guy' crap. If he's too nice, or too much of a gentleman, you're over it. I wonder if you're looking for flaws in him that don't exist, just so you don't have to put yourself out there.”

Sabine thought about the blonde. She wasn't making that up. True, she could be a cousin or something, and this was a free country—he could date whomever he wanted—but it was justifiably unsettling. “What if you're wrong, Mrs. Know It All?” asked Sabine. “What if he's an asshole and that's why I'm upset?”

“How can a nice Jewish lawyer be an asshole? Oh wait, I just answered my own question. Maybe you are right, Saby. The point is, how do you know? You've been seeing him for only a minute. Give it some time. You always jump the gun! Anyway, listen, I have to dash. I am starving and I know my girls will attack my bacon like vultures if I'm not around to claim it. Think about what I said and I'll call you later. I love you, Sabine.”

“Love you, too.”

Sabine hung up the phone and reached into her bedside table drawer for her journal. She had been so religious about keeping one for such a long time, but in the past year she had fallen off the self-reflection wagon. It wasn't that she didn't have time for it, it was just that dealing with her emotions was often harder than ignoring them completely. You couldn't lie to your journal.

Sabine rolled out of bed and moved to her desk. She grabbed a pen and turned to a fresh page, writing the date with care. With a deep sigh, she began. She wrote about yoga and Zach and work and writing and Naomi, along with anything else that came to her mind. At one point, she stopped. Her hand hurt. And her sweaty yoga clothes—stale and scratchy—felt like a straightjacket. She shook her hand and ripped off her sports bra.
Jesus, that feels good.

Back in her shirt, she resumed her writing. It felt good to get it out. There was so much in her head! The Zach fiasco had inspired her session, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Finally, she finished. Her hand throbbed. She looked at the clock. It was almost six! She couldn't believe it.

She got up from her desk and stretched to the ceiling. As she did so, she got a whiff of her underarms. “Shower time!” she exclaimed in a mixture of disgust and testosterone-fueled pride.

There was something about not showering that made her proud of herself. It didn't happen often, but when it did, Sabine viewed it as a deliberate “F you” to society's rules of femininity. Ninety-nine percent of the time, she followed those rules willingly, but when she didn't, she felt sort of like a badass. A dirty, smelly badass, but still.

In the shower, Sabine thought about Zach and the date they were supposedly going on that night. Was he really the kind of guy that had two women in one weekend? What was all that crap about how he couldn't sleep with her because he cared so much about her? Was it all a load of bullshit like Sabine had imagined?

She turned off the shower and wrapped herself in a towel.
I'm starving,
she thought, as she wrung out her hair. She hadn't really eaten anything since. . .shit, she wasn't sure if she had eaten all day!
Who am I?
She had always despised those women who claimed they “forgot” to eat. Who forgets to eat? People who “forgot” to eat were the same people that ordered a salad for dinner, hold the chicken please! With the dressing on the side. The only thing they had forgotten was how to eat like a human being.

Sabine emerged from the bathroom to find Lassie gazing at her expectantly. “You're hungry, too, huh?” she asked, watching his ears perk at the mention of food. She did a quick full-body moisturize and pulled on her favorite sweatpants and T-shirt.

In the kitchen, she fixed Lassie his dinner and pulled her trusty dossier of takeout menus off the top of the fridge. As she decided between Chinese and Japanese, her phone rang. Her stomach dropped. She picked it up to see who was calling, halfway hoping that it was Zach and halfway hoping that it wasn't. It was.

She let it go to voice mail. She just didn't feel like dealing with it—with him. Still, she was curious about what he would say. “Uh, hey, Sabine, it's Zach. I just woke up from a long nap. The chick I banged last night left after a late brunch and I was sooo tired. Anyway, now I'm up—and just want to cuddle. Call me so I can pretend I really like you just so I can screw with your head some more.” Sabine wondered how much simpler life would be if everyone just said what they meant all the time. The red light blinked angrily on her phone. Voice mail time!

Sabine picked it up to listen. “Uh, hey, Sabine. It's Zach. How are you? I, uh. . .I think we talked about going out tonight. Was wondering if you were still up for it? Give me a call. If you can. Uh, okay, bye—hope you're well.”

Sabine pressed seven to erase the message—regretting it approximately twenty seconds after doing so. This was the second dis from her. If she ignored his message, he might never call her again. And who could blame him? She put the phone down and thought about calling him back. He didn't sound like a jerk in his message. . .he sounded kind of sweet and intimidated, actually, but the fact remained that she had seen him with someone else. As her mom would say,
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck. . .

She picked up the phone. She had decided on sushi suddenly. Ordering Chinese would have felt a bit cliché. Single girl in the city gets her heart broken, drowns herself in sesame noodles. She'd heard it before. Hell, she'd done it before.