43: A Woman and a Cat on a Mat

On the Monday morning that Alex and Darcy were to return from their trip to Oklahoma, Socrates took it upon his feline self to assist his human companion in her daily yoga practice. As was his usual routine during yoga, he stretched out to his full length directly under the woman in the center of the blue yoga mat while she practiced the cat pose — aptly named — on hands and knees. For Socrates, it was like being under a sturdy table, all cozy and secure from all scary things in life. The woman’s cat pose was followed by the cow pose – still on hands and knees — which meant Socrates could stay sprawled and languid, even snooze for a few minutes, that is, until the woman collapsed onto the mat in the cobra pose, forcing his retreat to the far end of the mat. This was their routine, their daily ritual, and neither cat nor woman would change it for anything in the world.

Madeline Prescott Moore smiled down upon her little yoga companion, his tiny lithe body stretched out under her, eyes half-closed in some dreamy meditation of his own. On Monday mornings, when the shop was closed, Madeline normally went to a yoga class, a few doors down from Van Gelder’s, where she would meet her friend and Fat Soul Friday regular, Geraldine Nash. But today was different. She would be picking up Alex and Darcy at John Wayne Airport in a couple of hours, so her schedule was a bit tight. But even then, her twenty minutes of yoga with Socrates must not be hurried.

As Madeline completed her routine with an upward salute pose, she offered a little prayer, a secret affirmation that she had mouthed to herself every morning for years.

Today,

in some small way,

may I add to the amount

of happiness in the world.

It was a simple prayer that came to her one day after lecturing to a room full of undergraduate philosophy students. Her lecture was on Bentham and Mill who believed that the goal of moral conduct was to create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Including oneself, she thought, since happiness boomeranged (to use George’s metaphor) back to oneself. It is, she thought, like the verse from the Gospel of Luke: “Give, and it will be given to you.” Or the words of the Dalai Lama: “. . . the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.” Or from Robert Kennedy — her and Alex’s special hero — who said “You’re happiest when you’re making the greatest contribution.”

So, buttressed by the wisdom of philosophical and spiritual traditions, this was her starting point for her “happiness experiment,” the little exercise she had given to her Fat Soul Friday group. Something novel, she had said. Do something novel — different from your normal routine — to help create happiness in another, and then analyze how it makes you feel. Happier?

Of course it seemed with a priori reasoning that helping others naturally creates more happiness in the giver and thereby increases the total amount of happiness in the world. But there was something about actually testing a theory for oneself with focused intention — a little empirical test, so to speak — like the lab portion of a science class. It was the kind of thing she would have done with her undergraduate philosophy class at Berkeley. Yes, she thought, it was a good experiment for Fat Soul Fridays — a stretching of the soul — she thought, now stretching her arms even further upward as she felt her spine tingle with the rejuvenation of blood flow.

But the real catalyst for the happiness experiment came from George Saunders when he gave away all those TOMS shoes on Fat Soul Friday, and by this act, helped many shoeless children around the world. That was the spark. That was it. And it came from the least likely person, the one member of Fat Soul Friday who had once balked at the idea of helping others as a path to happiness.

But George Saunders was not the same George Saunders Madeline had interviewed for the job of manager of Van Gelder’s Tea and Books. No, George was changing before her eyes, breaking out of a shell of insecurity and pain and moving into a larger space, as if his very soul were breaking out – maybe even bourgeoning, she thought (still in love with that word). Or ripening, as Rilke, the poet, might say. Yes, ripening. A ripening soul — that was George.

Except for one thing.

The shadow of George’s estrangement from his parents, a ten-year affair of deep and damaging silence, often darkened his bright blue eyes, creating a penumbra of past pain that would have future repercussions on his relationship with his partner, Felipe. And with everyone, really. Alex and Darcy, in their own stealthy way, were attempting to remove that one stumbling block to George’s happiness, as part of their own happiness experiment. At first, Madeline was against their going to Oklahoma to find his parents, feeling that family dynamics were too complicated for such an intrusion from the outside. But then Alex convinced her that it was surely worth the effort of trying. And, of course, he was right.

And yet . . . it was, after all, quite complicated, as family situations usually are. As she struggled to roll up her yoga mat with a stubborn Socrates hanging on for dear life (also part of their routine), she thought about the phone call from Alex. From his report, the results were . . . mixed.

She sighed and looked down at Socrates, who was now sitting on his haunches with an alert stare out of his one eye, his mangled ear so pitiful, so endearing. “What do you think will happen?” she asked the cat. He inclined his head as if thinking it over.

Alex had first relayed the good news that Irene, George’s mother, was ready for such a reuniting with her son. Something about a recent disillusionment with her fundamentalist pastor, and he would explain later. But her husband, George, Sr., had come in from a church meeting while they were still with Irene. Alex said he was angry and agitated by their presence and immediately ushered the two men out with self-righteous indignation and a few choice words, saying that George was a “fag” — a dated term, she mused, one that revealed the long history of his bigotry — and that until he repented and turned back (apparently to a fantasized heterosexual tendency) — that he, George, Sr., would continue to consider his son dead to him.

She shuddered at the thought of such a man, so fossilized in his homophobia that he had given it religious authority. And so it was left like that: one parent against another, wife against husband, religion against human feeling. Alex was particularly worried over having “stirred up a hornet’s nest that most likely lead to some terrible marital row.” And they both knew that in the religious fundamentalist world view, the man always got his way, while the woman was to be submissive. This made Madeline’s blood boil, to think that such people still existed, but there it was. If Irene had to choose between her faith and her child, her child and her husband, what would she do? And at what cost?

They would have to wait and see.

But she wasn’t going to stress over it. Nor was she going to stress over Darcy’s crisis with the beautiful Elena Velasco. Naturally, she couldn’t wait to hear how Elena was dealing with her jerk of a boyfriend, and if she would ever look at Darcy as more than a good friend. These things interested Madeline immensely, as she felt a part of a big family, a Fat Soul Friday family, in which she felt to be the mother over all the younger people in the group. A part she didn’t mind playing. In fact, she thought, smiling to herself, it gave her retirement a sense of heightened purpose and buoyancy — the contagious energy of youth.

And now she felt especially happy in anticipation of the results of her own happiness experiment. She couldn’t wait to spill the secret with the group on Friday, when everyone would share what they had done and the results. Her own experiment made her want to burst, like a child at a birthday party hiding a wrapped gift behind her back. Not even Alex was privy to it.

“Secrets can be fun,” she said to a cat who made it no secret that, after an exhausting yoga session, it was time for a mid-morning snack of Friskies seafood pate.

As she opened the pate, the fishy smell nearly gagging her so early in the day, the phone rang. It was Geraldine Nash — probably wondering why Madeline was not at yoga class.

“Madeline, dear, are you sitting down?”

“I hate it when people say ‘are you sitting down?’ Out with it, Geraldine. What’s wrong?”

“Well, something, I’m afraid. Yes, something is wrong. I can feel it and can . . . well, I can almost see it . . . ” She made a few hesitant noises, as was her humble way when trying to relay her self-proclaimed psychic visions — visions that Madeline had to reluctantly admit tended to be on the accurate side.

“Go on,” Madeline urged.

“Well, it’s still a little fuzzy—”

“What’s fuzzy?” Madeline pressed, rolling her eyes at Socrates, as if he, too, shared her impatience with an eccentric elderly woman.

“Something is wrong, dear. I’m afraid my radar on this is . . . well, a tad alarming.”

“For God’s sake, Geraldine. Tell me what’s on your mind — or rather, your radar. I’ll even sit down.”

She did not sit down.

“Well, I — oh, please, don’t shoot the messenger — I see . . . Alex.”

“Alex? What do you mean, you see Alex?”

“It’s sort of in and out, but I see him on an airplane.”

“I’m picking him up at the airport in a couple of hours. Of course he’s on an airplane. Southwest Airlines.”

“Oh,” said Geraldine quietly. “I think, dear, you’d better call the airline, then. I sense danger. Something is wrong on that plane . . . ”