“You’re doomscrolling,” Margot corrects. “And it is turning your brain into soup. Phone.”
Olive sighs and surrenders it like a kid giving up contraband.
With the flourish of a stage magician, Margot unfurls the mat. “We stretch. We do doggy style. We sip water. Then you will feel better.”
“Doggy style?” Olive blinks, scandalized. “Oh—you mean downward dog. I don’t think stretching can fix my problems,” she mutters, but she’s already sliding off the couch, because no one refuses Margot when she uses that voice. It has the authority of a headmistress and the inevitability of weather.
I’m confused too. What the hell does a dog have to do with this? But while Olive and Margot set up on the floor, I decide hovering uselessly is a bad look. I grab a towel and drop onto the rug beside them.
Margot positions Olive at the front of the mat, nudges her shoulders back with two gentle fingers, and softens her voice. “Breathe into your ribs. In. Out. In. Out. There it is.”
“Hands and knees,” Margot directs. “Cat-cow. Move like you are made of velvet and spite.”
Olive huffs a laugh and rounds her spine. I copy her, more or less. My spine voices a formal complaint. Is Yoga supposed to feel like this? I feel like a folding chair someone tried to turn into origami.
“Downward dog,” Margot says.
I glance at Olive. She pushes her hips back, straightens her legs, upside-down V, effortless.
I try. Both calves seize like they’ve been waiting for this moment since 2009.
“AH—” I collapse into a dignified heap.
Olive startles, then covers her mouth, eyes sparkling. “Are you okay?”
“Peachy,” I grumble.
I ease back up, this time with my knees a little bent.
“Next,” Margot says, “we lunge. We remember we own thighs. Left foot forward. Yes, dear. Beautiful posture.”
Olive threads her fingers overhead, breath deepening. She looks taller. Something in my chest loosens. We cycle through a few more poses under Margot’s particular brand of diplomacy.
“Warrior two,” she says. “Gaze soft, jaw softer.”
“Pigeon,” she says. “We put the feelings in the hip and then we let them go.”
Why do these poses all have animal names, anyway?
“Child’s pose,” she says at last, settling a folded towel under Olive’s forehead like a benediction. “We are small by choice, not because anyone made us.”
Olive folds. Her breath evens. The quiet that arrives is the good kind—the kind with air in it.
Margot sits back on her heels, satisfied.
“Thank you,” Olive says into the towel, muffled.
Margot pats her shoulder. “You are welcome. Ten more breaths. Then a shower.”
After Margot leaves for the day, Olive returns from her shower with her laptop in hand and settles onto the couch.
I stay in the kitchen, pretending to clean up the dishes.
I can hear her typing. Fast, steady. That has to be a good sign. She always types when she’s sorting through things, pouring herself into god-knows-what. But if she’s writing, maybe she’s not feeling so bad anymore. Right?
That little crease forms between her brows—the one I’ve come to recognize as her “don’t-talk-to-me-I’m-in-a-flow-state” face.
I don’t interrupt.
