“Oh.” I guess I wasn’t aware we couldn’t take away a chair. More would-be fly-fitters crowd into the lobby. Now, we’re nearly elbow to elbow. I glance at the giant door leading into the studio, willing it to open. “Nami, I don’t want to mess anything up, but it’s just that I’m doing this thing for work and—”
“Work is more important than my wedding?” Nami’s fuming.
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Ugh. I’m just digging myself in deeper.
“What about the couples’ dance?” Nami demands. “The second dance? The wedding party is supposed to dance—as couples.” Nami’s brow wrinkles further.
“I didn’t know about the couples’ dance.”
“How can you not know about the couples’ dance?” Nami says, exasperated. I don’t point out that this is the first time I’ve even heard of a planned couples’ dance. That would only make Nami angrier. “And all the groomsmen already have dates. Now, I have to find you someone to dance with?”
“What about Uncle Bob?”
“Great-Uncle Bob is eighty-five years old,” Nami huffs. “He’ll ruin the pictures.”
Ouch. Poor Uncle Bob. He’s an adorable old man who likes to wear plaid ties and talks in a faint Scottish lilt.
“He’ll be fine in pictures.”
“He has a walker. How can he even dance?”
“I’ll help him,” I offer. “It’ll be cute. Or I can dance with Grandma Mitsuye. She loves to do the jitterbug.”
Nami lets out an exasperated sigh. “You don’t get it.” Nami glares at the ceiling of FlyFit. “Why do you always do this to me, Sora? Seriously?” There’s a lifetime of closely kept grudges in that one word. Just like Dad, Nami neither forgets nor forgives.
“I can just sit out the dance. It’s okay.”
“You have to dance. It’s my day and you have to dance.” I see Dad’s old temper in the flare of her nostrils.
“Okay, okay!” I raise my hands in surrender.
The studio door slips open then. And the instructor, I presume, steps out.
“All right, ladies!” cries the instructor, a petite blue-headed pixie clad head to toe in a leopard-print full-body leotard. “Are we ready to go in?”
Everyone gives a loud shout of approval, so loud that I jump. Are we in the marines?
The instructor, bouncing with exaggerated enthusiasm, swings open the birch door to the studio and we all file in. That’s when I notice the harnesses hanging from the higher-than-normal ceiling and the long, colored drapes knotted at the bottom and dragging on the wooden floor. Worse, a few of the ladies jump right into the swinging drapes and begin warm-up stretches, hanging in them like pros from Cirque du Soleil.
“What the hell is this?” I whisper to Mom.
“Aerial aerobics,” she says. “Haven’t you heard of FlyFit? And what did you think it was?”
“My idea of hell. Since when is this a thing?” I ask Nami, but she’s gone mute. She’s pissed at me now and I’m getting the Nami cold shoulder. Great. I feel a pang of guilt, even though, objectively, I know I’m not ruining her wedding. She’s overreacting because she’s stressed and Mitch has been zero help in planning any of this. It’s hard to help when he spends eight hours a day online shooting aliens. She’ll calm down. I hope.
Nami follows Mom as they both head to thefrontof the class, closest to the mirrors, and I suddenly forget any wedding tension as Mom climbs into a turquoise knotted drape and Nami hangs on to a pink one, grabbing it with both hands and bending forward in a stretch. Why are they so close to the front and the mirrors where everyone can see? It’s at that moment I realize Mom and Nami have been doing this every Saturday for likely months now. I’ve been politely (and not so politely) refusing tocome for ages. I try to inch back to a red drape at the very back, but Mom spots me. She gestures wildly for me to come to them. She’s holding a kelly green drape just for me. Great. I’ll look like the Jolly Green Giant stuck on Jack’s beanstalk.
Reluctantly, I move forward and stand beside the silky fabric, all the while trying not to stare at the other, far more fit women, sitting in their knotted cradles, contorting themselves into pointed-toe warm-ups. Why is there no padding on this floor? Even for yoga we get mats, and the worst I can do is fall six inches when doing Downward Dog. I’m not suspended five feet in the air.
“Ladies!” cries the leopard-print-clad instructor. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Amethyst. But you can call me Amee—two e’s!”
Really? Did she really need to tell us her name wasAmethyst? Or that she spells Amee with two e’s? I feel like it’s an unnecessary flex.
“Okay, first off, we’re going to do some stretches. Everyone, I want you to reach high, high up in the sky, both hands!” Everyone stands facing the mirrors, the drape swings to their left, and they lift their arms in the air, fingers spread. Mom positions herself to my left and Nami is to my right. “Come on now, high enough to touch those dreams!”
Dreams? My dream right now is to escape to my car and see if I can find any bacon crumbs in the crevice of a floor mat. I’m sure I dropped some on the way. I frown, and Mom makes eye contact with me in the mirror. Her eyes say,you’d better really be trying.
“All right-y, ladies. Now we’re going to make our bodies into a half moon. Reach up and take hold of your wings…”
