Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

picked them up, the single pair of shoes that I had placed mine next to, little black cotton shoes with rope soles, like the ones I’d seen in the hall, only these had “Lisa” written in black Magic Marker inside each shoe.
    He held them out to me.
    I didn’t move.
    “What can it hurt?” he asked. “You’re already wearing her perfume.”
    When I took the shoes from his hands and lifted one foot, I felt his large hand cup my elbow. I let him support me while I slipped each one on. His hand was as warm as the hearth of my fireplace after a fire had been burning all evening.
    “They fit,” I said.
    He smiled.
    “Does he need water?” he asked. “Come,” he said to Dashiell, “there’s a bowl in the office.” A moment later I heard the slapping sound of Dash drinking. Good, I thought, he still has the Akita .
    The huge windows on the north side of the studio opened out, which must have made it easy to see from the street below from where Lisa had taken her plunge. I wondered which one Lisa had gone out of and exactly what she was thinking at the time. I wondered how I’d possibly find out what made her so desperately unhappy that she had decided to take her own life. Was it in fact a decision? Or might it have been instead a thoughtless, spur-of-the-moment rush to make an end, once and for all, to her pain?
    I tried to picture Lisa in pain, but I couldn’t. All I could come up with was the lovely, smiling face I had seen on her parents’ piano and in their photo album.
    Not average, her mother had said.
    Avram returned with Dashiell padding along at his side as if they were old friends. He took my hands in both of his.
    “I am so glad you came,” he said, his eyes filling, as if he would cry. But then he let go of me and stepped onto the polished wooden floor of the studio and faced the mirror again.
    “I do not want you to worry about what you look like. Just copy. Come, come, come, stand behind me. One day soon, you will feel what t’ai chi is. I cannot explain it to you any more than I could explain Lisa to you. You will feel it for yourself. And then one day you will feel Lisa.”
    I stood behind him, heels together, toes to the diagonal, and shifting my body and then my legs and feet, ever so slowly, I found shoulder width. My arms lifted as if a string were tied to my wrists, gently pulling them toward the heavens, and I moved as Avram did, slowly through space, my dog lying at the edge of the tan carpet with only his front paws touching the light oak flooring of the studio.
    Each time Avram stopped, I stopped, and we would begin again; sometimes repeating the same few movements over and over again; sometimes Avram would go ahead as I struggled to mimic him, clumsy where he was graceful, shaking where he was steady, struggling where he was authoritative, worried where he was calm.
    After a while my legs were burning, especially the few times he spoke, asking me to hold a position while he looked at me. Several times he gently moved me, adjusting the position of an arm, a foot, straightening my spine or wrist, and afterward I felt something like a breeze, but inside, not on my skin, something cool and calming, something moving slowly, something wonderful, and when that happened, I wanted never to stop.
    We worked from eleven to three in the morning, and finally Avram stopped and sighed audibly.
    “I’ve forgotten everything already,” I said in a panic.
    “Go home, Rachel. You’re tired. We’re both tired. You couldn’t possibly hold all the movements in your mind. Your body is learning t’ai chi. Your body will remember for you.”
    “But when will you—”
    “ Shh , shh , shh ,” he said, holding his head as if I had given him a headache. “Are you familiar with the parable of the tiger?”
    No, I told him. I shook my head no.
    “A man was walking alone in the country, and he came across a tiger. He began to run, but the tiger also ran. It pursued him. Finally he came to the edge of a cliff, and grasping a vine, he attempted to escape from the tiger by climbing down. As he climbed, he looked beneath him. There below him was another tiger, looking up, waiting to devour him.”
    What was he talking about? He might as well have been speaking Chinese.
    “One tiger above, one below. Only the vine saved him. But when he looked back up, he saw two mice, one black, the other white, gnawing away at the vine. That’s when he noticed, right in front of him, growing on the side of the