What a surprise.
I deserve this. (Viv.) I do, I do. I motherfuckin Queer Eye do. (Ty.)
Everyone came together.
Baby still got the touch
That was cool (Alf)
The Three Mysteries
THE NEW YEAR
Four Affirmations
SIDD KITCHENER McCadden was now eight months old, and a regular at Peet’s Coffee on Montana. There were a lot of regulars at Peet’s, and Lisanne often wondered what those people did for a living aside from drinking tea and lattes. They probably wondered the same thing of her.
In the early morning, she left the baby in the care of a nanny and went jogging along the bluff. The regulars tended to congregate outside, even if it was freezing, and she would see them as she drove to Ocean Avenue. The ones who preferred to stay indoors had special places to sit that they guarded with their lives. When she came at about ten, after collecting her son, the clique was still remarkably intact. They oohed and aahed over “little Sidd” (they assumed he was a Sidney), but she didn’t make small talk. Lisanne held them in benign contempt, wondering which was the actor, model, stylist, which was the kept person or whatnot. Sometimes they appeared in absurd spandex cycling outfits; sometimes they celebrated each other’s birthdays with slices of cake which they tried to foist on whatever innocents had the misfortune to sit close by. They didn’t seem wealthy and no one was famous, although the rich and famous did pass through, like Meg Ryan and her son or Kate Capshaw in jodhpurs or Madeleine Stowe and her sweet husband, who looked like a short, stocky dentist. Everyone from local yoga came to Peet’s, and Lisanne held out hope she would see Marisa or Renée so she could strike up a conversation about the terrible thing that had happened to Kit. She didn’t think that would be inappropriate, but they never showed.
After Viv’s miscarriage and her epiphany that Siddhama was the child of Kit Lightfoot (a revelation she guarded from Philip and everyone else), Lisanne had begun to study vipassana in earnest, meeting regularly with a Westside group. They did their sitting at a Zen center tucked behind a post office in Santa Monica and at members’ houses too. Sometimes there were all-night yazas, but mostly they met on weekday afternoons. She liked vipassana because it was the oldest form of meditation, a technique the Buddha himself was said to have practiced. Philip was supportive even though he no longer evinced much interest in things Buddhist. (She wasn’t sure that he ever really had.) Still, he built Lisanne an airy cabin on the grounds where she could do her ashtanga and even let himself be dragged to a loving-kindness workshop just up the road, in Temescal.
• • •
THE SATURDAY RETREAT was led by teachers from a place up north called Spirit Rock. Lisanne and Philip joined about twenty others in sitting and walking meditations. No one was allowed to speak except to repeat four affirmations: