Free As Good as It Got by Isabel Sharpe Page B

chairs on which sat chattery Dinah, jingly Martha, horsey Cindy, and their fair and noble leader, Betsy, erstwhile cheerleading slut.
    Against three of the surrounding walls, between the windows, stood colorfully jammed natural-finish bookcases, topped with brass urns, lamps, and small vases of clustered berries, bright red against rich green leaves. On the fourth wall, a brick fireplace with an assortment of shells—scallop, mussel, sea urchin, and bleached sand dollar—arranged in an abstract mosaic on the chimney. Through the windows opposite, Ann could see the sparkling blue bay and peaceful green islands, which gave her the same imprisoned feeling as being in school on the first warm day of spring.
    “Welcome, ladies.” Betsy bowed her head in greeting.
    “How was breakfast? Everyone get enough to eat?”
    Yesses and nods all around, Cindy patting her stomach contentedly.
    “Glad to hear it. Now, you four are being hit with this session first thing on Monday, our first full day. That makes it hard, I know. It’s easier when you have an activity or two to help foster trust and to relax a little before we start with the 70 Isabel
    Sharpe
    soul-baring. But schedules are schedules and someone had to be first, right?”
    She waited for an answer to the rhetorical question.
    “Yes.” Cindy turned uncertainly to her cabin-mates, as if needing assurance that she’d said the right thing.
    “Absolutely. “I don’t mind going first, like I said, I’m used to therapy and don’t think it’s a big deal, so I’m completely comfortable with coming here.” Dinah spoke with her attention on arranging her necklaces. “Not a problem for me at all.”
    Betsy’s gaze moved to Martha, who mumbled, “Sure.”
    “You bet.” Ann used her best salesman-hearty tone.
    “Good.” Betsy looked proud, as if they’d all completed stage one of group therapy: Able to Respond to Simple Questions. “Now, to loosen our minds and our bodies, we’ll start with a brief yoga session.”
    She got up, indicating they should rise with her. “Anyone know the sun salute?”
    Martha’s hand was the only one to rise.
    “I’ve heard of it!” Dinah fixed her empty eyes on Betsy.
    “One time I was in New York, in Central Park with Dan, my first husband, and there was this guy doing yoga. We stopped to talk to him and he told us he was doing exactly that, the sun salute, how about that! I never took yoga, but a lot of my friends took it. They said it was very enjoyable how calm it made you. I guess that’s why you’re doing it for us here, isn’t it.”
    “Right. That’s it exactly. Now . . . ” Betsy neatly slipped the words in just as Dinah opened her mouth to continue.
    “We start with Tall Mountain.”
    She lined them up in front of the windows facing the sea As Good As It Got
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    and led them through the poses, sometimes demonstrating, sometimes coaching, urging them several times to “let the breath move them,” whatever that meant. Ann pushed her body through the routine, proud of her strength and flexibil-ity. To her right, Dinah murmured to herself, straining into the poses. Cindy puffed and grunted, unable to straighten her legs, balance a lunge, or hold herself in a plank without her butt rising skyward.
    Ann smirked and turned to her left. If Cindy was having such trouble, Martha would be a disaster.
    Ann was wrong. Martha’s large body moved effortlessly through the routine. She held the positions, breathed deeply, bent and flexed farther and better even than Ann could.
    More than that, she seemed transformed. Her eyes were open, wide and untroubled, staring at nothing. A small smile curved her lips. The perpetual crease between her eyebrows had smoothed. She seemed powerful and peaceful, Betsy-like, but even more so.
    “Eyes forward, please.”
    Ann moved them forward, wanting to stick her tongue out at Betsy. What difference did it make if she looked forward or sideways or around in circles? But, new attitude in