CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, 2006
“YOU’RE SUCH A doubter, Lefty. Just come.”
“I haven’t slept in two nights,” Lucy argued. “This
place is a dump. I need to clean up.”
Marnie looked around their small dorm room. “You
can’t clean it up without me, because then I might feel guilty.
We’ll do it tomorrow. Come on. Jackie and Soo-mi are downstairs
already. We have to celebrate.”
“What if I don’t feel like celebrating?” Lucy was
in fact a doubter and a lefty, and she was also superstitious about
celebrating before she got her grades back. “What if Lawdry notices
I turned in my paper two days late?”
Lucy’s resistance was barely a sigh in Marnie’s
typhoon of will. “Here. Here are your shoes.” Marnie chucked them
one flip-flop at a time. “Bring some money.”
“I have to pay for this thing I don’t want to
do?”
“Twenty bucks. People pay for a lot of things they
don’t want to do. The dentist. Wars in Iraq. Dead mice for Dana’s
snake.”
“You aren’t making it sound any more inviting.”
Lucy got her bag and put on shoes. Not the flip-flops Marnie threw
at her. She had the energy for only small rebellions.
“Don’t worry about Lawdry. He loves you.” Marnie
opened the door of their room and ushered Lucy out.
“No, he doesn’t.”
“I’m afraid he does.”
“Whose car are we taking?”
“Yours.”
“Oh, I see.”
On the way out on Route 53 toward Simeon the sun
was sliding into the flat roof of a Bed Bath & Beyond. Marnie
put on one of her brother Alexander’s terrible rap mixes and
cranked it up while Jackie and Soo-mi started opening beers in the
back. “Who is this person we’re going to?” Lucy asked over the
din.
“Madame Esme,” Marnie said, studying her
handwritten directions in the darkening car. “Two miles and turn
onto Bishop Hill.”
“Don’t you two want to be sober for your
twenty-dollar psychic reading with Madame Esme?” Lucy asked,
glancing at Soo-mi’s face in the rearview mirror.
Soo-mi held up her Miller Lite. “Not
particularly.”
“Is this really where we’re going?” Lucy asked,
turning onto a gravel road dotted with trailers and rusting
carcasses of trailers.
Marnie was trying to figure out addresses. “Do you
see any numbers?” she asked. “We want Twenty-three
thirty-two.”
“I think it’s that one.” Lucy motioned ahead to an
aging mobile home surrounded by trellises woven through with roses.
It might have had wheels once, but it didn’t look like it was going
anywhere anytime soon. “Are those roses real or fake?” she
asked.
Marnie squinted. “I think real.”
“I think fake,” Lucy said as she pulled into the
driveway.
Madame Esme met them at the door. Lucy saw more or
less what she expected to see. Long green robe. Hair piled up. Lots
of rouge. Oversized gestures.
“Who goes first?” Madame Esme inquired.
“Marnie, you set this up. You go,” Jackie
said.
“You three can sit in there.” Madame pointed to a
tiny living room/kitchen. There were a painted wooden table and
four mismatched chairs. “You follow me,” she said to Marnie.
We watched Marnie follow her through a door into a
dim room pulsing with candlelight. Madame closed the door after
them.
“What are we doing?” Lucy asked, sitting on a metal
folding chair.
“Alicia Kliner said she’s supposed to be really
amazing,” Soo-mi said in a whisper.
Lucy didn’t know what was potentially amazing in
this. Her mother went to psychics every couple of years and was
amazed when they said things like “You are at peace by the water.
Books feed you. You cannot help but nurture.” Her mother was also
amazed by polarity, chakras, foot massage, and many items featured
on the Home Shopping Network. Lucy suspected she had a higher
threshold for amazement.
LUCY WAS FINE with waiting until last for the
great Madame Esme, but it was hard to keep herself awake.
Especially after Marnie emerged with a look of bursting smugness
but claimed she couldn’t talk about it until they had all finished
their readings.
“Oh, come on.”
“I can’t. Seriously.”
“Who do you care about more, me or Madame
Esme?”
“Don’t make me choose.”
Lucy shook her head and put it back down on the
table.
At last Madame Esme emerged for the third time and
let Jackie out the door. “I’m ready for you,” she said to
Lucy.
Lucy yawned and approached. The small room was dark
but for three fluttering candle flames on a card table. Two more
folding chairs were pulled up to the table. As Lucy’s eyes
adjusted, she saw the open shelves of clothing. Sweaters and piles
of pants and a mound of socks. It was more than Lucy wanted to
know, and it badly undercut the veneer of mystery. Along the wall
was a twin bed with one pillow. There was a poster, but Lucy
couldn’t make it out because it was mostly behind a shelf.
Madame Esme closed the door and sat. Lucy sat in
the chair opposite. Esme closed her eyes and put out her hands
facing upward. Lucy wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.
“Give me your hands,” Esme said.
Lucy did so awkwardly. Madame Esme’s hands were
warm and clutched hers with surprising intensity. It was hard to
tell with all the makeup, but sitting close and feeling her hands,
Lucy sensed that Madame Esme wasn’t much older than she was. How
had she found her way into this profession? Lucy wondered. It took
a certain amount of nerve.
Esme closed her eyes and rocked back and forth. As
for acting, Lucy decided, it was only so-so. This was what you got
for twenty dollars. She tried to shut down another yawn.
Esme opened her mouth as if to say something and
then closed it again. She was quiet for an uncomfortably long time.
Lucy strained to hear the voices of her friends on the other side
of the door. “I’m seeing a flame, red lights, a lot of noise,” Esme
finally said. “Is it a school?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. She knew she was tired
and grumpy, but she didn’t feel like doing the work here.
“It feels like a school,” Esme said. “A lot of
people rushing around, but you are alone.”
Lucy was ready for this. You feel alone in a
crowd. You are shyer than people think. This was your basic
psychic bait.
Madame Esme’s eyes were twitching under her lids,
but they became still. Her expression changed.
“You aren’t alone. He is there with you.”
“Okay.” Lucy wondered if they were getting to the
romantic wish-fulfillment part.
“He has been waiting for you. Not only now, but for
a long time.” Esme was quiet for a while. The silence stretched
out, and Lucy wondered if maybe that was it. But then Esme spoke
again, and this time her voice was different, lower and more
intense.
“You wouldn’t listen to him.”
“I’m sorry?” Lucy said politely.
“He was trying to tell you something. He needed you
then. Why didn’t you listen?” The voice was higher now, and
plaintive.
“Listen to who?” Lucy cleared her throat. “I’m not
sure what you are talking about.”
“At the dance. The party. Something like that. I
feel that you were scared. But still.” Esme was squeezing her hands
a bit harder than Lucy liked.
Lucy didn’t especially want to know what Esme was
talking about. Esme didn’t know what Esme was talking about. She
was just fishing. Saying standard stuff and trying to get Lucy to
bite on something.
“You should have listened.”
“To what?” Was a psychic supposed to be giving
opinions?
“What he told you.” Esme’s voice was deeper and
stranger. Her trance was getting more convincing. She was warmed
up, obviously. Lucy had a sadistic impulse to kick her under the
table. “Because he loved you.”
“Who loved me?” Psychics never named names. They
waited for you to tell them.
“Daniel,” she said.
Lucy sat back. She made herself breathe.
“Who?”
“Daniel.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. She sat up straight and
felt the chair creak and reset. What did this woman know about her?
Did she know them from school, somehow? Had Marnie somehow briefed
her?
“Daniel wanted you to remember. He kissed you, and
you did remember for a moment, didn’t you? But you ran away.”
Marnie couldn’t have told her that. No one could
have. Lucy felt a wave of fear followed by a wave of nausea as her
mind raced to find a rational explanation. She didn’t want to say
anything more. She wanted it to be over, but Esme had not finished
with her.
“You said you’d try. When you were Constance you
promised you’d remember, but you turned your back on yourself. You
wouldn’t even try.”
Lucy felt tears burning in her eyes. Two years ago
she’d packed that night away. She’d sealed it up carefully and
tightly. How could anyone have known about it?
“He was lonely. You know that. And you are Sophia,
his great love, and you said you’d try.”
“What am I supposed to try to remember?” Lucy
asked. It was a voice she hardly recognized. It escaped from some
part of her, she couldn’t tell where, airy and thin and hissing
like a leak.
“You were supposed to remember . . . him.”
Esme said it loudly and with indignation. “You were supposed to
remember how you loved him. He said he would come back, and you
promised you would remember him.”
Esme’s head was almost vibrating, and though she
held Lucy’s hands, Lucy had the distinct feeling the rest of the
girl’s body was going somewhere else.
“In the war. You took care of him. He couldn’t
breathe. You knew he was dying. He didn’t want to leave you, but
you said you would never forget. You forget and he remembers. He
told you what he was. He trusted you. You know, don’t you?”
Lucy felt herself recoiling. She felt bitten and
criticized. “I don’t know.” This girl had circumvented Lucy’s
defenses.
“You know what he is. You understand.”
“I don’t. What is he?”
“Please. You are Sophia, and he needed you.”
“Stop! Who is Sophia? Why do you keep talking about
her?” It’s what Daniel had done, too. It had scared her then as it
did now.
“I’m talking about you.”
“No, you’re not. I’m Lucy,” she said hotly. She’d
once seen a movie about a girl with a split-personality disorder.
The way Esme talked, it was as though there were somebody else
inside Lucy listening and even responding, and the thought of it
terrified her.
“Now you are Lucy. But before.”
“Before what?”
“You should find him if you can.”
“How can I find him? I talked to him once. I don’t
even know him.”
“Yes, you do. Don’t tell me that lie.”
Lucy yanked her hands away. “Can you stop this,
okay?” Lucy heard the tears of her own confusion, the sound of
herself betraying herself. Since when did a psychic scold you? She
wrapped her arms around her body. She had to stick together.
Esme opened her eyes and looked at Lucy as though
surprised to see her there. She blinked a few times. She and Lucy
stared at each other as strangers. “You should find him because he
loves you,” Esme said faintly, coming back in stages.
It was worse with Esme’s eyes open and fixed on
her. Lucy didn’t want the words to land where they landed. But they
did.
“I don’t even think about him anymore,” Lucy said,
half hoping Esme would be willing to make a deal and forget
everything that had just happened. It was weird for both of them,
she knew. And Lucy had yet to pay her.
Esme looked at her with a sharp reproach. She
didn’t look like a twenty-something-year-old person with too much
green eye shadow and a desire for her payment. She looked like the
oldest judge in the world. “How can you even say that?”
Lucy shook her head. She wished she weren’t crying.
She wished she could keep pretending that she had no fear and no
faith in any of it.
“I don’t know,” she said, and she really
didn’t.