by Jane Langton
So it was all right. If only she could stay here quietly. If only the old witch would leave her alone.
Frieda had written no more letters to the Impossible Post Office. When her first actual letter had remained unanswered—the genuine friendly letter that she had sent through the United States Postal Service to a real person with a real address—she had felt silly and ashamed.
So these days, if she ever thought about someone named Leonard, a short grey man in a checkered scarf, she shoved the thought aside. Of course it is hard not to think about something. Frieda devoted a good deal of time to the practice of not thinking.
Today she was ready to tackle the kitchen ceiling. Frieda spread old newspapers on the floor and knelt to stir her can of paint. Only then did she see the name staring up at her from a page of death notices—
EDWARD FELL, 68
At once she was struck with painful memories. Edward Fell! How kind he had always been to her, what a bulwark and defender! But gradually the bulwark had vanished as his growing confusion became more desperate and his wife gained a freer hand.
Poor Edward! He had really died years ago. Perhaps his actual death could be called a blessing.
35
Homer was doubtful. “Spiritualists with crystal balls? There can’t be people like that any more.”
“Oh, yes, there are,” said Mary. “They’re all over the place. I’ll bet we can find Madame Ronda.”
And they did. In the yellow pages the heading for SPIRITUALISTS was between SPIRAL STAIRCASES and SPONGES.
To Homer’s surprise there were many listings. One was exactly what they were looking for.
Aquarian Truth Center of Light
Astral Images
Chloe’s Labyrinth
Goddessworks
Grotto of Sagittarius
Madame Ronda
SEE OUR DISPLAY AD THIS PAGE
Sun, Moon and Stars
Zodiac Power
The display ad for Madame Ronda was a staring eye looking out from the palm of an open hand with the words—
PSYCHIC READINGS
BY MME RONDA
•
PALMISTRY
TAROT CARDS
•
Walk-ins Welcome
1039 Norfolk St., Central Sq. Camb.
“It’s up to you, dear,” said Homer. “It’s your kind of thing.”
Mary was incensed. “What do you mean, my kind of thing?”
“Oh, you know,” said Homer uncomfortably. “Witches, they’re female, and so are gypsy fortune-tellers. Female irrationality and hysteria, right up your alley.” Mary’s mouth fell open, and Homer finished lamely, “Joke, that’s a joke.”
“Well, all right,” said Mary, giving in. “I guess I’m curious anyway.” She poked him in the chest. “But listen, Homer, if we’re going to put the house on the market, why don’t you work on the cellar while I’m gone? We’ve got to get rid of all that old stuff down there, although I don’t know what on earth you can possibly do with it, now that the old dump is gone.”
“The dear old dump,” said Homer dreamily. “All those bashed-in refrigerators and mountains of plastic bags. Ah, the dear dead days of the past.”
Central Square was Cambridge in transition. Mary Kelly was aware that Emily Dickinson had once lived in exile only a few blocks away, suffering from eye trouble and homesickness in a darkened room.
But nothing of an Emily Dickinson aesthetic pervaded this part of Massachusetts Avenue. Only a mile from Harvard Square, it might have been in Moscow.
For Homer and Mary Kelly the other choked intersection was home ground, the knotted angle where the brick walls of Harvard University crowded up against the curve of Massachusetts Avenue. Harvard Square was crisscrossed by Ph.D. candidates and professors, students and street people, kids on scooters and skates, burly teenagers from the public high school on the other side of Harvard Yard, pavement musicians with open guitar cases, hawkers of the homeless newspaper Spare Change, noisy Peruvian bands, booksellers and bookbuyers, shoppers at the Gap, restaurants dishing up arugula and fennel, and five hundred miscellaneous poets.
In Central Square the throngs on the sidewalk were scruffier and more mixed in race and country of origin. In the old days of rent control, new immigrants had once been thick on the streets, but now the high cost of living had forced many of the city’s poor to move elsewhere. Here and there a few buildings had been taken over by nonprofit developers, but only for the benefit of a few hundred elderly people.
The subway stop was twenty feet below the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue with Western Avenue, River and Magazine Streets. Mary climbed the dark stairs into air and sky. Around her there were milling crowds of pedestrians. Some gazed at the tormented traffic lights, some crossed daringly from corner to corner, dodging the trucks and delivery vans and cars turning in four or five different directions. A block away from the intersection rose the tower of City Hall, high above Massachusetts Avenue. Southward on River Street the steeple of an enormous church was a relic from a different age.
Where was Madame Ronda? As Mary looked at her map, a big man in a knitted cap said boldly, “Hey, ma’am, you got a dollar?”
In a fraction of a second Mary’s lifetime accumulation of social history and ethical principle funneled down into a decision to grope in her pocketbook and extract a bill. The man took it without a word and shambled away.
Leonard Sheldrake had explained it on the phone, the layout of Central Square. “It’s really four different towns—Area Four, Cambridgeport, Riverside and Mid-Cambridge. Area Four used to be the grungiest, but now it’s being gentrified along with the rest. And M.I.T. has a few big projects in Area Four. They play the City Council like a violin.”
Mary started walking in the direction of Norfolk Street, glancing at the shopfronts—Tax Man, Burger King, Goodwill, Center for Marxist Education, Cambridge Business Center, the Salvation Army. Along Mass Av the city planners had been at work. There were trees encircled with wrought-iron fences, there were benches under the trees. Norfolk Street was more neglected. Much of the upgrading here had been do-it-yourself. Salesmen for vinyl siding had been busy too. They had scampered up and down from block to block, covering rotting wooden clapboards with phony siding and nailing up plastic shutters.
Mary found the emporium of Madame Ronda del Rondo across the street from the Faithful and True Witness Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. It was flanked by Anita’s Caribbean American Grocery (Hablamos Espanol) and the Haitian Express Bureau de Transfer.
The door opened on a stairway. Beside the stairs stood a large wooden hand like the one in the telephone book. On the five fingers were the words, HEALTH, MONEY, FRIENDS, RELATIONS, LOVE.
So far, so good. Mary walked bravely up the stairs, composing in her head a story about her interest in the other world. At the top she was surprised to find herself in a big airy room. A young man sat before a computer monitor, jouncing a whimpering baby in his lap.
“Oh, hi, there,” he said. “You want to see my mother? Wait a sec.” He stood up, holding the baby against his shoulder. At once a beautiful young woman appeared from nowhere with another baby in her arms.
“Lena’s turn now,” she said, and they traded armfuls.
“Twins?” said Mary, amused.
“Right,” said the father. “This is Lena.” He nodded at his wife, who was vanishing with the other baby. “That’s Lola.”
“Is your wife Madame Ronda?”
“No, no. Madame Ronda’s my mother.” He gestured at an open door. “She’ll see you in there.” He sat down at the computer again with Lena fast asleep on his lap, and grinned at Mary. “Now maybe I can get some work done.”
“You’re a computer—uh—programmer?”
“It’s our website. I’m the one keeps it up.”
“Oh, I see.” Obediently Mary walked through the door and sat down in Madame Ronda’s consulting chamber. To her surprise it looked more like a doctor’s waiting
room than a den of mystery. There were no heavy draperies. The room was bright with sunlight. There was no atmosphere of the occult, no crystal ball.
When Madame Ronda sailed in, holding out her hand, Mary shook it and made a laughing confession. “It’s not what I expected at all. I thought it would be all dark and mysterious.”
Madame Ronda smiled and sat down comfortably in an upholstered chair. She was a large handsome woman. Mary noticed with relief that her beautiful dark eyes did not widen and stare and cast a mesmerizing spell.
“How can I help you?” asked Madame Ronda kindly.
Mary told the truth. “I want to ask about—um—a client of yours. She—”
“I’m sorry,” said Madame Ronda, interrupting at once and shaking her head. “I cannot discuss private conversations. They are confidential.”
“Oh, I see.” Mary thought a moment, and tried another tack. “Suppose someone came to you wanting to communicate with a relative who had passed away. Would you be able to help? What would you do?”
“I would tell the bereaved person that the spirit of the departed is now at rest. I would try to help the seeker find peace of mind.”
“That’s all? You wouldn’t go into a trance and summon the voice of the deceased?”
“No, nothing like that. My aim would be to help the grieving relative adjust to life in the real world. I might urge her to find other interests.”
Mary was stunned. She caught at a word. “Her? You mean a woman? Are you thinking of a particular woman?”
“No, no. It’s just that most of my clients are women.”
There was another pause. It was not embarrassing. Madame Ronda sat quietly, faintly smiling.
Mary abandoned her attempt to probe the strange secret life of the mother of Patrick Fell, and asked a more general question. “You’re a gypsy, Madame Ronda? Are most psychics gypsies? Tell me, are gypsies professing Christians?”
In answer Madame Ronda leaned forward and told a story. “The Bible says that five nails were driven into the body of Christ. Gypsies say that a sixth was meant for his heart, but we stole it.”
“You stole it? You mean gypsies stole the sixth nail?” Mary laughed with delight.
Madame Ronda laughed too. “We are Catholics. My family belongs to the parish of The Blessed Sacrament on Pearl Street.”
After this respite from hard questions, Mary thought of another. “Suppose I came to you with a desire to communicate with—say, a dead child. And then I was disappointed when you told me that you wouldn’t try to invoke his spirit in the other world. Suppose I didn’t want to give up. Maybe I’d want to try someone else, you know, get a second opinion. Would it be possible to find more traditional psychics? You know, the stereotype, with crystal balls and so on?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose it would be possible.”
“But where? How?”
Madame Ronda opened her mouth to reply, but there was a noisy interruption. Her daughter-in-law hurried in, her face wet with tears. She was carrying one of the twins. It was bawling lustily.
Madame Ronda held out her arms and enfolded the baby and cuddled it and made soft cooing noises. At once the baby—was it Lena or Lola?—stopped crying and gazed adoringly at its grandmother.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” sobbed the daughter-in-law. “Honestly, I’ve really had it. If it isn’t one, it’s the other.”
“There, there, dear. Lie down and rest. Lola and I will be fine.”
Mary stood up. “Can you tell me where else someone might go, if they wanted a different sort of help?”
There was a cry from the other room. Baby Lena, too, was getting up a head of steam. Madame Ronda rose majestically with Lola in her arms, and Mary followed her out of the consulting room. She watched as the grandmother swept up the other baby from the embrace of its exasperated father. Holding the two babies in her arms like a goddess of fertility, she looked at Mary and said, “What did you say, dear?”
“Nothing,” said Mary. “Thank you so much. Those babies are really cute.”
“Madame Ronda, I really liked her.”
Homer was flabbergasted. “You liked her?”
“Oh, yes, she was just great. I wanted to tell her all my troubles.”
“Troubles?” Homer was wounded to the quick. “What troubles?”
“Oh, you know, Homer. It’s just a figure of speech. But really, she wasn’t what I expected at all. I wanted to sit on her lap and suck my thumb.”
36
Homer and Mary Kelly and Leonard Sheldrake—all three were employed by the university that bulged eastward from Harvard Square, the institution Homer called that vast educational slaughterhouse, in the words of H. L. Mencken.
To their joint relief, the spring term was over. Leonard’s freedom would last the longest, an entire sabbatical year. Nevertheless he was dangerously available to his department chairwoman. Joanna knew his e-mail address as well as the number of his unlisted phone.
She was in raptures, she said, over his computer program for beginning students. She adored the way his rhombohedrons and scalenohedrons turned slowly on the screen; she was delighted with his demonstration of left-handed and right-handed trigonal trapezohedrons; she was enchanted by his display of the fantastic intergrowth of the twinned cubes of fluorite. “Oh, Leonard, it’s just like holding a tourmaline from Namibia in your hand, or an alexandrite from the Ural Mountains. I can almost explore the facets with my fingers. It’s so wonderful, the way they blink and flash in the light.”
But this triumph wasn’t enough. “Leonard, you’ve got to do crystal systems right away. Please, Leonard! We’d all be so grateful.”
For Homer and Mary, too, the end of the semester did not mean the end of drudgery. Mary had to write a speech for a summer conference. Homer was working on a book with a thousand footnotes. Therefore Leonard’s anxiety about the disappearance of the young woman called Frieda would have to wait, along with questions about her mysterious connection with a long-dead child and the possible murder of an old man in a nursing home by his niece and the puzzling absence of the baby’s mother, a madwoman who was trying to communicate with the dead.
Of course it was different for Leonard. No matter how busy he was, he could always find time to visit the art gallery on Huron Avenue, hoping to find Frieda there.
By necessity he was now a regular client of the elegant grocery store next door, buying his meager supplies at whatever cost—two fifty for a head of Boston lettuce, four dollars for a dozen treasures laid by happy chickens roaming free, pausing now and then to lay an egg.
So it was an expensive exercise, visiting the gallery nearly every day.
“Well, here you are again,” marveled the gallery owner, as Leonard walked in for the umpteenth time. “But excuse me, perhaps I’m mistaking you for someone else. You’ve been here before?”
“Of course I have.”
The gallery owner was embarrassed. “Oh, well, of course. Anyway, take a good look because it’s the last day. Are you interested in Budgie at all?”
“Budgie?”
“Oh, you must know Budgie’s work. Trash cans, towers of trash cans. He piles them up so they sort of sway.” The gallery owner’s hands tipped left and right. “It’s amazing. I mean they teeter as if they’re going to fall on you. I don’t know how he does it. It’s truly remarkable. We’re installing his stuff tomorrow.”
“Well, I guess not,” said Leonard. Turning away, he signed the guestbook, because it was an excuse to look back over the pages, hoping to find Frieda’s name.
As always it was missing, but for some reason—perhaps the fact that it was the last day of the exhibition—he remembered something he had forgotten. On the opening day, when he had asked about a woman in a green coat, the gallery owner had said, “You mean two women in green coats?”
Two women! Who was the other?
That night Leonard dreamed that two Friedas in green coats were climbing out of their magic mirrors and changing places.
“Wait,” he whispered, but they paid no attention. Both were striding away, growing smaller and smaller, disappearing at last in twin cavities of darkness.
His whisper woke him up, and he lay flat on his back staring at the rectangle of light on the ceiling, tossed up by a street lamp down there on Sibley Road.
There were two labyrinths, not just one. Who in the hell was the other Frieda?
37
Busy or not, Mary tried again to find Patrick’s mother by consulting the list of psychics in the yellow pages.
From the list that looked so strangely out of place on the same page as SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS, SPEEDOMETERS, and SPORTING GOODS, she picked a name at random, Madame Chloe. And on the day after she finished the script for her hugely important keynote address, Mary celebrated by taking the T to Downtown Crossing to look for Madame Chloe.
Fortunately the address in the phone book was real. Beside the street number, an arrow pointed downward to a door below the level of the sidewalk. On the arrow were the words CHLOE’S LABARINTH.
At the bottom of the stairs a second sign was tacked to the door. It was another gallant try at a possible spelling—
CHLOE’S LABERYNTH
Mary knocked.
Nothing happened. She was about to give up when there was a scuffling on the other side of the door and it opened to reveal Madame Chloe in person, a teenager with a snub nose, a tiny mouth and large frightened eyes. She was struggling to knot a kerchief around her hair.
A cornered rabbit, thought Mary. “Are you open today?” she said politely.
“Well, I guess so,” said Madame Chloe doubtfully. She backed away to let her client come in, then furtively snatched a shawl from the back of a chair and draped it over her T-shirt, which was emblazoned with the name of a rock band—
Mary had encountered the Underbelly before. Smiling, she sat down on the rickety chair Madame Chloe jerked out for her. As a psychic studio the place looked reasonable enough. It sported a generic crystal ball on the table, and there were bits of astrological paraphernalia dangling from the pipes. Where was the labyrinth?