by Connie Lacy
*
“You’re looking like you feel better,” Mrs. Robertson said, heading for my kitchen table.
She’d called saying she had more info on Eileen and wanted to stop by. I fixed us each a glass of ice water as she opened her laptop.
“Turns out Eileen was quite the entrepreneur,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “She actually parlayed her psychic readings into a nice little business. She and her husband were able to buy a middle class home in town. She turned the parlor into a seeing room for her customers. Only did business during the daytime hours and only accepted male customers if they came with their wife or daughter. She protected her reputation that way, which was mighty smart. She and her husband were able to afford to send their son to college. Their daughter married a preacher. Pretty impressive, don’t you think?”
“Wow.”
“Indeedy,” she said, beaming with pride. “I’ve never had so much fun researching a family history. Fascinating stuff. Anyway, I wanted to tell you in person that I was never able to find any significant medical issues in your father’s family tree. He comes from middle class stock – doctors, businessmen, lawyers, homemakers. No witches. No fortune tellers. No pattern of early deaths.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “I appreciate all your hard work, Mrs. Robertson.”
“I’ll put together a written report for you with a list all the names, birth and death dates, places of birth and death, marriages, children, newspaper articles, obituaries, letters – everything I found. I’ll mail you a nice fat envelope.”
After showing her out, I tried to recall the vision I’d had with Meg. What had I actually seen when I looked into her eyes? I must’ve misinterpreted something about that scene in the hospital room. And then I nagged my dad about staying healthy and he ramped up his bike riding and that’s what would get him killed!
I don’t know why, but I was reminded of Superman, who despite being faster than a speeding bullet and all that stuff, could still get tripped up because he just couldn’t be everywhere at the same time. And, of course, there was the Kryptonite. I imagined living the rest of my life trying to beat disease, accidents, shootings, abuse and all manner of bad things that happen to people, and failing! Being tripped up by my own Kryptonite.
“Shit!”
Even worse – I imagined never being able to look Brian in the eye. And I knew the novelty of gazing at each other in the mirror would quickly wear thin. Who wants to be in love with a woman you can’t look at? And that really pissed me off.
I returned to the kitchen, got a coffee mug from the cabinet and filled it with Chardonnay.
33.
By the time Brian returned I was good and drunk. And I mean good and drunk. I’d finished the white and was two thirds through the red and watching Jane Eyre on TV. He sat beside me on the couch, glanced at the screen, then leaned over and kissed my cheek.
“What’s this?”
“Jane Eyre. It’s a love story with lots of obstacles. But, unlike in real life, they eventually overcome all of them. Course, that includes a fire, a lunatic’s death, wandering the moors and being rescued by a religious zealot – not exactly in that order.”
“Rochester’s an asshole.”
“Rochester’s not an asshole.”
“Why is it so many women don’t recognize an asshole when they see one?”
He picked up the remote and turned off the TV.
“Hey, what’re you doing?” I cried.
“The question is: what’re you doing? Looks like you’re wasted.”
“So?”
“So, are you supposed to mix alcohol with your pain meds?”
I closed my eyes and pursed my lips, trying to think of a witty comeback but, for some reason, I couldn’t think of anything.
“I thought you’d like to know I talked again with Raymond and got the truth out of him,” he said, his voice filled with irritation. “He admitted Ike and Stefon were threatening to hurt his mom if he didn’t do as he was told.”
Which sobered me up a bit.
“I told him while I understood his fear, that he should be more afraid of being sucked in by those guys,” he went on. “He finally agreed to go with me over to headquarters and talk with an investigator in the gang unit. With any luck, Ike will be in a jail cell very soon.”
And I began to cry. Which made me mad.
“Hey, this is good news,” he said.
“I know, I know.”
“Then, why…”
“Because I can’t be a superhero.” I dragged myself off the couch and did my best not to weave as I walked to the kitchen.
“A superhero?” he said, following me.
“And you’ll get very tired of me after a while, always avoiding your eyes. It’ll get real old, real fast.”
I was standing at the kitchen window when he caught up with me and wrapped his arms around me from behind, putting his chin on my shoulder.
“I won’t get tired of you,” he whispered, kissing my cheek.
“Right!”
His kiss reminded me of what he said when we were at his house – “you’re not alone anymore.” And of how much I loved him.
I looked out on his garden, the garden he tended with such care, and wondered if it was possible I could do the same thing with my gift – mulch it, water it and prune it. I’d already proven I could steer my visions. Maybe I could fine-tune that skill. Maybe I could practice limiting how far into the future I saw. Like, just looking at what would happen in the next hour or the next day.
I leaned against him, but before I could speak, the doorbell chimed. He answered it and ushered Tia into the living room, holding three plastic containers. I started to introduce them.
“We’ve already met,” she said.
She looked from him to me and back again, then scooted into the kitchen.
“I brought some homemade beef stew,” she called out. “You can, like, freeze the containers and heat one at a time. Not that I made it, of course. My dad’s the cook in the family. I’m popping them in your freezer.”
And she was back in the living room in a flash.
“Just wanted to drop by and see how you’re doing.”
“I have to go to work now,” Brian said. “So you guys can visit. Nice to see you again,” he said to Tia and then kissed my forehead, giving me a quick hug. “I’ll be over tomorrow.”
Tia pumped her eyebrows at me as he closed the front door.
“Well, well,” she said. “Here I was worried about you being lonely and all the time you...”
“He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. In fact, he’s the love of my life.”
And I watched through the window as his truck pulled away and sighed.
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look very happy about it,” she said.
“I am happy about it,” I said, but my voice wavered. “It’s just that…”
And I crossed the room and got a tissue to blow my nose.
“Listen, I’m not gonna lie. Brian, like, called me and asked me to come over. He thought you needed a friend or something. But I have to confess I wasn’t too thrilled, to be honest. Not sure he knows we’re not exactly friends anymore.”
“Oh, Tia. I’ve missed you so much.”
I could feel her staring at me and I wanted so badly to look in her eyes and see the friend I’d known and loved for so long. It was obvious to me that the time had come to fix things between us.
“Well, what the hell’s been going on these past few months?” she said.
I sat down on the couch and patted the seat beside me.
“It’s kind of hard to explain. But I’ll try.”
She sat down and stared at me, waiting. And before I lost my nerve, I looked directly into her big brown eyes.
I saw her crying in a hospital room, holding a woman’s hand – it was me after my accident; then she was in a photo shoot, modeling a high fashion outfit; then she was arriv
ing at an airport, a man walking beside her. I wanted to see more but forced myself to put the brakes on, using my internal crystal ball. I felt dizzy and weak as I came to, closing my eyes and grabbing a cushion for something to hold onto.
“Jenna, are you all right?”
I waved my hand at her.
“Did you just have a seizure or something?”
“Thank God, you’re all right,” I whispered.
“Thank God I’m all right?”
“Yes.”
I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her.
“I’ve been so worried,” I said.
I hugged her close. It was wonderful knowing her life had changed. And I thought about my visions. I was seeing a trajectory and that trajectory could be altered. Tia had stopped drinking and maybe it was my accident that did it.
“Why were you worried about me?” she asked. “I was worried about you! I don’t get it.”
“Oh it’s such a long, complicated story.”
“Just pretend you’re tweeting and give me the short version.”
“Okay. Here goes. When my mother died I inherited her gift of clairvoyance, sort of. When I look into someone’s eyes – someone I care about – I see their future.”
I could feel her studying me like I was crazy. Which is exactly what I expected all along.
“I think you might’ve succeeded in keeping it to a hundred and forty characters,” she said. “But what the hell are you talking about?”
So I told her the whole story, beginning with what happened with my mom in the hospital room, and everything I’d seen in my visions. And then I told her how I’d seen Brian shot to death after a store robbery and everything we’d done since then to try to prevent it from happening. She never interrupted me. But skepticism oozed from her pores.
“I’ve been afraid to tell anyone because I knew they wouldn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed my mother if she’d told me about it.”
“When Brian said you needed to tell me something that might be hard to swallow, it was, like, totally an understatement.”
“Yeah.”
“So what did you see when you looked in my eyes?”
“The first time, right after Mom died, I saw you become an alcoholic. And I saw you set your apartment on fire. And I think your baby was inside.”
I shook my head, trying to erase that disturbing image from my mind.
“So that’s why you told my dad I was an alcoholic.”
“I didn’t tell him you were an alcoholic. I just told him there was a chance you might become one, you know, since your mom had that kind of problem.”
She grunted softly, obviously still steamed about it.
“But when I looked into your eyes just now, I saw a very different future. A good future. And I think something happened to change your trajectory.”
“My trajectory.”
She got up and paced around the living room, stopping to look at me and then pacing some more.
“This is too weird,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m not sure about this… this… vision thing.”
“Understandable.”
She continued pacing, huffing and shaking her head as she walked. Then she stopped and stared at me, but I focused on her hands as they landed on her waist.
“God, Jenna, I hate it when you’re right. I really hate it. I was drinking too much. And when you sicced my dad on me, he told me all about my mother and how her life and their marriage had been ruined. And then you got drunk and drove your damn car right through the wall into my dad’s living room, nearly killing yourself and everyone in the house. And I was like, holy shit! But…”
“But you still don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Listen, let’s go somewhere for dinner,” she said. “You look like you could use a pu pu platter ”
So we went to our favorite cheap Chinese restaurant and she brought me up to date on her modeling jobs and the new guy she was dating and how her teaching job was going. And I told her about Brian. It was so nice to hang out with her again. I didn’t realize how intensely I’d missed her. We still had work to do to repair our friendship but we’d taken the first step, thanks to Brian.
When we came out of the restaurant a soft rain was falling. We dashed to her car and headed back to my house. But when we turned onto my street the glow from the streetlight on the wet pavement seemed eerily familiar. And then it hit me.
“This is the night of the shooting,” I said.
34.
“Pull over!” I cried.
“What shooting?”
“Remember, I told you I saw Brian shot to death after an armed robbery? Well, this is the same kind of misty rain. This is the night, I’m sure of it.”
The distinct possibility that my vision might still come true made me weak. What if his talk with Raymond hadn’t really worked? What if Raymond was just telling Brian what he wanted to hear? And what if Ike wasn’t arrested anytime soon? And what if the two of them went to the store tonight anyway?
“Turn around,” I said.
“I’m not driving to some crummy little store in a bad neighborhood where an armed robbery is going down. You think I’m crazy?”
“We have to.”
“Forget it!”
“Tia! Please! Brian’s life is at stake. Raymond’s too.”
“Who’s Raymond?”
“I’ll explain on the way. Just turn around.”
“Jenna…”
“I’m begging you.”
She shook her head and slapped the steering wheel with her hand.
“If I’d known being friends with you again might get me killed…” she sputtered, while executing a quick u-turn.
I guided her to Raymond’s neighborhood, filling her in on Brian’s “little brother” as we drove. I told her how Ike was threatening his mother and how Brian was trying to get Ike arrested.
“I don’t like it,” she said, turning left. “Not one bit. If those guys have guns, we have no business being here. You hear me?”
But I was studying the look of the wet pavement as light rain continued to fall. It looked just like my vision when Brian was chasing the man with the gun as he ran under the streetlight. I knew in my gut I was right.
“There’s the store,” I said.
Even in the dark, with the rain coming down, you could see the peeling blue paint and a sign above the door that was probably older than me. “Joe’s Food & Liquor.”
“Right here,” I said, gesturing for her to park the car on the street.
“I’m not stopping. This is way too…”
“Fine, then. I’ll jump.” And I pulled the door handle.
“Jesus, Jenna!” she screamed, hitting the brakes.
She pulled to the curb a couple of car lengths beyond the store.
“Turn off the engine and lights,” I said.
“You know this is, like, insane, right?” she said, making sure the doors were locked.
We sat in the dark, as the mist coated the car. Tia gripped the steering wheel and scanned our surroundings, repeatedly glancing in the rearview mirror and the side mirrors. I shifted around so I could look out the back, but the rear window was already covered by water droplets, and for a split second I had the feeling we were submerged in a lake. The store had a small neon sign that said “Lottery Tickets” and another one that said “Beer” and there were bars over the windows. The nearest working streetlights were a block away in either direction, making it much darker than I’d expected.
“What if they’re already inside?” I whispered. “I’m going in.”
“Jenna!”
But I was already out of the car. She jumped out too and followed me to the entrance, both of us looking nervously toward the street. I pushed the door open and we stepped inside.
The man behind the counter was the same one I’d seen in my vision, Mr. S
ong. I learned his name from his wife. He looked us over but said nothing. I grabbed Tia by the arm and pulled her to the back of the store.
“Jenna, what the hell are we doing?”
“Shh.”
I gripped her arm and peeked around the shelves, waiting.
“What you need?” the owner called out, startling us.
“Uh, just choosing some drinks,” I said.
We pretended to study the bottles of beer and wine but we were too nervous to speak. And a couple of minutes later the door opened and in walked Raymond and a tall, skinny guy who had to be Ike. The hairs on my arms prickled. Before I could decide what to do, we heard Ike mutter something and then Raymond pulled a gun, pointing it at Mr. Song.
“Raymond, is that you?” I heard myself call out as I moseyed to the front of the store as casually as possible. Tia whimpered but I sensed she wasn’t following me.
Raymond jerked his head to the side and gave me a terrified look, still aiming his weapon at the store owner. Just as I reached the front, Mr. Song pulled a gun from his drawer and aimed it at Raymond’s chest.
“Wait!” I cried. “Don’t shoot.” And I took a tiny step closer to Raymond. “Raymond, don’t throw your life away. Put the gun down.”
“I told you to check the fuckin’ store first,” Ike hissed as Raymond’s eyes darted from Mr. Song to me.
I noticed Ike’s hand move and I could hardly breathe, thinking of what was about to happen. Then I sensed movement behind the counter and I knew Mr. Song was about to pull the trigger. I threw myself at Raymond just as a loud crack of gunfire filled the small store. Tia screamed as Raymond and I tumbled to the floor. There was another gunshot as Mr. Song fired at Ike, who managed to escape as the bullet shattered the glass door. Raymond was trying to push me off of him, still gripping his weapon, but I hit his wrist as hard as I could and knocked it from his hand.
Then there was a siren outside and flashing blue lights.
“Oh my God!” I cried, struggling to get up.
“I use silent alarm. Police here!” Mr. Song shouted. “You stay down,” he barked at Raymond. And he ordered me to kick the gun away.