The Reluctant Fortune-Teller

by Keziah Frost

  Norbert looked at Lindsay’s cards.

  “There’s a big question on your mind?”

  Almost everyone had a big question in mind.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, there is. That’s why I wanted the reading today. It’s a real-estate purchase—on Black Bear Island. Should I do it, or not? That’s my big question.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Norbert. He wasn’t “fishing.” He really wanted to know.

  “Well, there’s a little cottage. I don’t know why it caught my attention. I made an appointment with the Realtor, in fact, and I went to see it. I was just curious. But now that you’re talking about my art—maybe there’s a connection. It’s semi-isolated over there, on the island. Right now I’m thinking that if I have a place like that to go where there are fewer distractions, and if I don’t bring my laptop or my TV, if I just set it up as a simple living space and art studio, with all my supplies—oh, and my little dog, of course...well, it’s a beautiful place, Black Bear Island. Have you been there?”

  Norbert had.

  “Yes. In my youth, I was very familiar with it. It was—pristine—then.”

  Norbert saw himself as a teenager, exploring the island numerous times with his Eagle Scouts troop. He had loved that place.

  “It still is pristine!” said Lindsay with feeling. “It’s peaceful. It’s inspiring—it’s everything an artist would want. And the cottage has north light, and it’s just the right size. It’s a good chunk of change, though. But I have it, in my savings. I could do it. I’ve thought maybe I could justify it by renting it out sometimes to other teachers, friends and family. But knowing how I am, I would probably wind up just lending it out. Or maybe not. Maybe I’d just keep it always available for me—since you say I need a studio.”

  “Where exactly is this property?” Norbert enjoyed hearing about Lindsay’s dream cottage, and tried to see it in his mind’s eye.

  “It’s one of the houses that hugs the shore.”

  Lindsay described to Norbert precisely where it was, how it looked and why she loved the very idea of it. Norbert caught her enthusiasm.

  “I can see you there,” said Norbert, honestly.

  “Is that what the cards say?” asked Lindsay. “Do the cards say I should do it?”

  * * *

  The morning Norbert paid the last installment on Ivy’s vet bill, he declared, “Ivy, I think this calls for a celebration.”

  Ivy put her ears back and wagged her whole body.

  It was mid-August, and Norbert had been doing about twenty readings per week since he began in early July. He felt increased self-esteem as he thought of the encouragement and insight he had offered the unsure, and the enlightenment and comfort he had offered the self-deceived. He was doing good in the world, and to top it all off, he was able to support his Chihuahua.

  Norbert attached Ivy’s harness and leash, and they set off for the post office on Washington Street, where Norbert, with a bit of ceremony, dropped the payment in a blue mailbox on the sidewalk. From there, they continued down the street to the Happy Dog Boutique. Norbert was not only able to pay off Dr. Adams’s bill, but he even had a bit extra for a little something special.

  Norbert and Ivy walked, each one with a bouncing step, through the refreshing breeze that blew off the lake and through the decorative streets of their little town. They stopped and chatted—that is, Norbert chatted and Ivy wiggled—as they met familiar faces along their route. Tourists strolled hand in hand, pointing out curiosities in shop windows, and bicyclists rode past them, ringing bells.

  The Happy Dog Boutique offered an overwhelming variety of options in treats, attire, dog beds and refrigerator magnets. Norbert began to feel a little silly. On the one hand, he thought, Only in America could you find a dog shirt that reads, “I love bitches.” On the other hand, he felt an attachment to his constant companion and thought she deserved something nice. He also wanted a way to mark his financial achievement, however small it might seem to anyone else.

  He spotted a display of “healthy” dog treats and inspected a variety that was soft to chew and cut into extra-small pieces. He read the ingredients and wondered if Ivy would like it.

  The salesperson, a young violet-haired girl, offered, “How may I help you?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering if she—my dog—would like these.”

  “Would you like one for her to sample?”

  “Oh, yes, if it’s allowed,” said Norbert.

  The violet-haired girl tore open the bag and extended a bit in her flattened palm to Ivy, who accepted it gratefully, licking the girl’s palm clean.

  “Aw, she’s sweet. She seems to like it, all right.”

  “Thanks. We’ll take those. And...we’ll just look around a bit.”

  “Take your time.”

  Norbert’s eye was caught by a display of bandannas. One pile was Ivy’s size. Too bad the messages were wrong for Ivy: “Spoiled Rotten,” “Drama Queen” and “Pugs Not Drugs.” As he browsed, disappointed, the salesgirl’s common, ordinary phrase came back to him: “How may I help you?” Actually, that would have been a perfect message for Ivy to wear. All she ever wanted was to be of service and comfort to everyone she met.

  “Excuse me.”

  The violet-haired girl looked up from behind the counter.

  “Is it possible to have a bandanna printed with a personalized message?”

  “Why, sure!”

  As the young lady noted down the sentiment for Ivy’s new accessory, Norbert heard some stage whispering behind his back.

  “Hey, that’s Norbert Z—the one I was telling you about.”

  “You mean the psychic?”

  “Shh.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Four of Hearts:

  You may trust yourself now. A person in a power position may feel threatened by your skill and confidence. Beware.

  “I’m thinking of a person that I love.”

  The young man’s name was Dave, and he was a tourist. He approached his card reading with a gravity that still surprised Norbert.

  The cards on the table indicated conflict.

  “This person that I love, he’s been good to me. He’s been there for me when others weren’t. There’s a deep connection between us.”

  The young man paused, considering how to go on.

  “That’s what most people want, isn’t it? A deep connection?” supplied Norbert.

  “Yes, I think so. So I’m lucky. But I don’t know if I can stay with him. You see, he also has this other side. Rampages, tantrums.”

  “He hits you?”

  “Oh, no, of course not. Never. That’s why I don’t know if it’s really a big deal. Maybe I should look past it. That’s what I’ve been doing—looking past it. I always tell myself, maybe it will never happen again. But when he loses his temper, he crushes me. I mean, emotionally. Once he starts, nothing will stop him. Oh—unless someone stops by. Then he can pull himself together in the blink of an eye. You’d never know he’d been foaming at the mouth and berating me a minute before. Of course, he always apologizes. I know he’s a good person. He doesn’t mean to be that way.”

  Norbert felt this young man’s sadness, and wished he had some wisdom to give him.

  “And your question is—?”

  “Will he change? Or, no, that’s not what I mean. Okay—how can I help him to be the good version of himself more of the time? That’s my question, I think.”

  Norbert sat back. Now was he going to become an amateur domestic-abuse counselor? What did he know that could help this querent? As he took a deep breath, something he had read in Reader’s Digest just the night before came to him, like a gift.

  “Dave, I’m going to tell you a fable. See if this helps at all.

  “Once, there was a man who was about to cross a river, when a
poisonous snake slithered up to him and said, ‘Please pick me up and take me across the river with you.’ The man said, ‘You are a poisonous snake. I won’t pick you up. You would bite me, and I would die.’ The snake promised, ‘I give you my word—I will not bite you. Trust me.’ So the man picked up the snake and took him across the river. Once they got to the other side, the man laid the snake on the ground, and the snake bit his ankle. In pain and shock, the man cried, ‘Why did you bite me? You gave me your word you wouldn’t.’ The snake answered, ‘You knew what I was when you picked me up.’”

  Dave looked disappointed.

  “So, you’re saying he’s a poisonous snake? He can’t be anything else?”

  “I’m saying, there’s a fable for you to think about. Whether it applies to your situation or not, that’s for you to say.”

  Norbert watched Dave reluctantly accept his “light-bulb moment.”

  Norbert stole a glance at his own reflection in the metal napkin holder on the table. He liked what he saw there: a wise and skillful adviser. He was sorry for Dave’s pain, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but be just a little impressed with himself.

  * * *

  The more readings Norbert did, the better he understood the assertion in The Cards Don’t Lie that it would be accurate to tell most people “There is a great lie in your life” or “You are lying to yourself about something.” The lying, he noticed, had to do with what Birdie would call “life lessons.” Each person had lessons to learn about self-respect, self-knowledge, self-realization, self-trust, or some untrue belief. The only thing standing between a querent and the life lesson—was the lie. Norbert saw himself shining a light of truth into people’s lives through his card readings. He was grateful to be in this position to guide people. And his self-opinion had never been higher.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Five of Clubs:

  Disagreeable people present you with difficulties. Someone is watching your movements with displeasure. Handle issues delicately, or they may explode.

  Birdie hosted a dinner in her eclectic backyard one summer evening for the Club and Norbert. Norbert was invited for 6:00 p.m. The Club was invited for 5:00 p.m., so that they could talk about him before his arrival.

  Carlotta and Margaret stepped through the wrought-iron gate, past the antique stone statue of a child painted celestial blue, and found themselves in Birdie’s walled garden with climbing flowers, twinkling little white lights, bells, prisms and chimes hanging from the trees, half a dozen painted birdhouses and a Japanese rock garden. Most striking of all were the concrete planters in the shape of human heads: a Venus, a David, a Buddha and a Medusa. All emerged from the soil, with greenery sprouting from their scalps, looking serenely unconcerned about being buried up to their necks in Birdie’s garden.

  “You know, Birdie, what you need here are a few dozen gargoyles. We’ll have to remember that for your birthday,” observed Carlotta as she sank into flowered cushions on a wicker couch.

  Margaret started the conversation by chattering gaily about her daughter Vivian and the phone conversation they had had just that afternoon. “We talk every Sunday, you know,” she said.

  Everyone shared their happy Sunday occupations, a preamble to getting to whatever it was that Carlotta would want to get to.

  As the before-dinner wine began to flow, Carlotta began to grumble.

  “He’s a loose cannon. We have no idea what he’s telling people. He’s not relying on us as he should. He could be saying anything. We need to rein him in.”

  Birdie tilted her red locks and looked over Carlotta’s head. “Who?” she asked.

  “Norbert, dear,” explained Margaret. “Carlotta is saying she wants to run Norbert, and he’s not letting her.”

  Carlotta opened her eyes wide at her old friend. “Margaret! What are you saying? Do you really think I try to ‘run’ people?”

  “Of course not!” said Birdie innocently. “You just want to tell him what to do, for his own good, don’t you?”

  “If you’re all going to gang up on me—” sputtered Carlotta.

  “We’re on your side,” put in Margaret. “And it would be fun to know what he’s saying, and to whom!”

  “That is not the point!” said Carlotta. “This is not about fun.”

  “It isn’t?” asked Margaret.

  “Of course not.”

  There were a few moments of silence, and Birdie refilled the wineglasses.

  “We have created this psychic and unleashed him on the public,” began Margaret.

  “So it is our responsibility to supervise him,” concluded Carlotta.

  “What do you have in mind?” asked Birdie.

  “Well, I thought regular meetings would be appropriate. He would meet with all three of us a couple of times a week, to tell us what customers are asking him, and how he is answering them. And we could create some kind of evaluation form, a rubric, so to speak, and assess his work.” Carlotta knew that her granddaughter, Summer, as a high school teacher, was regularly evaluated according to a rubric. Why should a fortune-teller be any less accountable?

  “And would he give us his customers’ names?” asked Margaret, smiling, with eyebrows raised.

  “We can’t evaluate his readings. We are not even there when he does them.” This mild protest came from Birdie.

  “A well-reasoned point, Birdie,” said Carlotta. “So you are suggesting that I sit in on some readings with Norbert. Observations, we could call them. Well, I would have to clear some time in my schedule, but I do feel a responsibility to—”

  “Knock, knock, knock!” called Norbert from the gate.

  “Norbert!” called the Club, in chorus. “Come on in!”

  “I thought I’d have to apologize for arriving a few minutes early,” said Norbert, looking around at the ladies and the open wine, “but I see I’m actually late. Don’t know how I muddled that!” He pulled Ivy from her carrier and she ran around the garden, greeting all her friends one by one. Everyone complimented her on her fuchsia-colored bandanna that read: “How may I help you?”

  “Norbert!” exclaimed Margaret. “Are you getting taller?”

  Norbert did, indeed, seem to be carrying himself a little bit taller.

  Norbert chuckled. “I think I stopped growing a long time ago, Margaret. If anything, I’m shrinking slightly.”

  Birdie said, “Ah, but what about inner growth? I wonder if that’s what you are perceiving, Margaret.”

  Birdie set out an assortment of summer salads: apples, agave and raisins; cucumber, vegan mayonnaise and dill; tabbouleh; pasta and olives; mixed melons. As the little group supped, drank and conversed, Birdie brought the talk around to Norbert’s work.

  “How do you find it?” she asked in her typical, vague way.

  “I actually feel like I’m getting better at it all the time. It’s not hard. Sometimes I wonder why it took me all my life to find fortune-telling and advising. It suits me so much better than accounting did. I remember you, Carlotta, saying it was like being a psychologist—”

  “Except, you are not a psychologist.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Because, as you said, Norbert, a psychologist has credentials.” Carlotta popped an olive in her mouth and savored the salt. “And you have none.”

  “Oh, right. Exactly right.”

  “You see, Norbert, you are practicing fortune-telling without any credentials whatsoever.”

  “There is no credentialing for fortune-tellers, as you said, Carlotta.”

  “Correct. But there is supervision.”

  “What?” Norbert raised his voice slightly.

  “Which we will provide, Norbert. Do not worry.”

  “What we want to know,” Margaret rushed in, “is the names of the people you are seeing, and what their problems are!”

>   “Margaret!” corrected Carlotta. “Let me explain this to Norbert.”

  “Oh, Margaret,” said Norbert. “I couldn’t possibly tell you that. I mean, the readings are in a public place, and anyone can see who is coming to me, I suppose. But I would never divulge names—and certainly not what people are telling me. Oh, my. I couldn’t. It would be against my ethics.”

  Carlotta placed her wineglass with care on the tile table and regarded Norbert.

  “What ethics, Norbert?” she said, in an even tone.

  “Well, professional ethics, I guess.”

  “There’s no such thing,” she challenged. “You are still a novice. You still need our direction and advice.”

  “Oh, well, that’s very kind of you. I’m sure I do. I just can’t gossip about anyone—not that you were asking me to, of course.”

  “Of course not!” said Margaret, with a frown. She raked her fork through the tabbouleh. “Birdie, where do you get this lemony stuff?”

  “It’s in the produce section of the Lucky Pig,” said Birdie.

  Birdie brought the attention back to Norbert with an open-ended prompt: “So, you were telling us what it’s like.”

  “Well, people really do remember the hits and forget the misses, just like you all said they would. They often tell me what it is they want to know. I feel like if I just listen carefully, what I need to tell them becomes obvious. What’s really puzzling is that people are giving me credit for things I never said. They come back and say, ‘You were right—my business partner was stealing from me.’ Stuff like that—and I’m sure I never said anything close to that, but in their memory, I did. People are recommending me to their friends, and customers are coming from faraway places because someone told them they got an accurate reading from me. My schedule is full every day. Everyone seems happy with my work. Honestly, sometimes it’s overwhelming! In a good way!”

  “How gratifying,” said Carlotta, biding her time.

  “Yes, it is. It really is. And I have the three of you to thank for it.”

  Birdie said, “Norbert, it’s your own gift you have to thank. It’s only because of your gift that you can do this work.”