by Amber Foxx
But she didn’t dare. If Maloo figured out that Breda was Mae Martin-Ridley from Tylerton and told Joe about her, he’d tell the world. The predictions of the bones would come true for sure, people would line up against her, she and Hubert and Sallie would fight, and Mae would be alone.
Arriving at the CVU fitness center with only enough time to change into workout clothes, Mae ate half her lunch and checked her messages as she walked across the parking lot. As she’d expected, Hubert had called, to see if the snow was bad, saying it hadn’t been anything but rain in Tylerton. She called back to let him know she was fine and that she’d made the money and could quit being a paid psychic. Such a relief. This wasn’t something they needed to argue about again.
As she opened the heavy glass door to the fitness center, Mae felt a shadow fall away from her, like waking up from a bad dream. Even going to the locker room and changing her clothes, changing her roles, felt like liberation. She could hear other people, lockers closing and opening, voices on the other side of the row, the sounds of normal: people planning to exercise their bodies, not have someone read their minds. As she stuffed the blue dress into her gym bag and pulled on a T-shirt and track pants, she put Breda away and felt like Mae again.
She emerged into the wide hallway to look for her workshop. The building, three or four times the size of the Health Quest Center in Cauwetska, gleamed with new equipment in the aerobics studios and cardio workout rooms that she passed. The weight room where she joined Randi and the other personal training students could have held the entirety of Mae and Hubert’s house.
“We’re waiting on one more of your practice clients and then we can start,” Randi said. “Oh—here she comes.”
Bernadette Pena, in shorts and a tank top, strode through the door, her long hair tied back in a thick braid.
Randi addressed her students. “You’ll each start with a short intake. Make sure you do the Par-Q questionnaire. Then I want each of you to take your client through the one-rep max on the leg press and chest press, the pushup endurance test, quad and hamstring and shoulder flexibility tests, and the balance test. You’re going to teach good form and safety, and have great rapport with this person. I’ll be walking around seeing how you’re doing, answering your questions. Your clients are going to help me evaluate you. I’ve paired you up already.”
One by one, she made the introductions. Mae realized she and Bernadette were last. “Mae,” Randi said, “Bernadette wanted to work with you. Don’t be intimidated because she’s a professor. You’re the expert here. You can teach her.”
“I wanted to see how you were doing with your course.” Bernadette returned the health screening questionnaire to Mae. The two women stood in a quiet corner of the weight room near one of the leg press machines. “I hope you don’t mind having me for your client.”
“No, I don’t mind.” As long as you don’t bring up my supposed calling. “It’s good to see you.” Mae scanned the questionnaire. Perfect health. “What do you do for exercise?”
“Just yoga.”
“You’re kidding.”
“What—wrong Indians?”
“No.” Mae smiled at the joke. “I meant—you’re in such good shape. I didn’t know yoga would do that.”
“We’ll find out when you test me.” Bernadette paused. “And then we can talk. I hope you’ll have time.”
“It’d be nice to catch up with you, sure.”
“Especially about your work at Healing Balance.”
“I’m sorry—” Mae led the way towards the leg press machine, disappointed though not surprised. The mystical was as much Bernadette’s home field as the physical was Mae’s. “I need to focus on my personal training work for now.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean to distract you.”
Bernadette paid respectful attention as Mae took her through the muscular strength and endurance tests.
“Ninety-ninth percentile for your age.” Mae recorded Bernadette’s score. The intake forms showed that Bernadette was older than Mae had thought, forty-eight—her parents’ age. “I guess you’re gonna blow me away on flexibility now.”
“Probably.” They walked to an area of the room where mats had been laid out for stretching. “Tell me how you’ve been, Mae. I haven’t seen you since the day we got the crystals.”
“I did the work. And the crystals helped.” Mae looked at her list of fitness tests. “Okay, now you’ll lie on your back and bring one leg up, leave the other one straight on the floor.”
Bernadette followed the directions and lifted her leg into a virtual split. It was so far beyond the ninety-degree angle required to demonstrate adequate flexibility that Mae asked, “That doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“No. It feels good.” Bernadette repeated the test with her other leg. “How do you like doing psychic readings?”
“Honestly? Not much.” Mae directed Bernadette to turn over, face down, and bend one knee, drawing her heel toward her buttock. Seeing her heel go past the target, along the outer thigh, Mae cringed. Knees didn’t do that, at least not as Mae understood them. “That doesn’t hurt your knee?”
“No. I’ve been practicing yoga longer than you’ve been alive.” Bernadette did the same stretch with the other leg and sat up. “Why don’t you like the work?”
“I see so much misery and pain, I feel worn out. And my family’s against it big time. I’m not doing it anymore.”
Relieved when she got no reply, Mae guided Bernadette through a shoulder flexibility test where she reached one arm down and the other one up her back. Predictably, she was able to join her hands easily, and to pick up the thought Mae had hoped she’d dropped.
“If you told me to start lifting weights, and I said it made me tired and sore and I didn’t like it,” Bernadette did the shoulder stretch with the other arm on top, with equal ease, and then released the position, “what would you tell me?”
Mae wrote down Bernadette’s scores in her fitness profile form. “It’s not the same.”
“But what would you tell me? I can already tell my butt is going to hurt tomorrow from that leg press machine. What if I never want to do that exercise again?”
“I’d tell you that it’s normal to get sore as long as it goes away in three days, and that the soreness can be a sign of doing a good workout. Might ask you how bad it was, and if you overdid it. Or check if you did it wrong or something.” Mae looked at her list of tests to give. “I have to make you balance on one leg now.”
As Mae started timing her balance, Bernadette asked, “So, is there any parallel?”
“I don’t think so. Those articles from that Princeton lab said people were actually better at the remote viewing when they didn’t have any expectations. They got worse with practice.”
“You understood the article fairly well. When they got too bogged down in looking for details, the subjects began to deteriorate. But these weren’t gifted people.”
“You can come down from your balance. You’re already past excellent.”
Standing on both feet, Bernadette said, “Because I’ve practiced.” She waited for Mae to look up from making notes. “I only have Bessie’s word for this, but she says a healer gets better at knowing what people need and what to do to help them.”
“I’m not a healer.”
“Yet.” Bernadette’s voice, soft and steady, conveyed such certainty it felt more like a confrontation than if she had sounded angry.
“I don’t get why you’re so sure that’s who I am and that I have—”
Joining them, Randi said, “You’ve done all the tests?”
“Yes.” Mae welcomed the interruption. “She did great.”
“You still need to go over the results with her. Then we’re all going to the track for the cardiovascular fitness testing.”
Grateful to change the subject, Mae reviewed the fitness test results with Bernadette. The professor listened, letting Mae practice her skills, yet Mae sensed a kind of tension between them ove
r the unfinished conversation. As they came out into the hallway to go the cardio room, Mae noticed that the snow was continuing to fall. It looked about half an inch deep in the parking lot. Not bad. She could still get home. But by the time the training students had finished administering one-mile-walk or one-and-a-half-mile run tests for their clients, a radio traffic report came over the intercom. Somebody turned up the volume so it could be heard easily.
According to the radio, all the bridges and tunnels were icy, and accidents blocked the entrances to both the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and the Monitor-Merrimac tunnel. Due to hazardous conditions, listeners were advised to avoid driving if at all possible, especially on the bridges. Mae knew what that meant. She couldn’t get out of Norfolk without a tunnel or bridge, or both. There were a lot of rivers between here and Tylerton.
“For an inch of snow?” one of Mae's classmates said. “What is the matter with people here?”
“I know the feeling. I’m from Wisconsin,” Randi said, “but the city really can get blocked in if it gets icy. You don’t want to get out and drive with southerners, no offense to any of you-all.” She turned to Mae. “You might need to stay here tonight. I can call Rick, let him know we’ve got a guest.”
“She can stay with me,” Bernadette said. “It’s no trouble.”
Mae wanted to say she’d rather stay with Randi and Rick—they wouldn’t pressure her about a calling—but it would be rude to refuse Bernadette. And Randi’s relationship was under some strain, which a snow refugee might not help. “Thank you. I’ll take you up on that.”
Three weeks ago, Mae would have been excited to get to talk that long with Bernadette, would have had a thousand questions about the mystery of her gift. Tonight, she wished she could get home to Hubert and be ordinary.
She called to tell him she was stuck.
“I’ll be okay. I’m staying with a lady that was my practice client for the class today. She’s a professor at CVU—I’ve met her before, Patsy’s in a couple of her classes.”
“Not the woo-woo one, I hope.”
“I’m done with that stuff, even if she does teach it.”
Bernadette came out from the locker room clad in jeans and looking fragile in the thick parka that dwarfed her with its bulk. She walked past Mae to gaze out into the whiteness beyond the glass doors of the fitness center. If Bernadette had overheard her, Mae hoped what she said hadn’t sounded offensive.
“All right,” Hubert said. “As long as you’re not getting deeper into that stuff, I’m glad you don’t have to get a motel. We can’t spend that kind of money.”
“Actually, I could have. I made a little more than I needed for the tuition. Thought it might be fun to spend it on you.” Mae noticed a glance from Bernadette, an expression that came across as both warm and sad. Then, as if caught, Bernadette returned her attention to the falling snow. “First time I’ve had my own money to buy you a present. Is there something you want I can pick up while I’m here?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated, and Mae was afraid he’d tell her to use the money on the house. “You can’t try on new running shoes for me, but you can see if a place up there carries the kind with toes—the barefoot shoes. I been reading about that and I think I want some.”
“I made enough, if that’s what you want.”
“You’re a sweetheart to think of that. But we’ll see.”
“Come on. Do I need your permission to buy you a gift?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Call me in the morning. I’ll miss you,” Hubert said. “Bed’s gonna seem empty.”
“I know.” The fact sank in. She hadn’t thought about this, in the midst of reacting to the snow. “We’ve never slept a night apart since we got married.”
“Maybe it’s the once and only time. I love you. Drive safe.”
“I love you, too.”
Mae ended the call and joined Bernadette. “Thanks for waiting.”
“It’s all right.” Bernadette pushed open the door, and they stepped out into an icy gray-white world. “Watch your step.” They crossed the unplowed lot with care. “Sounds like you have a good husband.”
“I do.”
“You’ll need to ride with me and I’ll bring you back here when the streets are clear tomorrow. There’s no parking at my place for guests.” Bernadette unlocked her black Escort and brushed snow off the windshield with her sleeve while Mae cleared the back window. “It’s a shame that he’s so opposed to your calling.”
“We made peace about it.”
“With each other.” They got in, and Bernadette started the car. “But I don’t think you’ve asked the spirit world what it thinks.”
“Hubert doesn’t talk to spirits.”
“But they may talk to you.”
Mae said nothing, feeling the weight she’d shed when she left Healing Balance come back. It looked like she was stuck tonight in a lot more than snow.
The building where Bernadette lived stood on the corner of Colley Avenue, a venerable main street filled with shops and restaurants as well as apartment buildings. The other side of the corner was a narrow street where the residents’ cars barely squeezed into a small parking lot. The building had a name, The Madison, on a brass plaque on the brick front, boasting that it had been built in 1928. The stumps of two evergreens framed the door, sprouting a few feeble tendrils in what seemed an attempt to revive themselves.
“Landscaping by Hurricane Isabelle.” Bernadette nodded toward the trees as she and Mae approached the front doors. “We were underwater up to the first-floor windows. I should have evacuated, but I just had to see that much rain.”
They entered the lobby and climbed a broad staircase with a worn, dark wooden railing. Bernadette unlocked the door to her second-floor apartment and stepped inside, turning on a lamp. “It’s small, but please don’t feel like you’re taking up my space.” She took off her coat and hung it and Mae’s in a small closet in the living room. “I’ll make up the sofa bed for you later. This is where you’ll sleep. It should be all right if my upstairs neighbor doesn’t stomp her clogs around at the crack of dawn.”
The room was like an art gallery, with paintings on every wall and pottery with intricate black and white lines on the top of each bookshelf. “This is nice.” But incredibly small. I am taking up your space.
“Thanks. Let me show you around—the bathroom is through my bedroom.” Mae followed Bernadette into the next room, passing a tiny kitchen with the smallest stove Mae had ever seen. When Bernadette turned on a lamp in the bedroom, the light revealed more art, including a metal sculpture standing on a slab of rough wood. The sculpture depicted a flat bear-body profile with a lightning bolt of open space running from its mouth into its heart, a spirit bear perched on the gurgling radiator. “Don’t worry if you have to come though while I’m asleep.”
“I’ll try to be quiet. You sure you don’t mind me being here?”
“I want you here. It’s not an intrusion. And don’t think I’m being unsociable now, but I haven’t had a chance to do my yoga practice yet today. Will you be all right waiting an hour or so before dinner?”
“That’s fine.” Mae felt even more like an interloper, but she couldn’t complain. She sensed that Bernadette, for all her graciousness, was unused to having guests and didn’t know how to handle hospitality. “I can probably spend an hour looking at your art.”
“I’m glad you like it. And feel free to grab a book to read, too.”
Mae returned to the living room as Bernadette rolled out a yoga mat on her bedroom floor and put music in a CD player. As a lively call-and-response song in a foreign language played, Mae walked around the living room exploring the art and trying to relax. But everything she saw seemed to echo something of mystery and spirit.
Somehow, she couldn’t pull herself away from a painting of dancing men painted black with lightning bolts on their chests, each wearing a towering three-pronged headpiece, a long leather kilt with fringe, and moccasin
-like boots. They carried sticks painted with lightning bolts and danced across the silhouettes of sharp-peaked mountains and infinite stars in a moonless sky. The power of the image came from a worldview strange and alien to Mae, another reality. A spirit world.
To her amusement and annoyance, Mae heard Rhoda-Rae in her head, saying, Those are devils. Don’t you know the Indians worship devils? Would she ever get her mother out of her head? Then another voice in her head filled the space emptied by Rhoda-Rae’s—Hubert telling her how glad he was that Mae wasn’t religious or spiritual, and how important it was that they agreed on that.
Still, it was a fascinating work of art. Mae sat down to contemplate it longer, and out from behind the couch came a big, strong-looking, pale yellow cat with white paws and a white tip on his tail. He stretched, looked at Mae, and made a small chirping noise, lifting his chin and one paw.
“That sounded like a question.”
He continued to hold the paw up, so Mae reached down and took it like a handshake. The cat chirped a little mew again.
“You asking to come up with me? You can.” She released his paw and patted her lap. The cat sprang, and settled on her. He had claws, but he didn’t put them into her when he made himself comfortable. Bernadette’s cat was as reserved as she was.
No pictures of family or friends anywhere. Only art. The cat looked up at Mae and purred, then pressed his head into her stomach. Petting him, Mae hoped Bernadette had someone in her life beside this cat and a bunch of spirits.
Chapter Eleven
Mae walked with Bernadette around the neighborhood before dinner, and found Norfolk’s Ghent district exciting, such a contrast with home. The old buildings were busy, fully alive with shops displaying art, furniture, or fashion, and an array of ethnic restaurants mingling with more mundane burger joints and drug stores. So much was within walking distance of the houses and apartments that the snow and ice didn’t deter residents from going out, and the sidewalks were full of people. Wrapped up in enjoying and discovering the city, Mae stopped worrying about anything.