You Were There Too

by Colleen Oakley

  I try to construct a rebuttal, but can’t think of one. She smiles, knowing she’s won. “I know the perfect place. It’s near this corner Marcel used to work.”

  I look up at her. “You do hear how that sounds, don’t you?”

  She considers what she said. “Oh my god—see?” she says. “Jesse or no Jesse, I can’t be with someone who works corners for a living.”

  * * *

  It’s dark when the Lyft drops us off in Center City in front of a sushi place and a glass entrance to an old apartment building. To the right of that door, a red neon Palm Reader sign shines bright against the cinder block wall, the outline of a hand flickering, as if the bulb is on its last legs.

  “This place looks sketchy as hell,” I say, downing the last sip of Syrah from my red Solo cup.

  “It is,” says Raya, nudging me, then walking over to the metal door. “That’s how you know it’s legit.” She tries the handle, but it’s locked. She knocks.

  As we’re waiting for someone to answer, Raya keeps talking. “I used to walk right by here when I’d come see Marcel do his thing on my days off. And this lady would stand outside smoking cigarettes. She always asked if I wanted to see my future.”

  “Did you ever do it?”

  “No. I wanted to, but it was way too expensive.”

  “Raya! How much is it?”

  “Like, a hundred dollars.”

  “Uh, no.” I turn around. “Where’s the Lyft?”

  Just then, the door opens and a woman fills the frame. “Can I help you?” she says, with a muddled Caribbean accent that sounds put-on.

  “Yes,” Raya says, grabbing my arm and turning me back around. “We’re here to have a reading. Well, she is. I’m here to watch.”

  The woman flicks her eyes, framed by fake long lashes, from Raya to me. “Come on, then,” she says and starts walking back down what looks like a very dark hallway. Raya catches the door and starts to follow.

  “Raya—no. It’s pitch-black in there. If this were a movie, this is the part where the eerie music starts and we’d be yelling at the two stupid women on-screen to turn around and go home. And we don’t even know who that woman is. She could be anybody.” Suddenly we hear a click and light fills the hallway. And then a voice follows the light: “I’m Rita.”

  Raya smiles at me.

  At the end of the hallway is a set of stairs that goes down. We end up in a small room with a beaded curtain separating us from the other half of it, but I can make out a card table and chairs and a cheap floor lamp. On our side of the room is a desk littered with papers and an old-school desktop computer.

  “Fancy,” I mutter to Raya.

  The woman is holding out her hand to me. “I think you’re supposed to pay her,” Raya says in my ear.

  “Uh, I don’t have any cash.”

  “We take Visa, Mastercard, Discover,” the woman says. “No American Express.”

  I sigh and dig in my wallet and produce a credit card. She takes it, disappearing through a wooden door that I didn’t notice when we first came in. “Remind me to freeze that account,” I say to Raya. “And never listen to you again.”

  After what seems like hours, but is probably only fifteen minutes, the door opens and I straighten up, ready to get this ridiculous charade over with. I’ve seen Whoopi Goldberg’s fake reading in Ghost and I have a fairly good idea of what this woman is about to do. When it hits me that Whoopi’s character’s name was Rita Mae, I nearly laugh out loud. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

  This Rita enters the room and then steps aside, leaving the door open. She stands there, not speaking, and just when I’m about to ask if we can get started, an old man lopes in behind her. He’s astonishingly tall and thin, brittle looking, and it’s hard to tell if he’s hunched over due to his age or because the ceiling is too low for him to extend to his full height. I glance at Raya, but she’s just staring.

  Rita takes his hand and leads him through the beaded curtain, the movement causing an array of clacking sounds. He sits down in one of the folding chairs, and when he’s settled, Rita stands beside him, head up, hands folded at her groin, like a sentry on guard. Raya and I just watch them, until it becomes apparent that we’re supposed to follow. We scoot through the beaded curtain and I slide down into the chair opposite the man at the table. Raya stands behind me.

  There’s a long stretch of silence and then the man finally speaks. It’s a harsh language. I would have assumed Russian, if not for Raya whispering in my ear: “Slovenian.” I’m about to ask how in the world she knew that, until I remember the glass blower from Slovenia that she dated when he was a visiting professor at Moore.

  “I am Isak Vidmar,” the woman says, not looking at us.

  I’m about to say I thought her name was Rita when the man speaks again and then holds out his hands on the table, palms up. “Give me your hands,” Rita says, still not looking at us, and I realize she’s merely the translator for this man, Isak, who is apparently the psychic. I turn my head and shoot Raya a look. I have so many questions, starting with: Is there a big Slovenian population in Philly, and I had no idea? She nudges me and I pull my hands out of my lap and place them gently in Isak’s. His fingers are long and thin, but they’re soft. Gentle. And holding them somehow makes me feel both calm and awkward.

  He’s quiet for so long, I start to think he’s waiting on me to ask questions. So I do.

  “Could you tell me if I was strangled to death in a previous life? I’ve always been curious. I have this awful fear of things touching my neck—I can’t wear scarves or turtlenecks. Well, I don’t know if fear is the right word. It just gives me, like, this gagging sens—”

  “Sh,” the man says. It comes out sharply, like a knife literally cutting me off. I close my mouth.

  Silence envelops the room once again. Raya smacks me on the back of the head like a mother whose petulant child can’t follow the rules. To stave off boredom—and possibly because my brain is starting to fog from the four glasses of wine I’ve had—I study the room. The walls are a beige color, and in desperate need of a repaint, but aside from the nicks and dings of wear over time, they’re bare. Not a tarot card poster or Buddha or astrology chart to be found. Besides the beaded curtain, this is really nothing like Ghost. Where are the candles? Rita’s not even wearing any jewelry.

  “How long you have gift?” Isak says, his gruff voice drawing my attention back to him.

  It takes me a second to realize he has spoken in English, but when I do, I’m still not sure what he’s asking. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “He wants to know how long you’ve been psychic,” Rita says.

  “Uh, I’m not,” I say, chuckling.

  “Yes,” the man says, his eyes penetrating mine. “You, me. Same.” He thrusts his long pointer finger at me and then himself.

  “Ohhkay,” I say, wondering what he’s playing at. “Well, if I was, I wouldn’t have paid you, so . . .” I’m getting a little more irritated by the second that I let Raya talk me into this.

  The man speaks rapidly in his native language.

  “He wants to know if you’re creative,” Rita says. “Some kind of artist?”

  I notice the dried acrylic that clings to my nail beds, no matter how much I scrub. I roll my eyes and hope it’s not too rude. “I paint.”

  He nods, as if he expected that. So perceptive, this man.

  “Creatives are more open, mentally speaking, to the energy,” Rita says, of her own accord.

  “Energy?” I ask, looking at her.

  “Spiritual, psychic, all of that,” she says.

  “Look, can we just get on with it?” I say. “I’m not psychic.”

  She stares at me for a beat and then whispers something to Isak that I can’t make out.

  He nods genially and closes his eyes. His grip on my hands gets a little bit t
ighter and I hear a low humming that sounds like it’s coming from him. Finally, he opens his eyes and says something in Slovenian. I look up at Rita, impatient.

  “He wants to know who the man is with dark hair,” she says.

  I hold in my eye roll, but just barely. I’m immediately reminded of Warner McKay and his guessing game of names that begin with a certain letter until someone in the audience yells out, “Bob! I have a Bob.” I play along, so we can get out of here.

  “My husband,” I say. “Harrison. He has brown hair.”

  Isak shakes his head. “No, not him,” he says. “Different man.”

  I get a little chill up my spine, thinking of Oliver. But obviously a million people have dark hair and there’s no way this guy knows about him. I’m certainly not going to bring it up.

  “There’s another guy.” Raya pipes up. “Oliver.”

  “Raya!”

  “What? That’s what we’re here for,” she whispers.

  Isak slowly nods and then closes his eyes again, grips my hands. I take a deep breath and slowly exhale, trying to tamp down my irritation. It’s getting stuffy down here, my head is beginning to throb from the wine and the room is so small, it starts to feel like it’s closing in. How did I not notice how small it was before? When Isak opens his eyes, he says something else in his native tongue. I look to Rita.

  “He’s tall,” Rita says.

  “Mm-hm,” I say, even though he’s not. Not as tall as Harrison, anyway.

  “Brown eyes,” she says.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “What?” Rita asks, and Isak repeats himself. I stare at him, bored of the charade. Rita turns to me.

  “You dream of him.”

  My eyes dart to Rita’s face. “What?” But it comes out like a whisper. Raya makes a little squealing noise behind me. I glance back at Isak. He’s just pleasantly staring back at me.

  “How did you know that?” I ask, trying to tell myself it was just a lucky guess.

  “He’s good man,” Isak says. “He’s good to you.”

  “No,” I stammer, as the room starts to get even smaller. There’s a whooshing sound in my ears, as if I’m underwater. “I barely even . . . I don’t know him—”

  “Yes,” Isak continues. “This man. He give you baby.”

  “What? No.” This is getting ridiculous and I just want to leave. “I don’t have any children.”

  Rita asks him something in his native tongue and Isak replies. Rita turns to me, translating: “You will.”

  Everything stops. The whooshing sound in my ears. The shrinking room. My beating heart. I stare at her mouth. The lips that just formed the words I’ve always wanted to hear. Confirmation, from somebody, anybody—even a psychic’s translator—that I will have what I’ve wanted for so long. I should be relieved, but everything feels wrong, somehow. There’s a pit in my stomach, and I know it has to do with Oliver. I shouldn’t have spent the afternoon with him. I shouldn’t be here.

  I stand up. I want to go home. To Harrison.

  * * *

  It’s just after two a.m. when I pull in the driveway, and I nearly start shaking with relief at the sight of Harrison’s car. I was sure he would have stayed at the hospital and almost drove there first out of my desperation to see him. Desperation that wasn’t stemming from love as much as it was from guilt. I was wracked with it over my afternoon with Oliver—over the past two months I’d spent thinking about Oliver. And on the drive back to Hope Springs, it built upon itself, growing exponentially until I felt like it was going to eat me alive.

  I quietly turn my key in the dead bolt and slip in the front door, eager to get to our room, to curl up beside his warm body in our bed, but what I see when I flip on the foyer light stops me in my tracks.

  The worn, flattened cardboard box is gone and in its place is a table—a small, square nondescript white end table that looks like it came from some big-box chain store. But that’s not what catches me off guard. Scrawled on the side of the table in hand-painted blue capital letters are the words GODDAMN ENTRY TABLE with a pitiful fleur-de-lis on either side. I stare at it, wide-eyed, and then cover my mouth with my hand, laughter bursting around my fingers, my heart swelling for Harrison.

  I nearly run to our bedroom, not caring now if I wake him. Still giggling, I find my way to the bed in the dark, kicking off my shoes and lifting up the covers to crawl in beside him. He wakes up, inching his heavy, half-sleeping body over to make room. When his arms are around me and my head is rightfully tucked under his chin, he kisses the top of my hair. “Dios Mia,” he whispers, his voice thick with sleep. I feel his warm breath on my scalp. “You’re here.”

  “I’m here,” I say. Harrison’s hand snakes its way down my body, coming to a rest on my thigh.

  “Are you wearing sweatpants?” he asks, squinting down in the dark.

  “The ones you gave me.”

  “I thought you lost them.”

  “I found them.”

  “Mia, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so sorry—”

  I put my hand up to his mouth, shushing him.

  “The table,” I whisper back. “It’s perfect.”

  Relief rolls through me like the wave from a tsunami. I’m overcome. The world has been tilted the wrong way all day long, but now, finally, it has righted itself. Tears burn my eyes and I bury myself into Harrison’s chest.

  And somehow, even with my arm crushed beneath the weight of his body, my body temperature rocketing to a thousand degrees from the sweatpants, I fall asleep.

  Chapter 19

  When I was in kindergarten, a guest with a colorful gauzy scarf encircling her neck came to our classroom. The scarf triggered my gag reflex, so I focused on the stacks of rings adorning her fingers, the silver streaking her two dangling braids, the flat black loafers with gold buckles on her feet. She held a piece of paper behind her back and said it was the most beautiful painting she had ever created and was so excited to show it to us. But when she finally brought it forward and turned it around, I was imbued with disappointment. Light pink watercolor saturated the page. The gradient changed in places, but that was it. The whole painting. “Who likes this picture?” she asked. “Be honest.”

  We all looked at each other. One little girl half raised her hand.

  “That’s OK,” the woman said. “I want to tell you a story: One day I was at the park with my daughter and the sun was high in the sky and it was hot. We were running around playing hide-and-seek and laughing and having so much fun. And then we saw a lemonade stand and this boy was selling cold pink lemonade. My daughter and I bought some and it tasted sweet and cool. And we were so happy. Later that night, after I had tucked her in bed, I went downstairs and I painted this picture of the cool pink lemonade. Now, every time I look at it, I’m filled with joy remembering that wonderful day with my daughter.”

  She looked at each of us. “What do you think? Raise your hand if you like the picture now.”

  Eighteen little hands shot high in the air.

  And I never forgot the woman or her story.

  But now, as I finish retelling it to the adults that have come to my class at Fordham Community College, I think it might be an exercise that works best on children.

  I’m holding up a pink-wash painting I quickly created that afternoon, and four pairs of eyes stare back at me.

  “I thought this was supposed to be an acrylic class. Isn’t that watercolor?”

  “Yes, but the point is—”

  “I still don’t like it,” a gruff man with a crew cut and construction boots says. “Looks like something a child would paint. Not a grown woman.”

  I look to Foster’s wife, Rebecca, who is smiling politely. Perhaps this wasn’t the best way to start off the class, but I wasn’t as prepared as I had hoped to be. I had spent the last week trying to drown out m
y thoughts—my guilt over my afternoon with Oliver, the anxiety I felt at the psychic’s words, my fear about Harrison not wanting a baby—by doing everything I could not to think about any of it. I gardened—clearing all the weeds that had sprouted again in the weeks since Oliver had been there. I planted beets, broccoli, carrots, spinach—everything Jules at True Value recommended—and I spent time every day watering, weeding, waiting for plants to sprout. I bought furniture. Three teal metal barstools for the kitchen from the Blue-Eyed Macaw. A leather club chair to complement the sofa. A guest bed for one of the upstairs bedrooms. A shower curtain and gray shag rug for the upstairs bathroom. I hung paintings—the chicken above the fireplace, the tomatoes (with the sticker still on) on a wall in the kitchen, Keanu Reeves in the front foyer above the Goddamn Entry Table.

  Mostly to keep myself busy, but partly, too, as if it was my penance. As if I were a good enough steward of the earth, a good enough keeper of the home, a good enough wife, Harrison would change his mind about having a baby. I knew deep down it didn’t work like that—but I also didn’t know what else to do.

  But then a strange thing happened—somewhere in the middle of all my decorating I started to remember why I fell in love with the house when we first saw it, how it was a canvas just waiting to be filled with my ideas.

  Stranger still, the more welcoming I make the home, the less time Harrison seems to want to spend in it.

  He’s been working later than ever—sometimes not coming home until one or two in the morning, and going in on the weekends, even when he’s not on call. His morning runs have gone from three to four times a week to daily ventures—and instead of his twenty-five-minute three-milers, sometimes it’s an hour or more before I hear him bang in the back door.

  When he is home, it’s like he’s preoccupied; his mind is somewhere else. He didn’t even notice the Keanu Reeves painting until I pointed it out to him. “Huh?” he said that night in bed. “Oh yeah. Looks great.”