The Perfect Fraud

by Ellen LaCorte

  “Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Once you allow yourself to be open to the universe, it’s amazing what it will show and tell you,” she says.

  My mom bends over to pick up a brown leaf and twirls it between two fingers.

  “Let me ask you a question,” she says. “How are the visions since I’ve been here?”

  “Honestly, not too bad.”

  She nods. “I suspected as much. The universe can be very agreeable when treated right,” she says, wiping her palms and brushing bits of leaf to the ground. “I think I’ve acted kind of like a bodyguard for you this week, like a shield protecting you from what’s painful, while you try to figure things out.”

  “Thank you for that, but what’s going to happen when you leave tomorrow?”

  40

  Rena

  The drive to Sedona is amazing.

  The landscape keeps changing as we head north. First, it’s all cactus and scrubby bushes, and then puny evergreen trees. Finally, after we go around a curve, boom, incredible flat red mountains. Looks like something from another planet. Maybe Mars?

  “Boy, it’s really beautiful up here,” I say.

  “You miss New Jersey, Rena? From what I’ve heard, it’s kind of a crappy state.” Louis rolls down his window to let in air that smells great, really clean and fresh.

  “There’s some truth to that,” I say, laughing. “Nope, don’t miss it, not at all.”

  He pushes his aviator sunglasses back onto his head and wipes his palm across his forehead. His hands are so . . . manly. They’re strong-looking and big, much bigger than what I’d expect on a guy so small. Well, you know what they say about big hands.

  “But I know it’s hard for Gary, my ex, not to see Steph,” I add.

  He slips the glasses back down over his eyes. He shifts gears on the Mustang to pass a truck as we climb a hill. In this car, with this guy, I feel cool, like one of those girls in my high school, the ones with the straight, shiny hair whose mothers always sent them to school with cash for whatever they wanted to buy at lunch (not the stale bread with one slice of wrinkled dry salami and brown mustard I got).

  “I can sure understand that. Justin and Emily, they’re the best part of my marriage to Rachel. It’s hard to even think about not seeing them every day. But I feel like I’m fucking suffocating.”

  I reach over and touch his shoulder. “It’s so hard, isn’t it? Being a good parent at the same time you’re trying to be the person you were meant to be.” I read that in TV Guide a couple days ago.

  “Yeah.” He looks over at me. I’m wondering if he thinks the new makeup I’m trying—smoky eyes and pouty lips—is sexy. “That’s a really good way to put it. I feel like everything totally changed in the last two years, and not for good. Rachel’s constantly bitching at me to make more money, fix stuff around the house, spend more time with the kids. More, more, more. Like I’m not already working eighty hours a week to pay the mortgage on the big house she had to have, the one like her damn cousin’s. We never have fun anymore, never do things like this . . . get away for the weekend, see something new, do something different. It’s all work, chores, bills, and stupid-ass TV at night.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. It was the same with me and my ex. I didn’t know what to do. But for Steph’s sake, I had to make a move. If you and their mom don’t love each other anymore, then it’s probably better for everyone if you split up.”

  “You know, you’re really easy to talk to,” he says.

  “Hey, look,” I say, pointing to a billboard for a casino in a town called Casa Verde.

  “Let’s go there. Is Casa Verde very far away?” I ask.

  “Not too far,” he says, grinning. “A casino, huh? You a gambler, Rena?”

  “Fuck yeah, but really small-time. Mostly slots. You?”

  “Tell you the truth, I only went once, and that was just for a beer. I didn’t even gamble. Rachel’s real religious, and she thought it was a sin. I always wanted to go back.”

  “Then what the hell are we waiting for?” I ask. He takes the next exit.

  The casino is a blast. It’s on an Indian reservation stuck out in the middle of the desert, with nothing else around it.

  We lose at craps but make it up on roulette. Louis lays out the money for the bets, and I tell him I’ll pay him back—in trade. He definitely likes that idea. He tries to get me to begin the payment plan immediately, behind the quarter slot machines. I tell him he’ll just have to wait. Mostly, we get stupid drunk and have to double up on black coffee at the restaurant there before we can even think about getting back on the road.

  “I can’t believe how much fun this was,” says Louis, blowing over his steaming cup.

  “I just knew you were a gambler at heart.” I’m sitting as close to him as possible on the booth seat.

  “Rena, you’re amazing, you know that?” he says. He leans over to kiss me. “I can’t remember the last time Rachel and I did anything on the spur of the moment like this.”

  “Oh, just wait until you see the next fun thing I have planned,” I say, squeezing his crotch under the table. “And I’m really, really curious about the other things Rachel thinks are sins.”

  When Louis and me finally get to Sedona, it’s early in the afternoon. We stop at the visitor’s center for some trail maps and take a couple of short hikes. Then we go for ice cream on the main road in town. As far as I can tell, most of the shops here are jewelry, western clothing, or junky souvenir stores. There are some art places with huge paintings of Indians doing all kinds of weird dance moves. Not exactly my taste.

  Desert Dessert and Café is a small place with an old-fashioned counter. There are a few booths covered in red vinyl. It even has a tall jar filled with straws on the counter and a jukebox that takes quarters on each table. Very fifties-looking.

  Louis and me sit on the counter stools, and I can see his face in the big mirror across from us. He’s such a cutie pie.

  “Good hiking,” he says.

  “Yeah, the best.” I don’t tell him this much walking in one afternoon is more than I’ve done in all of the past year. Or mention that my bad knee is fucking killing me. I reach into my back pocket and get the two Advil I put there before we started up the first trail. I swallow them with a drink from my water bottle.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Vitamin C. I need to make sure I don’t get sick. For Stephanie’s sake. With her condition, we can’t afford any germs.”

  He gets a sundae, hot fudge on the side. I have a root beer float with chocolate-chip ice cream.

  When we finish, he takes out his billfold, which I can tell is leather. It looks soft and expensive. Then he peels off a hundred to give the clerk, and I notice there are a lot more hundreds behind that one. He must be really good at his job.

  Turns out I’m not wrong. At dinner I ask Louis about his work.

  “Well, I used to be an accountant, but I decided to change professions.”

  “Oh yeah? What do you do now?”

  He holds two fingers up, letting the waitress know to bring more beer, and then bends toward me and says, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  I giggle and ask, “What is it? Something undercover? A spy? Assassin?”

  He sits back. “Nah, nothing that exciting. I’m working for a company now where my accounting skills are put to really good use. Mostly, I make investments.”

  “Investments?”

  “Yeah, big-time. I help people with lots of money make lots more of it,” he says.

  “Well, congrats to you,” I say, tipping my beer glass against his. It’s my third drink after the margarita we had before dinner. I’m starting to feel loopy.

  “I guess. There’s one problem, though. They want to move me to California.”

  “That’s a problem? I never been, but I hear California is like the dream place to live.”

  “Except it will be so far away from Justin and Emily.”

&n
bsp; “Who?”

  “My kids, Justin and Emily. I don’t know how often I’d get to see them.”

  “You’re right. That would be tough. When would you have to go?”

  “Not for a while.”

  “Oh, good. Would you live near the ocean?”

  I’m sure it’s the booze. But I can’t help where my mind is going. Louis and me in California. We’re living in one of those adorable pink bungalows a block from the ocean. No, maybe right on the ocean. Our place is all white—white walls and couches, with blankets in sea colors spread over them and framed pictures of flowers on the walls. We light candles every night and snuggle under one of the blankets in front of a stone fireplace. Just the two of us.

  “Rena? Rena?”

  “What? Sorry, you say something?”

  “I asked if you want to call Stephanie after dinner, maybe check on her?”

  “That’s a great idea. Wait, what time is it? No, better not. She’s probably asleep by now, and any time I can let my baby get some rest, I don’t mess with that.”

  “You’re a great mom, you know that?” he says, helping me from the chair and leading me to the car.

  It’s an un-fucking-believable room. Louis told me he got it using credit card points because of all the travel he has to do. He said sometimes he even has to go to South America because his company has clients there.

  The bed is a king, and it’s across from a huge picture window. There’s a full moon, and if you listen real good, you can even hear the creek below. I don’t want this weekend to ever end.

  I turn out the lights and he moves toward me. He pulls my shirt over my head and unzips my jeans. I think how right I was not to buy a nightgown. I push him back onto the bed, which is like layers and layers of the softest feathers in the world. I keep bringing him to the point of explosion and then making him back off. Finally, I know he can’t take it anymore, and I pull him inside me. When it’s over and we’re lying there in the light from the moon, all I can think about is that house by the ocean, decorated all in white, with just Louis and me and the fireplace and the candles.

  I hardly remember I’m not on the pill and that I didn’t think to ask Louis whether he brought any condoms.

  41

  Claire

  The next morning, we all wake up early to enjoy breakfast together before Cal needs to take my mother to the airport.

  “Sleep okay?” Mom asks, squeezing lemon into her tea.

  “Not really,” I say, yawning so wide, my eyes tear up. “Truthfully, I’m a little scared to go back to work today.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” she says.

  “All those images, the issues, and the secrets, they go straight through me. I feel like a human sieve.”

  “Maybe you won’t even have the same experiences. You’ve been gone a week. Maybe it’s all, I don’t know, out of your system,” Cal says, retrieving a slightly burnt bagel from the toaster oven.

  I flip around to glare at him. “It’s not like I had the stomach flu or temporary insanity, Cal. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t gone away.”

  He holds up his hands in defense and says, “Fine, fine. Well, maybe you can filter these things a little. You know, protect yourself.” He’s slathering the bagel with butter and jelly, a combination that always horrifies me. He leans against the counter and takes huge bites. “Is that even possible?” he asks through a filled mouth, directing his question to my mom.

  “I wish,” I say. I reach to break off a yellow leaf from the potted philodendron on the table, the only type of houseplant with a minuscule chance of living under my care.

  “It’s a hard thing to do, trying to filter what comes through,” my mother replies.

  “But it’s possible?” asks Cal.

  She takes a deep breath, turns toward me, and says, “There is something you could try.”

  “Like what?” I ask, not surprised to hear desperation in my voice.

  “You could try refusing to participate,” she says.

  “Refusing to participate? What, like unsubscribing, or removing her name from a list?” Cal asks, laughing.

  “Kind of like that,” says Mom. “That’s what I did when I was pregnant with Claire.”

  “When you were pregnant? Why?” asks Cal.

  “Maybe it was all the baby hormones, but my readings became increasingly more powerful during that time.”

  “Powerful? How do you mean?” I ask.

  “The visions were much more vivid. I’m not sure how to explain this, but it was like they were painted in thick oils, where before the pregnancy, I would see things in light watercolors. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess I can understand that,” I say, remembering how physically and emotionally shaken the visions had left me.

  “It got more and more difficult. Each reading would leave me exhausted, but I figured it was because I was pregnant. I was early into my second trimester, and you had just started to move.” She smiles at the memory. “One day, a woman came into the shop for a reading. She said she was worried about her daughter, Georgia, who was in the ninth grade and not doing at all well. She was flunking almost all her classes, and the mom suspected she was hanging with the wrong crowd. I set out her cards, which did confirm a bad influence around Georgia, but then, all of a sudden, I had this vision. It was so painful.”

  “Painful? What do you mean, painful?” Cal asks.

  “Like pain. Real pain running from one side of my head to the other. It felt like my skull was about to break in half. A second after that, I saw her daughter. She was engulfed in these flames. I could see her sitting in a classroom, dressed in a pale blue sweater, jeans, and high-top sneakers—every detail was crystal clear—and she was surrounded by this yellow-and-orange fire.” My mom’s face drains of color.

  “Oh, Mom, that’s terrible,” I say, standing to get her a glass of water.

  “Not only was the vision horrible, but bizarrely, in addition to the pain in my head, I also started to have other weird physical reactions.”

  “What do you mean?” Cal asks. I put the water down near her hand, which I notice is shaking.

  “My skin actually felt like it was burning,” she says, gulping the water and then setting the glass down carefully. “I touched my arm and it was cool, but I still felt like it was pressed against a hot toaster. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like my throat was closing. My eyes were watering so much I could barely see the client, who, of course, had no idea what was going on.”

  “What did you say to her?” I ask.

  “I hardly remember now. I think I told her I was having a very bad allergy attack and I would have to cut the session short. I wouldn’t take her money. As she was leaving, I felt I had to tell her that, yes, her daughter was surrounded by a negative influence, but also that Georgia should be very careful around fire. The woman started to ask for more information, and I’m sure I seemed rude, but I basically shut the door in her face, locked it, and ran into a cold shower.”

  “Did that help?” I ask.

  “That, and letting some time pass. I finally calmed down, but you . . .” She taps my arm with her finger. “You did not. You were rolling around in my stomach as if the whole experience had seriously agitated you. I tried everything—chamomile tea, a warm bath, meditation—but nothing seemed to help. Finally, your dad came home, and after I told him what happened, he began talking softly to me and to you while massaging my shoulders. It was as if you finally felt safe, because you stopped racing back and forth.”

  “That sounds like Dad. He had a way of always making things right.”

  “I went to sleep and was prepared to start seeing clients again. But the next morning on the news, there was a report that a local girl had died in a house fire that apparently started because of faulty wiring in the family’s basement.”

  “Oh no. Was it Georgia?” Cal asks.

  “When the reporter announced her name, I fell apart. That poor girl and her family. Then, I know
it was selfish, but I thought, I just can’t put myself—and my baby—through something like that again. I couldn’t chance it. What if, during my sessions with clients, I saw more horrible visions? What if something I experienced during these sessions crossed through the placenta to Claire and somehow harmed her?” Mom touches my hand and says, “That’s when I decided to close up the shop until you were safely delivered.”

  “Were you better then?” Cal asks, starting to clear the table. I knew it was getting close to the time he and my mom needed to leave, but I couldn’t let her go yet.

  “Yes and no. I wasn’t seeing clients, but every time I went out of the house, even just to take the dog for a walk, if I was near a person, I would pick up a vision of some sort and have that terrible pain in my head. I needed to figure out a better way to protect both of us.”

  “Sounds like what happened to you, Claire,” says Cal.

  “What did you do?” I ask. “Decide not to have any more visions and they went away?” I’m thinking, hoping, maybe it was just that simple.

  “No, but that was a part of it. I figured if I could identify what was happening in my body and mind when a vision started, then perhaps I could stop it before it took hold.”

  “How? Did it work? What did you do?” asks Cal.

  “It was a lot of trial and error at first, and it wasn’t easy. I had to figure out the triggers I would get when a vision would start. Then, once I did that, I developed methods of dealing with the visions. Like, I would repeat statements to myself.”

  “Statements?” I ask.

  “You know, like mini mantras. I’d say things like ‘No thank you,’ or ‘I prefer not to help,’ or ‘Please find somebody else to visit.’”

  “That worked?” I asked, not fully convinced.

  “Most of the time. I also trained my mind to substitute a blank slate of color to fill my head. Essentially, block out the vision. Usually, I chose a deep blue, or sometimes burgundy. It took weeks and weeks of practice, and until I got the hang of it, visions kept slipping through. Like one time the mailman came to our door with a package I had to sign for. I saw a crack running down one of his arms, and I couldn’t help myself. I felt I had to tell him he should be very careful, that something might happen to his left arm.”