Julia took a sip of the tea. It steadied her. “What did you do?”
Fay said, “Both of us at once, reading you. It can be
strenuous.”
Rory said, “But we don’t often come across someone of your resources.”
“I don’t have any . . . resources.” She was gradually coming around, sorting herself out, although she still had a floating, disconnected feeling.
Fay and Rory both smiled. Fay said, “Usually, we wouldn’t be able to connect so strongly. With the young man. But you’re a wonderful receptor. That day on the street I could tell. Most people run on batteries. You’re like nuclear power.”
“Connect? What . . .”
“Loud and clear,” said Rory.
“He doesn’t care for Indian food,” said Fay. “Some joke he’s making about hamburgers.”
“All right, let’s not upset her again.”
The waiter returned with the broth and set it in front of Julia. Then he left and the curtains closed behind him. Rory and Fay were watching her with concern. They looked like kindly grandparents, although perhaps grandparents who turned out to be burying bodies in their backyard. She swallowed a spoonful of broth, then set it aside. “You’re saying he’s here.”
“Well, not the way you might imagine,” said Fay. “Not like some of those silly movies where spirits are walking around, or sitting in chairs, or smashing things up. More like a radio or television signal with a lot of static.”
Rory said, “Try to conceive of energy, emotions, thoughts, as taking up space. Existing in some other plane just beyond our senses. The way dogs hear sounds we can’t. Or like ultraviolet or infrared light. Things you know are real, even if you can’t perceive them.”
Maybe they were just telling her what she wanted to hear. There was a skeptical, critical part of her that wasn’t going to budge, like a rock that would not be pried out of the ground. But there was a current of water that cut paths and channels around the rock, going where it needed to go, and that was the other part of her nature. “Hi,” she said to the air around her, feeling foolish. “I miss you.” Nothing came back to her. To Fay and Rory, she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t think I have any gifts. Resources. No superpowers. I’m the most ordinary person in the world.”
“Well that’s because you haven’t practiced using it,” said Fay, picking up her fork and returning to her food. “Even Mozart had to sit down at a keyboard once in a while. You have the slightest little tendency toward laziness, don’t you, dear? I’m sorry to be so blunt. I tend to speak my mind. You may have noticed. God gives us our talents. It’s up to us to develop them.”
Julia was somewhat surprised to hear both of them talk
in religious terms, but she guessed she shouldn’t be. After all, religion, at least the kind she was raised on, was all about
visions, visits from angels, conversations with the deity, burning bushes, pillars of cloud by day, pillars of fire by night, weeping statues, miraculous wounds.
She said to Fay, “If you don’t mind my asking, what is it you do, I mean, do you earn a living being, ah, psychic?”
Fay laughed. “Oh my, no. Rory can, in a manner of speaking, because of his writing. I’m a clerk at the Division of Motor Vehicles. Talk about ordinary.”
That made perfect sense to Julia. She could well imagine Fay as one of those cheerful bureaucratic obstacles, telling people they’d failed their vision test or didn’t have the right ID.
“Let’s try something,” said Rory. “Look at me. Just look. Concentrate. See what you get out of it.”
She did so. His dark, tired eyes. The big beard that didn’t seem to fit his face, its hollows at the cheeks and temples. “You’re . . .”
“Say it.”
“You’re ill.”
“Yes,” said Rory. “Keep going.”
“You’re not going to get better.”
“There now,” said Rory, as if pleased, and Fay beamed at her.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No need,” said Rory, briskly. “It’s simply a great and wondrous transformation. Now, didn’t we tell you? You reached out with your mind and spoke the truth.”
“But, I’m sorry, but you don’t look very well, that’s not hard to see, and . . . the rest of it, you were giving me hints, and anyway, it didn’t feel like some big revelation or psychic earthquake, I didn’t go into a trance or anything. I just said it.”
Fay said, “And you could have said, ‘You’re going to have surgery,’ or anything else in the world, but you didn’t.”
“As for trances,” added Rory, “I consider them histrionic.”
Julia got her feet underneath her and stood up. “I think I need to go home now. Good luck,” she said to Rory. “I hope I’m wrong.”
Fay rested a hand on her arm. “Don’t be afraid. And do not deny your gift.”
By the next day, she was uncertain. Because really, nothing had been said that could not have been fabricated, or a lucky guess, or a psych job. Nothing that could be proven or documented, nothing rare or astounding had really happened. Just as nothing mysterious had ever really come her way, nothing beyond normal, unremarkable premonitions or hunches. Every so often in the next few weeks, a little sheepishly, she tried to meditate, coax her stubborn mind into doing something exalted, but she always ended up bored, or distracted, or even asleep. It didn’t seem to be anything she could squeeze out of herself. Something Fay had said, about the rock bringing forth water. She was a dry rock.
The summer’s heat dragged on into September and then October. Leaves of trees didn’t fall but hung on, coated with dust, like drooping tongues. Julia went out for a time with a man she met at a party, to the relief of her friends, who were afraid she was stuck in some morbid rut. It began promisingly, and she even slept with him a couple of times. He belonged to a softball league and Julia went to one of his games, sitting in the bleachers and cheering along with the other fans. Afterward
the team and their assorted wives and girlfriends all went out to a tavern. The tavern was hot, although no one seemed to notice or mind except her, as the day itself had been hot and the day before that, and the people around her were red-faced from beer and sunburn, bawling happily at each other, whole conversations taking place at top volume.
Her date slid his arm around her waist. He could expect them to go home together and make love. Why wouldn’t he? But she was so tired. And heat-addled, so that all her senses had an untrustworthy, miragelike cast. She was not meant to be here. It was all a mistake. This room of happy strangers—she seemed to see it from a great distance, a movie on a tiny screen—belonged to someone else’s life. Then she thought about the man who had died, and the life they should have had together. There was an unfairness to that, since they might have just as easily grown bored or irritated with each other by now, or fought in ways that revealed some fault line between them. But it was just as fair to imagine happiness. This was how he would haunt her, the ghost of all her foreclosed possibilities.
There was nothing to object to with this man, the ballplayer. He was pleasant and normal and full of uncomplicated virtues. But she had been cheering for a team that meant
nothing to her.
Julia worked her way out of his circling arm. “I don’t feel very well. I think I’ll go on home.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, I’m just kind of worn out. I need to get to sleep.” He frowned, concerned, perhaps, but also irritated that his evening was being disrupted. “No, you stay here. I can get home by myself.”
“If you’ll hang on a little while, I can—”
“Really. Don’t bother.” She could not wait another minute to be alone.
The next day he said to her, “You’re pretty independent, aren’t you?”
“I guess so,” Julia said, watching him appraise her. “Thanks,” she said, although she knew he had not meant it as a compliment.
So that was that.
A few weeks later she saw Rory’s obituary in the paper. She hadn’t been watching for it, and in most respects she had forgotten all about him. But here he was, the same photograph that had been on his book jacket, and a headline identifying him as “Author, Spiritualist.” He was seventy years old and had died of pancreatic cancer at his home in California.
After twenty-five years teaching in the anthropology departments at Brown University and the University of New Mexico, Dr. McAllister embarked on a second career as a researcher, author, and popularizer of various paranormal phenomena, such as extrasensory perception and clairvoyance. Although his methods and conclusions drew criticism from those who viewed them as unscientific and speculative, his books, as well as his Foundation for the New Paradigm, were influential in . . .
Julia didn’t read the rest of it. It filled her with unreasoning dread, as if she had pronounced sentence on him. Another death trailing her. That was shallow, idiotic thinking, if you could even call it thinking, not to mention narcissistic. The man had died; it had nothing to do with her. It was on par with believing there was some special providence in her choosing that day to buy a paper—which she seldom did—or turning to the obituaries.
It was coincidence pure and simple, there were such things as coincidences, and anything else was all mush-headedness and superstition. But you did not need to believe a thing in order to feel it. She was tired of arguing against herself. It took so much effort to be a fully functioning grown-up, so many self-admonishments for being anything other than sensible and resolute, that is, for being anxious, hopeful, or uncertain. It was not some psychic gift she had been in danger of denying, but her own fears.
Finding Fay in the phone book took some effort. Kjellander. It wasn’t spelled the way it sounded. Julia dialed and got an answering machine, Fay’s chiming voice instructing her to leave a message. She waited for the beep, but when it came, instead of the careful speech she’d rehearsed, she said, “Fay? You’re there, aren’t you?”
The line clicked and Fay said, “Julia? I was just this second thinking about you.”
Her heart leapt up, and she half-remembered something Rory had said, something about encountering beloved faces, silly, this was not a face, but there was that same sense of welcoming comfort. “I read about Rory. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. His spirit is at peace. But of course I miss him, as many will.”
“I felt bad about what I said to him. That . . . it was going to happen.”
“Now why should you? It wasn’t any of your doing. Honestly, you are a worrywart. Would you like to get together for lunch sometime?”
They met a few days later, at a coffee shop not far from the Division of Motor Vehicles branch where Fay worked. It was November, and the weather had changed to blustering rain. Julia took off her damp coat and located Fay sitting in one of the booths. Julia sat down across from her. In spite of what Fay had said, there were times she felt shy, as she did now. “Hi again.”
“Hello, so nice to see you.” Fay looked grayer, heavier, or maybe that was the oversized black sweater she wore. “I have to be back at work by one, so I went ahead and ordered. There’s nothing fancy here, but I like their grilled cheese and tomato.”
Julia picked up the laminated menu, which featured full-color photographs of hamburgers. The waitress came and took her order. Fay said, “I’m glad you called. We were worried about you, Rory and I. We felt we rather overwhelmed you.”
“Oh . . . well . . .” Fay’s eyes were always unnerving, overprominent to the point that you felt self-conscious about looking at them, the same way you might feel bad about staring at someone’s artificial leg. What did she need the glasses for anyway? “I’ve thought a lot about what you said since then, but . . .”
“You’re not convinced. You’d like to be, but you can’t quite bring yourself to it.”
“I guess so.” It felt peculiar to be talking about such things in the middle of a busy lunch hour, people passing ketchup bottles and getting refills on iced tea. But then, where would it not feel peculiar? “I don’t feel anything. I mean, my boyfriend. I don’t think he’s here anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t even want him to be, if he was sad.” Did spirits dissipate like smoke? Did they move on to some gauzy heaven? “I don’t know how this works.”
“Tell me about him. Any old thing.”
“He was a friendly person. People liked him.” That sounded insipid, something you could say about anyone. “He was taking Italian lessons, he wanted to go to Italy. We were saving up for a trip. He had a motorcycle that he spent all kinds of time and money on. He said that once the weather got better, he’d take me out for rides.”
“Keep going.”
“He was always healthy. He was only sick for a little while and we didn’t think it was anything that serious. I keep thinking I should have nagged him, made him get to the doctor sooner.”
She stopped talking because she didn’t want to rehearse her own muddy feelings of guilt and longing. Fay’s gaze focused on her, or rather, around, about, and through her. Fay’s eyebrows drew together, faintly frowning. So he was gone. She supposed she should be glad, although it felt like a new kind of mourning.
Then Fay’s hand brushed against hers. Fay said, “Softball.”
“What?”
“He keeps saying, ‘Softball.’”
The waitress arrived then, bringing them water glasses and silverware rolled up in paper napkins. When they were alone again Fay said, “That means something to you, I can tell. Never mind. None of my business.”
Their food came and they ate without speaking. Rain blew against the window glass; cars in the parking lot switched their lights and wipers on. Julia said, “I need to ask you some questions. When you touch people—”
“Yes. That helps me read them. It’s different for everyone. Some psychics work from photographs. Others use automatic writing, or sketches. Or they can read you right over the telephone.”
“Have you always been psychic?”
Fay nodded. “Growing up, you don’t think anything of it. You think everybody sees what you see, feels what you feel. Only later do you realize people think you’re a freak. A witch. Oh yes, I’ve been called that.”
Julia murmured that she was sorry. The check came, set facedown, slightly damp. Fay said, “It doesn’t make for an easy life. People think it should be, that you can do tricks, like predict the stock market, make all kinds of money. But it’s lonesome. No one else understands. That’s why we seek one another out. It’s another reason I miss Rory. I think you came along for a purpose. Let’s exchange phone numbers, shall we? I think we’re going to be great friends. I have to be getting back to work now. You can just imagine the extraordinary sensibilities that people bring with them when they come in for a driver’s license.”
They paid the check and went out into the weather. A few raindrops spattered against Fay’s glasses. “May I give you a hug? Good-bye, hurry on now, don’t get wet.”
Julia called her the next week and asked if they could meet again. “I have to know what I’m dealing with. You have to help me.” She hadn’t slept well. She felt the dead man watching her, carrying on his one-sided conversations, trying to get her attention with his bad jokes. Then doubt would shake her and she dismissed it all as stupid, a fantasy, only to waver, wondering if it might be true, if she even wanted it to be true, and the cycle began all over again.
Fay invited her to come over the next day after work. Julia thought about taking a bottle of wine as a hostess gift, but maybe Fay didn’t drink. She settled instead on carnations from the grocery. Fay lived in a part of town that gave her pause, on a residential street just off one of the city’s catastrophic thoroughfares. It was a place of hurtling traffic, car dealerships, down-and-out motels, dollar stores, liquor stores, small hutches where you could have keys made, buy lottery tickets, burritos, Polish sausages, a place for armed robberies, drug arrests, high-speed chases.
But Fay’s block was quiet en
ough, rows of brick four flats sitting in their squares of lawn and thin, fenced-off trees. Julia wouldn’t have lived in such a place, though she told herself not to be a snob. What did she think DMV clerks made for salaries? Fay must have been watching for her because she buzzed her inside and opened the door right away, exclaiming over the carnations—“So pretty!”
“What a cute apartment,” said Julia, although she found it small and rather fussy. All those smothering drapes, old-fashioned lamps, embroidered cushions. A row of decorative plates were displayed in special holders. It had a grandmotherlike feel to it, dingy and dated, although surely Fay was not all that old. Perhaps she had inherited it all from her own grandmother. Then, hastily, in case Fay was able to sense her thoughts, she said, “Your directions were great, I had no trouble at all getting here.”
Fay had a plate of triangle sandwiches for them, and tea, and there was a tray of hard little chocolate cookies. “I didn’t know if you had a chance to get your dinner.” Julia said she’d already eaten, then added, for politeness’ sake, that she hadn’t eaten all that much. She selected a couple of the sandwiches, which were filled with over-moist ham salad, washed them down with the tea. She set her cup in the center of the saucer. Now that she was here, she was filled with prickly dread. She wished she hadn’t eaten anything. Her stomach lurched.
Fay drew two chairs together, facing each other in the small living room. “Come on, let’s get started.”
Julia took her place and Fay sat opposite. “Nervous?” Fay asked. Her magnified eyes were so close, Julia could see the pink lining of her eyelids.
“I guess. A little.”
“Of course you are. This is the first time you’ve given yourself over willingly. Taken a step forward on your own. Every other time, I’m afraid, it was something of an ambush. Try not to hold your breath.”
Julia exhaled. Her stomach was still mutinous and there was a curdled, metallic taste in her mouth. “Why do I always feel sick? Every time. It’s like being beat up.”
“It takes a toll, doesn’t it? Other people don’t understand that. They think we send out lightning bolts from our fingertips, or some kind of mental gamma rays. But it can hollow you out. The body is just a vessel, after all. ‘The sword outwears its sheath and the soul outwears its breast.’ That’s a poem, but I forget who wrote it. Go ahead and close your eyes.”
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