Wrath of the Sister

by Shannon Heuston

  “How come they always have names like Madame Marisha?” I mused, gazing at the sign. “They’re never called, say, Mrs. Garrett.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Garrett, good call,” Sam said. “It would be great if they had a show about the Facts of Life cast becoming carnies. I’d watch that show.”

  “Oh, me too, I loved that show growing up,” Laurel said, as John squeezed her shoulders.

  “I want to get my fortune told,” I announced. Enough about thirty-year-old sitcoms. Talking about them made me feel old.

  “For twenty dollars? Hell no,” Sam said.

  “I’ll pay for it myself,” I assured him. “Twenty dollars isn’t that expensive. I have a coworker who has her own psychic who charges two hundred dollars an hour.”

  “What an idiot,” Sam declared. “You don’t really believe this shit, do you, Mel? It’s just a parlor trick.”

  I sighed. “We’re at a carnival. None of this stuff is real, it’s just for fun. You didn’t really believe you would win big at the Roulette wheel, did you?”

  “In that case, I’ll do the honors,” Sam announced, plucking a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. “Let no one say I will not sacrifice several pounds of silver to have fun!”

  I gave him an enormous grin as I took the money, to hide my irritation. Maybe I was getting my period. Because I felt like Sam was making fun of me, and I didn’t appreciate it. It was a fair. We were having fun. Seeing a fortune teller was just part of the whole experience. It wasn’t like I thought it was serious, so what was the big deal?

  There was no line for Madame Marisha. I was ushered inside the tent by a nervous, dark haired teenaged boy. Madame Marisha’s son, perhaps? The woman seated at the table was garbed in dark fabric from head to toe. I wondered if that outfit was hot on such a warm summer evening. The only part of her face visible was her eyes.

  The interior of the tent was lit by flickering candlelight, creating a spooky atmosphere, which was ruined by the sight of Madame Marisha texting on a smartphone. She whisked it out of sight as I entered.

  “Come in to hear your fortune,” she intoned. I resisted the urge to giggle. The whole thing reminded me of the haunted houses people in my neighborhood used to set up on Halloween.

  Madame Marisha gestured at the chair across the table from her. “Sit down, sit down. Give me your palm.”

  I handed her the money first, thinking that was what she meant, since the boy outside didn’t take it. Maybe she didn’t trust him. She whisked the twenty dollar bill out of sight just as fast as the smartphone, perhaps shoving it up her sleeve. Then she gestured impatiently at my hand. I gave it to her rather reluctantly, as I’m a germaphobe.

  “Ah,” she said, peering at my palm. “You are middle aged and have no children. Kind of getting late for you.” She shrugged. “Maybe not so late. I see a baby in your future. A change of life baby. It happens, for some of us.” She squinted at my hand, frowning.

  “What is it?” I asked, disgusted by the fear in my voice.

  “Let’s consult the tarot,” Madame Marisha hedged. She produced a deck of cards and offered the pack to me. I tapped one. She laid them out, then flipped over a card and stared at it. “This card represents your past. Death.”

  I shuddered, thinking of Agnes.

  “This card has several meanings for you,” she said, stroking it. “You’ve dealt with a lot of physical death in your life, of loved ones. I read pain in your face. But those deaths have freed you. Allowed you to start a new life.”

  I tried to repress my smile. I read that many mediums do what is called cold readings, where they throw out a few likely facts given your age then gauge your reaction. Chances were good that a woman my age had lost people.

  “This card represents your present,” she said, flipping over another card. “The Magician.” She grimaced.

  “What?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “The Magician usually represents someone glib, charming, charismatic.”

  Sam. “But that’s good, right?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “It all depends on the next card.” She dealt the third card and sucked in her breath, then cleared the entire deck off the table. “Let’s just forget the Tarot,” she said. “You asked to have your fortune told, so I will tell your fortune. You may not believe this, but I am truly psychic. Not all the time, no.” She waved her hand at the tent and all its trappings. “I do all the same parlor tricks as the charlatans. Because my visions come in flashes, and I don’t have them all the time. Not with everyone. Not even with most people. It’s rare I truly see. But I saw when you walked in.” Her face was white. “I need to warn you.”

  “The future isn’t set in stone. How could it be, when it hasn’t happened yet? I always see several possible futures, because there is more than one path a person could take. In your case, I did see you with a baby, a change of life child. But I also saw darkness swirling around you.” She shut her eyes as if trying to block the vision, then opened them.

  My mouth was hanging open. “What does that mean?”

  Her eyes met mine. “It means either you will live and have a child of your own, or you will die. Those are the two possible paths your future could take. One results in motherhood. The other, there is only blackness, which is how I see death.”

  “Do I get sick?”

  Her eyes were large and sympathetic. “Could be. But I don’t feel that’s it. I can see sickness.” She shook her head. “No. I sense that a bad end awaits you should you pick the wrong path. Murder. Perhaps.”

  A cold hand clutched my heart. “Say what?”

  She nodded. “Yes. You must be very careful. That’s all I have to say. That’s all I know.” She rose. “Time’s up.”

  “Can I tell people, or is that bad luck?”

  “Of course. It’s not like making a wish while blowing out the candles on your birthday cake.” She flapped her hands at me. “Go on now.”

  I rose to my feet and obeyed, realizing Madame Marisha was creeped out by me. Enough that she wanted me to leave.

  Stepping outside into the laughter of the midway and the sound of the calliope was like being plunged into another world after the silent gloom of the tent. Laurel and the guys were waiting for me a short distance away, standing in a huddle, snorting laughter. It subsided as I walked towards them.

  “What’s the matter, hun?” Sam asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I twisted back around to face the tent, shuddering.

  Laurel and John were passing a big plastic tumbler full of beer back and forth. My sister’s face was flushed and laughing. She was having a good time. They all were. I didn’t want to ruin it.

  “How was it?” Sam asked.

  I shrugged. “Just a load of bullshit, just like you said. I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

  Sam put his arm around me, and we walked towards the delicious smells emanating from the concession stands. But I felt eyes on me the entire way, as if someone was watching me from the confines of that dark tent.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  We booked a cottage on Cape Cod to celebrate the end of a wonderful summer, each of us chipping in a quarter portion. The destination was bittersweet. Agnes loved Cape Cod. She’d grown up in Massachusetts, so she had fond memories of summering with her family in Plymouth, which wasn’t quite on the Cape, but there was no telling her that.

  “My sisters and I used to run through the cranberry bogs,” Agnes told me. “We weren’t supposed to. I guess it damages the crop or something. But it was wicked fun, so we did it anyway. Sometimes the farmers would chase us.”

  Maybe as life faded from her body, she was transported back to the cranberry bogs, her sisters’ laughter echoing in her ears.

  “I have mixed feelings about Cape Cod,” I announced, when the subject was first introduced.

  John rolled his eyes. We’d reached an uneasy truce because of my relationship with Sam, but there was still no love lost between us. He made it
clear he found me tedious and difficult, and I failed to hide that I thought he was a moron. But we were trying. “What’s the problem with Cape Cod?” he asked, his stupid mustache quivering while he spoke.

  “It brings back memories of my mother,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Laurel said, squeezing my shoulder. “Good memories of Mom, when she was at her happiest, in the place she loved best. Going there is a way of honoring her.”

  I shrugged off the unfamiliar contact, pressing my lips together. Laurel didn’t give two shits about honoring Agnes. It was mind numbing how quickly Laurel put our mother out of her mind while I continued to struggle with my grief. Except for trotting her out when she wanted something.

  Truth was, my memories of Agnes and Cape Cod were neutral, neither happy nor sad. In our relationship, that passed for a good memory. I took her there a couple of years ago, after she voiced the desire to revisit her childhood happy place before she got too old and sick. She hadn’t been back there in many years. Money was always too tight to take a vacation when we were growing up.

  Even though I was scrounging pennies I felt it was important to honor my mother’s wishes. I knew someday I’d be glad I did. Using my credit card, I booked a room at the Quality Inn, wincing at the astronomical price for a four-day stay during the height of summer. The location was good, though. The hotel boasted a swimming pool and hot tub, and the beach and several restaurants were only a short distance away.

  It was weird going on vacation with Agnes. I know plenty of mothers and daughters take trips together, but our relationship was akin to two tigers uneasily circling each other. We lived together, but the house was big enough that we each had our own space. When thrust into situations that required spending quality time together, it felt strange. Like the time we had to share a bed while visiting an aunt in Boston. In my mind, you shared a bed with a close friend or a lover. Agnes was neither. We barely tolerated one another, and yet I couldn’t seem to quit her, living in her house long past the point an adult should live with a parent.

  Someone once told me I was seeking the love Agnes never gave me.

  If Laurel went on vacation with our mother, she would have indulged her every whim. Our mother’s craziness didn’t bother her one bit. But I was stuck in perpetual adolescence, hunching my shoulders against her criticisms, cringing at her braying voice as she tried to chat up strangers. I never lost the teenage habit of being embarrassed by my mother.

  Taking Agnes to Cape Cod turned out to be a stress-filled nightmare. It wound up being the kind of vacation that requires another vacation to recover. The trouble began before we even left. I wanted to leave early enough to miss rush hour and the mass weekend exodus from Boston to the Cape. This should have been easy, but when it came time to leave, Agnes hadn’t packed for the trip. Worse, she didn’t know what she wanted to pack. “I’m going to run to Macy’s,” she said around ten, already past the time I wanted to leave. “I have nothing to wear.”

  “Fine,” I said, not wanting our vacation to get off to a bad start. I figured Macy’s was fifteen minutes away. If she browsed for an hour, we could be on the road by one and arrive at our hotel around five, missing the worst of the traffic.

  I had a feeling it would not be that easy.

  Agnes returned triumphant at twelve thirty, her arms filled with bags. Not willing to leave anything more to chance, I began unpacking the bags and putting the clothes into her suitcase. “Why don’t you get ready?” I suggested.

  For a couple of minutes, I thought the start of our trip would be painless. We would get on the road early. Miss all the traffic. Get to Cape Cod in time for a quick trip to the beach before dinner.

  Then Agnes’s phone rang. She peered at the display, rolled her eyes, and said, “God help us. It’s Rachel.” Rachel was her best friend who was always embroiled in one crisis or another, all of them of her own making. She had impeccable timing.

  “Come on Ma, don’t answer,” I pleaded, but Agnes was waving away my objections.

  “I will only talk to her a minute,” she promised. “Hello? Rachel?”

  I sat watching the clock for the next hour and a half, as my mother argued, screeched, and laughed at her friend’s conversation. I finally interrupted around two.

  “What?” Agnes barked at me, covering the end of the receiving like she feared Rachel would hear a family secret.

  I pointed to the clock on the wall. “It’s two,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. “We have to go.”

  “Rachel, I have to go,” Agnes parroted into the phone, cutting her friend off midsentence. “I have to go. Because she says we gotta go. To the Cape. Cape Cod!” She paused, listening. “Yeah, well, I gotta go. She’s telling me we gotta go.” My mother rarely called Laurel and I by the names she gave us. Since I lived with her, she identified me as she. Laurel was the other one.

  She finally ended the call. “That Rachel, she has the worst goddamn timing,” she complained. “And she insists on talking my ear off about the stupidest shit!”

  I bit my tongue, deciding not to point out that my mother could have chosen not to take the call, as I asked.

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!” she snapped at me. “We’re in a hurry all of a sudden!” My mother’s sarcasm was at its zenith when she used the royal we.

  We didn’t get on the road until two-thirty. I held back curses behind clenched teeth. I had hoped to leave by eight in the morning, nine at the latest. Nine. I didn’t want to waste an entire day traveling. Now we’d be lucky to reach the Cape by seven, contending with bumper-to-bumper traffic the whole way. I wanted to growl.

  As we merged onto the highway, a new annoyance cropped up. Agnes kept gasping for no reason. It drove me batty, because to me a gasp while driving means a semi is headed right for us and we have minutes to live.

  That was not the case here. Agnes gasped because there was a big truck in the next lane. She gasped because she thought I was going too fast. (Meanwhile an Amish couple with a horse drawn buggy overtook us). She gasped because a red car that passed us was driving too fast.

  By the time we reached New Haven, I was frazzled and on edge. I didn’t think this trip could get any worse. Then we got stuck in an enormous traffic jam caused by a mixture of construction and rush hour.

  “I didn’t know there’d be this much traffic,” Agnes complained. Then, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  We were stuck in New Haven for fifty-two minutes and thirty seconds. I know this for a fact, because every minute and a half, with ever increasing urgency, Agnes groaned and said, “How long is this going to last? I have to go to the bathroom!”

  Once we cleared the jam, I pulled into the first rest stop I saw, a generic one maintained by the state of Connecticut. “Here we are,” I said with false cheer. “Now you can go to the bathroom.”

  Agnes eyed the cinder block building. “No, thanks,” she said.

  “Why not?” I was starting to lose it. All my good intentions were flying out the window like winged monkeys. Agnes and I never went at it in a space as enclosed as a car before. One of us might not survive this. This was like locking up two dominant cats together.

  Agnes folded her arms across her chest and shook her head with her lips pressed shut, like a child refusing to eat her vegetables. “I’m not going to use a public bathroom.”

  “These rest stops are always very well maintained,” I informed her.

  “No, thanks,” Agnes repeated.

  My tires screeched as I pulled back onto the highway. I couldn’t express my frustration, so I was venting it on the car.

  “Slow down!” Agnes screamed wild-eyed, clutching the passenger side door. My speedometer was registering a mere fifty miles an hour, well below the posted limit.

  Five minutes later, she groaned, clutched her stomach and said, “Jesus, I need to go to the bathroom. Are we almost there yet?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  That was just the beginning. Tha
t night, I took her to Captain Jack’s, a seafood restaurant from her childhood she reminisced about often. “When my family went to the Cape, we always went to Captain Jack’s at least once. There were so many of us they practically had to close down the restaurant. It was like a family reunion.”

  With a little digging online, I discovered Captain Jack’s was still in operation, run by the grandson of the original owner. I was excited about taking my mother there, but when we arrived, she looked it up and down, then said, “It looks a lot dumpier than I remember.”

  “Well, it’s old,” I said, attempting to squeeze my sedan between two vans in the full parking lot.

  Agnes glared at me. “Thanks a lot,” she snarled. “You must think I’m old too.”

  I sighed. “Did you think you were young?”

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “That’s not something you say to someone.”

  “I didn’t say it to you, I said it about Captain Jack’s,” I pointed out, resisting the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Well, if you think Captain Jack’s is old, you must think I’m old too,” Agnes insisted.

  I wanted to scream. I tried so hard to please her, but no matter what I did, it wasn’t good enough.

  “Let’s just get a table and eat,” I pleaded.

  Agnes followed me inside.

  “There’s a twenty-minute wait for a table inside, but I can seat you outside right away,” the hostess said.

  “That’ll be fine,” I said.

  She picked up two menus and said, “Follow me,” over her shoulder. I charged after her, not even glancing at Agnes, because out of the corner of my eye I could see she was making a face.

  I didn’t walk fast enough. “I don’t want to sit outside,” Agnes said to my back. “It’ll be buggy.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine, Ma,” I moaned. “I’m starving. Aren’t you hungry? You don’t want to wait a half hour for a table, do you?”

  She said nothing in reply, just pressed her lips together in a forbidding line to communicate her displeasure. The outdoor seating area featured picnic style wooden furniture painted all the colors of the rainbow. It didn’t look comfortable.