Laughing Down the Moon (22 page)

A woman, slightly stooped and draped in layered shawls, met us as we entered. The room was candlelit, overheated. A red couch that reminded me of my fainting couch at home took up one short wall. The backs of three mismatched, well-worn wingback chairs pressed the opposite wall. Everything in the room was richly and deeply saturated with color. There was barely room to move among the furniture. A large person might be uncomfortable here. And I realized the frankincense hadn’t been wafting from here. Rather, cinnamon and orange were the scents du jour. The cinnamon gave me a Shiloh pang in the heart. Damn.

The woman showed Veronica where to lay down her coat, and I followed suit, draping mine over Veronica’s on a dark blue wingback chair. The table in the middle of the tiny room was covered with shawls similar to those that covered the woman. Behind a dark green wingback was another smaller, but taller table with a tin lantern holding four short, fat white candles, the only light source in the room. This table had no shawl covering it. In the candlelight I could see that it was inlaid with an intricate pattern. There was another closed door, beside this smaller table.

The woman, diminutive under her shawls, stretched out a veined, scrawny forearm adorned with a multitude of gemstone-covered bracelets. She pointed to the couch and said, “Sit there,” to me and indicating the other half of the couch, “Sit there,” to Veronica. So we sat down, sinking in much further than either of us expected. We both said, “Oh!” at the same time. Madame DuVaulle chuckled and perched herself on a rose-colored wingback. She looked like a proper psychic, and that was reassuring. Good old Minnesota Public Radio. It had never let me down.

“You,” she said pointing at me again, “are happy that I look like I know what I am doing.”

Oh my Goddess. “Yes,” I said. I hoped that that was okay with her.

“Yes,” she said back, nodding her little pointed chin, “yes. We will read Tarot today?” she asked Veronica.

“Yes, please,” Veronica said. “Your website said we should pay ahead of the reading?”

“That is a good idea; that way if you do not like what I have to say, I can still feed my dogs the fancy food.” Madame DuVaulle cackled at her own joke. We each paid her and gave her a little extra to ensure a good reading. The money disappeared into a pocket under her shawls.

“Okay, we will read you first,” she indicated Veronica with another nod of her chin, “and then we will read you.” She looked at me, and I saw that her eyes were clouded with age and cataracts.

Madame DuVaulle asked Veronica what she wanted to know, so Veronica told her the three areas where she needed some perspective. Pulling a battered Tarot deck from beneath the table, the psychic slowly shuffled the deck, her knobby knuckles and crooked, wrinkly fingers reminding me of Dwight’s feet.

“You tell me when the deck is ready,” she said to Veronica.

Veronica nodded her understanding and watched as she shuffled. “It’s ready now,” Veronica said.

Madame DuVaulle stopped shuffling and placed the deck before Veronica.

“Now you make three cuts in the deck,” she said. So Veronica cut the deck into three piles, two skinny and one healthy. “Very nice,” Madame DuVaulle said and stacked up the three piles into one deck again and began dealing them out in a pattern on the table. Three cards were dealt into the middle of a circle, with eleven cards in all being laid out. Madame DuVaulle peered at the eleventh card she dealt. She didn’t seem satisfied. She laid another card atop the last card. This one she scrutinized as well before laying one more card on top of it. She frowned at this one, but she didn’t cover it with another card this time. Instead she held the remains of the deck in one hand and passed her other hand over the top of the leftover cards. Her lips moved, but no words were spoken aloud, and she turned to set the unused cards next to the lantern on the small, tall table.

“Okay, what is your name?” she asked Veronica.

“Veronica.”

“Veronica, my dear, you will have some decisions to make on your own, according to your cards here,” she said, pointing to the stack of three cards in the eleventh position. “But overall, you have some answers, or shall we say guidance,” she continued. She went through Veronica’s cards, one by one. Veronica listened, her eyes growing small and squinty at times and getting big and round at other times. Some of what Madame DuVaulle said was completely cryptic to me, but it all seemed to make sense to Veronica.

I tried to figure out the exact wording of my questions. I was guessing it was as important as the wording in a spell, so I wanted to get it right. The heat in the room that had at first seemed oppressive and cloying was now soothing, encouraging me to get comfortable physically if not mentally. Okay, how to word the questions? Maybe I could ask whether I should go forward or backward, but no, that question carried its own answer, didn’t it? A person couldn’t really go backward, ever. So no, that wording wouldn’t do. How about a question about whether or not I should pursue the unknown? Yes, that might work. And I could ask if I should pursue the unknown in my love life and in my career. That way both aspects would be taken care of. Solid. I felt good about my questions. I leaned back into the soft couch and listened again to Veronica’s reading.

“And here, in your Near Future position you have the Ace of Cups. This is your card that forecasts unconditional love, so if you want to pursue a lover, chances are very strong that you will find the right one in the near future.” Madame DuVaulle let a quiet, knowing laugh escape her wrinkled lips. Her smile was youthful and content. “You have someone in mind already, do you not?” Madame DuVaulle asked Veronica.

“Yes,” Veronica answered and my head snapped around hard enough to make a vertebra in my neck pop with a loud thunk. Yes? She sounded certain about the fact that she had someone in mind, yet she hadn’t mentioned one thing to me. Oh, how unfair!

Madame DuVaulle laughed again and said, “You will have some explaining to do, it seems.”

“Yes, you will,” I said, giving Veronica the how-dare-you-hold-out-on-me look out of the corner of my eye. She laughed with a hint of guilt and ducked her head slightly. I turned back to the Tarot cards. How dare Veronica not spill her guts the way I always did? Of course, I had never really asked her to spill them, had I? No, not that I could remember.

It was different asking Veronica to tell all. She had kept her own secrets close ever since we had first met. And I had never wanted to ask her about her love life and what she wanted for herself because I almost always had some sort of relationship going on and she only had infrequent, casual encounters. She had always seemed to want more, but hadn’t ever actually said anything to that effect. So I hadn’t brought it up. My fault then, that I didn’t know about this person in the works—or this person Veronica wanted to be in the works. I’d ask on the ride home, that was for sure.

The last cards in Veronica’s reading were all Minor Arcana, which was why Madame DuVaulle had been frowning at them. Apparently all it meant was that Veronica would have more influence over the matters she was asking about. I wasn’t sure how Veronica would see this, but I guessed that she’d view it as a negative. Especially in regard to her parents where I think she wanted some definite solution so she didn’t have to worry about how they’d age.

“Do you see any pattern, or anything that should encourage me to open my own business?” Veronica asked.

“Your Significator card is The World card, so yes, if you are contemplating opening your own business, you are in extremely good shape to do so,” Madame DuVaulle answered. I exhaled in relief for Veronica.

“What other questions do you have?” Madame DuVaulle wanted to know.

“None, thank you,” Veronica said, looking satisfied. She leaned back into the couch just as I was pushing my butt forward to get ready for my reading.

Madame DuVaulle was putting the Tarot deck back together. “What is your name?” she asked me. I always thought it funny that psychics would ask this question, but I answered her anyway.

“It’s Allura Satou,” I said, wondering why I gave her my last name too.

“Pretty name,” she said.

“It has too many vowels,” I said. Why? Because I was nervous. I could feel Veronica looking at me, and Madame DuVaulle laughed.

“It is still pretty,” she said. She was shuffling the cards now, and my palms grew clammy. “What is your question?”

“I…I uh, I want to know,” I stammered. Shit! What did I want to know again? I couldn’t remember the perfect wording I had sorted out earlier.

“It is all right,” the psychic said, “you take your time. Your question is in you, I know. You just let me know when it is ready to come out.”

Suddenly she reminded me of Dr. Browning. I knew now was not the time to screw around, but all these really funny, at least to me, questions were floating around in my head. What if I asked her to tell me what the weather would be like on my seventieth birthday? Or what if I asked her what color underwear the cards recommended I wear next Saturday? How about if I asked which wall I should paint red as an accent in my living room? What if I asked her what I really wanted to know? And why did that seem as farfetched as the first three ridiculous questions? I took a deep breath and blurted out my question.

“Should I take my love life and my career into the unknown, or should I stick with the familiar?” I asked in one loud, fast exhalation.

“There it is!” Madame DuVaulle said as if she just took first place in the homegrown question contest at the Minnesota State Fair. She nodded and said, “I knew your question was in there. Now, you just tell me when to stop shuffling. You tell me when the cards are ready.”

Then I realized she had been shuffling with those old, likely arthritic hands the whole time I had been stalling, so I told her to stop right away. The deck did seem ready to me, but I also didn’t want to make her shuffle more than she already had. She stopped shuffling and set the deck in front of me. I divided the deck into three piles as she instructed. Then she picked them up and compiled them back into one deck, which she dealt out in front of me in the same pattern she dealt out Veronica’s. My eleventh card was The Tower card, one of the Major Arcana, so Madame DuVaulle stopped there and dealt out no further cards.

I tried to remember what The Tower card represented, but I couldn’t. I had some recollection from past readings that it was a card that shook some people up, but I was already shaken up, so I let it go for now. I looked at my Significator card, the card that represented me, my essence, and it was the Son of Wands. Madame DuVaulle saw me looking at it and asked if we should start. I told her yes, we should.

“Your Significator is the Son of Wands. He lets us know that you love making people laugh and that people appreciate the exuberant energy you bring to their worlds. That is who you are deep, deep inside. If it is also who you want to be, you are in luck,” she said, looking at me to see if I understood.

I nodded, recognizing myself in the card. No question about that one—it was right on the money.

“The reason you are asking this question is represented by the Emperor card,” Madame DuVaulle began. She shook her head, not liking the card apparently. “This card tells us that you have somehow been made to fit into a rigid, inflexible schedule or position. Either you or somebody else has brought you too far into the thinking realm of life and has made you leave the feeling realm for a time. Do you know who this card represents?”

I had to think about that. It could be Mickey. It could be my current editors or even my whole job. I had deadlines, formats and word counts to follow. With Mickey, I had to think hard all the time, leaving little room to feel. But I wasn’t sure.

“I can’t really say who it might be,” I said.

“Well then. This is someone who has somehow sent you the message that you are not safe if you are feeling things, but that thinking through things constantly is just fine,” Madame DuVaulle offered.

Oh. Now I knew. Damn.

“Did you say it could be me doing this to myself?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Okay, I know who it is then—it’s me. What do I do?”

“You simply decide to start feeling things again,” Madame DuVaulle said.

Oh. I had held back as much as I could from feeling the pain of the breakup with Mickey, and then I had held back from feeling everything I could while getting to know Shiloh. Damn. Not only had I bought tickets to
Depression: The Musical
, I had also reserved a seasonal front row seat for myself. Or was I deciding to cast myself as the star in the whole production?

“Now, your Cross Current card is here—Judgment. You have already made a healing decision for yourself, but the trouble is you are not willing to go with that decision just yet because you are being too judgmental of your decision,” Madame DuVaulle said. “Do you know what I am talking about?”

“I think so,” I said.

“You know what you need. Now you can be the one who runs blindly through the snow. If you fall, the universe will protect you, understand?” she said. I thought I felt the couch tilt beneath me.

Had she really just said that? I had been looking at the Judgment card, but when she said I could run blindly, I looked up at her face. She was peering intently at me with her eyes cloudy as can be, but I felt she could see into my soul. I didn’t answer, because I knew she already knew what I would have said, which was simply, “Okay.”

“Let us look at what is underneath all of this. Let us look at what keeps you going. Ah, we have the Magician holding you up. You, Allura, want to be the alchemist who changes the bitter acid of suffering and pain into the wine that allows everyone to dance and feel good. Did you know that?” Madame DuVaulle asked.

“No, I didn’t,” I answered. “In fact, I’d have said I have selfishness at my root rather than wanting others to feel good.” I had to be honest because I had the feeling she’d see right through me if I lied and said that I always put others’ interests above my own.

“This Magician sometimes benefits others in benefiting himself,” she explained, “but that does not negate the good he does for others, does it?”