The Ghost Sonata (5 page)

Wendy wrinkled her nose. “What if you give me a bad reading? Then I'll feel even worse.”

“I don't give bad readings.” Gilda rummaged in her backpack and pulled out her tarot cards.
The Mystery of the Tarot
advised keeping the cards “wrapped in a purple silk scarf and facing east,” but Gilda kept hers wrapped in a leopard-print scarf and stuffed in her backpack. She handed the deck to Wendy.

“Now shuffle them and think about a question or problem.”

Wendy shuffled the cards. She glanced up and again noticed the red-haired mother and daughter placidly staring at her, as if she were a television show they were watching. She squelched a strange urge to stick out her tongue at them.

“Are you thinking about your question?” Gilda asked.

Wendy nodded. As she moved the cards back and forth with her quick, lithe fingers, she thought about the dream and wondered what it meant. She wondered who would win the piano competition and whether she would perform well. She thought of her mother offering her the red dress:
wish to win.

“Okay,” said Gilda. “Now hand me the cards.”

Gilda stood up and fanned out the cards on her seat. “Pick a card.”

Wendy tentatively drew a card. Ming Fong and Gary leaned closer to watch.

“Now place your first card face up on the chair so we can see it.”

Wendy flipped the card to reveal an image of a young man sitting up in bed. He held his head in his hands in a hopeless attempt to dodge nine swords that soared swiftly through the air, directly toward his body.

“See?” Wendy whined. “This is what I was talking about!”

“That kind of looks like a bad card,” said Gary.

“There aren't ‘bad' cards. The cards are just a mirror to show you what forces are at work in your life.”

“Swords flying at you looks bad,” said Gary.

“Wendy's first card represents her current situation in life. You picked the Nine of Swords, Wendy, which means that fears are hanging over you, and you may be having sleepless nights.”

“It looks like she's going to be stabbed,” said Ming Fong.

“Please draw your next card, Wendy.”

The second card featured a picture of a monstrous-looking devil with large webbed wings and curly horns.

“As I was saying,” said Wendy. “I would
hate
to get a bad reading.”

Secretly, Gilda had to admit that this was one of the worst readings she had seen in some time. Nobody wanted to get the Devil card.

“Does that mean she'll become possessed or something?” Gary asked.

“Bleaaaaaagh!”
Wendy did her best horror-film imitation of a girl possessed by demons.

“Yikes!”

Gilda sensed she was losing control of the reading. “Gary, you can't be so literal. The Devil card usually just means Wendy might be feeling trapped by something—maybe by another person—maybe by something else in her life.”

Wendy leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Okay, that's enough fun at my expense.”

“Come on, Wendy. Just finish the reading.”

“I'm done.”

“But the next card will give you something important to ponder.”

“The next card better give me something nice to look forward to for a change.” This time, Wendy reached for the opposite end of the fanned cards. The card she drew depicted a skeleton riding a horse and waving a black flag. On the ground beneath the horse's hooves was a corpse.

All four of them stared silently for a moment.

“Wow,” Wendy whispered, suddenly at a loss for wry comments and jokes.

Gilda knew that drawing the “Death card” didn't necessarily meant that an actual death was predicted. All the same, there was always something unnerving about the image of that skeleton riding a horse. You couldn't help but feel stirrings of dread when you drew the Death card. Gilda noticed a cold sensation in her hands. What, exactly, did this card mean? What if Wendy's dream really did mean that some disaster was imminent? She reminded herself of one of the rules from her
Mystery of the Tarot:
“Try not to alarm the person for whom you're interpreting the cards,” the book's author urged. “Try to put a positive spin on the reading. Never say things like, ‘It looks like you don't have long to live,' or ‘Some dire calamity may soon befall you and your loved ones.'”

“What we have here is the cute little Death card.” Gilda did her best to speak in a cheerful tone of voice. “It doesn't necessarily mean that Wendy—or any one of us—will die soon. It might simply mean that something is coming to an end or changing.”

Maybe your winning streak is coming to an end
, a mean voice in Wendy's head whispered.
Maybe you aren't up to any of this at all.

“To be honest, I'm getting a little freaked out,” Gary admitted. “Do you think we should tell someone about these tarot cards?”

“‘Excuse me, Mr. Airplane Pilot,'” said Wendy in a self-mocking tone of voice, “‘we just did a tarot reading, and now we're scared this plane is going to crash!'”

“But what if this is our one chance to say something?”

Gilda suddenly wished she hadn't offered to do the tarot card reading for Wendy after all. Gary had a point; if the cards were a warning about the flight, they
should
say something. “This plane
isn't
going to crash,” Gilda declared, hoping that by saying the words with enough certainty she could make them true. She was going to England, by jingo, and no tarot card reading was going to stop her. “And Wendy, you still have one last card to draw.”

“You've got to be kidding me. There's no way I'm drawing another card after these three.”

“But the last card is the one that tells you what you're supposed to
do
about the whole situation. It could put the other cards in a positive perspective.”

“Now boarding British Airways flight nine for London Heathrow Airport,” a smooth voice announced over the loudspeaker. Mrs. Mendelovich waved at them from across the room. There was no time left; they had to board the plane despite Wendy's disturbing tarot cards.

Gilda scooped up her tarot cards, and the four students grabbed their backpacks and joined Mrs. Mendelovich in line.

Wendy again felt light-headed as she followed the red-haired mother and daughter down the dim, carpeted ramp leading to the plane.

6

Turbulence

 

Gilda and Wendy shot each other horrified looks when they realized they weren't seated together on the plane: Gilda was wedged between Gary and Ming Fong, and Wendy's ticket had her seated across the aisle, next to Mrs. Mendelovich. “Wonderful!” Mrs. Mendelovich declared. “I seet next to Windy!”

Pointing at Mrs. Mendelovich, Gilda mouthed a silent command to Wendy:
“Ask her to switch seats!”

“I CAN'T!”
Wendy whispered in reply.

“Cheeildren!” Mrs. Mendelovich stood up in the middle of the aisle, drawing the attention of everyone in the surrounding seats along with that of her students. “I want to teell you something—how very ploud I am of you today. You are my stars. You haf made me so ploud.” A tiny tear trickled through her black eyeliner into the folds of her skin. “You haf plepared and plepared and plepared. Soon you will walk onstage, seet down to play, and—my God! Pearfect.” Mrs. Mendelovich grabbed Wendy's hand for emphasis. Wendy stiffened, and Mrs. Mendelovich gave her hand a little pat. “Each of you—like my own cheeildren—that is how ploud I am. I tell people: these three—the best I haf taught. The best! And maybe—one of you will ween.” She addressed these last words to Wendy, who suddenly wore a glazed expression.

Gilda wished she were sitting closer to Wendy so she could make a joke about “weening the competition.”

Gilda now understood Wendy's conflicted sense of fear and admiration for her teacher. Mrs. Mendelovich's big personality was both intoxicating and smothering. At the same time, Gilda found herself wishing that she were a more genuine part of this group—a true competitor rather than a lowly page-turner. What would it feel like to have somebody be that intensely “ploud” of something you had accomplished?

“So, you are all ready for England?” Mrs. Mendelovich asked the group. “You haf copies of your music, and scores all numbered for the judges? You haf your pajamas and underwears and toothbrushes?”

Everyone nodded and stifled giggles at the word
underwears.

“If not—too late now!”

Gary and Ming Fong laughed a little too uproariously at this comment.

Mrs. Mendelovich was asked to sit down because a flight attendant had just begun to describe the safety features of the aircraft. Each of Mrs. Mendelovich's students watched with rapt attention as the flight attendant talked about “floating devices” and “oxygen masks.” Gary actually scribbled some notes with a pencil.

As the plane took off, Gary and Ming Fong both pulled down their serving trays and opened music books that were virtually black with complex little lines and dots of notation. Gilda watched as they tapped their fingers on top of their plastic serving trays, pretending to play invisible pianos. Clearly, neither Gary nor Ming Fong was going to offer much conversation during the long flight.

“You missed a few notes there.” Gilda elbowed Ming Fong as she speedily drummed out the fingering of the Chopin “Ocean Étude.”

“No—no missed notes.”

Gilda pointed at Ming Fong's music. “Right there, that patch of squiggly bits was a complete mess.”

“Those are thirty-second notes, not squiggle bits. No mess—all right notes.”

“Ming Fong, I saw your middle finger move right when it should have moved left.”

Ming Fong frowned intensely at her music.

“Gilda's kidding, Ming Fong,” said Gary.

“I was completely serious.” Gilda couldn't help thinking that a big, juicy fight with Gary and Ming Fong might liven things up and make the time go faster. “Ming Fong was missing notes by the basketful.”

“Crazy Gilda!” Ming Fong donned her headphones to listen to a recording. This put a quick end to the whole conversation and the possibility of an entertaining argument.

Gilda peered across the aisle at Wendy, who was listening with an unintentionally nauseated expression as Mrs. Mendelovich described the quirks of one of the competition judges: “Professor Waldgrave, he is genius, but leetle crazy in the head,” Mrs. Mendelovich declared. “He loves nobody but his cat!”

Gilda wished she could switch seats with Wendy. Mrs. Mendelovich probably had lots of interesting stories about musicians who were “crazy in the head,” and that would at least be more interesting than being stuck between Ming Fong and Gary.

It was difficult to hear Mrs. Mendelovich over the drone of the plane engine, so Gilda decided to eavesdrop on an English couple directly behind her instead.
Maybe I'll pick up some observations for my travel diary
, she thought. Gilda had decided to make her diary as lively and interesting as possible for Mrs. Rawson, who had never been overseas in her entire life.

“I couldn't believe the portion sizes Americans have at restaurants,” the woman was saying. “I'd be a size one hundred if I stayed over here much longer. Absolutely ginormous amounts of food!”

“No wonder they're so fat with those ‘all-you-can-eat' restaurants,” said the man.

Gilda peeked over the edge of her seat to catch a glimpse of the couple. She noticed with satisfaction that both the man and the woman were slightly plump.