Spectral Evidence
“They think I’m a fraud.”
“They think I’m a fraud.”
I like to repeat this to myself in the mirror before I go out and do my job. It might seem weird to say something cruel right before I perform, but I thrive on the self-doubt. If I go out there feeling too confident, then I don’t work as hard. It’s easy to get lazy in this trade but I take the job seriously. For instance, the word psychic does not appear anywhere in the window of my storefront. I never say it to my visitors. I call what I do “communication.”
The other value in staying behind the curtain for a minute is that it gives the guests a chance to sniff around the parlor. They want to peruse the decor. They yearn to leaf through the handful of books I keep on the low shelf by the chairs. They’re here for a performance too. If I stepped out too soon they wouldn’t have the chance to reconnoiter, and then while I’m talking they’re casting their eyes around the room and I have to repeat myself. Or, even worse, we just never make a connection. I’m not here for the ten dollars I charge during the initial visit. That money doesn’t even cover the cost of all the coffee I drink in a day. Of course I’m in this for the money, everyone’s got to make a living, but even that isn’t the real goal. As I said, I am a communicator, and when a session works right all of us in the room play a part in the transmission. And at the end I get paid, so what’s wrong with that?
I like to start work in the morning. Not many others do. Most folks who do this kind of work don’t even open their eyes until mid-afternoon. Their days start in the early evening and run through the dawn. But that’s not my way. For one, there’s too much competition and I’m not part of a family or a crew. For instance, the Chinese work in small groups and cater only to their own. I tried to learn Cantonese for about fifteen minutes but one of them took a liking to me and explained that no Chinese person would ever go to an American woman for help, so what was the point? I didn’t take offense to it. She communicated something important to me. The only thing I can still say in Cantonese is Can I have your address? At least I think that’s what it means.
The other reason I like mornings is because it means I get mostly old people coming through the door. You know why they’re here? Most of them just want to talk and it turns out I do too. The cards I turn over at my table are secondary. Their loneliness is what blew them into my store. Isolation is as powerful as a gale force wind. There are times when we’ve been going at it for an hour or three, and before they leave they actually force a little more money on me, as if I’m a niece who should buy herself a new dress or something.
Which is why, I admit, I’m baffled by the three folks who are in the parlor right now. Can’t be more than nineteen or twenty. Girls. They might be drunk. People who are drunk at eleven in the morning are scary, no matter what. They’re so far gone they can’t even talk quietly. Even when they shush themselves they only come down to about a nine on the dial. Immediately, I figure they were passing by and decided to stumble in for a laugh. The best I can hope for is to get them in and out quickly, collect a few dollars, then greet my usual morning crowd. I’m already looking forward to hearing about someone’s endless concerns for a grandchild compared with corralling three drunks for half an hour. But work is work. They came in and I called out that I’d be there in a minute. Then I gave them five minutes to poke around. I tend to wait until they get to the books. The shelf is low and right by the chairs, so if they’re reading the titles, it means they’re probably sitting down.
“Wonders of the Invisible World,” one reads aloud. She moves on to the next. “The Roots of Coincidence.”
“Just sit down, Abby.”
“Where is this lady?”
“It’s too dark in here.”
They’re getting impatient. I give myself one more look in the mirror. I’ve been trying out this new look, a scarf wrapped round my head, one that drapes down around my neck as well. It makes me look like I’m from the silent movie era; think of Theda Bara in Cleopatra. But last week when I came out wearing it the guy in the chair asked me if I was a Muslim, and things only got tense after that. But these are three women and I tell myself they’ll appreciate the flourish. More than that, I like the look.
I give the scarf one last touch and whisper the five words to myself.
“They think I’m a fraud.”
Then it’s time for the show.
*
Two of them want to leave after ten minutes, but it’s the third who won’t get out of her chair. Abby is her name. Her head is down for most of my reading, hair hanging over her eyes. Her friends find her exhausting, but I try not to be hard on them. After all, they haven’t left her side. Abby is the only one who doesn’t ask silly questions. I know how that might sound to some. Any serious question at a storefront psychic’s must be, by definition, “silly.” I get it. There’s hardly room for all three of them on the other side of my table, it’s a little wooden countertop that’s really only made for two. But it doesn’t really matter, only one of them wants to be sitting across from me.
Abby’s mother died six years ago, that’s what brought Abby here. As soon as she says this, I find a part of my heart warming to her. Suddenly she doesn’t look all that different from my Sonia. What would she have been like if I’d died when she was twelve or thirteen? Would she have ended up in a place like this, with someone like me, or much worse than me? I find myself feeling even more grateful for her friends, no matter how impatient they’re becoming. They will not abandon her, at least not today. I wish I could remember either of their names.
“I just want to know if…” Abby whispers. Even though she seems tortured I don’t think she’s going to cry. She sounds resigned. “Is there something…after all this?”
I have a few things I usually say when people skirt close to this subject, the whole point of being here. But I can’t think of them, because I’ve never had someone ask the question so directly before.
“OK,” one of the friends says, rising to her feet. She’s the smallest of the three, but the most potent. This one is the sergeant-at-arms when they go out to the bar. She looks at me. “We’re going to miss our train back if we don’t leave now.”
The other friend is in worse shape, she sort of oozes off her chair. For a moment it’s not clear if she’ll fall flat or stand up. She stands, puts a hand on Abby’s shoulder but it doesn’t look like comfort, only a way to keep her balance. It looks, for a moment, as if she’s crushing the poor kid.
Abby nods and finally rises as well. Is it strange that I’m thinking less of Abby and more of her mother? Trying to guess what I’d want some stranger to have said to Sonia if she’d come to them pleading for answers, or at least comfort. I guess the obvious choice is to say something simple and uplifting, but I can’t do that about something so serious. Anyway, I can tell that’s not what she really wants to hear.
While I’m struggling Abby opens her bag and finds three ten-dollar bills. She hands them across the table to me and of course I do take them. We’ve been together for a half-hour, exactly as I’d expected. I hold Abby’s wrist. What should I say? What should I say? All my talk about putting on a show and I’ve got no preplanned act that will work for this.
“Yes,” I say and squeeze her hand. It’s the best I can do. The friends are already at the door, opening it and letting in cold air and sunlight. “There is more.”
Abby looks at me directly; chin up. It’s the first time I get to see her eyes. They’re red from lack of sleep. She cocks her head to the left, seems surprised to hear me being so definitive. Then she pulls her hand free and follows her friends out of my life.
My daughter died a year ago this July. Sonia went to the Turning Stone Casino in Verona and jumped from the 21st floor. We hadn’t spoken to each other in almost four years by that point. I hadn’t even known she was living upstate. The coroner’s office sent me an envelope with her last effects. Inside I found loose change and receipts from the ATM in the casino lobby, a flip phone that had somehow survived the fall, and a broken watch. It had been the watch that tore me open. I’d given it to her when she graduated high school. I didn’t know she’d kept it all that time. It’s not as if it had stopped at the moment of impact or anything, the hands weren’t even still attached. In a way, that seemed more accurate. For her and for me time didn’t stop, it shattered.
It’s nearly eight by the time I get home. I’ve been in this apartment for three decades, raised Sonia here. After Abby and her friends left, I welcomed my stream of regulars, but I thought about Abby the whole time. Most of my days are as long as this one. I leave early for work and don’t come home until dinner. All I do is sleep in this place now. I avoid it. I should admit that to myself.
I come through the front door with my late night pickup of Thai food, and in the kitchen I make a plate. For a little while—all of last year—I would eat the food right out of the container. There were times when I didn’t even take the container out of the bag. It got to be too sad. So now I pull down a plate and utensils. I find the white wine in the fridge and pour myself a glass. I even sit in the same spot I’ve been using since my daughter was old enough to sit up in a chair by herself. She made such a mess when she first learned how to eat on her own and I never acted too patiently about it. Even before she died I found myself fussing at details like that, trying to trace a line from how she fell apart to something I’d done when she was still a child. Somebody is always to blame and most of the world tends to agree it was the mother.
How do I know I’m a true New Yorker? I actually believe the city goes quiet at night. Sonia used to have trouble sleeping because we lived next to the BQE and all night she would hear the trucks and cars speeding by, but by the time I had her, I’d long learned to tune that stuff out. It was only if I got in bed with her, like if she’d woken up and couldn’t get back to sleep, that she’d point out the noise and I’d finally hear it.
Dinner done, I wash the dishes and pop the cork back into the wine. I can’t even claim I tasted the food. The apartment has one long hallway with rooms branching off from it. I pass Sonia’s old room. The door is shut. I never open it anymore. In the bathroom I take a slow shower, putting in the time to wash my hair, a nice way to slow myself down. My bedroom is at the end of the hall. I get in bed and turn off the lamp by my bedside and I listen to the sounds of this city.
“It’s too dark in here.”
The words came from the hallway, but I don’t even roll over. I know who it is.
It wasn’t a week after Sonia died that I started hearing from her. She only ever says the one thing. When it began, once I decided to believe it was happening and not just something caused by my grief, I had her body exhumed. I thought that might be what her words meant. She didn’t like being buried. But it didn’t help. She kept on talking. I begged her to tell me what she meant, but I couldn’t get her to say more. I kept longer hours at the storefront because I wanted to be around other people. When I’m alone I can’t drown her out.
“It’s too dark in here.”
She’s come down the hallway now and joined me in my room. She’ll go on like this all night.
*
A week later I get a walk-in first thing. It’s a middle-aged white guy, which is pretty unusual for me. He’s standing on the sidewalk when I show up at nine. He asks for me by name. I bring him in and ask him to wait. I slip in the back, but when he’s looking at the bookshelf, I take a moment to part the curtains and snap a photo of him with my phone. At least if he kills me the cops will find his picture. This might seem paranoid to some, but I don’t care. It strikes me as a completely rational thing to do. I’ve had more seeing-eye dogs in here than lone middle-aged men strolling in.
I look at myself in the mirror, but this time I don’t chant, not trying to charge myself up for a fine performance. Maybe he’s a cop; that’s the kind of energy he’s emitting. They still do undercover operations on storefronts. Two years ago, a guy gave away over $700,000 to a pair of psychics in Times Square. I won’t put on a show for this one, that’s what I decide. No scarf draped across my head and neck. He won’t see Cleopatra, only me.
When I get to the table, he’s already laid out the ten-dollar bill. There’s something insulting about seeing the cash before I’ve done anything. It looks new. Maybe he went to the ATM right before he showed up. Immediately, I wonder how many more fresh notes are waiting in his wallet, then I feel angry at myself for being so easily enticed.
His hair is white and thinning and slicked back and his sharp nose slopes down until the tip hovers right above his top lip. He doesn’t seem to blink, even as I sit there quietly watching him. There’s something predatory about him. As if he’s a bald eagle and I’m a fish. I’m used to people looking at me like I’m a fraud, but not like I’m a meal.
“You’re an early riser,” I say, trying to be chatty.
He holds my gaze. “Where’s the cards? Don’t you people use cards?”
“We can,” I say. “We will. But I like to talk first. It puts my visitors at ease.”
He hasn’t moved. Still hasn’t blinked. His hands are flat on the table, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer.
“What kind of things do you say? To put visitors at ease.”
I look up and count how many steps it would take me to reach the front door. Seven maybe and I can’t say I’m in any shape to run. The backroom has a bathroom, but there’s no emergency exit. I could lock myself in the bathroom and call the police, but how long would it take for him to smash his way in?“What did you say to Abby, for instance?”
He says the name with emphasis, but I admit I don’t know who the hell he’s talking about. Do you know how exhausted I am? I hardly sleep at night. At this point, I just lie there with my eyes closed listening to Sonia. How am I supposed to think of anything else?
For the first time, he moves, crosses his arms, and leans forward in his chair. “You don’t even remember her,” he says. He almost sounds happy about it, like I’ve confirmed his worst intuition.
“Abby,” I say. Then I repeat it. I’m trying to get the gears of my memory to catch. When they do I snap my fingers. Maybe I look like a child who’s happy to have passed a quiz. “She came into my store a few weeks ago.”
“One week ago.” He breathes deeply and his crossed arms rise and fall.
His eyes lose focus and he stares down at the table and the posture is exactly the same as Abby’s had been. That’s when I recognize him. It’s not their faces but the way they hold their bodies.
“Who is she to you?” I ask.
“One week ago,” he repeats.
I calculate my path to the door again. Maybe I could make it in five steps. This old girl might have one more sprint in her.
“What did you say to my daughter?” he asks.
I don’t understand where this is headed. Is he back to ask for her fee? All this over a few dollars? The story of an overprotective father scrolls before me, the kind who won’t ever let his child become an adult. I’m insulted on her behalf.
“She’s a grown woman,” I tell him. “What I said to her is confidential.”
He drops his arms and slips one hand below the tabletop so I can’t see what he’s doing. Reaching into his pocket maybe.
“You’re not a lawyer,” he says. “You’re just some scam.”
The words settle on me heavily, a lead apron instead of a slap. I find myself needing to breathe deeply, so I do but it hardly helps.
“Did she report me or something? Are you here with the cops?”
He pulls his hand out from under the table. He’s holding a tiny flashlight, like a novelty item, a gag gift. There’s a bit of fog on the inside of the protective glass, where the bulb is.
“I gave this to her years ago,” he said. “It was still on her keychain when her body was recovered.”
The blanket across my chest feels even heavier now. I think I might get pulled down, right off the chair.
“What did you say to my daughter!” he shouts and he throws the flashlight at me. It flies wild, goes over my shoulder and into the back. As soon as it leaves his hand he looks horrified and chases after it. He sends his chair flying sideways and it knocks into the shelf. A few of the books fall to the carpet. He hurtles through the curtain and he’s in the back and suddenly I’m alone. I get up to run for the door. I’m sure I can flag down a cop car on the street. But then I hear her.
“It’s too dark in here.”
Now I plop right back down onto the chair, can’t move my limbs. My mouth snaps shut and so do my eyes. What did I say to his daughter?
Yes. There is more.
He steps back through the curtain and he’s got my scarf in one hand, Abby’s flashlight in the other. I wonder if he’s planning to strangle me with the scarf and, for a moment, consider that I’d deserve it. The death of my child was already my fault, so why not his as well?
“I thought you would’ve run,” he says quietly. He stands over me, holding up the scarf and the flashlight as if he’s weighing the two.
“There’s nowhere for me to go,” I say.
He sits on the ground right there beside me. It’s strange to see a man my age cross-legged on a carpet.
“I won it for her at the Genesee County Fair,” he says of the flashlight. “It’s funny what kids hold on to.”
Now I understand why he grabbed my scarf. He’s patting at his face, his tears.
“Maybe I said something to her?” he asks. The words come out so quietly that my first instinct is to lean in closer, but he isn’t talking to me. I need to get an ambulance for him. I rise from my chair and slip my cell phone out of my pocket.
“I’m going to call someone for you,” I say and he nods softly. Now I’m surprised I thought he seemed angry, when he’s only delirious with despair.
After I call I crouch down beside him and wait for the sirens. This makes my knees start hurting instantly, but I can endure it. I grasp one of his hands between two of mine and I remember the way I touched his daughter when we spoke. They have the same delicate wrists.
I’m afraid to tell him what I said to her but not because I fear for my safety. Instead, I wonder if Abby thought I meant something hopeful when I told her there was more to existence. If she lost her mother, if she missed her mother, maybe she thought I meant the woman waited for her across the veil, that they’d be reunited in a better place. Why wouldn’t she think that? It’s the story people prefer. What if I told her father the same thing now? Would he be tempted to try and join Abby? I couldn’t be responsible for such a thing, so I say nothing and simply hold his hand.
The EMTs arrive and help Abby’s father to the ambulance. After taking some information from me they drive off with him, then I go back inside the store. For the first time, I can see the place like so many others must: the silly dim lighting, the bookshelf of mystic texts. It’s such a cliché. No wonder my visitors viewed me as a fraud.
I go to the back and make myself some tea. While the water boils, I lift the chair Abby’s father knocked over. I gather the books that fell, but instead of putting them back on the shelf, I go in the back and drop them, one by one, into the trashcan. I find the scarf and leave it in the garbage with the books.
My work changed after Sonia died. There is an afterlife and it’s worse than the world we live in. That’s what I know. I don’t understand why I kept the news to myself.
“It’s too dark in here.”
The kettle whistles in the other room but I can still hear my daughter. I suppose that will never stop. I make my tea, then I sit at the table and wait for visitors. From now on whoever comes to see me is going to hear truth.
