by Sarah Lassez
I relished their comfort, their words and vows. The Three Musketeers, my father used to call us. And just thinking of that phrase, our nickname, made me feel better—a feeling that was promptly ruined when they made the most wretched of wretched suggestions: Add up how much money you spent on psychics.
I didn’t want to do this. I knew the number was big, and as far as I was concerned that was as much as I needed to know. But my parents, both mathematicians, apparently had penchants for big numbers and continued to insist I add everything up. To get them off my back I agreed, and logged into my account at Psychicdom.
The strange thing about Psychicdom was that they actually listed, month by month, the breakdown of calls and just how much you’d spent. To me that was a little like a drug dealer handing over a baggie of coke along with a printout of the customer’s monthly usage. I was shocked that they didn’t try to hide this information, for surely seeing it in big bold print would dissuade people from calling again…but then again, anyone consumed with readings would most likely be too busy to add up all those pesky little numbers. And seriously, seeing how much I’d spent just made me want to get a reading to see if there was money in my future.
I started adding. And adding. And adding. It took a while; I had to tally each month and then move on to the next. Finally I had numbers that were staggering—and yet still I had to add them together. Hands shaking, I punched each month’s tally into the calculator. I hit enter.
Holy crap.
I don’t know what I thought it would be, maybe in the high hundreds? Well, I was wrong. It was, as Gina pointed out when I told her, more than the value of her car. I had shelled out thousands (plural) of dollars to essentially make myself miserable and torture myself on a daily basis. Though I’ve never been the queen of logic, this impressed even me as not so wise.
I vowed to stop calling. My parents, God bless them, understood the magnitude of the problem—or perhaps didn’t buy my weak promise never to call again—and immediately came up with a plan. Though my father had to work, my mother would hop on a plane and come stay with me.
The deal was, if I broke down and called, I paid her five dollars. This worked for about a day and a half. I don’t know if my mother noticed, but after that my showers were much longer and the phone was never where she’d left it. I also tended to forget things in the car, random items I had to run downstairs to get right away, and I had to do this with my cell phone, in case, God forbid, there was an emergency in the driveway. What can I say? Old habits die hard.
We finally called off the deal when I tired of the feats of deception and simply handed her a twenty (one I’d borrowed from her, as Lord knows I didn’t have cash, and she didn’t take credit cards) before curling up on the couch to make some calls. I obviously wasn’t going to change overnight, but now that I knew how much money I’d spent on psychics, I made every effort to curb my calling. And when I did call, I picked the cheap dollar-a-minute psychics, psychics who used stock photos of clouds and rainbows and aurora lights as their photos. Could they not afford to have their pictures taken? After calling a few times, I was soon convinced that it had nothing to do with money but everything to do with dedication. These cheap psychics weren’t nearly as committed. With longing I thought of my carefree former life, the good old days when I’d called expensive psychics who’d cared enough to go to Sears and get their pictures taken with turbans on their heads or wings strapped to their backs.
Before I could completely relapse, my mother whisked me off to our ranch in New Mexico, a place they’d bought upon leaving the East Coast. Going from a cramped apartment in Los Angeles to a sprawling ranch in New Mexico involves a certain amount of welcomed adjustment. For instance, if you look up in the sky? There are stars. And not the kind that drive big black SUVs and are so skinny you can see through their earlobes. No. We’re talking the celestial kind, and the sky is chock-full of them. Also, whereas in L.A. you could step out your front door, whisper “I’m going to slash the tires of your Prius,” and within seconds about thirty neighbors would be calling the cops in an effort to protect their Prii, that would never happen at the ranch. The ranch was completely isolated. Our nearest neighbor was a good half hour drive away.
If I was ever going to find the ability to recover from my addiction to psychics, it was there. Just seeing my father’s face (he pretty much looks like me, but with a beard) made me feel better, and soon I realized I’d stumbled into a rustic rehab, complete with a handful of dogs as a support group. Billy, Annie, Shadow, Attila, and Tyson all gathered around to listen to my stories. Tyson, a black pit bull my father had saved from being shot by some cowboys, was my favorite. I’d pour my heart out to him and he’d take it in, gazing at me with big brown soulful eyes, and I swear he’d nod his head at what I’d said, agreeing in his own little doggy way that Yes, Wilhelm is the Antichrist.
Part of the recovery process involved Law & Order episodes. Many episodes. It was my and Tyson’s favorite show, and my stint at the ranch rehab happened to coincide with a marathon or two. Curled on the couch together, we watched so many episodes that soon the sound of the judge’s gavel—DMM-DMMMmmm—became relaxing, as soothing as a meditation chime. For hours we’d be snuggled under a mohair blanket, settled in and refusing to move. My parents would bring us food, but we couldn’t be distracted from our cases. I felt with the utmost conviction that I had to be a member of the Special Victim’s Unit. On TV, of course. In addition to the real-life job not paying nearly as much and being a tad dangerous, I also had that instinctual reaction of puking when stressed, a reaction that really wouldn’t be fun for anyone.
Of course, to get on the show I’d have to audition. Auditioning meant facing rejection, and I honestly didn’t know if I could handle more of that right then. Though at the time it paled in comparison to what I was going through with Wilhelm, only months prior I’d been signed by another agency and then promptly dropped. I had a theory that they’d signed me simply so they could drop me. Maybe it was some rite of passage for young agents: Sign an actress, give her hope, then crush her very soul. There, now you’re ready to be a Hollywood agent! Honestly, I’d had such heartbreak with my career that I simply couldn’t fathom putting myself out there again. I was tired of putting myself out there, tired of the rejection, of auditions. It seemed like that was all I did, audition. Audition for acting roles, audition for agents, then audition men for the role of soul mate. What about me? When would I land the role of Sarah Lassez, a woman with a life?
Maybe it was the altitude—eight thousand feet above sea level can make one slightly lightheaded—but a week later I started planning my wedding. Not to Wilhelm, of course, but to a nameless, faceless groom who had yet to be cast. Truth be told, he wasn’t that important. This was about the wedding itself. The point was, I was going to get married, and the ranch was where the festivities would take place.
On long nature walks with my mother I perfected the vision. Cowboys would play fiddles as my father and I rode in on an antique horse-drawn carriage—the one sitting in the barn, left over from the ranch’s glory days, clearly destined to be a part of a wedding—the smell of hickory and sage in the air, bunches of wildflowers gathered in pails and placed on long tables amid candles and wine. Beneath hundreds of stars people would dance, the dogs would bark, and I would look positively smashing.
In fact, I decided one day as I filled my mother in on the plans, “We’ll rent out the entire motel in town to make sure all my friends come!”
My mother stumbled and tried to hide her alarm.
The funny thing was that this was the first time I’d envisioned my wedding. Oh sure, I’d debated over wedding dresses and engagement rings, but that was because I like fashion and diamonds. But the wedding itself? That had never been my thing. Too conventional. The appealing part of marriage was actually the security aspect, the part about never being alone and always having someone to wake up next to—basically, someone being contractually bound to be with me.
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But now I was kind of into the actual wedding. While we were walking, I narrowly avoided walking into a prickly pear, which naturally made me think of Wilhelm. “It’s not like you’re my wife” ricocheted in my mind. Whatever. Back to planning. I had much to decide, like what kind of shoes to wear in this rough terrain, how I could wrestle the dogs into tuxes, and where I could find a good catering company in the middle of the Chihuahua Desert.
My recovery wasn’t flawless, as the damn ranch did have a phone. It wasn’t really my fault, though. I mean, I was left alone in the house, completely unattended. That should never happen at a rehab. But there I was, all by my lonesome, with a phone, on an afternoon when my parents had gone out to get supplies. Getting supplies, by the way, is what you do when you live on a ranch, versus life in L.A., where you end up at the grocery store because you’re bored and figure you’ll kill time by studying the carb content in tofu or selecting the perfect teeth whitener.
At any rate, they were buying supplies and I was eyeing the phone. The store was so far away it’d be nightfall before they returned, and I knew I couldn’t spend the entire evening in a face-off with the phone. Well, I could, but I shouldn’t. To distract myself I flipped on the TV and was about to settle in on the couch when I spotted a book on the coffee table about my great-grandfather, Louis Marcoussis, a rather well-known cubist painter. Hmmm. Curious, I flipped it open, and then froze. There before me was a chapter on a series of works that he’d done, called “Les Devins”—which translates to “The Fortune-Tellers.”
My first thought was, Holy crap, it’s genetic. No wonder my mother didn’t seem shocked when I’d told her about my addiction to psychics—the predisposition runs in our family! I’ve got the gene! I tried to remain calm, though I seriously felt exhilarated, comforted, and strangely justified. Honestly, I must not have stood a chance.
The etchings were amazing. Each one represented a different form of divining: the interpreter of dreams, the crystal ball, the palm reader, the séance, the medium, the card reader, and several others. In fact, in one of them my great-grandfather portrayed himself as the numerologist, and, as the author mentioned, out of all the numbers that filled the etching, only one was repeated: the number twenty-two. As if my great grandfather were predicting his own death, he later died on the twenty-second of August.
I read more and realized that these were his last artworks, that he’d done this series while hiding from the Nazis in Vichy during the German Occupation. Huh, I thought. Look at that. We both have an interest in fortune-telling and we’ve both suffered at the hands of the Germans.
Well, that was all it took. I had Germans and fortune-telling on the brain and a phone that I swear was pulsating on the table behind me. Before I knew it, I was talking to Lady Lily.
Lily, a card reader, informed me that she was shuffling and that I should focus my energy on the cards. Duh, as if I were new at this.
“This first card,” she said at last, “is going to represent your situation.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Oh! The sorrow card.”
I sank into the sofa. “Go on.”
She tried to buffer her words just a bit. “The sorrow card’s not always bad, though. Anyway, it’s more about this sense of upheaval in your life I’m getting. Emotional or physical. Something has caused a disruption. Does this make sense?”
I thought of the breakup, which had evidently caused a disruption in my sanity. “Yeah, I get that.”
“Sarah,” she said, “I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to put the cards down. I don’t think I need them right now. Psychically I’m feeling your energy very strongly, what you’re going through. This doesn’t happen to me often. But it’s really strong. I’m being told that this time in your life is necessary. It’s a time to sort out your problems and allow for progress. Does that make sense?”
I said yes. I mean, I didn’t know about sorting out my problems, but I certainly had discovered a lot of them. I guess my next goal should have been to sort them, and then do that whole progress bit. Still, if she was getting strong psychic wavelengths, I wanted to know about Wilhelm, not about me. “But can you tell me how Wilhelm’s feeling?”
“Love,” she said right away, “makes people do crazy things.”
Oh my God! Yes! Tell me about it!
“He was confronted by something wonderful,” she continued, “and his worry was that he didn’t deserve it. I feel he doesn’t always think he’s deserving. Does this make sense?”
I pictured him window-shopping at Ross. “It completely does. Yes.”
“So there you were, and the intensity of his feelings scared him, because in a way he thought he’d lost you. But those are his issues. Those issues and fears, I feel they go back into his childhood. Does that make sense?”
He’d never spoken of issues with from childhood. In fact, he’d never spoken of his childhood at all. He’d glazed right over that portion of his life as if it had never happened. Right there, I figured, that said there were issues. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Okay. So he must confront the idea of losing you, of life without you. And he will do that if he hasn’t already. He loves you. That much I’m getting really strongly. It’s just a matter of when he’ll come around. My feeling is by Christmas you’ll hear from him. He’ll be back in your life before the stockings are hung.”
The reading was amazing. Just hearing he’d come back to me and that he still loved me made me feel better, which, I have to say, pissed me off. I mean, did I even want him back? Why would his loving me make me happy? I didn’t want him! Or did I? Maybe I just wanted him to want me. That’s normal. Or maybe I did want him back, just so I’d not have to face being alone, or, God forbid, have to go blindly through another maze of a relationship? The evil you know is less scary than the evil you have yet to meet. Maybe that was it. I didn’t want him back, but at least I knew him. I knew the extent of the pain he could cause me. With someone else my pain could be endless. Or, I thought with irritation, maybe I did just want him. Period.
Back in Los Angeles, a month and a half after the breakup, I was again faced with the horror of the Hunt for a Job. This would help my recovery, my mother insisted, as no longer would I have time to call psychics if I was actually working. And although this was true, the real motivating factor was the arrival of my last unemployment check. That came, and I started making calls.
It didn’t take long. Soon I was working as a personal assistant for a rich Beverly Hills woman who didn’t mind when, in the interview, I declared I’d need time to go on auditions. (Not that I was going on auditions, but I had fond memories of days when I had, and I liked saying the words.) Really, my new job wasn’t that bad. Of course, while other people my age were already doctors and lawyers, their days filled with importance, my days involved such tasks as going to Prada to get the handle on a handbag fixed. But you know what? Getting paid to go to Prada was just fine by me.
Soon, on my daily excursions to stores I couldn’t afford, I got the hint that the holidays had arrived. Whereas cheaper stores accost customers with holiday cheer, higher-end boutiques are subtle about such observances, and very easily one could miss the single red tie on a suit’s hanging display, or the white fiber-glass sculpture vaguely shaped like a wreath behind the front counter. Meanwhile, at cheaper stores off in the land of malls and other such gauche shopping complexes, tinsel abounds, Santa music blasts, and reindeer antlers sprout from employees’ heads.
All this was why the holidays had crept up on me, essentially ambushing me when I left the clean sanctity of stores such as Chanel and Christian Dior and stepped out onto a Rodeo Drive that had suddenly been adorned with yuletide décor, trees tied with stylish matching red ribbons, and tasteful and well-groomed poinsettias placed lovingly in center dividers. The holidays had officially arrived, but this lead to another, more upsetting feature of the season. Where, oh, pray tell, was Wilhelm?
There was no sign at all to indic
ate that Lady Lily had been right. My phone was silent and there was nothing of promise in his e-mails. Yep, I still checked them. The thing is, I couldn’t not check them. Checking his e-mail was a habit, a custom, like morning coffee, just a part of my daily routine…very similar to how the readings were. Adjusting my life to calling only two psychics a week had been hard, but that had been an emotional and financial necessity. But checking his e-mail? I was fine, and it was free. So why not?
But, as I said, there was nothing of interest in his e-mails, and from what I could gather, he’d still not told friends nor family we’d even broken up. That, I figured, was because it was still such a sore subject for him. Besides, if he was planning on getting back together—as Lady Lily had said—informing people of a minor split would have been pointless.
I tried confirming this with Gina one night at her house. “Right? If he hasn’t told people we’ve broken up, maybe it’s because he’s banking on it not being permanent?”
“Are you still checking his e-mails?”
“Maybe.” I eyed Mark on the other couch, my expression that of “Don’t say another word. We can’t let him know how crazy I am.” Mark, however, was completely engrossed in a football game, his eyes tracking a guy in orange and blue racing across the field, and I realized he wouldn’t have noticed me even if flames had been blasting from my head. “Should we go in the other room?”
“Nah. He’s seen it.”
“The game? It’s not live?”
“No, it was on two days ago. He saw it then.”
Clearly men and women have their own special versions of crazy. “Okay,” I said. “So back to me. I just don’t get it. Lily gave me such a great reading. I mean, it should be coming true. It’s almost Christmas.”
This last fact was confirmed by the Christmas tree Gina and Mark had bought, one tastefully adorned and glowing beautifully by the window, one with a silver ornament shaped like a bell that said GINA & MARK, FIRST CHRISTMAS, an ornament that was literally like a sword in my heart. I wanted one. I wanted to have a first Christmas with someone, and yet somehow it seemed like I was always having last Christmases with people.
