The Reluctant Fortune-Teller

by Keziah Frost

  “Nope,” said Carlotta, with special emphasis on the ‘p.’ “Mortals.”

  Norbert understood Carlotta’s mood. He saw from his first mention of Edith that there was an old rivalry between the two women. He also knew that Carlotta, from the beginning, had intended to control him and his fortune-telling work, and had been disappointed when he didn’t let her. He could almost read her mind today: If I don’t get to run Norbert, I’m certainly not going to allow Edith Butler to do it.

  Carlotta turned right into the long ginkgo tree–lined driveway of the palatial Center for Deeper Understanding. Yellow leaves trimmed the road and garnished the lawns.

  “‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity’—Ecclesiastes I,” she concluded the game, as was the custom.

  As the little band in her car craned their necks at the elegant white-pillared mansion surrounded by gardens and orchards, Carlotta pulled around to the parking lot off to the side.

  They walked along a path laid with wide flat stones that were inscribed with sentiments such as “Love is all” and “Be here now.”

  Norbert observed that Margaret was in a joyful hurry, and that Carlotta was rushing along, determined to get in front of everyone.

  Walking behind them all, Norbert reflected: both Carlotta and Edith were managers. But Edith was a manager with a staff and a veritable castle. How would Carlotta fare on the territory of her opposite number?

  Moved by the natural prettiness of the place, in spite of herself, Carlotta stopped. Margaret, who had been looking down at her orthotic shoes to avoid a mishap, ran into her.

  “Oh! Pardon, Marguerite,” exclaimed Carlotta. “Je m’excuse.”

  The whole gang stopped together for a moment and soaked in the breathtaking charm of this spot. Ivy poked her head over the top of Norbert’s man purse, to twitch her nose and inhale all the new information in the vicinity. The birds sang, chanted and whistled, seeming to sing of the gratitude in their hearts to be living here, in Heaven. The lake shimmered and rippled in the distance behind the Center. Across the harbor, on tree-covered Black Bear Island, threads of smoke arose from the cottages of wealthy tourists. All around the Center, there were marigold borders, apple and pear orchards, and vegetable gardens exuberant with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers. The bursting fall color, combined with the aesthetic design of the Center, bewitched them all. For Norbert, the perfection here was so touching that he felt tears rising to his eyes, touched to behold so much concentrated loveliness.

  “What a place to come with our paints and easels, huh?” breathed Margaret.

  “It’s like a place of enchantment!” assented Birdie.

  They had arrived at the bottom of the staircase when the door burst open.

  “Carlotta Moon!” crowed Edith as she ushered Norbert and the Club into the entryway of the Center. “I thought you were dead!”

  “Edith Butler,” answered Carlotta. “How gracious of you!”

  The little group laughed.

  “I see,” said Edith, “that your Evil Cabal has gotten smaller over the years.”

  The little group laughed again, this time less gaily.

  Norbert said, “So you all know each other? Then I don’t have to introduce anyone?”

  “We go way back,” affirmed Edith. “Several lifetimes, in fact.”

  “Funny, Edith, I only recall this lifetime,” protested Carlotta.

  “And at your age, I bet you can’t even do that very well!” Edith looked like a merry little otter.

  Carlotta recoiled from the insult. For once, it seemed that she could think of nothing clever, and only repeated, “Edith! How gracious of you!”

  The Club sensed trouble. Carlotta was at a disadvantage. She never repeated a sarcastic reprisal. Her comedy was always fresh.

  Margaret, ever-supportive, said, “Carlotta, hahaha! ‘How gracious of you’—that is so funny!”

  “I know!” chortled Edith. “And she’s said it twice!”

  For a moment, no one moved. This visit was off to an awkward start.

  Edith amended, “I’m just goofing around, you know. I’m only two years younger than Carlotta myself. Seventy-eight and proud of it! Anyway, we revere age here at the Center for Deeper Understanding.”

  Edith turned to the other ladies. “Margaret Birch! Hello, my dear! Birdie Walsh! How are you, you dear soul?” Edith embraced each in a bear hug. “I’ve been waiting for the day you all would come to my Center, and see what we’ve built here. I often think back to our early experiments in our living rooms with oracle decks and astrology charts. That’s where this all started, really! We were all such good friends, too!” Edith stopped and contemplated Carlotta. “Well, whatever may have happened in the past, chalk it up to our lower level of development at the time. I’m sure we are all of us much closer to our higher selves by now!”

  Birdie looked at her dreamily, and Margaret seemed to be falling under Edith’s spell, too. Carlotta looked annoyed, and glanced back toward her car as if she were thinking of leaving already.

  Edith turned her full attention to Norbert. “Norbert Z, you are a vibrational match for the Center for Deeper Understanding. You belong here at this time. Now, before we get to the group past-life regression, I’ll show you all around the Center.”

  Moving faster than any of them, Edith ran them around the rooms of the mansion.

  On the right of the entryway was the Crystals Shop. Edith sped through the aisles and around the tables, pointing out necklaces and earrings made of jade (“to increase love and nurturing”), iolite (“to promote psychic healing”) and kyanite (“excellent for protection while channeling and visualizing”). She waved toward the tarot cards, and let Norbert and the Club sniff the incense and essential oils. There were elephants and Buddhas and blue-skinned Hindu goddesses—or were those gods? Norbert really didn’t know what he was looking at, but he liked the colors.

  On the left of the entryway was the Great Room of Compassion and Loving Kindness. Indeed, each room had a name, which was announced by a ceramic plaque just outside its door: Acceptance, Peace, Wisdom, Healing, One Hand Clapping, The Third Eye, and Synchronicity, among others. Each room had its own character expressed through decor that harmonized with the name it had been assigned.

  Edith showed Norbert and his guests the vegetable gardens and orchards behind the Center. She spoke as if only Norbert was there, and the Club was invisible to her. Striding down the paths in the streaming rays of twilight, she talked on and on, allowing no interruption.

  “Ah!” cried Edith. “I hear one of you sighing! Because it’s so beautiful here, or because you’re out of shape and can’t walk as fast as I can? Ha ha! Yes, Norbert, I knew if you just saw it, the magic of this place would reel you in. Look at those sweet peppers!

  “Everyone who works here is welcome to share in the bounty, Norbert Z. It’s all organic.”

  Rushing forward, Edith recited a list of the classes and services that the Center provided. Norbert did not understand what some of them were: gong meditations, spiritual retreats, soul retrievals, séances, reiki healing, belly dancing, seeing and clearing auras, and connecting with angels.

  “We also offer Laughing Yoga. Laughter is a life-extender, Norbert Z. You should try it. Everybody in a room for an hour, just going ‘ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.’ It’s so healthy.”

  She laughed a full belly laugh that filled the air with merriment. Edith had a contagious kind of joy about her, and Norbert liked that. When she kept on laughing, Norbert finally couldn’t resist, and the two of them laughed together, although for the life of him, he didn’t see what was so funny. Margaret and Birdie joined in, too, because they liked to laugh. Carlotta observed them all as if they’d gone mad.

  Edith’s mirthful face abruptly composed itself into a businesslike one.

  “There’s still one thing we do need, Norbert Z. And that’s w
hy I’ve invited you here today. What we need is a past-life regressionist. I know you could do the job. There is a huge demand for past-life readings now. People want to understand themselves, and understand their own behavior patterns, or why certain things keep happening to them. A past-life reading can help a person to make sense of things, to heal, to move an emotional block out of the way and go forward.”

  Norbert asked, “Are you saying you don’t personally believe in—uh—past lives?” This topic was very strange to him.

  “No, I am not. I actually remember all my past lives, Norbert Z. Being able to remember them is very helpful to me in this life.”

  Norbert was curious, in spite of himself. “Can you give an example?”

  “I could give thousands. That’s how many past lives I’ve had.”

  Norbert could feel the Club shifting behind him.

  “Just one would be good, thank you.”

  Edith’s furry brows jumped up and down over her eyes, as they did when she spoke of anything that really delighted her.

  “Well, whenever I have any kind of a battle to fight in this life, I just remember my life as an Aztec warrior.”

  “You were an Aztec warrior?” Norbert tried not to let his eyes travel the roundness of Edith’s body.

  Carlotta made a sound that started out as a guffaw but turned into a cough. Margaret and Birdie were listening in rapt attention.

  Edith, deaf to Carlotta, said, “Yes, indeed, Norbert Z. Of course, when I was an Aztec warrior, I was in much better shape than I am now.” Edith put her hands on her plump hips, as if remembering her warrior stance.

  Norbert asked, “And thinking about being an Aztec warrior helps you somehow in this life?”

  “Absolutely. I know that I am brave and strong inside, no matter what people see on the outside. So I have no fear. Do you see?”

  Norbert answered, “Honestly, Edith, I have to admit, I don’t see. I don’t understand any of this.”

  Edith asked, “You do know what reincarnation is, I assume?”

  Norbert put both hands up to his glasses to adjust them. “Sort of. It’s the belief that when you die, your soul is born again in the body of a baby somewhere?”

  “That’s as good an explanation as any,” encouraged Edith.

  “If you call that an explanation,” sniped Carlotta.

  “Well, of course, Carl Jung, Jack London, Henry Ford and many other great minds could explain it with more words,” said Edith, easily scoring off Carlotta once again. “They were all proponents of reincarnation. But we’ll go with Norbert’s understanding of the process for now.”

  “But I don’t understand it,” protested Norbert. “Why wouldn’t we remember if we’d had a previous life as another person? And what is the point of being reborn?”

  Edith seemed glad that Norbert was asking questions. “We come back again and again, because we are here to learn, for the purpose of advancing our souls.

  “As to why we don’t remember,” Edith went on, “a few lucky people, like myself, do remember. The Buddha remembered all his lives, including one as a goldfish, I think.

  “Now, I myself remember lives both human and animal. For example, when I was a brown bear, I wasn’t the vegetarian I am today, you know. Oh, no. I used to love to eat fish! Yes! I used to catch them with my claws in the icy river. How they wriggled when I bit their heads off!” Edith said this with a nostalgic sigh. “There are things you can enjoy as a brown bear that just wouldn’t give you the same kick in your life as a human. This time around, I’d no more eat a fish than dig a den to hibernate in.”

  Carlotta smiled brightly for the first time today, as if entertained by the images this narrative created in her mind.

  “Now, Norbert Z, you ask why people don’t remember their past lives, and of course, you are right—most people don’t. They might have had some memories as little children, but if these are not encouraged, the pictures fade away. However, when I was a little girl, I used to say to my mother, ‘Remember when I was the mommy, and you were the little girl?’ Most mothers would just laugh and think that was silly, and the memory would not be caught, you see. But my mother was very forward thinking and knew all about reincarnation, and so she asked me to tell her more. There I was, only four years old, and telling her about the lifetime when she was my daughter and I was her mother, and I always gave her candy and let her stay up late at night. My mother wrote all these memories down for me, and as I grew, we added to them. That’s how I came to have so many.

  “However, my situation was exceptional. Most people who want to know about their past lives need to be hypnotized as adults in order to retrieve those memories. And that’s where you come in, Norbert Z. As a past-life regressionist, you just hypnotize people and help them go back to a buried memory of a previous life.”

  Norbert protested, “I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Norbert, we need your talent here. You can’t refuse to at least consider my offer.”

  “And yet,” put in Carlotta with her brilliant smile, “he has.”

  Margaret giggled supportively. They all knew how hard this was for Carlotta, to now be a captive audience of her old rival. Here she was, forced to take a tour of Edith’s impressive institution of education—just the sort of “Center” that Carlotta herself would have loved to found and dominate.

  Edith went on as if Carlotta had not spoken. “I’ll teach you everything I know about past-life regression, Norbert, but you are the one who has the gift. And as for hypnotism, that is easily learned. There’s nothing to it.”

  Norbert had a strange sensation of what a past-life regressionist might call déjà vu. Not too long ago, he had been urged into trying something he didn’t believe in, with the words “there’s nothing to it.” That time, it had been Carlotta urging him to tell fortunes with cards.

  “What gift are you talking about, Edith?” asked Norbert.

  “You have the gift of clairvoyance. I saw that when you read my cards. That’s your qualification, right there.”

  Norbert had given up arguing with people about his so-called “gift.” He did not know what to make of Edith’s ideas and her offer. Her enthusiasm was overpowering. He would need time alone to think about it.

  “As a faculty member, you will be listed in our catalog with your photo and a bio. That catalog goes all over the country. Your fame will spread. You will also have access to our orchards and vegetable gardens for your personal use. You will have the privilege of taking any classes here for free. I like my faculty to be well-informed of all aspects of our work, and to cross-promote classes.

  “As I said, I will provide you with training, books and all resources, and I will, of course, pay you for your time. Would ninety dollars per hour be in your fee range? Just for the training hours, of course. Once you begin working with our clients, I will pay you 50 percent of clients’ registration fees for our services and courses. Fifty percent would work out to a professional fee of $110 for a private, past-life reading session for one person. And then, of course, for group regressions—those are two hours each—we would require five to seven people to make a group—I would pay you $1,000 to $1,400 per two-hour session.”

  There was a collective sharp intake of breath from the Club.

  Norbert’s reflexive smile straightened. He was shocked.

  Edith amended quickly, “Of course, the percentages are somewhat negotiable, Norbert Z. I want you to be happy here.”

  Norbert wondered if he was at yet another turning point in his life—he, who just five months ago would have thought all his turning points were behind him. He was about to speak, but Edith stopped him.

  “Just try the group past-life regression as a participant tonight, Norbert Z. Then take a little time to think about it, and you can let me know. No obligation!”

  Norbert was dazzled and befuddled all at the same
time, and he sensed a similar brew of sensations in the Club who stood behind him. On the one hand, the amounts of money Edith had mentioned were staggering. Could she be serious? Norbert was living simply and getting by; still, the thought that he could rebuild security for future years by earning such sums—well, he had no choice but to consider it, at least. His obstacle was that he didn’t have the foggiest idea about reincarnation. But if he could learn about it, as he had learned about card reading, well, this would be something like taking a job promotion and getting a raise, wouldn’t it?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Two of Hearts:

  An adventure. Open your mind. Loosen up. Prepare to have some fun.

  Edith led the little band back into the mansion with the promise that they were “going to love the past-life regression class.” It was in the One Hand Clapping Room.

  A man who looked like an unhappy professional wrestler stepped into the doorway after Edith ran through. He stood with his legs spread, taking up as much space as possible. He extended his hand and grasped Norbert’s. His grip hurt the fine bones in Norbert’s hand.

  “Stanley Oppenheimer,” asserted the bald-headed, barefoot man, making severe eye contact with Norbert. “Astrologer,” he added, in a tone that said, Top that, if you can.

  Norbert, smarting, answered, “Norbert Zelenka.”

  He realized that this man was claiming the room as his own territory by blocking the entrance and forcing everyone to submit to his aggression as price of entry. Norbert wondered if he would go easier on the gentler sex.

  “Ow!” wailed Margaret. “You hurt my hand!”

  Stanley paused; apparently people did not usually call him on this maneuver of his. “I apologize,” he managed, before stretching his pincer toward Carlotta.

  “Let’s just wave,” said Carlotta, passing so close to him he was forced to step aside. Carlotta extended a protective arm in front of Birdie.

  “My name is Carlotta Moon, this is my friend Birdie Walsh, and the woman you just injured is our dear friend Margaret Birch.”