by Paisley Ray
“I used dexterity, cunning strategy, and,” with a cluck of her tongue, she winked, “mixed the whiskey sours myself in a friendly lawn bowling tournament.”
Edmond and I howled. Geneva McCarty was an eccentric hoot, and I enjoyed hearing about her shenanigans, but this was taking awhile. I looked at my Swatch. We’d been away from the shop longer than I’d expected. Moving things along, I asked, “Where’s the painting?”
She smashed her cigarette butt and stood. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
The walls in the study still emitted a newly painted fumy scent. Plate-size leaves of a grand oak tree swept against floor-to-ceiling paned window glass. Under a billow of wind, they lazily flapped like an awning. Even in the room’s disarray, I could dally endless hours staring out of the window. But not today.
My eyes veered into a box of books at my feet and I browsed titles. Some were in Latin, others French and Chinese. I read the spines: an Edgar Allan Poe intimately caressed the Grand Dame of Mystery, Agatha Christie. In between them, I ran my finger against a purple velvet case that covered a leather book jacket. “May I?” I asked.
“Of course.” Her eyes sparked magic. “Are you a believer in prophecies?”
I wondered if she knew Betts. “I’m a believer in making my own prophecies.”
Geneva and Edmond chortled. She turned her attention to Edmond, who snaked around boxes and folded tarps. The Cassandra painting leaned against the wall behind a French Provincial desk, and I caught sight of the corner of an ornate gold-leafed frame. “Edmond, do be careful.”
The book inside the velvet case had cracks in the grain and peeling leather. I’d seen this book before. A string entwined a figure eight around two circular cutouts the size of shirt buttons, holding the jacket secure. The title read Des Notes hieroglyphiques, by Nostradamus. The loops in the gold-leaf lettering were familiar. I rewound my memory. Geneva had dropped it off at our house years ago for my father, and I’d hidden the wrapped gift under the Christmas tree. What was it doing here? Holy Shit, this is a freakin’ relic. A first edition, and I’m not wearing gloves. Crap, the oils on my hands. I could be arrested by the museum police.
I used the soft velvet case as a potholder, and gripped the book by the spine. I didn’t dare open it. I interrupted. “You know this looks like a rare edition of Nostradamus.”
Geneva waved her hand around the room. “It’s a book of epigrams. Nostradamus’s translation of Horapollon of Manuthis. Are you familiar with the work?”
“Horapollo was supposedly one of the last leaders of Ancient Egyptian priesthood at a school in Menouthis, near Alexandria, during the reign of Zeno. Like in 474–491 AD.”
Edmond crossed his arms and held in a smirk, while Geneva skirted her tongue across her upper teeth. Edmond knew I had a photographic memory. Had he told Geneva? Both knew their history, but I given them my head dump. “He had to flee because he was accused of plotting a revolt against the Christians, and his temple to Isis and Osiris was destroyed. History books say that he was eventually captured, and after torture, converted to Christianity. Some believe him to be the author of hieroglyphics. This belongs under glass.”
Fluttering an arm over her head, she said, “That would be a shame. Books should be enjoyed.” She surveyed the boxes. “I’ve been meaning to catalogue these before they go back on the shelf.”
From across the room, Edmond lifted the gilded frame of the Cassandra for Geneva and me to see. Red locks of hair cascaded around a fair-skinned beauty in a blue sheath “She who entangles men,” he said.
“The very one,” she purred.
I wasn’t a man, but her beauty snared me. Sliding the book I held back into its case, I made a mental note to ask Dad about the Nostradamus book.
“Who’s the artist?” I asked.
“Evelyn Pickering De Morgan,” Edmond said.
Resting against a wall, Geneva blew a plume of smoke into the air. I cringed, but didn’t lecture her on the vices of smoking around six-figure art work. “Painted before you were born,” she mused.
“Eighteen ninety-eight,” Edmond said.
Trodding over boxes of books, I moved closer to Edmond. “The end of the Victorian era.”
Geneva’s thoughts seemed lost in memories. “De Morgan was a forward thinker, woman’s libber. She lived in the height of social and spiritual reform. Painted strong-minded women. Ones that personified spiritual empowerment.”
“The yellows swagged in her cloak depict sympathy,” Edmond said.
I shifted my stance. “And the red roses at her feet, martyrdom.”
Resting her elbows on a corner high back chair, Geneva told us, “It was a time of renewed hope for women. De Morgan was an optimist, and her paintings reflected her pursuit of spiritualism.”
“We’ll take her back to the shop,” Edmond said. “Some linseed oil and turpentine will remove the residue build-up.”
“Do be careful. She’s one of my favorites.”
Edmond carried the Cassandra into the hallway. “We’ll return her, safe and sound.”
“Rachael, I wanted to discuss a matter with you,” Geneva said. “Actually, it’s more of a project I have in mind.”
AS I TURNED THE VAN down the private drive toward Dad’s shop, I checked my watch. I had a half hour until Travis was due in town, barely enough time to get back to the house and change clothes.
My mind flitted. It was already July. Before I tapped the first domino in my plan to eliminate Betts and move Trudy out, I needed to broach a personal topic with my mother. Although my love interest from Freshman year and I weren’t conversing, I was an optimist, and needed to secure birth control before I returned to campus in the fall. I clung to the fantasy that there would be a perk to her—open mindedness in aiding me in the discovery of my sexual prowess? I didn’t want Mom to be my girlfriend, and I wasn’t up for sharing details. I just wanted her to help me protect myself from unwanted pregnancy.
“Expecting company?” Edmond asked.
I looked at the carport. “Travis!”
He stood next to his Volvo station wagon, and chewed on an apple that he’d bitten down to the core. Leaping out, I wrapped myself around his neck, and he spun me with one arm. In a t-shirt and jeans, with a shaved face and a tan, he looked even better than I’d remembered.
A noisy June bug dive-bombed my ear and I ducked. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Sorry, I got hung up at—”
Edmond carried the Cassandra painting, and held his free hand out.
“Travis Howard, this is Edmond.”
“Pleasure,” Travis said.
Edmond nodded.
“How did you know to find me here?”
“I met your dad at your house. He gave me directions.”
Hoping Dad didn’t say anything overly annoying, I flicked through the horseshoe key chain, and unlocked the barn door. Sliding it open, I stiffened.
“Mom?” She was with Betts. They hovered over a worktable in front of the Tiffany.
“How did you two get in?” Edmond asked sharply as he set Cassandra on an easel.
I wondered the same thing. Last Christmas when it was clear that Mom wasn’t coming back, Dad had rekeyed the locks on the house and the shop. If he were here, he’d be miffed.
Mom splayed her hand on the chest of a billowy three-quarter sleeve sundress that swallowed her under pleats of fabric. “Oh, Edmond. You startled me. Betts wanted some advice on staining an old dresser.” Mom pointed at the open door above the shop. “We came down the apartment stairs. Betts and I wanted a peek at the work floor.”
Did Dad forget to re-key that door?
“Hello,” Mom said to Travis.
“Travis, this is my mom and her—er—friend, Betts.”
Mom became distracted. Not by Travis, but by the painting. “Oh, that’s lovely. Who commissioned us?” Mom asked.
Us?
Edmond retrieved a folded cotton sheet, an
d moved toward the painting. “Rachael and I just picked the piece up from Geneva’s.”
Mom furled her eyebrows, making a crease between them. “McCarty?” she whispered, and stared at me. Did she know something I didn’t?
Moving in closer, Betts stroked the edges of the frame. “Cassandra of Troy?”
Having taken a Hellenistic Age elective that mostly focused on epic poems from Homer last semester, the painting piqued Travis’s interest and he walked toward it. “The daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy.”
“Seems like everyone’s familiar with Greek mythology.” Edmond said.
Travis opened his mouth, but before he articulated words, Betts interrupted. “Passionately.”
With Mom alone at the far end of the studio, I summoned my inner nerve, and scurried toward her for an ambush. Betts, Edmond, and Travis became engrossed in analyzing the details of Cassandra. I cleared my throat. “Mom?” I whispered.
Cupping my chin, she smiled. “Yes, Dear.”
“I think I need a doctor’s appointment.”
She placed her palm on my forehead. “You’re not running a fever. Is it your throat?”
“No, it’s not my throat.”
“Well then what is it?”
“It’s womanly,” I said, louder than I meant to.
Mom’s left eye twitched, and she blinked like she was sending Morse code with her eyelids. Clearing her throat, she shouted over to Edmond. “Betts is a historical connoisseur. She lived in Lyon, while she studied arts and social sciences at the local university. Tell them Betts. How you’ve traveled Europe, India, and Asia.”
Using the old pretend-I didn’t- hear-what-I-think-I-heard, Mom sank my gynie appointment request to the ocean floor. I didn’t know if I had the resolve to revive my request, and, to make matters worse, it seemed she’d dropped a quarter into her animated friend’s box of blabber.
Betts flicked her hands at an imaginary cloud that encircled the painting. “Cassandra inspired Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy.”
“Buckle in,” I whispered to no one in particular.
Travis leaned back against a stool. “Some gift. No one believed her predictions. Her visions became a source of pain and frustration.”
I met Edmond’s twinkling eyes. My heart swelled. One point for Travis. God, I wish he were straight.
Betts twisted a red-marbled stone ring around her index finger. “Some of the most insightful people are misunderstood, ignored, or thought mentally incapacitated.” Her eyes were drawn on the portrait. “Cassandra foresaw the Trojan horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own murder at the hands of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.”
I picked up a paintbrush and swept splintered glass remnants that had scattered under the suspended Tiffany. “Her prophetic insight caused her to go insane. The translations of her visions have undoubtedly been altered after the fact.” Just like yours.
“What are you saying?” my mom asked.
That your girlfriend likes the sound of her own words, I wanted to say, but I had a plan to stick to so I softened my words. “Folklore has a way of making figures more insightful than they actually were.”
Betts enlarged eyes gazed into mine as if she could intimidate my mind.
“Are your eyes dry? Do you need some drops?” I asked, not wanting any more of her loose interpretations of mythology, especially with Travis visiting. He already thought I lured trouble. Seeing Betts morph into her mother-medium-ship-O-woohoo would only add fuel to his crazies-are-attracted-to-Rachael theory.
Betts pinched her thumbs and index fingers, and rolling her head back in a phony sorcerer warm up, she began slurring, “I’m feeling a presence—a change is inevitable.”
Anger scorched my insides like burnt oil leaving a charred taste in my mouth. No shit. It’s called time, and it’s irreversible. I wanted Betts to take her con-artist ass out of my realm, and go flap her marshmallow fluff at some other schmuck’s family. How could Mom think this bullshit was real? And why did she subject Dad and me to this crap?
NOTE TO SELF
Geneva McCarty has a house full of treasure. In the short time I was there, my hands must have touched seven figures worth of furniture and rare edition books.
Travis witnessed the psychic show. Sorry I subjected him to the woo-who’s, but now he knows I’m not exaggerating about my mother and “her friend’s” realm of reality.
CHAPTER 7
Clairvoyance
My Aunt Gert was a creature of habit. Her attire varied in color, but never in style. Even in the July heat, she wore matching sweatsuit separates. Today she wore royal blue. The shade drew out her eyes, and gave her an air of sovereignty.
Gert wasn’t my biological aunt, but I considered her close family. She was my deceased maternal grandmother’s lifelong friend and roommate of twenty years. Mom, Dad, and I had spent every holiday with her that I can remember, except one. Last November, she won the raffle at the Bingo Bucket and chose a free weekend in Vegas over turkey with Dad and me.
Her new window air-conditioner motor churned in a battle against the late afternoon heat. Chin up, arms out, Dad stood frozen in front of the unit like the letter ‘T’ while Icelandic air shed relief on his sweat-stained armpits.
I wanted to have a conversation with Dad about Betts. After two wacko encounters, I was convinced she was a total bullshitter. I just didn’t know her playing field. I didn’t think Mom had given her money, but I wasn’t sure. What did my mother possess that would be of interest to Betts? I hoped it wasn’t a kinky sex thing. I wasn’t brave enough to delve there, and had erected barricades in those shaded mind-avenues. My mom had become a dodgy topic that Dad avoided, too. I’d have to navigate a conversation about her with care.
Dad organized his toolbox while Travis chalked a cue stick and broke the rack.
Aunt Gert bent below the opening of her kitchen pass-through and rotated the antenna on her old-fashioned stand-up radio. It looked more like a wood trunk with dials than something meant to produce sound. She struggled to find a non-static station.
Pleased with the spread of balls across the jeweled-purple felt pool table, Travis stepped aside and leaned against a wood paneled wall. Aunt G fiddled with the radio until Rod Stewart asked if we thought he was sexy. Aunt G did and sang along. Moving toward us, she grazed the edges of the varnished oak pool table with her fingertips, and winked at Travis. As for Travis, he was about to become a believer.
While smoking tobacco through a pipe, Aunt G made friendly hip contact with Travis’s left cheek. He fidgeted with his hands and kept his eyes on his shoelaces, as he politely grappled with the bountiful basket of mojo that she launched at him. I had to smirk. He’d accused me of magnifying the finer personality quirks of my family, but now, he was moments away from witnessing the Annie Oakley of pool. She was going to wallop his tushie, and for an encore, spit-shine the floor with it. It wouldn’t be pretty.
With bent knees, Aunt G perched her apple ass out and rested her bountiful chest at the rail. She squinted her left eye as she pulsed a Panama cocobolo stick between her knuckles. Angling downward, she skipped the cue ball over a ten stripe, and knocked a three solid into the corner pocket.
Travis’s mouth gaped. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Gert patted him on the shoulder, and moved to the side rail. She placed her back to the table, and maneuvered her stick under her left arm, to take out the orange five with one hand. Travis rolled his eyes. The solid two and six were aligned near the foot rail, and she made a show of sinking them both. Nudging Travis’s shoulder with her stick, she asked, “Are you just takin’ it easy on an old girl?”
Travis bent down and rubbed his hand beneath the table. “It has to be magnetized. Rachael probably has a remote in her pocket.”
I patted my front and rear short pockets. “Sorry, nothing but denim.”
Dad shook his head and told Travis, “Don’t feel bad, I’ve never won a game. Go easy on the boy. I’m going home t
o get a clean shirt. Trudy and I will be back with dinner.”
As soon as Dad’s truck door slammed, Gert tapped my knee with her stick. “Cold suds are in the garage fridge. Why don’t you get us all one? Help relax Travis’s pool arm.”
When I returned, she’d cleared the table. Travis collected the balls and asked her, “Will you show me how to shoot with my back to the table?”
Gert popped the cap off a green glass bottle, and poured the Rolling Rock into a beer stein with a lid. She took a long swallow and told us, “It’s simple geometry and positioning.”
I held my ponytail up, and chilled air dusted the back of my neck. From a corner stool, I asked, “Have you seen Mom since she’s been back?”
Hand rolling a ball across the table, Gert confessed, “I have.”
Travis took a shot and scratched. She lined up another, and repositioned his grip.
“And?”
Aunt G took another swallow. “I love Maeve, but her fuse has shorted. And that Betts? She’s a stinkbug. Doesn’t miss a beat, asked me all about my pool table and cues, trying to butter me up.”
“What’s the attraction?” I asked.
Gert shook the knotted white hair bun that rested on the top of her head. “The Maeve I knew had a mind of her own, and I wonder where it’s gone. I don’t know what she’s thinking, hovering in that woman’s shadow.”
Aunt G adjusted Travis’s shoulders, and stepped aside. He made contact with the cue ball but missed the pocket.
With my finger, I traced the white 33 on the Rolling Rock bottle. The printed number was a mistake on the initial run. Supposedly, it represented the number of words on the label, and wasn’t meant to be printed. In 1939, the depression was full blown, and it would’ve been too costly to correct. The misprint ended up becoming a trademark whose origin sparks outlandish intoxicated theories. I hoped Betts wouldn’t become the 33 in our family. I already wanted to forget her. “Betts makes a living trancing-out and telling people about themselves.”
