Once Upon Another Time (27 page)

Katelyn took the
Pepsi out of my hand.  “I don’t know why you feel funny drinking around Cacey,
but get over it.  Let’s go get a margarita.”  She pulled me to my feet.

As we walked
toward the kitchen, she cinched the wide, cream leather belt just a little
tighter around the waist of her apricot crocheted sleeveless top.  “So, is
there anything you’d like to ask the doctor?”  She smiled up at me. 

“What do you
mean?”

“You know.”  She
glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping.  “Want me to share any
sexual pointers with you for your love making with Gavin?”  She had a devilish
twinkle in her eye, while flashing her signature lady-like Southern Belle
smile.

I rolled my eyes. 
“No, we haven’t even
done
it yet.”

Her eyebrows shot
up.  “Hmm, really?”  Her brow wrinkled as we walked into the kitchen, which had
me wondering when Gavin and I
were
going to make love.

It wasn’t long
before the house filled with attractive women sporting various shades of
highlighted blonde hair.  All of them dressed in pastel-colored cropped pants
and sleeveless summery blouses with sweaters loosely tied over the shoulders. 

As they settled
into chenille-upholstered chairs, and cushiony black walnut framed loveseats, I
noticed that even though the women were casually dressed, there was enough
bling in the room to fill a mineshaft.  Katelyn and I mingled, but I felt oddly
out of place in my blue jean skirt, red sleeveless knit top, and non-designer
sandals, and not sporting even one tiny piece of bling.  Plus, next to all
those Davinci Veneer smiles, my store-bought whitening strips didn’t stand a
chance.

After a while, Cacey
took center stage and tapped the side of a champagne glass with a silver fork. 
Remarkably, the gentle chime of the crystal commanded everyone’s attention.

“Well ladies,
aside from the luncheon I have invited a surprise guest,” she announced
buoyantly.  “I think most of you know this person but here’s a hint.  In less
than ten minutes, I guarantee this person will know you intimately.”  Cacey
looked as if she could barely contain her exuberance.

“It’s Danny the
stripper from The Sugar Shack!” a woman shouted.  The room filled with cat
whistles, cheers, and laughter. 

Well, so much
for the stereotypical uptight suburban housewife.

Again, Cacey
tinkled the champagne glass, and the women quieted.  “No, I’m sorry, it’s not
Danny.”  The women let out a soft collective groan.  “However, that’s not a bad
idea,” Cacey said under her breath.  “Anyway, our guest this afternoon is…drum
roll please--Mother Paula!  And each of you will receive your own private
reading.”

I figured Mother
Paula must have been a pretty good scam artist because on a scale of one to
ten, the applause and cheers in the room had knocked Danny down to a six. 

“Have fun and bon
appétit!”  Cacey said, practically jumping up and down.

Since everyone had
at one time or another visited Mother Paula, Cacey decided that I should go
first.  Mother Paula had set up shop in an upstairs guest bedroom seated at a
round blue velvet draped table, her eyes closed as if she were meditating.  The
quiet tinkle of gently blown wind chimes projected from a boom box on the
floor.  A sound I’d heard each time I’d seen Matt.  The room-darkening drapes
drawn for full special effect. 

Except for a dozen
or so flickering red votive candles surrounding Mother Paula, there was no
other light in the room.  Her hair was deep black, shot through evenly with
lightning bolt streaks of gray, similar to the character Elizabeth, in Mel
Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”  Her thin straight lips were a gash of red. 
Aside from that, she looked rather ordinary in her summery red print dress and
silver jewelry that glistened when it caught the candlelight.  

For some odd
reason, a chant I learned as a child played in my head on an endless loop
. 
Sizzle, sizzle, crackle, pop!  Stir it in the witch's pot.  Bones, stones, and
frog eyes, too.  Add worms and gizzards to the stew. 

Mother Paula’s
eyes suddenly snapped open.  Her dark raven-like eyes studied me quizzically,
as I sat down across from her.  I couldn’t understand why she was looking at me
that way. 

 “Hello,” she
said.  Her voice was gentle and soft.  “I’m Mother Paula and you are?”

Just as the words
“snake charmer” popped into my head, I noticed her eyes narrow and her brow
furrowed ever so slight. 

“Ah, Aubrey,” I
said, while feeling a bit intimidated. 

She picked up a
set of tarot cards and shuffled them.  “Would you like to shuffle the cards?”
she asked sweetly.

For some reason I
had expected a crystal ball.  “No thank you, I’ve always been somewhat of a
klutz at things like that.”

She put the stack
of cards down, and with one sweeping motion of her hand, fanned them out on the
table in front of me.  “Please select any six cards you wish, but first you
must be in the correct frame of mind,” she said.  “Concentrate on questions
that might be unresolved issues in your life that need fixing.  Don’t say
anything out loud, just focus.  Try to consider questions that apply to your
past, your present, and your future.  Ask yourself how your life was before,
what it’s like now and how you want it to be in the future.  Think about this
for a moment,” she said, as she lowered her head and closed her eyes.

While feeling a
bit silly for participating in something so ridiculous, I stared at her
wondering how long the ritual was going to last, when she raised her head
slightly and opened one eye to look at me.  “Sometimes it helps if you close
your eyes.”

I closed my eyes
thinking she was the one who was supposed to have all the mystical powers.  So
why couldn’t she answer these questions herself?  After pretending to think
about the questions, I opened my eyes and told her I was ready.

She had me pick
six cards from the table and put them in a row in front of me, from left to
right.

“Good,” she said. 
“The order in which you have selected the cards has determined a sequence that
has a beginning, middle, and end.  This first card is called the
Fool
.  Placed
here it represents inner feelings of how you view yourself right now.”

Wonderful, so
right off the bat she was telling me I have self-esteem issues.

“You must remember
that the fool is not always foolish.  Think of it in terms of someone who makes
people laugh, like a standup comic.”

Gavin was always
commenting on my sense of humor, maybe that’s what the card meant.

“The actions of
the fool, however, can be something totally different.  It could mean being
perceptive and cunning, meaning no one can fool you.”  Mother Paula’s stare
pierced mine.

Like defending a
client, I thought.  There’d been times when I sensed all twelve jurors had
already made up their minds that my client was guilty, but in the end, I’d been
the one who had mopped up the courtroom floor with my opponent.  Okay, I bought
that. 

“This next card,”
Mother Paula continued, “is--”

“Death!”  I
blurted out nervously, as I stared at the ominous sickle-carrying skeleton
draped in black.  “Can we pretend we’re in Vegas and trade this card for a
different one?” 

She smiled
thinly.  “We’re not in Vegas.  Again, it isn’t what it seems.  The card in this
position could actually be a good thing.  Its position represents what you want
most right now.”

“Dying?”

“No, no, no.  It’s
a metaphorical death, like a dying of old ways.  It could mean you are about to
or are currently going through an adjustment period in your life.” 

Ah-huh, my more
positive attitude, my new boyfriend, my life finally becoming normal…
 I
was beginning to think I was actually catching on to the card game.

Mother Paula went
through the next four cards quickly and got right into the reading.  I politely
listened as she took obvious stabs at things such as I had suffered great
heartache. 
Hellooo!
  What woman my age hadn’t suffered from a broken
relationship, a parent dying or a husband falling off a cliff?  Then she told
me I had a son. 

Still, nothing
earth shattering, since I was wearing a bracelet with a “#1 Mom” charm and she
had a fifty-fifty chance and guessed I had a son and not a daughter.  After ten
minutes of what seemed like a lot of generalized information, she told me she
was going to attempt to do what she called a “cold reading.”  She told me visions
were coming to her and that she was going to have her Indian spirit guide help
her.

It took every
ounce of strength for me not to roll my eyes, as I thought back to my childhood
and my parents who were mystified by such silly things.

“Someone’s trying
to communicate with me.  I see a gentleman in a blue long-sleeved shirt--his
hair is a sandy color.  Do you know who that might be?” she asked urgently.

I didn’t want to
seem uncooperative, but I thought that if she could see him, why couldn’t she
just ask him herself.  Or she could have had her Indian guide ask his name. 
Perhaps she hadn’t paid her spirit helpers enough to get that kind of
information.

Just as I was
about to open my mouth to respond, my interest piqued, as Mother Paula seemed
to be going through some sort of metamorphous.  She paused in her speaking and
rested her palms flat on the table.  Her raven eyes had a mysterious, faraway
look, when suddenly her head tilted back and her eyes rolled to the back of her
head.  A humming sound rattled up in her throat.  “Ohmmmmmmmmm.”   

“I see a man,” she
said.

Her voice had a
raspy monotone that sounded nothing like the sweet voice she had been speaking
in seconds before. 

“He’s teetering
someplace up high...the ledge of a building perhaps.  No, I see a body of
water, crashing waves, thick fog…he’s on a cliff.  The man’s name is…  Mike,
Monk, Mark…Matt.  Yes, his name is Matt.”

Although I’d never
known Cacey to pull such a mean joke, I knew someone was behind the charade and
I wasn’t amused.  

“You had an
argument, he left, it’s foggy outside.”

I cupped my hand
to my mouth while feeling faint.  Laura was the only one I’d told, but she
wasn’t even at the luncheon and she never would have blabbed that to anyone. 

“There’s another
man...he’s very tall and very handsome.  This man is in your life now.  He’s
your soul mate...his name begins with the letter...B.  No…the letter…G,” Mother
Paula said.

Gavin! Gulp.

While her eyelids
fluttered and her face contorted into twisted expressions to make her look like
a natural for One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I looked around the room for a
camera.  Surely, Ashton Kutcher was going pop in at any moment to tell me I’d
just got Punk’d.

“I see a woman
with hair like fire,” she muttered.

Vanessa!

Mother Paula began
to mumble, her words were barely audible.  I practically leapt over the table
and turned an ear toward her, in an effort to hear what she was saying. 

“I see a jewelry
store.  The woman with the fiery hair is with the tall, handsome man whose name
begins with the letter G.  She loves the man...they are looking at
rings...engagement rings.”

“This happened in
the past, right?”  I eagerly asked, while totally caught up in the moment.

While Mother Paula
was doing her Ray Charles imitation, her head thrown back, swaying from side to
side, I was thinking, okay, so it doesn’t necessarily mean the man is Gavin. 
Vanessa probably attracts lots of tall, handsome men, someone named George
perhaps.

“No, this is the
future,” Mother Paula blurted out.

I suddenly found
myself clinging to Cacey’s words, hoping that what I was hearing was the ten
percent error portion of the reading.

“The handsome man
has a mark...a birthmark on his thigh...it’s in the shape of a...” 

Mother Paula’s
voice trailed off and I was thinking I had heard her say it was in the shape of
a...car?

“No!  A star!” she
shouted.

Okay, that
didn’t just happen.

I splayed my hand
over my heart that was beating faster than the beat of tribunal drums at a
Survival outcast party. 

Mother Paula let
out a loud gasp, her chest rattled as if she were taking her last breath.  “The
two men…one Matt and one whose name begins with the letter G are...they are...”

Are what for
heaven’s sake?

“Are one in the
same!” she cried out, as her head collapsed to her chest and her arms fell limp
at her sides. 

I felt my eyes
bulge from my head, as I stared intently at her for any sign of movement.  Just
as I wondered if maybe her Indian spirit guided her over to the other side and
left her there, her head popped back up like a Jack-in-the-box. 

Her face looked
refreshed, as if she’d just had Botox lift.  She let out a deep breath, smiled,
and in a very gentle calm voice asked, “Is there anything you would like to ask
me about your reading?”

Matt, Gavin, even
that little witch Vanessa--she saw them all!  Seeing that Ashton never showed
and knowing my ticker couldn’t take any more excitement, I quickly said, “I
don’t think so,” in a voice that sounded as if I’d been sucking on helium.

The shocked
expression on the faces of the plaintiff and his attorney as the judge ruled in
my favor, brought to mind the unexpected happenings in my own life.  However,
thoughts concerning my life had dissipated when I saw relief and appreciation
in the eyes of my client.  I had won the battle to protect her child from the
monster whose only right to fatherhood was the sperm he had produced, which
made me wonder who was going to help me win my own battle to keep my sanity.