One
According to the flashing gas pump symbol on the instrument panel, I needed gas. There goes half my paycheck. But, since being stranded on I-95 sounded like more excitement than I could tolerate today, I took the next exit and pulled into a gas station/souvenir store advertising peaches, pecans and free Disney tickets.
But wait, I envisioned a bright light at the end of this tunnel. There will be pecan logs! Lord knows I have a weakness for the things. Even though when I was a child and my family had taken our annual Myrtle Beach excursion, my cousin had bought three pecan logs for a dollar at a roadside convenience store. It was only after he had eaten two, and half of the third one, that he noticed little white worms swimming around in the creamy white center. I couldn’t bring myself to eat one in the forty years since, but now I was salivating like a mad dog just thinking about the pecan wrapped nougat as I pulled up to the gas pumps. After putting the Jeep in park, I was pulling the keys out of the ignition when a sign jumped out from the surrounding political propaganda and immediately grabbed my attention.
Lady Wonder
Psychic
A psychic? There’s a thought. How does one know if a psychic has a real gift or is just another scam artist looking for a quick buck? Was it possible for someone to predict the future? For real? Perhaps tell me how to plan for the next catastrophe in my life before it swallowed me whole? Intending to find out, I cruised past the pumps causing the flashing gas symbol to emit a pesky little tone.
Now let me just say this from the get go. I am a huge believer in fate. In my opinion, nothing happens purely by chance. There is a reason for everything. Even for my life being the pronounced travesty that it is. The fact that I needed gas and pulled into this little South Carolina town, then into this gas station, must have been predestined. And the fact that there happened to be a psychic housed right next to the gas station? Well, it was definitely a sign not to be ignored. Hey, I’ve never been to a soothsayer. What could it hurt?
I pulled behind the doublewide trailer with what looked like a brand spanking new silver Lexus ES 350, and a sparkling black Hummer with those expensive rims that spin when the vehicle isn’t moving, parked under an aluminum shed. The thought crossed my mind that being a medium must be quite the lucrative business and she certainly had the “location is everything” down pat. Either that, or she was married to Snoop Dogg.
Then I noticed 6 cars, ranging from a shiny new Mercedes to a beat up old pick up truck, in a dirt lot behind the shed. At least an inch of dust settled on the Jeep, as I rode down what must be a frequently traveled, heavily rutted road, and parked beside a red Dodge Neon that looked like a child had taken tap dancing lessons on the hood.
Okay, forgive me for being catty. However, if I could afford a Lexus and a Hummer with fancy wheels, I could certainly afford a load of gravel or oyster shells for my driveway. One of my pet peeves is a dirty ride.
As I strolled to the door I noticed a sign, which read “No Children”. Good! Now don’t get me wrong. I love children. Especially the ones you can send home. At any rate, the sheer volume of sound they produce immediately puts my brain in migraine mode. I just wasn’t up for it this morning.
I opened the door slowly, having no clue what to expect, and found at least 12 members of what I assumed to be the local society, squeezed into the waiting room. At first glance, they didn’t strike me as being a Sunday go to meeting church crowd. Then again, most churches I have attended tend to frown upon the art of fortune telling altogether. This looked like a well-seasoned bunch of folks. Not exactly what I would call card-carrying members of the KKK, more like one of the seedier biker gangs. You know the ones that have fundraisers for needy children, but are a little rough around the edges and will never fit comfortably into polite society. And wouldn’t you know it? Three of the room’s inhabitants were children.
Perhaps the folks in the room were illiterate and couldn’t be blamed for their noncompliance of the rules. Gazing around the room, I quickly assessed a problem. Seating. It stands to reason that if the guardians of the trio of rambunctious children had obeyed the sign and left the kids at home, where they belonged, all the adults would have found a seat.
As it was, it was standing room only, so I found an empty wall and leaned against it without anyone in the room so much as glancing my way. Unfortunately, I had the great misfortune to land beside a sitting preschooler, who was steadily popping and snapping gum in her jaw with a fervor that would have made a Fourth of July firecracker jealous. And what about the other two darling little toddling angels? Well, they seemed hell bent upon using my shoe as a ramp for their miniature skateboards. Their mother, assuming they had inherited their carrot colored hair from her, was a few pounds shy of morbid obesity and devouring every word in People while loudly snacking on a bag of salt and vinegar flavored pork rinds.
I will admit that I have a truly weak stomach, and nothing switches on my gag reflex quicker than snot. So, since all three children had a rather unsightly greenish discharge pooling in the valley between their nose and mouth, I drew a deep breath to settle my queasy insides, closed my eyes, leaned my head against the wall, and tried to think pleasant thoughts.
Luckily for me, a gentleman wracked with wheezing fits of chest rattling coughs got up to smoke and offered me his seat. I gratefully took the seat on a couch covered with clear plastic that protested with a loud embarrassing crackling when I planted my fanny on it and again every time afterward when my starving lungs demanded another deep breath.
This I hesitated to do, as the elderly lady to my left had chosen to douse herself with liberal amounts of an overwhelmingly floral Avon scent. On top of that, her false teeth clicked against each other while she chattered constantly and nonstop about her boyfriend Clyde running around with some floozy at the VFW’s Thursday Night Bingo. Although I did pause long enough to consider what the running around of two ninety year olds might entail, I chose to ignore her and peruse the room.
It was obvious that Lady Wonder had a fondness for the ocean. The walls were dotted with colorful landscaped scenes of palmetto trees and waves crashing on a sandy shore. Ceramic fish jumped from fountains in all four corners and ornate glass vases filled with sand and a variety of seashells took center stage on the surface of practically every table and shelf.
At last, the elderly lady was called back. Bless God! Then a new arrival, a gentleman in his late thirties-early forties and wearing an animal control officer uniform, took the seat the elderly lady had vacated and proceeded to entertain us with his daring deeds in the wilds of South Carolina’s treacherous jungles.
Okay, for starters. It was possible that he might have been considered reasonably attractive if he had been about a foot taller, or if he had chosen to acquaint himself with a tube of Colgate at some point during the last few decades.
We listened to his captivating tales of capturing everything from rabid foxes and dogs, to raccoons and skunks. We heard of his numerous, and always life threatening entanglements with poisonous snakes. He regaled us with his obviously embellished tales of his heroic efforts at capturing coyotes, poisonous spiders, squirrels, a baby kitten, etc. We even heard how he had once bravely wrestled a man-eating alligator to the ground with his bare hands, in a swamp no less, with several other hungry gators watching from the sidelines. He was 5’1” and probably weighed in at 120 pounds soaking wet. How much wrestling could he do? He carried on and on and on about his courageous adventures in the Animal Kingdom for over an hour.
Then, out of the blue, the charismatic dogcatcher gave me his most radiant smile and invited me to lunch next door at the Huddle House. Now, even though I’m sure I would have enjoyed the fine dining experience of a Huddle House, I had to wonder if I would even be able to swallow what I was served, with those gums screaming gingivitis over a plate of food. “No. Thanks for the offer, but I already have plans,” I fibbed, when he pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and commenced to pick one of his cavity-riddled molars, causing bile to swim around my tonsils.
When he saw that I wasn’t a willing candidate for an intimate luncheon for two, he leaned over me and posed the same question to the girl to my right. She was in her early 30’s and beautiful. What problems could she possibly need a psychic to solve?
I enjoyed watching her politely put him in his place and deflate his obnoxious ego by several degrees. Then while she courteously covered her mouth to filter the toxic fumes emanating from his lips, I turned to her and asked, “Is Lady Wonder any good?” Surely she must be to have a following like this on a Thursday.
“She has a gift from God. She sees things.” She smiled reverently. “She will answer all your questions.”
Then she settled back in her seat, which sounded like someone balling up wax paper, with a look of abject misery that I recognized as similar to mine. I would bet my last penny that the basis of her sorrow was nothing more than a vile, despicable, lying, cheating, scumbag of a black-hearted rogue. I know. I know. I read way too many historical romance novels.
Two hours later, I was feeling slightly ill from the elderly lady’s lingering perfume, which mingled with a rather nauseating stench permeating from the youngest child’s diaper. Then, there was the added aroma of good ole boy’s breath. Let’s just say when he exhaled, it could singe every last hair in your nose, trickle through your digestive tract, and seize up your bowels.
“Eve?” I heard my name called and with a sigh of relief happily plowed through the inhabitants of the waiting room from Hell.
Lady Wonder turned out to be a short cheery woman in her sixties with big white hair, a ponderous mid section and gentle, caring eyes. She was nothing at all what I expected. You know? Pointed chin. Hairy wart. Not even a crystal ball! She began shuffling a deck of regular playing cards as she offered me a seat on a white leather wing chair. Then turning over the card on top of the deck, the ace of hearts, she glanced up.
“Let me see your hands,” she said without preamble. Obediently, I showed her my hands palms up. “You have an odd number of children.”
“Yes, I have one son.”
“He works out of town and you don’t get to see him as often as you would like.” Her eyes fluttered and almost rolled back in her head, as she appeared to go into a trance-like state.
Wow! How did she know that? The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt goose bumps pop up on my arms and thighs. This woman had never laid eyes on me, yet she knew intimate details about my life. “Yes. He is a foreman on a construction crew and he travels up and down the east coast.” I glanced toward the exit when her upper body appeared to twitch uncontrollably. Lord have mercy! I hoped this was normal behavior for her and she wasn’t going into a seizure brought on by my tragic life.
“You caused your husband a great deal of pain.” Her eyes slowly rolled back down to their normal position and her jerking upper body became still once again.
Wow! She even knew about the ex. “Yes. He treated me like a queen for 18 years. The condensed version of the story is that I left him for a man who turned out to be a raging alcoholic and recently dumped me for some little oriental trollop.” There, happy!
I still hated myself for the pain I had caused my ex, although I, unlike Lady Wonder, tried not to pick at that old scab. “It did hurt him when I left, but he has since remarried a wonderful lady and they are very happy. So everything turned out okay in the end.”
“You thought he was too good for you. You only want men who will treat you poorly.”
She had effectively put my life in a nutshell. Men who will treat me poorly? Hah! Treat me like something to be scraped from the bottom of their shoe you mean! Use me, abuse me, and walk over me on their way out the door. This was the first time anyone had ever actually verbalized it, but thinking back over my past relationships…she was absolutely right!
“What happened when you were four years old, Eve?”
Huh? Where did that come from? Nothing had happened to me when I was four. “I don’t have any memories of my childhood, so I can’t answer that.” She leaned toward me with a worried frown and peered intently into my eyes. “Would you like to know what happened?”
Judging from her look of deep sadness, if anything had happened, it couldn’t have been pleasant. I couldn’t deal with more bad news. Not now. I was better off not knowing, at least until I came out on the other side of my current crisis. But what exactly was she alluding to? What could have happened when I was four? “No. Not really.”
“You are self employed and very successful in business.” Thankfully, she had abided by my wishes and decided to move on.
“Yes. I own a commercial cleaning company.” Wow, old girl was good!
“Men really like you.” She grinned, causing her sea green eyes to twinkle mischievously.
Okay. This is where she lost me. If she had said, “Men like to use you and then toss you out like yesterdays meatloaf,” I would have smiled, given her a standing ovation and agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment. But an idiotic comment such as that one assured me she didn’t really know her backside from a hole in the ground.
“What are you running from, Eve?”
How did she know? Who told her? Deciding to give her a chance to redeem herself, I told her the entire story of how I had recently gone to my boyfriend’s house and found him playing mattress tag with a petite, stunningly-beautiful, Asian adulteress.
She listened patiently and then asked, “Do you have a picture of this man from Maine? Adam?”
Okay! No comments from the peanut gallery. It was nothing more than an astoundingly lucky coincidence that I just so happened to carry a 4x5 glossy in my bag. “Yes. I believe I do.”
She studied the photo of Adam and me smiling into the camera at Dolly Pardon’s Pirate’s Voyage and settled back in her chair. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and began her detailed prognostication.
“Adam and Chia will be together for two months. She is starting to miss her children, but not enough to actually go home to them.”
Two months! I was beginning to wonder if I could survive two more days without the man I had loved with every fiber of my being for the past three years. “With six kids even I might prolong my homecoming.”
“At first she was so in love with Adam that, truthfully, she didn’t give her kids a second thought. She was too caught up in the secrecy of their illicit affair. The sneaking around and ever present fear of getting caught were thrilling to her. Now that the excitement of them living together is getting old, her guilt and regret are beginning to tug at her heart strings.”
“What heart?”
“It has even crossed her mind to try to convince her husband to allow her to come back home, but he’s finished with her. He has been living with her infidelity for years.”
Come on Wang Chung! Have a little fun tonight. Take her back.
“Adam has picked up the phone several times lately wanting to call you.”
My heart began a clamorous clanging in my chest at her words. Taking a quick peek at my phone to make sure it hadn’t accidentally powered off, I sat straight up and fiddled with a basket of potpourri on the end table beside my chair. “Yeah! Right! And what stopped him?”
“He didn't think you would talk to him.”
Oh, Sweet Jesus! Just to hear his heavily accented Yankee voice. “He was right,” I lied in a feverish attempt to hide the desperation I was feeling. “I wouldn’t have talked to him then and I hope I never hear his voice again.” I prayed fervently that I wouldn’t get struck by lightening on the way out for allowing that whopper to fall from my lips!
She covered her mouth with her hand in a failing attempt to hide a smile. Her brilliant green eyes nearly sparkled as she glanced at something in the area over my shoulder. Evidently, her clever spirit guide was bouncing with glee and mouthing the words, “She’s lying,” and giving Lady Wonder a clear vision of me bolting to the phone, stubbing my toe on a table leg, and sending whatnots flying in every direction as I snatched it up on the first ring. Damn! I should have remembered she was a freaking psychic!
She recovered, brought her gaze back to me and said with all seriousness, “He will be calling you within three weeks.
Stop the presses!
“But be warned. This man will never stop cheating with other women. It’s in his blood. If you allow yourself to get involved with him again it will lead to a life of heartache. When he calls, do not answer. Ignore him. This is your year. Aside from the fact that you won’t have Adam, everything else in your life will improve. In fact, by midsummer, Eve, there will be so much happening in your life that you will rarely even give Adam a second thought.”
Seriously? If she honestly believed there was even the most remote possibility of my life improving without Adam in it, then she, along with her inept spirit guide, might consider registering at the local community college for another semester of Remedial Fortune Telling. Adam might be able to switch his feelings on and off like a light bulb, but it wasn’t that easy for me. We were meant to be together! I have the wedding dress! I mean, come on. Adam and Eve? It’s biblical! If that isn’t a sign that we were meant to be together, please, tell me what is!
Suddenly, I noticed an abrupt change in her demeanor, as she gathered my hands in hers. Hers were so warm and comforting, that I felt like I had known her for years. She closed her eyes for several seconds, then opened them, looking at me with such a depth of sadness that I wanted to cry. This couldn't be good.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I must tell you some bad news.”
No shit! Imagine that! Certainly no beating around the bush with this woman! How bad could it be? I had no desire to find out! Nope! Time to go! I wasn’t going to wait around to hear any bad news. I didn’t have to hear it from a stranger. Hell, I lived it daily!
Jerking my hands from hers, I braced them on the arms of the chair in preparation for a hasty departure. I shouldn’t have come here. She didn’t know anything about me, or my life. She was a quack. She was guessing. Plus, I wasn’t at all sure my fragile mental state could withstand more bad news.
However, my traitorous legs refused to cooperate and lift me. It was almost like my body was forcing me to listen to her. I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Either she had put a spell on me, or I really didn’t want to leave without hearing what she had to say. I saw her getting ready to speak again. Don’t! Don’t! Hush! I wanted to cry out, but the words refused to leave my lips. Please! Whatever it is! Don't say it! Just let me return home unscathed!
“Chia is pregnant!”
Oh my God! That couldn’t be true. She was lying. I felt sick. Chia’s seventh child would belong to Adam? Surely her devious spirit guide was playing a horrible joke on me.
I could see it now. I would be Christmas shopping and pass Adam, Chia, and their little bundle of joy in the infant section at Target. Adam would be tenderly cradling a tiny replica of himself in his arms, while gazing at the woman of his dreams with adoring eyes. What if I was in a restaurant and they were in the booth across from me holding hands, laughing at a private joke-- probably at how they had succeeded in duping my dumb ass-- and sipping a latte? We all lived in the same town. There would have to eventually be a chance meeting.
“She doesn’t want the baby,” Lady Wonder announced abruptly. “She wants to have an abortion. She has no desire to be tied down with an infant again, now that her children are all in school.” She leaned back in her chair seemingly oblivious to the intensity of pain her words were causing me. “The thought of an abortion devastates Adam.”
“He’s a big boy. He’ll get over it.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, although I must be honest.”
“Trust me, I don’t mind if you lie.”
“Adam loves this woman more than he has ever loved anyone. He thinks that her having a baby will be a way to tie her to him forever. He knows what kind of woman she is and accepts it. He believes that her having his child will be a means to settle her down and convince her to accept his proposal of marriage."
Proposal? Did she say proposal? “What makes him think one kid will tie her to him when her husband couldn’t keep her with six?” I sobbed, imagining Adam in labor and delivery with Chia as the irritating Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater nursery rhyme played over and over in my head.
“He doesn’t care about any of that. He’s in love with her and love is blind.”
“Will she marry him?" Tears of hurt, pain and betrayal coursed down my cheek.
“Probably. However, it won’t be the happily ever after that Adam dreams about. By summer she will have met another man and fallen madly in love. Adam will be devastated.”
Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!
“He will feel like his life is over. He will be feeling exactly what you are feeling now, in fact, only worse. Always remember my dear, you reap what you sow.”
“That’s what my mom always says.” I hiccupped, but the flow of tears had slowed just a bit. “Is she going to have an abortion?”
“Yes. And that’s when Adam’s world will slowly begin to crumble. He’ll realize that if she loved him as he loved her she would want to have his baby. She wouldn’t be able to kill a part of him.” Then her face took on an irritated expression. “Do you know who he will turn to for comfort when this happens?”
“Me?” Oh! If that could only be true, I would straddle the bad breathed wonder on the way out and French kiss him for an hour!
“Like I told you before, Adam will never change. He will always be a skirt chaser. A doctor might even diagnose him as having a condition known as Sexual Addiction.”
Duh, Eve! Can you say Tiger Woods? How could I have been such an ignoramus? Tiger had admitted to seeking therapy in rehab for sexual addiction. In fact, I had often heard the term, but never had the common sense to apply it to Adam.
As with most obsessive disorders there were probably medications to keep the powerful cravings of this addiction under control. I would go online the minute I got home and learn everything there was to know on the subject, and call a Help Line. It was all so crystal clear now! His cheating was an addiction. He couldn’t help it. Bless him. The poor man just needed someone to understand his sickness, and some counseling.
The dreamy smile on my face must have been a dead giveaway that I was having a rare jubilant moment, because she swiftly wiped it from my face with her hateful words. “Adam’s ideal woman is Asian. He likes the different little things they do in the bedroom. He rarely finds an American woman sexually appealing.”
Her I must be honest mantra was about to piss me off. Why couldn’t she let me savor even the tiniest bit of hope before she stomped on it and crushed it into the carpet? “Does Adam ever think about me?”
“No.”
Did she take pleasure in saying that word? Or had I only imagined it? Why did this woman dislike me so? Had she never heard of little white lies to protect the innocent? Couldn’t she see that I was close to slipping over the edge here? Maybe she needed to twist the knife a little deeper next time she plunged it through my liver?
“He did the first couple of weeks after the breakup. Now you rarely ever cross his mind.” Then she stood up, signaling that our time was up.
It looked like I might be getting the last laugh after all. For no matter how in love Adam was, just knowing that his little Chia Pet was going to break his cheating heart thrilled me to the very core. And spring was just around the corner. A few more weeks and he would be feeling the pain I was feeling now. Lady Wonder had said so herself. Pay back is a bitch.
“Okay. That will be fifteen dollars.”
I had expected the fee for her services to be substantially higher with the following she had. I did the math and decided $60.00 an hour wasn’t too shabby. Passing her a twenty I shook her hand as she said, “Come back whenever you need me.”
“Thank you. I will.”
Weaving my way through the crowded waiting room, I thought, please? Just throw your hand up and don't smile. Nope, the bad breathed wonder removed his toothpick, which was in dire need of a replacement, long enough to flash a negative wattage smile.
I drove to the gas station, filled up the tank, and pulling back on the interstate, headed North instead of South. I was no longer feeling the drive to Georgia to visit my old college roommate. I just wanted to go home and wallow in my misery in private.