Day Twenty-Two
“Have you thought of any names?”
Norman was trying to be nice. Too nervous to drive himself, he had asked that Lally drive the Laredo; he didn’t trust her aging car, and Jesse had refused to come. He couldn’t remember the last time he and his sister had been alone together.
Lally adjusted his mirror to facilitate her rear view. “For the baby?”
“And no more naming things after our grandparents.” Their other grandmother’s name was Ersilla. Norman might not have fully accepted their situation, but he was not about to take his personal discomfort out on the child.
Lally bit her lip as she drove. “Can anyone be named Sigourney? Or just her.”
“I think just her,” Norman said before it dawned on him what she was implying. “It’s a girl?”
She turned to look at him. Always the big brother, he gestured for her to keep her eyes on the road. “Just a feeling,” she admitted. “But we can ask when we get there.”
Norman scoffed at the very idea.
They drove for a time, passing a gas station and a fast-food restaurant he didn’t know was out this way. “Do you need to stop?”
Lally assured him she was good, even if she did need a restroom more often than she cared to admit—the joys of a geriatric pregnancy.
“Where is this place, anyway?”
Lally pointed to his phone. They were using his GPS, since it paired with the Jeep. Norman saw that they would be there in four minutes.
“I’m nervous,” he confessed.
Lally stayed focused on the road. “Jesse has a decision to make. I think it’s in your best interest to give him room to make it.”
Norman felt that in the pit of his stomach. But that’s not what he meant in the moment. “I’m nervous about this.”
“Oh.” Lally nodded. “That makes sense. But you’re the one who wanted answers.”
“For Jesse.” Norman nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “To be honest, I have all the answers I need. I want Jesse.” It was the questions he was afraid of.
Like where on earth had he been?
“SHE’S A PET PSYCHIC?” Norman roared when they pulled up to the house. On the front gate was a childlike sign painted with dogs and two cats that looked like they had some sort of palsy.
Lally pulled the Jeep to a stop and killed the ignition. “Calm down.”
“Lally!”
“I told her your name was Mr. Whiskers and that you were a Maine coon. So when you go in there, maybe you could meow and purr and lick your paw and stuff.”
Lally released her seat belt, but Norman grabbed it and buckled her back in like they were not staying. “I’m going to kill you.”
“I’m pregnant!” she protested.
Norman gritted his teeth.
“Calm down, you don’t want her to hear you. Don’t give her any ammunition. This only works if she knows nothing.”
Norman stared at her, his anger not receding. In the moment, it felt like he knew nothing, too.
“Relax. It’s just marketing,” Lally explained of the sign. “She does people, too.” And then, as an afterthought, she mumbled, “I’m almost sure of it.”
The psychic’s name was Julia and she lived only a few towns over from Joshua Tree.
It wasn’t Zelda, or Madame Truth, or Marigold, or anything that Norman found off-putting.
Nor did she ask to be called the Oracle, or the Golden Woman of Wonder Valley.
She was just Julia, and her appearance reflected exactly that.
She looked comforting, matronly, not unlike someone who might publish a cookbook and then make one of the recipes on the Today show.
The natural gray in her hair was left untouched, making her look older perhaps than she was; in fact, Norman wondered if she might be younger than him.
Her eyes were kind but tired; they brightened only for a moment when she greeted her guests.
She grabbed Norman’s face like a grandmother might; the bracelets she wore on both arms rattled like snakes, but in a way that didn’t startle him.
“You’re lost,” she said like they’d wandered into the wrong house, and Norman could not agree more.
Her sweater hung loosely under her chin, more cowl-necked than turtle; in fact, the only expected thing about her appearance was that she wore lots of rings.
“I’d like to be found,” he confessed.
Julia worked out of her kitchen, which smelled like bouillon cubes; years of boiling cabbages and stews had steamed into the wallpaper (covered wagons and mills with waterwheels), causing it to peel at the seams. Norman was invited to sit at her table, where he nervously picked at the frayed edges of her tablecloth.
“Where should I sit?” Lally asked.
Julia looked at Lally less kindly than she had greeted Norman. “How about outside in your car.”
Norman interceded on Lally’s behalf, before it could become a thing. “I’d like my sister to stay. I feel like I could use a witness.” He then gestured at her pregnant belly, hoping to foster some sympathy.
Julia held firm. “Too much interference.”
“I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
She remained adamant. “Not that kind of interference.”
“Oh,” Lally said, understanding. She asked to use Julia’s bathroom, where she sent Norman a text that read: She’ll probably tell you that you spent the year trying to lick your own balls.
Under the table, he texted back. Who says I didn’t?
Don’t let her convince you that you have distemper.
“Phones off, please,” Julia instructed.
He complied, but not before texting, Unsubscribe.
Norman heard Lally flush and she saw herself out, Julia waiting until she heard the sound of her front door close to speak.
“So, tell me what brings you here.” Already Norman’s hackles were up; not five minutes in and she was fishing for clues.
It was exactly what Jesse had warned him about, and why he refused to come.
This whole business was a sham, desperate people easy marks for the fleece, eagerly volunteering their questions without even realizing they were providing ammunition for their own stickup.
“We’re desperate people,” Norman had reminded Jesse.
“Not that desperate.” But they both knew that was untrue.
Norman was determined to tell Julia only as much as she needed to hear. “There is a year of time I can’t account for. Basically most everything from last August until now.”
Julia appeared unsurprised, like that was a perfectly natural occurrence. “What is the last thing you remember before the time was lost?”
“Not much,” Norman confessed. “It was night. I was in bed. There was a light outside the window. The shutters were drawn, but I could sense that much. The light grew, brighter, yes, but also warmer, if that makes any sense? I was drawn to it. I remember that. Wanting to be bathed in it. I do not remember getting out of bed. I do not remember going outside. I have a very hazy memory of Jesse. My husband. Beneath me.”
“Beneath you.”
“I know. It sounds hierarchal, or even sexual, but I don’t mean it like that.
I guess I was floating? In the light. Jesse was on the ground.
Naked, which was not that unusual to be honest, holding a rolling pin, which was.
Unusual.” Norman flinched. He should have kept at least some of those details to himself. “And that’s the last thing I remember.”
Julia shimmied her shoulders like the Jackson 5 were playing on a frequency only she could hear.
“I want you to remain quiet and try to stay perfectly still.” Norman nodded and shifted in his seat to get comfortable, already disobeying one of her commands, but Julia had closed her eyes and didn’t notice.
And there she sat, as still as anyone Norman had seen.
The woman didn’t lock her elbows or grab the table, she didn’t roll her head or pulse back and forth—nothing close to the dramatics that won Whoopi Goldberg her Oscar.
She just closed her eyes and sat there in silence until Norman himself began to twitch.
He ignored a single bead of sweat as it dripped down his forehead, even though it tickled something fierce.
When he was just about to ask if everything was all right, she spoke. “Fruit.”
Norman smirked—in some contexts fruit was a homophobic slur. “Fruit,” he repeated. “You’re seeing fruit?” Maybe a banana, since he had said Jesse was naked, perhaps a juicy peach.
Julia shushed him; it wasn’t even worth opening her eyes. Instead, she doubled down. “Not fruit. Sweet.” Her eyes fluttered behind her closed eyelids. “Not sweet. Love.”
Norman chuckled to himself. They were off to a roaring start.
“If this is funny to you, it won’t ever work.” Her chiding did not break her concentration.
“Sorry,” he whispered as if he’d been caught passing notes in school.
Julia was silent for a long time. So long, Norman was left wondering if that was it. But the thing is, she was not wrong. Love was exactly what Norman felt anytime he tried to remember. An overwhelming sense of it. And to Jesse’s great horror, much of it was directed at him.
“You sound like a religious kook,” Jesse groaned whenever Norman tried to describe it. “Like a five-year-old named Colton who writes a book about visiting heaven after swallowing too much water in a pool.”
“Okay,” Norman would say. “Your feelings are clear.”
“Except you would spell Colton with a K and an H like the store. Kohlton. And you’d be invited on All Things Considered.”
Norman was certain he hadn’t been to heaven, but Jesse’s making light of it was verging on hell.
He jumped in his seat when Julia spoke again. “I’m seeing letters. F. L. And A. Do they mean anything to you?”
Norman sat very still, wondering if the question was rhetorical or if it was okay to speak. “Florida?” he finally asked. God help him if he’d spent the year there.
“No, wait. I’m seeing them in a mirror or something shiny. A fender, perhaps. The letters are A-L-F.”
This time Norman didn’t wait to speak. “My last name is Alfano. If that’s what you’re seeing, you’re halfway there.” It was a simple enough parlor trick, what she was doing; Lally had made the appointment, perhaps she had given Norman’s name.