25. Goldie
TWENTY-FIVE
GOLDIE
Ace jogged around the front of the truck to let Morton out. My dog ran full speed toward the carriage house. “It looks like he’s happy to see your mom.” Ace helped me out of the truck, and we walked hand in hand up the driveway.
“He’s just excited that someone is here. He doesn’t remember her. He hasn’t seen her since he was a puppy.”
“It’s been five years since you’ve seen your mom?” Ace asked.
“Give or take a year.” I shrugged and adjusted my handbag on my shoulder. “She’s been out finding herself.” I wondered if Ace could hear the animosity in my voice. He didn’t let on if he did.
We passed by my mom’s car and Ace chuckled as he read a few of the stickers. “She looks like a real character.”
As if on cue, the door to the carriage house flew open and my mom floated out the front door, her tunic billowing behind her. Her silver hair was wound into two French braids, and she didn’t have any shoes on. “Marigold!” She spread her arms wide. “And you must be the young hockey player.”
“Ace Bailey.” His voice was strong and confident as he shook my mom’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Fern.”
“That’s a solid handshake you’ve got there.” Mom winked at Ace. “I saw the news; that was quite the goal you scored at the end of the game in Miami.”
I raised my brows and shot my mother a look. Even when she was still with Dad, she hated watching hockey.
“Thanks. We practiced it a million times that week.”
Mom winked at me this time. “I’m sure you did. Ace, are you coming in for some tempeh and baked kale?”
“Ace has some stuff to do this afternoon,” I interjected. Ace was the kind of guy who would come in and chitchat with my mom all afternoon. I couldn’t subject him to that kind of torture. “Mom, don’t you need to put some shoes on?” Her bare feet had melted the snow down to the pavement.
“I’m grounding, Marigold. You should do it every day. You too, Ace.”
I was pretty sure that pavement didn’t count as grounding, but I wasn’t going to fight my mom on the subject. If she wanted to freeze her toes off, I wasn’t going to stop her.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Bailey. I sure hope to see a lot more of you around here.” Mom shook Ace’s hand and then disappeared into the carriage house.
I gestured to my place. “That was Fern. You’d better get out of here before she comes out with some carob black bean cookies.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ace muttered. “That sounds fucking terrible.”
“It’s worse than terrible.” I grabbed both of his hands. “We have to talk. Can I come over to your place tonight?”
He grinned. “Do you really have something to tell me, or are you just trying to get away from your mom?”
I shuffled my feet on the driveway. “A little of column A, a little bit of column B.”
Ace pulled me into a tight hug and kissed my forehead. “You are welcome any time, but don’t you dare set foot into my place with any black bean cookies.”
Standing on my toes, I planted a kiss on his lips. “You’re incredible. Thank you for the mini escape from the city.”
He squeezed my arms and kissed me one more time. “Come over any time after eight. I’m going to go to the rink and do some drills. Do you have any suggestions for what I should work on?” He put his hand on my forehead. “Anything?”
I laughed and shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way, and no, I’ve got nothing. It could be gone forever.”
There was a look of concern on his face, but it disappeared quickly. “Have fun with your mom.”
“How did you get in here?” I took the keys out of my purse and hung them on the hook by the door. “Did Dad let you in?”
“Your father? Does he live nearby?” Fern was pressing celery through a juicer that she must have brought with her; I certainly didn’t own one.
It was possible that I hadn’t told mom that I lived on the same property as Dad, but highly unlikely. I was pretty sure I’d told her multiple times. “Dad owns that house. He lets me stay here.”
“Isn’t that something.” Mom continued juicing. For someone who claimed she could see the future, she seemed to be barely holding on to the present. “Your boy seems nice. He loves you.”
“Mom.” I gasped. “We’ve just started dating.”
She shrugged and handed me a glass of bright green sludge that looked more like algae than juice. “What does time have anything to do with it? Time is an illusion, Marigold.”
The juice tasted as gross as it looked. “Have you had celery juice before?” She must have noticed that I cringed every time I took a sip.
I shook my head.
“Make sure you’re near a bathroom. It can be a little…interesting for newbies.”
The straw gurgled as I finished the last of the drink. “That’s something you could have told me before I choked down this whole glass.”
Mom sat on the sofa with her own glass of juice. “It’s good for you, Marigold. It looks like you could use a few nutrients. Your refrigerator looks like it was stocked by a fasting monk doing penicillin experiments.”
She wasn’t wrong. I had been neglecting myself lately. “I’ve been very busy with my study.”
“Sit down, dear. Tell me all about it.” She patted the sofa next to her. I plopped down and she draped her arm over my shoulder. I crinkled my nose; her patchouli deodorant had given up the ghost hours earlier.
“You still haven’t told me how you got into my place.”
“Oh.” She pointed to the window. “I broke in. You really need to work on your security if a fifty-year-old woman can crawl through your kitchen window.”
“What are you doing here, Mom?” I was tired, and all I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and take a nap. “Do you need money or something?” The last time she’d rolled through town, it was to see if I wanted to donate to her commune.
“That makes me sad, Marigold. No, I don’t need any money. I’m doing just fine. I came because you need your mother. You’re having visions now, aren’t you?”
I stiffened. Of course, Mom knew. She had been telling me for years that I was going to follow in her footsteps. I was grateful it hadn’t started sooner. “I was, but I’m not anymore.” I hated admitting that I knew what she was talking about.
She shifted on the sofa so she could face me. Taking my hands in hers, she stared into my eyes. I tried to look away, but she let go of my hand to grab my chin and maneuver my face back to look at her. “Goldie, don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid, Mom,” I shouted. “I’m embarrassed.”
“Oh.” She was the one who looked away this time. “Why are you ashamed of something so special, Marigold?”
Morton must have heard my outburst because he came over to sit by my feet. I let go of Mom’s hand to rest one on my dog. “I don’t believe in any of that stuff.”
Mom nodded. “If you tell yourself that long enough, you will lose it. Right now, there’s still time for you to harness it, and build it into something beautiful.”
“Yeah, like you did?”
Fern squeezed my hand. “I deserve that. I’m here now, Goldie.” Her voice had lowered to a whisper. “Don’t be scared. Tell me what you saw.”
If there ever was a time to get answers, it was now. I sighed. “It’s only happened with Ace and his brother, Gideon. I saw Ace scoring a goal in a hockey game.” I left out the next vision, the x-rated one. “It happened again, and I saw him do this trick shot.”
“The Michigan.”
“Yes.” I furrowed my brow. Mom didn’t know what icing was, and now she was naming off trick shots? “The Michigan.”
“What about the brother?”
I relaxed into the sofa. The conversation was exhausting. “I saw the reason why he hates his brother.”
“Mmm.” Mom nodded and took a sip of her juice.
“I also saw something weird. When I shook Gideon’s hand, it went dark and these lights blared at me. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at.” Until that moment, I’d forgotten about the dark vision with the weird fluorescent lights. I explained it to Fern and she was equally confused. “There’s another thing,” I added. “Every time I touched Ace, I felt like he was giving me a shock. My hands would tingle, and I saw…what I saw. Now, nothing is happening. There’s no shock or tingle or vision. It’s a relief.”
Fern smiled. “Goldie, everyone is different, and you’re going to have to figure out your own unique skills. However, I’ve learned that you can’t see things with people you genuinely love. When I was with your father, I couldn’t see anything to do with him. When we fell out of love, I saw everything, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“That explains why it hasn’t happened with Dad, or my best friend,” I mused.
“Exactly.” Fern played with one of the massive turquoise rings on her tanned, leathery-looking fingers.
My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it. “How did you fall out of love with Dad?”
Fern sighed. “I don’t want to say anything bad about your father. He did an excellent job of getting you through your teenage years. We were madly in love, but I think the last time he hit his head, it knocked something loose in there. He wasn’t the same after that. I knew what he was doing, but I didn’t have any proof. I didn’t want to break up the family based on a vision. Believe it or not, Goldie, I was once a skeptic like you.”
The grumble turned to a gurgle. “Mom, you’ll have to excuse me.”
I made it to the toilet just in time. When I emerged from the bathroom, Mom was talking to someone at the door. “Dad!” I deked around Mom to give him a hug. Morton ran past me, knocking into my dad’s legs.
“Your father wants to take Morton for the afternoon.”
Morton had already hopped around in excited circles around my dad. “How do I say no to that?”
“You and your mom should come over for dinner later. We can order something.”
Mom leaned against the doorframe. “You still can’t cook.” There was a smile on her face, and my dad laughed.
“I can make an average breakfast, but that’s about it. Are you still cooking with all the grossest ingredients you can find?”
They both laughed. They had fallen out of love years earlier, but a friendship had emerged from the ashes.
“She just put me through a turbo cleanse with celery juice.” I rested my hand on my belly. It still didn’t feel quite right. “The Indian place has some vegan options. We could order from there.”
Dad smiled. “Sounds good. I’ll be back later and we can sort that out.” He clicked a leash onto Morton and that damn dog of mine didn’t look back as he hopped into the back of the Range Rover.
“He’s a good man.” My mom smiled as Dad drove away. “We are so much better as friends. Has he introduced you to his girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend?” I spent a lot of time with my father, and I literally lived in his backyard. I would know if he was dating someone. “You might need to do a vision tune-up. Dad doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
Mom nodded, and I could tell that she wanted to say something but was holding back. “Maybe it’s not that serious.”
“Fern, there’s no girlfriend. I would know.”
She held up her hands. “I’m just telling you what I saw when I touched him.”
“Are the visions always right?” It was a question I’d forgotten to ask.
“No. Not always. You will figure it out the more it happens.”
I shut the door, poured myself a glass of water, and wondered if the diarrhea was done for the day. “Thanks for the cryptic non-advice.”
Mom folded her hands in front of her and bowed. “You will figure it out. That’s your journey.”
“Thanks.” I chugged the water and pointed to the closet. “There’re blankets and pillows in there. You can have the bed. I will sleep on the couch.”
“No, Marigold. I will not take your bed.”
“Too bad.” I pulled the throw blanket off the back of the couch and curled up in a ball. “I’m going to have a nap out here.”
When I woke up, the sun had set and my mom was nowhere to be seen. I rubbed my eyes and then doubled over. The celery juice was still wreaking havoc on my stomach. My mom had rolled into town, commandeered my afternoon with Ace, provided me with cryptic answers about being a psychic, and ruined my guts.
“Thanks, Fern,” I grumbled. “Thanks for nothing.”