Psychic Friends

She sounded so bitchy and demanding, I just knew she was the right woman for the job.

“My fee for parties is $375 and it’s not negotiable,” Mrs. T told me impatiently, sounding like a worn, wiry-haired imp on the other end of the phone.

Marty was headed out of town to commune with a horde of male family members in Las Vegas. In his absence I endeavored to throw my first slumber party. There would be 14 women, sleeping bags, Rice Krispie treats, a Ouija board, maybe ghost stories, and possibly some embarrassing calls placed to ex-boyfriends. To distinguish the evening from the average teenager’s sleep-over, the plan was to keep the wine and blender drinks flowing, to offer a viewing of the entire first season of Sex and the City, and to hire a psychic to come over and read everyone’s minds.

In preparation, I’d called three others of Mrs. T’s profession. Each was more affordable and less surly than she. But they seemed too nice, too accommodating. If one can truly view all things in the past, present, and future, I imagine one wouldn’t be that congenial.

“Listen, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. My mother did it before me. I wasn’t trained; I have a gift,” Mrs. T barked at me when I tried to talk her down to $325.

Listening to her berate me in a throaty Brooklyn accent, I was whisked back to preadolescence, where I was standing in front of Mrs. Abraham, apple-shaped madwoman and mother of one of my classmates. Like many other kids, I had to walk past the Abrahams’ ramshackle house on my way home from school every day, lingering there for awhile waiting for the light to change. Most afternoons, the ragged woman with the twinkling black eyes would cordially invite kids in. But once we entered her sticky web, her demeanor would switch from angelic to devilish in a flash. We’d be standing there innocently eating Cheese Puffs when, suddenly, she’d start cursing and threatening to call our parents to turn us in for a variety of things we didn’t do, would never think of doing. Our stomachs filled with fear and we’d scatter like dandelion fluff. One time she even stole one of my sweaters.

Mrs. T gave off the same vibe as the foul Mrs. Abraham. I wanted to hire her just to lay eyes on my batty neighbor again, to confront her as an adult. Plus, Mrs. T just sounded so real, if there is such a thing in her line of work. I checked with the 14 slumberers; they were amenable to splitting the costs of the dour seer. I called Mrs. T back and told her she was in.

“Cash only. And I’m going to need you to give directions to my husband Steve — right away!” she half-growled.

“If you’re so omniscient, can’t you tell Steve how to get here?” I thought but didn’t say.

Also, it didn’t seem like a psychic should be married to a man named Steve. I’d envisioned something more like Yanoro, or Vedel, or Ute.

A week later, when my apartment was filled with giggling girls and Mrs. T came calling, it was immediately clear that our telepath was no Mrs. Abraham. I opened the door and in flowed a tall, thin, striking creature flashing her sizeable capped teeth at me in a warm smile. Gone was the snarkiness. Perhaps it was reserved for phone conversations only.

In the collective unconscious, psychics don billowing scarves and ethereal robes. Not Mrs. T. She wore a fitted white turtleneck, a snug, below-the-knee black skirt, and black stockings. She was elegant, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, her black hair pulled back so severely it made me think of Sade. Not at all the wizened shrew I was looking forward to.

I led Mrs. T through the small sea of pajama-clad women and into my home office, a solarium with lots of windows that look out onto both the street and the living room. There, I had set up a table and two chairs. All the attendees could watch the action from the living room — but the solarium door would be shut, so they couldn’t hear any of the goings-on. Mrs. T asked for it to be that way. She also asked for red wine. I gave it to her in a bowl-like goblet, noticing then the huge diamond ring that glimmered on her right hand.

The guests began taking their turns, entering Mrs. T’s temporary lair with a mix of jubilation and anxiety. The rest of us would stand watching the consultation through the windows, feeling ashamed at our act of voyeurism but unable to look away. When each woman emerged, we’d invade her space, pushing in close to pummel her with questions.

One of the first in was Ingrid, who received some bad news. Mrs. T foretold that her relationship with my pal Adam would end in three to four months when Ingrid meets a man whose name starts with the letter “L.” Ouch. Cate was told she would work in computers and find the love of her life. Caroline was instructed not to give advice to anyone named Michelle, as that advice would be turned against her. She was also told she would have two kids. Kathleen was informed that in her next job, her boss would be either a Henry or a Howard, and he would be a good man. “Gee, do you think I should base my employment searches on that?” she said to us, crunching on a tortilla chip.

When I had enough of the drink in me, I took my turn in the candlelit room. Mrs. T had barely put a dent in her red wine. I noticed for the first time her heavy black eyeliner and the small circular Band-Aid on her left cheek. What was she concealing? A pimple? Skin cancer? Vampire-tooth marks?

I told her I wanted a tarot-card reading, like most of the others were getting. She instructed me to think of a question and put my hand on the worn-looking deck.

“And be pacific!” she intoned. I wasn’t sure how to do that.

I laid my hand on the deck, closed my eyes, and tried to shoot powerful gamma rays into the cards, thinking, I’m very distracted by her odd English. But OK, here goes: Will my writing ever reach as broad and appreciative an audience as, say, David Sedaris?

As soon as I opened my eyes, Mrs. T began furiously laying the deck out on the small black table. How could she have time to examine the cards at such high speed? Suddenly, she exclaimed with conviction, “You are filled with confusement!”

I was stunned. Gosh, I thought, no I’m not. I’ve never had my head on straighter in my entire life. But then I realized that maybe she was talking about my secret question. Oh sure, I am filled with “confusement” about how far my writing might go. OK...

Next Mrs. T waved her bony fingers in the air and said I had a loved one who died and is now at peace. Hmm. Could be my dad, though I highly doubt he was at peace in the netherworld, never having been at peace as a living being. I asked her if the dead person expired recently or awhile ago. She said there was one of each. How convenient, I thought, but then realized that there actually was one of each — my dad, who gave up the ghost 13 years ago, and David, my former co-worker who died a few months ago. I didn’t see how David could be at peace either, being young, troubled, and successfully suicidal. I decided to disregard this information.

Mrs. T then reared back and looked down her nose at me for emphasis.

“You have a good solid marriage, and your husband loves you verrrry much. He’s a good man, and the marriage will last. But for continued happiness, you must learn to trust him, really trust him.”

Whoa! I thought. How could she know I’m the one in the group with trust issues? Indeed, I’ve always felt unable to truly trust men — really deeply trust them. But the fault lies with my parents, not with any cheating boyfriends. Separating when I was 3 and deciding to live the partying single life though they still had a small child, my parents had been far more wayward than any boys I’d encountered. Thus, the abandonment thing was burned pretty deeply into me, resulting in a continuous sense of suspicion in my love life that has just recently begun to fade. But how could Mrs. T detect that? Was it something in my eyes? My skin?

She continued rapidly turning over the cards, changing the subject.

“Ah, money will be no problem for you,” she said, adding that I would eventually achieve success in my career.

“When?” I asked, sick to death of waiting.

“In two or three years — but you have to work harder.”

She was probably right. I did spend an awful lot of my writing time cleaning the apartment and looking up old classmates on the Internet.

And then suddenly Mrs. T sat back, showing her readiness to be rid of me.

“Do you want to axe me a question?” she purred.

I did. I realized she hadn’t said a word about offspring, a concept that lately has been coursing through my head like robust sperm swimming resolutely north.

“Yes, kids,” I said, not wanting to give away whether I had any, didn’t have any, wanted some, didn’t want any.

“You will have three, but not right away. You’re not ready,” she said, tilting her head back at an odd angle.

Oh, crap. I only wanted two, and I’m ready right now, I lamented to myself, buying into it all way too much.

“The first will be a girl,” Mrs. T proclaimed. At least that was good news.

Next, Mrs. T pulled out a purple flier that promised $5 off my next psychic session should I choose to drag my butt all the way out to her home base in the Washington, DC, suburbs. It was her way of saying “scram.” I thanked her and wandered out, trying hard to make indelible everything she’d just said, wishing I’d been able to take notes. I took a long swig of wine and sat down on a pillow to tell the slumberers what I’d learned.

When she had seen the future of the last of us, Mrs. T elected to flow out the door and wait for Steve downstairs rather than hang out and have peanut-butter brownies and strawberry coladas with us. I understood. It helped her maintain that air of mystery. Who is Mrs. T, really? We will never know, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. I walked her to the elevator, handing her an envelope packed with bills. She flashed me her final capped smile of the evening.

The instant our psychic friend disappeared, the slumberers fluttered forth from all corners of the apartment to compare and contrast readings. Apparently, Mrs. T had been dead on in a few instances. She told my pal Kathleen she had a good marriage but must stop picking at her husband and obsessing over the small things. Kathleen said this was “scarily true,” and how could the woman know that? Mrs. T told another guest she had a close family member who had recently hurt her terribly. That family member was really sick right now, Mrs. T said, and would never get any better. My chum took that to mean her husband, who just weeks prior had announced out of the blue that he was leaving her, giving no reason. “Sick,” she figured, meant “sick in the head.” Another woman was told she had been pining for a particular man, suffering in his absence, and she just couldn’t stop. This was in fact true — has been for the last two years. From where was Mrs. T channeling this data? It was spooky.

Apparently, though, surliness on the phone does not a true clairvoyant make. Mrs. T turned out to be dead wrong or really off about most everything else. Kim was told she would inherit a family business. There is no family business. She was also informed that a family member would be pregnant soon. Not likely — her female relatives are either too old or too young, Kim said. Mrs. T told one woman she was having trouble with her co-workers, when in actuality the person is considering going into business with a few of them. Amy — who also was told she’d inherit a nonexistent family firm — was informed that she was very sad inside. “Never mind that this is one of the happiest times of my life,” she said later. (Postscript: Mrs. T told Amy that she’d marry her boyfriend. He broke up with her a week after the party.)

Mrs. T was the farthest afield with Jen. Jen had had terrible bouts with Crohn’s disease and meningitis over the last year, cycling in and out of the hospital four times and losing oodles of weight. Mrs. T, however, mentioned nothing about health in Jen’s reading. Jen inquired, “What about my dad?” Our medium-for-hire said that Jen’s father was having troubles with work right now, but that he would get through it and be very happy. Jen’s father died of a heart attack last May.

Yes, most of it was a lot of hooey. But it was memorable hooey, $27 worth of hooey we’ll probably all tell our kids about some day. And hooey I’ll likely reference in my head if nature and chance decide to bring me a girl child first, or if I happen into a book deal in two to three years.

Later that night, when I went into the solarium to clean up and blow out candles, I saw that Mrs. T had left a stray tarot card on the floor, the “Wheel of Fortune” card. A little jolt went through me, followed by a tingle. Did she abandon it on purpose to delight the evening’s host, or was it a divine accident filled with meaning? I decided to go with the latter, and stood for a moment fantasizing hard about Marty and I and our beautiful future spawn shuttling between our seven coastal homes, riding the champion quarter horses housed at each. We’re dressed in white linen, galloping through sea grass, and laughing, laughing, laughing.