Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

She knew that this love wasn’t only the sweetest thing that had ever happened to her, but that it was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to anybody.

I didn’t even know how to want this, she thought. And in the end, it didn’t even matter, because he came to her, whether she wanted him or not. It didn’t even depend on her in the end, what she wanted or didn’t want, because what happened happened, and it was so easy and simple that it made her giggle.

“I love you,” said George.

“I love you, too,” said Irene.

“I’m glad you said that,” said George. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Yes, it’s been five whole days since we met. What a holdout I am. You’ve been through such endless torments,” she teased.

“I have,” said George. “I thought I would never find you.”

“What do you mean,” Irene said. Her eyes were closed. “Wait, are you about to say something about destiny? I might need you to shut up. I’m feeling very happy in my body, and if you wake my brain up, it might disapprove.”

“I want to tell you something,” he said. He turned to face her and propped his head up on an elbow. She did the same.

“Are you sure? With the talking? We can’t just lie here?”

He put his hand on her rib cage. “I’m going to say something about destiny.”

“OK,” she said. “Get it over with. Pull the Band-Aid. Then I’m going to climb down and rummage in that desk and see if there are any salty foods.”

“You are destined to be mine,” he said.

“Here it comes.” She smiled at him and rolled her eyes. “Like in the stars?”

“In a crystal ball. I went to a psychic. She saw you.”

“You know when those astrologer types catch TIA faculty outside the safety of academia they like to play all kinds of jokes on you, right?”

“On you. You’re TIA faculty now, too.”

“On us then. Nothing gives them more pleasure than to torment us with oogly stories about fate and prophecies.”

“Yeah,” said George. “I’m sure nothing gives them more pleasure than that.”

He sighed, and then she felt a little bit bad. Not really, but at least she felt a little bit sympathetic.

“OK, go on,” she said. “Tell me about this psychic you went to see, that saw me.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you, because I thought you’d think I was ridiculous.”

“Right, that was wise.”

“And I thought it would bother you.”

“It does bother me. Things that are silly bother me.”

“But now…”

“Now you’ve invaded my girl parts with your face, you can come clean with all your strange and mystical leanings.”

“Right.”

“Fine! I told you to go on.” Irene laughed, and settled in on her back again, desultorily stroking at the side of the pipe. There were no seams. There was no out.

“Well, I went to see this psychic, to find out, you know, if I was ever going to find you.”

“True love, impending death, and whatever happened to Grandma,” said Irene wryly. “The top three reasons to visit a psychic.”

“She looked into her crystal ball.” George went on.

“Where did I put my thingawhatever,” said Irene. “Reason number four.”

“She said you would have brown hair and would be an astronomer,” George began.

“And that I would also have two legs and a ciliated lining in my intestine?” Irene asked.

“And that you would be a dreamer,” he told her.

“Well, there you go,” said Irene. “I’m not a dreamer. Obviously. I’m the opposite of a dreamer. I reject dreaming in all its forms.”

I’m a dreamer, thought Irene. I visit other people in my dreams, and I have a house in my dream that threatens to eat me. Irene suddenly had an uncomfortable feeling, like itchy feet. The psychic’s prediction was stupid but eerily correct. Well, not really. Vague wasn’t correct. Psychic predictions are always vague in the client’s first visit. It was one of her mother’s most important rules. You only need to give the client enough to get them feeling good and coming back. Save the specificity for when they’ve divulged a bit more about themselves.

“I think you are a dreamer,” said George.

“You wish,” Irene murmured. She rolled over and put her arms around him.

“Doesn’t matter,” said George, pushing his face into her neck and holding her close. “The thing is, Irene, she was your mom.”

Irene heard the word “mom” like a clang of metal banging into metal. She pushed him off her so hard his skin made a smacking sound against her hand.

“What?” she barked.

“I saw when we went to pick up Belion that it was the same house—”

“Where did she live?” Irene asked.

“On Bancroft,” said George, his forehead now wrinkled in concern. “I was going to tell you.”

“Shut up,” said Irene. “Shut up, shut up.”

Remember when I told you my mother was an astrologer? Irene wanted to say. Remember when I told you that she was a psychic?

Irene pounded up the stairs in her mother’s house. Belion had cleared out, and she was glad. Belion’s scant possessions were gone from the bedroom, no evidence of him in the bathroom. Perhaps Belion and Kate Oakenshield were still out on George’s boat, or had dived down to live with the merpeople at the bottom of Lake Erie. Why should they not? Obviously, they were in love. Simple, uncomplicated love between two people. The simplest thing in the world.

Irene pulled the rope that brought the attic stairs down and began to climb up. There were boxes and boxes up there. Boxes and boxes of everything her mother had touched, every piece of paper that had come through the front door, every session she had ever had, recorded on tape, and dutifully cataloged alphabetically into lettered crates. If her mother ever had repeat customers who left long spaces between their appointments, she would need to listen to the previous session in order not to contradict herself. Her methodology was programmatic, but at times it yielded different results. It wasn’t like she was listening to the stars, and the stars would not remember what she had said. It wasn’t like she was actually psychic. It was a skill, a learned behavior, and the documentation of every session was part of what made the business work. The stealthy documentation. Tapes in the attic.

Irene located the D crate and began to paw through its contents. She felt darkly sure that she would find a tape with the name GEORGE DERMONT on it, and she did. She held it in her hand. George Dermont, and a date that matched the month he said he’d visited her mother. Irene came down the stairs slowly, slowly, thinking, just as she did every time she descended this staircase, about the fall her mother had taken. Which step represented the point of no return? And had her mother been fighting? Or had she just been falling?

A woman on a bridge has two choices: jump or not jump. A woman standing over a tape player has two choices as well: play or not play. Know or not know. A woman falling through the air has no choices. A woman listening to information from a taped recording of something that happened three years ago has no choices either. She already knows. There was no one there to push Irene, no hand on her finger clicking the PLAY button, no encouraging voice saying “Do it!” Was there a hand on the back of her mother, pushing her off that top step, taking all prevarication out of the equation, sending her to her death? Irene sat in her dead mother’s chair and listened to her voice coming out of the machine. She’d clicked on the recorder surreptitiously toward the beginning of the reading; Irene could tell they were just sitting down. And then the words came out: I see her. I love her. She is your true love. I cannot help but love her, too.