Barbara Samuel (14 page)

“Hmm,” Allie said, laying the cards side by side in a row. “Well, now that’s very interesting.”

Luna’s heart thudded hard three times. She didn’t always know what the cards meant, though Allie had told her not to get worried over the Death card, which meant new beginnings. It was the Tower card that was scary. Or maybe not scary, but it meant big stuff coming and it was always wise to get your act together in that case.

At any rate, there was no Death card. Only the Ten of Wands, then the Lovers, then the Knight of Cups, riding his horse in a kindly, noble fashion across the road of her life. “What does that mean?”

“Probably a lot of what you think it does,” she said, narrowing her eyes. Luna recognized the concentration face—they’d been reading cards and palms together for more than five years—and let her be for a minute.

With the extravagantly long copper fingernail of her left index finger, Allie touched each of the cards in turn and smiled. “I’m
very
happy about this!” She said in a bright, tinkly voice. “Here’s the first card: tens are a time of transition and culmination. This one says you’re
dragging around a lot of burdens you don’t have to carry. You need to learn you don’t have to do everything yourself.”

Well, that rang true. But it would ring true for just about any female in America, wouldn’t it?

“Two—the Lovers. That’s sex, for sure, but it also points to new developments, or a new level of development in your life. Usually something physical that leads to something spiritual.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Have sex with him. Soon and often.”

“Allie!”

“I’m not kidding. That’s what this card says. Do it. It’s telling you to be open and vulnerable if you want healing. You won’t be sorry. Finally”—she smiled like a cat—“the Knight of Cups. A good man, a responsible man. I like him.”

“No warnings?” she said, feeling cheated.

“You want opposing forces?”

“Yes.”

She offered Luna the deck. “Draw a card.”

She pulled one out, and another tumbled on to the table. The one she drew and gave to Allie was the Queen of Pentacles. It was upside down. The other one fell face first on the table and she left it there.

“Let’s deal with this one, first,” Allie said. “A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, full of passion. Probably someone who lives close to the land, or earns her living from it in some way. Because it’s upside down, there’s suspicion and manipulation involved.” Allie grimaced, tapped her finger on the rabbit in the picture. “This makes me think of pregnancy. What’s the ex look like?”

Luna shrugged. “No idea.”

“Okay, well, one of the opposing forces is a woman, an earthy woman.”

“Not like a female force, maybe?”

“Could be. I’m betting on a living woman. Gut feeling.” She peered at it, then shook her head and reached for the other card. The bell over the door rang and a pair of young women came in. “Hi,” Allie called. “I’ll be with you soon.”

She turned the card over. “Now this is interesting.” It was the Emperor, reversed. Allie closed her eyes and her hands were outstretched. It embarrassed Luna to death when she did this and there were other people present, but the two girls didn’t seem to care or even notice.

“A big man,” she said. “A big dark man. Someone in a powerful position in your life.
Very
powerful. Ring a bell?”

There was no one in power in her life, not a man, anyway. She and Barbie, they were doing it on their own. “Nope.”

“This is really not very clear is it? A woman and a man. Let me try something.”

“Allie, it’s okay—I was just playing around. Really, I’ve got to—”

“Shuffle,” Allie ordered.

But Luna suddenly could not bear to be here, to think about her life in this way, the possibilities, the power of love or betrayal, the intense highs and lows that were always part of loving someone. “No. That’s enough.”

Allie raised her head, and Luna saw the surprise and curiosity there. She was about to speak when one of the girls said, “Excuse me, can we get you to pull out the rings?”

Luna seized the moment. She stood up. “I’ve got to get home to Joy. We’re doing our nails tonight. Hers black. Mine … I don’t know what.”

“I’ll call you.”

Luna rushed out, glad there was a wind coming down from the blue mountains to blow away the silly sense of
impending … excitement the cards lent. It would be ridiculous to let a random drawing of cards influence events, and she certainly didn’t intend to worry about any of it, but the picture of the Lovers, hair flying in the breeze, kept surfacing.

When she got home, there was trouble waiting. Joy was on the telephone, her voice bright and brittle, tears streaming down her cheeks. “April, I’m doing great. Really! If he wants to know how it is, he should stay home to talk to me sometimes.”

Luna put her bag on the table and started putting away the few groceries she’d brought home in a canvas tote bag—big black plums, a chunk of Gouda, sourdough bread, and some fresh glazed doughnuts for dessert. Joy listened for a minute, then started to protest, “I don’t care about—” She went quiet, listening, and gave Luna a look she couldn’t read. She dashed away her tears with an angry wrist.

The groceries that had looked so appealing in the store now looked pitifully picnicky, not at all the offerings a mother should give her growing teenage daughter. She imagined April’s fridge filled with tender roast beef and carrots, hearty soups, gallons of milk, and sweet tea. Freshly baked cobbler for dessert. Opening the fridge to put away the cheese, she was embarrassed by how spare it looked—a few stalks of celery in the crisper, three tall brown bottles of Henry Weinhardt vanilla soda, a quart of milk, which Luna only used in coffee. She would have to ask her mother to drive her to the store for a real shopping trip tomorrow or the next day. Maybe even tonight.

“Tell him,” Joy said distinctly, “that I’m not coming back to Atlanta.” She hung up.

“What’s up?” Luna said, offering a plum, wet from the tap water she’d just washed it in. April probably used that spray stuff you bought in a bottle.

Joy took the plum, took a bite, shook the hair out of her eyes. “My dad thinks my educational chances will be ruined if I go to school here. He thinks it’s too risky for me to spend the school year here.”

A hollowness hit her belly. “I see.”

“I’m not going back there,” she said. “Not. Going.” Then she darted a look at Luna. “Unless this is too much hassle?”

“Oh, my God, no! I love having you here!” She sat down, relief making her knees weak, and reached for Joy, touching just her elbow.

“I don’t know why he’s doing this,” Joy cried. “He couldn’t wait to get rid of me and now he wants me back there? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Joy,” Luna said cautiously, “I’ve never been entirely clear about the reasons for the change in custody arrangements. Did you and your father have a fight? Was it your decision or his?”

Finishing the plum, Joy tossed the pit toward the trash can by the fridge. It missed, and she stood up to put it in properly. “I’ve wanted to come for a couple of years, but he wouldn’t let me. Then, last year, I just got sick of all his game stuff and I decided I wanted to make my own life.” She quirked her mouth upward in a half grin. Luna saw her sister in the gesture. “So I gave up the good life and found the freaks.”

Luna laughed, partly in relief. Partly in amusement. “Okay. But you don’t have to give up the good grades.”

“No,” she said, “I know. That was a mistake, last year.”

“Changing the way you look won’t hurt you in the long run, as long as you don’t tattoo your neck or arms or—heaven forefend—face. But you don’t want to do things now that will limit your choices down the line. It’s just so hard to know what you’ll want later.”

“I know, Mom.” She pulled open the fridge. “What else is there to eat? I’m starving.”

“Ravioli? It’ll only take a few minutes to fix.”

“Okay.”

She sat down as Luna got up. “You can learn to do this, you know. It’s really easy.”

“I don’t particularly want to know.”

“Better for you, though.” She took a bag of frozen cheese raviolis out of the freezer and put them on the counter, and took out a medium-sized saucepan and filled it with water. “Bring the water to a boil first,” Luna said, turning on the burner.

“Mom, you graduated early, right? Why did you do it that way?”

Because her life was the opposite of Joy’s, she wanted to say—because her mother had to work way too hard to just keep them in jeans and Luna wanted to get out and get into a place she could help take care of her. “It was my ticket to the world,” she said instead. “I was smart. That’s what I had. I used it.”

“Didn’t you want to party and stuff, just be a teenager?”

“Not really.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t party at all?”

“Not then. When I got to CU, yes, but I didn’t even get into it then until I was a junior.”

“Yeah, everybody says Boulder’s a big party school.”

Luna crossed her arms, remembering Carol, her party-hearty roommate that year. Luna was finally eighteen, and had been in school for two years, away from home, made the dean’s list every time, too. It was time to let down her hair—and boy, Carol had been the one to show her how. “Made up for lost time that year,
I’ll tell you. It scares me to death to think of you doing those things.”

She lifted a shoulder. “You know, Mom, if I wanted to, I could do any drug you can think of—anything. I’m not interested. Just seems stupid.”

“Good.” The water started to rumble and Luna glanced at it, then back at her daughter. “Do you drink?”

“Never.”

“That’s good.” Waving her over to the stove, Luna opened the ravioli and poured some in, showing her how many for how much water, all the while wondering what had changed to make Marc want to bring Joy back to Atlanta.

Suddenly, it worried her that she was seeing Thomas. The first guy she’d dated in at least a couple of years, but would it make her look bad if she went back to court? No, that was silly. She took a breath. Women dated. Especially women who had been divorced for close to a decade.

But she couldn’t help sending out a little prayer.
Not this time. Please.

“I’ll call your dad later, see what’s up,” she said. “In the meantime, don’t worry about him forcing you to go back. He can’t. We changed the custody agreements officially. You have to go at Christmas, but he has to send you back. Okay?”

Joy let go of a breath. “Okay. Thanks, Mom.” She slumped against the wall behind the bench. “And Grandma’s richer than my dad, even, isn’t she?”

Luna laughed. “Frank is, but yeah. Your father is pretty much outclassed there.”

“Grandma would fight for me, if it came to that.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yep.”

“Good,” she said. And again. “Good.”

Placida Ramirez woke up feeling winded. In the air she smelled burned sugar, the odor of trouble. Outside, she could hear the cry of ravens. Nobody remembered anymore that they could be warnings of trouble, but she remembered. She didn’t have to look in the yard to know there were three.

Out on the porch, she found Tiny, who stayed with Thomas because he had no other place to go. Placida did not wish to like him, but there was an air of starvation about him and she couldn’t help feeding him, and he had such deep sorrow around him it clung like a purple cloud, the color of bruises. His wife was the daughter of a bad line, and he should never have kissed her, because things started in motion right then to this, to him sitting here with his heart in his throat, his children running wild in the street. She made a noise and said to him in Spanish, “I need to go to the church in Chimayó.”

He shook his head and lifted his pant leg to show her the black bracelet around his ankle. “This don’t let me go nowhere.”

Placida knew better and not through any magic. Her grandson Donnie had been tethered to the bracelet for a year the third time they arrested him for drinking and getting behind the wheel of his car. He could go for a few hours, now and then, long as he asked. “We’ll ask ‘em. And I’ll make you a charm.”

The sorrow around him thinned the smallest bit. Hope could do that. He frowned. “I got a car. I’ll ask.”

She waited with her hands in her lap, looking down from the deep shade of the porch to the town just below, peeking out from between cottonwoods. Her heart, none too steady these days, went into one of its racing spins. The ravens bickered over in the side yard, trying to get her attention, but she steadfastly ignored them.

Tiny came out, his back a little straighter, his keys in his hand. He helped her down the steps into his car, a pretty thing painted in a sparkly kind of purple, with an engine that sounded like thunder. He rolled the windows down for her and made her strap herself into the seat belt. It rocked and rumbled around her, the car, feeling powerful, and she patted the door happily. When he started down the narrow road out of Taos toward Chimayó, he didn’t talk, but he turned the radio to the one with Mexican songs, and he knew some of the words. She remembered his father had sung for a long time. Maybe there was music in Tiny, too. She would see what she could do.

At the church, he stayed outside, the way so many people will do, as if he was afraid it would fall down on him, or he might fall down on his knees himself, his guilt and unhappiness turning him into one of the
penitentes
who still secretly scourged themselves in the mountains on holy days. Placida snorted to herself. So much noise they made with all their howling. The saints could hear a whisper. On those holy days, they had to be covering their ears in pain, like a mother with too many babies all setting each other off in wails that got louder and louder.