Psychic Junkie (14 page)

The best part of my new plan was that as a lounge singer I’d still be an entertainer, yet I’d be mercifully removed from the twisted pressures of the A-, B-, C-, or F-list life. It was simple. I didn’t need Hollywood; I just needed a bar, a piano, and a killer dress. That was it. It was the answer. I had a new identity: I’d be Wilhelm’s wife and the best damn luxury-hotel lobby/lounge singer ever.

A few days later I remembered a reading Aurelia had done for me, back when I was still with Jonas. She’d said she’d seen me with my own business—and she’d said it had something to do with hotels and entertainment. At the time I’d had the fleeting worry I’d end up an independent call girl, but now it all made sense! Wilhelm works in hotels, and I’m a lounge singer!

Everything was wonderful. My gleaming future was about to unfold, and August was the month when it would happen. As I went off to the bank to cash my unemployment check, I was in absolute heaven.

THE PROGRESSION FROM GIRLFRIEND TO FIANCÉE
to wife can be documented in the magazines found on a woman’s coffee table. As a girlfriend, I poured through the pages of
Marie Claire
and
Glamour
and
Vogue
. As a fiancée, I should have been compiling stacks of
Modern Bride
and
Elegant Bride
and
The Knot
, but since I couldn’t let Wilhelm know I was on to him and his plans to propose, the only logical thing to do was to prepare for the role of Sarah the Wife. So as August approached, I started up subscriptions to
Martha Stewart Living
,
O
, and
Real Simple
. I even considered making a doctor’s appointment so I could hijack a few issues of
Redbook
or
Better Homes and Gardens
, though ultimately I decided that those magazines were really for mothers, or at least wives in a later stage.

I hurled myself into my new role as Sarah the Wife, and at the end of each day had practically memorized entire articles on making curtains or the best ways to organize a closet. In the evenings Sarah the Wife cut out recipes from magazines with surgical precision, carefully adding them to a cookbook she was making, one tailored to the tastes of Wilhelm the Husband, a very discriminating creature who couldn’t be satisfied with basic dishes such as macaroni and cheese. And though difficult, Sarah the Wife completely ignored her Neiman Marcus catalog to instead focus on the Williams-Sonoma catalog, coveting with a scary passion the Le Creuset pots shaped like hearts and the KitchenAid Tilt-Head Stand Mixer in the exclusive pink satin pearl finish. Eventually, I decided, Sarah the Wife would even take up knitting (just as soon as she’d managed to give up buying bath products rather than buying yarn) and would be perfect in every way, like an ad for how the job should be done: young (fine, “not old”) and sexy, combining with flair the worlds of pot roasts and stilettos, teddies and All-Clad copper pots.

The one thing I, as Sarah the Wife, had issues with was décor. Perhaps as a result of his metrosexuality, Wilhelm had a very clear sense of style and a very firm choice in interior design—and that was stark and modern, clean lines and no frills, Lucite and Le Corbusier. In contrast, I favored antiques and toile fabrics, messy bouquets of flowers, and velvet curtains. My room had ornately carved French walnut nightstands, a floral bedspread, oriental rugs, and a sense that someone had been living there for approximately two hundred years.

I quickly came to terms with the fact that everything I owned would have to go. It was okay, I told myself, I loved him enough that his tastes would become my tastes, his interests my interests. Though I’d always considered myself something of a feminist, touting women’s rights and the importance of independence, it was becoming evident that perhaps that wasn’t really the case. I guess deep down I was a 1950s housewife, a 1950s housewife who doubled as a lounge singer.

After brimming with shame over my unevolved state, I got over it. I saw things logically: After ten years of struggles and pain and rejection, would being taken care of be so bad? No. What was so wrong about being a housewife, anyway? Nothing. I mean, sure I’d have to get rid of all those pesky hopes and dreams I’d always had, but it’s not like my efforts had been panning out. Might as well focus on Wilhelm, the one thing in my life that was on the right track.

Still, I needed to maintain
some
of my identity and not completely fold myself into him. Thus I decided to absolutely put my foot down and insist on being allotted at least one little room in our future house, where I could sequester all my belongings. There. Identity secured.

Yes, Sarah the Wife was the answer. In the face of stark unemployment, dwindling funds, and a life with no career, I simply counted the days till August, and debated over china patterns.

Suddenly August was two weeks away, just fourteen days off, which meant Wilhelm had only about 336 hours to come up with a romantic and wonderful proposal. Not that I really thought he was going to propose
on
August first—I’m not
that
crazy. But I figured I should be prepared and looking memorable starting on the first of August. No more figuring my hair was fine unwashed as long as it was in a ponytail, no more deciding my chipped nail polish would go unnoticed if I wore big distracting rings. No. When he told the story of the proposal to our future children, Max and Madeleine, he’d tell them their mother’s hair was shining, her nails were gleaming, and her eyes were sparkling between perfectly applied eyeliner. “She looked radiant,” he’d say, and beside him I’d smile from my lounge chair, the reflection of our infinity pool wavering in my tearing eyes.

Strangely, I was so caught in the momentum of our approaching proposal that I barely had time for readings. It was, in a sense, time to sit back and let the predictions I’d been waiting for happen, to enjoy the life I was about to have. Besides, one of my last calls had been to a psychic named Evangeline, a woman who’d cheerfully said in a Southern drawl, “M’dear, your relationship is an impendin’ train wreck.” Immediately I recognized her as the evil person she was and decided her accent was brash and disagreeable, and then I noted that her ratings weren’t nearly as stellar as Erlin’s. I had nothing to worry about, but I decided to take a break from readings just so I didn’t upset myself with people who undoubtedly had miserable existences and enjoyed hurting younger women whose entire amazing lives were about to unfold. They were bitter, I knew, and nothing’s worse than a bitter psychic.

July thirty-first arrived, and something horrible occurred to me. He didn’t know my ring size. How could he buy a ring? Obviously I couldn’t just tell him, so I went to my jewelry box and lifted from its depths all the rings I’d ever owned. Carefully I cleaned each one so they’d catch as much light as possible, then slyly planted them around the house, leaving a couple on the coffee table, a few on the end tables, one on the bathroom sink, and a dozen on the kitchen counter. I knew it was just a matter of time till Wilhelm seized his chance, pocketed one, and took it to a jeweler. Then again, I reassured myself, there was the chance he’d somehow already figured it out, and I realized that as a metrosexual he might possess the ability to determine ring size
visually
. Of course! I was almost certain that was it, and tried to remember all the times I’d seen him looking at my hands, my heart racing as I realized he looked at my hands
a lot
.

Content that he’d already found a way to ascertain my ring size, I watched him like a hawk for any signs of debating about my ring, ordering my ring, or receiving news that my ring had arrived. Then one evening, a few days into August, I saw such a sign. We’d just returned from a long, strenuous day of discount shopping at an outlet mall and were relaxing at my house, when he requested to use my computer to check his e-mails. Of course I let him, and pretended to watch TV in the next room as I pictured him grinning at an e-mail that, oh, I don’t know, maybe said something like, “Your 1920s platinum 1.79 carat Old European–cut diamond ring is ready for pickup, and we’ve made sure that all six French-cut sapphires on the sides are secured and certified.”

After a while I got hungry and wandered to the kitchen, a trek that involved passing through the dining room, the location of the computer. Sensing my presence, he quickly minimized something, something that looked like an e-mail, and pretended to study an eBay listing for a Giorgio Armani shirt. Hmmm. My ring suspicions pretty much confirmed, I continued into the kitchen, found a bag of potato chips, and was about to pop a chip into my mouth, when an absolutely horrible, wretched thought swept over me:
I might not like the ring.
What with our vastly different tastes in décor, there was a huge chance we wouldn’t agree on jewelry. I liked antique rings that people consider heirlooms, and he’d like contemporary rings people consider art pieces. This, despite my detailed mulling on the subject, had never occurred to me, and with horror I saw him on bended knee, presenting me with a modern ring made of titanium, a stark ring consisting of only one single stone—clean lines and no frills. I lost my appetite. I put the chip back. I
had
to see the ring.

But what could I do, even if I did see the ring? That would be a problem for later, I decided, the key right now was to prepare myself. Not only am I not a fan of surprises, but I detest surprises and don’t handle them well at all. I was a child who couldn’t be left unattended in the house near Christmas, because I would tear everything apart in a hunt for my presents—and not because I wanted them early, or was even excited about my gifts, but because I simply couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. The suspense hurt. And though my parents should’ve taken note of my quirks and ruled out surprise parties, they did make one unfortunate attempt at such a celebration for my ninth birthday. There I was, convinced that they’d forgotten, when suddenly I was confronted with a room full of people smiling and singing and holding a cake. I was so completely caught off guard that I burst into tears and bawled uncontrollably for hours. From that point on they practically drew up programs for all events.

Thus I knew: I could not be caught off guard with this ring. Very easily Wilhelm would be able to discern that my tears were not tears of joy, and that would pretty much be that. I went back into the dining room and put my hands on his shoulders, massaging like a caring, plotting girlfriend would.

“Almost done?” I asked sweetly. “I’ve got some e-mails to write.”

“Sure.” He got up, and I took his spot, and waited until he was in the other room, till I heard him channel surf and land on his new favorite TV show,
elimiDATE
. “It’s a marathon,” he said with excitement. “An
elimiDATE
marathon!”

I scooted in toward the table. “Mmm-hmm. Good. I’ll be there in a bit.”

Though the browser was now on Yahoo!, I hit the back button, and
Bingo!
There was his e-mail account, and, of course, being trusting and technologically inept, he’d not logged out. My heart, as if it were just clueing in to what was going on, started pounding furiously. What was I doing? I was being bad, this I knew, yet I couldn’t help but also feel exhilarated. Briefly I pictured myself as an undercover agent who’d slipped into a den in the midst of a party to hack into the host’s computer, and immediately felt better. Ah, yes, secret agent stealth mode. Very good.

With Wilhelm safely snickering in the other room, I swiftly scanned his e-mails, searching for anything with the word “diamond” or “ring” or “purchase” in the subject line. Though I came across nothing with those words, I did stumble upon an e-mail with the subject
“liebling,”
a word I recognized as German for “darling,” as it was one of Wilhelm’s pet names for me. Um,
darling
? My eyes darted to the sender’s name: Nadja. Who the hell was Nadja? I knew it wasn’t his mother or sister, but prayed it was an aunt or someone else able to use the word “darling” in a nonsexual way. As far as I knew, the only person he kept in contact with back home was his best friend, a guy named Rolf—
not
a guy named Nadja.

I opened the e-mail. German. The entire thing was in German. But then my eyes focused on two words, two words that needed no translation: Julia Roberts. I took a deep breath.
I
was Julia Roberts. Not that I was actually Julia Roberts, of course, but Wilhelm liked to say I looked like her, so evidently this e-mail was about me. And if it was about me, I had every right to read it—or so I told myself as I copied the entire thing, closed his e-mail, went to a site that offered free instant translations, selected German to English, and hit paste and enter. There. Heart racing, I leaned in. What sat before me was a passage Shakespeare might have written when completely hammered.

The first thing I did, after reading this highly suspicious note to my boyfriend from a girl whose name conjured images of a six-foot-tall Aryan goddess, was try to envision my last Visa statement, in particular the itty-bitty amount under “Available Credit,” an amount that would hopefully serve as a psychic buffer zone before I hit the sharp and unsympathetic “limit.” There would be calls about this, of that I was certain. Of course, I couldn’t just pick up the phone with Wilhelm in the other room. I had to wait. So I shot off a copy of the e-mail to Gina, figuring she’d been an English major and should hence be familiar with passages that made no sense. Then, just for fun, I read the malevolent little note over and over and over again.

This wasn’t symbolism here; this was mistranslation. “The woman you marry and the woman you have a fling with are completely separate pair of shoes.” I got that, sort of, though I was curious what in German could mistakenly lead to “pair of shoes.” Perhaps it was just some wacky German saying? Next was the part about American women. The word “shackle” was one that Wilhelm had used, and without having to be told, I knew that this girl, this evil Aryan goddess, had been the one to plant such a word in his head, because she wanted him. This was a thinly veiled manipulation, a letter written by a cunning woman posing as a friend, a woman who wished to destroy a relationship so
she
could get the man. I recognized this tactic because this was a letter I myself could’ve written.

I was trying to figure out what “cupboard” meant when I heard Wilhelm get up.

“Are you getting hungry?” he asked.

“Uh, no, not yet.” I quickly saved the translation in a Word document, minimized everything, and stopped breathing as he passed behind my chair and into the kitchen.