Seasons of the Fool (4 page)

“It’s just salt water, dear,” Ms. Elsie reassured her. “I’m going to say a few words while I sprinkle a little bit of it on you, front and back. Then Thea will smudge you, and you’ll be ready.”

“Smudge…?”

But the women had turned away from her. Both faced north – the direction of the lake – and Ms. Elsie said something about welcoming the Earth spirits. Then they made a quarter turn, and Ms. Thea welcomed the Air spirits. Another quarter turn, and Ms. Elsie welcomed the spirits of Fire. One more turn, and Ms. Thea welcomed the spirits of Water. Julia thought it odd that they didn’t welcome Water when they faced north – after all, there was a whole lot of it in that direction – but she kept her question to herself.

“Earth and Water, bless and purify our friend Julia as she enters the sacred labyrinth,” Ms. Elsie said, circling her as she flicked droplets of water from the bottle over her.

Then it was Ms. Thea’s turn. “Fire and Air, bless and purify our friend Julia as she enters the sacred labyrinth,” she said, using the fan to push the scented smoke from the bundle toward her. “May her visions be true, and may they bring her the comfort she seeks.”

“So mote it be,” said Ms. Elsie, capping the water bottle. The two women stepped back, beaming at her. “All right, dear,” Ms. Elsie said. “You can go in now. Mind you, walk slowly. And don’t be afraid. Whatever you see in there is only in your mind’s eye – it’s not real.” The two women exchanged a significant look, as if maybe they weren’t telling her the whole truth.

She stepped to the labyrinth’s entrance and hesitated, suddenly nervous. To her left was her own house; to her right, Ms. Thea and Ms. Elsie’s cottage. She could see Mr. Starek’s house across the street through the thinning foliage. Mr. Starek himself was out of sight, for which she was absurdly grateful.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Ms. Thea murmured behind her. “It’s so close to Samhain. The veil is already thinning.”

“Maybe it’s the best idea,” Ms. Elsie replied quietly.

The conviction in her voice gave Julia the courage to step into the labyrinth.

At the moment her toes touched the path inside the ropes, everything changed.

She teetered on the edge of a precipice. A little dog nipped at her heels; she couldn’t tell whether it was trying to keep her from falling, or pushing her over the brink.

As she half-turned to try to shoo it away, movement caught her eye. She turned farther….

And she was younger, just out of high school. She stood at an airport window, watching small planes take off and land. Her grandmother was behind her, her hand on her shoulder. “See?” Grandma was saying as she pointed out a twin-engine plane coming in for a landing. “Here they come!”

The plane’s landing gear collapsed on one side at touchdown. The aircraft cartwheeled down the runway and exploded. She screamed, for she knew her parents were aboard the aircraft, and she knew they would not survive.

She turned away from the window and ran….

And was in college a year later, standing before a bulletin board outside the theater department office, checking the cast list for a play. No matter how many times she searched the list, ever more frantically, her name was not on it. Her dream of becoming an actress shattered. Someone near her murmured, “I guess there’s always tech crew,” but she knew that was not for her. She turned and ran….

And smacked headlong into Lance. He, too, was college-aged in this vision or whatever it was, and with just one look at him, her heart turned over. He was tall, dark, and handsome, with carefully-coiffed hair and a natural charm that pulled everyone nearby into his orbit. He held her shoulders as he set her back with easy grace and said, “Hey there, honey. Where’s the fire?” At his words, in her mind’s eye, a small plane erupted in flames. Sobbing, she turned and ran….

And was ten years older, married to Lance, and entering her first writing workshop at StoryStudio. A man across the room immediately caught her eye. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a dirty blond ponytail and a beard – completely different from her husband. His name was Jesse Vaughn, she learned, and he wanted to be a playwright. His desire resonated with the frustrated actress inside her. It seemed to her as if fate had brought them together – that maybe, at long last, she had found her soulmate. Then he said her work was shit. Devastated, she lurched from her seat and ran….

And it was a couple of years later, in Jesse’s crappy apartment in Logan Square. They had just finished making love, and she was sitting, naked, on his scratchy couch, making out a check to him for half of her inheritance. He was going to use it to start a publishing house, he said, and she would be his top editor. Part of her knew there would never be a publishing house, and that this money would go the way of all the rest of the checks she had given him – for booze, drugs, and rent for this hovel – but she was still half-convinced she could save him. Then it was too late, the check was cashed and the money gone, and she turned and ran….

And stood as if rooted in the kitchen of the house in Evanston, facing Lance as he told her with malicious glee that he was seeing someone on the side. She had known for months – it was part of what drove her to begin sleeping with Jesse – but she hadn’t wanted to believe it. She hurled Jesse’s name at him in retaliation. Furious, he raised a hand; she backed away from him and ran….

And was in the living room in Evanston, ripping open an envelope addressed to her from the Securities and Exchange Commission. She could not run from this – not until she had told the government what she knew, confessed to their lavish lifestyle, and admitted she had no idea how much money they had or where it had all come from. Lance had been the business major, she told them; Lance was the hedge fund manager, the financial whiz. She was just a kid who had wanted to be an actress, a would-be writer who got pulled into his world, and who had swallowed his bullshit like all his other victims had. But as soon as the grilling was over, she turned and ran….

And was back on the precipice, with the little dog yapping at her, and all the disasters she had run from at her back. She knew she needed to make a choice: she could step away from the brink and face everything that had gone wrong in her life. She could take responsibility for the mistakes she had made and absolve herself of guilt for the things that were not her fault. She could go back and stand by Lance’s side; she could play the dutiful wife who stood by her man, even as he drove them both over a cliff.

Or she could walk off a cliff under her own power.

Fleeing was a hard habit to break.

With the little dog tugging at the hem of her jeans, she took a step into thin air.

On the way down, as the wind whistled past her ears, she realized something was breaking her fall. She looked down, and saw two things holding her up: her minor in creative writing, and the college publication for which she had been the editor.

She looked past them, farther below, and saw her sanctuary – her grandparents’ cottage. There were people down there, too, but she couldn’t make out their faces; she was falling too fast and everything was blurry. She opened her mouth to scream, her arms wrapped over her head in a futile effort to protect herself from the consequences of her choices…

And stumbled out of the labyrinth, landing on all fours in the cold dirt.

At once, Ms. Thea and Ms. Elsie appeared on either side of her, taking hold of her arms, helping her to her feet. They gauged her appearance with wary concern. Ms. Elsie handed her a water bottle – not the one containing the salt water, but a regular clear plastic one with a paper label – and she drank about half of the contents, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket. Then the older women helped her walk the trail to their cottage.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, as they brought her up the steps to their back door. “You don’t need to baby me. I’ll be all right.”

“Think of it as a special service we provide to all of our labyrinth walkers,” Ms. Elsie said, patting her arm, as Ms. Thea held the screen door open for them all.

In truth, Julia was glad to sink into a chair in the women’s living room. Her trip through the labyrinth, together with her sleepless night, must have taken more out of her than she had thought. Ms. Thea urged her to put her feet up as she whisked the stack of newspapers off the footstool – but not fast enough to keep Julia from recognizing the photo of Lance on the front page of the paper atop the stack. And why wouldn’t she recognize it? She had taken it herself.

She leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. In a moment, she was asleep.

Her dream wasn’t anything like the experience she’d had inside the labyrinth – for which her dreaming self was grateful. She didn’t think she could relive all that again so soon. Instead, she dreamed she was walking along the beach. She was barefoot, and the warm sand felt good on her toes as it supported yet cushioned her every step. Gentle waves murmured to her right. To her left was a wall of dunes, stippled here and there with beach grass. She thought Lake Shore Drive might run along the top of the line of dunes, but she could not see an easy way to get up there. For now, she was content to keep walking along the shore, the waves’ sussuration calming her, soothing her overwrought spirit.

It was past midday when she woke. Neither of the older women was present, but they had left a sandwich and an apple on the counter for her. There was a note, too, from Ms. Elsie: “We have to go into town. We’ll stop by to see you when we get back. Enjoy your lunch!”

Feeling as if she had already stayed too long, she wrapped the sandwich in a paper towel and pocketed it along with the apple. She scrawled, “Thank you for everything,” on the edge of the note and left it on her empty plate. Then she let herself out the front door and walked home.

Not until she had closed her own door and locked it did she begin to ponder what she had seen in the labyrinth.

She knew, in her heart of hearts, that she had been running for a long time, caroming from one apparent haven to another. That the labyrinth had traced it back to her parents’ death was somewhat of a surprise, but it seemed right. Her father had been in the process of earning his pilot’s license – something he had always wanted to do – and the day of the crash was the first time he had ever taken her mother aloft with him. It had struck many of her parents’ friends as romantic that her father had died doing something he loved, and with his wife beside him. But those romantics had not felt the searing heat that had consumed her parents. They had not lost the two people most dear to them in all the world.

The crash happened two weeks before the start of her freshman year of college. She debated sitting out a semester – she was sure the admissions office would understand – but her grandparents talked her into going, after all.

She ran into Lance a month later.

She didn’t want to think, right now, about where that had led.

Instead, she turned her thoughts to her plummet off the cliff – specifically, how her degree and her editing stint in college had cushioned her fall.

The reference to writing made sense – after all, she had come to Michiana ostensibly to jumpstart her career as a novelist. She had thought she would spend her days writing and polishing her work, without having to worry about earning money. But that was before the lawsuit.

Maybe she could support herself by taking on editing work. She wouldn’t need much; her expenses were minimal – just food and utilities. And that bastard Jesse had been right about one thing: she was a damn fine editor.

Nibbling at her sandwich, she opened her laptop and began looking into places where she could advertise her services.

~

The knock on the front door startled her from her research. She checked the time in the corner of her computer screen and glanced out at the waning daylight. Then she wiggled out from between the chair and desk and stretched, getting the kinks out from her hours of inactivity. “I need a better desk chair,” she said aloud, and immediately wondered how she would pay for it – as well as all the other new furnishings she had been meaning to add to the place, including a new futon mattress for the loft. Maybe she should look into getting a part-time job, too.

Her visitor knocked again. Sighing, she went to open the door.

Ms. Thea and Ms. Elsie stood on her stoop. “Hello, dear,” said Ms. Elsie. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” she said, moving aside so they could come in. “Thank you for lunch. You didn’t have to do that.”

“We’ve found it’s important to eat something after you’ve had an experience like yours,” Ms. Thea said. “It helps to ground you back in our world.” Ms. Elsie nodded in agreement as the two of them sat on the sofa.

“Well, it was sweet of you,” Julia said. “Would you care for anything to drink?”

“Oh, no, we’re fine.” That was Ms. Elsie. “We just came by to talk with you a little bit about your experience.”

“We don’t need every detail,” Ms. Thea added quickly.

“But sometimes things come up,” said Ms. Elsie. “We’ve found it helps to talk about them.” Now it was Ms. Thea’s turn to nod in agreement.

Julie took a seat on the hearth and debated how much to share with these women. They didn’t seem nosy, exactly. But their eyes were wide with hope behind their glasses, and Ms. Elsie had scooted forward on the sofa so that she was literally on the edge of her seat. Did they have an agenda?
What are they expecting me to say?