The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho (15 page)

I stood waiting, wincing at the word
autopsy
.

“How's the girl? The boy's mother? I saw when she fainted, you know,” Olivia called out from what sounded like the bedroom. The one she'd shared with Hector.

“Abril? I think she's fine.”

“I'm glad,” she said, returning with a sheet of yellow legal paper that she placed in my hand.

My letter. The crumpled, jealous one drenched in irony that Hector took with him that night.

So she knew.

And now I knew too.

I felt a wave of repentance punching me hard on the chest when I took it from her.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“He forgot his wallet here when he came in that night. Before he left again in such a hurry, not even taking the time to change or to sit down for a proper dinner. I didn't read it. I'm not that brave. But I saw the handwriting and recognized it from the notes you post next to the mailbox to warn us of repairs or fumigation.”

Of course. How hard could it have been?
I thought, feeling as stupid as I must've seemed to her.

“I'm really sorry,” I said again, wanting to say I had never meant to hurt her, but knowing I couldn't say it, because it wasn't the truth. I hadn't cared if I hurt her, which was different. I hadn't even considered her.

“Take it.” She handed me the piece of paper. “He liked it enough to keep it. It must have meant . . . something to him.”

I nodded without raising my head, then left in silence, never lifting my eyes away from her gleaming wood floors.

Chapter 18

A
s soon as I got inside my apartment, I leaned against the door to read the letter Hector had seen fit to save from my wrath, to fold and tuck into his wallet, to keep, even after he'd decided he didn't care to keep me.

I remembered how I'd sat, jealous and hurt that he had rushed his time with me in order to go out with Olivia, searching the Internet for a literary breakup letter to base mine on. I'd searched for Borges because Hector was always quoting him in the most obnoxious way, but instead found inspiration in a letter from Agnes von Kurowsky to Ernest Hemingway, in which she begins by addressing him as “Ernie, dear boy,” continuing to pile on the digs, the sarcasm, and the condescension right until she signs her name: Aggie, and even that, one imagines as the last turn of the screw, a tool designed to hurt.

I'd done it with the deliberate intention of showing him that even though I didn't know as much as he did about literature and language, I could still manage to sound as pompous as he when I wanted to. I'd wanted him to know I could inhabit his immovable feast of a world if I put my mind to it. Like Aggie, I'd wanted to hurt him, of course, but I'd wanted to surprise and intrigue him even more.

I read it through again, imagining his thoughts as he read, his chuckling at my creative pettiness, the possibility that he'd privately conceded the originality of my approach. I compared this to the blandness of the letter I'd given him, the “nice” one, written as he walked over, determined to break up with me.

Which was a bad idea, because once you start imagining the dead as if they were alive, you can't help but desperately wish that they were. I wanted to turn back time, not to the time before the breakup, because on some level I understood that had to happen, but definitely to the hours before his death.

Had I been in love with him? I didn't think so, but I did know I missed him. I missed his life, and the window it had opened on my own. Seeing things through his experiences had felt so exotic, global, and free, like watching a foreign movie to bask in the locations, and to dream of going wherever “there” happens to be. I missed that window that made everything strange, new, and more exciting: food, books, business, people, music, and thought were, post-Hector, forever synonymous with seduction in my mind.

And then there was Olivia. Because you didn't think I bought her story about not reading the letter, did you? And still, she'd given it back to me. And not in a mean way, though I suppose kindness could just be her dignified wife way of shaming me.

I wondered how she felt when she read it. Had she suspected all along? Had she been surprised beyond anger? Or did she feel a certain triumph about being right? About catching him “in the act” for once? Something told me Hector had been one of those men who subscribe to the strategy of “deny, deny, deny,” no matter how obviously he's been caught with another woman. What am I saying? He was a man, wasn't he?

Still, an affair, even one with the landlord, didn't seem like the thing someone like her, someone who seemed to know her husband with all his bad and good traits, would kill over at this stage of her life. And what other thing could she have learned about her husband on that very day that would be anywhere near as bad?

Don't get me wrong—I know there are probably many women who would, and have, killed men over an affair with anyone, let alone one with a woman who lived in the same building. But despite her raw edges, Olivia just didn't seem like the type.

Then there was all that stuff about her inability to conceive, and his taking advantage of her feelings of inadequacy over something she couldn't help, which in itself was horrible. But she'd had plenty of time to kill him over that, and hadn't.

No, I was pretty sure it hadn't been Olivia, probably because I didn't want it to be. She'd suffered enough. The autopsy would rule out all the crazy possibilities of crime, either petty or as the result of passion, and prove Hector had died from some unknown disease, strange as that might have appeared to me at first.

And think about it: If Olivia had killed Hector over our affair, she wouldn't have given me the letter back. She would know the police would eventually find out whatever she'd done through the autopsy, and she'd have kept the letter, used it to incriminate me, to turn any suspicion that might arise away from herself.

Instead, she'd been kind to me, as if the finality of death had made her wise enough for several lives and she now knew things I still didn't grasp, like that it was useless to hate me. That whatever he'd given me obviously hadn't meant all that much to him, whereas she'd been his one and only wife for decades.

Had I had her all wrong all this time? Had I been seeing her through Hector's bored eyes, never giving the real Olivia a chance? Oh, that's right. How could I? I'd been too busy sleeping with her husband.

I realized I never asked her what she knew about how he died. Not that I'd intended to, just like I hadn't intended going inside and drinking her tea as if we were the best of friends. The grand extent of my plan had been to give her my condolences. If she said thank you and acted reasonably pleasant, it would've meant I was in the clear. If she slammed the door in my face, I'd have had my answer. I'd been so anxious at first, and then so confused by all her talking about poisonous apples and potatoes, that I never mustered the nerve to ask. Now I didn't know what to think. On the one hand, it was possible she'd been trying to tell me something with all that talk about poison. On the other, she was a macrobiotic nutritionist. Apples, potatoes, and their curative or poisonous properties were probably all she talked about every day of her life.

Maybe I was making a big production out of stupid bad luck. Olivia had probably woken to the noise, realized Hector wasn't sleeping beside her, and found out the horrible news along with the rest of Coffee Park, the news being nothing more than that he'd had some wine, felt like smoking a cigar, and crossed the street to smoke in peace and get some fresh air. That he'd then had a mild stroke and fell, hitting his head and dying from the concussion.

Yes, and maybe, I was this much full of shit.

I was grasping for light, thinking this and that and trying to infuse each thought with the energy of true sight. But it wasn't. And I wasn't seeing a thing. Can you imagine how crazy it made me that I hadn't even been able to see what Olivia knew until she chose to reveal it to me? If after all the meditating, praying, reading, and rereading of my great-great-grandma's journal, I still couldn't see beyond my own nose, how would I ever reach Hector, find out what really happened to him, say a proper good-bye, or make my peace with death, his, and maybe my mother's?

The one good thing was that I had the letter. Well, one of them at least. The other one was probably in the bottom of the recycling bin, and I just needed to search for it a little better before the recycling truck came and destroyed it.

I went back to my red armchair where my inherited medium's “workbook” still lay, knowing that all the reading in the world was not going to be enough, and that I'd need help if I was to get some peace by bringing Hector into my space and trying to speak to him. But it was a start, so I kept reading. The journal had sections on working with energy, clairvoyance-inducing foods, practice exercises for reaching other dimensions in a minimum of time, and a troubleshooting section titled,
“Remedios de Luz,”
or “Remedies of Light,” which I read start to finish.

Did you know sex increases your psychic ability?

And that drinking coffee can kill your ability to access other dimensions, whereas clean water and very juicy or porous fruits and vegetables, such as watermelons and tomatoes, enhance it? I didn't.

And what about the fact that a mirror is one of the most powerful clairvoyance tools available?

Now, I did know that mirrors are perfect for gazing into and visualizing the person or vision you are seeking coming into the mirror, like they do in old horror movies. Not only does it help your mind more potently “get” that it's jumping between realms, but the fact that it's a light-reflecting object gives it that much more strength.

But what I didn't know was that it comes with its own way for you to test if what you're doing is working. According to my great-great-nana's
diario de clarividencia
, when your visions are about to appear, the mirror will get cloudy or dark, as if misted with vintage dew from some day long ago.

As I read through the list of tips, tricks, and other phone lines to the ghost world, it dawned on me that my mother had been wrong. Clairvoyance isn't a gift. It's a talent that has to be developed. It's a craft that needs to be worked at every day. I saw now that I'd been wrong to renounce it, believing it was an intrinsic part of me, like an arm, instead of what it was: an ability that I could practice, or not, like singing or painting.

I'd been so desperate to think that clairvoyance was as certain as the blood shared with the grandparents I'd never met, that I fell into the trap of writers who swear the muse just “takes over” and writes everything for them. As if this muse always worked perfectly unless something were wrong with you, the way my mother thought.

For the first time, I saw that I'd just been too young when this “gift” was thrust at me. I understood that the pressure of pleasing my mother had turned something that could've been scary, but also fun and empowering, into something I was doing for the worst of all reasons: to be loved.

And then I got to the end of the book, and there, in a long-dead clairvoyant's handwriting, were the answers to all my psychic insecurities in the form of fortune cookie–like disclaimers:

 

* Sight is not to be used for self-benefit alone. A higher purpose is needed, but it is possible to assist a more spiritually senior sister or brother of sight on your behalf.

* Sight does not protect from evil. It attracts it.

* The sight medium must have the purest of intentions when initiating contact with another realm, and be responsible for protecting herself and those she's helping from evil energy.

(See cures for protection.)

 

You'd think these disclaimers would have been at the beginning of the darn book, right?

And then, the next two made me gasp.

 

* Sight is not perfect, clearly interpreted, or unfailing.

* Strong emotions (love, fear, etc.) will cloud sight, especially with truth related to self, mother, father, sister, son, daughter, husband, or other that medium is bound to by love or fear, etc.

 

Of course I didn't see my mother's illness! I loved her too much.

So much pain, and the answer had been in this journal, a few feet from me, all this time. A surge of gratitude filled me and I dropped to my knees, thanking God and talking to my mother out loud, the words flowing from me like a torrent, my body lighter with every memory finally expressed. And even though I was not able to connect with her soul right then, I was still my mother's daughter, and she'd loved me past her death, I knew, was suddenly sure, wise once more. She'd just been confused and worried and sad, like me. She'd read this journal dozens of times and had to know I wasn't to blame. I faintly remembered her trying to tell me this, to reason with me back then, but I wasn't listening. I thought she was just saying anything to save me from my own deserved guilt. She must've died hoping I'd one day read the journal, convince myself. And now that day had come, and it was as if my mother were kissing my hair again, her arms warm around me once more.

I remembered I'd been about to do the same thing to myself again. Denying my ability and blaming myself even though I'd clearly seen Hector's death psychically. I'd just been too ignorant of my own ability to know how to interpret it and inadequately armed with the weakest of intents: soothing my squashed ego.

Well, no more. What I needed was the assistance of a real clairvoyant who could help me get my sight back, put myself back together again, and be who I'd been intended to be all along.

Dusk was approaching quickly. I slipped on my flip-flops and padded over to Gustavo's with a plan in mind, gave his door a strong pounding, and waited.