The Blue Pen

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I hadn’t asked Barbie about Patrick. It was one of the things I meant to do. Patrick still hung on the fringes of my dreams and seemed like he was always there, somewhere in my mind, no matter what I was doing. It had been that way since I met him. What would my life have been like if I’d never known him? Would I be in Philly? Would I have married Cecil? Would I have Belle? Would I ever have gone to the Beacon? All the events of my life seemed guided by the one person who was forever gone, like some mystical plan. But why did he have to go so soon, so young?

  Cecil came out to the porch after the sun had risen and kissed me, crouching in front of me like he had the night before, but without hostility. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s all. Let me make you some breakfast. You look like you feel awful.”

  “I do,” I told him.

  Around eleven in the morning, as I was helping Belle with her math homework, the phone rang. Cecil yelled from another room, “I’ll get it.”

  We continued with one plus twos and such until Cecil came into the room a few minutes later. He said, “Barbie’s on the phone for you.” He looked displeased.

  Once I was on the phone, Barbie said, “I figured you’d forget. You were pretty drunk last night when we talked about it.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About Patrick. We were supposed to meet at noon today at my place. I was going to contact him for you. I was calling to remind you.” She had a sweet sound in her voice, welcoming. So I had covered that task the night before, but now I was embarrassed. What had I said?

  Reading my silence, she said, “It’s okay, nothing to worry about. It’s normal to feel weird about it. Can you still make it?”

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “I just need to finish helping Belle with her homework.”

  “Belle?” she asked.

  “Angelica, sorry. She changed her name because of this awful dress grandmother picked out for her. Now she’s Belle.”

  “A lot of name changing going on, yeah?” she said, and I could hear her smile over the line.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told her. We said our goodbyes.

  I told Cecil and Belle that I would be going to Barbie’s after the math was done. Cecil’s sweet mood had definitely soured, and he left the library to parts unknown without saying anything.

  Barbie opened her door wearing soft, flowing clothes and a pink crystal around her neck. So out-of-touch with the vibe of the early ‘80s, and nothing like anything I’d seen her in. She stepped out into her building’s hallway and locked her door.

  I asked, “Where are we going?”

  “To my shop,” she replied.

  I followed her back onto the street and we walked in silence down a couple of blocks to a store-fronted area. One of the shops had a sign that read, “Readings by Joan,” and the red-curtained window had a painting of a hand on it. How had I never noticed it before?

  “This your place?”

  She nodded and unlocked the door. Inside it was dark, but as Barbie turned on lamps, I could see that the walls were painted a deep maroon and that the area we were standing in was a lobby. “I have my own reading room, like they do at the Beacon. Mine is a little more personal.” She gestured at the soft-looking red chairs against the walls. “My clients can wait here if I’m with someone. I’m usually open all day on Saturday. It’s a good day for business. But today I posted that I wasn’t open til one on the door.”

  She led me to another dark room where she turned on a few lamps. It was cozy, with beige walls and gold-embroidered trim along the ceilings. “Rivers painted those,” she said, gesturing at the trim. There were several vases of fresh cut lilies and daisies on small wooden tables that held the lamps. In the center of the room were a soft, pale armchair and a plush sofa of the same shade across from it. She said, “I explained it all last night when I walked you home, but I doubt you remember it. In here I do my readings. My clients sit there,” she pointed at the sofa, “And I sit in the chair. That table in the corner, I pull that out if they want tarot. Otherwise, this is it.” She turned to me. “Do you like it?”

  The room was as grand as a palace compared to where she lived. I told her, “I am surprised at how nice it is in here. Very cozy.”

  She smiled and I realized she had been nervous about showing it to me. “I’m glad you think so. I want all my clients to feel welcome, because they all are.” She gestured at the sofa. “Have a seat. I need to smudge the room.”

  “What is that?” I asked.

  She took a short stick of what looked like thick grass out of a drawer from one of the little wooden tables. “I use this white sage to clear the room of all its energies. You see, a place picks up people’s energies and carries it. It needs to be cleared. This does it.” She lit the ends of the white sage on fire, and once it was burning, blew it out. The ends stayed lit like incense and smoked heavily. “I did this yesterday before I closed up, but today I want to make sure everything is right.”

  She waved the grass around the doorway, then around the furniture and all through the air. It smelled strange, almost familiar, but I couldn’t place the scent. Then she ran it around my head and up and down my body. I couldn’t help but say, “I need to be cleaned of energies too?” I hoped I had kept the sarcasm out of my voice. I really was quite intrigued with all of this, but I thought it was all so, well, campy.

  “All people carry the energies with them. The sage helps clear things,” she explained.

  I decided not to argue. I still had a headache from the night of drinking.

  Satisfied after covering me in smoke, she sat across from me and set the sage on a table next to her, still burning. “Don’t worry, it’ll go out,” she said. She folded her hands in her lap and eyed me carefully. “This is all new to you, and I know you aren’t exactly a believer, but you do have the curiosity and, whether you like it or not, a gift. Anyone who can improv like you has the gift of insight. As I said last night, it’s in our family. What you do with it is what really matters. Like Mom. She lets it control her life. Then there are people like at the Beacon. Most of them let it be what it is and not let it take over everything they think or do. And then there are people who have the gift and block it out, like what I think you have been doing your whole life.”

  I nodded, not having anything to say. I didn’t have a gift of any sort. I didn’t believe I saw spirits, nor had anything otherworldly ever happen to me.

  “I get the feeling,” she said, “That you think you aren’t special, but you are. You see, this is what I chose to do with my gift. I make a living from it. I could make more money, really, but I chose to make just as much as I need to get by on. It’s like a musician who plays a local club network doing solo gigs. It’s just a talent put to work for me. Do you get it?”

  She seemed like she really wanted me to get it, to approve and understand all at once. I remembered why I was here, and I nodded again. I would see for myself shortly if she could actually contact Patrick’s beyond, and said as much with, “About Patrick. I feel strange about it now that I’m not loaded. I don’t know why I even brought it up last night.”

  She lit a pink candle on the table next to her, saying, “You’re curious. I know how much he means to you. He means a lot to me, too. I can’t explain why right now. But what I need you to do is to close your eyes and think of him. Lean back, relax.”

  I closed my eyes and sunk into the soft sofa. I tried to think of Patrick, but the smell of the white sage kept assaulting my senses. Where had I smelled it before? Then I remembered Mother’s room and my eyes popped open. “Mother had this sage in her room,” I said.

  “Yes,” Barbie said, glancing at the smoldering grass. “I suggested it to her and sent her some, since she has such fears of the bad spirits. I send her some each month. I don’t think it helps. She invites them, in a way. But, you see, as you start to relax, you’ll think of all kinds of things. Try closing your eyes again. Don’t worry about anything. This is a
safe place.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to relax. She told me to think of my favorite memory of Patrick, so I thought of snuggling with him in the hayloft in the barn. His rough hands, that dark bruise on his cheek. The way his voice sounded when he called me, “Beautiful.”

  Barbie said, “He’s here, Cleo. Don’t open your eyes, keep the concentration.”

  I opened my eyes anyway. I didn’t see that anything had changed. I said, “Do you think you see him?”

  “I sense him. I’m not like Mom. I don’t see them, I just know they are here. If you close your eyes and concentrate, you can feel him too. I promise,” she said.

  I closed my eyes and let the sounds of the street outside filter out of my senses. I edged out the smelly herb burning on the table. I thought of the candle Barbie had lit. It looked like the one I had brought up from the house to the hayloft all those years ago. I breathed deeply, but nothing happened.

  She said, “He wants you to think about that car ride you took, on the way back from the fair. Think about that, then maybe you’ll hear him.”

  I said, “I thought you were supposed to talk for him, or something like that.”

  “I do that for most of my clients,” she said, “But like we talked about last night, I can teach you to talk to him on your own. That was the plan, you see?”

  I didn’t remember that at all. I began shutting out all the sounds and smells again and focused on that car ride. Why would he want me to think of that?

  She said, “Tell me what you remember.”

  “We talked about Janis Joplin and the war.” My voice sounded soft. I so rarely talked about him, though I thought of him so much. It was a tender subject to speak aloud about.

  “What else? He says there is something else.”

  I said, “He told me I need to get in a little trouble when he dropped me off at home.”

  Quiet for a moment, then she said, “Yes, but there was something else.”

  I thought deeply about that ride. I then remembered it so vividly that I could smell the fresh air of farmlands and feel his leather jacket. I heard him say, “I like to listen.”

  My eyes opened again, for he was surely in the room. I looked all around me and the room seemed smaller and cryptic. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

  Barbie shook her blond head. “What did you hear, Cleo?”

  I leaned back and rubbed my ears. “He said…”

  Barbie interrupted, “You don’t need to tell me. It was what he wanted you to know, not what he wanted me to know. He just wanted me to tell you to think of that night.”

  “I don’t understand,” I mumbled. “I heard him, his voice. But it was just a memory, right?”

  “I don’t know,” was her response. “Let me ask.” She closed her eyes, and then opened them. “He said you heard right. Now, he says, you need to do what you’ve always wanted to do. He said it would make sense to you.”

  He wanted me to talk? He wanted to listen? Then I realized that was the truest thing I wanted, ever wanted in my life. I wanted to talk to him again. Then I started crying.

  Barbie joined me on the couch and held me in her arms while I bawled. She handed me a tissue. Where had that come from? I assumed she must have them stashed away for people like me. I used it and another before I stopped my tears. Still sniffling, I asked, “Why was he so important to you? You were a beast after he died.”

  “I can tell you now,” she said in a soft voice. “Patrick and Dad, they were the first, you see? They both came to me early. Mom knew, that’s why she was the way she was. And now you know, and it feels so good that you do.”

  I teared up again because I heard him saying it over and over: “I like to listen, I like to listen.”

 

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX