“I see,” my mother said. She stood up, groping in her purse. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I forgot how much our session is. I’m sorry. It’s a dollar seventy—”
“There’s no charge today,” Mrs. Ludiki said. “I’m happy to see you. Please don’t take away the wrong ideas from the tarot.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re correct,” my mother said. “It’s been an unusual day. I must be running. Aaron, say goodbye to Mrs. Ludiki.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Ludiki.”
Her eyes couldn’t meet ours. She rose from her chair, a basically good woman wreathed in scarfs and tinkling jewelry and fumes from her candles and incense bowls, unable to dispel the misery she had helped fuel.
Outside, I took my mother’s arm, then opened the car door for her. “Would you like to go for a drive? Maybe to a show?”
“No, I don’t feel well. Thank you anyway, Aaron. He looked like you. You saw the resemblance, didn’t you?”
“The Hanged Man? Not a chance, Mother. That guy looks like the ninety-pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face in the Charles Atlas ad.”
Her face blanched. Could I have chosen a worse metaphor? Nope. I had found the absolute worst.
I drove my mother to a soda shop and bought her a lime Coke. I thought I heard a clock ticking inside my head. I don’t think the sound was imaginary.
Chapter
30
MY ANXIETY HAD become almost as bad as my mother’s. I called Valerie. “I have to talk to your father,” I said.
“He’s at his club.”
“What club?”
“The one he hangs out at by the driving range. What is wrong with you, Aaron?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Is it about yesterday?” she said. “About not wanting to do it?”
“No, I understood perfectly,” I said. “Don’t worry about a thing. Not for one minute.”
“So why do you want to talk to my father?”
“Because I don’t like all this secrecy crap.”
“Come by the house and I’ll go with you.”
“No, I need to talk to him on a personal level.”
“You feel you’re doing something wrong?”
“I feel like we’re slipping around.”
“My father treats me like a grown woman. I don’t keep secrets from him.”
“But he does,” I said.
“What?”
“I always have to guess at what he’s talking about. He’s always indicating that he knows something he’s not sharing.”
She gave me the address of his club, then asked if I would be by later.