Zee looked under the seats and in the glove compartment but found nothing. Then she knelt down by the driver’s door and looked under the car, but all she found was an empty Almond Joy wrapper and one dirty child-size cotton sock. When she came back, Maureen was tense but finally located her wallet in her jacket pocket. The psychic rolled her eyes but took the money-and ten dollars extra because Maureen had brought Zee along. “I’m not used to working in front of an audience,” she said.
“You have done past-life readings before,” Maureen said.
“Of course,” Arcana said. “I do them all the time.”
Zee could tell that it was a lie, but the look on Maureen’s face was so hopeful that Zee took a seat on the couch and was quiet as the psychic had instructed.
Though the table was flimsy and the decorations looked fake, the psychic had some high-tech tools. On the floor under the table were two switches: a dimmer and a dial that controlled the sound system.
“I demand silence,” Arcana announced with the authority of a sanctimonious second-grade teacher.
Zee wondered at the declaration, since no one had uttered a word.
With her bare, simian feet, the psychic flipped the two switches, grabbing them each with her toes and turning the dials expertly. First the music came up, a cross between Indian mystic and theremin music from a bad fifties sci-fi film. With the other foot, her toes dialed the lights down until Maureen and Zee were left in near darkness. The only source of illumination was the neon sign for the midway across the street.
Maureen was anxious. “Am I supposed to do anything?”
“Not yet.”
For the next four or five minutes, the psychic did breathing exercises. Deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, making a great show of her hyperventilation.
When she spoke again, her voice had dropped an octave.
“Hello, this is ARCANA,” she said. “What is your question?”
Zee tried to keep from laughing.
“I don’t have a question. I’m here to find out about my past lives,” Maureen said softly.
“What is your question?” Arcana’s voice boomed.
Maureen looked at Zee. “I guess my question is whether I was Zylphia Browne in a past life.”
It wasn’t going at all as Maureen had told Zee it would. Somehow she’d gotten the idea, or had read somewhere, that she would be the one going into the trance. In the book she had read on past-life regressions, the therapist would put the seeker into a trance and then record the outcome. When the seeker woke up, she would be able to listen to what she’d said under hypnosis. Or, barring that, another approach would be that Arcana might go into a trance herself, the way Edgar Cayce did, and just start relating her impressions. Maureen seemed surprised that she would have to ask a question herself.
Zee was trying hard not to laugh.
The psychic said nothing. But Zee could feel her annoyance through her supposed trance. She couldn’t tell for sure that Arcana was faking it, but she would have bet she was. Zee was aware that the psychic was watching her. In another minute, if she couldn’t stop giggling, she was pretty certain that Arcana would kick her out.
“What is your question?” Arcana boomed.
“She told you. She wants to know if she was Zylphia Browne in another life,” Zee finally said.
“Silence!” Arcana hissed.
Maureen shot Zee a warning look. Maureen’s voice shook as she once again formed the question. “Was I Zylphia Browne in a prior life?”
Everyone in Salem knew the story of Zylphia Browne, who had killed her husband and then disappeared, never to be seen again.
“The MUR-der-ess?” Arcana bellowed, stressing the first of the separated syllables and arching her eyebrows like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.
It was wrong to classify Zylphia as a murderess; rather she was a victim of severe abuse who happened to escape. Even Zee believed that much.
It didn’t take a psychic to figure out the answer Maureen wanted to hear. It also didn’t take a psychic to know how much this woman didn’t like Maureen. Maureen was a beautiful woman with a childlike presence that could seem ingenuous if you didn’t know her and which often had the effect of enraging women who had to make their own way in the world and weren’t having an easy time of it. Arcana seemed instinctively to know that her answer could do some damage to Maureen. And she seemed fully prepared to do it.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” she said to herself. The growl of a Harley from the street below drowned her words.
“Excuse me?” Maureen strained to hear her. Even Zee sat forward in her seat.
“You are not Zylphia Browne,” Arcana said in a voice that neither of them could miss. “But your daughter is.”
Maureen stared at her, uncomprehending at first.
Arcana poked an accusing finger out from under her caftan and pointed at Zee. “Your daughter is the young Zylphia Browne come back to life.”
Maureen stared in disbelief.
Arcana seemed to know immediately what she had won. The look of devastation on Maureen’s face was unforgettable.
And though she didn’t buy it for a minute, a chill ran down Zee’s spine.
As they descended the stairs and through the midway to the car, Zee could see that Maureen was in shock. They got into the car and sat in silence.
“You know that she was playing you, don’t you?” Zee said.
“What are you talking about?”
“She didn’t like us from the moment we walked in.”
Instead of having the desired effect, it had the opposite.
“You didn’t have to be so rude!” Maureen said. “You didn’t have to laugh!”
“I’m sorry,” Zee said.
Maureen’s hands were shaking as she turned the key in the ignition. She flooded the engine several times before the car finally started. Zee fought the urge to tell her mother that she wasn’t doing it right. She’d already said far too much.
ON HIS WAY BETWEEN SHOPS, Mickey had spotted Zee talking to Ann in front of her store. He walked over to join them. “What?” he said. “You’re stopping to see her before you say hello to me?”
When Zee looked at Uncle Mickey’s eyes, it was like looking into Maureen’s. It had always been disconcerting. Uncle Mickey had the same deep blue Irish eyes that his sister had had, though the look in his had always been much more playful.
He lifted her up and spun her around. “How’s the little bride-to-be?” he said.
“Good. Fine,” she said. “A little dizzy, actually.”
He laughed and put her down, winking at Ann. “How’s Finch?”
“I think you know,” she said.
“I’ve been meaning to get over to see him,” Mickey lied.
He’d been saying the same thing for years. Zee didn’t challenge him.
“I need a carpenter,” she said. “One who can put in some railings. I thought you might know someone.”
“Sure,” he said. “I know a couple of people who could probably do that for you.”
He thought about it for a moment, then they said good-bye to Ann, and he walked her over to the next wharf, where the Friendship was moored.
At 171 feet, the tall ship was impressive. It had always seemed an odd coincidence to Zee, with so many ships having sailed out of Salem in the age of sail, that the Friendship of Maureen’s book was the same historic vessel the city had later chosen to re-create. There had been no real connection between the Friendship and Maureen’s book, no record that she had ever been used for the young lovers’ escape. As it turned out, the very voyage that Maureen had chosen, the only one that would have accurately fit with history, had been the Friendship’s final one. On that final voyage, the East Indiaman had been captured by the British, and its entire crew had been taken prisoner. Maureen’s choice of vessels had rendered her desired happy ending impossible.