Then she did what would now be called a “soft launch.”
She offered “half-price” readings to a select group of chatty, not too churchy but very influential women in our neighborhood. “Influencers,” they would be called now.
The most successful of these turned out to be Mrs. Shaw, who worked at Shaw’s Cake Shop on George Street. Mrs. Shaw was a widow, with seven children and three grandchildren. Her vanilla slices were to die for.
Mum told Mrs. Shaw that she saw these things in her future: an odd illness from which she would quickly recover as long as she rested, a small financial windfall, and an extraordinarily beautiful new baby.
In quick succession: Mrs. Shaw was struck by an odd illness from which she quickly recovered; she found twenty quid hidden in an old pair of her husband’s socks at the back of a drawer; and her second daughter announced her first pregnancy.
Mrs. Shaw was amazed. She told the story to every single person who walked through the door of her cake shop. She was the sixties’ version of a viral meme.
I couldn’t believe people were so easily fooled. It was simple probability! Mrs. Shaw was a hypochondriac who was always suffering odd illnesses, everyone knew that! We also knew that ever since her husband died she’d been finding his hidden cash, and finally, three out of the six Shaw daughters had recently married so there was every reason to expect a new baby in the family soon, and of course all first grandchildren are “extraordinarily beautiful.”
Word spread. (Word always spreads, it just happens faster these days.)
People began to travel long distances for a reading with Madame Mae.
Mum sat on the imposing high-backed leather winged armchair that had once belonged to my dad’s dad. Her customers sat on a soft floral armchair, so that they were both comfortable and forced to look up at my mother as she spoke in her Madame Mae voice: deeper and slower than normal, and oooh, so spooky. I couldn’t stand it. I found it ridiculous.
Some customers caught the train to Hornsby and walked from the station up the steep hill to our house, arriving nervous and breathless and in need of a glass of water. Others came by bicycle, car, and taxi. People began to waylay me at the shops to tell me my mother was remarkable, gifted, her readings were so accurate, she had changed their lives, even saved their lives!
My grandfather was horrified. Grandma wasn’t pleased either. This was a big leap forward from Grandma’s secret palm-reading. This was her daughter openly establishing an actual business.
Grandma and Grandpa believed Mum had lost her mind because of her grief, which I guess in a way she had. They asked the new parish priest to call on Mum to set her straight.
Over tea and a Shaw’s Cake Shop vanilla slice (Mrs. Shaw brought along freshly baked vanilla slices whenever she came for a reading), Father O’Malley gently suggested that Mum lean on our Lord in her hour of need.
Mum said, “Father, I see a forbidden love in your future.”
Father O’Malley got out of there fast.
He left the priesthood three years later, after he scandalously fell in love with a married red-haired woman, a respected member of the Parish Liturgy Committee. They went on to have six redheaded children, one of whom is now an MP I occasionally see on the news, nodding along in the background of more important politicians’ press conferences.
You may be impressed by the accuracy of Mum’s prediction, but I put it to you that perhaps my mother sensed Father O’Malley’s eyes on her legs and intuited that celibacy was going to be tricky for him.
(My mother had beautiful legs.)
I was always looking for a more logical explanation. I believed logic was the answer to every question, the solution to every argument. Mum would say, “Sometimes there is no logical explanation, Cherry.”
I still love logic, but I understand its limitations. I was nineteen when I first learned about Gödel’s “incompleteness theorem,” which states that in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved.
I was so disappointed!
I thought: Dammit, Mum.
Chapter 66
“Do psychics ever change their mind?” asks Paula.
She is on the phone to the random cousin of the groom from her sister’s wedding, the one who forwarded the car accident video and whose name she hasn’t bothered to remember, which is rude of her.
Paula just wants information, and this cousin, who spoke so gravely about checking in with her clairvoyant before she made a decision, not a hint of cynicism or this-is-all-just-a-bit-of-fun in her voice, is the only one she could think to ask.
“Sometimes,” says the cousin. “Like if your circumstances change. Or if you make a different choice. My clairvoyant shows me different scenarios and it’s up to me to manifest the outcome I want.”
“Right,” says Paula. “It’s just that my baby boy can swim now. So I guess I just wondered if that would change her prediction? Like when you change your diet and get your cholesterol down, your doctor predicts you’ll live longer.”
“My doctor says diet only contributes like around twenty percent of the cholesterol in your blood,” comments the cousin.
“Yes, well, that was just an example, but do you think this psychic would give me a different prediction now that Timmy can swim?”
“Sure,” says the cousin. “It’s possible. Also, my clairvoyant says that sometimes you might just have a different energy on the day. So that changes the prediction.”
Different energy. All this woo-woo language. It’s ridiculous.
But Paula needs to hear it from the lady.
She just has to find her.
Chapter 67
These were my grandmother’s last words: “I have wasted my life.”
“Thanks a lot,” said my mother, who tended to make everything about her.
I said, “What do you mean, Grandma?”
I was interested, as I hoped to learn from her mistakes. I may even have gotten pen and paper ready.
