Midsummer's Eve (2 page)

I will admit that I have a truly weak stomach, and nothing switches on my gag reflex quicker than s
not. So, since all three
children had a rather unsightly greenish discharge pooling in the valley between their nose and mouth, I drew a deep breath to settle my queasy insides, closed my eyes, leaned my head against the wall, and tried to think pleasant thoughts.

Luckily for me, a gentleman wracked with wheezing fits of chest rattling coughs got up to smoke and offered me his seat. I gratefully took the seat on a couch covered with clear plastic that protested with a loud embarrassing crackling when I planted my fanny on it and again every time afterward when my starving lungs demanded another deep breath.

This I hesitated to do
,
as the elderly lady to my left had chosen to douse herself with liberal amoun
ts of an
overwhelmingly flo
ral Avon scent.
On top of that
,
her false teeth clicked against each other while she chattered constantly and nonstop about her boyfriend Clyde running around with som
e floozy at the VFW’s Thursday Night Bingo
. Although I did pause long enough to consider what the running around of two ninety year olds might entail, I chose to ignore her and peruse the room. 

It was obvious that Lady Wonder had a fondness for the ocean. The walls were dotted with colorful landscaped scenes of palmetto trees and waves crashing on a sandy shore. C
eramic fish jumped from
fountains in all four corners and ornate glass vases filled
with sand and a variety of sea
shells took center stage on the surface of practically every table and shelf.

At last
,
the elderly lady was called back. Bless God! Then a new arrival, a gentleman in his late thirties-early forties and wearing an animal control officer uniform, took the seat the elderly lady had vacated and proceeded to entertain us with
his daring deeds
in the wilds of South Carolina
’s treacherous jungles
.

Okay, for starters. It was possible that he might have been considered reasonably attractive if he ha
d been about a foot taller
,
or
if he
had chosen to acquaint himself with a tube of Colgate at some point during the last few decades.

We listened to his captivating tales of capturing everything from rabid foxes and dogs
,
to raccoons and s
kunks. We heard of his numerous
,
and always life threatening
entanglements with poisonous
snakes.
He regaled us with
his
obviously embellished tales of his heroic efforts at capturing coyotes, poisonous spiders, squirrels, a baby kitten, etc. We even heard how he had once bravely wrestled a man-eating alligator to the ground with his bare hands, in a swamp no less, with several other hungry gators watchin
g from the sidelines. He was 5’1
” and
probably weighed in at
12
0 pounds soaking wet. How much wrestling could he do? He carried on and on a
nd on about his courageous adventures
in the Animal Ki
ngdom for over
an hour.

Then
, out of the blue,
the charismatic dogcatcher gave me his most radiant smile and invited me to lunch nex
t door at the Huddle House. Now
,
even though I’m sure I would have enjoyed the fine dining experience of a Huddle House, I had to wonder if I would even be able to swallow what I was served
,
with those gums screaming gingivitis over a plate of food. “No. Thanks for the offer, but I already have plans,” I fibbed, when he pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and commenced to pick one of his cavity
-riddled molars, causing bile to
swim around
my tonsils
.

When h
e saw that I wasn’
t a willing candidate for an intimate luncheon for two, he leaned over me and posed the same question to the girl to my
right. She was in her early 30’
s and beautiful. What problems could she poss
ibly need a psychic to
solve? 

I enjoyed watching her politely put him in his place and deflate his obnoxio
us ego by several degrees. Then
while she courteously covered her mouth to filter the toxic fumes emanating from his lips, I turned to her and asked, “Is Lady Wonder any good?” Surely she must be to have a following like this on a Thursday.

“
She has a gift from God
. She sees things.
”
She
smiled reve
rently. “
She will answer all
your questions.”
 

Then she settled back in her seat, which sounded like someone balling up wax paper, with a look of abject misery that I recognized as similar to mine. I would bet my last penny that the basis of her sorrow was nothing more than a vile, despicable, lying, cheating, scumbag of a black-hearted rogue.
I know. I know. I read way too many historical romance
novels
.

Two hours later, I was feeling sli
ghtly ill from the elderly lady’
s lingering perfume, which mingled with a rather nauseating stench per
meating from the youngest child’
s diaper. Then
,
there was the added aroma of good ole boy
’
s breath. Let’s just say when he exhaled
,
it could singe every last hair in your nose, trickle through your digestive tract, and seize up your bowels.

“Eve?” I heard my name
called
and with a sigh
of relief happily plowed
through t
he inhabitants of the waiting room from Hell.

Lady Wonder turned ou
t to be a short cheery woman in
her sixties with big white hair, a ponderous mid section and gentle
,
caring eyes. She was nothing at all what I expected. You know? Pointed chin. Hairy wart. Not even a crystal ball!
She began shuffling a deck of regular playing cards as she offered me a seat on a white leather wing chair. Then turning over the card on top of the deck, the ace of hearts, she glanced up.

“Let me see your hands,” she said without preamble. Obediently, I showed her my hands palms up. “You have an odd number of children.”

“
Yes, I have one son.”

“He works out of town and you don’t get to see him as often as you would like
.”
Her eyes fluttered and almost rolled back in her head, as she appeared to go into a trance-like state.

Wow! How did she know that? The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I felt goose bumps pop up on my arms
and thighs
. This woman
had never laid eyes on me
, yet sh
e knew intimate details about my life
.
“
Yes. He is a foreman on a construction crew and he travels up and down the east coast
.
”
I
glanced toward the exit when
her upper body appeared
to twitch uncontrollably
. Lord have mercy!
I hoped this was normal behavior for her and she wasn’t going into a seizure brought on by my tragic life.

“
You caused your husband a great deal of p
ain.” H
er eyes slowly rolled back down to their normal position and her jerking upper body became still
once
again.

Wow! She even knew about the ex.
“
Yes. He treated me like a queen for 18 years. The condensed version of the story is that I left him for a man who turned out to be a raging alcoholic and rec
ently dumped me for some
little
oriental
trollop
.”
There, happy!

I still hated myself for the
pain I had caused my ex
, although I, unlike Lady Wonder, tried not to pick at that old scab.
“
It
did
hurt him when I left,
b
ut he has since
remarried
a wonderful lady
and they are very happy. So everyth
ing turned out okay in the end.”
 

“You thought he was too good for you. You only want men who will treat you poorly.”

She had effectively put my life in a nutshell. Men
who will treat me poorly? Hah!
Treat me like something to be scraped from the bottom of their shoe you m
ean! Use me, abuse me, and
walk over me on their way out the door. This was the first time anyone had ever actually verbalized it, but thinking back over my past relation
ships…
she was absolutely right!

“What happened when you were four years old, Eve?”

Huh?
Where did that come from?
Nothing had happened to me when I was four. “I don’t have any memories of my childhood, so I can’
t answer that.
”
She leaned toward me with a worried frown and peered intently into my eyes. “Would you
li
ke to know what happened
?”

Judging from her look of deep sadness, if anything had hap
pened
,
it couldn’t have been pleasant
. I couldn’t deal with more bad news. Not now. I was better off not knowing, at least until I came out on the other side of my current crisis. But what exactly was she alluding to? What could have happened when I was four?  “No. Not really.”

“
You are self employed a
nd very successful in business.”
Thankfully, she had abided by my wishes and decided to move on.

“
Yes. I own
a commercial cleaning company.”
Wow, old girl was good!

“
Men really
like you.
” She grinned, causing her
sea green
eyes to twinkle mischievously. 

Okay. This is where
she lost me. If she had said, “
Men like to use you and then toss you out like yesterdays meatloaf
,”
I would have smiled, given her a standing ovation and agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment. But an idiotic co
mment such as
that
one
assured me sh
e didn’
t really know her backside from a hole in the ground.

“
What are you running from, Eve
?”
 

How did she know? Who told her?
Deciding to give her a chance to redeem herself
,
I told her the entire st
ory of how I had
recently
gone to my
boyfriend
’
s
house
and found him playing mattres
s tag with a petite, stunningly-
beautiful,
Asian adulteress.

She listened patiently and then asked, “Do you have a picture of
this man from Maine?
Adam
?”

Okay! No comments from the peanut gallery. It was nothing more than an astoundingly lucky coincidence that I just so happened t
o carry a 4x5 glossy in my bag
. “Yes. I believe I do.”

She studied the photo of
Adam
and me smiling into the camera at Dolly Par
don’s Pirate’s Voyage
and settled back in her chair. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and began her detailed prognostication.

“
Adam
and Chia will be together for two months. She is starting to miss her children, but not enough to actually go home to them.”

Two months!
I was beginning to wonder if I could survive two
more days without the man
I had lov
ed with every fiber of my being
for the past three years. “With six kids even I might prolong my homecoming
.” 

“At first she was so in love with
Adam
that
,
truthfully
,
she didn’
t give her kids a second thought. She was too caught up in the secrecy of their illicit affair. The sneaking around and ever present fear of
getting caught were
thrilling to her. Now that the excitement of them living together is getting old, her guilt and regret are beginning to tug at her heart strings.”

“
What heart
?”