Psychic Tony

I went to a psychic about five years ago. I brought my mother along for a little coraggio. I’ll admit I was a little nervous and my practical minded 78 year old mother was the perfect companion to soothe my nerves.

“What are you nervous about?” she asked on the drive over there. “You don’t believe this stuff, do you?”

“If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t be spending $75 to hear it.”

“Seventy five dollars? Are you nuts?! Keep your money and let’s go shopping instead.”

“Let’s see what kind of neighborhood he lives in first. If it’s a rundown shack with candles glowing through the windows, we’ll bolt.”

When we pulled in front of the house, my mother summed up the neighborhood with an approving, hmmm. “This is a better neighborhood than we live in.”

When we reached the front door I decided to test Tony’s psychic abilities. “I’m not going to ring the doorbell,” I whispered. “Let’s see if he can feel our presence.” We were a few minutes early, anyway. I was still a little timid about going in – afraid that I might hear bad news. My mother and I had already agreed, on the ride over, that I was only going to believe the good news and discount the bad stuff.

“Nice geraniums,” mom said, pointing up to the hanging pots that filled the wrap around porch. “They are all so healthy looking.”

“Take a closer look,” I told her. “They’re all fake. Who hangs fake geraniums in June?”

“I like this wooden porch,” she said.

“It’s not wood. Touch it and see; it’s that pressurized plastic. Everything is fake here -except these butts.” The tiny table between us held two packs of opened cigarettes and a soup bowl full of burned up cigarette butts.

The front door was suddenly yanked open and out flew a slim man with a slight paunch, and long skinny legs. His receding hairline was slicked back with a thick greasy gel that pasted every strand of dyed black hair in place. A slight red rash creeped below the well manicured matching black goatee.

Seeing us, he stopped short, clicked his heels together, and with a mime's exaggerated look of surprise, he stood with both arms outstretched waiting for us to introduce ourselves.

"I'm Chris, your 9:00 reading," I said.

He ignored me as he grabbed a cigarette from the table, snapped his lighter open and sucked in three short puffs until the tip glowed red. Studying my white haired mother with a peering eye, he squinted through the cigarette smoke, cocked his head to the side and pointed the lit cigarette at her left shoulder. She glanced quickly to see if there was something there to brush off, a bug perhaps.

"There is a gentleman on your left,” he said looking at the air over her left shoulder. “He is there all the time, watching over you." His cheeks caved in as he sucked hard on the cigarette, watching us closely, as my mother and I discussed who it could be.

"It's your father, of course!" I told her, as Tony blew a smoke cloud above our heads.

Mom's mouth was agape as she watched him in awe. Was it the information he gave her that caused her jaw to drop lower, or her latent desire to suck on that cigarette he was flaunting in front of her? I couldn't tell.

He paced back and forth in front of us, head down, concentrating on something. He stopped abruptly and, turning to my mother, said, "He was a piece of bread; capese?" He leaned between us to stub out his cigarette in the cereal bowl and grabbed another. Suck, suck, suck - three short puffs got it glowing red.

"A piece of bread…" mom repeated. “Yes, but he was unhappy,” she added.

"No he wasn't,” his words coming out in puffs of smoke. “What makes you think so?"

"People made a fool of him," mom said, her mouth turning down.

"No! He knew who he was. Anyway he's happy now," Tony dismissed her mood with a wave of his hand, blowing smoke around the top our heads.

"He is?"

"Of course! Everyone is happy up there. They don't have desires or anger or lust or any of the things that we have down here that make us pazzo - crazy - capese?"

"No?" she asked, not quite convinced.

"Of course not! And your father is in a good place. He's very happy. You have to believe that," he mashed his butt stub into the bowl to make his point. “Let’s go inside and begin the reading.”

As the front door opened we heard a mechanical sing-song voice announce, “Front door opened, making entrance.” There was a small camera and a TV screen recording our entry.

I asked to use the bathroom before we began. I locked the bathroom door and searched for cameras behind the mirror and around the ceiling moldings. Nothing. When I was done, I walked out to find Tony and my mother had vanished. I heard voices and followed them toward the kitchen. Empty. I walked back in the direction I came from, peering into a darkened hallway where every door was closed, I knew they couldn't be in there, but I still heard the voices. Muffled voices - they were behind a wall somewhere.

I had the feeling I was being watched – hidden cameras? - so I tried to visually take in the whole house without looking like I was snooping around. I kept my head straight and rolled my eyes around as far as I could to see beyond my peripheral vision. My sneakers made a squeaking sound on the polished wooden floors as I walked slowly back toward the kitchen. I was getting the creeps and would have fled on foot if my mother wasn’t hidden behind one of those doors somewhere. If only I could find her and sneak out. We would go shopping all day and forget this psychic escapade. I called out in a frightened whisper, “mom?”

Tony surprised me and came in the room from a direction that I wasn’t watching. He walked me to the kitchen table, and, pointing randomly, he said, "You sit there," as he scooted off into the darkened hallway and disappeared again behind a door. I wasn’t sure which seat he wanted me in, so I stood there waiting for him to return. Psychic auras being what they are, I wouldn't want to provoke the wrong spirit.

After a few minutes, he burst back into the room, his unbuttoned shirt billowing out behind him like a parachute. Grabbing a bottle of Windex, he sprayed the kitchen table, then vigorously wiped it down.

"I didn't know which seat you wanted me in," I said, still standing where he had left me.

"That one," he said, pointing to the specific seat. "I sit here," he said, pulling out the chair at the head of the table. It figured he would sit at the head of the table. It had to be the best place to channel the spirits. "I can only hear out of this one ear," he explained pointing to his left ear. “That’s why I want you there – on my left. Did you bring a piece of jewelry and the deck of cards?"

I handed him my wedding band and he slipped it halfway up his pinky finger. As I handed him the deck of playing cards, unopened, as he had instructed on the phone, he said, "First, let me tell you that the reading I give you is not the final word. You must listen to a power higher than me. And that is God. He is the supreme power and you must trust in him only. O.K.?" Aha! So that cleared him from anyone blaming him for bad luck.

"Well, I've been praying for guidance," I answered. "some answer to my question, but I haven't seen it yet. That's why I called you."

"O.K. Let's begin."

He slapped the playing cards into neat piles, observed them while scratching his chin, then his forehead, slapped a few more down, squinted at them than looked up and said, “The cards show me a state of confusion. You are trying to come to a decision about something” Didn’t I just tell him that? “….your job?” Good guess.

I answered, “Yes!” a little too quickly. I should have let him tell me more, because for the remaining hour Psychic Tony became Career Coach Tony.

“You’ve got to reinvent yourself,” he told me. “You’re too quick to give up when it gets tough. You’ve got to stick it out, nothing worthwhile comes easy… blahblahblah…”

We went on to discuss cooking and recipes for eggplant parmigiana, pizza dough and meat balls. He told me stories about his old neighborhood in Brooklyn and I laughed alot. He was very entertaining, but not very psychic. After about 45 minutes, I could sense that he was getting fidgety as he kept glancing over to the counter where his cigarettes were. “OK, let’s have a look at the photos you brought.”

He tapped on the faces of the people in the photos, looked at another photo, tapped his forehead and closed his eyes, and, finally the third photo. He shuffled the photos around on top of the table - like that game you play with the cups where you try to find the hidden item under one of the cups. Finally, he said, “Someone is getting married soon and a child will be on the way. There will be a death in the family. A male. Your husband loves you very much.”

“Who is getting married?” I asked. “Who is going to die?” I wasted all my time talking about recipes, and now that I finally had some psychic revelation, it was over.

I jumped out of my seat when, from nowhere, a black cat leaped onto my lap and flicked his tail in my face. “Cleo likes you,” said psychic Tony. “That’s a good sign because cats are psychic too and they know good people immediately.”

“Well, maybe Cleo can tell me who is going to die,” I said. That’s the only reading that I wanted more information about because I knew neither of my sons were ready to get married and I had no doubts about my own marriage.

“Come back for another reading and we can go into more detail,” said Tony. “Do you want to make another appointment now?” he said reaching for his crinkled pack of cigarettes, squeezing them tight.

“Let me see what my schedule is like,” I told him. We both wanted to get out of there for different reasons. I checked my finger to be sure I had my ring back. “Where is my mother?” I asked, as he yanked open a door to reveal her happily knitting in a chair in front of a small TV.

Back in the car my mother wanted to know what he said.

“He said I should work harder to build up my business, someone is going to get married and have a child and my husband loves me. He told me stories about the old days in Brooklyn and we swapped recipes.” I didn’t tell her about the death coming. Even though we decided not to pay attention to the foretelling of bad fortune, I knew it would weigh on her mind, as it was now on mine.

“So what’s the big news?” she said. “That someone is getting married? I wonder who? Peter?... James?... Paul is too young.”

“I’m sure every one of them will be married - eventually. And they will probably all have children – eventually. I already knew my marriage was good. And who doesn’t know that hard work builds up a business? The guy is a chain smoking quack who didn’t tell me anything I don’t already know! And I’m the idiot who just gave him $75 cash!”

“I told you to save your money. Now what are we going to do with the rest of the day?”

“I don’t know, mom. Let’s see if you can read my mind.”

“Well, we already travelled this far, why don’t we go to the Huntington Mall, grab a bite at Starbucks and have a look in Talbot’s?”

“Amazing! And you got it right on the first reading.”