Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [57]
He spoke more to the cameras than to the audience, but within several minutes had stepped off the stage, and went into the audience. He asked about someone who had lost a child, and a woman in the back raised her hand.
He jogged up the steps to where the woman now stood. The woman was short and stout, and had a mullet-style hairdo, and wore a sweatshirt and jeans. Diamond went to her, and took her hand. One of the cameramen followed, trailing thick electrical cords up the steps.
“What’s she saying?” Julie’s mother asked.
“Quiet,” Mel whispered.
“Here’s what I’m getting,” Michael Diamond said. “You have been beating yourself up for years about the event. Do you have an item?”
The woman nodded, producing a small shoe from a wadded-up brown paper bag.
On the monitors that hung over the stage, the cameras went in close up on the small red sneaker in Michael Diamond’s hand.
Diamond closed his eyes. He said, “His name was Jimmy. He was four. No, five. You lived on a…cul de sac. In…somewhere in Connecticut.”
“New London,” the woman nodded.
Diamond opened his eyes. “Please, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Let me tell you, and you can tell me if I’m wrong.”
He closed his eyes again, pressing the shoe against his left ear as if the sneaker were a seashell and he was listening to the ocean. With his free hand, he pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes, rubbing at his eyelids.
Then, he opened his eyes and passed the shoe back. “I’m sorry. His name was Dennis. You lived separately from his father. A woman with the name of M. Mary? The name Miranda is somewhere in there. Or a name like that. Mary Anne? Marianna. That’s it. Is it?”
The woman nodded.
“You need to forgive her,” Diamond said. “She’s not at fault. It was an accident.”
The woman took the sneaker back, staring at it.
“If he were here, he’d want you to forgive her. That’s really all I can say,” Diamond said, touching her gently on the shoulder.
The woman’s head slumped against his chest.
“You need to get some rest. You can’t put yourself through this. You’ve relived that car accident for two years. Dennis wouldn’t want it.”
“I hate her,” the woman whispered, her voice barely audible in the microphone that hung suspended on a boom one of the TV crew held overhead.
Michael Diamond pulled sharply away from her, and put both his hands on her shoulders—more to separate himself from her than to console. “You need to look in the mirror, Alice. You need to see what role you played in this. Accidents happen. You need to forgive Marianna. She was only a girl herself. She had just gotten her driver’s license. You could as easily blame yourself. But Dennis would not want you to do that. Dennis is gone.”
Julie touched the top of Mel’s hand. Mel looked over at her, a question forming on her face.
Julie whispered, “He seems a little harsh.”
2
After two more readings, Michael Diamond went to the stage and said, “Someone is here who recently lost a husband. Someone named Jewel?”
“Julie!” her mother called out, pointing to her daughter.
3
“I’d like to do a one-on-one this time,” Diamond said. His face was enormous on the monitor screen that Julie watched. She felt she could count every pore in his skin. She saw flecks of yellow in his brown eyes.
Then she looked from the screen down to the man in front of her. He half smiled, and for some stupid reason, she felt comfortable with him, as if she’d known him all her life.
“Okay,” she said, and just before she got out of her chair, Mel leaned over and whispered, “sit on his lap.”
4
The one-on-one was a segment of the television show where the subject sat with Michael Diamond on the low-backed curved sofa at the back of the stage.
“You’re still grieving,” he said.
“Yes,” Julie said. She was about to say: And I don’t believe in psychics, thank you.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in me,” Michael Diamond said. His words sent a shock through her. “Belief has nothing to do with it.”
5
“Tell me about the brain radio,” he said.
“That what?