Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [119]
“Yes.”
“She did and she didn’t. She’s with you always.” Sister Claire sits back in the chair and closes her eyes. “She’s wearing purple.”
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
I buried my mother in a purple suit, her favorite suit made of silk wool. She made it herself out of fabric she bought on one of Fred Mulligan’s buying trips to New York. She told me that she didn’t want to make anything out of the fabric for the longest time because it was so beautiful, she couldn’t bear to cut it into pieces.
Sister Claire continues, “And she is showing me a house with many rooms. She is hanging curtains in one of the rooms.”
“She used to make curtains.”
“There’s a boy in the room. He just walked in. He has brown eyes and curly brown hair. Who is he?”
“My son.”
“He passed?” she asks me quietly.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Very young.”
“He was four years old.”
Sister Claire laughs. “He’s a funny kid. He’s happy with her. She is looking out for him.” She opens her eyes and looks at me.
Sister Claire goes on to tell me lots of things—about work, about Jack, about Etta. She sees us traveling together, and she sees Etta taking a new path, which validates my feelings that my kid is going to go where she wants to go and do what she wants to do with or without my blessing.
“Sister, how does the afterlife work?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will my son always be four years old and my mother the age she was when she died? And when I die …”
“What do you think?”
“I thought that they were in a holding pattern, waiting for Judgment Day.”
Sister Claire laughs, but I wasn’t being funny. “That’s a possibility, and it all depends. Your mother and son wanted you to know they’re okay, so they came to me in a way you would recognize them. This doesn’t happen every time.”
“So they are … somewhere, right?”
“I like to think the idea of them is somewhere, but that their energy is eternal and that it’s very possible that they return to life as a different person to learn new things.”
“So they could be here?”
“Anywhere.”
“Should I be looking for them?”
“You won’t have to look for them; they’ll find you.” Sister Claire shuffles the cards, this time lining them up in a single row. She asks me to pick another from the deck. “Now for your future.”
I take a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
“You’ve set many goals for yourself in your lifetime. And you’ve met most of them. But what I see here is that you have to begin anew. You have to decide where your life is going; you must re-dream.”
“Re-dream?”
“You have to invent your life again. You’ve reached many of your personal and professional goals, and now you have to think about what you want your life to mean from here on in. Do you understand?” I nod that I do, but I don’t really, or maybe I just don’t want to talk about the rest of my life. Maybe I’m not ready to talk about it.
I pay Sister Claire, and she helps me up out of my seat and to the doorway; I am a little stunned that my mother and son might be looking for me but I won’t know them. The smell of Iva Lou’s cigarette brings me back to the present. Iva Lou is sitting in one of the folding chairs, puffing away.
“I’m ready to go,” I tell her.
“Well, honey-o, since we’re here, maybe I’ll get a reading too.” Iva Lou turns to Sister Claire and points to her with her pinkie finger. “But I’m warnin’ you, Sis, don’t tell me when I’m gonna die, even if you know. Okay, I amend that. You can tell me when I’m gonna die if it’s at a hundred-and-one with all my faculties and a young man up in the bed next to me that thinks I’m better than pepper jelly.”
“You got a deal.” Sister laughs.
They go inside the tent and I can hear quiet muttering. I sit down, stretching my legs and leaning back in the chair. From this angle, I can see the spotlight at the beauty contest make a tunnel of light against the black mountain. It is a smoky beam, barely visible as it competes with the Ferris wheel