The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,119

was a gas chamber of incense and perfumed candles. The centerpiece was her deck of tarot cards; the iconography had its origins in Egypt and Byzantium and the legends of Crusader knights seeking the Grail. The deck was a pictorial history of the Western world’s cultural debt to the Middle East.

My mother’s conversations with Mrs. Ludiki were always circuitous. She could not bring herself to say she was afraid; she could not admit her addiction to pharmaceuticals; she could not admit that she was forced to quit high school in the tenth grade and go to work, nor that she had married a man much older than she when she was seventeen, as though poverty and loneliness and desperation were unacceptable in the sight of the Creator.

“I’ve felt terribly out of sorts,” she said to Mrs. Ludiki. “Nothing on a grand scale, of course. Like this morning at the bank. A man was discourteous and kept insisting he knew me when he didn’t. Actually, it doesn’t bother me. I’m quite all right now, except for a mild case of food poisoning. How have you been, Mrs. Ludiki?”

“I think we can get to the root of these problems quickly, Mrs. Broussard,” Mrs. Ludiki said, laying out the tarot cards in a wheel. “Look. There’s the man carrying staves on his back, his burden about to break him. He takes out his unhappiness on others. He resents spirituality and goodness in others and is to be pitied and not feared.”

“You think that’s the man I met this morning?”

“Yes, I do. So I’ll put him back in the deck and leave him to his fate.”

I thought we were finished. But Mrs. Ludiki, like all people who toy with the delicate membrane that holds the soul together, had unlocked doors that my mother never should have walked through.

“Who is the figure tied upside down on the tree?” my mother asked.

“That’s the Hanged Man.” Mrs. Ludiki tried to pick up the card and replace it in the deck before the conversation went further.

“That’s the death card, isn’t it?” my mother asked. She pressed her finger on the edge of the card.

“The Hanged Man is Saint Sebastian, the first martyr of Rome. He was a soldier executed by his fellow soldiers.”

My mother studied the card carefully. The figure was pale-bodied and effeminate, covered only by a loincloth. “He bears a resemblance to Aaron. Look. It’s uncanny.”

“No, we mustn’t transfer the wrong meaning from this card, Mrs. Broussard.”

“Are those arrows?”

“They’re darts. The Legionnaires fired darts from their crossbows.”

“What’s the next card in the deck?”

“I don’t know. Let’s move on and look at these other things in our wheel,” Mrs. Ludiki said, her eyes veiled. “There is certainly prosperity here. Good health as well. Yes, there are very positive indicators working in your life.”

“No, the Hanged Man is at the apex of the wheel. When there is an ambiguity in the card, you always supplement it with another. Please show me the next card, Mrs. Ludiki.”

Mrs. Ludiki turned over the top card on the deck and placed it below the Hanged Man. It showed a skeleton wearing black armor and riding a white horse.

“That’s the Fourth Horseman of the Book of Revelation,” my mother said.

“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Ludiki said.

“Death?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” my mother said. She stood up, groping in her purse. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I forgot how much our session is. I’m sorry. It’s a dollar seventy—”

“There’s no charge today,” Mrs. Ludiki said. “I’m happy to see you. Please don’t take away the wrong ideas from the tarot.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re correct,” my mother said. “It’s been an unusual day. I must be running. Aaron, say goodbye to Mrs. Ludiki.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Ludiki.”

Her eyes couldn’t meet ours. She rose from her chair, a basically good woman wreathed in scarfs and tinkling jewelry and fumes from her candles and incense bowls, unable to dispel the misery she had helped fuel.

Outside, I took my mother’s arm, then opened the car door for her. “Would you like to go for a drive? Maybe to a show?”

“No, I don’t feel well. Thank you anyway, Aaron. He looked like you. You saw the resemblance, didn’t you?”

“The Hanged Man? Not a chance, Mother. That guy looks like the ninety-pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face in the Charles Atlas ad.”

Her face blanched. Could I have chosen a worse metaphor? Nope. I had found the absolute worst.

I drove my mother to a soda shop and bought her a lime Coke. I thought I