Little Psychic

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  LITTLE

  PSYCHIC

  Following the death of Virginia Andrews, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews’ stories and to create additional ones, inspired by her storytelling genius.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © September 2001 by the Vanda General Partnership

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN 0-7434-4868-5

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  Mommy told me that even when I was a little girl—only three, in fact—I would say things and ask things that astounded my family. My paternal great-grandmother, Sophie, who was still alive then, often crossed herself when in my presence and especially whenever I looked intently at her. She had been born in Europe and believed in something called the Evil Eye. When she was dying, she asked my father to bring me to her bedside. I can vividly remember him holding me in his arms and Great-grandmother Sophie struggling in her weakened state to reach up to touch me.

  “Great-grandmother Sophie is very sick,” my daddy said.

  I shook my head.

  “Not sick,” I insisted.

  “Not sick? Why isn’t she sick, sweetheart?” he asked me.

  “Just tired,” I said. “Needs to sleep.”

  Great-grandmother smiled and let her hand drop away. Daddy said when she closed her eyes, I nearly spun completely around in his arms as if I was watching her spirit leave the room. She died so softly, so quietly in that moment, no one was sure she had.

  I said, “Bye-bye.”

  Most thought it was just a family fable, the sort of story relatives tell each other on holidays when everyone has gathered and been fed. Mommy said because of my eyes it was easy for all of them to believe the stories. I have the biggest eyes of anyone in the family. When I look at myself in the mirror, I am just as amazed by the size of them, by the depth of my dark orbs, the tiny, spiraling ebony marbles that look out on the world and see shadows where there seem to be none, see shapes in trees and clouds and mountains that no one else sees, see ghostlike images following people, and see brightness in the dullest of days.

  I hear things, too, things no one else seems to hear. I told Mommy that I heard the trees talking to each other once and she shook her head and moaned, “The child has a wild imagination. She’ll make a fool of herself and fools of all of us when she goes to school.”

  She scolded my father for encouraging me or smiling and laughing at things I did and said.

  “You’ve got to tell her, Marshall. Tell her to not say these silly things to strangers and never to any teacher,” Mommy commanded.

  Mommy was always worried about the family’s reputation and honor. She was impressed with her own heritage and the family’s social importance. We lived in a grand house in Savannah, Georgia, with so many rooms, my daddy used to say we could have a houseguest and not even know it.

  “Impress upon her how important it is not to do and say things that will embarrass us, Marshall,” Mommy continued.

  Even though Daddy was so much taller and bigger than Mommy, she often gave him orders. It was always that way. Once, when my auntie Merrill, my daddy’s sister, was over for dinner, Mommy got very angry at Daddy, chastising him in front of everyone. Later, when Daddy and Auntie Merrill were alone, I heard her say, “That’s what you get for marrying the boss’s daughter. She’ll treat you like one of her employees forever. Even in bed!”

  Daddy’s face turned the color of a ripe apple. He saw me just inside the doorway, looking at them and listening.

  “Be careful of what you say in front of Tiffany, Merrill. Her ears store words like squirrels store acorns. She brings up things she heard when she was only four or five.”

  Auntie Merrill gazed at me with eyes that revealed her kaleidoscope of emotions. Everyone thought I was cute when I was little, and that naturally evolved into their saying that I was very pretty, unusually pretty, a rare jewel. I was always polite and respectful, so they approved of my behavior, but just as I saw in Auntie Merrill’s face that night, there was always the ingredient of a little fear, a little concern added to the mix of reactions.

  My uncles and aunts who had children close to my age were never comfortable leaving them to play with me. By the age of nine, I had a reputation in my family that made me the subject of whispers. One of my cousins, Holden Wallingford, would actually freeze in terror if I looked at him too directly or too long. He would cry out and point at me, screaming, “She’s looking at me again, Mommy!”

  “Don’t stare,” my mother would sternly admonish.

  I really wasn’t staring at him or at anyone, but I couldn’t help what I saw.

  Sometimes I saw their faces pale and sickly, old and wrinkled; sometimes I saw their faces and their bodies injured and bleeding. When I was much younger, these images would frighten me as much as my glare would frighten Holden, but as I grew older and saw more and more of it, I stopped being afraid. I sensed that what I was seeing wasn’t there at the moment and none of it was ever any threat to me.

  Because I never stopped saying and doing things that troubled Mommy, she sent me to a psychiatrist when I was ten. His name was Doctor Bloomingdale, and he was so short and stubby that I couldn’t help thinking of him as a giant animated thumb. At ten I was only about four inches shorter than he was. He had a big head with a burst of dark brown hair that looked like it had all sprouted one night and spread like weeds over his temples and his forehead. He was not a very neat man. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and the tips of his thick little fingers were always stained yellow. His hair rained dandruff down the collar, over the shoulders and the breast of his suit jacket. Sometimes, while he was listening to me or talking to me, he would flick his fingers at the tiny white flakes and send them drifting over his desk.

  I didn’t lie on a couch. I sat with firm posture in a big, hard wooden chair, barely moving when I spoke to him, and looking at him so directly and intensely that he would gaze down at his notepad quite often, scribble something, and nod.

  He was very interested in the voices I heard. Actually, that was what caused Mommy to rush me to him. I told her about the voices one day, and she turned a shade of blueberry.

  “The child needs psychiatric help!” she cried.

  As usual, Daddy glanced at her with almost no emotion and then looked back at his paper. However, this time she was determined and she made an appointment for me with Doctor Bloomingdale. She told Daddy he came with high references from friends of theirs who had sent their children to see him for one reason or another. Daddy said they were all just spoiled and di
dn’t need analysis. They needed discipline. Also as usual, Mommy ignored him and did what she wanted.

  So I was sent to Doctor Bloomingdale who was eager to learn about my voices.

  “Do they whisper or talk in a normal volume?”

  “Mostly whisper,” I said.

  “Do they come at any time or only special times of the day or night?”

  “Anytime,” I replied.

  “Do they sound like the voice of one person or many?”

  “Many.”

  He scrunched his lips, nodded, put down some notes, sat back, folded his hands over his stomach and looked at me.

  “You wouldn’t be hearing them now, would you?” he asked.

  I stared at him for a long moment and then I turned my head as if to listen to someone standing beside me. Doctor Bloomingdale’s eyes widened with expectation. I nodded and then turned back to him.

  “I can only tell you that you’re not going to be happy with what your wife has done today,” I said.

  “What?” He sat forward—fell forward, I should say. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What is my wife doing today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He was pensive, but also looked angry.

  “You know you’re making your parents very unhappy with this behavior, don’t you?”

  “What am I doing?”

  “You don’t see yourself as doing anything unusual?”

  I shook my head.

  “If what we do is what we’re meant to do, it’s not unusual,” I said.

  He raised his bushy eyebrows.

  “Who told you that?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Was that told to you by one of your voices just now?”

  I nodded.

  It wasn’t, but there was something impish in me and I did enjoy the effect I was having on him.

  He phoned my mother that night and she came to the den where Daddy and I were playing a game of chess. I was always very good at board games, especially the sort where you had to react to your opponent’s moves.

  “That was brilliant,” Daddy said, just as Mommy came hurrying into the room.

  We both looked up at her with some surprise because she looked very disturbed, her cheeks crimson, her eyes like full-blown sunflowers.

  “What now?” Daddy asked.

  “That was Doctor Bloomingdale. He wants to send her to some special clinic. He said she was beyond him.”

  “Really?” Daddy said with a soft smile. He looked pleased, and that made Mommy angrier.

  “What did you say about his wife, Tiffany?”

  Daddy turned to me.

  I thought a moment.

  “I just told him he would be unhappy about something she was doing today,” I said.

  “What was she doing?” Daddy asked quickly.

  “I don’t know, Daddy.”

  He looked at Mommy.

  “She invested a large amount of their money in her girl-friend’s restaurant, and he was very angry at her for doing so without his approval. Did you hear his secretary talking about that, or another one of his patients?” Mommy asked me.

  “No, Mommy.”

  “Well, why did you say such a thing to him?” she demanded, practically screaming.

  “I heard...”

  “Don’t,” she cried, pressing her hand to her breast as if she had to hold in her heart. “Don’t say it. Marshall,” she wailed.

  “Now, now, Jocelyn, don’t get yourself all worked up.”

  “Maybe she should go to a clinic.”

  “Absolutely not. There’s nothing any clinic can do but harm her. Enough is enough. Leave her alone. She’s an excellent student. She doesn’t do anything to bring shame on us like the children of so many of your friends are doing to their parents. She just has a wonderful imagination. She’ll make some good use of it someday, perhaps.” He smiled at me. “Perhaps someday she’ll write books.”

  “Make her stop talking about these damn voices,” Mommy ordered. “Do you understand, Marshall? Do you?”

  “All right, Jocelyn, all right. Calm down. Tiffany and I will have a little talk. I didn’t want you to send her to that doctor in the first place. He’s a quack if the only thing he can do is send her to someone else instead of telling you there’s absolutely nothing mentally wrong with your child. She’s gifted and a blessing.”

  It was the longest speech about me that I ever heard Daddy make. Even Mommy was impressed enough to reduce the swelling in her shoulders and take a deep breath.

  “I’m not going to think about it anymore,” she declared. “It’s your problem from here on in.”

  “I accept,” Daddy said.

  Mommy shook her head and left us.

  Daddy gazed down at the chessboard.

  “You know what I’m going to do next, don’t you?” he asked without looking up at me.

  “Yes, Daddy,” I admitted.

  He smiled and deliberately changed his mind. It wasn’t much of a move. When he looked up at me, we both laughed.

  “I don’t know if you have some special power or you’re just an extraordinary little girl, Tiffany, but let me give you some good advice. Keep your secrets to yourself. People are uncomfortable around someone who might know more about them than they know about themselves. Can you understand and appreciate that?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “I love you, princess,” he said, “and your mother does too. She just doesn’t know how to show it.”

  That advice Daddy gave me was the best advice anyone could have given me. I never forgot it. I saw and felt many things in the years that followed, but I didn’t reveal them. I understood that seeing them didn’t mean I could prevent them from happening.

  Years later, one of my teachers in college was talking about the difference between an all-knowing deity and man’s free will, his power to choose for himself. He said, imagine you’re on a high hill and you look down at a railroad track. On your right, way off, you see a train coming and then you look to your left and you see another train, speeding from the opposite direction. You know they are going to crash, but you can’t stop it. Just because God knows what’s going to happen, doesn’t mean He can or will stop it.”

  I’m not a god, I thought, but that’s the way I feel sometimes. Mommy was right in a way. It was not a pleasing power to have. I remember looking at a boy I liked and seeing his face all battered in. I nearly blurted it aloud, but I didn’t, and that night he was in a terrible car accident and killed. I was crying for him hours and hours before he died.

  The other thing was, I couldn’t look in the mirror and see anything about my own future. I could do it only for others. I was glad of that.

  One night after I had come home from college on a holiday, we were all having dinner. Mommy was happier than I could remember. She had been elected president of some social organization and her picture had been in the papers that day. My grandfather had retired and Daddy was now the CEO of the company and he was happier, too.

  During a pause in their discussion, my grandfather focused the spotlight of conversation on me and asked about college and how I was doing. He wanted to know what I was planning to do with my expensive education.

  “Not just find yourself a rich young man, I expect,” he said. He was always teasing me about women in the business world. He was old fashioned, I suppose, but I had inherited some of my impishness from him. “Women like you want to run things men used to run, huh? You want to be equal so now you can suffer hypertension, heart attacks and nervous breakdowns as much as we do. Welcome to the new world.”

  My grandmother jumped all over him, and they all began to chatter about politics and the media, everyone taking the same position he or she had been taking for years and years.Then my grandmother looked at me and smiled.

  “I’m glad you’ve outgrown all that nonsense, Tiffany. Those were terrible days when you drove your mothe
r into the world of antidepressant drugs. No more voices, thank goodness.”

  Daddy sat back, smiling at me because of the way I was just listening.

  “The truth is, Grandmother, we all hear the same voices, but most of us don’t listen,” I said.

  “I don’t hear any voices,” she declared as though it was a social disgrace.

  “Sure you do,” my grandfather said. “You’re always mumbling to yourself these days.”

  “That’s because of things you do, Winston Morris. Don’t blame me for it!” she cried.

  I smiled to myself and finished eating.

  Afterward, Daddy and I went for a walk on the street outside our Savannah home. It was mild and not too humid.

  “When you were a little girl,” he said, “you and I used to walk this street and you would look at various houses and say things about the people living in them, remember?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Some of those things were sad, and I used to worry that your life would be full of so much bad news, you would simply break apart. How do you handle that, honey?” he asked.

  “I don’t look into as many windows, and when I do I accept and move on, Daddy.”

  “You keep your voices secret always?”

  “I try,” I said. “You were right. People really don’t want to know about tomorrow. They say they do. They tiptoe into the dens of fortune-tellers and keep their eyes closed, their hands pressed tightly together, and hold their breaths. It’s like going over the top of a roller coaster.”

  “You’re serious about being a doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a wonderful place for your talents. Prognosis of ailments and sickness. Wonderful.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret, Daddy,” I said.

  We stopped walking and he turned to me.

  “Go on,” he said, looking a bit afraid and holding his breath.

  “I don’t have the power as much as I did when I was younger.”

  He looked at me suspiciously.

  “You’re not saying that to hide something from me, are you, Tiffany?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “I don’t know whether I should be happy or sad about it,” he said.