Tarot

Count All This — Chapter 14: pick a card

Just when Jo Kasten’s adult son encounters schizophrenia, she discovers she has breast cancer. Meanwhile, her marriage faces a test. Count All This is a story about love and loyalty, addiction and madness. This is the fourteenth chapter. Find the first chapter here.

Sometimes I wonder if I brought these troubles upon me, called them to me with a siren song while I worked or slept.

I remember one day before all the trouble started — before Eddy’s psychosis and my breast cancer diagnoses and the cascading crises — when Karen came over to do a tarot reading. I brought her for privacy into my bedroom, which wasn’t as messy as usual, since I’d spent an hour cleaning in honor of this visit; the bed was made and the cover was clean. Still, I swept it with my hand a few times to rid lingering cat hair before inviting her to sit down.

Karen wasn’t bothered. “Don’t worry about it,” she laughed, before plopping down on the bed. “This will be fine.”

She sat back against one of the big pillows and hauled up her giant handbag. Then she carefully pulled out several items: a tarot deck, two books on interpretation of the cards, and a large blue binder with plastic-covered sheets containing color printouts of every card followed by multiple interpretations.

“Now then. There are many different ways we can do this,” she said. “One way I’ve been interested in lately is we can spread all the cards out and you can select ones that call to you. Then you can tell me what draws you to the card, why you chose it, what it signifies to you. Afterwards, I can give youadditional interpretations from my books.”

“That sounds good.”

Karen opened the packet and spread the colorful cards over the bedspread. They were larger than regular playing cards, and thicker, and vastly more interesting. Each held a unique image, richly detailed. I ran my hand over the array. I liked the feel of them under my fingers. Karen told me to stir them in a clockwise motion while I looked for images that stood out for me.

“I think I like this one,” I said cautiously, pulling out the seven of pentacles. It showed a young man leaning on a walking stick, looking at a bush adorned with seven big, yellow circles, each one containing a star.

“What draws you to it?”

“I guess it’s the abundance. It’s comforting. It seems to indicate the young man has all he needs. He’s proud of how well his bush has grown, and all the fruit it has produced. He doesn’t have to worry about starving. I guess this could represent all the good things I have in my life right now: my home, my job, my family.”

“That’s a good interpretation,” Karen said, opening her binder to the corresponding page. “Notice how uncomplicated the scenery is, and the modesty of his dress. Although he’s wealthy, he doesn’t seem sophisticated or corrupt. He seems to genuinely appreciate what he has,” she smiled. “Another interpretation is that the first card you pick represents how you look on the outside.” I wasn’t sure what that meant. “What else calls to you?”

The next card I pulled out showed a figure walking out on rocks toward the ocean. Both the sun and moon were in the sky at the same time. He had a walking stick and a red cloak. His back was to the viewer. On the shore were stacked many golden cups, which he seemed to be leaving behind.

“The eight of cups,” said Karen. “And what do you like about this one?”

“There’s something about the solitude that appeals to me, and the ocean setting. It looks like he’s going on a journey, but a pretty safe one. He has all this wealth to return to, if he decides to come back. What does your book say?”

“One interpretation is the figure is rejecting his riches — leaving them behind to seek new fortune. Another is a change in priorities. What you once thought was important becomes inconsequential. The second card you pick might also represent how you feel on the inside.”

I nodded uncertainly, wondering how that interpretation might apply to me. I thought my priorities were in order, but at the same time, I’d been feeling a nagging dissatisfaction with my life. So many little things bothered me. Larry was crabby and distant, and had never been romantic enough for my extravagant tastes. Now I found myself resenting the aridity of the 20 years we’d spent together, and his lack of ready tenderness.

At work, I also had disappointments. Despite spending 11 years in the work force since birthing my children, including the past three in the Marketing Department of the Sisters of Infinite Beneficence Hospital, I still wasn’t certain I had found my niche. The pay was good at Sisters, but the work was repetitive and often annoying. I wasn’t living up to my potential there, either. I was keeping a “good” job because it was safe.

My children were satisfactory, but not the shining stars I had imagined they would become. Rose had gotten into UC Berkeley, that was something we were proud of, but she rarely came home to visit and share the glory of that achievement. Eddy was always having some kind of conflict, and Michael was sullen and disenchanted with school.

And my house, although theoretically worth a lot of money, was really just a giant container full of unfinished projects. There wasn’t enough money to do all the things I wanted to do, and there wasn’t enough time. Despite my constantly overbooked schedule, it seemed I wasn’t accomplishing anything important — that I was just running in place. The only respite from the treadmill at that particular point in time had been Jason’s visits, when time slowed and we sat together at the kitchen table to play Settlers of Catan or talk about the meaning of life.

All these thoughts flitted through my mind as I swept my hand over the plasticized cards, spreading them apart to reveal the borders and moving them around to see how they compared to their neighbors. I hesitated before pulling the next card from the deck. I felt drawn to one card, but afraid of the attraction. Finally, I stopped resisting and grabbed the number sixteen — The Tower.

“I know this is crazy, and probably terribly bad judgment, but for some reason this card really interests me,” I told Karen. She didn’t draw back or seem startled by my selection.

“Don’t worry. I understand the attraction.”

The card was mostly black. From craggy rocks on the bottom rose a tower — straight and unadorned, like Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. But the rounded roof was missing. Instead, flames shot out of the top from three black windows. A lightening bolt zigzagged from the heavens and pointed an arrow directly to the heart of the fire. Two figures dove head-first from the burning building. On the right, a blue- cloaked man in a crown was falling casually, almost floating, his hands outstretched to soften his impending impact with the ground. On the left, a man hurtled headlong with his mouth frozen in a scream, his hair streaming crazily behind him.

“Before I read from the book, why don’t you tell me why you picked it. What does this image mean to you?”

“I’m not sure,” I stumbled. “The figures look like they are falling — or leaping — into a new place.”

“The Tower represents a destructive force, but it can also stand for the creativity that is born from that destruction,” Karen said. “It can be a card of new beginnings, or you could think of the destruction as applying to something negative in your life, something you want to get rid of.”

Before she gathered up her things and replaced them in her bag, Karen offered to make me a tarot gift — a pendant containing one of the cards that I could wear as a necklace or hang from the rearview mirror in my car. I passed my hand once again over the deck and considered which of the 78 cards I wanted to wear around my neck. I caught an image of myself in a swamp, up to my thighs in muddy, fetid water, trying to slog forward through reeds and spindly grass.

The metaphor wasn’t quite fair, I knew. I had a good life, and should be grateful. In every category I could consider, I had enough. I had enough money in the bank to pay the bills. I had enough clothes in my closet and food in my belly. I had enough books to read and articles to write. I had enough faith in my husband’s unspoken love that I could intuit the affection.

I had enough moody 14-year-old boys who never wanted to go to school, enough feisty 18-year-old boys who passionately rejected my world view, enough distant 19-year-old girls.

I had enough cobwebs to sweep off the front porch, enough rampaging raspberry bushes in the backyard, pulling down the back fence. I had enough debris in the driveway to take to the dump.

I had enough age spots and fat mounds and gray hair dyed ginger. I had enough canceled piano lessons and unwritten poetry. Enough unfinished projects piled against the walls.

I had enough random geegaws in enough nooks and crannies. Enough useless stuff in my useless stuff-stuffed house. More than enough.

“I want this one,” I told Karen, picking The Tower once again. “Is that crazy?”

“No. You know what you need.”

That was the fourteenth chapter of my novel, Count All This. To continue, follow the free chapter links below or buy a digital copy of the whole book on Amazon, where leaving a rating or review will help others find my story.

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