We Are the Light(48)

I remember thinking they looked medieval, although I wouldn’t have known that word back then. But there were kings and queens and towers and magicians and angels and suns and moons. They looked a little like the Led Zeppelin album covers I’d seen in Dad’s record collection.

Then Mrs. Case scooped up all the cards and thoroughly shuffled them before spreading them out facedown on the round table.

“Pick one,” she said.

When I asked, “Which one?” she smiled knowingly and said, “That is the question, isn’t it?”

I remember scanning the cards, feeling as though I had absolutely no idea what was going on. But then my skin started to tingle and, suddenly, the card closest to my left hand caught my attention. When I flipped it over, I saw a skeleton using a scythe for a walking stick. At his feet were two decapitated heads—a woman’s on the left and a crowned man’s on the right. At the bottom I read the number thirteen followed by the word “death” and a strange symbol.

“Is this bad?” I asked.

But Mrs. Case was smiling. “Nothing in this deck of cards is bad or good.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“It means you have very good bones.” She scooped up all the cards once more and put them into their box.

And I never saw her tarot deck again. In my memory now, I see myself seated in the classroom at the end of the hall, reading strange stories with Mrs. Case every Friday morning. Fairy tales, I guess you’d call them. She and I would take turns reading aloud to each other—about witches and trolls and princes and giants and sorcerers. After each story, she’d ask what it had meant to me and I’d do my best to answer honestly. I never knew if I was giving the right answers or not, but Mrs. Case said the point was to think about the stories and let them get into our bones, where they would stay for the rest of our lives and maybe even help us through the worst of times.

“How can a story help me?” I’d ask.

And she would always answer, “You’ll see. A million times before you die, the answer will pass right before your very eyes.”

There were two other students in Mrs. Falana’s class who would leave once a week to spend time with Mrs. Case. I asked them what they did with the strange teacher at the end of the hall. Jason Bachman always scored highest on the math tests Mrs. Falana gave us and so, with Mrs. Case, he did nothing but math problems. Carla Naso was our best speller and she studied the dictionary when she was in Mrs. Case’s room. They asked me what I did and I said, “Reading comprehension,” even though whatever I was doing with Mrs. Case didn’t much resemble Mrs. Falana’s reading comprehension tests, which I often failed.

“What card did you pick when she spread out that weird Led Zeppelin–looking deck?” I asked Jason and Carla.

But they just stared back at me blankly, before saying, “What are you talking about?”

I described the tarot deck in more detail, but they only shrugged and then looked at each other as if to say, Lucas Goodgame is such a dweeb!

I couldn’t figure out why I had been selected to work with Mrs. Case, but I liked spending time with her, so I just sort of stopped asking questions.

I don’t remember when I ceased seeing Mrs. Case once a week. I want to say our meetings continued all through elementary school, but the truth is I only remember the initial few times I was taken out of class and the few conversations I had with Jason and Carla before I realized that they were having radically different experiences. After that I stopped talking about Mrs. Case with anyone else at all and maybe my brain stopped recording memories regarding any of the above.

I broke the Sunday-only rule this past week and called my mother, who immediately launched into another of her monologues. It took me almost a half hour, but I was eventually able to interrupt her long enough to ask what Mom remembered of Mrs. Case. My mother laughed and said there was no Mrs. Case at the Majestic Elementary School.

“I’d certainly remember if you’d been pulled out of Mrs. Falana’s class once a week for remedial instruction, because I’d have been thoroughly mortified,” Mom said. “I was the president of the PTA.”

I told Mom that Mrs. Case and I hadn’t been doing remedial work, but when Mom asked what exactly this alleged Mrs. Case had taught me, I went silent. Part of me didn’t really remember what I had experienced and another part of me felt like the teaching had been private—for my ears and eyes only. I began to worry I’d even lose what I remembered if I shared any of the above with the wrong type of person. And every bone in my body knew Mom was definitely the wrong type of person.

Karl, I remember you saying in one of our analytic sessions that the Death card was associated with spiritual rebirth and the Scorpio sign, under which I was born. It can represent the end of one thing but also the beginning of something new, which seems apropos, here at the start of our movie shoot, which I will tell you about in a second.

There’s a part of me that isn’t sure if the above is a memory of what really happened to me when I was a child or is something I dreamed up. I feel as though I would have told you about my time with Mrs. Case in analysis if it had really happened. And yet, it’s in my memory now as I write to you. Regardless, why do you think I’m having these dreams and thoughts and imaginations? What do you make of this? I know you have studied tarot and Jewish mysticism.