My First Call with a Psychic

My alarm goes off at 12:40 A.M., waking me from a half-sleep on my couch that’s been plagued by the gong of a Law & Order marathon. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to make it until 1:00. (Hence the alarm.) I brush tortilla chips off my sweater, switch off Law & Order, and reach for my phone, my nerves vibrating at a frequency that falls somewhere between job interview and pap smear. I’m nervous, but mostly I’m excited. I’m about to call a psychic. It’s my first time.

Back when I was a practicing Catholic (I think I was eight?), I used to say prayers every night before bed. I’d close my eyes, clasp my hands and whisper, “Dear God, please make me magic. I want to be just like Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie, except I don’t want to have a master, so kind of like Bewitched, but without having to twinkle your nose. I don’t know how to do that. Amen.” Despite the obvious heresy in my request, my prayers were sincere. I wanted a connection to the supernatural. I wanted to move things with my mind.

Years went by and, sadly, I found myself very much not in possession of any kind of telepathic or telekinetic powers. So as I approached puberty, I turned my attention to those who could commune with preternatural forces. I remember one particularly gruesome period in the sixth grade when I was bedridden with strep throat no fewer than five times over the course of a few months (note to others: if you suspect your step-sister of making you ill, even if it’s just because you don’t like her, you may, in fact, have a medical case to support your hypothesis). Equipped with a personal TV in my bedroom, I did what any normal twelve-year-old might do while on bed rest: I watched the psychic network. I wasn’t old enough to actually make a call to any of their hotlines, so instead I would look for clues about my future in infomercials advertising five dollar per minute phone calls. Would my crush ever get over that stupid tall girl? Would he realize we’re soul mates? (Scorpio + Cancer = True Love 4 Ever, you know.) Did he get the note I put in his locker last week? If only I had a credit card. Most preteens look forward to their sixteenth or twenty-first birthdays. I looked forward to my eighteenth, when I would finally be able to unlock the door to the beyond. Until then, I would busy myself with tarot cards, learning to read palms, and making out with my seventh-grade boyfriend.

But eighteen came and went. Then twenty-one. Twenty-five. And no calls were ever made. Not even a trip to the $5 psychic whose office is on my way to Target.

Then a few weeks ago, in the comments of Meg’s letter from the editor, longtime APW reader and commenter, Class of 1980, left a note singing the praises of her psychic. Now, if you don’t spend a lot of time in the comments, you should know this: Class of 1980 is nothing if not a grounded individual. So when she says her psychic is legit, her psychic is legit. “A few people in the comments are asking for contact information,” went the email I sent that day. Subtext: I’m too scared to ask for myself. Class of 1980 advised me that her psychic’s name is Walter and he’s with California Psychics, and that he only works from midnight to dawn. I forwarded it to Meg, the only other believer I know:

Me: For both of us. :)

Meg: Clearly one of us has to do this ASAP, paid for by the company, to write about it for the witching hour, am I right? And by someone, I obviously mean you. I’m not up at midnight. (Editor’s note: Meg has a reasonable bedtime because she has a toddler. I like to write style posts at two in the morning.)

Me: Is this a dream?! I have been waiting for this since I was like eight. I told myself the first thing I’d do when I turned eighteen was call a psychic hotline but then I realized it was $$$.

Meg: Consider it a mini bonus. You should book it now.

I made an appointment with Walter through California Psychics for one o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday night. (A note to newbies like myself: I almost missed my appointment because I assumed that California Psychics count time like I do, where 1:00 A.M. on Wednesday means staying up really late on Wednesday night instead of, as it were, getting up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Whoops. Thanks for the reminder email.) Class of 1980 had advised me to come prepared with some general questions, but not to get too specific. Ever the procrastinator, I had prepared exactly nothing when it was my turn to call except for a secret wish that Walter might be able to use his powers as a medium to speak to one of my hip great-aunts who died before I could fully appreciate their badassery, and a deep anxiety that he would contact my sister Stephie, who passed away when I was twelve (not ready for that, just yet).

“What questions do you have, Maddie?” he asks me.

“I was just sort of hoping we could talk. It’s my first time doing this. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

Walter’s voice is hoarse but kind, like my favorite gruff-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside uncle’s. He asks if I’m in the process of “redesigning” my life and then murmurs quietly to confirm (with the spirits I assume) that “redesign” is in fact the word they had intended for him. I explain that I’ve just retired from wedding photography, and that we’re in the process of renegotiating our living situation. He tells me that by June I’ll be jumpstarting a new aspect of my business, one that’s not just lucrative but heart fulfilling. I explain that he’s probably thinking of my APW job, as I’m really planning on focusing my energies on a business that isn’t my own. He murmurs a bit more, and then assures me it’s definitively my own business that he’s talking about. Look out for me in June, I suppose?

The second thing he tells me is that he is being shown an image of me walking by a mirror and being unhappy with my being. “I’m not trying to scold you or anything, I’m just telling you what they’re telling me, and they’re telling me that you need to stop being unhappy with your being.” WHATEVER WALTER, YOU DON’T KNOW ME. Except, this is the part where I tell you that sometimes my body positivity is as much as reminder for myself as it is for you, and that the past few months have been hard in the self-acceptance department.

Midway through my allotted thirty minutes, and Walter has made a few more observations that aren’t wrong, but aren’t specific enough to convince any kind of skeptic. (Not that I’m any kind of skeptic. In fact, Walter seems pleasantly surprised by how excited I am at the experience. I guess most midnight phone calls to psychics are less… perky?) Walter then makes a few predictions relating to things that are happening in my life at the moment. Change is coming. Here’s when to expect it. Etc. Etc. Then he tells me there are seven spirits around me.

“You have a strong maternal presence around you. She’s someone from your mother’s side, and she cares deeply about you. She’s pulling for you, is what I’d call it. She’s pulling for you very strongly. But you seem too young for your mother to not be with you anymore, so who could this be?” I genuinely have no idea. My mom, my grandmothers, they’re all alive. “Wait, wait. She’s pointing to her left leg. There’s something wrong with her leg.” Still nothing. “She’s telling me she has diabetes?” Bingo.

I think all the blood evaporated from my body when he said it. I hadn’t actually been expecting to actually get anything significant out of my reading. But there it was. My Aunt Carol. She passed away a few years ago at age fifty-one of complications from Type I diabetes. She walked with a limp. This was not a reach, not a distant relative. And it totally blindsided me. But maybe it shouldn’t have. When my Aunt Carol passed, I was young and broke in college. The funeral was on my late sister’s birthday, and the bus fare to get home was basically the only money I had to my name at the time. A local radio station was hosting one of those song giveaways that weekend; you listen in, and if you hear the right Beatles song, win $500. I saved the phone number to my contacts, and forgot about it for the rest of the day. On the way home from family activities later that evening, I insisted that my younger sister change her awful pop station to my classic rock channel and tuned into the second or third verse of “Help.” I need somebody. Not just anybody. I was caller number nine, and the $500 was mine. At the time, I chalked it up to the universe giving me something when I really needed it, or maybe, maybe Stephie pulling in a favor for me. (I only call on her when I’m very desperate, or if I’m about to get on a plane.) But who knows. Maybe Aunt Carol has been looking out for me this whole time.

Walter calls up a few other startlingly accurate pieces of information, and then advises me that I needed to call my dad. (“There’s someone who collects stamps or currency. You should call them. They’ll have good news for you.”) He asks if my husband was preoccuppying himself with informational books, or textbooks, as I stare blankly at a pile of literature on Michael’s side of the couch, littered with titles on rebuilding your Mazda Miata. I finally get up the nerve to ask him if there are any “young people” around me, and he informs me that there is a girl who appears to be around eight years old, but that she’s shy and is hiding bashfully behind something. I don’t tell him that I think it might be my sister. I extend the call twice, surprising Walter both times. Then it’s over.

As I crawl into bed, I have to resist waking Michael, who has recently enacted a new rule that I’m not allowed to wake him up at two-in-the-morning just because I’m excited/scared of the dark/want to spoon. Instead, I assault him via G-chat the next day, armed with predictions from the beyond, and hoping to impress upon him the life-altering experience I had the night before. He is having none of it. Fucking husbands. So I give up on him and call my sister, Casey. I’ve finally figured out what I’m giving her for her birthday, I say, and his name is Walter. Later that day, Meg sets aside time to recap my call with Walter and awards it the appropriate level of interest and enthusiasm (friends: for when husbands don’t get it).

I’m not sure why I feel like it’s so important to share, but it is. I mean, yes, if we’re getting technical, I was hired to write something about the experience. But still, even beyond that, I want to tell everyone. I want my experience simultaneously validated and protected against skeptics. And I want everyone I know to call Walter so we can compare notes.

Perhaps it’s because the predictions Walter made are things I desperately want to have happen. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the year I try therapy for the first time is the year I try a psychic for the first time too. Both are about digging deep and figuring out how to get past your own bullshit. Except, in some ways, the psychic was more healing. Or, to quote Lena Dunham in her new book, “Why spend $200 once week on therapy when you can spend $150 once a year on a psychic?” Therapy is an unknown quantity. But Walter’s predictions remove fear of the unknown, and let me act authentically on my own behalf, without fear of consequence. (I already know how this will turn out! Now I’m just helping things along.) In a way, it doesn’t even matter if what he said reveals itself to be true. Because I’m already set on the path to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I think that might be the whole point. Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right (or so the saying goes).

But to focus on the predictive aspects of my call with Walter would be missing the point. My first psychic reading unlocked a door I’ve been staring at too long, and it’s like I discovered a whole other family living inside it, and now we have so much to catch up on. Which is exactly what Class of 1980 told me would happen. “One thing you learn,” she said in her email, “is that even when you think you’re alone, you are never alone. Your people/guides/angels on the other side know all about what you’re doing. And thinking.” I wonder if they know about the secret Walter fund I’ve created in my bank account. I guess I’ll find out next time.