The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney Read Free Book Online Page B

slack and heavy, like a drop of water trembling on the lip of a faucet. Carol reached over to squeeze her hand.
    â€œGenevieve’s smiling!” Carol said.
    â€œI hear the waves, I see—­” The psychic stopped. Carol made a big deal of holding her breath and waiting for the next revelation. The psychic sneezed. “Sorry,” she said. “Darn allergies.”
    It probably wasn’t allergies that made the psychic sneeze, but all the patchouli oil she was wearing.
    Who else was there that morning? Their Aunt Nancy and the psychic’s boyfriend, who had an enormous belly and needed a cane to walk. And Joe, Carol’s husband. He stood apart from the others, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest.
    It was a chilly, rainy day. Every now and then, the wind flung a spray of rain hard against the living-­room window and made Julianna jump. She was sitting cross-­legged on the dusty wood floor, right beneath the window.
    She had been skeptical when the psychic arrived. The pimply arms, the gray roots. Julianna and Genevieve had driven past the run-­down shop on the run-­down stretch of Classen Boulevard many times. Now, though, when the psychic said she could smell the ocean and hear the waves, her voice was clear and certain, like the chime of glass on glass.
    The sofa was faded red velvet. It, and the house, had belonged to their grandmother. When she died, the summer of 1983, the three of them moved in, Julianna and Genevieve and their mother. The house smelled like mildew, and the wood floors were warped, the neighborhood was so-­so, but both the house and the neighborhood were a step up from the place they’d been renting before.
    Their grandmother’s house had a finished basement with wood-­paneled walls and a linoleum-­tile floor, separated from the rest of the house by two doors and a flight of steep, narrow steps. Genevieve had staked her claim right away. She dragged her mattress down to the basement, her boxes of records and clothes and makeup. For the first time in her life Julianna had a room to herself, though she still spent most of her time downstairs with Genevieve.
    That red velvet sofa that used to be Grandma’s. Remember it? Remember the linoleum floor in the basement? Remember how we went to the carpet store and begged them and they gave us some of the carpet squares they used for samples? Each square was a different color, a different kind of carpet. You made a joke about that, about used carpet, something dirty and hilarious, but I can’t remember what it was.
    When the psychic said that Genevieve would be home soon, Julianna saw Joe frown.
    â€œOh!” Carol said. “Did you hear that?”
    Julianna’s mother remained expressionless. Carol leaned across and squeezed her hand again.
    Looking back, Julianna wondered if Carol truly believed what the psychic said or if she was just clueless. Maybe Carol believed that hope, no matter how faint or false it might be, was a necessary kind of nourishment, like the cookies and tamales and ham casseroles with cornflake crust that she’d brought over every day since Genevieve disappeared.
    Her husband, Joe, was not clueless. Julianna understood that now. He could see the pain in her mother’s eyes.
    â€œIt’s Christmastime,” the psychic said, rocking back and forth. “and Genevieve is walking up the—­”
    â€œThat’s enough,” Joe said quietly, but with sufficient force to turn the psychic’s head.
    â€œHoney,” Carol warned him.
    The psychic’s boyfriend stirred. He was in the easy chair, pinned beneath his huge belly.
    Joe worked at a gas station, a mechanic. There was always grease in the grooves and swirls of his knuckles. He had seemed so old to Julianna at the time, but he was probably forty or so, only a ­couple of years older than Julianna was now.
    â€œThat’s enough,” Joe said again. And