Kyle and Bella married six months later.  "Did you know the date before we even met?" he asked on their honeymoon. Only occasionally did he think about her "gift." 

"No," she told him, gently rubbing sunscreen on his back. "It's not like that, Kyle. It's not about trivial, self-indulgent information. I wish I could explain it to you." 

She didn't go any farther that day, having probably realized Kyle's attitude toward her intuition was rather like Darren Stevens' toward Samantha on the television show Bewitched. Kyle didn't ask her not to use her “gift,” since the time for patriarchal behavior had passed, but it made him uncomfortable when she voiced her insights, if he believed in them at all. 

Their marriage proceeded in much the way Kyle desired.  Bella, an orphan, embraced Kyle's family.  She strongly regretted that her secret “gift,” (though she detested this euphemism), stood like a chasm between them. But it was a chasm only she recognized. The Miller family liked her enormously. She was tempted to tell Kara about her intuitions once or twice, feeling her to be more open-minded than her parents or siblings, but she knew Kyle would disapprove of such confidences so she kept quiet.

If presented with revelations about her in-laws, Bella found subtle ways to effect the necessary changes. On one occasion, she insisted that Mrs. Miller go to the doctor when she was reluctant to pursue the diagnosis of a symptom. Nobody even remembered it was Bella who sent her when a troublesome gallstone was detected. Another time, she hid Dianne's car keys until the hour for school dismissal (with all those children on rollerblades) passed. Generally, her intuitions about the Millers were pleasantly benign, and she readily gave the usual sisterly advice about which dress Dianne should buy for a wedding and which kind of cheesecake was better at a summer picnic. 

And the happy couple was—well happy.  Kyle was a good and faithful husband who helped with the cooking and shopping, did all of their laundry himself, and made love with his wife nearly every night. They took long walks in the evening, cycled in the park on Sunday mornings, looked through books of names for their future children, and went to quaint towns with antique shops and used bookstores on the weekend. Bella belonged to a book group and an embroidery guild. He went to Phillies' games and golfed on clement Saturday mornings. 

It was perfect then, except for that one damned thing: Bella's intuition. For Kyle, there remained the nagging sensation that his wife often knew better than he did.  When he picked up a seven iron on the golf course, he wondered, if only fleetingly, whether Bella would have chosen differently, especially had she ever played the game. Would she have avoided the turnpike in a spring thunderstorm, choosing local streets instead? 

Bella's problems, though different from Kyle’s, were also the results of her gift of intuition. When the first gleanings of her ability surfaced at nine, she learned to turn it off. At the time, her mother was gravely ill with the disease that would kill her and most of Bella's insights concerned her mother. She was unable, at ten, to act on any of the information.  It was easier to refocus her mind on more trivial concerns. She rooted herself in daily life, kept to a routine, forbidding herself any visualization. 

But after her mother's death, the insights came unbidden and gradually she came to accept their usefulness. She attended college and graduate school pursing a degree in psychology. Once again, she questioned her abilities and practiced a more severe form of routinization than she had at ten.  She would be a scientist, not a practitioner of sorcery at best and hucksterism at worst. 

But midway through her doctorate, she’d had enough.  She declined her research assistantship and took a job. First it was at a bookstore, then with an airline, and finally a travel agency.  Making travel plans for people was an interim situation although Kyle didn't know this.  It was a good place to work out her attitude toward her intuitive powers.  Here she could do no harm—hopefully. 

One day, after more than two years of marriage, Kyle came home to find his quiet apartment, his shelter from his frantic life as an IRS agent, had been irrevocably altered. A line of mostly women snaked up the stairway and into his garden apartment.  It didn't occur to him at first that the assemblage was related to Bella's intuition. He thought he had forgotten a bridal shower or a Tupperware party. 

Easing by the large woman in white satin overalls jammed threateningly in the doorway, and sounding a bit like Stanley Kowalski, he called out, "Bella!"

Several women, misinterpreting his actions, yelled out, "No cuts, no cuts!" 

He ignored them and headed for the bedroom. There he found Bella seated at an empty table much as he’d found her at the travel agency three years earlier. A worried looking woman sat across from her, clutching both Bella's hand and a damp handkerchief. 

Embarrassed at interrupting so poignant a scene, Kyle backed out of the room, barely catching Bella's eye. The throng of waiting woman in the living room swallowed him up, spitting him out on the landing. There he half-stumbled and half- escaped down the stairs.  Outside, a stream of drivers scrambled for parking spots. He pulled out, brakes squealing, as a large black Expedition barreled into the vacated place. He drove round and round, trying to make sense of it. Each time he came back to their block, the scene was unchanged.

Then suddenly, they were gone, and he ran up the steps to find his dinner ready. The meal had obviously required hours of preparation.  It was all his favorites—traditional Jewish fare—such as his grandmother would have served her husband in the forties. 

Spooning a generous helping of noodle kugel into his mouth, he started to speak. "Bella, what the hell was going on here today? Are you running your business out of the house now?”

Bella, dressed in a subdued manner, certainly nothing one could call gypsyish, put down her fork.  "Kyle, there's something I've been trying to tell you for some time now."  He looked at her expectantly.

"The job at the travel agency has been something of a ruse.  Actually, I've mostly been in training there. With Althea. Learning the ropes, so to say." 

"The ropes," he repeated.  "I guess you don't mean the ropes to the travel profession."

"Not really, Kyle.  I've made my share of airline reservations and booked an ocean of hotel rooms, but we mostly operate as an intuitive counseling center. The two go well together when you think of it. Althea has helped me to accept and hone my skills. The travel end of it was always secondary, although I certainly enjoyed planning your trip to Ireland." 

"And now you're moving this freak show to our home!" His IRS voice had taken over. 

"It's only temporary," she told him. "The air's on the fritz at the shop.  But I resent the term 'freak show.' Whom do you consider the freak?  Me, I suppose." 

"Of course, not you.  But in a sense, you're moving it into our home regardless of where it's housed, aren't you?"  He put down his fork. "I'm not religious, Bella, but fortune- telling seems blasphemous.  Or, at the very least, hippyish. Like some anachronistic holdover from the sixties." 

"The history of intuitives or mystics, or whatever you want to call them, goes back thousands of years. We deny its existence today far more than our ancestors did. There's a lineage of mystics in Judaism and in almost every other religion. Not that I'm comparing my meager aptitude to theirs." She got up from the table and began loading the dishwasher.

Wordlessly, Kyle began to clear the table. He watched sorrowfully as Bella scrapped the remains of the brisket (buttery-tender and his mother's recipe) into the garbage disposal. 

"Well, just what does it mean for us?" he said, as she heartlessly ground his brisket to bits.  "Is it lines of women on the stairs, phonecalls in the middle of the nights, frantic voices at the door? Is this the sort of life you want for yourself, Bella?" 

"Oh, it doesn't have to be like that, Kyle. And I don't seem to have a choice about it anyway. When I suppress my sixth sense, which I have repeatedly attempted to do, it drains me more than when I listen to it.  Althea warned me about this. Suppressed energy is enervating. I can't ignore it any longer. You'll have to decide whether you can live with it or not.  I certainly hope you can."  Wiping her hands on the dishtowel, she left the kitchen. 

Kyle watched her sad little figure pass through the living room and into the bedroom. Why couldn't they be an average married couple, hoping to have a child someday, enjoying holidays with his family, working at nice little careers that needn't intrude too much on their home life. That's why he chose accounting.  There was no excitement in accounting, but no anxious Sunday nights either. His father, a dental surgeon, was often nauseated with dread during the final hours of Sunday, even worse was the end of a week away from his surgeries. And his mother, a middle-school vice-principal, suffered from gastric ulcers. The three Miller children, after spending the Sunday nights of childhood at the top of the stairs listening to their parents’ tears and complaints, had all chosen low-keyed if prosaic professions.

Now here he was married to Bella, the fortuneteller.  Would he ever have to say those words aloud?  To introduce her to someone at an office party as his wife, the psychic reader, the channeler, the medium, the mystic. the healer, the intuitive.  All of these titles had the air of quackery to him. He was a practical guy, a man who prized sanity and rationality above all else.  Could he tolerate a life filled with auras, crystals, tea leaves, auric sound tapes, ritual objects, aroma therapy, table tipping, ouija boards, mirror writing, voodoo dolls and so much more.  The accouterments of the psychic life were vast.  Every day some new talisman appeared on the scene—from India, from Mexico, from Tibet, from South Dakota.  He pictured Bella and her huge satchel of tricks making her way down the streets of Philadelphia, stumbling under the weight of it. The image was medieval.  

"Kyle, Kyle,” he heard Bella gently saying, "come back to earth,” He whipped around and found Bella in the doorway. 

"It won't be that bad," she told him with a frown. "I hardly operate like the Fuller Brush Man of channeling, carrying about a huge case of materials. You've been in the agency a dozen times.  Do I use any of those things?  I think what you need is a sample of what I do." 

"You mean come in and watch you do a—reading?”

"No, I mean I'll do a reading for you.  I don't normally like to do one with people I know. Any insights get filtered through my knowledge of their personal history.  Sometimes I hold back when I normally wouldn't, or press beyond where I usually go. But in this case, it makes sense."  Kyle nodded and they sat down at the small kitchen table.  Bella yanked off the cloth so their four hands rested on the bare wood. 

"The patterns distract me," she apologized.

"So how do we do it?" he asked. "Do you read my palm?"

Bella shook her head impatiently.  "Why don't you try to forget all the ideas you have about how this works. Just sit back and relax. Pretend you're talking with an old friend. Someone you like and who likes you."  

Suppressing an inopportune giggle, Kyle relaxed, or tried to.  For her part, Bella looked much the way she had the first time he saw her. Her hands lay serenely on the table, her face was very soft, and she looked at him more fully than he was used to.  He got the feeling that only he existed for her at that moment.  This was a curious and compelling feeling. Kyle was thrilled and for some reason, he began to talk, to babble almost. He told her how hard he was trying to understand this thing she did.  He told her that his job was less rewarding than he had thought it would be.  Then he said that his mother was getting on his nerves lately with her hints that it was time for them to have a child. As he talked, he began to feel both lighter and stronger. He felt he could run with the total joy he felt when running as a child, or he could jump very high, paint a credible picture, play the violin, and make love to ten women. 

When he was finally finished, Bella put her hands over his. "What should I tell you, Kyle?  You seem to have told me everything I wanted to tell you. You know you need to look for a new job. A low level of stress is not enough of a recommendation for a lifetime career. You know your mother longs to be a grandmother. That's neither here nor there.  And you're wrestling with the odd career choice of your wife." 

Kyle nodded, feeling strangely disappointed.  She was telling him what he already knew. 

"It's a process, Kyle. Together, we can arrive at what needs to be recognized."  He was still miffed. 

"Tell me just one thing I didn't already know," he demanded.  "One thing I didn't tell you first." 

She looked at him hard for a minute, and he thought he could see a line of electricity darting through her body. It was orangey-red, reminding him of a plastic model of the human body he had once as a child that lit up various organs and systems. 

Bella was waiting when he looked up. "Get anything new that time," he demanded. 

She laughed.

"As a matter of fact, I did,” she told him.  "Do you think you're ready to hear this?"  It occurred to him then that it might be something bad. "Go on." 

"I see a child in your future. A child named Ari."

"How far in the future?" he asked suspiciously. If she said less than nine months, she was reading her present to tell him his future. 

"I'd say more than nine months but less than twelve." 

"Well that seems to put it all on me then,” he complained. "It's up to me to prove your right. If I stayed away from you for three months, you'd be in a fix."

"Is that what you want then? You're determined to take credit for everything, Kyle, declare me a fraud.” She got up from the table. 

"Wait a minute," he said reaching for her arm. "This thing won't happen at all if we have that kind of attitude toward each other."

"That's for sure," she said in a softer voice.  "Do you want it to happen?  Beyond the validation of my intuition, do you want it to happen?"

"Well, we know my Mom does.  I guess, I wouldn't mind too much."

"Even if Ari’s mother's a little different from the other mothers at PTA."

"Only if his mother's a little different."  She sat down on his knee then and they began to work hard at making it happen. Which, not surprisingly, it did. 

  About the Author: Patricia Abbott

Patricia Abbott has published more than 60 stories in various literary and crime fiction venues. Her stories have been included in several anthologies and she won the Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society last year for her story, 'My Hero.' She lives and works in Detroit. Please visit her at http://pattinase.blogspot.com for links to her online stories. She is also the host of a weekly feature there on forgotten books, for which she invites submissions.