The Tarot Card Reader

When Kathy suggested we visit a tarot card reader, I thought she was joking. I was wrong. Our marriage had been under a good deal of stress for months, mostly due to our recent relocation to a very small town in Tennessee. We were both city people, born, raised and schooled in Philadelphia. That’s where we lived for the first six years of our marriage.

When I was offered a fellowship to practice medicine in a rural area for two years, I jumped at the chance. Kathy wasn’t thrilled, but she was a magazine features writer, between jobs. She went along with my plan, to help my career, while helping people in need. I also pointed out that she would have two full years to work on the book she always wanted to write.

Everything worked out for both of us the first year. I enjoyed my work and she wrote every day. Then we went home to Philadelphia during the Christmas Holidays. I guess we both realized how much we missed our friends and city life. Almost from our first day back in Tennessee, things started to go wrong for Kathy. She had a horrible case of bronchitis. Then her writing stalled. I was working very long hours. She hated being alone so often and, living in the country, there was nothing to do that didn’t involve a long drive.  

When she told me she wanted to go home and wait for me there, I knew we had a serious problem. I wrangled a week off and suggested we go home for a visit, thinking she would charge her batteries and find that she could begin writing again. On the day before we were scheduled to return to Tennessee, she informed me that she might not go with me. 

I knew I couldn’t cut my fellowship short. “What else can I do to make this easier for you?” I asked. That’s when she suggested we see the tarot card reader.

"How can a tarot card reader help us? Do you want out of the marriage? Is that it?”

“No, I’m trying to save our marriage. I know this is very unorthodox, and not like me at all, but my friend, Camille, swears by him,” Kathy said. “He is so very insightful. We need to hear from someone who can see the direction we should take.”

“We don’t need help with directions,” I said, “Tennessee is southwest of Philadelphia.”

She didn’t laugh. “Do this for me, please.”

John Orsatti was around fifty years old. He ran what he called his tarot card practice out of a rundown rowhouse in the Northeast part of the city. He was a bit rotund and combed his black hair straight back. He was also wearing eyeglasses obviously meant for a woman, which accented the housedress he wore. His socks more or less matched the color of his white housedress, which was adorned with tiny roses. He was wearing pink sandals as well. Orsatti noticed that I was staring at him.

“Like my dress? I can tell you where to get one,” he laughed. “Just kidding doctor. Let’s get down to business.” He ushered us to his dining room table, urging Kathy and I to sit side by side. 

He pulled his tarot card deck out of its wooden box and unwrapped the cards from a protective silk cloth. He shuffled the cards several times, then pushed the deck in front of me and asked, “Would you cut these please?” Then he laid out the cards. His phone rang just as he was about to say something. It was an old phone with an answering machine attached. He pulled his glasses off and started cleaning the lens, waiting for the phone to stop ringing. When it did, his voicemail message played. “I knew you would call. Please leave a detailed message and I’ll contemplate your future.”

I looked at Kathy, smiling, but she acted as if everything was normal. Judging by her face, we could have been sitting in front of a bank officer. John studied the cards again. Then he looked up at Kathy and said, “You’re going to be famous. You must be a writer, screenplays I think.”

“I’m writing a book.” She corrected him.

“I see you winning awards, a Hollywood kind of thing.” Then he looked in my direction. “You have a wonderful future too, doctor. You’ll have a large following and you will one day run a large hospital in the deep south.”

“You see all that in these colorful pieces of thin cardboard?” I asked. 

He nodded. “Yes, and more. But I must warn you that some of what I see might upset you in the short term.”

“Let me guess,” I said, “she’s leaving me, right?”

John turned to Kathy. “Are you, my dear?”

"I was hoping you could tell me.”

He looked at me and shrugged. “Yes, it certainly looks that way, I would say within a two; two days, two weeks, two months or two years.”

In spite of what I’d just heard, I laughed. Funny thing was so did John. “I can almost always see what will happen, but I get only vague images that might reveal when.” 

I couldn’t help it. I liked this guy. For all of his silliness, he seemed sincere, not the least bit insecure about who he was, or how he earned his living. “Well, right now, John, I just need to know if Kathy is coming with me to Tennessee.”

“I don’t advise it. There is a dark cloud there, foreboding I’m afraid.”

I went back to Tennessee alone. When I came back to Philadelphia, Kathy was putting the final touches on her screenplay. A week later I received an invitation to help an old friend from medical school to start a practice in Mississippi. She filed for divorce.

I still see John once a year. On our last visit, he told me I would remarry. Within a two.