I do not think it is whimsy that makes me ask my mother to give me a reading. It is something else.

She looks pleasantly taken off guard by the request, and I remember how wonderful it is to please her. It has been ages since she’s given me a reading. When I was a teenager, she would pull me aside every so often, tell me in no uncertain terms that I was in need of a reading, sit me down, and give me one against my will, with frequent interruptions of, “Samantha, are you paying attention?” Sometimes I thought she might be making up the meanings of the cards to fit whatever narrative she’d invented about my life—reasons I was struggling in chemistry, for instance. Yet looking back, I realize all those unwanted readings veered, at least in the end, toward the optimistic; and against my will I left them with a sense of hope for the future, a feeling that things might turn around, that the friends who had abandoned me would return, or that I would eventually find a boyfriend—which was true, although it turned out later I didn’t want one after all.

Maybe it is because teenagers always think they can find their own answers to life’s questions, even though our parents have been around longer than us and likely know more than we do about life. We still think, when we are young, that they are old and out of touch, that we do not need their antiquated guidance even if we do need their approval, that what we really need is to figure things out on our own. And then, when we are older, we return to that childish desire for parental wisdom, but we must request it in oblique ways that play into that grand game of pretend in which all adults participate, pretending that we have any clue what we’re about. It is not so much the reading I want but my mother’s reassurance.

On the second floor, adjacent to the dreadful Rose Room, tucked into the haphazard floor plan, is my mother’s reading room—not for reading books, mind you, but for reading tarot cards. It is a small, oppressive room, bundled tight in its thick tapestries like a cocoon. In the middle sits a circular table with S-shaped legs, covered in a purple cloth. An old curio cabinet looms against the wall, filled with uncanny items: an owl skull, vials of lavender oil, incense, stray books on the occult, and mismatched religious ephemera including a small brass Buddha, a wooden crucifix, and a steel pentagram. A rusted horseshoe is nailed upright to one wall; on another hangs a copy of the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

Before we begin, Mother lights a white candle and some sage, the scents of which mingle intoxicatingly. She waves the flame off the match as smoke curls inquisitively from the candle, then takes out the cards and begins to shuffle the deck. “I suppose I’ll do the five-card horseshoe spread. Good for working out problems.”