Free The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman

front window. “Daisy.”
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œThis phone is for emergencies.”
    â€œYou weren’t home,” Daisy complained.
    â€œAre you okay?”
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œI’m at a psychic.”
    Her mother snorted. “A good one?”
    â€œNear home. I drive by every day.”
    â€œI can recommend the best. Gary. My Gary. He’s amazing. He’s here in New York, but he can read you over the phone.”
    â€œIs something wrong?”
    â€œI can’t believe you just walked in off the street. Look around. Does it look like the house of someone who knows the future?”
    Winnie looked at the ugly carpeting, the sagging floral couch, the glass shelf filled with porcelain angel figurines.
    â€œWell—”
    â€œDon’t give her any money. Go home. I’ll give you Gary’s number.” Her mother paused. “You don’t need a psychic anyway. You need a dating service.”
    Winnie sighed. “Daisy.”
    â€œListen, I’m insanely busy. Can I talk to you later?”
    â€œYou called me.”
    â€œI guess I just had a feeling I should. Go home.”
    Winnie hung up and walked back to the table. “I’m sorry,” she apologized again. She sat down, but Madame Nadalia stood. She scratched under her wig. She looked at her watch. She started for the kitchen.
    â€œWait,” Winnie said. “Are you coming back?”
    â€œThe things I have to tell you, you will learn anyway. Soon enough you will live them. You will meet a man. There will be much excitement, a trip to another place.”
    â€œAll that is going to happen to me?”
    â€œI am only the weather report,” Madame said. “I can tell you it’s going to rain, but you’ll forget your umbrella anyway.”
    â€œNo. I won’t. I promise.”
    Madame Nadalia shook her head as she went through the beaded curtain.
    â€œSo?” Winnie tried to laugh. “How big an umbrella do I need?”
    â€œAsk your mother.”
    She disappeared around the corner. The TV got louder and then a door closed and it was muffled again.
    Jesus twinkled. His right eye seemed to be staring at Winnie. She breathed an odor of infection, like the yellow pus of a child’s skinned knee. The rain fell harder as she opened the front door to leave. She almost laughed, she did need that umbrella.
    As she drove away from the psychic, Winnie wondered what it was she really wanted. She should want to go to college. Shealways meant to get a degree in something, but she kept putting it off and then she met Jonathan. Eight months later she was pregnant with Lacy.
    As a child she had wanted to be a clown. She loved making people laugh. She knew she wasn’t beautiful like her mother, but she was strong and flexible. She taught herself to walk on her hands and sometimes, when Lacy was at school or sleeping, she still flipped upside down and turned the pages of the newspaper with her toes. There was always clown college—two birds with one stone.
    She had never wanted to be an actor. Never. She knew too many, Daisy and her friends, and they were boring, myopic, and self-absorbed. Most of them were stupid. Of course her mother assumed she thought she wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t try because she knew she couldn’t compete. And that was fine with Daisy.
    â€œDon’t worry, darling. We can’t all be important. Maybe you’ll marry someone fabulous.”
    And then, to her mother’s smug satisfaction, she married Jonathan.
    Winnie thought she wanted a new man in her life, but then again, maybe not. The thought of sex on the dining room table as wine glasses crashed to the floor or bent over a kitchen chair with her skirt lifted just made her tired. The idea of loving anyone as much as she had loved Jonathan was exhausting. She had been addicted to him. They would spend hours together, eating, playing, cooking,