Selma Blair - Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up

I n the fall of 2002, I saw a tarot reader in Los Angeles. I had just been cast in a movie that was about to film in Prague for six months. I was thirty years old, anxious and searching. My mind was a void, and I wanted someone to fill it. I wanted to hear the story of who I would become, what signs I should seek along the way. I wanted an outline, if not an epiphany. After all, thats why we open our checkbooks to fortune-tellers. Tell us a tale. Make it wild. Make it entertaining. But make it our own.

The reader was named T, and she looked a bit like a Berkeley professor, very thin, very intellectual. Large eyes framed by black bangs falling straight across her forehead. She kept a hankie tucked in one palm. Her breath smelled of Altoids. A skinny black cat curled up at her feet. As we spoke, I learned that T used to be a lawyer, a profession she left to fully utilize her gifts. In all ways, she seemed like a good captain to have on this metaphysical journey, the right person to relay the drama of my life.

T was not my first intuitive. For much of my life, Id sought out such stories from mystics and chakra healers, mediums and numerologists, past-life therapists and astrologers. My fascination goes way back to when I was a child growing up in Southfield, Michigan. At a birthday party in second grade, my friend Melissa Sterns glamorous mother dressed up as a fortune-teller, a sparkling vision in a headscarf and layers of necklaces and bracelets. Melissas mom was beautiful and lived in a giant house, which felt like evidence enough that she could see into the future, or at the very least that her words must have some merit. When it was my turn, she stared into a crystal ball, traced the lines on both my palms, closed her eyes, held my little hands, and told me that when I grew up, I was going to be a beautiful actress.

There will be so many boys throughout your life that there will be a line, Mrs. Stern said as she swept the air with her finger to indicate a long queue of men waiting to swoop me off my feet. Seven-year-old me couldnt imagine why on earth she thought this. I had heavy eyebrows and stringy hair and did not believe myself to be an especially attractive child. And though I was prone to dramatic outbursts, the idea of performing in front of an audience terrified me. But I wanted so desperately to believe it. So convinced was I by Mrs. Sterns future-predicting abilities that I internalized every word. I couldnt wait to tell my mother, who would delight in the news.

As soon as my mom drove up in her navy blue 1979 Corvette, the Evita soundtrack blaring, I climbed into the back. Our cute neighbor Todd, a little older than I was, settled into the white leather bucket seat that was tinged yellow from cigarette smoke. I wanted them both to know what was predicted for me, so I spilled it all. Mrs. Stern read my fortune and she said Im going to be a beautiful actress, I bragged. I wanted my mother to be impressed. I wanted Todd to notice me. Even at age seven I knew beauty was a rare prize.

Yeah, right, Todd scoffed.

Thats ridiculous, my mother said as she pulled out of the Sterns long driveway. Once we were safely out of view, she took a drag off her Vantage cigarette. She exhaled against the dashboard, filling the car with curls of smoke. Why would she tell you that? Besides. If you do grow up to be beautifulemphasis on the ifand tallemphasis on the andyoull be a model. Or youll marry an oilman and spend your days on his yacht. That settled it. My mothers word was gospel. End of discussion. I looked out the window.

As it happened, Mrs. Sterns prediction for me came true, at least in part: I was an actress. And by this point, Id gone through my fair share of men. Even an oilman, whom I eventually found lacking. But I was still searching, still unsatisfied, still restless and stuck, still desperate to please, still prone to periods of overwhelming despair. Still binge drinking when I couldnt make sense of what to do next or needed to escape my body. I wanted clues, signs, good fortune. I wanted someone to tell me how the story unfolded. I wanted someone to spell out what came next.

Now, many years and many seers later, here I was again. T studied the cards for a long time and then stacked them up in a neat deck. She tented her fingers, her unpolished nails touching, and said with the kind of conviction that one expects from a tarot reader: Your life is going to change in Prague. The cat at her feet looked up at me as if in agreement.

I smiled. There it was: my life was going to change in Prague. She went on to say that I would meet a little man who would become important to me and that the true meaning of my life would be revealed. This, too, sounded fine. In fact, this whole visit was turning out to be much better than the last psychic Id seen, who informed me that in my past life Id been held captive by my own father and locked in a cement tomb in the woods, where I was burned alive, unknown by anyone.