Pam Coronado

       After working through much of my anger, I made the big decision to call psychic Pam Coronado again. It had been a couple of years since we last spoke. Everything she had told me at that time was accurate. And her mention of the book Fifty Shades of Grey in her prediction from Tom about his life story had proved to be painfully true.

 Since the revelation about my marriage had hurt me so deeply, I needed to consult a proven professional psychic like Pam, who could definitively confirm or refute what I had seen and perhaps provide some details. Though it might seem vulgar to want details, if I don't know more about with whom, how often, when, and, most important, why Tom was playing around, I’d never figure out who Tom really was.

 In preparation for talking to Pam, I had several women acquaintances of Tom's who were now on my suspicious list as possible affairs. The minute I told Pam the story and she started looking at Tom's life, she physically described one of the women perfectly. And when I said this woman's name, she told me she'd gotten that name, but in a very funny way. She herself had just recently gone through a divorce, and in one of her dreams, that name had come into her mind very clearly and strongly as someone who was illicitly involved with someone's husband, and she presumed it was her own husband. She searched all her acquaintance, but there was absolutely no one she knew with that name. Well, mystery solved. It was my husband who had been cheating with that alleged person whose name I won't mention.

 Of course, once I knew this woman's name, a different picture of many incidents in our life started to emerge. This was the woman connected with Tom's job at The Guiding Light right from his first day of work there, so the trouble did go way back to before we were even married.

 Now that we had a name, Pam looked more deeply into Tom's life. She said she was going to look at Tom's life, not speak to him, because she found that the dead sometimes don't tell the truth. Well, he hadn’t told the truth when he was alive, either.

 Looking at his life, what she saw was that Tom had wanted to be free of me because he felt the only reason he wasn’t as successful as he should be was that being married had prevented him from “schmoozing” with powerful women in the industry who could further his career. She said he absolutely refused to accept that he didn't have enough talent or good looks to be successful; no, he blamed me, because being married had kept him from being free to pursue and hang out with these powerful women and achieve success. And she said that he blamed me, even though she could see very clearly that he knew our marriage had been his own decision.

She said that the woman whose name she’d gotten had been angry that Tom didn’t leave me for her and had taken revenge on him by keeping him from getting a good job where others had wanted him. I wonder if he knew that his schmoozing had actually backfired and cost him a good job? Well, he knows it now, doesn’t he.

 But I was stunned and couldn't quite make sense of what Pam had told me. Could that really be true of the Tom I knew? He was chasing powerful women to achieve success? But it certainly was consistent with the woman whose name we got. And I knew he’d done all his cheating during working hours, so that fit the pattern, too.

 However, even though Pam confirmed my worst fears about the truth of my dreams that Tom was a constant and angry cheater, still the things she said seemed very puzzling.

 It was difficult to believe that Tom could actually thought his only route to success was sexual flattery of powerful women. This made no sense. I’d been by his side through all of his successes and knew for certain that powerful women played hardly any role at all in those successes. Why would Tom think he needed to schmooze powerful women to be successful?

 Also, the way Pam said he refused to accept that he just wasn’t good looking or talented enough to be successful didn’t make sense either. Of course, he refused to accept that. It wasn’t true. He’d more than proved he was good-looking and talented enough to be successful. Nobody could possibly doubt that.

You don’t play a romantic leading man on a national soap opera for seven years and help raise the show’s ratings to the top three, without being a very good looking and talented actor. He was on TV daily in front of an audience of millions delivering sexy, romantic, and dramatic scenes that kept people tuning in for seven years, day after day. No powerful woman in the world can help you do that. And in appearances at malls and publicity events, I’d seen the way his woman fans were thrilled by handsome, charming Tom. Not good-looking enough? Not talented enough? Gimme a break!

  And later, he’d starred in a nighttime sitcom with some of the best people in the industry. That was certainly proof he was loaded with talent. We had TV veteran Tom Patchett’s praise for his great comedy gifts. Getting laughs in a sitcom is an art. It’s all about timing, character, and delivering lines with wit, a gift that he was well-known for when he went on to play a sardonic judge on Law and Order SVU. Once again, he achieved those successes all by himself. Nobody can help you when the camera is rolling, and you’re out there all alone on stage; and he knew that.

 He was right; he was good-looking enough and talented enough to be a big success. So, why wasn’t he? Over the years of his career, I’d certainly asked myself that question often enough.

 When he was on the set, it sounds like he was constantly “schmoozing” some powerful woman, rather than networking with people who were impressed by his good looks and formidable acting talents. Maybe this is a better explanation of why he wasn’t a bigger success.

 We spent ten years in Hollywood. Tom worked all the time in episodic TV. It mystified that he never made any new friends or contacts that led anywhere. No one ever wanted to get to know him better, as a person. Nobody ever wanted to meet his wife or have dinner with us. Now I know why. Instead of exercising his engaging personality, he spent his time on the set schmoozing. I’m sure he’d acquired quite an unsavory reputation.

His behavior was so unlike the usually very savvy Tom, that I couldn’t understand it. What Pam must have been seeing was Tom’s hidden persona. The Tom I knew and lived with for thirty-five years could never have been so naïve as to believe the only reason he wasn’t a star was that he wasn’t free to zoom the producer babes. He wasn’t a fool. However, on some emotional level, he bought into this ridiculous narrative. My instincts told me this was just a rationalization to justify a deeper, more complex psychological problem.

Pam had the facts right, but not the answer to the question of why for thirty-five years he’d run after women who had only a passing interest in him and never did a thing for his career. It sounds like the definition of stupid, but Tom was not stupid. His actions weren’t just irrational, they were self-destructive. It was like he had a angry, crazy person living in his head.

 I needed to go deeper into Tom’s mind, but how could I do that since he was dead? I needed to understand the real story.