The Palmist

March 29, 2010
Dear Feed Store Zealots,
Stranger things have happened in my life than inspiration, but none so strange nor strong as the latest psychic events that have sent me spinning.
About 2 weeks ago I stopped in at the local bar, a divey place made more or less interesting by the lower life forms found lounging on stools in front of empty beer bottles, and hundreds of signed dollars mounted on the walls and ceiling like calling cards of the damned. It’s not my favorite place, but it is pretty much the only place within safe driving range. Is it me, or have dives lost their romantic edge as I age, feeling like the only person in the place with even half a brain, and at least a quarter of a decent body? I really wanted to play a couple of quick games, alone if need be, as very few of the patrons will speak to me let alone challenge me to 8 Ball. What is it about a lone female of a certain age, 50, that is so uncomfortable or threatening? Only some of the men will even look at me, and the women for the most part feign ignorance of my presence entirely.
That is what made the gypsy happening so strange.
I had just walked in, and was approaching a stool to claim as temporary home turf, removing coat and scarf, and trying to catch the incredibly lazy and somewhat hostile bartender’s eye to order a drink, when a woman behind me shouted out, “Hey, what’s your name?”
I turned and saw a nice looking mid-forties brunette about 3 beers gone sitting with another woman of similar ilk. She looked reasonably friendly. I didn’t know quite how to respond, and was assessing her sobriety and recklessness, deciding whether she was being friendly or potentially offensive. She hollered again over the juke, “I’ve never seen you here before, where are you from?”
Now I was really stuck. Eye contact can be deadly under certain circumstances. What is my name? Where am I from? Am I Maggie? Celeste? Am I willing to deal with this one, or try to casually ignore without offending? Where am I from? Here? There? I’ve had eight address changes in as many months, living out of my car and surfing couches since October of 2009. I’ve been in Marysville, Hawaii, Middletown, and now here, running from a bizarre cult, from ego-destruction, from unemployment, from a bad relationship, from a hostile daughter-in-law, running from myself most of all. Who am I? Where am I from? How do I answer that?
“I’m a gypsy,” I stammered, the first cohesive thought worth uttering since her demand.
She jumped up and came right up to me, right in my face. I brought my coat and scarf up in front of me as if fending off a charging bull, thinking this was going from strange to dangerous.
She thrust her hands under my nose and demanded, “Read my palms, then, Gypsy.”
Oh shit, I thought, then, Fine. I set my things down on the nearest stool, hooked the bartender’s eye with a caustic glance, and told her, “I need a beer and my glasses. Then I’ll read your palms.”
She skipped over to her stool, grinning at her friend, who promptly stalked out to the patio for a smoke. I kept wondering why in the hell did I do that? For once, just once, I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Crazies aren’t what I was up for at that moment. I was feeling down and frustrated and trapped in this hell hole place, and wondering why I’d even gone in there in that frame of mind. It was compulsive, the bar scene/ pool scene has become compulsive, a habit I can’t break. It gives me some sense of purpose, playing pool, and an excuse, to be honest, to frequent drinking establishments alone. I’m not here to pick up guys, I say, just to play pool. Great line, and not altogether dishonest. I’m here like everyone else, to get buzzed and avoid loneliness through these haphazard and meaningless interactions with strangers. A pseudolife, with ‘single serving’ friends, only perhaps more than ‘single’, more like ‘double’, but insignificant and insubstantial nonetheless.
My beer arrived, I dug through my purse for my glasses and the woman hovered expectantly. I admit to feeling a bit of power in the situation, power over my non-existence here, because this woman wanted from something from me, and I was in a position to provide it. Or was I? It was dawning on me that I don’t really know how to read palms. I mean, we used to dabble in various forms of the occult when we were teenagers, and truth be told, I was fairly well-versed in the foundations. Life line, heart line, head line, whorls in the fingertips, creases in the side on the hand, the look and shape of the hand itself, and the wrapping of fate around the wrist in a strange chain-like band. In fact, I’d recently had my palms read by a near-blind man in Hilo just before I left. He was unerringly correct in every single statement. Scary in his accuracy, but his final call, that I would soon be doing the very thing that would make me happiest in my life, seemed like a strange throwaway in an otherwise unsettling, and dispassionate reading.
I was thinking all these things as I took my first sip, and turned to the woman, standing eagerly at my elbow, palms upturned, waiting my mystical intervention. What right do I have to do this, I thought? Well, it’s just a bar, and this is just some bullshit encounter with a nearly drunk woman, and when I’m done I can get over to the table and rack.
So, I took her hands into mine and we both stared into her tiny palms. They were soft, gentle hands, but worn looking, and they were small, almost child-sized. I looked up at her eyes for a moment, her look so full of trust and anticipation, it made me feel like a real asshole. What the fuck am I doing?
And then came an awful feeling, a sinking feeling, like when you know what you’re about to do is going to go badly, but you’re somehow committed and you can’t stop. I looked away, I looked back, I stared into her hands. I saw the lifelines, in both hands, saw them clearly stopping right in the middle, no connection to the wrist lines, no crossing of the heart lines. Just a dead stop. Hers had not been an easy life, in fact, it had been hard, and lacking in satisfaction or fulfillment of any dreams. It was a sad life. And it was about to end abruptly.
I knew it in my belly before it entered my conscious mind. I knew the words were going to come out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop them, not by my will or hers. It had come to this. I had to tell her. I thought for a moment to lie. I can’t lie. I’m a terrible liar. It shows all over my face. I had to tell her, but I didn’t know how. So I did what I do when that happens. I took the filter off my mouth, what filter there is, and let the words fall from my lips.
“You don’t have much time. You need to get your things in order. Prepare your family…. I’m truly sorry.”
She just stared at me, then looked down into her hands. I watched her face, my mind spinning. What have I done, what right do I have…
“You’re right. You’re right. Oh, Jesus. How could you tell? How did you know?”
I shuddered. I literally shuddered. She just stared at me, then we both looked into her palms again.
“I don’t know what or how, but it’s very very soon, and you need to get your things in order and prepare your family. Where are your children?”
She was crying now. I was crying. The bar was silent except for the juke which seemed somehow muted.
“They just told me I have a terminal brain tumor. They gave me 6 months. I don’t know what to do…” She cried quietly, tiny tears slipping down her cheeks. I held her hands in mine, no need to look anymore. Just holding them, standing at the bar, people looking away, staring from the sides of their eyes, silently. Shit. Shit. Shit, was all I could think. What have I done?
She slumped onto the stool next to me. I edged over, carefully letting her hands fall back to her. What have I done? Was all I could think. This poor woman. I should have lied. I couldn’t lie. How the hell had I known? What the hell was I thinking. What can I do?
And the only thing I understood at that moment, was that I had done what I’d been asked, without any agenda or need, just out of a sense of fatalism and inexplicable obligation. A momentary confusion when asked my name, where I was from, had led to a flippant response, self-defined gypsy. A brief time in my life when I decided to learn about palmistry more than 35 years ago, the compulsion to walk into this dive for a game, the off-chance of meeting this woman who was so obviously in need of something ineffable, momentary relief from a pain that would devour her. I had only done what I’d been asked, and I had done it according to some inner knowledge, some innate ability to read the signs creased into a palm.
We talked about her children, about her life at the moment, but the tumor did not come up again. Her friend returned, looked at us briefly, then sat to drink by herself. The other patrons stayed clear, the bartender would not look at me again, not for days would he look at me, and as it turned out, he would never speak to me again and soon quit the place for good. That is another story, not for today.
I suppose I could have just said that she was finally going to have what she wanted, like the palmist told me in Hawaii on that black night in Hilo. But those weren’t the words that slipped from my tongue that night. The truth was told. How I knew it, I don’t know, but she did, and knew to ask the stranger who wandered in for a drink.

There is much more to this life than can be dreamed of in your philosophy. Hamlet.
I will say this: I left immediately, never drank my beer, never played a game of pool. I went home, smoked a little, and stared at the blank tv. I could have given the same advice to anyone, for in truth, none of us has much time left, and we should all get our things in order and prepare our families. We will all die, that is the natural conclusion to these lives of ours. How we live is the question.

Much love in the mysteries,

Maggie