It's 1969: Do you know where your mother is???

April 13, 2010


Dear Feed Store Zealots,

Today is my son Danno’s 23rd birthday. Yea, I know, huh. Matt is almost 29, with 2 kids, and a mortgage. I suppose having a mortgage is an accomplishment, or at least it used to be. The ‘old’ American Dream and all. Danno and his girl, Cara, are working for their apartment complex up in Ashland. He’s maintenance, she’s office staff. So grown up! Scary. No, I don’t feel old at all. (Sarcasm)

I don’t have a mortgage. I’m still renting. I think I may always be renting. I think that may be ok. I can always paint the walls orange if I want to, and they can just paint over it and take it out of my deposit. A fountain in the yard under a beamed pool house is another matter. I remember the pool house in LA. It was right out of a magazine. Mom was like that, always making things like they were right out of a magazine.

When I turned 15 my parents threw a big party for me and my friends. We were living in a great old house in The Valley. San Fernando, that is. Yep, that’s me: an original Valley Girl and Mall Rat. The party was outside on a warm September night. Mom floated candles in little cups on the surface of the black-bottom pool, and we ate hot dogs and potato salad in the fern-draped pool house, under the 16th century carved lion’s head on the wall. It was really gorgeous, except I never did like potato salad. I don’t know what she was thinking: maybe she was dreaming of an all-American life she had seen in the movies as a kid. We never ate potato salad normally. My friends thought it was totally cool, though. They devoured the potato salad.

The candles looked like giant stars as they whirled on the currents of the pool driven by the automatic filtration system, humming in the background. There was a long table covered with food and sodas. Our favorite rock and roll on the turntable brought outside for the occasion. Boys and girls giggling under the huge sycamore, dangerously dark brick decking that changed elevations twice along the length of the pool. Paper cups and streamers, lights hung from the branches, my parents trying to stay out of the way and chaperone at the same time. I was a goddess for an evening. By Monday I was back to being my same old nerdy self: too smart for my britches, Mom used to say. I never quite figured that out. What does smart have to do with britches?

At 10:30 the boys had to go home, and we girls set sleeping bags out on the floor of the pool house. That’s another thing: the bags were those flimsy cotton jobs sold just for slumber parties. No padding. I can’t sleep on anything harder than a mattress. The night was spent tossing, once we finally did go to bed.

We had been planning on sneaking out for days before the party. What self-respecting 15 year olds wouldn’t have? The boys were staying at one of their houses nearby and we had arranged to slip out the driveway gate around midnight and rendezvous with them down the street. Problem was, the gate had been padlocked by my knowing parents from the other side. I suppose they were inside watching while we gathered at the gate and came up with plan B. How stealth can 6 teenage girls be? Especially after all that soda, and potato salad.

We decided to climb over the back yard wall, 6’ tall and made of concrete bricks. No footholds whatsoever. We managed, giving each other legs up, only to find ourselves in the neighbor’s yard, which, as it turned out, was also locked. Somewhere around 1:30 we gave up and got back to the pool house, hugely disappointed, slightly relieved. All but Cheryl Peterson. She was furious. She was the wild one in the bunch, and my mom did not like me hanging out with her at all. Mom was usually right, but that didn’t make me any happier back then than it does now.

Cheryl and I once hitched from the Valley to the Strip, yea, Sunset Strip, at midnight one summer eve. This would have been in ’69. Can you imagine? What were we thinking? We cruised awhile, avoiding cat calls and whistles. At least I was. Again, Cheryl was disappointed. At that point, I was definitely naïve and not too into ‘getting laid’. Cheryl? Well, she was always up for anything.

Cheryl and I once snuck away from a church group sleep out at San Onofre beach and snuck out to party with a Hell’s Angel bunch camping nearby. She’d met one of the guys at the beach and he had invited us. You betcha. Bowls of pills, plates of powder, dishes filled with doobies. Lots of Jack Daniels. I don’t remember how the hell we got back to the church group. I do remember being woken up just before dawn, having just gotten to sleep, as the entire camp group searched the grounds for my brother Rick, a year younger, who had disappeared sometime in the night. We found him the next morning in his sleeping bag, sound asleep on a cliff ledge about a hundred feet above the ocean. We tried to convince them that he had always been a sleep walker, but no one believed us. I think they thought he was possessed or something. We went on one other trip with the church group, but that turned out to be an utter fiasco.

That time we took a bus out to Park City, Utah for a ski trip. The first day, I slipped off the lift onto the icy run and broke my tailbone. The next morning I struggled to wake from a fever induced nightmare. I had relapsed with the Hong Kong flu and stayed in bed for the next 3 days with 105’ fever living on aspirin. They refused to send me home. I had to bus back, sleeping in the luggage rack because I was too weak to sit up. They were mad at my brother and I, I guess, because we tried to smuggle my boyfriend and his buddy into the motel. He wasn’t in the church group, but had driven his antique black volkswagon bug all the way from California with the intention of staying secretly with my brother and I.

Naturally the church kids were appalled at this plan, and poor Erik and Eddie spent 3 miserable nights in an unheated laundry room about frozen to death. They would come back early from skiing, sneak into my empty room, shower, steal snacks, and dash out before the group got back from their skiing. I can’t believe Eric even speaks to me anymore, after all I put him through.

Mom didn’t let us go on anymore church trips, which was fine, because I couldn’t stand the insipid songs and prayers anyway. I’m not Christian, either, so it really was lame to begin with. We thought the trips would be fun. I guess our idea of ‘trips’ was a bit different from theirs. No kidding.

At any rate, I am happy to be mortgage-free. A pool house would be fun, maybe not as much as when I was a teen, but then what is? I wonder what stories my sons, now adults, have from their teen age years? Matt shared one or two, but not until he was safely relocated 5,000 miles away. Danno? He’s within driving distance. He went through the DARE program, so he was sober until he turned 18. He’s been making up time. We never let them join any church groups, though. Just to be safe. I mean, what would Jesus do… at 15? What would you?

Have fun,

Magpie

The Four Levels of Sadness: Imagination's Junkie

I admit to being a thrift store fanatic. That's not the sad part. The saddest part, and there are more than four when you stop to think, is what and who is to be found there.

The First Level of Sadness
... is when you pull out that little blouse or dress only to shrivel up your nose in disdain. Oh my god, you think, someone actually wore this. Not only that, they bought it new and then wore it. Maybe even with pride at how fabulous it looked, or so they thought.

The Second Level of Sadness
... is when pay perfectly good money for some godawful item to wear to the annual Grossman Easter Party, knowing full well that it is perfectly awful, and that some poor schmuck wore it in good faith before you. It is hideous, and that is precisely the point: it must be hideous to pass muster, or else you would have passed it  by for something judiciously whimsical that actually looks like a fashion statement you, and only you could have pulled off. Or so you'd like to think.

The Third Level of Sadness
... is when, in a moment of true insanity, you buy that eloquent fashion statement, realizing full well that you bought it once before and finally after a single wearing, or perhaps having allowed it to hang relentlessly in your closet, gave it back to the thrift store and were somehow obliged to buy it back. Truly sad. And, of course, you promise yourself to never again, for the second time, buy back a thrift store find you really should not have bought the first time.

The Fourth, and Saddest Level of Sadness
... is the day or so after Christmas when you join the throngs of after-Christmas shoppers who were sorely disappointed by the somehow meaningless gifts from family and so, end up, alone again naturally, combing the racks for that singular item that will assuage that terrible sinking feeling that you are so unloved and fashion-challenged that you are here, once again, searching for the ineffable gift to yourself that will enable you to face the world.

This last, and saddest level, strikes me as the quintessential American disease of "Not Enough". When you have shopped for family and friends, online and up close and personal, for weeks, days, hours before the stores closed on Christmas Eve, yet you return not to 'return', but to buy anew. For you, glorious and loving mother-wife-friend spent more than you should have or wanted to in an attempt to prove your consideration for the loved ones in your life, but ended up feeling somehow empty instead. The emptiness consumes the consummate consumer, forcing your hand to your purse to your plastic personhood to prove your worthiness and power. Yes You, Great American Consumer, must buy to be.

And that is truly sad.

Women shop to experience not so much shopping, but the imagined event of wearing that gorgeous outfit found wanting a warm body to give it meaning. We shop and as we do we imagine ourselves entering the room, looking fabulous, earning the praise and jealousy of the other women in the room, imagining their envious looks and pleasantries in the form of, "Oh, my, where did you get that??" You see yourself not so much in the mirror, as in the mind's eye, glamorous and funky and tasteful and thrifty, appearing as if in a fashion mag, looking years younger (or older) and infinitely enviable.
It is in this imagining that we exist in multiple realities and our existence is thereby magnified, amplified: we live, in our minds, in an alternate reality.

That is why we shop. We don't really need more stuff. We hunger for more experiences. We are imagination's junkies.

Is this sad? Of course not. If it were, television and media in general would not have their appeal. Why do men watch golf? Is it really for the scintillating scrutiny of the hushed voice overs describing in tepid detail the positioning of the club, the flight of the ball, the thud and roll on the green? No. Men, too, like we women, crave the satisfaction of their imaginary realities. Football fans, churning on bar stools like blood-crazed sharks are in fact living the life of Riley, feeling the sink of cleats into muddy fields, the clank of armor-against-armor, the thrill of the victory dance. We are an imaginative people, look you to our cars and cities, whose craving for experience has been mediated to the great benefit of the producer-species, manufacturers.
Why else sell beer with the use of buxom babes bouncing on beaches, bottles in hand?
But who am I to criticize our national pastime? I shop with relish, trained to it from birth. If not, my mind would lie fallow waiting for immeasurable happiness in the form of a sunny day, stormy night, or love's first kiss.

I am not sad. I am happy. Truly. I imagine I am, therefore, I might be.

[Painting:"Retail Therapy" by Des Brophy http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.desbrophy.com]

The Sorcerer's Game

The Dragon rose from the sea, shedding salt water like pearls from a broken necklace across a ballroom floor. She roared with delight, raising steam in great clouds as she went. Freedom, freedom on the wind, scattered sunlight off waves and rippling muscles loosed from the pressure of the deep. How long had she been hidden there? And where was the Sorcerer now?

The sylvan green coastline in the distance marred by high-rise resorts insulted her senses. Had it been so long? The humans had spread even here on this remote island chain. Their smog and noise assaulted her senses. She cast her awareness abroad, seeking the chartreuse glare of the Sorcerer’s energy field.

Ah, there he was. She banked hard to the northeast, rising high above the heat waves of the spewing volcano, calling a greeting to the great goddess Pele. A burst of crimson lava and plumes of acrid sulphur answered. The dragon laughed at the thought of people, once settled like cats before the fire, running in terror.

The Sorcerer’s field shifted from its resting greens to active cerulean blue: he had seen her and was rising to meet her. But where? She cast about with her extraordinary sense of space across the surface of the planet, seeking his exact location. Suddenly she had him: he was aloft! Fool! The skies were her domain. Now, finally, she would put an end to this.

Beneath her, cetaceans rose for air, and dove again, grey backs like seashells in the undulating waves. Their minds sent messages of fear and anger. The humans were interfering with their birthing grounds, pouring their filth into the seas at an ever increasing rate. She sought for their minds’ images and saw huge underwater ships spewing sound waves, disrupting communication throughout the underwater worlds. Her rage rose in her throat, her tail lashing in fury. How dare they, puny worthless beings on two legs! What had the Gods been thinking when they created these vermin? Well, she would tend to that later. For now, she sent her strength.

Suddenly, a twinge of recognition, a memory of a tin pot full of earth and pungent herbs. He was here! But where? There was no land, no ship to carry him this far to sea. And then it came again. She veered left, and dove, but it was too late. The bolt dug into her flank like spurs, sending a cascade of scales steaming into the water below.

The Sorcerer stepped out from behind the clouds, huge in spirit, though small in form. His feathers shone rainbow in the sunlight. He had taken the form of a phoenix! How had he gained such power?

He struck again, with less intensity, and the blow skittered away, harmless. What game is this, she thought, then banked suddenly coming up underneath him, melting the cloud with her fiery breath. His arms raised, he gestured to the sun as if to say, I’ll meet you there, then vanished into the light.

Her wingbeats carried her after him, following his gleaming trail. She laughed out loud to think of how she would embalm him in flame when she caught him, ending this challenge for once and for all.

At once, she realized her mistake. He had been following her, hidden again behind the clouds! Too late, too late, she banked.

His feet came to land on her back, and he reached forward, grasping the tips of her ears like reins.

“Tag! You’re it,” he laughed into the wind, then vanished.

She shrieked with fury, and careened after him into the sky. "Sorcerers!"

The Blue Dragon

Her favorite was the brilliant blue ceramic dragon from China. It sat on the dresser like a sentinel, overseeing the goings on in her room. It had come from an antique store in old town Auburn in the Sierra foothills and cost about $2.

The minute she saw it, the little girl had begun counting her quarters from her allowance to be sure she had enough. Then she cheerfully approached her mother, tugging at her to come look at this new treasure.

Her mother, distracted by a bright copper pillbox hat with sequined netting, was charmed by her daughter’s excitement. For years, the little girl had ignored the frilly girl-things in the stores, the lightly used ‘tween stars’ uniforms, in favor of these Asian artifacts.
She had once begged for a cloth Geisha doll upon a stand that was ridiculously overpriced at $12. Her mother, feeling horrible, on a budget, denied her. Later out of guilt, she had gone back, bought the doll, and placed it prominently on the dresser.
Now, dusting, the mother gently straightened the Geisha’s kimono and adjusted the parasol to a more demure attitude. An old tin pot, filled with flowers made from feathers, sat near a framed photo of her own mother cradling kittens in front of the fireplace.
From what thrift store, on what spending spree, out of what need, had that strange container been paid for with silver from the jar by the door? Next to it was a beautiful, huge conch shell decorated with a carving of a Victorian lady. An old memory rose as a lump in her throat.
They were in Aberdeen Harbor, Hong Kong. It was raining hard off and on, and between downpours, the air was muggy and hot enough to make you feel faint, moving from air conditioned cars and hotels to the overburdened streets. Arab women in long white robes weighed down with jeweled gold clustered under the protection of huge dark-skinned body guards. It was 1973. Her mother, descended from the black Irish, had taught her to walk through the crowds holding a lit cigarette in front of her to shield her from the crowds.
They were walking along gang planks strung between floating junks, while Chinese vendors screamed and gestured their way through hard barters on board. Very few guilo’s dared enter this strange city, but her mother was ferocious in her intent to collect the rarest of seashells for her collection.
Following closely behind her mother, and feeling the omnipotent presence of their 6’4” bodyguard behind her, the girl, 16, noticed an odd-looking dog floating belly-up in the water alongside the boat.
“You know, they don’t bother to teach their daughters to swim…” her mother said over her shoulder, descending a rickety ladder into the belly of a merchant’s ship. The smell of diesel, salt water, rotting flesh and bitter tobacco made the girl faint with nausea.
When they returned, hours later, to the hotel, she had tried to nap but her parents’ voices, arguing forever about money spent that was not yet earned, forced her from her room and down to the lobby. The bartender was happy to bring the girl her usual: Manhattan rocks.

The mother was startled by her daughter’s voice.
“Mom? Are you crying?”
“No, just cleaning up, honey.” Then she hugged her daughter to her like a life jacket, stood, and suggested, “Want to hit the thrift store? I need a hat for Easter.”
Her daughter shrugged. “Sure, mom, if you want.” She moved the blue dragon slightly left of the Geisha and nodded with approval. “Let’s go.”

The Fly Button

Dear Feedstore Zealots,

I couldn't help myself. Lucy followed me into the shower and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote her story. Once again, I have met the NPR challenge using the same 4 words (see if you can figure out what they are... duh.), referencing the same general setting, and limiting myself to exactly 600 words. This one is a bit more whimsical, but then Lucy is only 9, after all.... Did I mention today is April Fool's Day?



Lucy reached under the ruffled bedspread and pulled out her sewing kit. Inside was a large ziplock bag full of buttons. Lucy loved buttons. She had been collecting them since she was four. Her favorites were always shiny. Today she was planning on sewing her newest, a golden metallic fly with red rhinestone eyes, onto the blue sweater Poppa had brought home yesterday. Soon they were going to the corner diner for pancakes. Poppa always took her to the diner on Saturday mornings for a plate of giant pancakes and a mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream. She loved the whipped cream. The waitress always piled it high above the rim of the white mug. Lucy would watch it melt down into the brown liquid, not touching it with her spoon, just licking a little off the top as she watched. Poppa read the weekly, grunting over the columns like an angry giraffe. He made her laugh. She didn’t understand why he got so mad at the paper. It was just a stupid newspaper with a lot of stuff about politics and government. She liked the ads at the end, though. The ones with all the pretty girls telling you to call them to chat. Poppa said the ads were inappropriate, but that was just a trick of his. He liked to play tricks like that, using words like ‘inappropriate’ or ‘mature’. Sometimes he tricked her into eating things she didn’t like by using words like ‘organic’ or ‘healthy’. He only let her eat the pancakes and hot chocolate so he could grunt over the newspaper.
The blue sweater was really pretty. Poppa said he found it at the little store near his business, Planting the Seeds of Change. She thought the name was pretty funny because there weren’t any plants at all in his office, except the one plastic palm that stood by the front windows to make people think about plants. He called it ‘marketing’. She thought marketing was what you did when you went get groceries.
She pulled a spool of thread from the kit to match the blue of the sweater and drew it through a slender needle. She bent over her work and carefully attached the fly button above the embroidery. She had really been excited when she first saw the sweater. It was decorated all over with leaves and flowers from different plants, just like an Easter bouquet. She thought immediately of the fly button, thinking it would be a good trick to make it look like it was flying just above the plants. It made her laugh. She couldn’t wait.
Her Poppa didn’t even notice. She had come out of her room and twirled around and thrust her little chest out to show off her work, but he had just grunted, as usual, and headed for the door. Lucy sighed. He was so grumpy lately. On the way to the diner he said almost nothing except to watch for the mud in front of Mrs. Simpton’s lawn. She always watered at night, even when it rained, and sometimes mud flooded the sidewalk. Sometimes Lucy would stop to rescue the worms, but today Poppa was in a hurry.
They slid into their usual booth at the diner. Lucy loved the shiny red upholstery that matched the table tops. She thought it looked like a Mickey Mouse diner. That made her laugh. Poppa looked up from his paper and smiled.
“I like the sweater,” he said. “Nice button.”
Lucy grinned. The fly glittered above the plants. It had been a good trick after all.

NPR's 600 Word Challenge: Keep the Change

Dear Feed Store Zealots,


In what is a slight change of venues, I have written the following story and submitted it to NPR's 600 Word Short Story contest. Why not? After all, how many self-indulgent personal examinations can you stand? Unless, of course they are universal in nature.
The contest requires that your story be no more than 600 words, and include the following 4 specifically:
Plant
Fly
Trick
Button
The story must also at least in some way reference a photo of an open newspaper on a red cafe table.
I love a challenge like this. There's a great little book for creative types who have hit some block or other called, The Blank Canvas. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in creating anything. It is also very useful for teachers. The most important concept it related is this:
a blank canvas, page, etc., is inherently terrifying for many people. But, it you simply draw a circle or square creating a boundary, the psyche is released from the fear of infinite possibilities and can work again. It makes perfect sense, and I've used the technique in many ways since.
So, this 600 Word challenge is probably the easiest writing assignment ever, at least for me. I could write dozens of them, each completely different in content and style. The addition of the requirement for the 4 words and the photo makes it fun and ultimately even easier. I think mine ended up at 598 words. I wrote it in one fell swoop, watching the word count at the bottom of the page, and learning only halfway through what was going to happen to my characters.
The funny thing about writing is that you often are not sure where you're headed. Or what is going to happen to your people. That often stops us from writing. But it shouldn't. That's what makes it 'creative' vs. report writing.
Last thing: it took about 90 minutes, one cup of coffee and one cigarette. I wish I could do this all day long!



"Keep the Change"

His eyes fell on the girl’s jeans, wrapped tightly around her legs like a toddler begging for sweets, as she delivered his eggs. He noticed the blur of chalk marks along her thighs. Yesterday there had been blue stains on the fingers of her left hand. He wondered about this, as he wondered about all things relating to her. He never asked, though, for anything but eggs over easy, no bacon, and tomatoes instead of toast. Her smile drifted as she set the plate before him and asked if he needed a warm up.
On Thursday he had brought her a plant, Thai basil, from the farmer’s market. She had been surprised, (or embarrassed?) at the gesture. Since then he had kept his distance, going so far as to sit in the other girl’s station. But today, he had been emboldened by a slug of single malt.
The whites of the eggs surrounding their bright yellow centers glistened on his plate, and by some trick of the light, winked at him knowingly. He stabbed them, vigorously stirring the runny yolks into the hash browns, and smiled at their destruction. “Button your lips,” he muttered. His mother always said that, “Button your lips, buster,” when he was being smart.
“What? Did you say something,” she asked. He hadn’t realized she was nearby. How had that happened? He always knew when she was close: he sensed her, or more likely, smelled her, as she moved, tending to the needs of her patrons like a saint.
“Uh, well, actually, no. I mean, I was talking to myself. Not that I talk to myself, but rather the eggs. I mean, I was talking to the eggs, they weren’t talking to me…” He halted.
She was looking at him, closely. He was crazy, he was sure that’s what she was thinking.
“I’m not crazy,” he murmured.
“No,” she laughed, “you’re not crazy. Aren’t you a teacher, at the college?”
She was talking to him, asking him a personal question. As if she weren’t an angel, a sacred being sent to salvage his soul. As if her floating essence wasn’t the air of life to which he desperately clung every morning.
She waited, for a moment, for a response. He looked at her dark eyes, her spun sugar hair – why did women do that to their hair, turn it all kinds of colors, none of them natural, not even close? She was waiting.
“Uh, yes, a teacher, that’s right. How did you…”
“Oh, I don’t know, you just look like the type, you know, professorial and all.”
He glanced down at himself, and thought, “’Professorial’”? Where did she get that word? A waitress, using words like, “professorial”. How would she know what a professor looked like? What, was she a student? She could be, most of the waitresses in town were students trying to get by. He’d never waited tables, but he knew that’s how it worked. He had gone to college on scholarships, never needed aid. Private university back East.
“There’s chalk on your jeans. Yesterday you had blue fingers.”
She brushed at her jeans, looked at her left hand. “Oh, I play pool, a lot.” She laughed. “Tournaments sometimes. More money than here.”
He stared at her. A fly landed between them. He reached out and smashed it with the flat of his hand on the red linoleum table. She looked startled. Then she asked, “What do you teach?”
He stood abruptly, silently drew a twenty from his wallet and tossed it over the remains of the fly.
“Psychology.”
He left without another word.

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