The Fortune Teller
Two years ago I went to a fortune teller with a friend on a weekend night after we’d been in a bar. People do that all the time, right? For fun.
The first thing she did was look at my former friend’s palm and tell him he was going to have to choose between two men. My former friend sputtered and fumed. “But I’m not gay,” he lisped.
Yes, yes he was gay. He just couldn’t admit it. That was why he hung out with me all the time – so that he could circle the Montrose over and over in the hopes that I’d force him into one of its many fine gay bars. And so that, while we were doing that, people at work would assume we were dating.
So the fortune teller gained instant credibility with me – not as a psychic, but as a judge of character, you see. That was why I’d wanted to go in the first place. To see what I look like to a con artist. Do I look like someone who needs to hear about love? Do I look like someone who needs to hear about money?
The fortune teller amended her first statement to keep my former friend from walking out. She said oops, no, that he’d have to choose between a man and a woman. Then she told him that she saw him becoming a successful writer or actor. He liked that. She said he’d meet his soulmate in two years. Awesome. Super freaking awesome.
Then the fortune teller took my hand. She studied it. She announced that I’d had an unhappy childhood. She said that I’d been through a lot of bad things. Okay, I thought, but that’s probably easy enough to see in my face. Tell me something I don’t know.
She traced the lines of my palm, starting from its corner. I would be successful at whatever it was that I was planning on doing. “You mean my book?” I said. “You mean I’m gonna get my book published?” She looked at my face and nodded only vaguely. I realized that I was giving the details away.
She frowned at my palm. She kept saying, “You’ve been through so much… so much. But, despite all you’ve been through, you will nevertheless succeed.” C’mon, I thought. Come on! Tell me something exciting!
“You will make a lot of money in your lifetime,” she said. I tingled with the pleasure that money always brings me. “But you won’t keep it. Money seems to slip through your fingers. Something always comes up so that you have to spend it – you can’t keep it.”
No! Dammit! That was wrong. Just because that was what always happened, that didn’t mean it was destined to happen. Was it?
She moved her finger along my line as if counting freckles I don’t have. “You will have… three boys… and one girl.”
I laughed. This proved she was a complete fraud.
“I already have three boys,” I said.
“Well, then you only have the girl to go, then,” she said, smiling modestly at her own skill.
What the…? Goddammit! When Rory was born a boy, I said I’d only have another baby if I got rich. I’d give birth to a girl, I decided, or else I’d adopt a Chinese girl baby.
But how the hell could that happen if money was going to slip through my fingers all the time? Jesus. I’d get pregnant by accident and stay just well enough off to take care of my kids. Dammit! What the hell was I going to be thinking? Shit! But… who would be the father? She was probably going to tell me that next.
The fortune teller folded my fingers and gently pushed my palm back to me. Then, she noticed the bewilderment and disappointment clouding my face. Quickly, she opened my palm, touched a line at random and recited, “Oh, and you’ll meet your soulmate in two years, and you’ll be very happy.” The end. I got my hand back. That was all.
It’s been almost two years since then. I have no soulmate. I have no money. I’m paranoid about getting pregnant, all of a sudden.
It is not a good idea for people like me to go see fortune tellers. All it did was feed into superstitions and insecurities I already had.
The other day I was at a grocery store near the fortune teller’s house. You don’t know how very close I came to bursting through her door and demanding a better fortune. Or, at least, a re-read. Maybe things have changed. You can change your future, can’t you? Can’t a hard-working woman improve her fate?
Last night I told my ex-boyfriend Tad that I see him finding a woman to love and marry. She would be very nice, I imagined. Too nice to hate, but also too nice for me to be friends with to the extent that he’s envisioning, with his optimistically functional mind.
Then I told Tad that I see myself with no one. I see myself dying alone at 50, in a car crash or because of the early onset of cancer or some other disease. My books won’t have made enough money for me to quit working in insurance, I imagine. But, when I die, my kids will be able to sell the Duran Duran spiral notebooks I filled with angst when I was fourteen. That will keep them in nice tennis shoes. At least I can see that.
Tad said, “You won’t die alone. You have lots of friends!” That’s not what I meant and he knew it. (Be quiet, Tad. Don’t you know a dramatic monologue when you hear one?)
He says I shouldn’t go back to the fortune teller, that it’s just a waste of money. I know that I’ll go some day, though. I’ll just walk in as if I’ve never seen her before, not telling her who I am. I have to know one of two things for certain: that she’s a goddamned fraud, or that my fate is sealed.
