Still Life with Tornado(51)

I put all the clothing back on the return rack.

“I didn’t like any of those,” I say to Mom. “I think I’m better off at a thrift shop or something. More my style.”

Mom says, “Bras?”

“I really hate them.”

Forty-year-old Sarah is over in the accessory section looking at wallets. She holds up a sign that says, TELL MOM. I notice that she’s not wearing a bra.

“Let’s skip them today, then,” Mom says.

? ? ?

We eat lunch at a crepe place across from the mall and it’s good. Mom doesn’t have a lot to say. I don’t have a lot to say. We just eat and look out the window at the people going by. On the two blocks between the crepe place and Walnut, we pass three homeless people and Mom gives them each a dollar.

She says, “You really have Bruce’s phone number?”

“Yes.”

“Have you called him?”

I don’t answer this. I just keep walking. Then I say, “Do you remember in Mexico when I asked you if you were going to get a divorce?”

“Yeah.”

“I know Bruce got in trouble for telling me, but why was it such a big deal? People get divorced all the time.”

“I don’t know. Your father can’t handle it, I guess.”

“Dad can’t handle dusting the TV screen.”

“True.”

“I just don’t understand why he had to hit Bruce because Bruce told me.”

“He didn’t hit him!”

I stop on the sidewalk and she takes a step to notice and then steps back to where I am. “Don’t lie for him, Mom. I remember. Ten-year-old Sarah remembers. She’s still scared of Dad. Didn’t you see that at dinner last night?” We’re in front of a palm reader’s door. Mom looks at the image on the glass—a woman with a mystical-looking scarf over her head, blowing stars out of her hand. The rest of the glass is covered by stars, a graphic of an upturned hand, three tarot cards, and the words PSYCHIC READINGS BY TIFFANY.

“Your father is a complicated man. He goes inside himself.” She says this while still staring at the door.

“So?”

“So, he had a rough childhood. He does what he can.”

He does what he can, my ass. That’s what I want to say. But I don’t say anything. A minute ago she denied Dad even hit Bruce. She’s still staring at the door to the palm reader’s place.

“Want to go in?” I ask.

We open the door. The first thing we see is an overturned trash can. This is not a good sign. A man comes into the hallway from a first-floor apartment with a trash bag and starts to put the spilled trash into the bag. He asks, “You here to see Tiffany?”

We nod.

He yells something foreign up the steep staircase in front of us and says, “Go ahead up. She’s there somewhere.”

Tiffany appears and she looks as if she’s been napping. There are little children running around. I want to ask Tiffany where her family is from, but she doesn’t seem to want small talk. She’s wearing a long blue skirt with tiny bells at the bottom. When she walks, they jingle. When we get into her palm reading room, there are three chairs. This is the waiting area. She looks at us and frowns. “Who’s first?”

Mom says, “How much?”

“Depends on what you want.”

“A palm reading?” Mom says.

“Twenty-five.”

Tiffany looks at me when she answers Mom. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t not smile. She could still be napping in her mind, but it doesn’t look it.

“I’ll go first,” I say.

“Yes,” Tiffany says. “That would be best.”

Her accent is extraordinary, her voice strong, and she’s scary, but in a comforting sort of way. She could be a drill sergeant. A drill sergeant of your future. She opens a door to a tiny room where there’s a table covered in thin, brightly colored scarves and on it is a deck of tarot cards. She sits down in her chair and I keep standing.

It’s now I realize I don’t want to know my future. I don’t want to know anything. I just saw forty-year-old Sarah at the mall. What else do I need to know?

“You need to know your present,” Tiffany says. Shit. “Your name?”

“Sarah.”

She says, “Give me your hand, Sarah.”

I give her my left hand and she looks at it for about a second. Then she looks at my face. Then she grabs my hand and pulls it closer to her. She looks at my face—right through it—and she says, all in one breath, “You’re healthy. You’ll live a long life. No illnesses or anything like that. You’re hiding things from other people and from yourself. This isn’t good for you. You want to live an honest life. You have little faith in people. You have little faith in yourself. Something happened to you.”

I nod. I wonder why she isn’t looking at my hand. How can a palm reader read your palm if she doesn’t look at your hand?

I think about how many times I’ve drawn my left hand without looking at it. Two hundred times at least. I think back to the magician in Mexico. I wonder if this is all a scam.

“You are unhappy and lost. You have no home,” she says.

“I have a home,” I say.