“You could see the future if you wanted to,” Hannie said. “You’ve just decided to ignore it.”
Lila had just fallen in love with her acting teacher, and the future was practically all she did think about.
“Answer me one question,” Hannie demanded. “Why do you think it is that after all this time you never asked me to do a reading for you?”
“Maybe I don’t believe in readings,” Lila admitted. “Maybe that’s why I never really see anything.”
“You think that’s the reason?” Hannie said. The old woman’s black skirt crackled as she leaned forward and took Lila’s hands in her own. That day the luncheon special in the restaurant was pot roast, and the smell of burnt onions was everywhere. It stuck in your throat and brought tears to your eyes. All afternoon, Lila had been wondering if she’d have time to go home after work and wash her hair before she met Stephen. Stephen not only taught acting—he was the second lead in a play off Broadway, and every Thursday night they met in his small dressing room. Lila had already decided to wear a cotton dress with a lace collar, but now, with Hannie holding her hands, Lila wondered if she should wear something warmer. Suddenly she was freezing, and when Hannie closed Lila’s fingers, so that each hand made a fist, Lila could feel the chill all the way from her fingertips to her heart.
“Let me give you some good advice,” Hannie said. “Be careful—otherwise you may discover that you’ve lost the one you love best.”
But at eighteen the only thing more impossible than being careful is listening to an old woman’s advice. “You can see the future,” Hannie had insisted. “All you have to do is open your eyes.” There was the smell of burnt onions, the rattle of dishes in the kitchen, the rustling of the fortuneteller’s black skirts.
And now whenever Lila dreamed, it was of New York. When she woke, she still heard the steam heat, and as she sat in the dark and watched her husband sleep she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she did have some talent as a fortune-teller after all. There was no doubt in her mind that Rae Perry was the age her own daughter would have been. And she hoped that Hannie had been wrong all those years ago, because if this was what seeing into the future was like, Lila could do very well without that gift.
Jessup had been gone for a week when Rae began to suspect that even more was wrong than she’d thought. A rush of cool air swept the city, but Rae barely noticed the change in the weather—she still felt burning hot. She drank pitchers of water and took her temperature, convinced that she must have some terrible fever. During the day she couldn’t stay awake: she locked the office door and curled up on Freddy’s couch. Then at night, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned until the sheets were as twisted as snakes. She grew afraid of the dark, afraid of dreams and noises in the night, and clouds that covered the moon. No matter where she turned in her apartment she always found herself staring at the telephone, even though she already knew that Jessup wouldn’t be calling her again.
On the day she went to see Lila Grey, Rae started out to go grocery shopping, and had made it as far as the vegetable aisle. But the checkout lines were all too long, and the peaches were bruised, and the milk not yet delivered, and Rae wound up deserting her cart near a display of radishes and scallions. After that it was easy—she didn’t even have to think about it. Instead of turning right and walking home, she turned left, and in no time at all she found herself on Three Sisters Street.
Rae knocked on the front door, but as she stood on the porch the scent of the roses overwhelmed her, and before she knew it she was weak in the knees. By the time Lila opened the door, Rae was doubled over.
“I don’t know what happened,” Rae said as Lila helped her inside. “I just collapsed.”
“And you decided to do it here,” Lila said.
Actually, Lila felt panicky, and the only reason she went into the kitchen for some water was to get Rae on her feet and out of the house as quickly as possible. Lila stood at the sink and gulped down a glass of water herself before rinsing out the glass and filling it for Rae. In the living room, Rae took the water greedily, and she didn’t notice that Lila was staring at her until she was done.
“I came to have my fortune read,” Rae explained.
Lila was wearing blue slacks and a white cotton shirt. Without her turban and her silver bracelets she looked like someone you’d meet on line in the market, and Rae felt somewhat ridiculous asking her to see into the future.
“I work by appointment,” Lila said sternly.
She would have said anything then to get rid of Rae.
“It’s an emergency,” Rae confided. “The man I’m in love with left me.”
“If you consider that an emergency, half the women in Hollywood would be here right now.”
Rae could feel herself sinking. “You won’t believe this,” she said. “I think I’m going to faint.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Lila said. “Not here.”
Lila went back to the kitchen for a bottle of vinegar to hold under Rae’s nose. When some of Rae’s color returned, Lila went to the front door and opened it.
“You’re right—I need air,” Rae said gratefully. “And maybe some more water.”
“Anything else?” Lila snapped, taking the empty glass.
“A cracker?” Rae called after her.
Lila brought out a box of Wheat Thins and a fresh glass of water. She told herself that in less than five minutes Rae would be deposited back on the street.
“This is fabulous,” Rae said as she took out a cracker and bit it in half.
“I don’t think you understand,” Lila said. “I do readings by appointment only. I can’t have anyone just walk in off the street.”
“Oh,” Rae said. She had the other half of her cracker in her mouth, but now she was too self-conscious to chew. The Wheat Thin expanded, swelling her cheek.
If Rae hadn’t looked so pathetic, Lila might not have sat down in the rocking chair and reconsidered.
“When did he leave you?” Lila asked.
“A week ago,” Rae said. “If I knew he was coming back I wouldn’t mind waiting. I really wouldn’t.”
“Twenty-five dollars,” Lila said. “And I don’t take personal checks.”
Rae reached into her purse and counted out two tens and a five.
“I hope you understand that you may not like what I have to say,” Lila warned her.
“I don’t care,” Rae said. “I’m ready for anything. You can tell me everything you know.”
Lila had no intention of doing that. This reading was not for Rae, but for herself. A simple thing like going into the kitchen and filling the teapot was suddenly an act of courage. Lifting the teapot onto the stove’s front burner seemed to take forever; time was moving in that odd way it does when you are terrified of what may happen next, and your senses are slow and dull. As the water began to heat up, Lila looked out into the yard. Richard stood on a stepladder and picked lemons off the tree. A neighbor called across the hedge and Lila could hear the two men discuss fertilizer. But after a while Lila could no longer hear their voices; she couldn’t hear the thud of lemons as they dropped into a wicker basket. Instead, she heard the flare of Hannie’s stiff black skirts as the old woman shrank back and moved against the wall. Lila had brought Stephen to the restaurant just to meet Hannie, but now she could see that she shouldn’t have. Hannie looked right through Stephen, even after he had given her his most winning smile, the one that worked on nearly everyone. When he asked the old woman for a reading, she laughed out loud—but it was a hollow sound that echoed in the kitchen and made the cooks put down the knives they were using to cut up potatoes for soup and stare at each other uneasily.
“Lila talks about you all the time,” Stephen said to Hannie. “Don’t tell me that now you won’t tell my fortune.”
Hannie hadn’t answered. Instead, she gave him one long look, and the heat she threw off nearly burnt a hole right through him.
“I don’t need tea leaves to tell
you his future,” Hannie said to Lila, just as if Stephen weren’t there.
Stephen stood up; he went to the counter and didn’t look over his shoulder. And there Lila was, in the middle. Now, Hannie wouldn’t look at her either, and when Lila reached for the old woman’s hand, Hannie’s fingers seemed to retract, and Lila was left holding on to the table. Lila made her decision then and there; she got up and followed Stephen to the counter—although when he put his arm around her, Lila swore he was doing it for spite, more for Hannie’s benefit than anything else. Of course, Hannie’s rejection only made Stephen even more curious, and from that time on he was after Lila to read his tea leaves. But even then, Lila must have had some hint as to what would happen, because she refused him again and again.
Stephen had grown up in Florida, and when she was with him Lila found herself dreaming about oranges and salt water and endless white beaches where there wasn’t a soul. There was nothing she would not do for him, and when Stephen decided that Hannie was a bad influence—a madwoman who could do nothing but harm an impressionable girl—Lila stopped sitting at the old woman’s table during her breaks. Soon, Lila stopped telling fortunes; she threw away the tins of tea she kept in her mother’s kitchen, she told her aunts and her girlfriends it had just been a game. But as she served customers in the restaurant, she could feel the old woman watching her and she grew clumsy, spilling tumblers of water and bowls of boiling-hot soup. What she missed more than anything were those late hours when business in the restaurant was slow, and she’d sit at Hannie’s table, asking for another story about the village where the fortune-teller had grown up—a town nearly cut off from the rest of the world by forests where nothing but pine and wild lavender grew. Now she dreaded that time of the day, and although she tried to stand up to the disappointment on Hannie’s face, it grew clear that the only solution to the distance between the two women was more distance. Lila quit her job at the restaurant and took another, at a Chock Full o’ Nuts around the corner, where there wasn’t the slightest danger that a waitress might talk to a customer.
Lila had to admit there were problems in her love affair: Stephen was married. But people did divorce, and all his marriage meant to Lila was that they couldn’t go to his apartment. Instead, they met in a dressing room, or in the borrowed apartment of an actress friend who was often on the road. They stole things when they were in the actress’s apartment: tins of sardines, pints of cream, earrings made out of glass. These small thefts bound them together, and when they were in the actress’s bed Lila could almost envision their future together. They would sleep late on Sundays once he was free, a kiss would last forever, every cup of tea they drank would be sweetened with two spoons of sugar and utterly free of tea leaves.
But most of the time they were forced to meet in the dressing room, and whenever they were there it didn’t seem to matter how hard Lila tried not to look—she always found herself staring at the small photograph of Stephen’s wife. Not that he had ever lied to her or led her on. When the run of his play ended, Stephen planned to go to Maine for the summer—his wife’s family had a house there. Stephen called it a cottage, but Lila had seen a photograph. It was a huge white house on the edge of a peninsula which jutted into a bay that froze solid from October to May. In her dreams, Lila was haunted by this house; a cold wind moved through the rooms turning every object to ice. Even the arms of the wooden rocking chairs on the porch were coated with frost. That summer house became Lila’s enemy, and she knew that it was just a matter of time before it claimed Stephen and Lila would be left with even less than she’d had before.
She did everything she could to prolong the run of his play. She used up her salary buying tickets which she gave away to distant cousins and neighbors. Every night she called the box office, and every night more tickets were available. At last, Stephen told her that the play was about to close. A part of Lila believed that if she just had time enough she could persuade Stephen not to leave her for that house in Maine. But the idea of battling that cold, empty house was simply too much, and her weapons too fragile—nothing more than desire and youth. Since she was about to lose him anyway, she decided she wouldn’t ruin their last night together. But of course, it was ruined even before it began: when she got to the dressing room, Stephen had already boiled water for tea and he begged her to tell his fortune. Lila knew enough to be sure that if she refused him this time, they would argue and she would wind up in tears. And then Stephen would softly whisper that he could never stand to see a woman cry, and he would ask her to leave. So she sat across from him at a small wicker table and watched him drink his tea, although just the movement of his hand as he reached for the teacup nearly broke her heart.
“I especially want to know if I’ll be famous,” Stephen said. “Of course, I wouldn’t mind being exceedingly rich.”
He had come around so that he stood behind Lila. He put his hands on her shoulders and bent down. As he spoke, Lila could feel his breath on her neck. And she knew, even before she looked, that in the center of the teacup there would be a four-pointed star.
Lila told him exactly what he wanted to hear.
“I can see that you’ll have everything you ever wanted,” she told him, but then, the moment Stephen looked away, Lila dipped her finger in the teacup and stirred up the leaves. She still did not believe in the symbols Hannie had taught her, but it was so much easier to invent a future when the only distraction was the heat of her lover’s breath. The predictions she offered Stephen were each more delightful than the next. His children would swim like fish and recite the alphabet before their second birthdays; his summers on that cold, glassy bay would be endless; and as for fame, his name would be remembered forever and ever.
To tease her, Stephen tossed a dollar down on the table, and then he pulled her down on the couch. But although she embraced him, Lila couldn’t look at him. Instead, she stared up at a small window that was screened with heavy black mesh. That night the moon was so huge that it broke through the screen and filled the room with light. As they made love, Lila felt her spirit being pulled out of her. The sheet of moonlight was wrapping itself around her. Her bones were as brittle as ice, and the skin beneath her fingernails turned a startling blue. The tighter Stephen held her, the more lost Lila was. She was farther and farther away from the earth, up where the air was so thin it was always winter, and breathing alone hurt your lungs and left tears in your eyes.
When Lila reached up her arms it was the moon she reached for. To embrace this lover she had to leave her body behind. She could see herself on the couch with Stephen—her arms and legs covered with a watery film, her mouth wide open. It seemed a pity for Stephen to think she was there with him. Up in the air she was weightless, and her hair turned into feathers that were so black you couldn’t see them against the night. That was when the light entered her, and as it did Lila could see the future. It unfolded to her cell by cell, second by second. At first she thought she heard the rapid flapping of a bird struggling for flight, but when Lila listened closely she knew it was the sound of another heart beating.
The very next evening, Lila waited outside the restaurant at closing time. She couldn’t bring herself to go in like some customer off the street, and so she decided to follow the old woman home. It was a cool night, and the air was damp. Lila made sure to stay a block behind Hannie; she was frightened of being discovered, then having to beg for a reading on a street corner. They walked for a very long time, Hannie leading the way through a maze of streets, behind Chelsea, near the river. The streets were made of cobblestones—no one had ever bothered to tar them over. There was no traffic here, not even the underground shudder of the subway. No one lived here except for a few old women who carried their belongings in paper bags and pillowcases, and, in the abandoned buildings, feral cats, quick, underfed animals who hunted for pigeons on the fire escapes.
When Lila could no longer tell east from west, Hannie stopped outside the door of an old rowhouse and let herself in. Lila
watched as the lights inside were turned on; in the window sat a huge, tawny cat—no relation to the wild cats on the fire escapes—and, Lila was sure of this, there was the impossibly delicious smell of bread baking. As she stood there, Lila imagined what it would be like to follow Hannie inside: the house would be warm and silent, there would be bread and butter and tea. You could sleep here all night and not even hear the wind. And if others missed you, they’d never find you unless you wanted them to. Not in a million years.
Lila began to think of her own mother, and of her own bedroom, where she had slept every night of her life. She could tell Hannie was waiting for her, but she felt a sudden wave of homesickness. She panicked and began to run. It was dark now, the sky purple at the horizon, and Lila thought she heard an anguished echo from the rowhouse, like a bird caught between wires. She was terrified that she was lost, but she never once stopped running. After a while she began to feel the rumble of buses, and she realized that she was looking up, and that the position of the stars had guided her back to Tenth Avenue.
That night, safe in her own bed, Lila couldn’t sleep. The next evening she returned to the restaurant, but this time when she followed Hannie the fortune-teller disappeared around a corner after they crossed Tenth Avenue. Nothing seemed familiar to Lila, and she had to struggle so hard to get out of the maze of streets that by the time she stumbled across the avenue, she was in tears. She knew then that in turning away that first time, she had lost her chance. She was certain that Hannie had seen her and that she no longer trusted Lila, she didn’t even want Lila to know where she lived. For weeks Lila tried to get up the nerve to go to the restaurant and see Hannie. She was obsessed with having her fortune read; she was desperate to know what her future would bring, and each day she grew more troubled, and ten times as lonely as she had been the day before. At night she dreamed of Stephen, asleep in a hammock on the porch of that house in Maine. She dreamed of birds and gold wedding rings, and she no longer felt safe in her own bedroom. She stopped taking classes at the theater. The new teacher was nothing compared to Stephen, and besides, Lila already knew, she hadn’t any real talent after all. In July she went back to the restaurant, and although she didn’t actually go inside, she felt a little braver. By the end of the month Lila was ready to face Hannie, to walk past the row of waitresses and the cooks, and ask to have her tea leaves read. Lila never once guessed that Hannie hadn’t seen her and purposely avoided her in the alleys and cobblestone streets, just as she never knew that when the old woman squinted as she read tea leaves it wasn’t in order to see the future more clearly, but because she was blind in one eye. Every day, when business was slow, Hannie sat at the rear table, waiting for Lila. But by the time Lila had the courage to come back she hadn’t menstruated in two months, and she no longer needed to have her fortune told.
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