Fortune-Telling

When we walk through the sliding doors, my mother enters her kingdom. Always to the produce first, in an effort to start collecting the essentials: garlic, in cloves; lemons, by bagfuls. “Did you know that walnuts are good for the heart?” she asks me, tossing two bulk-sized sacks into the cart. I wonder what my mother thinks is wrong this time—if she felt a flutter or a missing beat. She gathers grapefruits, Brussels sprouts, bananas. She swears by turmeric, handles the pieces of fresh ginger like they are something holy, and I suppose, to her, they are.

As we enter the vitamin aisle, my mother really hits her stride. Picking up bottle after bottle of supplements, she reads the labels with precision, pronouncing the words in slow, heavy mouthfuls. Riboflavin, thiamin, pantothenic acid. She rummages through her purse and pulls out her phone, where she scrolls and scrolls, sure that if she just looks hard enough she will find the cure for whatever disease she is certain she has this week. Transfixed on the bright blue screen, her cart starts to roll away. Without lifting her eyes, she reaches out a hand and grabs it.

________

Marnie and I watch movies in the basement, stuff that gives us nightmares. Killers with masks, with claws, with giant smiles on their faces. The kind of stuff my mother would not let us watch if only she took a moment to realize what it is we do down here. But Marnie and I like these movies. We like that in the end someone always gets away. We make bets on who this person will be.

A small girl runs through the woods, and a man with sharp teeth in a blood-speckled jumpsuit chases her. Marnie and I huddle together under a blanket and hold each other’s hands. The girl looks younger than us by a few years, but not so young that we cannot remember being that age. She has been separated from the rest of her family, and when she trips on a root, falls into the dirt, and stains her white tights, Marnie and I know that it is the end for her. We know this because we are only sixteen minutes into the movie and girls are always the first to go.

________

“Ever play MASH?”

Marnie and I shake our heads and follow my mother into her bedroom, where endless bottles of pills cover every surface, some containers still sealed, others open and spilling onto her dresser.

She takes out two pieces of paper and tells us to make long lists of the people we want to marry, the places we want to live, and the number of children we want to have. “M is for mansion,” she tells us. “S is for shack.”

In the yellow light of her bedroom, we fill out futures. Once we’ve finished, my mother asks us what time it is. Her digital clock reads 3:12 p.m., and we watch as my mother writes these numbers down on Marnie’s sheet of paper. “Three plus one plus two is six,” she narrates. Then, with the pen in her hand, she begins. Every sixth word Marnie has written on her sheet gets crossed out. My mother counts and scratches, counts and scratches. Line by line, she strikes the name of a boy Marnie loves, a city she likely knows very little about. When my mother’s finished she puts down her pen and lifts the page as if she’s going to be reading a formal announcement. Taking a scarf from the edge of her bed and wrapping it around her neck and head, she clears her throat, “Mrs. Marnie Peterson will live in a house in Honolulu with four children.”

Marnie looks relieved. She’s always wanted to live in Hawaii ever since three years ago when she took a family vacation and came back saying that the water was like being in a bathtub. I’ve never been, but the image of soapy, gray water that Marnie conjures keeps me from ever wanting to go.

My mother turns...