“When he brought me back he stayed all night,” said Ann-Campbell.
“It’s his English Leather aftershave,” said Dorcas.
Justine laughed.
The church parking lot was packed with cars, flashing the afternoon sunlight off their chrome, and ladies were swarming in the front yard and spilling down the hill as far as the cemetery. “I want to get a hot dog,” Ann-Campbell said, “and you owe me a balloon from that time at the shopping center, and I need a caramel apple. If they have cotton candy, can I have some? If they’re selling lemon sticks—”
“Ann-Campbell, you promised me you would act nice now if I let you stay out of school today.”
“In school we do this math,” Ann-Campbell told Justine.
“Oh yes,” said Justine, who had disliked math.
“If five mothers are fighting over ten blond wigs, how many does each of them get? They want me to say two, but how can I be sure? Maybe one wig’s ugly and nobody takes it. Maybe one mother’s stronger than the rest and she gets five. Or one’s got a head that’s too big for the—”
“Ann-Campbell Britt, you are sending a shooting sharp pain right down between my shoulder blades,” her mother told her.
If Justine had had to choose what child would most likely be Duncan’s in all the world, she would have said Ann-Campbell. Never Meg.
The bazaar was in the church basement, down a flight of linoleum steps. It took Justine’s eyes a minute to get used to the dimness. Then she saw rows of booths covered with crêpe paper, and more ladies bustling around in pantsuits and varnished hairdos. Justine hated pantsuits. Whenever she saw one she had an urge to tell the owner some scandalous fortune, loudly enough to be heard everywhere: “The father of your next-to-last baby has run off with a cigar-smoking redhead.” But she kept her bright smile and waited, clutching her bag, until the woman in charge noticed she was there. Mrs. Edge’s pantsuit was pale aqua, Justine’s least favorite color. Oh, but she would have to get over this mood she was in. She widened her smile another inch. “I’m Justine Peck,” she said. “I promised to come tell fortunes.”
“Mrs. Peck? Why, I thought you would be darker. We’ve heard such amazing things about you, dear. Now somewhere, let me see now . . . ”
Mrs. Edge led the way toward a card table. It was covered with a white cloth to which stars and crescent moons had been pinned. Justine followed and behind her came Dorcas, wobbling on her spike heels and humming. There was no telling where Ann-Campbell had got to.
“Now dear, this is your cashbox. I’ve laid a few dollar bills in for change. Is there anything else you’ll be wanting? I do hope you won’t be chilly. Perhaps you should have brought a wrap.”
“Oh no, I’ll be fine,” said Justine, who was always burning up.
“Why! Here’s Mrs. Linthicum, our pastor’s wife. Mrs. Peck here is just a wizard telling fortunes, Mrs. L.”
“Oh, then you can start on me,” Mrs. Linthicum said. She was wearing a dress, and a little brown mushroom of a hat. She was a tall wispy woman with freckles seeping through her pink face powder. When she sat down in the folding chair she arranged herself so graciously, smoothing her skirt beneath her and then patting her bosom as if to make certain it was there, that Justine felt an unexplainable rush of sorrow. She reached over without planning to and touched Mrs. Linthicum’s freckled hand. “Oh, is it the left palm you read?” asked Mrs. Linthicum.
“No, no, I don’t read palms,” said Justine, withdrawing her hand.
But she could easily have read that one, with its lengthwise groove and the worn wedding ring no wider than a thread.
She took out her cards and unwrapped them. “Why, how fascinating,” said Mrs. Linthicum.
“Is there anything in particular you want to know?” Justine asked.
“Oh, nothing I can think of.”
Dorcas leaned closer, giving off waves of Tabu, while Justine laid the cards down very, very gently. Madame Olita used to snap them down, but that was before they had started falling apart. When these went, where would she get more? She gazed into space, considering.
“I’m not afraid to hear, if it’s bad,” said Mrs. Linthicum.
Justine pulled her eyes back to the cards. “Oh, it’s not bad, not at all,” she said. “You’re going to do just fine.”
“I am?”
“You’ll continue to have money worries, but not serious ones. You shouldn’t be so concerned about your children. They will turn out all right. No trips in sight. No illness. You have true friends and a loving husband.”
“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Linthicum.
“All in all it’s a very good life,” Justine said. She cleared her throat and steadied her voice. “Anybody would be happy to have a formation like this one.”
“Why, thank you very much,” said Mrs. Linthicum. Then when the silence had stretched on a while she gave a little laugh and rose to pay her fee, pressing Justine’s palm briefly with her cool, wilted fingers. When she left, Justine gazed after her for so long that Dorcas waggled a hand in front of her face and said, “You in there?”
Then others came, woman after woman, giggling a little in front of their friends. “No tall dark strangers? No ocean trips?” Several young girls filed through, a little boy in a baseball suit, a man in platform heels, an old lady. Justine tried to pin her mind to what she was doing. This was how she attracted future clients, after all. “You will have a minor car accident,” she told one girl, relieved to see something concrete.
“Even if I drive slower?”
“No, maybe not.”
“Then what’s the point of all this?”
“I don’t know.”
“To warn you to start driving slower, Miss!” Dorcas cried. “Honestly, Justine! Where are you today?”
Oh, beautiful Dorcas, with her watery silk dress showing dimpled knees and her jangling bracelets and creamy throat! Her fortune altered from week to week. Which gave Justine a greater likelihood of error, but at least she enjoyed doing it.
During a lull they captured Ann-Campbell, who was winning too many prizes anyway tossing nickels into ashtrays, and Justine read her cards. Ann-Campbell leaned over her with a cone of cotton candy, smelling of burnt sugar and money. “You’ll have to travel your whole life to use up all the travel cards I’m seeing,” Justine told her.
“I know that.”
Then Dorcas, who had learned palmistry in high school, examined Ann-Campbell’s little square hand — a mass of warts and deep, soiled lines. “I find travel too,” she said, “but I don’t know, Ann-Campbell gets carsick. Let me see yours, Justine.”
Justine turned her palm up. Secretly she had become as addicted to the future as Alonzo Divich, now that life moved so quickly.
“Oh, talk about travel!” said Dorcas.
“What do you see?”
“Lots of trips. Oh, well, there’s much too much to read here. You have an indecisive nature, there are lots of . . . but I’m not too sure what this means. And then a frequent change in surroundings and tendency to—”
“But is it a good palm?”
“I’m telling you, Justine! Of course it is, it’s just full of things.”
“No, I mean—”
Dorcas raised her head.
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter,” Justine told her finally.
She never did say what she had meant. She sat silent, frowning at the cracked square of silk in her lap, while beside her Ann-Campbell started firmly, grimly patting her arm with the hand that wasn’t holding the cotton candy.