Turn of Mind (33 page)

Really?
The girl leans forward. She turns slightly and it's her turn to hit the young man.
See? I told you!
She turns back to you.
Like what?

For a long time scientists have been interested in exploring whether phenotypic markers can diagnose genetic disorders.

Can you say that in English?

Certainly. Doctors have always been interested in whether they can use the lines in your hands and the length of your fingers and even your fingerprints as a way of diagnosing illness.

Like what kind of illnesses?

Mostly genetic. For example, there turns out to be a strong correlation between a single palmar crease and aberrant fingerprints and Cri Du Chat syndrome.

Cri Du Chat? Cry of the cat?
the young man asks.

Yes, because babies born with this defect mew like cats. They are usually severely mentally impaired. Then there's Jacobsen Syndrome. Also diagnosable by the hands.Very similar to Down.

Are there any happy diagnoses you can make with the palm? Annette likes telling
people they have long lives and will come into riches some day.

Unfortunately, most of the deviations from the normal in hand characteristics point to problems, often severe ones. But one researcher claims to have found a strong correlation between different ratios of finger lengths and exceptional musical ability. You pause. Of course, that's just statistically speaking. Look. You hold out your right hand. See how my index finger is just as long as my middle finger? That's statistically abnormal. Yet I don't have any genetic defect that I know of.

Let me see your hand,
the girl says, somewhat abruptly. You hesitate, then let her take it. She leans over your palm, frowning.

How's my life line? you ask.

Oh, no one believes that one anymore. Good thing, too. According to your life
line, you had a very short life. You're dead, technically. But otherwise, you are
intellectual rather than materialistic. You have the power to manipulate, but you
choose not to exercise it. And your life has not been especially fortunate.

You're using past tense, you say. Is that because I'm technically dead?

I'm sorry?

You didn't say, your life will not
be
especially fortunate, but that it has
not
been.

The girl blushes.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that your life is over. You
don't
act
old.

You are puzzled. Why should I? you ask.

You're right, I'm stereotyping. Blame it on the beer.

But how old do you think I am? you ask.

Oh, I'm terrible at this. Don't ask me.

I would guess we're about the same age. Or that I'm slightly younger.

The girl smiles.
I deserved that. You know, I took that Internet test, the one
that is supposed to tell you your real age, and I scored sixteen. All my friends
scored older—thirty, thirty-two. Jim here is an old soul. His real age is thirty-fi
ve, according to the test. In actual years, he's only twenty-four, of course.

I'm eighteen, you say.

Good for you! Forever young!

Not forever, you say. Although it certainly seems that way sometimes.

If I were really thirty-five, I'd want to slit my wrists,
says the young man.

The girl rolls her eyes.
Here he goes again,
she says.

Why on earth? you ask.

I mean, if I were thirty-five and were in the position I am now. Stupid job. Not
getting on with anything. Not having written my novel. Things like that.

Are you working on a novel? you ask. It seems like this is information that a lot of people divulge in bars, on examining tables.

No. That's the point. Here I am, still in my twenties, so I have an excuse. But
at thirty-five you don't have any more. Excuses, I mean.

You'd be surprised, you say. Mark will have plenty of excuses when he's that age. Just wait and see.

Who is Mark?

You are confused. Who
is
he?

Just someone I know, you say. I think he might be my nephew.

You think?
The girl starts to laugh and then looks at your face and stops.

An image rises up in front of you. A distraught face. Slight shoulders shaking. Someone in deep distress. Her face is familiar.

Fiona, you say slowly. Fiona is someone else I know, someone I admire very much, who seems to have gotten herself into some trouble. Mark, on the other hand. You pause to think. Mark has always been in trouble.

The girl looks confused.
Fiona?

Fiona is someone who always knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, you say slowly. But sometimes that is not the best thing. No.

I find I don't really like those kind of people very much
, the girl says
.

No. You would like Fiona.

The girl nods politely. She has lost interest in talking about people she doesn't know. She whispers something to the young man next to her and he smiles in return. He has turned his attention back to the television. It's now the national news, all bad. Catastrophes natural and manmade. Money lost by millions, upticks in flooding, natural disasters, murders committed and unsolved.

You have finished the food on your plate, and both glasses, the tall and the short one, are empty. The heavyset man is at the other end of the counter, talking to another man in a suit.

Do you know where the bathroom is? you ask. The girl points.
There.
Near the door where you came in.

You get off the stool, stumbling slightly. You feel your way across the crowded room, using the backs of chairs and sometimes people's shoulders, as guides. You are unsteady and feel intense pressure on your bladder.

The door marked toilet is locked, so you wait, shifting from one foot to the other like a small child. You hear the toilet flush, water being run in the sink, and the click of the door as it finally opens. A woman emerges.

You stumble past her and barely make it to the toilet to relieve yourself. Even so, there is a wet patch on your pant leg. You take a paper towel and rinse it out, making it more prominent than before. At least it's not as bad as blood. You think of all the times you locked yourself in public bathrooms like this, scrubbing at pants to rid them of bloodstains from tampon overflows. For a doctor you've had remarkably little insight into your own body. You secreted tampons everywhere: in your purse, in the glove compartment of the car, in your desk drawer, and yet you were continually caught short. Your body was always betraying you.

It got worse as you got older. There were days in your forties and early fifties when you hesitated to schedule surgeries because of brief, intense episodes of hemorrhaging that could happen any time. Your body defeated you in ways it had never in the past. You wore double tampons and pads underneath that. You'd go into the surgery wearing adult diapers, waddling slightly when you walked. But once the gushing started, there was no stopping it. You learned to live with the humiliation. Blood in the OR. You kept extra clothes in the office, in the car. Two years of that. You thought you might mourn the loss of fertility, but the trauma of perimenopause made you welcome it.

You look in the mirror as you wash your hands. What you see there startles you. The very short crinkly white hair. Your face covered with red blotches, liver spots on your forehead, and the slack skin over the jawbone. Too much sun.

You never did listen to the dermatologists, felt their cautions were old lady-ish. Now you
are
an old lady. Your life should be discussed in the past tense. You are suddenly tired. It's time to go home. You exit the bathroom only to stop, disoriented.

Where are you? A crowded restaurant. Overwhelming smells of heavy garlicky sauces. The noise makes your head ache. Bodies press up against you, propel you back into the open door of the bathroom. As if from far away, you catch sight of a door marked exit. You start to make your way toward it.

Voices are shouting behind you.
Hey! Lady!
A man holding menus nods, opens the door for you.
Stop her!
The man sings a cheery
Good
evening!
Evening? you ask, and then you are outside, a warm breeze caressing your face.

When did day turn to night? The heat into deliciousness? The streetlights are on, all the shops and restaurants are lit and welcoming, and bright lights shine amid the leaves of the trees, which are in full bloom. People everywhere, holding hands, linking arms, the warmth of human bodies in harmony. It is a party. It is a fairyland. You plunge deep into the festive night.

You have not lived until you have seen fish striving for the moon. By the dozens they burst out of the water, their silvery bodies flashing as they rise. The perfect shiny arc as they peak. The downward trajectory is lyrical: perfect dives back into the blue gray depths.

The air is balmy and tropical, but the lake water frigid. How it numbs your feet and ankles. Still, there are others who would not be dissuaded. You see heads just above the water, arms reaching up and slicing through the water, a long line of heads attached to shoulders and arms. Bursts of water from the feet, those tiny motors.

The park is nearly as bright as day—the automatic streetlights haven't switched on. Celebratory howls emanate from the zoo. All the benches are occupied, the pavements crowded. And dogs everywhere, running, rolling, chasing balls and Frisbees, frolicking in the shallow waves. The fish continue to jump and splash.

Ma'am?
A young man is running up behind you. He is holding something in his hand.

You forgot your shoes!
He is out of breath. He stops and holds out a pair of new-looking white sneakers. He has the look of someone who expects gratitude, so you try to infuse your voice with warmth.

Why, thank you, you say. He is still extending the shoes, so you take them, but the minute he turns his back, you drop them on the grass. Who needs shoes on a night like this? Encumbrances. They just separate your flesh from this goodly sphere, the earth.

To your right you see a young couple vacate a bench. You sit down, not because you're tired but because you want to watch the parade.

And what a parade! Musicians: drummers and horn players and trombonists. You have to strain to hear them because the crickets are so loud. Then come the entertainers, the tumblers and acrobats and men on unicycles and women on stilts, all dressed in the most outlandish costumes.

Some are naked. You have to laugh at the men's fully extended penises, aroused by the night air and the proximity of so much beauty. You are almost aroused yourself.

You think of your young man. He is late. He is always late. You are always waiting. Your father says that a woman who waits must contain all and lack nothing. You think he was quoting, but you were never able to discover what. He is full of surprises, your father. Barely an eighth-grade education, yet he would correct your college English papers.

But your young man, your beautiful young man. He wears green to match his eyes. He is not stupid, but he is not smart enough to hide his vanity. You discovered foundation makeup in his locker, yet not for a moment did you think he was cheating. Not that he wasn't capable of that. But he was so full of guile as to be guileless.

But you? Hook you up to a polygraph and you would flunk every question. Did you love him? Yes. No. You would have been tagged a liar for either answer. Sometimes. Maybe. Only when hooked to a machine calibrated to detect ambivalence would you pass.

After the entertainers, the animals. But such animals! Not any that God created. Fabulous creatures with the heads of lions with large child faces mounted on them. A herd of cats, goose-stepping in the moonlight.

You are reminded of the wonderful and terrible books of your childhood. There was one where a boy was given the power to read into the hearts and souls of creatures by feeling the shape of their hands. Thus the hands of kings and courtiers often felt like the appendages of cloven beasts, and the hands of honest workers were soft like those of the highest royalty.

The idea that you couldn't tell the nature of the creatures around you, human or otherwise, without such a gift was terrifying. In bed you would hold your own hand to determine what you were. Human or beast?

Across the path from your bench is a low stone wall separating the grass of the park from the sand of a narrow beach. There is writing on it. A sacred script. Thick strokes in black paint outlined in red. Punctuated by a face that grins. It is sending a message. But what is it?

The parade is over. People are leaving for other festivities. The dogs have vanished, the children lifted onto shoulders and taken to bed. Silence descends. You close your eyes to revel in it.