Wildwood
At first he sees nothing different about the mechanical fortune teller. She has always been there, on a narrow pier off the boardwalk. Her booth looks the same as ever, the red and black paint corroded long ago by the ocean air, the glass front scratched and cloudy from decades of wind-blown sand. Anthony puts in his coins. Behind her somewhere, ancient gears creak into action. The old mannequin shudders and starts up the way she always does.
He rests his face against the cool glass. He has spent all day at the beach and all evening on the boardwalk. By the time he ran into Doreen, a couple of hours ago, he’d stopped feeling gritty and uncomfortable from the saltiness on his skin, the tightness on his shoulders and face where he’d been sunburned.
The fortune teller’s wrinkled hands are weighed down with rings: topaz, yellow gold, rubies, the same flaming colors in her silk headscarf. She leans toward the deck of cards spread out before her. Normally she would extend her right arm and sweep it across the table in a slow mechanical motion. But now he sees that her hands are trembling. Of course, this night of all nights. She hunches her shoulders and then straightens them, as if she feels stiff or wants to adjust her shawl. Instead of pointing to a card, her hand creeps up to finger the beads of her amber necklace.
Anthony feels no surprise when she lifts her heavy-lidded dark eyes to him. He’s curious himself about his appearance, whether he seems different, whether his friends will know just from looking at him. “What took you so long, you loser?” But the only place he can see his reflection is a funhouse mirror, so he can’t be sure.
He had gone to buy french fries near the old arcade when he saw Doreen.
“I can’t believe it,” she’d said. “Lori’s kid brother. You’re practically a grown-up.”
They had both smiled at that. He was a head taller than her. “How old are you now?”
“Just turned seventeen.”
“By the time I was eighteen I was married.”
They sat under the boardwalk. Doreen opened her purse, a bag that looked like it was made from pieces of woven rug. She pulled out a beer bottle.
“Your hair,” he said. “Never seen it this short.”
“I got a buzz cut last year. It’s still growing out.”
He tried to picture her making that decision, maybe cutting off her long hair herself. He wanted to ask about it but he didn’t want to be rude. And she seemed nervous, her knee was grazing his as she sat cross-legged in the sand, and he could feel her leg twitching, hear the sound her rings made tapping against the beer bottle. He felt if he said something annoying she would bolt up and disappear.
“When I met your sister,” she said, “you were two years old. I carried you around in my arms.”
“I think I remember that.”
“No you don’t.”
He couldn’t stop looking at her. She wore a light blue tank top and faded jeans that he knew would be soft as a handkerchief if he touched them.
Anthony offered her the fries. She handed him the bottle and when he drank from it he could taste salt on the rim. Sweat from her lips, he thought, though he was sweating too and everything tastes salty near the ocean. There’d been a time when this petite person loomed over him. He felt he understood how it was possible, how she could be large even now and yet small at the same time.
“I heard you were getting a divorce,” he said.
“It’s final tonight.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m celebrating. Look, the moon’s rising. Pass me the beer.”
The fortune teller is ageless, Anthony thinks, despite her long white hair and the fine lines on her face. She’d looked shriveled and cruel when she was a mannequin. Then, all she’d cared about was the money people put in the slot. She pointed to cards, handed out fates, never tried to soften the news of impending disaster, give a smile of congratulations at good fortune.
He has misjudged her. The customers are unfeeling and hard. For years he himself had put in his coins, learned his future—You are fortune’s son, Be careful what you wish for—and walked away to the Ferris wheel, the ring toss, not bothering to meet her eye or thank her. He is the first person to ever truly look at the fortune teller and see a wise, beautiful woman.
The ocean starts drowning out the boardwalk sounds, the carnival music, laughter, colliding bumper cars. He no longer smells the funnel cakes and pepper steak subs mixing in the breeze with whiffs of engine grease and overheated gears. The ocean exhales its salt fragrance over him so that even if he hadn’t been able to see or hear it he would smell it and know it’s there, waiting for him.
The old woman smiles.
He had let Doreen do most of the talking. It was easier that way.
“Married at eighteen, divorced at twenty-three,” she said. “I’m old and experienced. Not at sex, though. Not really. I’m sure there’s lots we never did figure out.”
He remembered when he was starting first grade and Doreen and his sister’s other friends were the cool girls in the middle school, aloof and grown-up. Doreen was the only one who didn’t always ignore him. She liked his dog, a stray he’d found on the beach, and once she let him show her the new Game Boy he’d gotten for his birthday. Mostly she stayed in his sister’s room talking about girl things, and he could hear their giggling whenever he passed the door.
Now here she was talking about sex. He would have been embarrassed if she’d been looking directly at him.
“Some things I know,” she said. “I know what it’s like to love someone and then get so sick of him I would’ve got violent if I hadn’t just turned and walked out the door. Do you know what that’s like?”
“No.”
“I hope you never find out.”
He’d always thought her eyes were blue but when he looked at them closely now they seemed greenish-gold. It could have been an effect of the lengthening shadows under the boardwalk. Maybe it was her mood. He didn’t want to sound like an idiot by asking.
“I think I should start smoking,” she said. “That would make me look sophisticated, wouldn’t it?” She laughed. “Who am I kidding? I’m not the glamorous type.”
He tried to think of something witty and charming. He gave up. “You look fine to me, Doreen.”
“Thanks,” she said. Fingertips on his skin, soft as her voice. “Come here.”
He follows the fortune teller’s gaze to the card she’s chosen. A skeleton in a black cloak, holding a bright curved blade on a long handle.
“It stands for change,” she whispers.
“I know.”
I want you to kiss me here. And here . . . and here.
Loudspeakers play scratchy carnival music. People crowd past the fortune teller’s booth, jostling him, indifferent to his great secret. He looks up, beyond the garish boardwalk lights with their plastic orange and white globes. The moon has risen higher. The waves continue their ceaseless movement.
Sweet boy. Come here.
Anthony whispers, “Are you going to escape? Do you want me to help you?”
She smiles and shakes her head, eyelids closing, chin sinking toward her chest. Her hands lie still. As she subsides into her old mannequin self he realizes she’s picked out another card now: a woman holding cups overflowing with water.
He knows she’ll escape one day. He’ll go to the booth and find it empty. People will spot her now and then walking on the beach at twilight, a silver woman, salty and infinite like the ocean.
Copyright © 2008 by Rosalie Morales Kearns
