Fran Ross - Oreo

Oreo was just warming to her subject when Mrs. Schwartz said, “But I must have roaches. I use them in my… work.”

Oreo put on a concerned look. “I don’t mean to tell you how to run your business, but would it be possible to breed them in captivity? That way, the rest of the apartment could be roach-free and you would still have sufficient numbers for your… work — and under controlled conditions.”

The woman looked at Oreo sharply. “Excellent idea, excellent,” she said slowly. Without lowering her arm, she nodded her torch hand several times. “I have other, more serious objections, Miss…?”

“Christie,” Oreo said quickly. “But just call me Anna.” What would a foreigner know, anyway?

“I will get to my objections in a moment, but first I have a favor to ask of you, Miss. . Christie.”

There was a definite smirk on her face, Oreo decided. Either that or she had a facial tic without a toc, on top of her catatonia/boil. Oreo waited.

“Would you allow me to read your palm? I know you must have many more tenants to see today, but I assure you it will not take long. I see something in your face that interests me.” Oreo readily agreed.

They moved to the round table. Mrs. Schwartz shoved the animal-vegetable-mineral box against the wall so that they could both get their feet under the table. It was just as well. Oreo did not want to touch the ishy thing with a bare toe and inadvertently put a jambalaya jinx on her perfect feet. She liked her hexes straight, simple, homogeneous.

Mrs. Schwartz studied Oreo’s palm silently for several minutes, her eyes rapidly scanning the mounts and lines. With a long-nailed finger she traced Oreo’s rascettes. A chill pimpled along Oreo’s right leg and around her hairline, as it always did when she was profoundly shaken by something — good or bad. Her body registered the same sensation for Buxtehude well played as for singing telegrams well sung, only her brain distinguishing between what she called “thrilly chills” and “chilly chills.” Put on a sweater, her brain told her now.

When the woman dropped her hand as though it were a hot sea urchin, Oreo laid it to envy. She had had her palm read before and had been told that her Mounts of Jupiter, Venus, Apollo, and Lower Mars were transcendent, her lines of Mercury and Life enviable, those of the Sun, Head, and Heart virtually a crime against the rest of humanity. In short, she had a fabulous, a mythic hand — the quintessential chiromantic reading (though some might cavil at a rather too well-developed Plain of Mars).

“Anything wrong?” Oreo asked.

The woman seemed to be agonizing over a grave decision. When, presumably, she had made up her mind, she was friendlier than she had been since Oreo’s arrival. “You must stay and have some lunch with me, my dear. Can you do that?”

“I’d love to,” Oreo lied. How was she going to fix lunch with one hand in the air? “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about the reading? Anything special?”

The woman dismissed this possibility with a peremptory flick of the left hand. “No, no, the usual, I am afraid. You will marry a basketball player at twenty-one, have three children — two boys and a girl — and live happily ever after.”

Oreo knew all this was a stone lie . With her hand? Amaze the Amazons, perhaps — but live happily ever after with some jive guard and three crumb snatchers? Foul!

While Oreo was fuming, the door opened and two little boys, about six and seven, came in. Their identical cream-colored shirts and navy-blue caps, ties, and short pants suggested a school uniform or a mother with a twin fetish. They had latchkeys on chains around their necks and were carrying small plaid suitcases. The boys stood in front of the door, which they had not closed completely, rubbing what looked like black track shoes against the pitiful calves of their spindly legs and wrinkling their navy-blue knee socks, which they then hiked while keeping their eyes on Mrs. Schwartz and Oreo. They looked like frightened voles. Their large gold-brown lemur eyes seemed to be searching out escape routes.

“Close the door,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “If I have told you once, I have told you thirty-two and five-eighths times.”

The little things that give a foreigner away, thought Oreo. She probably says “Vanzetti and Sacco” too.

Reluctantly, the older of the two did as he was told. He jiggled the knob a few times as if to make sure he was not locked in.

“Come here and meet our visitor,” Mrs. Schwartz commanded.

The children edged forward, eyes looming.

“Marvin, Edgar, say hello to Miss Christie.”

“Anna,” Oreo said.

“No — children should show respect for their elders,” Mrs. Schwartz insisted.

The children aspirated almost inaudible hellos. Oreo gave them the expected pat on their caps, but they did not expect it and shied away.

“Go put your toys away,” Mrs. Schwartz directed.

“So that’s what’s in those suitcases,” said Oreo.

The woman looked at her strangely. “The suitcase is the toy. Miss Christie.”

“Of course,” Oreo quickly amended.

“It is what they like to play with,” she said defensively.

“Certainly,” said Oreo. What would those little voles have in their suitcase toys? Roadmap toys, spare-clothing toys, K-ration toys, Dr. Scholl’s toys?

“And take off those silly track shoes. They are ruining the floor,” Mrs. Schwartz said as the boys clattered into their room.

For the first time, Oreo noticed that the parquet swath from the front door to the children’s room did bear a certain resemblance to Cobb’s Creek Golf Links. Either that or the floor had never recovered from a bad case of a pox on this house.

“They don’t look much like you,” Oreo said, trying to hide the fact that it was a compliment to Mrs. Schwartz.

The woman obviously divined the flattery. She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “They are adopted. My own children… died. I felt the loss keenly and adopted these children. . after.”

She confided to Oreo that her first husband had been somewhat frivolous. His woolly-headed schemes had gotten him fleeced on several occasions. But their children had been dear to them both, their loss almost unbearable. To assuage her pain, she adopted the first children who came along — much to her regret. She was very disappointed in them. They were afraid of slime mold. (“They remind me of a certain animal I used to see when I was a child,” she said. “I don’t know the English word for it.” Oreo smiled and said, “Vole.”) Now all she wanted was children of her own loins. One of the things she was experimenting with was a pill that put the pleasure back into parturition. Mrs. Schwartz gestured to her equipment — occult and natural. “In this age of scientific miracles, man should no longer have to undergo the pain of childbirth,” she said determinedly. She shook her head as though to clear it of further illogic. “But why am I boring you with my life story? I must fix that lunch I promised you.”

She gave Oreo a magazine to read — to keep her away from the flasks and vials, Oreo guessed. No matter. Oreo was soon engrossed in “Burp: The Course of Smiling Among Groups of Israeli Infants in the First Eighteen Months of Life,” the cover story in Pitfalls of Gynecology .

Mrs. Schwartz came back a few minutes later, not lighting her way with her invisible torch and balancing a tray of shrimp, saltines, lemon wedges, and water cress. As she was sliding the tray onto the coffee table in front of the couch, a man walked in. Oreo knew immediately that he was her father.

He was not exactly ugly (a litotes). He was in his early forties, had curly, almost kinky hair (which Oreo knew had been gray since his late teens), noble-savage nose and cheekbones, long cheek creases that would become dimples when he smiled, and the smug, God-favored lips of a covenant David (2 Samuel 7):