Anne Tyler - Noah's Compass

“Me neither,” his father said, and he gave a dry cough of a laugh, although his face remained unsmiling. (He hadn’t seen Julia in forty-some years, and even then it was just because he’d shown up uninvited at her high school graduation.) He shifted in his seat slightly, as if he regretted his little joke, and smoothed his tie again.

“I’ve been laid off at St. Dyfrig,” Liam said.

At least it was a conversational topic.

“Laid off!”

“They’re folding their two fifth grades into one class next year.”

“But you’ve been there forever!”

“Just about,” Liam said.

“Don’t you have seniority?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know. That’s not how it works there.”

“How does it work?”

“I don’t know, I told you,” Liam said. He looked gratefully toward the kitchen, from where he heard the clink of ice cubes approaching.

“Real brewed tea!” Esther Jo announced, appearing with a tray. “I have to say I’ve just never held with instant. Seems to me instant has a sort of dusty taste.” She set the tray on the coffee table and distributed a tall glass to each of them. In the interim, she had put on lipstick. Her shiny, cherry-red lips reminded Liam of the days when she and his father were first together, when she had been movie-star pretty in her buxom sweater sets and her tightly packed straight skirts with the kick pleats.

Wasn’t it amazing, he thought, that even a species as supposedly evolved as the human race was still so subject to biology. And now here they sat-his ancient father shriveled to a husk, the femme fatale’s swollen feet stuffed into calico mules.

“Liam’s lost his job,” Bard told Esther Jo.

“Oh, no, Liam!” Esther Jo said.

Liam said, “Yep.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Well, I’m thinking that over.”

“You just know somebody’s going to snatch you up in half a second,” she told him. “How about one of the public schools? They’re dying for good teachers in the public schools.”

“I’m not certified, though,” Liam said.

“Well, something’s going to come along, I’m sure of it. You know what?” she said, setting down her glass. “I should tell your fortune.”

“Oh, yes, hon, good idea,” Bard told her. “You haven’t done that in a long time.”

“Not for me, at any rate,” Liam said.

He remembered her telling his fortune when he’d been applying to graduate schools. She had said he would go to a place that was good for him professionally but not personally. What was that all about? you’d have to ask, but never mind; at least if she told his fortune now it would give them something to fill the silence with. He said, “Would you be willing?”

“Well, if I still know how,” she said. “Seems like the older all our friends get, the less they wonder about. I can’t think when was the last time… Betty Adler, maybe. Was it Betty?” she asked Bard. “Betty was wanting to know if she should move to New Mexico to be near her married daughter. Here, let me skootch this footstool around.”

She slid the footstool over in front of Liam and settled on it, slanting her knees decorously to one side. This close, she gave off a faint scent of roses. “Show me your hands,” she commanded, and Liam held his hands out to her obediently. She took hold of them both at the base of his fingers and bent them slightly backward to flatten them. Her own fingers were chilled and dampish from her iced-tea glass. She said, “Now, first what I like to do is-oh!”

She was staring at his left palm-the gnarly line of his scar.

“What happened?” she asked him.

“I had a little accident.”

She made a clucking sound, looking dazed. “Well, this just skews everything every which way,” she said. “I never ran into such a thing before.”

“It’s only a scar,” Liam told her. For some reason, he felt it was important to carry through with this now. “I don’t see why it would make any difference.”

“But am I supposed to treat it like a brand-new line, or what? And how do I read what’s underneath it? I can’t tell what’s underneath it! I mean, your left hand is your whole entire past! I wonder if one of my books deals with this.”

“If it’s my past, why do we care?” Liam asked. “We just want to know about my future.”

“Oh, you can’t read one without the other,” Esther Jo told him. “They’re intermingled. They bounce off of each other. That’s what the amateurs fail to understand.”

She released his hands with a dismissive little pat that gave Liam a sense of rejection, absurdly enough.

“Let’s see if I can explain this,” she said. “You know how farmers can predict what kind of winter they’ll have by looking at the acorns and berries? Those acorns and berries are the way they are because of what has gone before-how much rainfall there’s been and et cetera, et cetera. A whole lot depends on the weather that’s already happened. And the farmers know that.”

She gave a quick, self-confirming nod.

“Well, just the same way, a real fortune-teller-and I’m not one to brag, but I am a real fortune-teller; I’ve just always had the gift, somehow-a real fortune-teller knows that your future depends on your past. It keeps shifting about; it’s not carved in stone. It keeps bouncing off whatever happened earlier. So, no, I can’t do a thing without seeing what’s in your left palm.”

And she sat back on her footstool with an annoyingly smug expression and laced her fingers around her knees.

Liam said, “Couldn’t you at least give it a try?”

She shook her head vigorously.

“You know what they say,” she told him. “‘Those who forget the past tend to regret the future.’”

“What?”

Bard said, “Aw, now, hon. Seems to me you might this once make an exception.”

“It’s not a matter of choice,” she told him.

He said, “At least it would help us to pass the time, look at it that way.”

“Pass the time!” she said. She stared at him. “Have I not just told you I’m a real fortune-teller?”

“Oh, well, real; ha-ha…”

“Do you not know I’ve been reading people’s futures since I was seven?”

“The boy was only wondering where to find a job, Esther Jo.”

Liam said, “Oh, no, it’s not important.” Now he felt foolish, as if he were, in fact, a “boy” begging for crumbs of wisdom. “I was just curious,” he said. “I know it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t mean anything!” Esther Jo echoed.

“Or, rather… of course it means something, but…”

How had things reached such a state? But it wasn’t his fault. He honestly didn’t think he should be shouldering the blame for this. He looked across at his father, who seemed unperturbed.

“Well, silly me, right?” Esther Jo said. “Silly me to think you-all would take it seriously.”

She jumped up from the footstool, more spryly than you would expect from a woman her age, and stalked back to her chair and flung herself into it. “I don’t know why I bothered,” she told the ceiling.

“Oh, princess,” Bard said mildly. “Can’t we just have a nice visit? Drink your tea.”

“I’m not thirsty,” she said, still addressing the ceiling.

“Come on, hon. Be nice.”

She didn’t answer, but she picked up her glass and took a sip, finally.

Liam said, “Well, anyhow, I should be running along. I just wanted to pop in and say hello.”

Bard looked relieved. “We appreciate that,” he said. “Always good to see you, son.”

He and Liam stood up, but Esther Jo stayed seated, gazing down into her glass. Liam said, “Thank you for the tea, Esther Jo.”