Lifeline

Barbara felt the worst pain of her life while scrubbing the stains from her new white button up. She didn’t cry out, but she did shed a few tears. At first she thought it was just a reaction to the cleaner. But she’d used it before, the same old soap. There appeared on her hand a line as if drawn by marker. It was purple, not the shade of  a blood vessel, felt hot to the touch. Looking at the other hand, there was nothing. Yes, the other hand felt fine. 

And when she showed the line to Darren, he put on his cheaters and squinted. He prodded at it, and told her that it looked like one of those “vermerose veins” that women tend to get on their legs. She was getting older, that was all. 

“Did this happen to you then?” 

He knew better than to mention her age. He answered as softly as he could; he'd never had it happen to him. He was smart to leave out his main point, that these things only happened to women. He called his sister in law. Maggie, as usual, said she knew exactly the problem and gave them instructions to buy a type of salve from the drug store. Normally meant for hemorrhoids. Barbara did not question or argue, but the cream did nothing more than make her hand smell a bit milky. 

When she was typing at the computer the next morning, it gave her an awful time. She tried to move her fingers as little as possible, especially her thumb. It was as though any stretching at all struck another match that ran all through her palm and then through her. 

Someone came to the desk asking for a copy of The Idiot. 

“No, not that one.” the young person said disgustedly,

“The new one. Published last year. It has a boulder on the cover.” 

She led them to the book, which was in the tiny new book section. They peeled it off the shelf, knocking three other titles off in the process. The person walked away and Barbara leaned down to sort out the mess. She winced as the tight spines connected to her palm. It was scorching hot now. The line had deepened.  

“Mrs. H, you alright?” 

Poor little Andrei crouched down and put the books all back for her quickly and mechanically. It was his only real job after all, so he was quite good at it. His attendance was excellent. He had a can-do attitude. But he had been neglected for promotion to even assistant aide four months running. They said things about the way he dressed, his tattoos, and his talkativeness. His sudden, frequent bouts of moroseness. He was a little sad man of mysteries.

She explained her hand to him. And for the first time since Darren told her it was only a womanly vein, she revealed it.  

“Mrs. H! That’s your life line, or, what is it? Destiny? No, fate! God, it’s really inflamed. And it’s short. Not to be rude but, can I ask how old you are? Are you fifty? That’s my guess.” 

Barbara smiled to herself and patted Andrei on the arm with her good hand. He was only a few years off. Fifty six. 

He told her if that was the case, it did not make sense that the line was so short. She should already be dead. At least twenty years ago, if not longer. If that’s how it all worked, he wasn’t positive. 

None of the other librarians were nice to Andrei. She always listened to him, no matter the length of his speeches. He told her the pain would not go away. He went on about the importance of palms. The implications of the readings. The rituals he followed regarding the different cycles of life. He grew more and more animated as he recalled memories from the first time he’d ever had his palm read. 

“You’d love her Mrs. H, really, she’s brilliant. She has an entire room covered in quartz crystals. Pink ones and white ones. And you don’t have to tell her anything, she guesses about you. And she’s always right. Well, almost always.” 

Just then, Carl turned the corner and emitted his signature shush. Barbara and Andrei went back to rearranging. She hoped that he would forget about her hand. Andrei stopped her in the parking lot as she was leaving, driving with one hand. The bum hand was wrapped in a loose scarf by her side. 

“I found it in my backpack!” 

Andrei slipped a crumpled business card through her window. She smiled as honestly as she could through the pain and then continued on to the hospital. She could hardly stand it, and she did not want to spend another night on the couch holding her hand up in the air. 

They gave her no answers. She was prescribed a cream. It was the name brand version of the one that Maggie had recommended. Useless. She sat in the driveway, not wanting to go in. Not wanting to face dinner, Darren, the process of readying for bed. She recounted the silliness of Andrei’s speech. His amazement with her age. She should have been dead many years ago. She almost agreed with him. Almost. 

Inside, Darren was frantic. She’d left her phone at home again. And it had been making all kinds of buzzing and noise, and Darren did not know the password so he had no way to turn it off. 

The next morning as she was taking a bathroom break, she had a fright while exiting the stall. A woman standing about six foot four was in front of the door, blocking Barbara’s exit. She wore all black except for the scarves around her neck, of which there were around eight. Mostly paisley. Without speaking, the woman took a step to the side and revealed Andrei standing behind her. 

“Sorry Mrs. H, it just seemed like such an emergency. I called her last night.” 

Barbara, still distracted by her pain, did not protest. She did ask  permission to wash her hand first, which was granted to her. 

Madame Pearl seemed made of stone. She did not smile, play with her braids, or otherwise fluff about as one might expect of a woman in her line of work. She spoke plainly and did not light candles. Not that she was allowed to. Carl’s small musty eyes glared into the conference room before Andrei got up and shut the blinds.

Madame Pearl told them that Barbara indeed was suffering from fate line problems. Barbara sucked in breath to cope with the stinging she felt from the Madame touching it. Then  Madame Pearl was holding both of Barbara’s hands. She put pressure between the middle and index and suddenly the pain faded. 

“Feel better now, do ya?” 

Barbara nodded, relishing the bit of time she had with an unclouded mind. She could have cried, the relief. 

Andrei was unendingly impressed. Barbara thanked the Madame. 

“Don’t thank me yet, we’ve work to do.” 

From her modest bag, Madame Pearl extracted three items. One, was a salve in a little jar, homemade by the looks of it. Two, was a pink crystal tied to a burlap string. Three, was an outdated looking guidebook of Paris. Andrei pointed to the crystal and said “quartz” as if Barbara had never seen one before. But Barbara was mostly taken with the guidebook. It looked so familiar to her. It had to be at least thirty years old, all faded. 

Madame Pearl started to rub the salve on Barbara’s fate line. It smelled strongly of jasmine and clove, both of which Barbara was allergic to. She did not bother to call out because of how wonderful it felt. If she got hives, they’d be worth it. 

“You didn’t go.” 

Madame did not make eye contact, she kept rubbing the salve into Barbara’s palm in a tiny circle. 

“Sorry?” 

Madame repeated,

“You didn’t go to Paris. Because you were to have a baby. Then you didn’t have a baby. And you didn’t go to Paris. Lose, lose. And you married that man. Third lose. Now you go to Paris.” 

Barbara snatched her hand away. She had never told a soul. About the baby. Lost at three and a half months. 

“This line might be yours. It might be your baby, the one that never got born. Or it might be someone else, I don’t know. They tell lies now to make people feel better. That the line just means how you walk through life. No, its your life line. You will probably die soon. You should die in Paris.” 

Madame Pearl reached back in her bag. She pulled out a fourth object. An hourglass filled with sand. As it stood on the rickety table, the sand was still and all gathered at the top. 

“Is it clogged maybe?”

Barbara said, still all politeness, though quite afraid. Madame chuckled. 

“It’s just slow. Slower is better for you. It means more time. But there’s not much. Less than a week probably.  I have to go.” 

Madame Pearl tried to exit swiftly and mysteriously but Andrei did not allow it. He was on the floor clinging to her dragging black skirt. 

He did not want Mrs. H to die. No one else was nice to him at the library. He’d have no friends and then be fired and subsequently suicidally depressed. It had taken ages to get to the miserable spot he was in. There would be no one to care about him. He had friends outside the library of course, but they were as impoverished and sad as he was. Mrs. H was the best part of his day to day life. She could not leave him, she could not die. 

Barbara's pain had almost completely floated on. She was able to finally grasp the emotional gravity of the situation. A clump of sand dropped all at once through the hourglass to the other end. 

“What’s the quartz for then? 

Madame Pearl whispered as she was now half way out the open conference room doors,

“To wear, quartz are pretty.” 

Barbara was surprised, she’d expected the Madame to have asked for someone’s credit card. Maybe the bill would be sent later. 

She gathered Andrei up from the floor and wiped his face. She was steady, Mrs. H. Her sure attitude calmed him enough to finish the day. 

Though she tried to scoff, there was a weight in the air. What was more, she began to notice physical changes. This might have happened while she had been distracted by the scorching feeling in her hand. By the end of the work day, she had no voice left. And every time she tried to glance to her left or right, big white electric spots appeared. 

The line on her hand did not give her pain, but it was still more purple than ever. Lilac, unnatural. Short and feathering as if on the brink of total collapse. 

The hourglass, which she had buried in her mess of a bag, was still faithfully keeping time. Despite being on its side, small clumps of sand were sliding from one end to the other. That was strange. 

Andrei was wiping his nose and waiting for her on the bench out front. The moon was bright, almost full. 

“I’m going to Paris, Andrei. I’ll either have a nice little vacation, or a nice end to my life. Death by croissants and all that.”  

This did not comfort him. His bike helmet fell to the concrete and he was blubbering once again. 

“Would you like to come with me?” 

He made even more noise. No, he didn’t have a passport. 

Before she could insist on giving him a ride, he was off. Part of her wanted to follow him to make sure he got where it was he was going. She went home. 

Darren had the reaction that an outsider might question. His wife of twenty nine years abruptly booked a ticket to Paris. He only said, 

“Got a date at the Eiffel tower? Good for you.” 

It was a joke but it was not a joke. Coward’s end, that was their way, it had bound them together. 

Barbara slept on the couch again even though her hand was fine. She stared at the ceiling and saw visions of Andrei’s contorted face. It wasn’t about her, his explosion. The kid was not alright. There were still two days before her flight. 

Andrei was shocked to see her at work the next day, but he didn’t protest. She was offended by Carl’s critique of her summer reading display board before she remembered she hadn’t told him. She hadn’t told anyone, not even her husband, that she was running out of time. She was going to die. She laughed and doused the board in even more glitter glue. The clip came out of her hair and she let it fall on her shoulders. She fluttered her eyes to chase the white spots away. In full voice she said, 

“Andrei, before I go, I want to do something for you. What would you like to do? Isn’t there something your old pal can help with?” 

He was crying again, the little rollercoaster. Out came his life story, the one he had danced around so many times in the past. 

“I don’t know. She had the baby and then she gave it up and then she told me to never talk to her again. So I moved here. But it was all okay up until then, when the baby came. We were supposed to move in together. I was going to name it Bennett.” 

Barbara felt her voice come back a little. Might have been the lozenge or the surprise to think this boy, this child, had a child somewhere.” 

“Where is she? The girl?” 

Andrei pulled out his phone. 

“That’s less than three hours away.”  

They provided Carl no explanation and being all bark and no bite, he didn’t ask. 

There was no traffic. Barbara’s hand, coated in Madame Pearl’s salve, felt fine. 

The girl was working at a dingy cafe. Chez Pauline, what a horror. The sign looked like it hadn’t been washed since the last century. Speckled moss flecked the blue lettering. 

In the side mirror, she watched Andrei examine his face. He asked her if he looked okay. She lied and told him he looked sharp. And then he asked her to come with him. 

Inside, it looked a little French. Mainly because the patrons were smoking and the coffee cups were petite. There was a huge dusty statue in the corner of the Eiffel tower coated in Christmas lights that were only half lit. 

Through the smoke, a petite girl wearing a blue beret dropped off some putrid looking stew at one of the tables. 

Barbara was worried, the girl looked intimidating, severe. It could turn out to be a mistake. But as soon as they saw each other, both kids melted. It was like a movie, and Barbara felt a flutter of excitement shift through her. None of the patrons reacted much, but it didn’t matter. It was better that way.

 Barbara reached her hands up to her face and saw that the purple line was gone. She dumped the contents of her bag on the cafe counter. The hourglass, it was gone too. The quartz was there. And the guide book. Despite its old age, she packed it in her suitcase the next morning. 

Barbara Henry ate eight croissants in her four day trip to Paris. As she gazed out over the Seine on her last evening, it occurred to her that she had never felt better.