Lifelines

by Caroline Leavitt

  Duse began to feel more and more tired. She was always thinking about sleep. Humming reminded her of snoring, songs sounded like lullabies, even the damp palms she held between her own two hands mesmerized her into a stupor. In the middle of a reading, she would droop, her head would flutter down to her chest, and she would start, jerking her neck up, wincing at the snap. She would apologize to her clients. As soon as she got home, she stretched out on the bed—just for a few moments, she told herself, just for a quick snatching of sleep. She always fell asleep. Even when she dreamed, she was dreaming about sleeping. She was heavy with it, she carried sleep around with her as if it were a living thing, big and weighted and perfumed.

  Sometimes she was queasy. She dreamed one night that she was heaving something up out of her, something sharp and sticky, and when she woke up, she found herself covered with stale vomit. Her bedclothes were damp, fetid. She pulled herself up, reeling, knowing she was going to be sick again. She struggled into the kitchen, steadying herself with hands white and braced along the wall. She grabbed handfuls of coarse brown salt from a glass jar and forced herself to swallow it. She spilled salt all over the floor, and grains of it stuck to the pads of her bare feet, but the salt managed to quell the gripping nausea. Her stomach burned. She bent over and fisted her hands into it, deep. She hung over the edge of the sink and waited for the burning pain to subside.

  When she finally slumped back to her bed again, her sheets still felt damp, they smelled as if they were rotting away right beneath her. But she was too sleepy to change them, too tired to even shuck herself free of her nightgown and get into something clean and dry. She lay flat down. She’d have to be up before Anna to do the sheets, to clean them. When she dreamed, she dreamed about sleep.

  It got worse. The nausea was so terrible mornings that she would have to bolt outside to vomit in the patch of grass behind the fence, covering her sickness with a scattering of dirt. She wanted to vomit up her blood, her lungs, everything that kept her alive, just to be done with it. She hated feeling sick; she felt as if her body were betraying her, were bent on her own ruin.

  After a while, she got used to vomiting. She sometimes took the trolley into town, to look in the shops. She never ate beforehand, and she carried loose salt in her pockets in case she felt ill, but even so, any kind of motion made her sick.

  Eventually, the vomiting stopped, but she still didn’t feel right, and when she missed her period, a different kind of nausea erupted within her. She was sick with her own fear. She began studying her palms, searching for clues. Her lifeline was still strong, stretching long down into her wrist; her fate line held peaks and stutters she hadn’t even reached yet. She watched her palms until she made the lines waver and throb from all her staring, until her eyes burned raw in her head. She clasped her hands together, she worried.

  Duse tried to avoid Anna. When Anna nagged her about eating dinner, about not wasting food, when Anna said that Duse was fooling no one by crowding her food to the rim of her plate like that, Duse said that she had eaten at Olya’s. Duse said that her walking to and from Olya’s was tiring, that was why she was sleeping so much and so often, and when Anna narrowed her eyes, Duse tried not to see.

  Duse waited another two days and then she went into town and saw a doctor, a stranger. On the way, she stopped at Kresges and bought herself a child’s imitation gold band. She pushed it fiercely onto her hand, jerking it over her knuckle.

  Duse sat in her room and dreamed. She had peeled off her girdle and had her hands on her belly and was teasing the skin, probing it, feeling for the life the doctor said moved within her. She had sent word to Olya that she wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come to work today. Anna was out marketing. Duse had to be alone in this house so she could think what to do. Duse knew the way people would react if they knew she was carrying a child. No one would want her to read his palm.

  She looked into her palm. Her lines didn’t seem different, you couldn’t tell anything from them. Her stomach would remain flat for a time, she imagined, but then it would betray her, it would swell out and everytime anyone saw her, they would hear a baby crying. The sound would strain right through her own graveled voice. Her clients would disappear; people would pull away from her. Duse flounced on the bed, resting her head on her arms. She played with different versions of events, trying on scenarios for size, seeing if she could move within their confines.

  She could move to a new place, pretend she was a widow. She could stay right here and defy everyone, become fodder for the tabloids. She could kill the fetus, rip it from her, stop its hesitant cleaving. She sat up suddenly. She had never even cut her hair, much less cut away a baby, had never pared her nails, but had let them just break off or wear themselves down. One summer, when she had gone outside without her hat, without sleeves, she had badly burned her frail skin. She could remember the peelings coming free of her, the sick way she had felt that a layer of herself was somehow being lost, the way she had almost wanted to paste those peelings back onto her. Duse put her hands over her belly, trying to sense just where that living thing was, almost seeing the shape of it, the way it was hooked up into her own system. She was suddenly torn by fear, slick with her own sweat.

  She made enough money for herself, but not for two, not for a baby. She would have to write him, that dentist, and ask for money. She got out a fountain pen and some cheap blue writing paper and penned him a note. She licked it inside an envelope. Now all she had to do was to see that it was mailed and wait.

  Anna kept asking her what on earth was the matter with her. Why wasn’t Duse wearing her girdle, didn’t she know that that didn’t look nice? Duse was glad that Anna wasn’t around when her letter finally came, and she tore it open on her bed. It was slim, not bulky, and there was no money. Inside was a flat brown ticket, one way, to Madison. She looked at it, forcing her eyes around each word. He wanted to marry her. He wasn’t sure about a child, but he did want her. It was ridiculous for him to send her money when he could easily take care of her himself, when he even thought that he wanted to. Duse let the letter flutter to the ground. She got up and went into the kitchen, running her hands through her hair, trying to think.

  Anna found Duse asleep at the table. She let Duse rest as she fussed about the kitchen, making them both a beef sandwich, putting the food on blue dinner plates before she shook her daughter awake. Duse blinked, her face sluggish, pulled down with sleep. “You eat,” said Anna, sitting down, pushing a plate toward Duse. Anna lifted up her sandwich and took a big bite.

  “I’m going to get married,” said Duse. “I’m going to Madison. I have a ticket.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Anna, taking another bite. “Marry who—”

  “A man. I met him here. Read his palm.” Duse watched Anna’s face. She picked up her own sandwich and then set it back down on her plate.

  “You’re not marrying anyone,” said Anna. “And you’re certainly not going to Jesus knows where. Not yet. Married. My God. I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my whole life. You just forget it.”

  “I am marrying him,” said Duse. “I have to.” She told Anna about how sick she had been, about the nausea, the doctor. Anna’s face as she listened was terrible. She kept squeezing at her sandwich, pushing the meat from the bread right onto the table, continuing to squeeze and squeeze the sandwich until the bread itself moved out through her fingers in soft ribbons of dough. When Duse was finished speaking, Anna said heavily, “So that’s it, then, isn’t it.” She stood up, and then sat back down, carefully unstrapping her shoes, stretching her feet. “You resisted everything I ever wanted for you,” said Anna quietly. “You know that? Everything. Even in the womb. I had a picture I wore for you. I had thoughts influencing you. I wanted you to be an actress. Was that such a terrible thing to want, such a horrible life for you? You wouldn’t even try to be an actress though, would you, you wouldn’t even be born when you were supposed to.” Anna’s voice lifted, veined with anger. �
��You chose your own sweet time, your own place. Right goddamned here,” she gestured. “Right on this floor. You chose it and you chose it against me.

  Duse stared at Anna.

  “You don’t know anything,” said Anna.

  “I’ll learn,” said Duse.

  “You’ll learn nothing.”

  Anna stood, bracing her hands on the table. “Are you eating this sandwich at all?” she said, taking Duse’s plate, lifting it. “A waste,” she said. She juggled the plate, and watched it drop and smash on the floor. She pranced her feet out of the way, but she cut her hand. A thin red stripe of blood wobbled across her palm. Duse, detached, thought Anna was ruining her lines, blurring her future. Anna looked at her hand. “When are you leaving?” she said, her eyes still focused on her cut. “I want to mark it down. I want to watch you when you leave here.”

  Duse felt something snaking inside of her. She didn’t want her mother standing at the station looking grim, becoming a blot of color from the train window.

  “Where’s the ticket. Let me see.”

  “It’s around.”

  “What’s the matter, can’t I even see the ticket now?”

  Duse went and got the ticket and handed it to Anna, who studied it and then went over to the calendar by the stove. She ruffled the pages and then she took a sewing pin from a box on one of the shelves and jabbed the pin into the departure date. She handed the ticket back to Duse.

  “I’m going to lie down,” she said, her voice flat, unrippled by emotion.

  Duse, watching her leave, said, “You know, it’s me who has to marry some man with chicken scratches for palm lines. It’s me.”

  Anna turned. “You won’t even let me feel for you, will you? You even take that away. You won’t take any compassion unless you yourself ask for it, initiate it like a spell. Even when you were little, God help the person who tried to kiss you, to touch. No one could pat your cheek without your flinching back from them, looking at them as if they had tried to burn you. But it was all fine and dandy, wasn’t it, when you felt blue and stormy, for you to come and creep into my lap, to slink about me. It was fine then, wasn’t it?”

  Duse waited until Anna left the room and then got up and pulled the pin free of the calendar. Anna had a terrible memory. She forgot things moments after discovering them. Duse jabbed the pin into another date, the seventeenth, two days after her departure. There was a faint pinprick on the fifteenth, so Duse took a pencil and scribbled over it.

  During the next few days, Duse spent a lot of time in her room looking at the ticket, staring at it until the words and numbers wavered. She had written Martin that she would come, but she didn’t want him to write her any more letters, and she had given her notice to Olya, who offered to read her tea leaves as a wedding present. That had made Duse grin. She didn’t want to hear about meeting tall strangers, about taking trips. Duse watched Anna racing around, heard the tightening panic of her voice.

  Duse would miss nothing here. She had never really felt close to Anna. She mentally thought out a note she could leave, explaining why she was leaving before Anna thought she was, why she was leaving alone, unescorted. She had crazy dreams filled with yellow heat, with Indians and lions and things that had nothing to do with Madison at all.

  Duse packed only one suitcase and she wore her good hat, a red-brimmed wool with flowers. She struggled to the city, to the station. She wasn’t sure how to get there, and every few minutes she had to stop and ask someone, propping her suitcase at her feet. She pretended she understood the complicated wavings of hands, the jerkings of heads—to the right, the left.

  She was at the station in plenty of time, and as soon as she saw that dirty black train, the smoke chewing up the air, she tensed. People thronged about her, undulating in tangled nets of arms and legs and suitcases. People tugged at her coat to give themselves leverage, they pulled her down. They pushed and cursed. Duse clutched her suitcase, ignoring the clamoring hands of the kids wanting to make a quick quarter from her, the hands of the men noticing a woman traveling alone. Duse pulled herself into the train and let the conductor show her her seat. The upholstery was torn and she spread her skirt over the rip. The noise came through the window. Everyone on the platform was waving hands, fluttering hats, shouting out the names of people she didn’t know. Phrases, words, pet names, emotions like lifelines were awkwardly thrown from one person to the other, crying to be caught.

  She was leaving, really leaving, and when she looked at her palm, she thought she saw a new line. When she touched it, it seemed to uncrease, and she stood up, the panic sudden in her throat, wearing her down. No face was familiar to her, but she still felt eyes feeding on her, smarmy, insistently knowing. Not one of these people knew her, not one could see inside her head, yet they touched her as they passed, and their fingers were an assault, a rape. “Anna—” she said aloud. She wanted a touch her skin knew, a comfort. A man frankly stared at her and she pressed back into her seat, and then the train was inching forward and she clamped her eyes shut.

  She got through the trip by watching the flat endless fields, the concrete. No one made any conversation with her, and she kept to herself. The train jittered to a stop and moved on again, but it was always the same tossing and catching of names. She didn’t remember the towns, and it wasn’t a long trip to Madison. She would be there by morning.

  She was the last one off the train, and as she walked, she tried to move as slowly and evenly as she could, ignoring the elbows at her back, the hands. The ground seemed to be swaying under her feet, and she kept her eyes down until Martin swooped at her. She danced back.

  “What’s the matter?” Martin shouted over the crowd. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  Her legs wobbled. She tried to sense the train moving under her, the way it had been just minutes before, but Martin was pulling her forward, into another train now, and when they were seated, he announced that they could marry, right that day.

  “What?” she said. He looked different to her. He wasn’t the same. He had different skin, new eyes, his voice was accented. She plucked his hand up from his lap, but he closed his fingers so she couldn’t budge them, so she couldn’t get at his lines. “Don’t you want to marry me?” he said, but he was smiling, suddenly a little shy with her.

  “I don’t feel ready,” she said. She flexed her hand open, she saw the marriage line darting in her palm. But lines weren’t absolute, she thought, you could affect them.

  “This stop, up you go,” he said, easily lifting her hand.

  Her eyes glittered and she dragged her feet until Martin said her name, sharpened it. “What did you think was going to happen?” he said.

  She pulled back, wounded. She didn’t know how to fit her mouth around the words boiling up inside of her. “You don’t feel ready either,” she said. “You don’t love me.”

  “Sometimes I think I do,” he said. He told her about her pictures then, about how they had got deep inside of him, how they wouldn’t yield. She couldn’t stop watching his eyes when he talked, the way they swooped from face to face in that crowd, from suitcase to train car, all the time pulling back toward her, making her the center. She glanced down again at her palm, at the marriage line by her smallest finger. “All right,” she said.

  They small-talked their way to the justice of the peace. He told her that she wouldn’t need to work, she wouldn’t have to worry about one damn thing. “But I like work,” she said. “I need palms.” He looked at her again and then he said that he was very private, that he didn’t want strangers coming into his house, putting their hands in his wife’s lap. She was pregnant; she should take it easy, and besides, her hands would soon be filled with diapers and formulas and baby fingers, there wouldn’t be room for any other palm but his own.

  She didn’t argue with him, not then. She followed him into a gray box of a building, up a flight of stairs into a small office. Martin patted her hand and told her that he was sorry that all he could get was a justic
e of the peace. Duse watched him filling out the forms, and when she had to sign her name, she scribbled so it was nearly unintelligible, she made the dark ink slide down the page.

  A man in a gray suit came into the room, smiling at Martin, pumping his hand, introducing himself, but Duse kept her hands behind her back, twisted together. She didn’t even hear his name. She was moved, placed shoulder to shoulder with Martin. She kept fiddling with her hands, trying to reach his, until he told her to stop.

  She refused to understand the ceremony, to give it any sort of validity at all. A woman came in to act as a witness. Duse felt dirty. She hadn’t had a chance to change her dress. She hadn’t been able to wash her hair, and she had it pinned to her scalp so that the weight of it was loosening the gold clip, making her head prickle. She wondered where Martin’s parents were, why they had to marry in this cold ugly room. When Martin took her hand, she involuntarily pulled it back, but then he was sliding a ring on it, and she looked down, startled. The finger looked odd, ringed like that. He bent to kiss her, and she held her breath, letting it out only when he stepped away from her.