Searching for Caleb

The woman who answered was thin and dark, with a crimson slash of lipstick. She was not much older than Justine, but there were two little boys with runny noses hanging onto her skirt. Gray straps slid out from her scoop-necked blouse. Justine was sorry she had come, but it was too late to back out.

Then when she was settled at the kitchen table, over the remains of breakfast, it seemed she was expected to ask some specific question. She hadn't known that. "What is it?" the woman asked, flattening Justine's hand like a letter. "Husband? Boyfriend?"

"No, I-just general things, I wanted to know."

The woman sighed. She scratched her head and frowned at Justine's palm.

Apparently she saw nothing unusual. "Well," she said finally, "you're going to live a long time, that's for sure."

"Yes," Justine said, bored. Really she had no particular interest in her future, which seemed certain to be happy and uneventful from here on out.

"Good marriage. Probably travel a little. Health is good. Probably have a lot of kids."

"I will?" Justine asked. Duncan didn't seem to want any children. But the woman said, "Oh yes."

A question began to tug at the edges of Justine's mind. She stared into space, not listening to the rest of her fortune. "Um, Magic Marcia," she said finally. "Could you tell me something? If your palm predicts a certain future, is there any way you can change it?"

"Huh?"

"If your future is having children, could you deliberately not have children? If your future is to cause someone pain, for instance, isn't there some way you could be very careful and not cause pain? Can't you escape your fortune?"

"What is written is written," said Magic Marcia, yawning.

"Oh," Justine said.

On Friday she went to Blainestown, having checked the yellow pages beforehand. She climbed the stairs to SERENA, MISTRESS OF THE OCCULT.

This time, she knew exactly what she wanted to ask.

"Could I have avoided my future if my future was to do somebody harm?"

"Man does not avoid the future," Serena said.

On Monday she went back to Blainestown, this time to MADAME

AZUKI, ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED.

"It's in the stars. There is no escape," said Madame Azuki.

"I see."

On Wednesday she went to Baltimore. Duncan was inventing an automatic bean stringer and he only nodded when she told him she would be out for a while. She drove directly to a cluttered section on the east side of town. She found the dry cleaner's, which was exactly the same even to its fly-specked, faded posters showing women in 1940's suits. But Madame Olita's sign on the window above had become a few flecks of paint, and there was a padlock on her door. Justine went into the cleaner's. A large gray man was lining up laundry tags on the counter. "Can you tell me anything about Madame Olita?" she asked him.

"Ah, Madame Olita. She's gone."

"What, is she dead?"

"No, retired. She's not feeling so well, you know? But was she a fortune teller! I don't mind telling you, I used to go to her myself. Okay, so it's mumbo-jumbo. You know why I went? Say you got a problem, some decision to make. You ask your minister. You ask your psychiatrist, psychologist, marriage counselor, lawyer-they all say, 'Well of course I can't decide for you and we want to look at all the angles here and I wouldn't want to be responsible for-' They hedge their bets, you see. But not Madame Olita. Not any good fortune teller. 'Do X,' they say. 'Forget Y.' 'Stop seeing Z.' It's wonderful, they take full responsibility. What more could we ask?"

"Well, do you know where she is now? Could I just visit her?"

"Sure, she's right down the block. But I don't know how much she's up to.

Well, tell her I sent you, Joe sent you. Maybe she could use the company.

Five eight three, apartment A."

"Thank you very much," Justine told him.

"Hope you get the answer you want."

She let the door tinkle shut and walked on down the street, passing more cleaners and cut-rate pharmacies and pawnshops. At the end of the block was a large Victorian frame house surrounded by a veranda, and on the veranda sat Madame Olita in a Polynesian wicker chair. Although it was hot, she wore a crocheted shawl. She still had her stubby haircut, but she had lost an enormous amount of weight. Her clothes flopped and her neck was so scrawny that her face appeared to be lunging forward, vulture-like. She looked hollowed out. While Justine climbed the steps she watched without interest, perhaps assuming this was somebody else's visitor. "Hello, Madame Olita," Justine said.

"Hmmm?"

Madame Olita pulled herself together, wrapping the shawl more tightly around her shoulders.

"Joe sent me," Justine said.

"Oh? Joe."

"There's a question I wanted to ask. Would you mind?"

"Well, I'm feeling poorly these days, you see. I don't look into the future much."

"No, it wasn't about the future."

Madame Olita sighed. "Sit down," she said, pointing to the wicker chair beside her. She reached for Justine's hand, as if she hadn't understood.

"But I didn't want-"