An Inappropriate Psychic
by Robert Garner McBrearty
When I was a young man, I had my palm read by a psychic. She worked out of a café and she had a reputation of being accurate. She was in her early sixties, a little tired looking as if she had made a few too many predictions along the way. She did not go into a trance, but she assumed a quiet, concentrated demeanor as she traced my palm with her finger, frowning, shutting her eyes, speaking slowly and softly.
I had not gone into the session taking it all that seriously, but over the years some of her predictions have come true. She said that I would be married and have two children, one son and one daughter, and that has been the case. She said that I would go into the arts and have some minor success but make little money, and that too has been the case.
Unfortunately, she also predicted the year of my death. At the time, since I was only twenty, my death in late middle age seemed far away. Unfortunately, that year is upon me now and I’ve gotten a little jumpy. Recently, hoping for a second opinion, I consulted another psychic. She was young, a graduate of a school for psychics apparently, and a friend had recommended her. He found here a little assertive, but he trusted her. At her suggestion, he’d even put a little money into the stock market and made a few bucks.
When I told her about the first psychic’s prediction about my death, she exclaimed, “That is highly inappropriate! It’s extremely unethical to tell someone when they’re going to die!” She frowned at my palm, turned it this way and that, traced a line down the middle, paused with a tremble in her finger. “For instance, this interruption in the lifeline here might simply be a nick. Do you wear gloves when you work outdoors?” She sighed deeply. “That break could mean a lot of things. But…Be careful crossing streets. Don’t stay too long in one place. Set an unpredictable pattern. I will try to send you mental warnings.”
She’s been true to her word. I hear her voice now as I stand in a bank line, whispering I’m seeing masked robbers come through the lobby door. You’re the first one they shoot! Get down! Now!
On my belly, the floor smells of ammonia. I stare at the trouser cuffs of the man in line in front of me. With my nose near his legs, his calves shift nervously. He turns and frowns down at me. Really, I’m only on the floor for a moment. Maybe people thought I’d dropped something, or I could be an exercise junkie, working in a quick push-up or two. I bolt out of line and into the parking lot.
I’m a little angry with her. I don’t see any bank robbers coming in, I tell her. I feel like a fool.
Okay, dodged a bullet there, but watch out for a home invasion. Wait, don’t drive! I’m sensing an accident. Walk. No, take a bus. Get an Uber. Have your wife pick you up …Oh my, I’m tapping into a lot of negative energy! I see plagues coming your way, pestilence, war, famine, earthquakes, tornadoes. There are boils covering your body. Get your shingles shot! Watch out for rabies, tetanus. I keep getting these visions of sinkholes. How’s your blood pressure? Relax. Worry can kill you. There’s that sinkhole again. Better come in for another reading. That other psychic was so inappropriate!
Robert Garner McBrearty’s most recent book is a collection of stories, WHEN I CAN’T SLEEP, published by Matter Press. He’s the author of four other books of fiction, one which received a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. For many years, his stories have been appearing widely, including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, New England Review, North American Review, StoryQuarterly, New Flash Fiction Review and Fiction Southeast. His writing awards include a New Mexico State Arts Grant and fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center. Currently, he teaches short story writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in the Denver area. He’s at work on another collection of stories.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “An Inappropriate Psychic”? I often write about an experience only after many years have passed, and the experience combines with other experiences and imaginings until it takes on the form of a story. In a way, it becomes easier to fictionalize long ago memories as they already are seen through the haze of time, drifting into a dream-like world. As in the story, when I was a young man, I had my fortune told by a psychic. When she told me how old I would be when I died, it seemed not too bad, a long way off, almost reassuring really. Some years later, I met another psychic at a social gathering who was outraged by that earlier prediction. I was intrigued by the notion of a psychic code of ethics. Still, there were more years to go before I put the two psychics together in a story, and there was still some piece missing. I started thinking about how a character might be quite anxious when that year arrived, and that merged with a kind of universal anxiety of the fate that hangs over us all, heightened by the anxiety of the age and yet timeless, biblical in the nature of the warnings the psychic sends. An image stuck with me: a dark café, the psychic’s concentrated demeanor, her soft voice. I often don’t describe in great detail. I tend to use a more impressionistic touch. But certain images stay in my mind. If an image is held long enough, keeps resurfacing, there’s a story calling. Partly, it’s a matter of finding the way the pieces fit together, and rewriting is often about finding the missing pieces.
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