Memory Work
by
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Old Dockside Mall,
"I thought palm readers predicted how long a person would live," Phipp said as he paid the fortuneteller. "You only told me how old I am. Hell, who needs a palm reader to know he''''''''s in his thirties?
The palm reader frowned. "I said, sir, that you are age thirty-seven or thirty-eight, although you look much younger."
"So? Does that mean I should live a long time?"
"Sir . . . "
"Is there a reason you can’t tell me?"
"Well, sir . . . "
"You know something, don’t you?"
The palm reader sighed.
"The palms don’t tell me everything in detail, sir."
"I don''''''''t care. I just want my money''''''''s worth of this hocus pocus. So, tell me. How long am I supposed to live?"
With a rounding and hardening of eye by which she demonstrated her loss of patience, the palm reader grabbed Phipp''''''''s hand, flipped his palm up, and cocked it toward her. She peered into it again, then pointed.
"See this line, sir?"
"Yes."
"That’s your life line."
"Okay. So, what’s my life span?"
The woman swallowed. She raised her eyes to his. She spoke softly.
"Sir..."
"Yes?"
"You die this year."
Phipp jerked his hand away. The table shook. The palm reader caught it. Her client sprang to his feet.
"Thank you," he answered tautly.
He spun from the booth and hurried along the corridor of the river mall. He dodged passers-by and browsers, tables and booths as he rushed for the edge of the psychic fair. When he reached the perimeter, he slowed his pace. He took a breath. His eyes locked upon the flashing neon sign of a bar.
"Son?" someone said.
Phipp turned toward the voice. The woman with the two sweaters and the green hair stood before a shrouded booth. She motioned for him to join her at a table inside. He thought not to do so, but people grabbed him and threw him into the chair. He looked for his assailants, but they were not there.
"What do you want?" he asked as the woman closed the drape behind him.
"Me?"
She smiled at him as she straightened her greenish mane and dropped into her chair.
"Only you and I sit here," Phipp said caustically.
"Oh, I don’t know about that. Quite a lot of people roam in and out of my space."
"I don’t want to hear any more psychedelic shit from this place," Phipp replied angrily.
The lady said nothing. She raised her hand and scratched her scalp. She returned the hand to her lap and looked at him as if he were a fool.
"What?" Phipp asked.
"I wanted to tell you—"
"Tell me what?"
"I rarely see lavender."
"Lavender?"
"Yes. The color lavender. In an aura. And in a spike at that. Whew! What grace. What powerful grace. And what God-sent knowledge saves you."
"Huh?"
"Son, you’re all red—all energy and activity. But also anger, rage, percolating hate."
"I''''''''ve already heard that from a number of places, Mrs. Whoever-You-Are."
"And then there’s your spike; wedged into the most sensitive area of your being through all that red. Squeezed in and absolutely impenetrable." The woman cackled. "That’s your angel, son. Your grace. In the lavender. And what you can become spreads out from him or her into violet, which the red then pinches tight. Oh! How you teeter on a thread between loss and redemption."
"With all respect, Mrs. Whoever-You-Are, you and all these other people here are f***ed up. One of your species just told me I’ll die this year."
"She did?"
"Yes, she did."
"Here," the woman said and motioned for Phipp’s hand. She took it and held it. "Hmm. Yes. Very likely you’ll die this year."
Phipp gave a cry and fell back into his chair. He broke into nervous laughter. The laughter sounded more like a wail.
"But that’s good. That’s good. It’s time you died," the medium said.
Phipp returned his attention to her, his face as white as his teeth.
"You say it’s good that I die?"
"Oh, my son, you’ve already died. You’re so long dead that your soul rots even as we speak. And you came here so alive, with that lavender originally opened, I do believe, so that it filled over half your crown; and, too, with your violet shooting out, spreading everywhere, gobbling up learning like a sponge." She chuckled. "You always did want to be smart, didn’t you, young doctor?"
"Well . . . yes."
"And so did you become, I see. You gained smartness but you gave up understanding, didn’t you?"
"There’s not any."
"Not from whence you came. Not in who you are."
"So, being the ignorant bastard that I am . . . "
"Said by your own tongue, I hear. And, possibly, well."
"How will I die?"
The woman’s face sobered. "I think you’ll drown," she replied thoughtfully, "You could drown in the quiet waters of a river, like the Coosa outside our little mall here. Or you could drown in your bathtub after a drunken spill there. Or you could drown by the tightness of a rope you put around your own neck. All those opportunities open to you." She stopped. She eyed him certainly. "Or you could die the slowest and most horrible of deaths that mortals know."
"What? Dismemberment?"
"No, young doctor. I speak of the death that self awareness brings. The death that ego dreads most: to recognize itself for what it is. Oh, how horrible! How vulnerable do we become when we dare to die so that we might live again."
"You sound like an Evangelical. So, what’s next? You break into an unknown tongue?"
"I
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About the Book
Phipp Kearney is a college professor who should have been a criminal. He, who grew up in a torture chamber hidden behind a middle class front door, suffers with a ruinous personality. His life is a waiting room for his childhood to sneak into the present and destroy him. The loss of his wife and his university position loom before him. Yet he neither understands why these losses are imminent nor recognizes the troubles that precipitated them. In a bitter-end effort, his wife lures him into a therapy called Memory Work. He accedes, and begrudgingly begins to write. In a cabin upon Georgia’s mighty Coosa River, with neighbors out of the book of the too familiar, he finds that past and present merge into a lethal profile of himself. Still, with a sense of stoicism and raillery, he shares with the reader his memories of being stripped of ego, self-esteem, spontaneity, creativity, and the ability to love, along the road toward disconnectedness as an adult. Infidelity, bigotry, suicide, and the masks of battery and abuse, scar the landscape over which Phipp travels in his search to unravel his past—a twelve year old boy and timid old man his most potent therapists.
About the Author
J J Garrett is a product of Georgia. He is a novelist, a poet, a researcher, and an educator. He holds a Ph.D., M.Ed., and B.A. from various Georgia colleges. He has lived in and traveled most of the U.S. and Central America. He has consolidated his search for lore into six novels and seven chapbooks of poem (now in anthology) with a resolve to return literary fiction back to Planet Earth. He is married; has too many animals around the house.