The Cable Between Palms

Margaret sat on her screened porch, the morning sun warming her arthritis-stiffened fingers. At seventy-eight, she'd become something of a family spy—not the sinister kind, but the benevolent sort. She noticed things: the way her granddaughter's voice tightened before she announced bad news, how her son still clicked his pen when nervous, a habit he'd had since kindergarten. Being the family spy meant carrying their stories, their secrets, their hearts.

She glanced at the old photograph on her wicker table. There she was at twenty-two, reading palms at the Jersey Shore boardwalk. The Great Marguerita, they'd called her. She'd trace the lifeline of some anxious teenager, promising romance and adventure, always guessing correctly because young people all wanted the same things. Her own palm had been read by a fortune teller who told her she'd have three great loves. Margaret had laughed then, but now, thinking of Harold, her children, and especially her granddaughter Ruby, she understood.

The telephone rang—the landline she refused to disconnect, its cable stretching beneath the floorboards like an umbilical cord to another era. Harold had installed it in 1972, the same year they'd watched the moon landing on their first cable TV. Now Harold was gone, but the cable remained, connecting her to the world.

"Grandma?" Ruby's voice crackled through the receiver. "Can you come over? I have something to tell you."

Margaret smiled into the phone. As a spy, she already knew. She'd noticed Ruby's morning sickness last week, the way her hand had lingered on her stomach. But she would feign surprise. That was part of the job too—being witness to each generation's becoming, pretending not to know until they were ready to tell their own stories.

"Of course, darling," she said. "I'll bring my palm cards. Maybe we can see what the future holds for all of us."

Outside, a palm tree swayed in the breeze. The cable between her home and Ruby's would soon carry another generation's stories. And Margaret, the family spy, would be there to witness every single one.