Between the Head and the Heart Lines

Sibley notices immediately that Arianne Hebert’s life story is scattered across her palm like a handful of freshly tossed pick-up sticks, she’d be easily misled, easily convinced. There is very little space between her thumb and life line, and the shallow heart line with the circles across it – like someone had pressed two pennies into her palm – indicate this woman has suffered. The woman with a billion dollars in the bank has no fate line on either hand and the head line is so shallow, Sibley uses a magnifying glass and sketches the lines on a piece of paper, to show Arianne what she’s talking about when she says, you have no future, you have no past.

Sibley Young has been reading palms for twenty-five years, blackmailing rich clients for two. She grew up in the two-bedroom apartment upstairs. This is her mother’s “Crystal Palace and Chiromancy” shop, now curtained off from the world and stripped of the neon signs, with the only evidence her mother ever existed, a deep pain in the middle of Sibley’s palm, between the head and the heart lines. When she was ten years old, she started working alongside her mother who read palms and tarot cards for the wealthy Toronto socialites who needed weekly reminders that everything they had would never go away.

Arianne, the heiress to the Hebert fortune has somehow made it to forty with sad and indeterminate palm lines.

“Would you mind if I took some photos?” Sibley grabs her digital camera from under the cash register.

“I need to know today. Does he love me? Or is he after my money?”

Sibley knows the easy answer. Arianne Hebert is the ten-times-granddaughter of Rolande Hebert, perfumier to the House of Bourbon, whose ancestors were miraculously not murdered by Napoleon III. Now, Hebert Inc. mixes unique perfumes for celebrities, owns two of the largest make-up brands in the world, and half of the wine-producing land in France. They’re known as the rich woman’s Hermès. The dog-walker may not have been after her money before their little meet-cute in the park, but why would a guy end a relationship no matter how mismatched when he makes forty-dollars a dog, fifty for an extra-large breed, and Arianne makes a million dollars a week by simply existing? Arianne tripping over a mastiff was a lottery ticket and he’d be a fool to not cash it in.

“He wants to keep working. That means something doesn’t it?” Arianne presses the corner of her eye with a shellacked pinkie.

Arianne also said he wanted to expand his business, maybe get on television to talk about the breedism that negatively affects the pack of Rottweilers, Dobermans, Mastiffs, and Bullies in his care. He wants to be famous.

“Didn’t you say he stopped walking dogs a few weeks ago?” Sibley videos the woman’s unique palms, the tops and sides of her hands, and her arms up to the elbows. Then takes photos.

“Only because he had to join me in Paris for a meeting with the president’s wife.”

“He had to join you?”

“He’s been so lonely since his golden retriever, Glossy, died. I couldn’t leave him.”

“Who’s taking care of his litter of special clients now?”

“We hired a couple of young men who’d been volunteering at the humane society.”

“We?”

“Well, he can’t afford to pay them a living wage, and I can’t stomach the idea of someone not getting paid what they’re due.”

“How long have you been having doubts?”

“I don’t have any doubts, but my friend…Trish…she’s the one who referred me to you. She said she got a bad feeling when she shook his hand. She’s very sensitive to that sort of thing. Like you.”

Trish? Sibley doesn't have a client named Trish. “She referred you to me? She’s a client of mine?”

“I’m not sure. She’s a consultant. Works with people like me who find themselves in this sort of predicament.”

Shit.

“What’s her last name?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest, she’s very. Secretive.”

“But she’s a friend?”

“Not a friend, I guess. Helping me. Like you.”

If this Trish woman referred Arianne to Sibley, Trish has been told that Sibley can be trusted or that they were conned out of $50K, and they believe Sibley’s the mountebank, which would make Arianne Herbert, a plant.

“I’d love to meet her.” Sibley sends the photos from her camera to her printer. “Just a minute.”

“I really do have to be going.” Arianne wraps the scarf around her neck, tying it at the front in a French twist. The Hebert silk scarf is worth as much as Sibley’s car.

When Sibley returns with the photos of Arianne’s hands, she packs up the tarot cards and astrological charts, before spreading the pictures across the harvest table in the middle of the shop. Sibley has no intention of reading them, she only needs to get Arianne under her control.

~

It doesn’t take long for Arianne to succumb. She sits just as Sibley instructs, back bent, arms straight out in front of her, head limp and relaxed with her chin resting against her chest.

“Who referred you to me today?”

“Dilys Firth, but I call her Trish.”

“Who is Dilys Firth?”

“A spiritual consultant.”

“What does that mean?”

“Trish helps people who are being emotionally conned.”

“Conned by whom?”

“Anybody, really.”

“Did you call her because you were worried about being blackmailed by me?”

“I thought she might help me with Thomas, but she said that she can’t predict the future.”

“Does she think I can predict the future?”

“She sent me to you because…”

“Because what?”

“You…”

Arianne is coming out of her spell. Sibley’s incantation normally gets her fifteen minutes.

“Am I the blackmailer? Sullomeeee, sullomeee, sullomeeeeeee…”

The incantation isn’t working. Arianne opens her eyes.

“What do you see?” Arianne asks, as though she hadn’t been asleep for five minutes.

If her mother were here, she’d know what to do, but her mother would offer to follow the dog-walker around for weeks, she’d give up hours of unpaid time to ensure this pathetic woman didn’t have to worry about a thing.

“I see a fate that was determined before you were born. It runs deep in both hands, intersecting the head, the heart and the life lines.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your right hand, your dominant hand, represents external action, the conscious choices you make, the impact of family, your wealth and fame, for example, and the choices you made that have steered you to where you are today.”

“I never had a choice. I’m here because of my family.”

“Yes. I see that. Your lines are chaotic, and they appear to have been imprinted, which corresponds with that theory.”

“And my left hand?” Arianne wipes the sweat from her upper lip with the corner of her scarf, still tied around her neck.

“The left hand is the subconscious, your karma.” Sibley pushes the photo closer, circles the faint lines between the head and the heart lines with a blue marker.

She kneads the same spot on her own left hand. When she was a child, her mother had traced the mystic cross with a feather pen dipped in her own blood, pressed Sibley’s tiny palm against her own and promised that she would live forever there, that they’d forever be connected. Now, it’s a gaping hole full of grief.

“What is that circle?” Arianne points to one of the penny prints.

“It is your due,” Sibley says.

“What am I due?”

“Nothing. You’re owed nothing in this life, and you deserve even less.”

Arianne quietly sobs. “That’s cruel.”

~

Sibley’s mother held monthly seances where rich people enchanted loved ones back from the dead. Toward the end, she had people flying up from New York to learn their futures, including their deaths. They wanted to know their ancestors weren’t swimming in a lake of fire. Her mother never disclosed how they would die because she believed, like a good book or film, spoilers ruined all the fun. Sibley never feared her mother’s death because she had faith that somehow, they’d be able to connect. She’s tried a hundred times and her mother hasn’t answered the calls.

Now, almost forty, she’s made more in three years than her mother made her entire life and Sibley doesn’t care what she has to do to get the money her mother deserved.

~

“I don’t mean to be cruel. I see Thomas.”

“How do you know his name is Thomas?”

“It is Thomas, right?” Sibley forgot that Arianne hadn’t wanted to share his name.

“Yes, but.”

“I see Thomas very clearly. He is turning handles on the front doors of houses and waiting for one to open.”

“I’m an unlocked door?” Arianne is surprised.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Arianne removes her scarf and uses it to blow her nose.

“What if I lock the door?”

“I suggest you do.”

Arianne pushes the scarf into her cashmere sleeve and opens her purse. She places three hundred dollars on the table.

“Thank you.” Sibley watches Arianne. “Can I ask you another question. About Trish?”

“Please don’t. I’m afraid I’ve said too much already.”

What hold does this Dilys Firth woman have on her?

Arianne reaches into her bag and takes out another four hundred dollars, slipping it under a photo on the table. “Thank you for your discretion.”

Sibley observes Arianne as she walks to her car, shoulders slumped. Arianne whispers something to the driver who stares back at Sibley watching between a narrow opening in the curtains. The driver closes the windows of the black Phantom. It’s up to Arianne now. The devastation in Arianne’s face revealed that she is in love with the gold-digging Thomas. Just as Sibley once dreamed of moving to Scotland with her mother, living the rest of their lives in a thatched cottage on a hill overlooking the sea, the rug’s been pulled out from under her, and she’ll have to find happiness in all that money.

~

Friday morning, Sibley runs through the client list. She has six bookings, five repeats including Marcus March, a man who stupidly dumped a box of puppies in Lewiston, New York. After a deep, deep internet dive, Sibley thought she’d found the unicorn, a wealthy man without skeletons, but then she found it. Ten years ago, he’d paid handsomely to have the internet combed of the video originally posted on Twitter. Someone found it and included it in a Substack note about rescue dogs, with #sharktank, misspelling Marcus’ company, @thebueatyplace. The footage was grainy enough that he wouldn’t jump out at someone, but also the stacker had four followers, three of whom seemed to be aliases of himself. Marcus had been a dragon on Dragon’s Den and The Beauty Place was now called Victoria’s Beauty Shoppe, since his wedding to Victoria Haliburton. This would be an easy $50 grand.

Sibley sent the email on Monday. She described herself as someone who’d overheard his drunk confession at a bar, said she was disgusted when she learned he was married to Victoria Haliburton, spokesperson for the Humane Society and staunch critic of animal testing, and what did Victoria think of him dumping a box of puppies on the side of the Niagara Scenic Parkway? Someone had tried to locate the owner of the atomic email address, but Sibley had dedicated a year of her life developing a process that not even the best hackers would figure out.

Sibley jumps at the sound of the bell above the door. She forgot to lock it when she went out for the mail.

“Sorry. I’m not open to the public.” She swallows her heart now beating at the back of her throat.

A woman wearing a floor length eggplant coloured leather jacket enters with an Hebert scarf wrapped around her neck like a cowboy’s neckerchief. She turns the lock on the tinted glass door.

“Sorry. I’m not open.”

The woman sweeps her wind-blown blonde hair to the side, casually braiding it and tying the end with an elastic she pulls from her wrist. She tips her John Lennon sunglasses to the top of her head, and the whites of her eyes light up the room. Her lips have been stained a plummy pink either by nature or an expensive silky lipstick, her cheeks rosy from the wind, and her slender fingers – the ones she’d delicately tied her hair with – are like eagle talons, nails tipped with black polish, curved and filed to a point.

“Sorry, but.”

“Sibley Young?”

“I’m Sibley. And you are?”

“Dilys Firth.”

“Can I help you Dilys?”

“I’d like to chat, if you’ve got time.”

“I don’t, actually. I have a busy schedule today.”

“Marcus March?”

“He’s on the schedule.”

“He won’t be coming today.”

“Why’s that?”

“I think you know why.”

“I’m sure I don’t.” Sibley is nervous, and it isn’t because Dilys has uncovered her little scheme. Dilys exists not just here today in this moment but in Sibley’s journals upstairs in her bedroom. Sibley has lived this moment, she’s scribbled a picture of a beautiful woman in a long purple coat in the margins of schoolbooks, on the backs of printed paper images of other people’s hands. This is the future.

“Victoria called me on Wednesday. Marcus broke down and admitted the truth to her. She’s all he cared about. They’ve planned a news conference this afternoon. But that isn’t why I’m here.”

Sibley motions for Dilys to sit while she pulls out the burgundy leather chair opposite.

Dilys picks a piece of food from between her teeth with her pinky talon.

Sibley remains still.

“Victoria doesn’t like animals. It’s all a marketing ploy.” Dilys reaches for Sibley’s hands and she’s powerless against her. An energy field surrounds them, and Sibley’s locked in this embrace.

Dilys rubs a tear from Sibley’s eye and licks her thumb.

Dilys drops her head, rolls it from side to side.

Sibley breaks free, pushes her chair back and falls on to the floor.

“Whoa, whoa. How'd you do that?”

“You never met my mother, I guess.”

“I have actually.” Dilys grabs her hands again.

“No. Stop. What do you want?”

“I think you know.”

“I don’t. Actually. Really, I don’t.” The images of Dilys in her dreams reappear in Sibley’s head, swirling, dancing around, just as they had when she was a child.

“Your mother sent me.”

“What? No.”

Sibley sits on the velvet chaise under the portrait of Madame Beaufort, her maternal great grandmother.

“By my calculations, you’ve raised a couple of million dollars so far.”

“Six.”

“Six million? Wow. Good for you.”

“I can’t stop.”

How can Sibley describe the pain in her hand, the emptiness forged by her mother’s absence, her heart line as broken as the life lines in both hands, all the lines engraved before she was born now thinned and hollowed of meaning?

“I can’t.”

“Sibley, you must.” Dilys’ lips touch her ear. “My darling, it is time to move on.”

“Mummy. I can’t.”

“You must.”

Dilys removes her leather coat. Her dress the colour of her peachy skin, her body sinewy and slender, she stands before her without moving. Yet her hands surround her hands, the nail of her index finger carves new lines in her palms. Sibley’s life stretches beyond her wrist, curving down and joining the lines on the back of her hand. The head line unites with the life line above the thenar eminence of her thumb; the heart line arches up toward her index finger. The spot bordered by her health and fate, between the head and the heart lines, the mystic cross, it throbs. The emptiness she’d been trying to fill with money, gaping, aching, waiting.

Sibley screams in pain as Dilys plunges into its depths with her nail.

~

Sibley opens her eyes to see Arianne unravelling her scarf and then running it under the tap beside the coffeemaker. She kneels beside Sibley and rests the cold silk against her forehead. Sibley sits up. A man and a Great Dane, dark silhouettes in the doorway. Thomas.

“Are you okay? Your door was swinging open and closed. Thomas noticed on his walk and called me.”

Sibley manages to stand and staggers over to her red book. Her next five targets have been erased from her schedule.

When she asks Arianne about Trish, about Dilys. Who is she? Where can she find her?

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Arianne says. She’s never heard of her.

“This is my fiancé, Thomas.”

“Fiancé?”

“Yes. We’re going to be married in Paris in August.” Arianne looks happy.

Sibley shakes his hand.

She turns them over. She stares at her hands. Her palms, soft and warm, the tenderness when she touches her mother’s spot between the head and the heart feels less like fear, more like love, happiness even.