Gryphon: New and Selected Stories (2 page)

“I want to know how,” Gregory said. “They all do it on TV. What do I do?”

“I don’t know,” Burrage told him. “But try this: kneel beside the bed at night and put your head down and close your eyes. Think of what you’re happy about. Then think about the things you want. That’s what people usually do when they pray.” He stopped and waited. Then he asked, “Why do you want to start doing something like this?”

“It might help,” Gregory said.

In this way, Burrage hit on the idea of astrology and horoscopes. He had noticed, at a time when he thought they had nothing in common, that Gregory’s birthday and his own were both in May, making them Taureans. One night, while Gregory was curled at his end of the sofa watching television and he himself was reading the paper, he found an astrology column and read the entry for Taureans aloud: “Show greater confidence in yourself and others will pay more attention to your ideas and comments. You cannot handle a project all alone. Share the work—and the glory.” At first Gregory said nothing, as if he hadn’t heard, but then he turned to Burrage and asked, “What’s that?”

Burrage explained that it was his fortune for tomorrow, and that the woman who wrote it was a kind of fortune-teller, and people believed that she could see into the future and tell what was about to happen before it actually happened.

“How?” Gregory asked. “How does she know?”

“It’s called astrology,” Burrage said. “It’s based on the stars and the planets. People think the planets have mysterious forces. They cause things. This says you should share your games at school tomorrow and be nice and not hog everything and not be afraid. Mostly it says not to be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” Gregory said, his eyes on the television.

“I know you’re not. But here it says that the stars will help you out not being afraid.”

“Okay,” Gregory said.

In Ann Arbor, a bookish town, Burrage had no trouble finding a paperback guide to astrology. The one he chose had a bloated, menacing star on the cover, either a red giant or an arcane symbol of some sort. At the cash register he felt quite sheepish, as if he had emotional difficulties that he was trying to cure by himself, but the clerk didn’t seem to care very much about what books he bought. He took the book to his car, drove to the nursery school, picked up Gregory, and went home. That night, after Gregory was asleep, he read the book straight through, dismayed by its complexity. Casting Gregory’s horoscope would take some time. He took fifteen minutes off from his lunch break at the bank the next day to read relevant sections of the book, which he had brought along in his briefcase, and the next night he began to put Gregory’s horoscope together at the kitchen table.

Sun in Taurus: constructive, practical, down-to-earth. Burrage marked down Gregory’s Earth sign, appropriate for farmers and others with persistence and domestic virtues. Hitler, the book informed him, had been a Taurus, as was Walt Whitman. Discouraged, he read on. At his birth, Gregory’s moon was in Cancer: “You may have a strong bond with your mother. You are good at camouflage. You excel at impersonations.” Ascendant or rising sign: Gemini. “Gemini ascending has special problems with bankers and clergymen.” Burrage read this sentence again. “
Gemini ascending has special problems with bankers and clergymen.
” He continued on. “You may hold several jobs at one time. You may well be divorced. You may lose your children.” Burrage could not get Gregory’s sign for Mercury; the procedure was too complicated. He paged through the book for Gregory’s Venus sign, which was also Gemini. “Venus in Gemini makes you pleasant, sociable, and relaxed.” The rest of the description applied only to adults. As for Mars, at Gregory’s birth, it had been in Leo: “You are friendly. But you tend to be self-centered and see most events in your own terms. You may have a habit of blowing small things out of proportion.”

“What’s that?” A voice out of nowhere came from behind Burrage. He turned around and saw Mrs. Schultz looking over his shoulder at the horoscope he was constructing. She was carrying a pair of garden clippers, their blades caked with dirt.

“Mrs. Schultz! This is a horoscope. How did you get in?”

“I was tending to things. I thought this was
my
house. Your front door was unlocked, and so I came in. I get confused in this place because all these damn-fool buildings look alike.” She gazed down at the table with an expression of pained amusement. “A horoscope? I thought you were a grown-up.”

“I
am
a grown-up. I’m using it for Gregory. He needs it.”

The noise Mrs. Schultz made could have been throat-clearing, laughter, or a cough. Burrage decided that he would not ask which one it was. “In that case,” she said, “I won’t stay. I’m going home, and you don’t have to help me this time. I’ll find my way by myself,
without
a horoscope. What’s that music I hear? Glenn Miller. Well,
that
puts me back into the bloom of youth.” She did not shuffle out but picked up her feet ostentatiously. Burrage watched her disappear down the hall and go out the front door, which she left open. He went back to work.

Burrage’s composite horoscope for Gregory presented his nephew as a rather shaky and split character with extraordinary requirements for domestic stability. The planetary signs, however, were somewhat obtuse when they were not contradictory, so Burrage decided to change them, to revise the sky. Where there was weakness, Burrage inserted strength. Where he found indecision or calamity, he substituted resolve and good fortune. In place of trauma and loss he wrote down words like “luck” and “intelligence.” This, he thought at first, would invalidate the horoscope, but he decided that if the planets had real influence, then they were influencing him now to alter Gregory’s life-plan. It was their wish.

He put up Gregory’s planetary wheel on the refrigerator door. Above the wheel he wrote down Gregory’s virtue-words in blue and yellow crayon. For the next week, he explained the chart to Gregory and told him what the planets said he would be like. He explained what all the words were and what they meant. At first Gregory was silent about all this, but one morning he asked Burrage if he could take his horoscope to school. Given permission, he put the chart in his Lone Ranger lunchbox. That afternoon, when he got into the car, he said that most of the other kids wanted Burrage to make up
their
horoscopes but that the only one he really had to do was Magda Brodsky’s.

“Who’s Magda Brodsky?” Burrage asked.

“Somebody,” Gregory said. “She’s in the class.”

“Is she your friend?”

“I guess so.”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s nice.”

“I mean, what does she
look
like?”

“I told you. She’s nice.”

“Is she your friend?”

“I guess. She doesn’t say a whole lot.”

“When’s her birthday?”

“I asked her. She said the fourth of July.”

“Is she as old as you are?”

“Yeah.”

This time, Burrage did not consult the book, although he pretended to do so whenever Gregory was in the room. He drew the wheel, wrote out the symbols for the signs in the quadrants, and then wrote down Magda Brodsky’s virtues in green and orange crayon. It was like making up a calendar that had no relation to real dates or days of the week. Burrage decided that Magda was courageous, businesslike, and articulate. In addition, she was affectionate, physically agile, sensible, and generous. The adjectives came to him easily. Burrage drew a picture of Saturn at the top of the chart, along with several five-pointed stars. He told Gregory to give the chart to Magda, and he explained what all the words were, and what they meant. Gregory took the chart to school the next day.

In the evening, after dinner, Magda’s mother called him. Being the assistant manager of a branch bank, Burrage had expected this call and thought he knew how to handle it.

“Hello, Mr. Birmingham? This is Amelia Brodsky.” She had a pleasant but resolute voice. “Look, I don’t want to disturb you, but Magda brought this sheet of paper home from school today, which she says she got from your boy. I want you to understand that I’m not objecting to it. In fact, it’s made a distinct difference in her behavior this afternoon. She’s been quite an angel. I just want to know what this thing is. Did you do it? Can you explain it to me?”

“I thought you’d be calling,” Burrage said. “Actually, it’s her horoscope, but it’s not accurate. By that I mean that I made up a horoscope to give my boy some confidence, and he took it to school. When he came
home he said his friend Magda wanted one, so I made up that one for her.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Brodsky sounded discreetly taken aback. “You see,” she began, then stopped. She tried again. “You see, it’s not that I think this little game is doing any harm.” She paused. “What do you mean when you say it’s not accurate?”

Burrage smiled and waited a moment. Then he said, “I just drew some symbols on the horoscope and listed a few virtues at the top. It’s not accurate because I didn’t check an ephemeris, where her planetary signs would be listed. I just wrote down some virtues I thought she might like to have. I’ve never met your daughter. My boy asked me to do it as a favor to her. Do you mind?”

“Well, no. That is, I don’t think so. I’m not sure. I’m not a believer in astrology. Not at all. It’s against my discipline. I’m a professional biologist.” She said this last sentence as if it were an astounding revelation, with pauses between the words.

“Well,” Burrage said, “I don’t believe in it either, and I’m a banker.”

“If you don’t believe in it,” she asked, “why did you do it?”

Burrage had had a drink in preparation for this call, which was probably why he said, “I’m trying to learn how to be a parent.”

This statement proved to be too much for Mrs. Brodsky, who rapidly thanked Burrage for explaining the whole matter to her before she hung up.

Later in the week, sitting in the dark of Gregory’s room, with a cigar in his hand and Glenn Miller playing “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” softly beside him, Burrage began a bunny story. “Once upon a time, there was a bunny who lived with his mommy and daddy bunny in the bunny hole at the edge of the great green wood.” All the bunny stories started with that sentence. After it, Burrage was deep in the terror of fictional improvisation. “One day the little bunny went hopping out on the bunny path in the woods when he met his friend the porcupine. The wind was blowing like this.” Burrage made a wind sound, and the cigar smoke blew out of his mouth. “Together the bunny and the porcupine walked down the path, gazing at the branches that waved back and forth, when suddenly the little bunny fell into a hole. It was a deep hole that
the little bunny hadn’t seen, because he had been staring at the branches waving in the wind. ‘Help!’ he cried. ‘Help!’ ”

“Uncle Burrage,” Gregory said.

“What?”

“I don’t want to hear any more bunny stories.”

“Any of them? Or just this one?”

“Any of them.” He brought his stuffed dragon closer to his face. “Tell me my horoscope.”

“It will be warm tomorrow,” Burrage said, having seen the weather reports. “It will be a fine spring day. Soon it will be summer, and you’ll be playing outside.” Burrage stopped. “You will learn to swim, and you’ll take boat rides.”

Gregory’s eyes opened. “I want a boat ride.”

“When?”

“Right away.”

“What kind of boat?”

“I don’t care. I want a boat ride. Can Magda come?”

“You want a ride in a rowboat?”

“Sure. Can Magda come?”

“Next Saturday,” Burrage said, “if the weather is good. You’ll have to remember to invite her.”

“Don’t worry,” Gregory said.

Amelia Brodsky delivered Magda promptly at nine o’clock in the morning ten days later. She kept the pleasantries to a minimum. She couldn’t stay to chat, she said, because she was on her way to the farmers’ market, where she would have to battle the crowds. She asked which lake they were going to, and when Burrage said Cloverleaf Lake, Mrs. Brodsky nodded and said there
was
a rowboat concession there, with life jackets, and with that she kissed Magda good-bye and left in her station wagon. Burrage had been glad to see her go: she was well over six feet tall and wore a button on her blouse with some slogan on it that he had been unable to read.

Magda was looking at him suspiciously. She was a small girl, even for her age, with tightly curled hair and intelligently watchful brown eyes. She was wearing jeans and a pink sweatshirt that said “Say good things about Detroit” on it, the words printed underneath a rainbow. She and
Gregory climbed into the backseat, whispering to each other but then falling silent. Burrage looked in at them. “Do we have everything?” he asked, feeling shaky himself. “Jackets, caps, snacks, and shoes?” From his list he realized how nervous he was. “Anybody have to go to the bathroom before we leave?” They both shook their heads. “All right,” he said. “Here goes.” He backed the car out of the driveway into the street, where Mrs. Schultz happened to be standing, a slightly more vacant expression on her face than was usual for her.

“Where are you going?” she asked, through the open window on the driver’s side.