AEgypt (32 page)

That was called “rectification of the chart.” The reason for such rectification was obvious to Val: if all the babies who were born in a single hour in all the hospitals of a single city, all therefore under identical astral influences, would have fates and fortunes subtly or radically different from one another (and surely they would), then each soul on earth was subtly or radically different from every other, and that difference could not be apprehended in the mere accurate placement of planetary symbols in a scheme of houses. And in any case, as far as Val could tell there was no end to how accurate you could be, and with every advance in accuracy everything could change, a person's planets could slip from one sign or house into another, oppositions could be negated, squares turn into meaningless rhomboids.

No, what mattered always more than accuracy, more than math, was
apprehension
: the growing conviction that you had it right, that it made sense. Oh look here, Mercury is inconjunct with Saturn in the seventh house, of
course
; and your mother must have had her moon in Gemini, of
course
she did. When the twelve houses became to Val's mind's eye not wedges of an abstract pie but
houses
—and not anyone's houses but this soul's houses, houses that, ramshackle or sleekly marbled or grim and machicolated, could be no one else's—then, and only then, did she begin to speak.

"Houses,” she said to Spofford. “There are twelve houses in a horoscope, and dwelling in them are planets. Twelve compartments of life, twelve different kinds of things life has in it, that's the houses; and seven kinds of pressures or forces or influences on those things, that's the planets. See? Now, depending on when and where you were born, and just what stars were coming up over the horizon just then, we arrange these houses one to twelve, counterclockwise from here, where you get born."

"Hm,” Spofford said.

"The trick is,” Val said, “that this chart is made of time, and so are these houses; and we have to turn them into places to be in.

"The first three houses, from here to here, are the first quaternary: the first fourth, see, because there are four sets of three in twelve, right? The first quaternary is dawn. And spring. And birth. Okay?” She fingered another cigarette from within her crumpled pack, and lit it. “Okay. The first house is called
Vita
: that's Latin, you shmoe, you wouldn't know it.
Vita
: Life. The House of Life. Little Spofford gets born, and begins his journey."

She went on, pointing out to Spofford where his planets lay, in which houses, and whether they were comfortable there, or even exalted, or quite the reverse, and what it all might portend for Spofford's fate, and for his happiness, and for his Growth. He listened happily, intrigued and satisfied to hear himself articulated into parts in this way, his inchoate self set up in neat geometries, and the general dun color of his soul (as he perceived it usually) broken by the prism of his chart into a spectrum of clear hues, some broad bands, some narrow ones.

"What's this?” he asked; a line from Saturn in his own house, the twelfth—
Carcer
, the Prison—connected to Venus, just opposite in the sixth house.

"Opposition,” Val said. “Challenge. Saturn in the twelfth house can mean isolation. Self-discipline. Aloneness, gloomy hermit stuff. Uh-uh. Opposed to Venus in
Valetudo,
the sixth house, which is the house of service sort of; there, she means bringing harmony to other people's lives. Sometimes by intervention, getting your two cents in and helping out. Okay?"

Spofford looked down at this tussle. “So who wins?"

"Who knows? That's the challenge.” She dispersed smoke with a wave of her hand from before her. “
But
. There's more. See: here's Mars right next door in the seventh house, that's
Uxor
, the Wife; and old Mars is trine with Saturn over here, and when two planets in opposition have a third planet that's sextile to one and trine to the other, that's called an Easy Opposition. Easy because no matter how hard the opposition, it's balanced by the big weight of the third planet.

"Mars in
Uxor
! Means maybe a romance started on an impulse, that you just never get out of. One of those with a lot of yelling, you know? Or it could make for real strong partners in a marriage, buddies to the end.

"That's up to you."

Done with what she knew so far, Val crossed her hands on the table before her.

"Well,” said Spofford.

"Well."

"Basically,” he said, tugging down his cap, “what I hoped to find out about was the future."

"Yeah?"

"About a certain woman. My chances. How it looks from here."

"What certain woman? Hey, take it easy. I don't want to know her name. But astrally. What's her sign?"

"I can never remember. I think Pisces."

"Pisces and Aries aren't all that great, first off,” Val said. “But there's so many factors."

"Not all that great?"

"Fire and water,” Val said. “Remember. And Aries is the youngest sign. Pisces is the oldest."

Spofford regarded the chart which Val had turned toward him. He seemed to be able to discern in it anyway all that he needed for the moment to know. Saturn, the pull of melancholy, his small house; a gray sad stone, like the gray sad stone he seemed to feel so often in his own breast. Solitude.

But Venus, Saturn's soft-smiling opposite number ... An old soul, Rosie had said to him once, a jolly old soul, in an old old water sign. He'd already intervened: he would fight for her too, if fighting could help. And Mars, fiery, his own planet, inhabited the house of taking wives (Spofford's scarred forefinger touched the sign—

Image34.jpg

—and had not he, Spofford, been a warrior? Maybe he could get some help here, if it came to it. Like the GI Bill.

Shine on, then, he thought; shine on. “It don't look bad,” he said, rising. “It looks all right."

When he was gone, Val sat for a time with her hands folded before her, and then with her chin resting in the cup of one hand, and then with both hands laced behind her head.

Rosie Mucho had better be careful, she thought. That guy has set his cap for her. He's got a moon in Taurus, too, a whim of iron. Rosie had better be ready for that.

She turned in her chair. Behind her on the bookshelves were several old-fashioned letter files, the kind with orange backs and black-and-white spatterdash spines, little brass clips to close them with, and leather tabs on their sides to draw them out by. She chose one of these, opened it, and after a little search amid its contents drew out a twelve-part pie chart like the unfinished one she had been explicating for Spofford, only all different, different domiciles housing different guests differently disposed. She placed it next to Spofford's, and cradling her brow with one hand and drumming with the fingers of the other, she studied both together.

Pisces: Love and Death. That's how Val thought of the sign. Chopin was a Pisces. Only here was a commonsense ascendant, Taurus with Venus in the House of Life.

Well, she was a good girl, and probably a survivor, but a little crazy; more crazy than she probably knew. Moon in Scorpio: Scorpio is Sex and Death.

She had better be careful.

The snow continued, growing heavier, through that day and the night; the big plows came out toward morning, sailing ghostlike behind their bright lights, their blades casting aside long wakes of snow. Next day when the sun shone at last the world had been neatly packed up in it; Spofford's sheep were not so round, or so white, or so soft, as the hills and woods seen from the kitchen windows of Arcady where Rosie stood waiting.

"Pst,” said the tall radiator.

"Pst,” said Sam, half in and half out of her snowsuit but ready enough to go that Rosie needed only to encase her upper half and put her out the door. The snowsuit's arms and hood hung down like a pelt Sam was shedding.

"Psst,” said the radiator.

"Pssst,” said Sam, and laughed.

"
There
he is,” said Rosie, gratefully, “right on time."

"I wanna see."

Rosie lifted her up to see a little red car turn in at the gate, fishtailing somewhat in the heedless snowplow's leavings piled there in the driveway.

"I hope they're careful,” Rosie said to Sam, pulling up the Siamese twin of her snowsuit and tucking Sam into it.

"It's slipry."

"Yep."

"Daddy can drive."

"He can?"

"You could come too."

"Not this morning. I'll see you later."

Rosie hurried Sam through the house to the vestibule and swung open the heavy front door. In the drive the little red car idled, trembling as though with cold, and breathing whitely from its tailpipe. Mike made his way toward the house carefully, holding out gloved hands for balance.

"Hi."

"Hi. Okay? Hi, hi Sam. Hey.” He gathered up the wrapped bundle of his daughter and squeezed her; Rosie, embracing herself, cold in the open doorway, waited for their colloquy. Sam had news. Mike listened.

"So what's up today?” Rosie said at last. “What's the schedule?"

"I don't know,” Mike said, looking not at Rosie but at Sam, whose fingers were in his mustache. “Maybe build a snowman, huh? Or a snow fort."

"Okay!” Sam said, wriggling to get down. “Or a snow
car
! Or a snow
hops
pittal."

"Hey, but not
here
,” Mike said. He put her down. “We'll go home and make one."

"Hey,” Rosie said to him, warningly.

"Okay."

She gave Mike a zippered case. “Blankie. Bottle for later. Don't give her milk in it while she naps; dentist says. Book. Stuff."

"Okay,” Mike said. “Ready?"

Sam, standing between them, looked from one to the other, still new at this choice.

"Bye, Sam. See you later."

"Come on, Sam. Mommie's cold in the doorway. Let's let her go inside."

Sam still would make no voluntary move to go, so Mike at last with a cheerful Whee! picked her up again and carried her off like a pirate, almost taking a header on the snowy path. The little car harrumphed. Mike climbed into the driver's side, pushing Sam in before him, must be a little crowded in there Rosie thought, but she knew Sam liked that car.

Rosie waved. Bye-bye. She smiled. She waved again, a grownup's wave, for the car, no hard feelings. She went inside and shut the door. The last segment of caught winter air went off down the hall.

Boney stood at the hall's end, hands behind his back.

"It's sort of okay,” Rosie said. “Sort of like having a good babysitter. Free.” She hadn't uncrossed her arms, they still hugged her. “He never spent this much time with her before. Never tried this hard to please her."

Boney nodded, slowly, as though considering this. He wore an old old turtleneck sweater, its stretched neck-opening far too wide for his own skinny turtle's neck which protruded from it. “Did you have anything planned for this morning?” he said.

"No."

"Well,” he said, pondering. “I'd like to have your advice about something. Talk something over."

"Sure, sure."

"What say?"

"I said
sure
,” Rosie said, releasing herself and coming to Boney's side, no need to make him shout. “Sure. What kind of something?"

"If you're sure you've got nothing else to occupy you,” Boney said, watching her closely.

"I haven't got anything else,” Rosie said smiling, taking the arm he offered her and squeezing it gently. “You know I don't."

"Well,” he said, “this might be a good opportunity then. We'll just go down along to my office there."

Every time, every time Mike went off with Sam, Rosie felt it, this cloud of guilt and loss that was absurd and unusable, a cloud she refused to stand under and yet couldn't get rid of—it was like that dream she had used repeatedly to have in the first months of Sam's life, that somebody with a right to judge had decided that Sam wasn't hers, or that Rosie wasn't competent to raise her and would have to give her up: the same sense of guilt and loss, the awful shriving off of her adulthood, and at the same time that feeling of being once again free and alone, like a child—a sneaky sense of freedom and solitary possibility that was no substitute for Sam, but was there anyway. Now either this cloud came from that dream, or both this cloud and that dream came from the same place, and what was that? Guilt, guilt over not wanting to grow up, could that be it; not wanting in your own secret kid's heart to be double or triple but only and forever single—and then loss, too, loss of everything dear to you, everything earned in growing up.

Everything, everything dear to you but yourself.

"Here we are,” Boney said, opening narrow double doors and showing her in.

Rosie had never been in what was called the office, though Boney had often been spoken of, when she was a child, as being there, occupied there, not to be disturbed there; she had used to picture him denned and brooding like a dark mage, but supposed now, hearing again in memory those injunctions, that Boney had probably been taking a nap.

And in fact in the corner there was a buttoned leather chaise longue with an afghan thrown over it which looked pretty cozy.

"The office,” Boney said.

It had once been and was still mostly a library; handsome bookcases of some light wood reached up to a coffered ceiling all around the room, even in between the deep tall windows that looked out to the garden; and they were all full, though not entirely with books, there were letter files and what seemed to be shoe boxes, and piles of old newspapers and magazines on the shelves as well.

"Mike comes every week, does he?” Boney asked, moving a pile of mail from the seat of a leather swivel chair.

"Yup.” She glimpsed what he might be driving at. “I mean just temporarily. Really, really, you know, I don't intend to hang on here the rest of your life. It's just until..."

Until what?

"Don't get me wrong,” Boney said, having laboriously cleared himself a seat, and taken it. “You're more than welcome. I was only wondering—if you are pretty sure you're not taking up again with Mike—how you're fixed for money."