Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [5]
“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