Mortal as I am, I know that I was born for only one day. But when I see the stars circling in their orbits, my feet no longer touch the ground. — Ptolemy
August 1975 and I was on a road trip, a sabbatical the fortuneteller had predicted. Two months earlier, before the sabbatical and the unfortunate, job-related incident would come true, I found it odd that a coworker, scribbling on paper as she asked, wanted to know the month, day, hour, and place I was born. She’d organized a get-together, including wine and a seer, to read our birth charts and tarot. I’d agreed to attend since I never paid much attention to astrology or worried that a forecast would scare me. The night of the readings, the hired seer informed us that she’d legally changed the spelling of her name from Jeannie to Genie. I’m not sure if this was to improve her clairvoyance, but Genie didn’t arrive in a bottle; instead, she arrived in a dark-blue caftan with tinted, false eyelashes to match.
We’d carry our wine glasses, one at a time, to the porch of my friend’s riverfront home where the seer sat. A hanging sheet served as a privacy curtain between rooms. Behind Genie, through the porch’s many windows, I watched geese backlit by an orange sunset peck at the ground, oblivious to us women inside who were about to learn our fate.
Spreading my chart before me, she first warned to stay away from Capricorns. I laughed, thinking of two relationships I’d had in the past seven years that failed. How could she have known the only boyfriends I ever had were that sign? She went on at length, but I’d stopped listening until she said that I’d soon take a long break between careers. Puzzled since I liked my job, I asked if I would quit or be fired.
She rolled up the chart and, handing it to me, said, “Neither.” She then spread out the tarot. While looking down and turning cards, her eyes, veiled by blue lashes, focused on the one for death. The image of a skeleton holding a sickle, blade down with both hands as if using it as a cane to prop up its bones made me recall a terrifying dream I’d had years ago about my own demise and how I was unable to summon fear, a simple earthly emotion. In it, I was covered by a sheet, being wheeled on a gurney to the hospital basement, knowing I was about to be autopsied.
In the elevator, I watched the scene from above as two nurses discussed where they should eat lunch, rushing to deliver my sheet-covered body, that, reduced to an inanimate object, wanted but was unable to suggest a restaurant.
I asked Genie about the card, then my dream’s significance. She assured me the dream and the card, as well as my chart, foretold not death but transformation, new beginnings, predicting that between my current job and a long sabbatical I’d later be employed in the art field.
* * *
That sabbatical Genie predicted had crept up on me as I drove to the end of New Jersey. While driving, I recalled my first Capricorn boyfriend, rarely agreeing with me on any subject. He’d questioned how the autopsy dream could have been so terrifying if I couldn’t feel fear. My reply was that while experiencing it, I was bewildered why fear couldn’t be summoned no matter how hard I tried. I wondered if, without fear, pain might still be present when it was inevitable that the doctor in the hospital basement was waiting to saw open my skull.
I met that first Capricorn at the same Jersey Shore town where I’d be renting an efficiency for the month of August. Both teenagers at the time, what started as a summer romance became a long-distance one lasting five years. In the beginning, we’d spend nights on the beach in lifeguard chairs, looking out to the ocean, watching the moonlit tide, the muffled sounds of the boardwalk behind us. Seventeen, he looked like a young, long-haired Tom Cruise, a good Catholic boy who attended an all-boys high school in Philadelphia. I was sixteen, a fallen-away Catholic attending a New Jersey public school. Neither of us were quite sure where our lips and hands should go, but as time passed and the more experienced we got with placement, not only did we become less passionate but also less tolerant of each other.
While visiting him, anything I attempted never met his standards: He’d throw away bacon I’d prepared and start over, rewrap gifts and refold laundry. Once-amorous letters and phone calls became less frequent. I wouldn’t hear from him for months, then he’d call or write like we’d spoken the day before, inviting me to come to Philadelphia for the weekend. I’d arrive, only to learn he was out with friends, and I’d spend hours with his mom and siblings while they moved around the house, going about their business. I found myself cradling a mug of cold coffee in front of me, the only one waiting. Then he’d appear without apology.
One weekend I told him, “I can’t do this anymore.” He walked me to my car, silent, without emotion. On the long drive home, I wondered what those five years meant, if anything.
The second Capricorn looked like a young Marlon Brando. We’d dated on and off for two years, in a time before cellphones were commonplace. Not hearing from him for weeks at a time, I’d spend hours staring at the landline, willing him to call. Eventually my willpower worked, and he’d invite me to dinner in his neighborhood. At the restaurant, he seemed distracted, nervous.
Afterward, as we drove in my car, he ridiculed the Beatles playing in my 8-track, then said I was using the brakes too much and it was making him physically nauseous. Later, at a red light, he yelled for us to “duck down.” Since the area was known for gang warfare, right away I assumed there might be gunfire, stray bullets. When the coast was clear, I asked what happened. “My girlfriend was crossing the street. I didn’t want her to see us.” After two years of infrequent dating, he’d never mentioned a girlfriend, the one I’d soon learn he had every intention of marrying, since like him she was Portuguese. After losing touch, he’d call only once more to say that they had a son.
* * *
I’d chosen this same seaside town in which I’d been with the first Capricorn, not for nostalgia’s sake but for its comforting, familiar scenery and the tranquility of the ocean. The tiny rental was a street-level, dingy apartment with no windows, the only natural light filtering through frosted-glass shutters on the door leading outside. I was lucky to find anything, since summer rentals were booked months in advance. The living room with sleeper sofa and kitchen were one room, plus a bathroom. With a month to go, I already felt claustrophobic.
My girlfriends would visit on weekends, talking about their boyfriends and careers, asking if I was hoping to find either in this beach town. I wasn’t. I had to admit that I was lonely on Sundays when my friends left for their weekly jobs until Fridays when they’d return, feeling like a monk who’d taken an involuntary vow of silence, having no one to talk to unless I’d mention food items when placing orders at the local diner or thanking a grocery cashier, all strangers. But I needed this sabbatical to gather my thoughts, to erase the image of my former boss, a long-time family friend, nice enough to have given me a job I loved. Now he was dead, beheaded in a horrific car accident on his way to work, all the years put into building his business now irrelevant. I also needed time to evaluate why, regarding men, I only seemed drawn to one astrological sign.
Each day I felt no guilt sleeping till noon; then I’d pack some things and walk to the beach. The streets would be filled with bright and cheerful early risers. I’d find a spot on the sand and lay down my towel. Genie had sparked my curiosity in zodiac signs, and before leaving on my trip, I’d bought a book about astrology’s place in history.
My hand a visor, I shielded my eyes from the bright August sun reflecting off sand and water. To my left sat fit, young lifeguards high in their chairs, looking to the ocean, sporadically blowing warning whistles, their red nylon jackets unzipped to show their tanned chests.
I took the book from my bag, surprised to learn that astrology was the origin of science itself. Not only scientists but doctors, kings, and explorers put their trust in the solar system to govern their lives, predicting not only good fortune but illness and the dates when their own or others’ deaths would arrive. The Three Wise Men were astrologers, not kings. Ptolemy, the Second century astronomer, mathematician, geographer, and writer of the revered Almagest (astronomy) and Tetrabiblos (astrology), had blamed deformed births and violent deaths on the sun, moon, and ruling planets as they coincided with a particular time a soul would enter the world. Columbus, aided by mathematicians, charted his course with the aid of planetary tables. Shakespeare often referred to the heavens’ influence in his writing, and William Harvey, physician to King James I, on discovering the circulation of blood, believed it was tied to the circling of the planets. Until the end of the nineteenth century, astrology and astronomy would remain closely related.
I found Capricorns were ruled by Saturn, a malignant and destructive planet. Males born under it could be sarcastic, selfish, and emotionally unavailable, disappearing for months at a time. I wasn’t “throwing roses at myself,” an expression my mom often used, since according to the book, Scorpios, known to be jealous and possessive, had negative traits too. From my double-Capricorn experience, I found this to be true: It was difficult for a jealous, possessive Scorpio to keep track of emotionally unavailable Capricorns who’d disappear for months at a time. Being an only child didn’t help, since I often was possessive of girlfriends, jealous that they had siblings to occupy their time while I sat alone feeling like an afterthought.
* * *
My daily routine was boring yet comforting. The weather cooperated, allowing me long days at the beach, but the nights were the loneliest, when I’d walk the boardwalk, hearing the sounds of life surround me, barely having an excuse to use my voice. Sometimes, even though I knew the way around, I’d ask for directions just to see if my vocal cords still worked.
When Labor Day arrived, I knew I had to get my act together, get back to reality, leave this oceanside city and find a job. My friends would come to celebrate the three-day weekend, but they’d leave early that last day to beat the traffic. The apartment cleaned, I packed my car, then walked the two-mile boardwalk one last time. At the farthest pier, where the rides and stores ended, I walked down the steps to the beach. I climbed a lifeguard chair and sat looking out to the ocean. The sky was clear with a sliver of moon. From the zodiac book I’d been reading, I’d learned what the constellation looked like and searched the sky for Capricornus, the Horned Goat. I contemplated the astrological signs pointing to the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy and the American and French Revolutions. I thought of Ebenezer Sibly, a Freemason, author, and doctor, faithful to astrology, predicting the French and American Revolutions, foreseeing that America would win the Revolutionary War and go on to become a secure, prosperous, and influential nation. Sibly was so passionately devoted to learning how the stars ruled our lives that when he was young, he locked himself in an attic for two years, receiving his meals through a hole in the door. His work seemed more involved than the simple task of constructing one’s birth chart.
I’d just located the constellation when two beach police approached, carrying a flashlight, telling me the area wasn’t safe at night and no one was allowed after dark. I climbed down from the chair, thinking of all those nights years before when I’d never been caught in the dark on the beach with my first Capricorn.
My sabbatical over, I was back to the life I’d left. My cousin had called with a job offer. She worked for a major publishing house and arranged an interview for me, a position in the art department laying out copy for books. I resented my mom for secretly calling her to get me out of the house. I guessed that by October my parents were tired of my comfortable routine coming home late from bars with friends on weekends, while, Monday through Friday, when my friends had career obligations, I’d stay up half the night watching classic movies, devouring whole boxes of cookies.
The interview went well, and I was hired. After a few weeks there, I realized one of Genie’s predictions came true: I was now in the art field. Eventually, my old friends all married and moved away, but I’d made new ones at my new job. One night after work, I made a quick run to a store in town, and while waiting for a traffic light to change, I started feeling old and sorry for myself, being twenty-three and still living in my parent’s house, not having a husband or boyfriend. It was clear that friends who once visited me during my shore sabbatical had all matured and moved on, meeting life’s milestones. I stared into space when someone crossed in front of my car, then turned to look at me. Realizing we were casual friends in high school, we waved at each other, and he ran to my driver’s-side window to say a quick hello, suggesting we should hang out sometime. Soon after that, he called, and we began dating. My mother thought he resembled Che Guevara. As fall turned to winter, I ignored the bitter cold and the lingering snow, my new relationship helping me survive the season I found most depressing. He let me know we’d be going to a jazz club in the city on Saturday with some of his friends to celebrate his birthday. He had one pierced ear. I bought him a tiny, silver dragon earring.
The night of his birthday, we met at his apartment, where I handed him the box. As he opened it, I glanced at the calendar on the wall behind him, trying to recall what was so familiar about the month of January. It only took a moment to realize, yet right then and there, knowing my love life would never be as significant an event as the French or American Revolution or a president’s assassination, I wondered if I should heed Genie’s advice.
