The Biology of Luck (21 page)

She transfers to the bus, rides past the medical center, and then
walks the final eight blocks to the glue factory. That is Agatha's pet name for Bayview Manor, something she picked up from a magazine article on horse breeding, although the facility actually offers state-of-the-art care in modestly comfortable surroundings. The home occupies a turn-of-the-twentieth-century mansion. The structure was once the centerpiece of a vast estate, the suburban hacienda of a prosperous bauxite importer, and it has experienced previous incarnations as a coast guard station and a home for incapacitated seamen. The formal English garden and the tennis lawn have long since been cleared for the construction of a cinderblock administrative annex, and the spacious drawing rooms and parlors have been viciously subdivided, but a handful of the ancient sailors remain on the property in accordance with the original deed of sale. The living quarters are copious and sanitary. The food is abundant, if not terribly eclectic. Staten Island Community Hospital is within shouting distance. What more can an old blind woman possibly need? If Bayview isn't the Waldorf-Astoria, it certainly isn't a glue factory.

The day nurse greets Starshine at the registration desk. Miss Bohm is an elfin, puckered creature well past retirement age who could easily pass as an inmate rather than a warden. A jagged scar cuts across the left side of her face, from eye to lip; it brands her one of the last living survivors of the Hindenburg explosion. She is Starshine's opposite—a beautiful young woman thrust into premature ugliness—and maybe for that reason they have struck up a close acquaintanceship.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” says Miss Bohm. “And she's brought such a lovely basket. Agatha will be delighted.”

“It has been a while, hasn't it?” says Starshine. “I've had a hell of a month.”

“A month isn't so long. Your aunt will be overjoyed to see you. She is such a remarkable woman, that aunt of yours. And the stories she tells … a regular Gracie Allen. She has us in stitches nearly every morning. But she's also very naughty, my dear. She hides cigarettes inside her wig and smokes them in the middle of the night. You really
have to scold her for us. It's bad for her, but it's also dangerous. We can't have our patients smoking in bed.”

“How is she?” asks Starshine.

She follows Miss Bohm along the passageway. A shriveled man in a wheelchair bobs his head at her as she passes and she quickly looks away. She can't help viewing the elderly like expensive glassware: any admiration is tempered by a fear of breaking them.

“She's as well as she can be,” says Miss Bohm, “Mood swings. Lots of pent up anger. She'll be telling a delightful story and all of a sudden she'll start cussing about being penned up in the glue factory. Her mind wanders. She's like the girl in the nursery rhyme: when she's good, she's very, very good, but when she's bad, she's horrid. And I'm afraid today is one of her bad days. “

“Maybe the fruit will cheer her up. I bought the largest basket I could find.”

“That's sweet, dear,” says Miss Bohm. “But there isn't really any need. We always tell her that you've brought the largest basket. You are aware that she doesn't eat any of it. Honestly, there's no call for you to be feeding me and Nurse Tithers. But your aunt appreciates the thought.”

“I do hope the basket will cheer her up. Last time was just unbearable.”

Starshine's previous visit coincided with the farthest advance of Agatha's revisionist crusade. Having decided that her niece was unenlightened with regard to her own sister-in-law's marriage, delinquently so, she bombarded Starshine with a salvo of the woman's secrets and sufferings. Did Starshine know that her father frequented brothels along the San Francisco waterfront? That while her poor mother sewed her own dresses by hand, the bastard she had married lavished hookers with silks and satins? That she had even caught him with one of the whores in their own bedroom? The stories were whetted, painful, and often extremely inconsistent. Brazen streetwalkers instantly transmuted into high-class call girls; the back alleys of San Francisco's Barbary Coast flowed into the boulevards of prewar Munich. Aunt
Agatha further undermined her own credibility by periodically lapsing into anecdotes picked up at the family dinner table, the fragments of the history of genocide that were Uncle Luther's final legacy, so one moment Starshine's father would be carousing at a cathouse and the next he'd be liquidating kulaks. It is impossible to tell where truth lets off and fantasy takes over. But there are two convictions about which Starshine harbors absolutely no doubts. One certainty is that her father's suicide had as much to do with women as with money. Throughout her childhood, he exuded the distinctive hunger of a man on the prowl; it is the only lasting impression he had left on his ten-year-old daughter. The other certainty is that his philandering doesn't matter, that it cannot be undone, that there is no afterlife and no salvation and that the dead should be left to decay in peace. Yet Aunt Agatha values these stories immeasurably, conceives of them as some sort of perverse oral legacy, as her homage to history and justice, and as Aunt Agatha remains among the living, Starshine has no choice but to endure.

Miss Bohm knocks on Agatha's door to announce a visitor and then leaves Starshine to her mission. Starshine finds her aunt propped up on a stack of pillows. The old woman is not wearing her wig and her thin wisps of white hair give her an otherworldly, almost angelic appearance. Agatha stares when her niece enters.

“Who's there?” she demands in a mechanized voice.

“Hi, Aunt Agatha,” says Starshine. “I've brought you a basket of fruit.”

“I don't want fruit. It rots and it stinks. I want a cigarette.”

The old woman sniffs and blinks her vacant eyes.

“What kind of fruit?” she asks.

“Nectarines, oranges, plumbs, apricots.”

“Bosc pears?”

“Yes, Bosc pears. I remember what you like.”

“How many?” demands Agatha. “How many pears?”

“Five,” Starshine lies. There is only one.

“What a waste of money,” says Agatha. “I could have made do with one or two.”

“Only the best for my favorite aunt.”

“Then come here and give your favorite aunt a hug.”

Agatha extends her arms like a sleepwalker and Starshine folds into her embrace. The old woman's body smells of industrial soap and disinfectant. She is too clean. Like an object on permanent display in a museum. And it is this aroma, such a contrast to her surrogate mother's lost smell of burning wood and hyacinth, upon which Starshine blames her discomfort. She sits down on the edge of the bed. She will make this a short visit.

“So how have you been since last time I saw you?” asks Starshine.

“I died twice. They melted me into glue.”

“So how have you really been since the last time?” Starshine asks again.

“I don't remember. I can't think back that far.”

Starshine places the Bosc pear between her aunt's fingers. The old woman cradles the fruit in both hands and picks at the stem. Then she raises it to her nose and nuzzles the smooth skin against her cheek. A thin smile curves across her face. She is like a little girl with a new toy, a woman after orgasm, a mother caressing a newborn child. This is her happiness.

Agatha lurches forward suddenly and opens her eyes.

“I remember what I wanted to tell you,” she exclaims. “I told the nurse to remind me, but she didn't. She's not very efficient. She gets confused and makes all sorts of mistakes with my medication. Yesterday, she tried to trick me into taking two round pills. I told her I take one round pill and one long one. And she had the nerve to argue with me. She's liable to kill someone.”

“What is it you remembered?” Starshine prods.

“Code names!”

“Code names?”

“Did I ever tell you how your mother, rest her soul, came to name you Starshine?”

“After the song, right? The song by Strawberry Alarm Clock.”

Aunt Agatha frowns gravely. “That's what we told you. That's
what your mother, rest her soul, thought at first. But it was pure coincidence that the song came out that year. It was an excuse to give you the name, but not the reason.”

“I don't understand.”

“It was Luther's idea of a joke. His way of pulling a fast one on all of us. Particularly your father. Luther despised your father. He used to call him a war criminal without a crime. ‘My baby sister threw herself away on that monster,' was one of his favorite mantras.”

“Names,” says Starshine. “Code names.”

“That's right. Well, the Office of Strategic Services—that was where your uncle served during the war—used to have code names for big shots. Mostly foreign big shots. Not official names, mind you, just the names they used around the office. I still remember some of them. The men's names were always insulting. Prime Minister Churchill was Old Fuss and Feathers. And … let me see … Hitler was Napoléon's Penis…. That's right…. But the woman's names were often rather beautiful….”

Agatha closes her eyes and falls back into momentary reverie.

“Aunt Agatha?”

“What?”

“Code names. You were telling me about my name and code names.”

“That's right. I was, wasn't I?”

“You were.”

“I remember now. The women all had … how shall I put it? … names suited to their appearance. I won't tell you what Luther called Mrs. Roosevelt. But you should know who
you
were named after. You were named after Claretta Petacci. She had the code name Starshine.”

Starshine racks her brain. The name does nothing for her.

“Aunt Agatha,” she finally asks. “Who was Claretta Petacci?”

“I'll tell you,” says Agatha. She grasps Starshine's hand and speaks as though sharing a secret of grave national importance. “It was Luther's idea of a slap in your father's face. Claretta Petacci was Benito Mussolini's favorite prostitute.”

“You know that's not true. You made that up.”

“It's the God's honest truth. She died hanging from a meat hook!”

“Please, Aunt Agatha,” says Starshine. “Don't get all worked up.”

“Do you hear me?” Agatha shouts. “A prostitute!”

The outburst has drained the old woman and she slumps suddenly into her pillows. Her breath seems to fade away under her heavy woolen quilt. A soft breeze flutters the curtains, dances through her tufts of gray hair. Agatha's face is expressionless, her frail arms slack at her sides. She is not dead. This is merely a regenerative nap. It is nature's version of the dress rehearsal, an opportunity for the victim to recuperate for her next assault against the past, a warning to friends and family that the curtain call is forthcoming.

Starshine shudders. She wipes a tear from her face and plants it on Agatha's cheek with her index finger. Then she kisses her aunt's forehead and presses her hand. She can feel the brittleness of bone. This is good-bye.

“I love you, Aunt Agatha,” says Starshine. “I truly do love you.”

And she does love her aunt, cherishes the old woman for all that she has been and for all that she has done, but this must be her final visit. She can no longer endure these pointless stories, the sterile air of Bayview Manor, the pervasive climate of death. She knows that each short stay abrades her own life, somehow scrapes the varnish off all she has worked for, and that her aunt—if the old woman were capable of understanding—would want her to stay far away.

She clenches her fists.

She is Starshine. She will not lose her beauty. She will
not
grow old.

Mort Bloom attends a Broadway play once each month.

Mort Bloom is Larry's father, although he often regrets it, a fifty-seven-year-old chemical engineer who accepted an early retirement package from Johnson & Johnson. He is short and beefy. His hands emit a faint scent of shampoo. Mort Bloom is a practical man of little culture and less imagination, an inveterate suburbanite who relishes a five-dollar cigar and the contours of his Barco lounger, and passes his mornings cursing at the stock listings in the
New York Times
. His deepest regret is that he didn't study aeronautical engineering to pursue a career in avionics. His private fantasy is to co-own a minor league baseball franchise. His publicly stated ambition is to purchase a condominium on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, which will reduce his property taxes and enable him to play golf in February. Dry heat and prickly heat compose the gamut of his dinner table conversation. Mort Bloom is, in short, the very last person one would expect to find in a playhouse. And yet, every month for thirty-two years, excepting a brief hiatus for the removal of his gallbladder, Larry's father has boarded the Metro North train in Hastings-on-Hudson to catch a Sunday matinee in the theater district. He eschews glitzy musical and tourist traps;
Oklahoma!
and
South Pacific
are not to his taste. But he has seen much of Strindberg and Mamet, William Inge and Paula Vogel, even the collected works of Berthold Brecht, and although Mort rarely enjoys the experience at the time, more often than not
leaving the theater with the nagging suspicion that he has missed something crucial, like the plot, the experience grows on him over the course of the ensuing four weeks, as he summarizes the story line for acquaintances, until he is finally convinced that he has gotten his money's worth. Then he goes back for more. And since his wife never accompanies him on these outings, for although she enjoys theater, she cannot abide public transit, Mort Bloom exposed his only son to twelve plays each year from the time of his bar mitzvah through his departure for college. That, Mort believes, is the primary reason his son is such a good-for-nothing screwup. He may very well be right.