Cancer

Crabby

FAT a box of donuts. Lock all the doors and windows, pull down the shades, and turn on the answering machine.

Then get into bed and pull the covers up over your head. That little ritual should give you a fair idea of what Cancers have to do to find relief in this world.

Why do the gentle souls bom between June 21 and July 22 see life as an oncoming locomotive? Perhaps in an earlier life (Cancers often tell you they're old souls) they were clams luxuriating in a calm tidal pool that got destroyed by a volcano. Or maybe it's not so cosmic—maybe they just never got over leaving Mommy's womb. Whatever the reason, they live in constant fear of being evicted. Separation is a terrifying issue for them: if you tell your Cancer you're going out for a quart of milk and will be back by eight, you'd better be back, because at a quarter to nine Cancer will be on the phone to the police.

Many Cancers keep a suitcase packed by the door, but in general the Cancerian home radiates a desire for permanence—herb teas, lots of green plants, and a needlepoint sign that says:

LEAVE GUN AT DOOR. I AM PEACEFUL. ALSO REMOVE SHOES. I JUST DID MY FLOORS.

Don't cross the castle moat without knocking, though. Cancers hate surprise visits. They are spooked at the mere thought of submarines lurking off the coast. And no matter how hospitable they are, inside every Cancer is a little gray-haired lady on a porch aiming a shotgun at the varmint who has dared to trespass on her property.

Cancers are as old-fashioned as lilacs and lace. They love to sift through memories and look back wistfully on magnolia mornings and silent snowy evenings, even though they never experienced them. They find life in the present as jarring as Ashley Wilkes found Reconstruction Georgia.

Their strongest trump is their psychic power. They have grand conversations with dead Aunt Harriet, and they can always tell when a pineapple is ripe or a house is haunted. This power has a grim side, however; when they call you up to ask you how you are, they often give you the feeling that you should go for a liver scan as soon as possible.

Cancers are into fats and starches and D-cup bras. The women, when they're not anorexic, are as voluptuous as Jane Russell, and the men often look six months pregnant. Rubens was a Cancer. Their arms are sometimes too thin for their bodies , their feet splay, and many of them resemble Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Cancers compete fiercely with their offspring for the role of the child, but they usually make good parents, mainly because they can take a lot of pain. They also have a talent for making others feel comfortable, safe, well fed, and loved—when they choose to use it.

There are as many types of Cancers as nuts in a pound of almonds. They're the fairy godmothers and the Captain Kangaroos of the world, as well as the Rockefellers, the Ronstadts, and the Rembrandts. But they all have one trait in common: They'll hoard every nickel and every crust of bread to avoid facing their two greatest fears in life—being hungry and being out in the cold.

The Cancer dance is an agile exercise of defensive postures, as graceful as T'ai Chi, as effective as black-belt karate. If you want to make it with a Cancer, just let her—or him—live in your fur, like a tick.

Advice for 1985: Go have kids.

Michael Lutin