Letters to Jenny (16 page)

Have I said anything yet in this letter? My head’s spinning; I’m not sure what I’ve done and what I have yet to do. Well, let’s go back to the beginning of the day: when I biked out to fetch the newspapers, I saw a raccoon on the way up and a bunny on the way back. We have an opossum on that section, too. I can tell the difference: the possum has a ratlike tail, while the coon has a ringed tail. Nearer the house I saw our Devil’s Walking Stick. That’s a plant. It’s an ugly, thorny weed here, looking like a crooked cane, with thorns anywhere you might try to touch it. But it’s distinctive. We went out to rescue a number of native plants in FeBlueberry, before the mower came to mow between the pines. We transplanted about eight rosemary plants, one ivy vine, and one little Devil’s Walking Stick which was hardly more than a section of root. The rosemaries all died; I guess they didn’t like the soil near the house. The ivy got chewed back several times, but survives. The Devil’s Walking Stick survived and put out a new fernlike leaf—which a bunny must have chewed off. So I sprayed bug repellent on it, and then it was left alone. It put out another leaf, and another, and now it’s about knee high with ten big leaves and beginning to come into its true ugliness. Wonderful; it’s a success story. Maybe some day it will be tree-size. Say, do you think if they sprayed you with bug repellent, you’d grow strong and ugly? Maybe just strong and mad.

I guess I’d better get on to the enclosures, before you enclose me in a magic shield. I hate to throw things out, even when I can’t use them, so I saved out a few of those magazine stamps: two about cats for you, one about Vegetarian Times, and one for SAVVY WOMAN for your mother. No, I couldn’t find one saying GOOD NATURED MAN for your daddy. Also a clipping about V.C. Andrews, a writer currently on the bestseller list: she gets 20 fan letters a week, though she’s dead. I know the feeling! What surprised me was to learn that she was quadraplegic—that is, she couldn’t use her arms or legs. Shows you can become a highly successful writer regardless. No, you don’t have to go that far, and I guess you don’t want to be a writer anyway. But I think the same would be true for an artist. Maybe once you get home, if they ever finish fixing up your house, and you have room for a computer, you can use the time between therapy sessions to paint pictures on the screen and become a teenage artist. Which reminds me: do you have a radio? I listen to the radio all day while I’m working: popular songs, light classical music, the news, and interesting call-in programs. There’s Dr. Joy Brown the psychologist, who addresses callers' most personal problems—um, the Adult Conspiracy might veto that. At 5:00 daily there’s
All Things Considered
, an excellent program; you’re a teen now, so you should be adult enough to appreciate it. There are violent liberal and conservative call-in hosts who can be fun to listen to even if you don’t agree with them. The local liberal one is running a campaign to make the Orlando Blockbuster Video store carry
The Last Temptation of Christ
; he’s even interviewing their customers, who say about two to one they want that video movie carried, but the store refuses. He’s really putting it to them. I like that, because I’m an agnostic—that means I don’t believe or disbelieve in God, and belong to no religion—and I support freedom of expression. I want to see that movie, which I understand is a thoughtful one, but I can’t, because no store dares carry it locally. That’s censorship, and I HATE CENSORSHIP!! (Sorry, didn’t mean to yell.)

Where was I? Oh, the clippings. Why do you let me wander off the subject like that? There’s one on a big maze called the Wooz (Zoom spelled upside down) that folk can wander through. Let’s you and I walk through that one, some day. There’s Curtis, with cheese flavored bubble gum. (Mozzarella is a cheese: we call it Monster-ella, just as Muenster is Monster cheese.) And my British mother sent a sheet for you: goofs English children made. “Noah’s wife was called Joan of Arc.” That sort of thing. So why isn’t your mother laughing? Oh, those teef; I forgot. And a chain letter I received a year ago, and ignored; as a matter of principle I never forward chain letters. Don’t send this one on to anyone; I just thought you’d like to see it. It claims you get good luck. Chain letters, in general, are a crock of—er, nitrogen; they are not legitimate. Many of them pretend to be thousands of years old, when they can’t be, and to bring you money, which they won’t. Any one involving money is illegal anyway. But let’s pretend this one will bring you good luck, though we both know this is nonsense.

Jewel-Lye 21, 1989

Dear Jenny
,

Wow! It’s almost five, and I’m just starting this letter. I had hoped to have it finished by this time. My day has been—in fact my week has been—WILL YOU PAY ATTENTION, YOU DIFFICULT GIRL!? That’s better. I’ve had piles of stuff to read, and piles of complicated letters to—nuh-uh, keep that tongue out of sight!—so it’s just been a hassle, and I’ve gotten very little paying writing done since last week’s letter.

I’ve been hearing from you folk! I have two letters from your mother—I’ll get to them in a moment—and one from Sue Berres (before I thought it was Benes, but now those letters look like R’s), and two from you. The first was a Birthday Card—um, I’d better discuss that. I offered to exchange information about birthdays with you, because I wanted to discover yours, so we could catch you in time with the Jenny/Xanth cushion. I figured we could just forget about mine, after that. The truth is, birthdays aren’t nearly as much fun at my age as they are at your age, and I didn’t want you to feel obliged to send anything. But since you have already sent a card, okay, I’ll tell you. I’ll be 55 on AwGhost 6. So thanks for the card, and I’ll remember it when the ill-fated day finally strikes. The other was an Anniversary Card. I guess I mentioned our [power failure here—Ha! I had just Saved, so I didn’t lose anything] 33rd anniversary because it fell on a Jenny-letter day. Otherwise I would not have bothered you. But thanks for that card too. I understand it’s a real job for you to sign your name to these things. (That would seem like sarcasm, if we didn’t know your situation. Folk outside don’t realize—well, never mind.)

Now let me get a bit more serious. Last time I teased your mother about her supposed problem speaking. Then her letters arrived describing the progress of her jaw problem, and I wished I hadn’t. Teasing is supposed to be a fun thing, and this isn’t fun. I mean, if she had two days of discomfort, then was better than new, okay. But she’s in real distress, and for all I know that complaint could have her in the hospital by the time you hear this letter. The chances of her being there to read it to you are next to nil. Since your mother has been my main inspiration for fun insults—well, this just isn’t the time for that sort of thing. But I did want to say that even from this distance, I can see that her misery is composed of three parts. First, the actual discomfort of her mouth, which is physical and horrendous. Second, the inconvenience this malady causes, inhibiting her activity so she can’t do all the things she wants to do. You know better than anybody what that’s like. Third, it stops her from visiting you. I think that’s the worst. She wants so much to be with you, Jenny, and everything keeps getting in the way so she can’t have you home yet, and now she can’t even get over there for visits. This tears her up. I guess you’re not too pleased about this either, but I think at the moment that it’s bothering her more than you.

So she is feeling worse than she might because of you, and you are feeling worse because of her. This does neither of you much good. Of course you can’t just say “I don’t care!” and not worry about each other, or not be concerned about your separation. But I hope some understanding helps. Send her an “Okay, I love you” through your daddy, and it will make her feel better. She might even send you one back. Meanwhile, in case she has to spend some time in bed and can’t reach her computer, I’m sending her a bound galley that just arrived of my collaborative novel
Through the Ice
. That’s the one I wrote with Robert Kornwise, who died in an auto accident just one year before your accident, with no more justice. It is as though I am fated to encounter one such tragedy a year, and his was the one for 1988. So this isn’t a joyful association, but it’s one you folk will understand rather better than most. When your mother gets better, maybe she’ll read bits of it to you, as there is time. I hope there’s not another case like this next year; there’s already been twice as much misery as there should have been, for Robert Kornwise’s family and yours.

Meanwhile, keep up with your dull mundane exercises. I know progress is slow, but it’s possible to be slow and still get where you’re going. I’ve always been slow—slow to speak, slow to read, slow to discover what girls were (stop sniggering!), and slow to make it as a writer. Remember the tortoise and the hare. One writer, younger than I, had already written and sold forty novels by the time I had sold my first, but today I think I have done more than he has, and certainly more successfully. So speed is not the essence; steady accomplishment is. You don’t have to do everything in a month, or a year; you could take eight years, as I did to make my first story sale, and still go pretty far thereafter, as I did. Just don’t quit trying.

On to incidental things: Today my wife may have seen a hummingbird. They flit by so fast it’s hard to be sure. And on my run (yes, the little magnolia is fine), I saw tiny tadpoles in the tub we use for horse water in the pasture. We should have a whole flock of frogs! (Flock? Well, what
is
it called?) And yesterday I found a canoe. Well, not exactly. I was writing a chapter of
Tatham Mound
, and the southern Indians use dugout canoes, and my hero was traveling up to Tennessee, where the Cherokees lived, and I thought wouldn’t it be nice if he could get a birchbark canoe there. But white birch trees don’t grow in the south. I knew them up north, with their paperlike bark that you can actually write on. But maybe up high in the mountains—so I researched, and discovered that there is one variant of paper birch that grows in the south: high in the mountains of North Carolina. That’s exactly where my hero is! So he can have a birchbark canoe, which is a great comfort to him, as well as a novelty, because he has one bad arm and paddling is hard. A light canoe makes all the difference. So that was a nice discovery, and now I have him and a friend in their birchbark canoe traveling down the Tennessee river, in the year 1516.

We had three power failures in a row, trying to wipe out this letter, so I had to quit for a while, and couldn’t finish it today. Okay, hang on; I’ll finish it tomorrow morning and still catch the mail, or else. Have a good night’s sleep, Jenny. You too, Cathy.

Jewel-Lye 22, 1989—Okay, it’s next morning. I was going to finish this quickly, so as to catch the mail, but I had to check on two things—and wouldn’t you know it, that took me a #$%&*
f
!! hour. So now—what? No, those other items wouldn’t interest you. So now I’ll get on to the enclosures, which—what? No, those other things which delayed me are very dull, really; you don’t want to know about them. So I have the Sunday Curtis, which Sue Berres tells me is the first thing you read in my letters; now I know what you like about my letters, the comics! And an item on cats, and one on big Florida mosquitoes, and—what? Will you get off that other business;, girl? It’s not interesting! You know something, you can be the stubbornest darn thing—now don’t look that way, you know I don’t like it—oh, all right, I’ll tell you. Briefly. I had ten letters yesterday from fans, and I managed to pencil answers to nine of them yesterday during the power failures that were making this letter late. I scribble my answers on the backs of the envelopes, see, and every week the secretary types them up for me. You demand to know why you don’t rate a secretarial letter? Because those take about an extra ten days, and—ah, now you understand. So this morning I tackled the last one, and the guy apologized for what he’d said in his last letter, and asked for my opinion of his marriage, so I thought I’d better reread his last letter, which I did not remember. One thing I’ll say about you, Jenny: you don’t ask my opinion about your marriage. Yes I know, you’ll get to that a decade hence, when—let’s get back to the subject, shall we? So I checked my correspondence, and couldn’t find his last letter. Time wasted. So I turned on the computer and did a computer search of my letter record. Found it—for last OctOgre. Last week I filed all last year’s letters in the attic. Sigh. So I unlocked it and headed off into the heat to delve through the voluminous files—what? Oh, “voluminous” means the way your mother’s jaw is feeling these days. All blown up out of proportion, so that she looks like a—now stop that! You know I promised not to tease her about that. So finally I found the letter—and it bore no relation to anything the current letter said. Oh: different first name, different address. It wasn’t the same person, after all. I could find no letter by the same person, and his present letter came through the publisher, so he didn’t have my address. I don’t think he wrote to me before. So why did he say he did? Beats me. Do
you
know? You’re not much help, you know that? And keep that tongue in your mouth! And stop blinking at me. I’m on to all your tricks. No, don’t you dare do your thing with the finger! And don’t call me Nitrogen Face either! If you do, I’ll tell Ray what you really called him, instead of the expurgated version. Ha—that finally got to you, didn’t it! So the other thing was a letter from the fanzine I write to, where I mentioned you, and the folk there send their good wishes to you. But this letter was about John Brewer, the prisoner I mentioned: the fanzine called the TV station near Brewer’s prison, and the folk there say the man’s not on death row but serving life imprisonment. Now the fanzine is upset, because I said he was on death row. Well, I sure thought he was. So I had to check his first letter to me, way back last AwGhost—right, in the attic files!—and when I ran it down, it said nothing about anything like that. So I went through more letters, and finally found it in his third letter to me: how he killed his fiancee and was sentenced to death for it. I’ll quote that to the fanzine, so at least I won’t be in trouble with them. You see, I had Brewer write to them, stating his case, and if you want to know what happens when you drop a nitrogen bomb into an outhouse—well, these folk can get righteous about law enforcement, so I thought I’d acquaint them with the reality and maybe jolt them out of their ivory towers. Your daddy will tell you what an ivory tower is. They aren’t too pleased. You see, Brewer is trying to get them to execute him, because he says he’s guilty and deserves to die. I suspect he’s right. I only wish that drunk driver who hit you was next in line after him. Anyway, that’s where my hour went, and I still have to write that letter—right after this one. Now aren’t you sorry you brought it up? Stop looking so smug!