Letters to Jenny (15 page)

A little girl begins to eat semisolid food. A little girl’s mother begins to eat semisolid food. Someone’s finger signs improve. A bird. A plane. No, definitely a bird. An author pretends to be a reviewer. And the shortcomings of education are discussed
.

Jewel-Lye 7, 1989

Dear Jenny
,

You will not believe this. I spent two hours this morning writing a letter to someone about setting up a possible collaboration with Philip Jose Farmer. You haven’t heard of him? Well, maybe your mother has. He’s a fine writer, whose work I admired when I was in college. His first novel was called
The Lovers
, and it’s a classic. A girl and I collaborated on an oil painting suggested by it; I painted the monstrous bug, and she painted the nude woman. We don’t know where that painting is now; it disappeared into a men’s dorm somewhere and hasn’t been seen since. You say you believe that, and when am I going to get to something interesting? Give me time, girl; I’ve only started. So thirty years later I agreed to contribute to a ten-author collaborative novel. I wrote the first chapter, and Mr. Farmer wrote the second, but then it went wrong, because the later writers didn’t relate well to the first two chapters, and the editor rejected it before it was finished. Now, over a year later, the editor who rejected it wants to see if it can be rescued by making it a Farmer-Anthony collaboration, starting with our two chapters and alternating between us until it is done. This intrigues me, because Farmer is one fine writer. If you ever get bored with Anthony, try Farmer. So I said okay, and now the editor will see if Farmer wants to do it. You say you believe that, and what’s the point? Have patience, girl; you’re a teenager now, and supposed to be interested in more interesting things. Well, the chapter I wrote to start off the book was adapted from a story I did about twenty five years ago, that never sold, about a thirteen year old girl who was blinded and maimed in a car accident, and is mute, and—you say you don’t believe that? Look, I wrote it in 1963, when your mother was only eight years old, which was about the age of the girl when she was in the accident. The girl’s name was Tappuah, Tappy for short, and she developed the ability to relate to animals in a way that ordinary folk could not. In fact they would come to her. You still don’t believe? Well, I said you wouldn’t. Oh, now you believe? You say you’re a terrible teen young woman and you will change your mind as you please? Sigh. So anyway, if this project goes forward, in due course you can read about Tappy, who is your age now, and how she finds love and adventure in realms nobody can believe. Yes, she will learn to speak again; that was more psychological than physical. And I suspect she will see again, in due course.

So that was my morning, when I should have been working on
Tatham Mound
. In that novel, the nine year old girl Tzec has just been adopted as a daughter by the Trader, as she is an orphan. Fifteen years later she will meet the protagonist again, and marry him; she has a long memory. But first I have a lot of other adventures to figure out. Meanwhile, I wanted to mark the word “said” in the prior paragraph for bold printing, and this is the monochrome screen and doesn’t show it, so I went to the color modifier and experimented, and discovered the darndest things. I put it on blink, and now it’s blinking perpetually. No I’m not teasing you! Will you stop with that stuff! I tried putting the whole screen on blink, and it did it, but that’s deafening, I mean blinding to watch, so I put it back. Two blinking words are enough.

Ongoing matters: As I write this I have your mother’s letter, which says she hopes to go see you Friday—that’s today, in my terms—when you will see the cushion my wife made for you. We had to guess at your birthday, but maybe we came close. You can have catnaps with it. She says you may be home before the house gets revised. No, you can’t tell the house to hurry up. No, you won’t be out of your teens before it’s ready. Have patience. Your mother has little enough of that already.

Remember that power failure we had? No, it hasn’t returned—I wonder where they go, in between times?—but we still have buckets of water we dipped out of the pool to flush the toilets. Maybe we’ll have another power failure, so we can use up those buckets.

And horses: I had told you about Blue. Now I’ll skim over two others, but I can’t skip them entirely, so brace yourself, because it’s sad business. We didn’t want to have one horse alone, because they prefer company of their own kind, and also we had another daughter, so we got Cheryl a horse too. That was Misty, a white horse, fifteen and a half hands high. I represented her (with a sex change) as the Day Horse in
Night Mare
. She was sort of set in her ways, and preferred mooching food from people to giving them rides. She came down with foot problems, which is bad news with horses, and in the end couldn’t walk, and we lost her.

The vet happened to have another mare, called Fantasy, who was a beautiful five year old with a perfect white shield on her brown forehead. She had had a serious illness when young, and looked fine now, but was not to be ridden; she was perfect for company for Blue. She loved people, because she had been raised among them. She would have been a twenty thousand dollar horse, but we got her for nothing, because she was now worthless as a show horse. Oh, she was a darling! I had an Astroturf mat by my study door, and she could not believe it wasn’t edible, so every time I came to the study it was in a different place, where she had dropped it after tasting it. We have a mini barn we built for the horses—when we moved we built another just like it, so they would feel at home—and from the house we could see into the two stalls, but it did no good. Blue is black, and she faded into the shadow, night mare style, becoming invisible. Fantasy was brown, and she faded into the woodwork. But Fantasy was not as healthy as she seemed. When she began ailing, we called the vet, thinking it was something minor, but it was her heart, dating back from her fillyhood: it had a hole in it, so it couldn’t circulate her blood well, and now it was catching up with her, and she was gone, only four months after we got her. She didn’t deserve it.

The vet had a white pony, which someone had left for boarding and then never picked up. That’s like dumping dogs and cats. But of course the vet didn’t kick her out; he was just stuck for the unpaid board. So now we’re boarding her, and if the owner ever comes to pick her up, he’ll have to pay several times her value in boarding fees, so I don’t think he will. We named her Snowflake, after a lost filly in
Blue Adept
, because the vet didn’t know her name. She’s a true pony, all white and the cutest thing, trained for children to ride. But we don’t ride her, of course; no children here any more, and she’s only for company for Blue. She’s so fat that sometimes I call her roly-pony. We feed her only half a cup of grain at a feeding, but she forages well, and remains so fat we sometimes wonder if she’s pregnant. She gets along perfectly with Blue. So it has been for two and a half years. When Blue—well, she is 31 years old, which is ancient for a horse—she’s healthy, but eventually—well, then we’ll give Snowflake back to the vet, who has a relative with a child who will by then be ready to learn to ride.

And I was telling you my songs. Today I had a good run, and I sang several to myself in the shower, and the one I want to share with you this time is
Rue
. I needed a song for
Mercenary
, the second novel in my Space Tyrant series—DON’T READ IT—you may be a teenager now but you’re still below the age of consent and subject to the Adult Conspiracy—for a girl called Roulette, Rue for short, and none seemed suitable, and I looked through my daughter Penny’s collection of song books—I turned her on to music, of course, along with the value of long hair (which reminds me: I had a terrible dream the other night, that my other daughter Cheryl had cut her hair short; what a horror!), and found that one, just right. I had it on a record, in fact. It’s advice to young women, tending their gardens, and your mother will have to explain part of what makes it funny and sad because of the spellings. “Come all ye fair and tender maids, who flourish in your prime, prime; beware, beware, make your garden fair, let no man steal your thyme, thyme, let no man steal your thyme.” Second verse: “For when your thyme is past and gone, he’ll care no more for you, you; And every day that your garden is waste, it will spread all over with rue, rue …” And the third: “A woman is a branching tree, a man a sea wind, wind; And from her branches carelessly, he will take what he can find, find …” Keep that advice in mind, when.

Now our pool has crept up to a scant 84°F and is almost swimmable, for the first time this year; Cam and Cheryl are in it, and I must join them. So this letter must end, but there will be another in a week. Don’t squander your teens all in one year, Jenny!

PS—Hi, Cathy! Same for you!

The Morning After: Here is a special bulletin: 84° is not warm enough! Brrrr! We swam for half an hour, missing a phone call in the process, and I think I turned blue. But while I’m here, some additional notes: I’m enclosing the usual clippings, such as an old one I found of a woman with hair ten feet long, some fun-sheets in a catalog with things like newsprint or handsome men on them—if you ever see ones with luscious young women, let me know—, an idealized map of the country, a math riddle your mother will delight torturing you with, a tall fish story, and illustrated headaches that describe your mother’s worstest days.

And a final note: two days ago, as I rode my bicycle out to pick up the newspapers, I saw two clouds rising brightly out of the background smog, as if seeking their place in the sun. They were highlighted at the top, but their feet remained bogged down in glop. I think their names were Amorphous and Vagary. Remember them, next time you have a dull therapy session.

Jewel-Lye 14, 1989

Dear Jenny
,

I consolidated the files and got all your letters together, here; this is the 20th Jenlet. Maybe we should celebrate with a cupcake with 20 candles on it. Well, you had something like that for your birthday, didn’t you? So how come I can’t—I
know
it’s not a birthday, but—are you going to be a spoilsport about this? Growr!

What? Who’s tugging on my sleeve? Oh, your mother. She says “Mmmph mmmph,” and the rest is indistinguishable. Oh, that dental surgery! She’s translating what you’re saying, but somehow I’m not getting it. So how can I—Cathy, do
you
know what—?

Ah, there’s your daddy. There’s a law I made up: every family needs a man in it, to make sense of things. So what’s the—

Ah, he explained it. You want to save that cupcake for when you can eat it. Well, why didn’t you say so? You just lay there with your teeth in your mouth, and—

How did we get into this mess? I’ve already written today to a suicidal girl and a murderer, and now—What? You say I’m the one who’s looking for the fight? How dare you! Just because the next thing I have to do is answer a letter in a fanzine that differs with me about whether there should be a Minimum Wage (I once had a job at a restaurant that paid 45 cents an hour because the minimum wage law didn’t apply)—What? Oh, yes, I earn more than that now. I think. Now will you stop changing the subject? Hm, maybe we
should
change the subject; this one isn’t getting anywhere.

Your mother’s situation reminds me that when I first heard from her about you, at the end of FeBlueberry, I was recovering from dental surgery. The gum was getting low at the front of my mouth, pulled down by a tendon or something attached to my lip, so they took a little square of gum tissue from the roof of my mouth and spliced it into the front. The front recovered okay, but every time I tried to eat anything, that raw empty patch in the roof of my mouth said “Make My Day!” I had to stay on a liquid or mush diet for a couple of weeks. I guess you know what that’s like. So does your mother. When the dogsled runners say “Mush! Mush!” they mean “Go faster!” but when we say it we mean “When the Censored will I be able to get off this diet?!”

Ouch—I started this letter this morning, and suddenly it’s late afternoon. What happened? Well, I ran my run, and I remembered a wonderful song to tell you about—and forgot it right after. Sigh. The mail piled in, everything except your mother’s letter she said way on va vay. (No, she didn’t sound quite that bad, but she did sound as if you had better hold her hand for a while.) You want to hear about my problems with the mail? No? Good, I’ll tell you. Several fan letters to answer, and one from a former editor about that possible collaboration with Phil Farmer—remember, the one with the thirteen year old blind girl?—explaining that the other editor associated with that ten-author project might make trouble. I may have to buy him out, in order to recover the rights to my chapter, and Farmer’s chapter. Could cost me twenty times as much as I was paid for that chapter. Oh, I can do it, but it’s an aggravation; I only did that chapter as a favor to him. I’ll be more careful about favors next time. If he gets too greedy, I’ll point out that legally I don’t have to pay him anything; the material has already reverted to me, because it’s been two years since I delivered it. But this is nasty sort of business. Which reminds me: ask your mother whether she is pursuing a civil remedy. She’ll know what I mean. Also in the mail arrived three books by Jack Woodford from his publisher. You never heard of the man? Small wonder; most of his books are decades out of print. He was an ornery cuss who got into trouble with publishers by speaking the ugly truth. You can see why I like him! It was one of his books about writing that gave me the information I needed to get going better as a writer, back in 1958. So now I’ll return the favor and give a blurb—that’s a favorable brief comment—for his books, though he’s dead now. But that means my weekend will be gone, reading. Sigh. Would you like to read a book for me? No, huh? What kind of a friend are you? I can see it now: a blurb saying “This is a great book—Jenny” and everyone will wonder how Jack Woodford ever managed to get such an important person to comment. I still have in mind getting you to a fan convention, some year, where everyone will be amazed to meet you. But first let’s see how far you progress; I don’t think you’re ready for it yet. Is it true you have prism spectacles, so you can look down without looking down? That sounds like fun.