Letters to Jenny (21 page)

Her second letter contained her penciled picture of you, drawn from memory. And here I thought
you
were the one in the family who was interested in art! She says her jawbone surgery is doing much better than they thought. I can explain that: when everyone and sundry got into mischief, she let fire with such heated words that any remaining infection was burned right out of her jaw. Fire-breathing dragons don’t have much trouble with infection either, for the same reason. So maybe she’ll have teeth again on schedule. She says you went on to eat more real food, not merely pudding. She says that if you can manage to eat again, that should help you to talk too, because the same tongue you eat with is used in speech. Well, keep eating, then!

She also tells me that I have the “Serendipity” explanation in my big novel
Tarot
just the way I gave it to you. Oh? I don’t remember, and now can’t find the place.
Tarot
is the kind of novel your mother shouldn’t be reading. Anyone who reads it without being affronted at some point doesn’t understand it. I regard it as my best work, but it’s way beyond the competence of my average Xanth reader. So don’t you try to read it, even with your right-angle lenses. I note, on rechecking the one-volume edition, that it says “the classic fantasy adventure trilogy,” though it is science fiction rather than fantasy, and it’s a single novel. My contract even says it shall never be referred to as a trilogy. So much for contracts. So don’t become a writer, Jenny; there’s too much aggravation. And she says Ray tried to order
Bio of an Ogre
at Waldenbooks, and first they tried to make it
Ogre Ogre
, then the Bio of a Space Tyrant series. But for all that, at least Waldenbooks carried it; Dalton did not. Tell Ray that in about two weeks it will appear in paperback; he should have saved his money, I really didn’t mean to bring so much aggravation to your friends.

She also says you have one of those special effect sounds devices like the one I described, only with different sounds. Well, have fun! I remember when I was in high school, and someone played a joke on an instructor. When the man started his car, it went WHEEEEEE-BOOM, and then thick black smoke poured out from under the hood. I really shouldn’t laugh….

And she says you already know about dog-done-it and plastic vomit. Ah, well. I believe in education, and I made sure to educate my daughters. That meant that they learned early what a whoopee cushion was, and bouncy imitation snakes and the like. What schools think is education is something else.

So you see, your mother had a mouthful to say. Actually she said even more than that, but rather than boring you with it I’ll write her a separate note. Your mother says a lot! Oh, you already knew?

How is Cathy, your roommate, doing these days? I remember when she moved in with you, but I haven’t heard since. You girls didn’t quarrel, did you?

I have some enclosures. Curtis and Alligator Express are back, and a couple of Far Side cartoon reruns I thought you might like if you didn’t see them before. Also a picture for a computer ad, with RAM being rendered as male sheep.

Keep going, Jenny; life may get more interesting soon.

SapTimber 8, 1989

Dear Jenny
,

I wash my hair each Friday, because that’s when I take my weekly shower whether I need it or not (stop sniggering; I do wash up every morning and after every run; I just don’t take a full shower), and noticed that I was running low on shampoo. I need to keep changing brands, because any one brand stops working and in three days I’m all over dandruff. So my wife bought what looks like a bottle of bleach called Selsun Blue. Next week I’ll try that, but I’m afraid this stuff is really laundry bluing and I’ll turn bleached or bright blue. What do
you
use? Oh, you don’t get dandruff? Well I didn’t either, when I was your age. But one of the disgusting things about growing up is that you get dandruff. Just wait; you’ll see. So there. Anyway, I had my fastest run in two months, and yes I stopped at the little magnolia tree. The sandspurs stuck in my socks, and when I stopped to take them out (ouch!) the flies swarmed in to bite me. Par for the course.

I have to get on with this letter, because I have a couple of others to follow. A fan in Texas says the folk in his class have to choose an author to study, so that next month they can
be
that author before the class. He chose me, so he wants to learn something about me. I’ll tell him to get the paperback
Bio of an Ogre
which will appear in paperback soon after he gets my letter; that will tell him more about me than he cares to know. Why he should want to be 55 years old with a receding hairline I don’t know. I also have to write a note to Richard Pini (what do you mean, Richard Who? Richard Elfquest Pini, that’s who) because he sent me three copies of
The Blood of Ten Chiefs
and one of its sequel,
Wolfsong
, out of the blue. You know, in
Isle of View
(What do you mean, is that part of a series?!) I have Jenny Elf mention part of the past history of the elves of her land, which is not Xanth (oh, you’d caught on to that?), and the part she mentioned related to the story I did about Prey-Pacer, who was mostly known as Prunepit. I wonder what Jenny Elf will be doing in the future? Even the Muses can’t say for sure, because she’s not really part of their frame.

I am now in the last chapter of
Tatham Mound
. It’s depressing. I do get depressed sometimes when a novel ends, because for months I have been in the thick of it, living and breathing with my characters (yes, they do breathe, especially the buxom young women) and it is finally over, and that part of my life is done. Normally I get right on into the next novel, to ease the unease. But this one is worse, because it’s a bigger novel than most—it should be about 180,000 words when finished—and sadder. All the characters die. I knew that before I started, of course, because we found their bones in the Mound. Still, now I know those folk, and I hate the way they died of smallpox. Tale Teller’s daughter Wren had just married and had a baby when the plague killed them both, for example, and her beautiful bones (even the archaeologists marveled) and those of her baby are there together. I made up the story, but a beautiful young woman and her baby really did die then, and who is to say it wasn’t Wren? This morning I got the bodies buried—what a job that was, covering over 77 bodies using baskets of sand hauled by hand!—but there’s still the ceremony of the Black Drink to go, to be sure the spirits of the dead are satisfied and don’t get mad at the living. It is bad business when the spirits get angry! Then I’ll have to do the Author’s Note, with all the dry discussion about population statistics and plagues and excavation of mounds. So this letter is a kind of relief, because we aren’t going to bury you in a mound and dig you out over 400 years later to look at your bones. We’re not going to bury you at all; we’re going to get you up and about and out of Cumbersome hospital.

What’s that? No, don’t tell me you didn’t mutter anything; I heard it. What was it? Something about getting out—you mean to say you’re nervous about going out, after all this time there? Well, sure, that’s understandable, but Jenny, you surely don’t want to stay there forever! There are things to do outside, like school and homework and chores—let’s start this sentence over; I don’t like the way you’re nodding agreement. There are things to do outside, like petting cats and shopping for pretty things and watching VCR movies and using your computer to paint pictures and staying up late and sleeping late and all that. Besides, your mother’s getting lonely; she says there are too many stupid males and not enough smart females at home.

You don’t want to leave your friends there? You don’t have to. You can come back to visit them. You’ll probably be seeing some of them anyway, because you’ll have to report for therapy sessions and such. You can go to the Five and Ten Cent Store (yes, I know, now they are five and ten dollar stores, but in my day they were priced right) and buy them little presents. Or just go out to the garden, where your flowers are languishing for lack of your presence; they feel so inadequate when you aren’t there to smell them. Pick a pretty flower for someone, or a pretty seed. No, don’t laugh; seeds can be pretty. Here, I’ll prove it: I stopped by the big magnolia tree that had three flowers on the one little branch that extends onto our property, and none anywhere else—I tell you, the magnolias like me!— and took some of the seeds from its seed-ball. They are bright red, some with two sides or three sides, like grapefruit seeds. Here are two of them: one for you and one for Cathy. Hi, Cathy! (I discovered this past week that one of my earlier letters told you to say “hit” to Cathy for me; that was a typo. It should have been “hi.” I hope you didn’t hit her!) Maybe if you get little pots you can plant them and they’ll grow. Then you can return fifty years later and see this giant magnolia tree growing out of the hospital window, providing pretty white flowers and pretty red seeds for all the patients.

Meanwhile, how are things here? It has been a dull week, except for a couple of things. One was a power failure last Saturday: lightning hit our line and blew out our transformer and our pump. It took them five hours to replace the transformer. I read
John Dollar
by candlelight. That’s a novel by the wife of Salmon Rushdie, the man the Ayatollah threatened to kill. It’s the kind of book the critics like, which means that real people don’t like it. It’s about girls your age, but don’t you read it; it is truly ugly and shocking in places. But what could I do? It was night without power, so I read. Now I’m reading Stephen King’s
The Gunslinger
. You don’t want to read that one either. Anyway, it was Sunday afternoon by the time we got the pump replaced; it actually worked on Saturday, so we didn’t know, but then it started glitching. The lightning had glitched it up at several places. Because it was Sunday—and the following day a holiday—that’s always when these things happen, as your mother well knows—we had to pay double time. It came to $761. All because the lightning arrester didn’t work. I would make a pithy comment, but your delicate shell-pink ears would turn an indelicate color.

Then on Tuesday I started out by cleaning the algae from the pool, then putting Dvorak letters on my downstairs computer keyboard so I wouldn’t have to keep carrying my upstairs keyboard down and maybe dropping it. See, the big letters are all red now, with the old QWERTY letters in small black. Do you notice the difference in this letter? (You’re supposed to say yes, you do, in a very calm voice.) Then I wrote to my current Ligeia girl, who I think is gradually becoming less suicidal. And I had a visit by two English girls. One was the daughter of my British agent, visiting this country. She remarked how odd it was to be driving on roads where all the cars are on the wrong side. Right. I don’t normally entertain visitors, but there are some few exceptions, and the daughters of my agents are one of them. That agent just sold my novelization for the movie
Total Recall
in Japan. Of course it wasn’t my name that did it; it was that it’s a Schwarzenegger movie, and the Japanese are big on such movies. And I’ll only get some of the money, eventually; the publisher and the movie company get most of it. Still, I’d better stay on that agent’s good side. She stays on my good side too, because the reason she is handling the foreign rights for this book is that I asked for my own agents, American and Foreign, on it, and the motion picture company agreed. The company didn’t have to, because it owns the rights, but it humored me. It’s a sixty million dollar movie, probably next year’s big block-buster. Yes, I’m sure your daddy will take you to it, humoring you, though there isn’t anything in it that would interest him apart from unremitting action and violence and a slew of luscious bare girls. Unless he likes science fiction; then he can enjoy the planet Mars scenes, and the phenomenal alien nuclear plant there. Remember, I didn’t write the movie, I just adapted the script to make it a novel. But I did add some significant material, if they care to use it. So I talked with my agent’s daughter, who is an environmentalist, and her friend, and they had lunch with us, and I showed them our deep forest and horses and lake with the water lilies on it. If you ever want to visit, Jenny, I’ll do the same for you. So it was three and a half hours in all. Then in the afternoon your mother called. What? How many pages did she talk this time? I lost count. A dozen, at least. She told me that they measured you this way and that, and that you’ve grown two inches, and that, uh (blush), you’re giving up childhood and trying young ladyhood. Next thing we know, you’ll be joining the Adult Conspiracy. Ah, well. At any rate, you are much on your mother’s mind, Jenny. I suspect you already knew that. My daughter Penny also visited from college, bringing her latest papers for me to copy-edit. That took me half a day, most of it Wednesday. Anyway, that was my Tuesday; as you can see, it was duller than yours.

Say—I looked out the window, and there’s one of our big box turtles—actually a gopher tortoise—walking along our drive, past our house. We have a number of them here, and we like them. Elsewhere in Florida they are trying to protect them, but development keeps encroaching, and they have to catch them and move them to safer regions— which are in turn encroached on by development. Bad business. But
our
turtles will remain unencroached on.

Slew of enclosures this time, maybe a slew and a half. A page on kids and the news, with several kids who have pets; one has 14 cats and wants a white rabbit. I guess you know about that. Article on insect metamorphosis, surely old stuff to you, but pretty anyway. One on a man whose legs are paralyzed, but he hopes to walk with magic boots. Article on questions kids ask, such as whether cats really have nine lives. One on the other wildlife of Citrus County—that’s where I live—and how development is disturbing it. Alligator Express. Curtis Picture of butterfly with flowers. And one of a drum that sounds liquid; is that how you play the drum? And of course the two magnolia seeds. No, don’t eat them!

SapTimber 15, 1989