Letters to Jenny (9 page)

Your mother got tired of waiting for me to forward the “Curtis” comic strip, so had them run it in your local paper. Okay, I’ll just enclose the ones I had already cut out, plus a cartoon about the unpleasantness of having a shot in a nerve or wherever. Tell her that Adept #6,
Unicorn Point
, is already out, in hardcover; if she makes the library ignore the bad reviews and stock it, she can read it. And I didn’t mean to make trouble for you with that Mary and Ann problem; I can give you the formula to solve it, if—you say not to bother? Well, it’s no trouble, really. Uh, okay, I’ll drop it.

Mayhem 12, 1989

Dear Jenny
,

Remember when I said I didn’t think your picture illustrated the flower story? Ouch! Five lashes with a wet noodle. When I got into it to adapt it I saw my mistake: I was thinking of Lily, not her mother, and the picture was of her mother. Anyway, I did the scene, and have printed it out for you. But don’t go straight to it; let me explain the background first.

Che Centaur, the winged foal, is. captive in Goblin Mountain. Jenny and Sammy go with him, voluntarily, because Jenny feels the foal needs company. They meet Gwendolyn Goblin, the daughter of Godiva Goblin, who turns out to be a rather nice twelve year old girl. The reason Godiva wanted a centaur companion for her was to help her get about and to see things, because she is a bit lame and so nearsighted that everything farther than a foot or two away is a blur. Jenny’s problem was solved by her spectacles, but Gwenny’s problem can’t be solved that way, so she really does need help. She has a chance to be the first female chief of the goblins—a chiefess—who can make the goblins behave much better, but if any of them learn about her sight problem, they will kill her and put in a male instead, and things will be as brutish as they have always been with goblins. So Godiva really does have good reason for what she has done: only a centaur can work so well with Gwenny that the goblins will be fooled, and she can rule. That’s part of the larger problem in this novel: Jenny and Che have agreed not to tell, because if they do, Gwenny will die, and she really doesn’t deserve that. But can Che agree to be prisoner of the goblins for the rest of his life? So he hasn’t made up his mind.

Jenny and Che and Gwenny get into a Tsoda fight, squirting bottles of the water of Lake Tsoda Popka at each other (we happen to live on Lake Tsala Apopka, here in Florida: another of those odd coincidences) and get drenched; it’s great fun. Godiva doesn’t quite approve of this, for some reason, but of course mothers don’t have to have reasons for their objection to fun. So the kids clean up (Che has to face away and close his eyes so as not to see any Panties) and Jenny tells a story instead. She has to adapt it to Xanth terms, which is tricky, and it doesn’t work perfectly, but the essence comes through. That’s the excerpt I printed out for you. At the end, their shared dream is shaken apart when the mountain trembles: Cheiron Centaur is commencing the siege, by having rocs drop stones. The battle has begun. Okay, now at last you can go to that scene. This is my first draft, so maybe there are typos, and I may change things later. If you see something that is fouled up, let me know and I’ll fix it before sending the novel to the publisher. I’ll also show a copy to the Elfquest folk.

Um, it occurs to me that you may feel that Gwenny is a name too close to Jenny. Well, I pondered this, but it just does seem the best way to simplify Gwendolyn. One letter of a word can make a big difference; I don’t confuse you with my daughter Penny, for example. Penny is 21 now, in college, with a job, but she’s still my little girl. So I think the name’s all right.

On to other business. I’m enclosing a Sunday Curtis comic you may have missed, and a cartoon about the space shuttle launch; if you look at it twice you’ll see what’s funny. And two clippings about girls you may like: one saved her friend’s mother’s life, and the other sued her boyfriend when he stood her up for a prom. These are your type of girl, right? Plus an envelope with Polish stamps— oh, these’ll never fit in the little envelope I typed! Well too bad, I’ll type a bigger one. What do you care about Polish stamps? Well, they have pretty pictures of horses, penguins and dragonflies. The letter was sent to my old address, but managed to reach me anyway.

I understand you are using a computer now, to help communicate. I’m glad of that. Maybe they’ll set you up with a paintbrush program, so you can paint pictures on the screen. We have Microsoft Paintbrush, which uses a mouse; you can paint good pictures with it, if you have the patience, and save them or print them out. If they haven’t gotten something like that for you yet, blink your eyes and wiggle your toe until they do; I suspect you could have a lot of fun with the screen and that mouse control, and maybe turn out some great pictures.

I also understand you are back in Elven Armor again, and casts on your arms. You put a good face on it, but I know that isn’t much fun. I’d tell you to look on the positive side, but I know it’s a pain, so might as well say so. One of the periodic debates I get into with those who believe in God is why God allows awful things to happen to folk who don’t deserve it. Don’t tell
me
you were a bad girl so you were punished by being almost killed. But of course I explain it all in my Incarnations series: Satan is doing it. Early next year the final novel,
And Eternity
, will tackle the matter of God and resolve it. You’ll probably like that one, when you get old enough to sneak it past the Adult Conspiracy censors. Anyway, I understand also that you are getting a blazing fast red wheelchair, and that the nurses in the halls will be set spinning when you zoom by too fast to see. “What was that?” one will ask, “A bird? A plane?” and another will reply: “No, that’s Spinning Jenny!” You know I joke about the doctors and nurses, and how they can get piled up ten deep, but I’ve actually had some experience with the real work that they do. I collaborated with a doctor on a book about kidney disease, dialysis and kidney transplants, and I interviewed doctors, nurses, and patients and learned a lot. The doctor changed his mind after I found a publisher for the book, and I had to drop the project, which I think was too bad; it was a good book. But by that avenue I got to know pretty well folk who were being saved from dying by the doctors and nurses, and what it took to keep them alive. If you want to know a lot about kidney dialysis, I can tell you, but not in this paragraph. I have also had some absolutely infuriating encounters with callous or incompetent doctors and nurses. So I have seen both sides. Just so you know that when I tease a person or a profession, that does not necessarily reflect my underlying opinion. Each profession seems to have its good examples and its bad ones, and this is true for writers as well as doctors and nurses.

Oh, I almost forgot: yes, the wrens are doing nicely.

The eggs are still there, and all seems well. Our magnolia trees continue to bloom. I see them when I ride the bicycle out to fetch the paper in the morning—it’s a mile and a half round trip—and the bunnies along the drive. Also when I do my exercise run, which covers most of our tree farm. We have pretty big blue passion flowers now, too. And yes, I saw a dragonfly exactly like the one in the corner of the envelope, green and blue; it was probably the one who posed for that picture.

So have a harpy day, Jenny, and don’t forget to ask about that paintbrush program. You don’t have to wait to get all the way better, to draw again; you can do it now, if they have the setup.

Mayhem 19, 1989

Dear Jenny,

Yesterday I finished the novel proper, and this morning I finished the Author’s Note for
Isle of View
, I’m sending a printout, which your mother may or may not read to you, as she sees fit. No, don’t blink your eyes angrily at her; she has reason. Let me explain.

You may not remember much between when you were hit by that car, and the time my first letter helped bring you out of your long sleep. (I feel like a prince!) It was a bad time. The Author’s Note describes it in fair detail. You walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and your family felt the terrible chill of it. That part of the experience is not fun reading. You may not care to listen to it now.

I have sent this because I want your folks to go over it and tell me where it is wrong and what parts should not be left in. I have named you only Jenny here, because I am afraid that folk could discover who you really are if I gave your full name, and there are some folk who shouldn’t. But I can change that if you wish. I will modify it as required, and ship the novel, Note and all, to the publisher. Along about OctOgre 1990 it will be published. By then I hope you are long out of the hospital and maybe out of your wheelchair, Jenny, and getting on with your life. I doubt you’ll ever be a star Olympic athlete, but you can be a lot else, regardless. I hope you like the novel, when. There’s a lot more than just Jenny Elf in it, of course, but Jenny is a major character.

I have tried to avoid subjects that I fear will bring you disquiet, but I seem to have been blundering into them anyway. I assumed that your mother’s description of your present hair style was the way it’s always been, and that you liked it that way. Now I learn that you had waist-length hair, before the accident. I’m sorry if I hurt you by my comments; it was the last thing I wanted to do. Let me tell you a bit more about hair, in my family. I wouldn’t let my wife cut her hair, for the first ten years or so of our marriage, so she wore it waist length. But she complained that it was hot, especially here in Florida, and finally I realized that I did not have the right to make her uncomfortable. So she cut it, and has worn it short since. But our daughters—that’s another story. The first one I claimed as mine; Penny was my little girl, and she never has cut her hair. She was hyperactive as well as dyslexic, and I told everyone that she had so much energy because her hair had never been cut. In the Bible Samson was the strongest of men while his hair was long, you see; when it was cut he became weak. Cheryl was our second daughter, and her mother claimed her. Penny’s hair color matched mine, though I am dark and she is blond—you think that’s crazy? No it isn’t. When we checked we discovered that Penny’s hair is the same shade as mine at the same length. If I wore mine waist length, it would bleach out blond. Anyway, Cheryl’s hair was dark like her mother’s, and she was good in school like her mother, while Penny’s grades were like mine. Once Penny brought home a report card, and I lectured her: “Penny, I don’t understand. This is not like you. I don’t expect this sort of thing from you.” It was all A’s and B’s, you see, instead of C’s and D’s. I suspect your dad would do the same with you, if you brought home an A math grade. Some folk don’t understand the humor in a family where love is more important than success; too bad for those folk. Cheryl I teased the other way: that if she ever saw a grade below A + she would be baffled, having never seen a B, and someone would have to explain what it was. Or even an A -. Cheryl was the one who made the highest SAT score in the history of her school. There weren’t SAT tests in my day, but if there had been, no one knows what I would have done with it, but height would be the least likely course. Depth, maybe. No, I’m not stupid; the test makers are. They don’t know the best answers to their questions. In fact they don’t know the best questions. Anyway, Cheryl’s hair was in the charge of her mother, who cut it short, until I remarked passingly how Cheryl looked like a little boy. About that time Cheryl, no dummy, began to take control of her life, and I don’t think she has let her hair be cut since, and now her hair is well down her back. The two daughters together are a marvel, one blonde, the other brunette, a complementary set. My wife doesn’t speak of the matter. So I’m glad to hear that you have the right attitude about hair; I understand you won’t let your mother cut hers either. I guess we know who has the willpower in your family! I’m sure your mother looks much better with her hair long. There’s a verse in a folk song that reminds me of: “Laura was a pretty girl, o-my-o!” Surely because she wore her hair long. Don’t get me wrong: my wife is a fine woman. Just not perfect. She doesn’t understand about hair. Anyway, go ahead and grow your hair long again, Jenny, and feel your strength returning with it.

There were other things I learned too late, such as about your getting beaten up by that bully of a boy last year. I might not have mentioned that business of the woman getting attacked if I’d realized. And you being dyslexic too. The first day in first grade, the teacher was yelling at my daughter, because of her handwriting and such. Um, you know what a pressure-cooker is? No? Ask your mother. Then picture the pressure rising toward the explosion point. That’s me when someone starts yelling at my daughter. I was once a teacher myself, and I don’t take any guff from teachers, many of whom are illiterate compared to me. But in Florida we were locked in, because of the system to prevent segregation. That is, if folk could choose their own schools, they’d be all black or all white, no mixing. We approve of integration, but this meant that we couldn’t move our daughter out because they would think we were trying to get out of an integrated school. So we forced the issue on the basis of Penny’s dyslexia: that school had no learning-disabled program, so we required that she be transferred to a school that did. That got her out of that class with the yelling teacher, and after that she did well in school, and learned to read, and has been reading at a great rate ever since. Her dyslexia doesn’t affect input, just output. There were other battles to fight, and I fought them; I have been militant on behalf of my daughters throughout, right up into college. When Penny had trouble in college because of her vegetarianism, and they insisted she pay for the full schedule of college meals though she couldn’t eat them, I showed her how to teach a college a lesson. I wrote to the college president approximately thus: “I will regard this meals charge as an involuntary contribution to the college. You may be sure I shall not make a voluntary one.” That crossed in the mail with the college’s appeal for contributions. What do you know: suddenly the unbendable rule was bent, and my daughter was free of college meals. So anyway, I hope that my references to things didn’t disturb you too much. Just so you know I mean well.