Letters to Jenny Page 7

  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.

  Your mother says she’s dyslexic too, and wonders whether it ties in with ambidexterity. That is, using either hand. I wonder too. As far as I know, I am not dyslexic, but it did take me three years to get out of first grade. The things I was taught to do, I do right handed; the things I taught myself, I do left handed. Some things I did both ways, just as a challenge. Today I write right handed (but I have written left-handed in the past; I quit because it’s harder pushing the pencil into the paper than pulling it across) and eat left handed. My father thinks my absolute idiocy with respect to foreign languages derives from that; I mastered only one language, English, but I got pretty good at that, eventually. So I keep wondering about right and left handedness, and problems in learning, and male and female. You see, the brains of women may be wired differently from those of men; they have a larger corpus col—oh, I can’t remember the term, but it’s the cable that connects the halves of the brain, like the cable between the computer and the printer. A bigger cable makes for a better connection, and women often can see more sides to a situation than men can. But I’m strange; in ways I think like a woman, and I think it helps my writing. Left-handers may have a bigger cable too, to compensate. So I think I have more access to the parts of my brain than does the average man, and I can relate well to women, though I feel like a man. But you know, it’s supposed to be mostly boys who are hyperactive and dyslexic, also they tend to be blond and blue-eyed. That’s Penny. So maybe she’s a girl who is wired in her brain like a boy. These crossovers are fascinating, but we really don’t know anything for sure. Still, when something threatens you, how does your mother react: man-fashion or woman-fashion? Man-fashion is to bash that threat into oblivion; woman-fashion is to be understanding. Yes, I know: she reacts
both ways. In short, ambidextrously.

  And your mother says she copies all my letters, so they can’t get lost. Now that’s flattering! But if one ever is lost, and you want it back, let me know; I keep copies of all my letters, and I can print one out again if necessary. Twelve letters—I’ve been writing to you pretty often, haven’t I! I hope you aren’t getting bored.

  You know, I had some notes for this letter, and here I am over 1500 words into it, and I have used none of those notes. Sigh. Well, if you want to know what I would have said, had I stayed on track, tell me, and I’ll say it next time. What? No I don’t have room for it all this time; I’m already three pages along. STOP BLINKING AT ME! Okay, one item: back when you had the accident, I was working on Total Recall, a special project. A novelization. That is, they had the script for what will be a major science fiction adventure movie next year, and I turned it into a novel. So that novel will be published this SapTimber as a hardcover under my name, and then in paperback when the movie is released, starring muscle man Arnold Schwarzenegger. So if you like science fiction violence, you can watch it, and think of me, though I really had nothing to do with the movie. I just wondered what I was doing when the horror that was going to have the single nice effect of bringing you into my life occurred, and that was it.

  And one other item, from those notes: I don’t know whether you have gotten anyone to read Heaven Cent to you, but if you have the interest, I think you would like it. I had to check in it, because two major characters in Isle of View were introduced in that novel, and I saw things that I think would appeal to you and make you think. For one thing, twelve year old, freckled Electra. Now she’s an old woman of eighteen, but then she was a girl of your generation, who slept long.

  Well, this has been a sort of a serious letter. It happens. Maybe I’ll get back to normal next time. Harpy thymes, Jenny!

  PS (the morning after): I’m adding a clipping about a British vegetarian girl who entered Oxford University at age 11 and is a math whiz. Both my parents graduated from Oxford, my mother the top in her class, my father almost, except his marriage to my mother distracted him. Everyone in my family was smart, except me.

  Mayhem 26, 1989

  Dear Jenny,

  Your mother didn’t write, and didn’t write, and I knew what had happened: the doctor had finally caught her out of bed once too often and locked her in the hospital, where she was fretting about everything and sundry. There she was stuck, until her ulcers went down and her blood count went up. I thought of calling, to make sure, but I knew that if I did, she would turn out to be at home and would tell me in 9.35 pages exactly what a sad sod I was to ever believe that any thumping quack of a doctor could ever catch her out. So I took the cowardly way, and waited. Finally she got tired of that game, and got her computer in gear again, and I got letters today and yesterday, not necessarily in that order. She had lost a day’s work by not saving her material, and naturally the computer had struck at the worst moment. Your mother is an idiot: tell her to get one of those programs that saves automatically every few seconds, so that her material can never again be lost. Every bloke but a Computer Systems Analyst knows that.

  Just to get even, she says that you stuck your tongue out at me, because of that picture business. Oh you did, did you? Well, how would you like a pot of nitrogen on it? That’ll teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head. A smelly one, maybe, but civil.

  Let’s see, where were we before we got into this quarrel? Your mother’s browned off letters. She says you approved the Jenny Elf story, and that she has no keyboard with the pound symbol. Horrors; I’ll lend her some of mine: £ £ £ £ £. It’s just a matter of pounding them out. She says you’re working on a letter to me. But I already have one from you, with your picture in Elven Armor, and about how your daddy fell out of his chair. And your signature, JNY. She also mentions your occupational therapy, where I gather you have arms and legs but not much middle. I wonder: would they ever let you try swimming? So the water would support you. It might be more comfortable exercise.

  As of her last letter, you had not seen the Author’s Note. I’ve made the corrections she gave, but you will have to say about some things, such as whether to call you just Jenny. Tell her that when I went over that Note, this morning, I also added in a reference to Andrea Alton, who suggested putting Jenny (Elf) in, and her novel. And I told other fans not to deluge me with requests for their names as characters. “If you aren’t in a coma,” I said, “don’t ask.”

  She also sent pictures of your reunion with Sammy, and your cat sweater. I’m glad you two could get together again; it’s been a long time. I see you have elven ears on, there, except that they aren’t pointed. Ah, well, the Elfquest folk will no doubt survive.

  Okay, I’ll enclose some items for you. Gunk the vegetarian is back in the Curtis comic; he’s an animal rights activist, of course. In that connection, there’s a clipping about how they treat laboratory rats here in Florida: it’s horrible. What they want to find out is how to stop the muscles of folk like you from wasting away while you’re trying to get your head together, but the way they do it is sickening. However, we also have decent folk here, as the clipping about the veterinarian who takes in animals shows. I know you’d like him. I was raised on a goat farm, and little goats—those are the true kids—are the most wonderful pets. Little deer are a lot like that. We have families of deer living on our tree farm here; every blue moon or so we see them. Also possum, box turtles, snakes and whatnot; we value them all. The only thing we don’t like is hunters, so we keep them off. I’m also enclosing a picture in an ad. It’s not original with the ad; I first saw it over twenty years ago. Which face do you see: the young Jenny-girl, or your tired old mum? They are both there. No, keep looking; eventually you’ll see them both. It took me forever to see the old one, way back when.

  Meanwhile, what’s new here? Well, remember that wren nest in my bicycle bag? The eggs hatched maybe a day after my last letter; I can see one of the chicks in there, though I don’t dare look too closely, because Lina Wren has an attitude like that of your mother: Leave My Baby Alone. But little Wrenny is in there, and maybe two more.

  Yesterday two significant things happened. I finally heard from your mother, and I had a letter from a video producer who would like to turn Xanth into a series of videos, using live actors mixed with computer animation. He sent some sample video cassettes of what he had done, and it looked pretty good. Of course there’s a lot to check, yet; not everyone who wants to make a movie or video is capable of doing it right. But my agent is checking it out, and who knows: maybe some day there’ll be a series of Xanth movies, including Isle of View, with Jenny Elf and Sammy Cat.

  So I guess that wraps it up, and—what? You say I still have most of a page left over. Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean I have to fill it. No, don’t you dare stick your tongue out at me again! I’ll blow a stink horn at you. That’s the kind that makes a foul-smelling noise. So there. But okay, I’ll fill in with a note or so.

  One’s about my Rapunzel doll. Yes, I do have one. STOP SNICKERING! Franklin Mint wanted to do some Xanth figurines, which they’ll be promoting any year now; I even used their mountain setting in Man From Mundania, and you can only get onto that mountain by passing the Frankinmint plant. Then they pondered doing some Xanth dolls, and I said oh, you mean like Rapunzel? So they sent me their Rapunzel doll. She’s about twenty inches tall, in a beautiful purple gown and robe, and her hair, oh, my, it reaches down below her feet. She’s an expensive doll, about two hundred dollars, I think, but they sent her free. That’s the advantage of being a successful writer. I have her standing on a file cabinet where I can see her as I type my novels. She reminds me of my daughter Penny; her face is similar.

  Okay, now may I end this letter? I ran out of time last night (this is now the next morning), because I had an hourlong phone call from my agent in New York about a complicated contract. I could get a lot of things done, if it wasn’t for the phone! You say
one more note? All right, but this is the last one.

  I may have mentioned that I answer over a hundred letters a month. Most of them I route through a secretary. I write my answers in pencil on the back of the envelopes as I read the letters, and once a week my wife takes the package of 20 or 25 letters to the secretary, who’s about 10 miles away, and picks up the prior week’s bunch. Some letters I do directly, like the ones to you. I have correspondents who are suicidal, or women who find me fascinating (stifle that snigger!), prisoners, bereaved families—I finished the novel of a young man who was killed by a car a year before you were hit—collaborators, and so on. After this letter I have to write to a murderer on Death Row, who brutally killed his girlfriend and their unborn baby. The funny thing is that in other respects he is ordinary and sensitive; when he learned I was writing to you he inquired, because he doesn’t like crimes like that. He says “I know she/her family wouldn’t appreciate me writing, but tell her I’m thinking of her and hope she has a full recovery.”

  * * *

  Author’s Note:

  WHEN I REFERRED TO JENNY BEING INJURED MAINLY IN THE HEAD, I WAS MISTAKEN. JENNY WAS BASHED BADLY IN THE BODY TOO; I JUST DIDN’T KNOW THE FULL EXTENT OF IT. I UNDERSTAND THEY USE MAKEUP TO COVER HER FACIAL SCARS, SO THAT EVEN WHEN I MET HER, LATER, I DIDN’T REALIZE THE EXTENT OF HER INJURIES.

  FOR THOSE WHO LIKE ANSWERS TO THEIR MATH PROBLEMS: THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS TO FATHOM THIS RIDDLE, BUT PERHAPS THE SIMPLEST IS BY USING ONE UNKNOWN AND SOLVING IT ALGEBRAICALLY. LET X = THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEIR AGES. MARY IS 24. SO MARY IS TWICE AS OLD AS ANN WAS, WHICH MUST HAVE BEEN 12, WHEN MARY WAS AS OLD AS ANN IS NOW. MARY’S AGE MINUS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM HAS TO BE ANN’S AGE, AND ANN’S AGE PLUS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM HAS TO BE MARY’S AGE. SO 24 - X IS ANN’S AGE NOW, AND THAT’S THE SAME AS MARY’S AGE THEN, 12 + X. SO THE FORMULA IS 24 - X = 12 + X. SIMPLIFY THAT BY MOVING 12 TO THE OTHER SIDE, AND - X TO THE OTHER SIDE, CHANGING THE SIGNS AS YOU DO. THUS 24-12 = X + X. THEN 12 = 2X. DIVIDE BY TWO, AND X = 6. SO IF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEIR AGES IS 6, ANN MUST BE 18. HOWEVER, WHEN I FIRST ENCOUNTERED THIS PROBLEM, I JUST PLAYED WITH IT IN MY HEAD, AND FIGURED THAT THE ANSWER WAS PROBABLY SOMEWHERE AROUND HALFWAY BETWEEN 24 AND 12, AND THAT WORKED. THEN I PROVED IT WITH THE ALGEBRA. FOR ME, THE SOLUTION ALWAYS WAS SIMPLER THAN THE MATH. JENNY DID FIGURE OUT ANN’S AGE, PROBABLY THE SAME WAY I DID: BY JUDGMENT RATHER THAN MATH. YOU MIGHT SAY THAT MATH IS A TOOL FOR THOSE WHO LACK JUDGMENT.