Hope and Other Luxuries (11 page)

“I'm just answering this reader,” I said. But my heart sank.

Valerie and Elena hated my reader mail. I didn't bother mentioning it to them anymore, but they were good at catching me at it. Just now, they must have been able to detect a change in my expression. I must have looked . . . happy.

“It's a waste of time!” Valerie scolded. “You tell
us
not to waste time. Why do you want to spend all that time on strangers when you ought to be spending it on
us
?”

Because they're nicer to me than you are
, I answered in my heart.
This is the only part of my day I still enjoy
.

But I didn't say that. Instead, I set aside the fan letter. Valerie wasn't right, but that didn't change anything. I couldn't enjoy it anymore with the two of them glaring at me.

“I don't get it,” I said to Joe that night as he ate dinner. “Why do the girls hate my readers so much? You'd think they'd be glad people want to buy the books. Wouldn't you think they'd be glad?”

Joe had worked a very long and very horrible day. It was eight o'clock at night, and he had just come through the door.

“You could answer a fan letter in five minutes,” he said as he spooned up stew. “Those things take you forever.”

“Well, they ask such interesting questions,” I pointed out. “Do you know, so far, no one's asked me a question I haven't already thought of and been able to answer. That's pretty good if you think about the fact that these readers have gone through the book over and over. One girl wrote that she'd read it twenty-eight times.”

Joe ignored this happy bit of self-congratulation. Given the day he'd had, I couldn't really blame him.

“You should create form letters,” he said. “You should let me take over. I could answer all of your mail in five minutes.”

I left him eating, trudged up two flights of stairs, and pushed open the door of the garret room. Discarded stacks of games still congregated
in this former playroom, silent witnesses to the fact that my children had once been close friends. Needless to say, no one touched those games anymore.

I pressed the power button on the old PC and waited a ridiculous amount of time for it to start up. My werewolf book was finished and would be coming out the following year. It was time for me to write something different. So, targeting the only reader I had left—Joe—I had decided to write a science fiction story.

I created a new Word file. It would be the future home of Martin, a thirteen-year-old boy. He looked like my husband had looked at thirteen, and he lived in a kind of parallel future. That was almost all I knew about him.

Now, I stared at the white Word page and waited for my imagination to take over.
What is Martin's world like?
I wondered.

I could answer all of your mail in five minutes
.

I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch to reset the movie playing there.

Not my world.
Martin's
world!

Vague patches of color began to blossom in my mind and block out the view of the white screen. Bright colors. Grape soda. Gummy candy.

Jell-O—that was it! Bright Jell-O colors.

Almost the first thing I see, when I start to work on a book, is patches or pools of color. These colors set the palette for the whole book. Kate and Marak's story had started with clear forest greens, along with deep-hued satin and the sparkle of gems. In spite of its gloom, it was a rich, sumptuous world.

My werewolf's world had been smudged and gritty, with gray peat smoke, flickering firelight, and the bright red of spilled blood.

Martin's world was going to be colorful, I could see that already. It was too colorful, in fact—highly artificial. It was clean, I could see that, too. I took a closer look into the patches of color. Now I could see bright plastic flowers stuck on window glass.

What are they doing here?
I wondered.

It was spring. That's why those flower stickers were there. This world had no trees, no flowers, no bugs. That was all this world had left of springtime.

And now I could see brick around that window. A brick wall. A garage door. A front door. It looked like the door of an apartment or condo: a flat metal door with a peephole.

What's inside?
I wondered.

A living room. A little living room. Here was the easy chair, here was the couch. And over here were stacks of papers to grade—I had so many papers to grade! And unfriendly, angry eyes.

Why should I care what some mythical teacher in Washington State thinks about me?

Again, I squeezed my eyes shut and gave a little shake. Not my world! I needed to see Martin's world! Hadn't this been easy once upon a time? Hadn't I had to fight to keep my dreamy head in the real world? Now I was having to fight to keep the real world out!

Slowly, the living room came into focus again. The biggest thing in it was the television. It was on. It had no switches or buttons. It couldn't be turned off. It was the most exciting thing in the whole boring room— the most passionate thing in Martin's whole world.

“The ALLDOG!” the television shrieked. “Large or small, sleek or fuzzy—all the dogs you ever wanted rolled into one!”

What does a computerized dog look like?
I wondered.

Images flashed through my imagination. Exactly like a real dog, full of energy. Boundless energy and hopeful enthusiasm.

I needed some hopeful enthusiasm right now. I started typing.

A large object struck Martin in the chest, knocking his chair to the ground. Something heavy proceeded to dance on him. He gave it a shove and got a look at it. A big golden-coated collie was attacking him in a frenzy of affection, licking his face and yelping ecstatically.

I smiled. I loved that dog. I loved the affection.

“He's all yours, son,” Dad said, helping Martin to his feet. “They had us send in your photo and a dirty sock and programmed him right at the factory.”

I laughed. It made sense, practically speaking. But it also tickled my fancy.

The collie, unable to contain itself any longer, began swimming forward on its belly. When its nose rested on Martin's sneaker, it toppled sideways and began running in place. Its warm brown eyes never left his face for a second.

“‘The Alldog,'” read Martin's little sister Cassie, “‘is the perfect pet and particularly good with children. Do not place your Alldog in a strong magnetic field. Some assembly required.'”

“Mom?” came the voice from downstairs.

It was Valerie. But Valerie and Elena had had me all day, and they had snapped at me all day. Surely I could have a little time to myself. I kept typing.

Now I was in Martin's room, and he and Cassie were talking, but things weren't so happy anymore. Martin didn't like his dog, no matter what kind of dog it changed into. It kept switching dog breeds to try to please him, but nothing worked.

Because that's what warmth and enthusiasm bring you these days
, I thought sadly.
They don't necessarily win you friends
.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the garret door pushed open.

“Hey, Momma,” Valerie said as she came in and sat down on the floor. “Did you ever play the guitar?”

“Um . . . No.”

A little cream-colored Chihuahua came crawling out from under the bed, whip tail curled between skinny legs. Its large ears lay against its round head
like crumpled Kleenex, and tiny whimpers rose from it at every breath. Its enormous brown eyes practically held tears.

I had it all: the feel of it, the sound of it, the way the room looked, the emotions, the next four or five paragraphs. But it was slipping. I could feel it slipping. I squinted with concentration.

“I used to play Gabi's guitar,” Valerie said. “Do you know the band Echt?”

“Uh-uh,” I muttered, still typing.

But the Chihuahua began to look more and more like Kleenex, and that looked like crumpled paper. Stacks of school papers gathered in drifts in Martin's room. I could see that they hadn't been graded yet.

“Before I left the school, I bought a Toten Hosen CD,” Valerie said. “Do you know the Toten Hosen?”

Toten Hosen? Dead pants?
A pair of black pants went walking through Martin's room, stepping over the stacks of school papers.

“Dead
pants
?” I heard myself ask. “What kind of a band name is that?”

“They were supposed to be the Roten Rosen, the Red Roses,” Valerie said. “But a drunk fan called them the Toten Hosen.”

Now the black pants walking through Martin's room had bold red roses embroidered on their pockets. The Chihuahua was a crumpled-up essay because
Seriously, Mom! What difference does it make?
The collection of words waiting to be racked into the next several paragraphs dripped and flowed into messy, sticky clumps of phrases with no meaning.

Then it was over. I was back in the garret room.

But did it even matter? Who would want to read this book, anyway? Joe didn't have time these days. And let's face it: my whole family thought that my writing was a waste of time.

Or maybe they just hated to share me.

That reminded me of my own mother, tucked away out of reach behind ramparts of college papers. She had never had time—not for anything.

I had certainly hated to share her.

So I closed the file.
Good-bye, Martin. I hope I see you tomorrow
.

And I said, “So, tell me about these Dead Pants.”

I
can't stand it!” Elena wailed. “I hate my life!”

I'm not surprised
, I thought. But I didn't say it.

Valerie had finished her few credits and was done with high school. Now Elena was stuck doing schoolwork by herself. Even though she didn't get along with her sister, she hated the loneliness even more. The girl who had once been at the center of an adoring throng now had not a single friend.

“Let's go to base right now,” I offered. “We can enroll you today, and you can start class tomorrow. It won't take you long to make up the work.”

“No way!” Elena answered. “The semester started weeks ago. They've all already made their friends. Nobody would talk to me.”

“But Elena, it's a military base! Students move in and out all the time. New students show up at that school every single day and have to make friends.”

“No!” And she reached for her stack of textbooks to emphasize her decision.

“Elena, think! How could it be worse than this?”

She flipped open her Latin textbook and pulled out a sheet of paper.

“It could be worse,” she said.

The frustration I felt drove me out of my office chair to pace the room. We had this same argument almost every day. I couldn't understand why Elena wouldn't see reason. She had started from a different culture at boarding school, for goodness' sake! That hadn't kept her from making friends.

I stopped by the bookcases and stared out the window. Valerie was strolling down our village street. At least Valerie seemed to be doing better. She was out and about every day now, making friends with all the village widows. They absolutely doted on her.

“Look at our couch potato,” I said, “out soaking up a little sunshine.”

“It's because she's smoking,” Elena said with gloomy satisfaction. “You think she's walking to get fresh air and meet new people, but what she's really doing is smoking and then walking long enough that you can't smell the smoke when she gets home.”

“Elena!” I said. “Why do you have to be so hateful about your sister?”

If there was one bad habit I despised, it was cigarette smoking. It combined the worst aspects of hedonism and self-loathing. Its contribution to society consisted of stains, stink, trash, and slow, unnecessary death. It was foul, that's what it was—foul!

And here Elena was, throwing around accusations about it. She knew how much I hated smoking!

“I'm not lying, Mom,” Elena said. “She's stealing money to smoke. I'll show you.”

She slipped out of her chair. A minute later, she was back with the euro coin holder in her hands. It had round slots to hold each kind of coin from every euro nation. We had bought it several years ago, when the euro first came out, so that we could collect the designs from each European Union country.

I opened it up. All the little change was there. But all the one-euro and two-euro coins were gone.

I set the holder down on the table and ran my finger around the empty circles. So many memories came up: checking change at the museums in Vienna, squirreling away coins in the bottom of my purse in Rome. They were happy memories from family vacations. This had been a family project.

Or had it been? Wasn't it really just me, admiring the interesting designs, wanting to do something as a family?

Check your coins. Which countries did you get? Oh, good, that's a new one!

At that moment, it all felt so trivial and silly, so sad, almost painfully embarrassing. There I had been, exclaiming over shiny, pretty coins. The Greek owl. The French mask. The odd Italian coin that looked like a skater wearing bricks strapped to his feet. They had meant something to this happy-go-lucky woman, out on vacation with her workaholic husband and two grumpy teens. But the coins weren't special. Not special at all. They were nothing but cold, hard cash.

“Look,” I murmured. “The Portuguese euro is gone. When am I going to see another one of those?”

But it was a rhetorical question. I knew my coin-collecting days were over.

Valerie didn't deny it when I confronted her. Instead, she yelled at her sister. “You're such a little sneak!” she shouted. “You're such a hypocritical little shit!”

“You're a liar and a thief!” Elena shouted back. “How does it feel to steal from your own parents?”