Chapter 12
From the desk (actually love seat) of Kate Fair who still doesn’t have any bookstore stationery at home
2/22/92
Dear Frida,
Did you ever get that snow you wanted? We just got a major surprise for this late in February. The whole city is snowed in. It started late this afternoon with these big feathery flakes like angels pillow fighting in the sky, and the store closed early before the buses stopped running. I read somewhere the city only has a couple snowplows. It’s a real mess when we get a storm like this.
Highway 99 was already shut down so my bus went up First Avenue. The air was all crisp edges, and my favorite neon signs like Metsker Maps and Warshal’s Sporting Goods looked like stained glass. Up at Pike Place the cobblestones were dusted with snow, and they shimmered crimson in the glow from the Public Market sign. The newsstand was the only place still open, with a few people inside bundled up in the amber light like a scene on a Christmas card. Along with working at a bookstore, I wanted to live in a big city when I was growing up, and tonight Seattle looked as magical as I imagined it would.
By the time the bus got to my stop in Ballard (the city’s Scandinavian neighborhood with lots of old brick buildings like Pioneer Square), everything was icy white. My apartment’s on the second floor. Because I’m at the end of the building I have two brick walls. It’s basically a long room with a ceiling sort of high enough for a kind of bedroom loft over the kitchen. I moved in last year, and every time I walk in I still think: A Room of My Very Own! I wonder what I’d think if I didn’t learn about Virginia Woolf in college.
As soon as I got inside the power conked out. No buzzing fridge. No cars whooshing in the street. It felt like being in a frozen cloud of It felt like having chilled cotton I hate it when I can’t find the right words. That’s why I cross things out. It seems like some writers have the perfect word for every single thing, but I have to spend all this time searching my thesaurus because there are so many ways to use words that I never read when I was growing up, and I end up using the same ones, like awesome and totally. What am I, a Valley Girl?
I’m drinking a cup of Twinings blackcurrant tea, snuggled up on my love seat. Between my oil lamp and the moon off the snow, there’s more than enough light to write to you. I think the snow is making me thoughtful introspective. I’ve been thinking about how different your childhood was from mine. I’m sorry it was embarrassing for you sometimes. It sounds awesome (there it is again) fascinating to me. You know about so many things I’m learning about for the first time reading your letters. Like capers and Isadora Duncan. And I can’t imagine what it must be like to grow up in one place where everyone knows you.
My dad’s a civil engineer, and he kept getting jobs all over the state. I think that’s why I wrote what I did about being able to count on books. One time I ended up living in three places in a single year, but Sheila the Great and Harriet the Spy were up to the same old thing no matter where I was. Kind of like my family. It didn’t matter where we lived. Dad would come into our bedroom at night and tell us one of his silly Raggedy Kojak mysteries that he started making up after our Raggedy Ann doll lost her hair. Mom would always find the local library and craft store for us, and Franny and I could play travel agent or Charlie’s Angels wherever we were. We’re pretty lucky. One thing I learned from all that moving is there are a lot of families out there that don’t get along. We actually like each other. I mean, we can have fun doing pretty much anything together. Even if we’re just driving to a store, we’re talking a mile a minute or singing “Bad Moon Rising” at the top of our lungs. I get to see Mom and Dad a lot because they’re only an hour away down in Olympia, but I really miss Franny. She graduated from college in California and got a job with a hotel down there. Our budgets don’t have wiggle room for too many long-distance calls even now with the new evening rates.
Since I can only guess what therapy is like, to me our letters feel like writing in my diary but more satisfying because I know you’re going to write back something that makes me think. It definitely isn’t like my pen pal in the seventh grade. She lived in Wisconsin. All we wrote about were our favorite Lip Smacker flavors (Lipton lemonade for me) and our chances of marrying Shaun Cassidy.
I’m starting to doze off. Have a nice night,
Kate
P.S. I had to wait to mail this because of the snow. I ended up reading two books in the meantime, and now I have to tell you about them because I’m sending them to you. The Debut by Anita Brookner and Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac. The reason I read Eugénie is because Anita writes about it in The Debut . Her main character, Ruth, thinks her life has been ruined by literature because she read the wrong kinds of books growing up. Fairy tales where the wicked get punished and the good live happily ever after. But Ruth was good, and she didn’t get a happy ending. Ruth thinks if she read more realistic books like Eugénie she would’ve been better prepared for life. Do you think that’s true? When I try to think about it, the bees go into overdrive.
P.P.S. I hope it’s not corny to send you a picture of me, but I’m curious about what you look like, so maybe you feel the same way.