Chapter 36
The Puget Sound Book Company
101 South Main Street??Seattle, WA 98104
12/7/92
Dear Frida,
I hope you like the mixtape. It’s been a while since I’ve made one. I’m pretty sure the last one was for a high school boyfriend. I’m having flashbacks about trying to record Journey and Loverboy off the radio. I also hope you get the point of it, FRIEND!
News Flash: Trying something that doesn’t work out doesn’t make you a phony. You get on my case to stop talking about what I don’t know. Well, you need to stop looking at what you didn’t do and look at what you did. It was exactly what your sisters wanted. When you grilled those sardines, you made the world a better place. You showed Lejla, Irena, and the other students that someone cares about them. Maybe it wasn’t a Pulitzer Prize–winning article, but it mattered to them that you cared. You still care. Don’t go back to West Coast Commerce .
For the record, I’m Fair Kate, not Fairweather Kate. I wasn’t mad at you, even though that was pretty rude. Apology accepted. (On that note, you might want to lighten up on your friends. I liked Singles , too. They filmed a lot of it around the bookstore which was pretty cool.) The reason I didn’t respond right away is because things haven’t been going great. It’s not just Bumpa. Ever since his stroke, something’s been off-kilter between Sven and me. I tried writing to you about it a couple times. Usually when I do that things start to clear up, but lately I feel like everything’s getting muddier, especially after this morning.
Sven’s been in a super low mood because he’s had a few rejections for his novel. Last night at a party he and this famous British novelist got into a gripe-fest about the commodification of the publishing industry. The writer’s wife belted back one too many, and she pulled me aside and whispered, “Consider yourself warned. Here’s the thing about a great writer. His ambition will make him bitter.” On the drive home, Sven went on a jag about how most people plod along not caring if they do anything meaningful with their lives, but he’s trying with his novel and no one appreciates it.
When I met Mom at the nursing home today, the night was stuck in my head like clumps of wet cotton. We were in the game room working on a jigsaw puzzle. She’d find a piece and then give it to Bumpa. His good hand is pretty shaky, so he’d get a piece close to where it was supposed to go, and she’d wrap her hand around his and they’d press it in together. One piece after another. Every once in a while she asked him if he was warm enough or if he’d rather watch TV like everything was normal. Like it’s perfectly acceptable to be a good person and love your family and work all your life and take your car in for an oil change every three months until the scumbag universe decides to reciprocate by knocking you flat with a stroke.
What’s the point in I started to feel tight like I did that day in Toppenish. Frida, I’m so tired of Big Questions barging into my head. I could feel this one swelling inside me, and when Bumpa fell asleep, I couldn’t hold it back. I had to know if Mom thought Bumpa had a happy life.
The second I asked, I knew what I wanted her to say. Please say yes. Please say it was real happiness and please tell me how you know. She reached out and brushed a strand of his thin gray hair away from his forehead, gently like you do with a child so you don’t wake them up. She was quiet for a while and then she whispered, “Chicago was hard, but I think he made peace with it.”
Chicago? Peace with what? It turns out that not long after I was born, Bumpa disappeared from Seattle. No one knew where he went until he called his sister and told her he was working at a factory in Chicago. I asked Mom why I never heard this story, and she said it was all such a long time ago. He came back a few months later, went to a psychiatrist for his depression, and got better. Bumpa was depressed, Frida. Gentle, smiling Bumpa who spent hours teaching Franny and me how to carve soap and build ships in bottles went to a psychiatrist! What happened? Was he questioning who he was? Did he figure it out? More questions ping-ponged in my head, but Mom’s lips were tight the way they get when she’s trying not to cry. She slid her hand across the table and softly touched her fingertips to Bumpa’s fingertips. My anxiety hit me so hard my earlobes tingled.
When I got to the store, Sven was downstairs setting up for the Cynthia Kadohata reading. I told him what Mom told me. He nodded like he wasn’t surprised and asked if I’ve read Walden . Then he quoted how the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Seriously? I share that Bumpa was so depressed he fled all the way across the country, and that’s the best I get? Fortune cookie Thoreau?
Writing to you may not be solving anything, but it sure makes me feel better to let it out (to you, not just anybody, but YOU).
Your faithful BEST FRIEND forever,
Kate