Chapter 41
The Puget Sound Book Company
101 South Main Street??Seattle, WA 98104
3/30/93
Dear Frida,
Lejla is so lucky to have you in her life. And West Coast Commerce ’s loss is the world’s gain. But you haven’t mentioned writing since you left Sarajevo. I noticed it during our phone calls when you were in L.A. Maybe I should have said something then. You are going to keep writing, aren’t you? The only answer I will accept is yes. I figured maybe you need a little prod, so I went to the galley box (that’s where our book buyer puts prepublication copies that all the different publishers send us). I told it, “Give me a book for Frida.” I closed my eyes and reached in, and I swear this is true. I pulled out The Balkan Express . The interesting thing about Slavenka Drakuli? is that her Me-Myself-I writing doesn’t feel self-centered. It makes me feel like I’m experiencing what she experienced right along with her. You should stop resisting your amazing Frida-ness. “Pick up where the news stops,” like Slavenka says. (There’s a line near the beginning of the book that especially made me think of you. I want to see if you find it on your own.)
I wish I could say I’ve been writing too, but mostly I’ve been avoiding it by cooking. Today I’m perfecting Laurie Colwin’s tomato pie recipe (the biscuit-dough crust is tricky), even though every time I drizzle the lemon and mayo I start crying. I still can’t believe she died. She was only forty-eight. I was just getting to know her. I remember when I was reading Home Cooking , I’d have these daydreams about how she’d write more books and I’d read them, and one day I’d meet her and gush about how much she means to me. She introduced me to polenta and olive oil. She took away my fear of eggplant with its prehistoric starfish stem and vinyl skin. She burned food and sometimes drank too much wine and didn’t seem to agonize at all over who she was supposed to be. She didn’t write a so-called Big Important Novel, but when I read Happy All the Time it made me feel The way the character Holly serves tea in her unmatched I want to decant things in glass Give me a second to nail down this thought. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Got it (sort of).
When I’m feeling blue and redo my address book with colored pens to cheer myself up, Laurie makes me feel like I’m not devising Ugh. Why can’t I figure out what I want to say? Laurie’s characters think a lot about the way life works, but they let themselves really enjoy it, too, and I guess the way they live got me thinking more about Sven’s whole constructed happiness theory. I’m not sure I agree with it. Like the other day when I was especially sad about Bumpa, I hopped in Edith Wharton (that’s what I named my car) and drove down to Sears. It has a big craft section, and I wanted to buy rope so Bumpa and I could do macrame. He loves tying knots. I think it’s a sailor thing. When we’re working on macrame together I’m happy, and I can tell he’s happy, too. It doesn’t feel artificial at all, and it makes me wonder if Sven’s right, or if there’s a reason he needs to think some kinds of happiness are real and some aren’t.
I tried asking him, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He’s in such a funk about his novel. Confession: I didn’t mind since I’ve pretty much stopped talking to him about Bumpa anyway. It’s like I live two totally different lives. Like last weekend I spent Saturday at the nursing home and Sunday with Sven. We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island and drove around looking at old-fashioned farmhouses, figuring out how much money we’d need to live there and write books and raise a family. When we went down to the beach overlooking the city, we wrapped up in a blanket, and we could see the skyline from the Space Needle all the way down to Mount Rainier. We talked for hours like when we first got together. He really opened up to me in a new way.
I knew diabetes can affect a person’s eyes, but I didn’t know he went to the doctor recently because he’s had some black spots in his vision. His voice sounded frail when he told me how afraid he is of losing his eyesight. There’s this quote he read by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It’s about how so many people die with their music still inside them. Sven’s terrified of going blind before he publishes his novel. He says he doesn’t mean to be so bleak all the time. He wants to have more picnics in department stores and dance in more heat waves, but he’s afraid of running out of time. There’s already so much darkness in the world, Frida. What if the dark spots on his soul keep growing like the ones in his vision? It scares me. He says he’s thankful for the light I bring into his life, but what if I don’t have enough light for both of us?
I’ve been thinking about what Bobbie said about a steel place in a person’s heart. I’m pretty sure I don’t have one either, and I wonder if some people have a place that’s extra tender. Everything makes me cry these days. The poor people on that ferry in Haiti. The World Trade Center bombing. Laurie Colwin, Bumpa, Sven’s eyesight. That stupid Fruit of the Loom ad with the song about teaching your children well. It’s like all the compartments in my heart collapsed and I feel everything all at once.
Love,
Kate
P.S. I guessed at Branka’s size for the Smurfette dress, and I hope she likes Ramona the Pest . I thought you could use it to help teach her English. If she doesn’t like it I can send something different like Frog and Toad .
P.P.S. If a book doesn’t sell we can return it to the publisher and get a refund. Because mass market paperbacks are so cheap, it’s more expensive to mail the whole book back than it’s worth, so we strip off the covers, throw the books away, and send the covers back to the publisher to get our money back. That’s a stripped mass market.