“Could be,” she said cheerfully.
Besides, they’re right, by God. Isn’t time the medium of all those interwoven lives I saw there, bringing us together and apart and together again?
“I’d like a shot of you with your daughter and the poodle, Mrs. Howard,” one of the photographers said.
The letter found Blanca at the asthma camp, where the juvenile court judge had insisted that she go. She hated the camp, just as she had known she would. Her mattress sagged, the kids in her bunk were noisy and silly, and someone had stolen her comb. They watched you like a hawk here. She would have spent her entire time in the crafts room carving soapstone, but they wouldn’t let her. They had all these activities, and they made you do them all.
If you had an attack, nobody was impressed. They weren’t actually mean, but they treated you so matter-of-fact, and everybody else went on about their business. She had no tv and not enough to read. After a while you got bored being sick and got up, even if you didn’t feel great. Nobody made a fuss about that, either.
Every day you had mail call at lunch and then a rest hour when you could write letters or sleep.
The letter Blanca had gotten was in a thin, bluish envelope, and the stamps were foreign. The return address was St. Christopher’s Hospice, London. The name of the sender was G. Eric Maulders.
Blanca put the letter on her pillow and looked at it for a while. Nobody took any notice. The girl in the next bunk was sleeping. Nobody came sneaking over to Blanca’s bunk to whisper with her. Blanca had made no friends here. She didn’t want to.
She opened the letter.
It was written in blue ball-point on flimsy paper, like tracing paper.
My Dear Blanca,
You will have been told, I imagine, that I was too ill to respond to your card or your phone messages during the remainder of my stay in New Mexico. This was true in the sense that although physically far better off than I was the last time you saw me, mentally I felt a great deal nearer my death. Frankly, I did not wish to nourish ties to a world I must so shortly be leaving. I may have been mistaken in this, and I apologize for any hurt my silence caused you.
Since settling in here, I have thought of you often. You have a clever, restless, observant mind, Blanca, and it seems to me that you would make a good traveler.
Not all travels are happy ones, as you know. Your brother would not have enjoyed wandering in Canada. I have a sister who returned from an early journey forever changed for the worse (not so severely changed, however, as I had thought, as I have lately discovered). But one need not be a fugitive or an exile to fare forth, and I believe that for an eager, questing mind like yours the risks are worth the gains.
Do you recall my telling you that night of a friend from India (Sikh, but not, lucky man, sick, as you at first supposed)? He has turned up and visits me here frequently. I am reminded by him of many people I have met in my travels whose spirits have warmed at once to mine and for whom I in turn have felt an immediate liking that made the most alien settings and situations seem less strange and the world itself a less lonely place. I think now it is not so bad a thing to rove over the world clasping the hands held out to you. You may in that way meet those heart’s-kindred of whom we once spoke.
In that way you and I, against all probability, managed to meet however briefly. I hope that despite the negative aspects of that experience, when you can venture forth again, you will. I feel certain that there are many lives your life could cross to their great gain and your own.
To that end, I am making you a modest bequest in my Will. Given current economic conditions, by the time you reach your majority this money, no matter how wisely invested in the interim, will probably buy you little more than a one-way bus ticket to Denver, Colorado. The legacy is intended as an aid only, and, with luck, by that time you shall already be away on your own.
On the other hand, if I have misread you, or if you change very much between now and then and find that you would prefer to use this sum for other purposes, by all means feel free to do so. My intention is to help you to free yourself, not to constrain you in any way.
It rains here nearly all the time, but at least people know how to speak properly. They say “privv-acy,” not “pry-vacy.” Good luck to you, my dear young friend. Don’t trouble to write a reply. They assure me here that the end is very near. I find that I hardly mind.
Your old friend, Ricky
P.S. I regret being unable to write this letter in my own hand, but in the past few days my vision has gone very bad. Therefore I am dictating to a companion who is very discreet and who assures me of the privacy (see pronunciation instruction above) of this communication.
R.
The letter was on such fragile paper that, subjected to many re-readings, many foldings and unfoldings, parts of it became illegible. By that time Blanca knew the contents by heart.
THE END
Author Biography
Suzy Charnas didn’t get out of her home city of New York until the Peace Corps sent her to Nigeria in 1961, where she taught high school and fell in love with the great wide world outside Manhattan. She has pursued broadened horizons ever since in tales of fantasy and science fiction, beginning with Walk to the End of the World, a novel that grew into a four-book feminist epic about myth, history, and gender (winner of the Tiptree Award). Her varied sf, horror, and fantasy works (including the classic The Vampire Tapestry ) have won the Hugo, the Nebula, the Gigamesh Award, and the Mythopoeic Award for young-adult fantasy. Stagestruck Vampires, her latest work (Tachyon), collects her best short fiction and essays; new stories regularly appear in original anthologies with other-worldly themes. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but you can visit on the net at www.suzymckeecharnas.com.
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Suzy McKee Charnas, Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books)
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