Free Swann by Carol Shields Page B

grabbing little, light girlish puffs of air. For the first time in mylife I envy her, wanting a portion of her new lightness. Probably she’ll sleep like this for another hour. Relief begins to settle around me. The bruise on my check resumes its faint throbbing. When she wakes up we’ll talk for a bit, and after that I’ll slip off to the telephone to call Stephen as I promised.
18
    Letters; I’ve fallen behind in my letter writing, but nevertheless they arrive at the door in bales.
    Willard Lang has written me a brisk, cosy little note saying my paper has arrived and been reviewed by the program committee and deemed very suitable
indeed
. A place on the agenda has been given to me, one hour for my lecture and twenty minutes for questions from the floor, should there be any. (He warns me not to go beyond the time limit since a buffet lunch is planned for 12:30, after which there will be a varied program of workshops.) I am to speak at the opening session immediately after the coffee break that follows Dr. Morton Jimroy’s keynote address. There is an implication of honour in this.
    Morton Jimroy has written a long, disjointed, and somewhat paranoid letter from Palo Alto. He distrusts Lang and dreads the unveiling of the four love poems, fearing they will spawn absurd theories. His own work is going well, despite the fact that Mary Swann’s daughter, Frances, has become inexplicably hostile. He despairs of getting anything more from her. Furthermore, the continual California sunshine is oppressive, and there are roses blooming all around his rented house, he says, too many roses, which give the effect of vulgar profusion and untimeliness. He wouldlike to lop off their heads with a pair of shears, but is afraid this might violate the terms of tenancy. Three times he tells me he is looking forward to meeting me: in the first paragraph, again in a middle paragraph, and once more in the closing paragraph. “We will have so much to say to each other,” he suggests, declares, promises.
    Frederic Cruzzi writes, agreeing, reluctantly, to attend the symposium. A stilted letter and faintly arrogant, but he praises my handwriting.
    Rose Hindmarch from Nadeau, Ontario, has sent me a note on the back of a Christmas card, though it is only the first week in December, the Holy Family bathed in spears of blue light. “If my health permits,” she writes, “I will be going to the symposium in January. Hope you’ll be there so we can have a good gab.” This letter stirs in me separate wavelets of emotion: pleasure that she’s been invited; guilt (the free-floating variety) at the mention of her poor health; concern, in case she remembers Mary Swann’s rhyming dictionary and mentions it to someone; and anticipation at the warm mention of a “gab,” my needy self being fed by all manifestations of sisterhood.
    A woman in Amsterdam (signature illegible) writes to say she has just finished reading the Dutch edition of
The Female Prism
and that it has changed her life. (Immediately after my book was published I received about two hundred such letters, mostly from women, though three were from men, crediting me with changing their lives, liberating them from their biological braces and so on. Nowadays, I sometimes see my book for sale in second-hand bookstores, and I’m always surprised at how little pain this gives me.)
    A letter comes from Larry Fine who has gone out west to interview witnesses of the Mt. St. Helens eruption. “Temporary danger breeds permanent fears,” he informsme, “but surprisingly few people can recall the exact date of the disaster.”
    My sister, Lena, writes from London—at the bottom is a string of pencilled kisses from my adored little Franklin, aged six—begging me to keep close watch over our postoperative mother, which she herself would do if she weren’t so far away and hadn’t just changed jobs again, abandoning the handcrafted bird-cage business for the more people-oriented field of therapy