Dear Sylvia Read online

  And Andy said — shhh Leonard!

  And Mom said — what are we going to live on?

  And Dad said — haven’t I always paid for us?

  And Mom said — maybe I should get a job!

  And Dad said — not my wife!

  And Mom said — why not?

  I kept wanting to hear what Dad’s story is. Because I have a lot of ideas for it.

  Mom and Dad yelled a lot more after that. Andy said I should go down and put them to sleep like they were Fillus but I didn’t want to go in the middle of a hurracane hurricane plane crash in a dessert desert sandstorm tidle tidal wave which was what they sounded like.

  But Leonard said — Mom is going to smash Dad with the frying pan!

  And Andy said — why would she do that?

  And Leonard said — because I saw it on TV!

  And Leonard said I should sneek sneak down into the kitchen and get the frying pan so Mom wouldn’t smash Dad with it and then there’d be a bad murder.

  Andy started kicking me out of the bed.

  But I said nobody is going to get a smashed head from the frying pan!

  But I wondered about it anyway. They kept fighting like 2 cats in a barn. Then their was a terrible loud crash and then nothing at all and Leonard said — Owen! Go!

  So I went down the stairs 1 step and then 2. They were in the living room. Dad was standing with his back turned like a perfect target. If Mom wanted to she could have got the frying pan and bonked him. But she was sitting down and not looking at him and her nukkles knuckles were hard red from skweezing squeezing.

  A chair was turned over. That’s all.

  Dad said — I don’t know why you’re being so neggutive negative!

  And Mom screamed — because I like to feed my children and pay the bills!

  And Dad yelled — being a writer is not a vow of povvertty! poverty!

  Dad saw me on the stairs and he said — GO BACK TO BED! like he was thunder all over the sky. I ran so fast I can’t remember how I got back in bed.

  And Leonard said over and over — we’re going to starve! in his little voice like a sliver in your finger that you can’t get out and it hurts not a lot but won’t let you get to sleep.

  Sincerely,

  Owen

  Deer Sylvia,

  I know you have not written yet and I forgive you because I wrote you lots of letters that I did not send yet. I am trying to keep them in order in case I do send them. Which I probably will when I get better with the dictionary but I hate flipping all the pages and it takes forever.

  We have not starved yet even though my father has quit his job and decided to become a writer.

  I got some good ideas for his book The Invisible Enshurince Man. To start I think he should be walking home from a day at his office and then there should be a big commoshun commotion. The ground is shaking. Buildings tremble! A giant reptile is staggering toward the city! So the Invisible Enshurince Man puts down his breefcase briefcase and unwinds the cloth he keeps over his face and takes off the black eye patch he always wears. Nobody is looking because the Giant Reptile is coming! The Invisible Enshurince Man takes off his hat and his soot suit and pants and socks and shoes and undershirt and underpants and then he is Invisible!

  I think that would make a good Chapter 1.

  Sincerely,

  Owen

  PSST! The Invisible Enshurince Man would step away from his closes clothes just as the Giant Reptile was about to stomp on him. That way he would be saved.

  Deer Sylvia,

  Dad did not go to work today. He is home for GOOD. He stays in his office room clacking and clacking and Mom has a hard time making the bread rise. She got mad at Sylvester when he was just sniffing a bit of bacon she left on the counter. She smacked him with the flat side of the bread knife and he ran around yowelling.

  There isn’t anyplace you can go in the house without hearing CLACKclackCLACK. Leonard said it is like we live in a big book factory. And Andy said book factories are a lot louder than this. And Leonard said was Dad even allowed to make his own book at home instead of at the factory? And Andy said he didn’t think the police cared whether you made your own book at home.

  Then Sylvester came yowelling with little bits of bacon stuck in his furry lips. And Mom was running after him. Instead of the bread knife she had the big black frying pan in her hand!

  Leonard yelled — run! run! and Sylvester skweezed squeezed in behind the chesterfeelde sofa but his tail bumped over the vase from when Mom and Dad got married.

  It was just like in baseball when you see the pop fly is falling and falling but they’re isn’t time to get their in time. Sometimes then I throw my glove in case the ball might land inside it by a mirruckle miracle. But I didn’t have my glove with me since we weren’t playing baseball and anyway we’re not allowed to any more inside. I kicked my shoe at it instead and if Leonard’s head didn’t get in the way I think the vase would have landed on it and been saved.

  And then Sylvester wouldn’t have bolted out and stepped on the glass and tracked blood through the house and Dad wouldn’t have exploded and yelled what he did about piece peace and quiet as if the hole house has to be a library just for him and Mom wouldn’t have looked at him like that still with the frying pan in her hand and Leonard wouldn’t have had tred sneaker marks on his cheak cheek.

  From,

  Owen

  PSST! This is my last envelope. Sylvester got hold of a bunch of them and they fell in the toilet. Sorry. I’ll try to get some more. What I wanted to say was that back at camping when Eleanor and Sadie were sitting on the big rock and Andy and Leonard were after the sea monster dragging around Dad’s fishing rod in the middle of the lake and Uncle Lorne and Dad were asleep by the dead fire and Ant Lorraine and Mom were trying to give Fillus a bath in the lake and it wasn’t raining for a minute I took my pocket knife and went back in the woods a little and carved something in a tree. I wanted to write OWEN AND SYLVIA but the bark felt hard as wood and my knife isn’t big so I wrote OS.

  I hope you don’t mind.

  Deer Sylvia,

  I am writing now even though I don’t have any more envelopes. And I know you didn’t get many letters from me yet because I have them still in a shoe box that I keep in the back of the closet. I will mail them soon when I get some more envelopes but right now we’re poor!

  It happened this morning when I went to make eggs. I make all the eggs now for everybody because Dad is too busy with the Invisible Enshurince Man from even before it’s morning. I wonder what is happening in the book. Did the Invisible Enshurince Man find his clothes when he got home and has their been a murder yet? Andy says you have to have a murder right on the first page. I said what about the Giant Reptile? He could have killed 8 dozen people just by stepping in the wrong place. And Andy said what’s the point of killing 8 dozen people on the first page if you know eggzackly eczakly who did it?

  Their has to be a mystery.

  Their is no mystery about who broke the last vase of the wedding. Leonard said it wasn’t Sylvester’s fawlt fault it was his tail’s. Sylvester’s tail wags all on its own and sometimes he runs around and around biting at it like it belongs to some other dog so really it was like another dog broke the vase not Sylvester.

  But Mom said — shut up about the vase!

  And Dad said — I’ll buy you another one just as good as soon as the book is done.

  And Mom said — we got four vases for our wedding and that was the prettiest!

  But Dad said — I’ll get you five new vases even better!

  Mom was crying into her dish towel when she swept up the glass yesterday.

  Andy said that we needed to get Mom a new vase. I thought we should see if we had enough money from the pennies and nickels we all had together in our comic book jar but Andy said the best vases were from
Aynshent Ancient Grease and so we should dig 1 up and then we could wash and polish it. Andy said probably the best place was in the woods by the railroad tracks where a lot of Greasy rocks were dug up already. But first we had to find a shovel so we had a secret meeting in the garage. Their are a lot of things in the garage like saw horses and an old dead baby buggy but the hardest thing to find is what you want most of the time. So we had to croll crawl a bit in the dust and the dirt and underneath the old mowers and where the ladder is and some benches. While we were looking Leonard said — I think Dad should go back to being an Enshurince man and not write a book about it. Then Mom would be happy and we wouldn’t be starving poor!

  And then Andy found the Ancient Greasy vase right in the back corner of the garage. It was rusty filthy brown like everything else but probably a million years old according to Andy who spit on it to clean it up a bit. We gave it a proper bath in a bucket and I found an old horse brush. We couldn’t get all the dirt out from inside because the opening was too small even for Leonard’s hand. Andy said that Ancient vases were even more speshul special for their chips and cracks.

  Andy said — this might be worth $100!

  When we brought it in the house we were all carrying it.

  Dad was back in his office with the door closed going CLACKclackCLACK! Mom was upstairs working at her soing sowing machine and the needle was going brinyin-brinyin-brinyin-brin and she didn’t hear us coming. I was thinking if it was worth $100 then maybe we could sell it and not be starving poor any more until Dad’s book was ready.

  Mom kept her head down like she really didn’t want to see us. So we got closer and closer.

  Until Leonard said — it’s dripping!

  I didn’t notice till then. Mud drops were on the white carpet Mom has up in the sooing room. Some of the drops I guess were from the Greasy Vase and some I guess were from our feet.

  Mom really didn’t like the vase at all! But we didn’t drop it when we ran out. We put it back in the garage where some other explorers will find it in a million more years and they can have the $100.

  Love,

  Owen

  Deer Sylvia,

  I hope you don’t mind that I signed LOVE. You won’t get this letter anyway until we aren’t poor any more and I can buy envelopes.

  Love,

  Owen

  PSST! Instead of eggs now in the morning I have to cook up a big pot of poorudge porridge. You put the owtmeel oatmeal in a big pot with a little spoon of salt and a lot of water and you stir and stir on the burner till your arm gets tired then you keep stirring and this is what Oliver Twist wanted more of!

  That’s how poor we are.

  Deer Sylvia,

  Dad can’t stop writing pages! Even in the middle of the night now we can hear him CLACK-clackCLACKing. Leonard groans and says when is he going to stop? Andy thinks the Invisible Enshurince Man should team up with the Bog Man to fight the Temptress Serpina in an intergalactic struggle of bad guys fighting each other.

  And Leonard said — you can’t just have bad guys fighting each other!

  And Andy said — he could make another chapter with good guys fighting.

  And Leonard said — you have to have the good guys and the bad guys fighting in the same chapter or else you can’t have a book.

  I don’t know what the rules are. I’d like the Invisible Enshurince Man to have a nice time some time when he could just get up in the morning and it would be quite quiet with no CLACKING and nobody wants him to go every night to make Fillus stop crying and he could just make his own egg and that would be breakfast.

  With toast.

  Love,

  Owen

  PSST! I never told you that time I was walking back with Andy from hockey and we cut across the school yard in the dark and I looked up and into the window of the classroom which wasn’t ours but you were their anyway playing piano at a lesson. I didn’t hear you at all. I guess because the snow was too loud from our walking. But I saw you.

  It was dark where I was but where you were it was so bright you were taking off your hair band and you looked right at me.

  Deer Sylvia,

  My teacher Miss Glendon is giving me a hard time over my spelling! I have been working so hard on it too and dragging my dictionary whenever I go to write you a letter. But she gives us tricky words like three kinds of THEREs and UNFORTUNATELY.

  She said — Owen! When you make such basic errors on the page people will think you are an IGNORAMOUSE!

  Miss Glendon is yelling at lots of us not just me. I think she feels bad because she hasn’t made us perfect and school is almost over. She doesn’t know how hard I am trying. And how much it slows me down when I have all these stories and everything happening in my head to tell you.

  Love,

  Owen

  PSST! When you do read these letters I hope you see I am not really an ignoramouse. But sometimes the dictionary doesn’t have the words I need or else my eyes can’t find them or they are on another page.

  PSST again! Its OK if you don’t remember seeing me outside with my hockey stick that night when I saw you. It was a long time ago and sometimes it is different depending on what side of the window you’re on.

  Deer Sylvia,

  We are getting poorer and poorer. Dad came out of his office for the first time all week I think but it was because his typewriter ribbon was in shreds. He has not shaved in a long time. He raced out and bought six new ribbons. Mom and him had another loud windstorm but this time they didn’t even wait for us to go to bed. They had it right in the living room. Mom said — how could you buy six ribbons when we haven’t even paid the electrisitty electricity bill?

  And Dad said — I’ll be finished the book in six ribbons!

  And Mom said — how many pages will that be?

  And Dad said — about 400!

  And Mom said — who’s going to read a 400 page book? You won’t even let me read the first 20 pages!

  So Dad threw the pages at her and she went upstairs with them and we are all waiting.

  Except Dad. He is CLACKclackCLACKing again.

  Leonard and Andy and me are thinking of ways to make money so we don’t have to eat boiled cans which is what we have for dinner now instead of food. We want to bring Sylvester to the river and make a show so he would dive underwater for his rock and people would pay us. He is the only underwater dog we know.

  Love,

  Owen

  Deer Sylvia,

  Mom doesn’t like the Invisible Enshurince Man!

  She spent all afternoon reading and reading in the bedroom with the door closed. When she finally came out her face looked gray as an old newspaper that’s been left in the wall for 100 years and when you have to open up the wall to look for someone’s skullbone instead you find the newspaper.

  She said — who is Rebecca?

  And Dad said — I made her up!

  And Mom said — I want to know who she is!

  But Dad couldn’t tell her.

  So Mom drove off in the car. She learned to giggle it herself. Now it’s suppertime and we’re having canned beens beans. I’ll tell you what happens later.

  Now it’s later.

  We sat and stared at the beans. It felt like we were all underneath too many blankets. Finally Leonard said — I can’t eat this stuff its poyzunned poisoned!

  Dad looked at him like he just pulled the ring out of a grenade.

  Leonard poked his beans around and around on the plate.

  He said in his little voice — they taste like clay.

  Dad hit the table with his hand! We jumped and Leonard’s plate rolled onto the floor like a hubcap.

  With beans on it.

  Then Leonard had to get the rag and the mop and another plate and a spoon and scrape all the poisoned beans into the garbage and Dad said he could go
hungry if he didn’t like beans. He said we were all spoilt and that kids in Africa would kill their mothers for beans as good as this. Leonard said he didn’t want to kill his mother for any beans and he started to cry.

  Andy said — who’s Rebecca?

  I thought Dad was going to explode another grenade. Instead he said — you have to have a love interest in a book!

  Why? Andy said.

  Dad got up and threw his beans in the garbage and said we could all go climb trees naked in a thunderstorm. He said we would learn about love interest when we were older. Then he went back to his office and going CLACKclackCLACK again at first really hard then like a woodleg pirate hopping across a stone street.

  Andy decided we needed to clean up the kitchen so there wouldn’t be a windstorm over that when Mom got home. While we were at it he said he thought Rebecca was the Invisible Enshurince Man’s seckreterry secretary who had long red hair like a red silk rope down her back and she wore lipstick.

  Leonard said — why does she have to wear lipstick?

  Andy said — because the love interest secretary always wears lipstick. That’s how you know who she is.

  Leonard said — Mom wears lipstick.

  Andy said — not at the office.

  Leonard said — but Mom doesn’t go to the office!

  So she can’t be the love interest! Andy said.

  Andy said Rebecca wears special secretary spy glasses and that’s why she can see the Invisible Enshurince Man who is in love with her because of her red hair.

  Leonard said — what’s so great about red hair? Fillus has red hair!

  Fillus is a baby — Andy said.

  And Leonard said to me — are you in love with Fillus because she has red hair?

  I said I wasn’t and Leonard said I was and I said I wasn’t and the big pot of beans slipped off the stove and mostly went down Leonard’s leg but it wasn’t me!

  Leonard was snapping his dish towel around and Andy caught it and somebody’s elbow knocked the cupboard door and that’s when the glasses fell down on the counter so close to Leonard he bumped into the bean pot.

  Dad stopped going clackCLACKclack and I thought a world war would come stomping into the kitchen but it was just us with the broken glasses and Leonard crying over beans.