Dragonholder (6 page)

For most of the next nine years, Anne's singing and acting took backstage to her two children, her two science fiction stories, and her two moves. The second move brought the family to a new estate in Wilmington, Delaware where right next door was a friendly family with a teenager old enough to baby-sit.

Anne joined the Breck's Mills Cronies and was the heroine's crony in their production of
The Vagabond King
. And she joined the Concorde Presbyterian church choir, singing soprano and taking lessons from the choirmaster, Ted Huang.

But best was when Anne met the opera stage director of the Lancaster Opera Society. She met him as they worked together on a production at the Wilmington Music School. They became fast friends, and he would often stop at her house for dinner after the long drive back to Delaware from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Years later, Frederic H. Robinson would become the mold from which MasterHarper Robinton was cast.

 

T
he trip to Germany was a real wrench, as “Robie” had offered a
plum role in a modern opera. Worse, in Germany Anne's Canadian tenor, Ron Stewart, decided
that she was a contralto and commenced to train her in that lower range. It was a mistake.
Singing in the lower range, Anne had flaws in the E, F, and G notes in the middle voice. Her
maestro never allowed her to sing anywhere except in his studio and so she never noticed the
flaw herself. When he later told her about it, Anne's devastation was traumatic.

Years later Anne bequeathed her emotions to Killashandra Ree, of
Crystal Singer
:
“I've repertoire! I've worked hard and now — now you tell me I've no voice!”

 

B
ack to Anne's parents. Bittersweet.

After the war, the Kernel went unhappily back to his old job at the Commerce and Industry Association. He had reveled in the problems of wartime military government. When he was offered a chance to help the Japanese revamp their erratic tax structure he took it and was sent out as a fiscal authority. Anne's mother followed shortly afterwards, and from 1950 until the outbreak of the Korean War in 1952, the two had been happily engrossed in the Japanese culture and its revitalization.

When the war in Korea broke out in 1952, the Kernel had finished restructuring of the Japanese taxation system. He waived his disabilities to volunteer his services to be chief of the Finance Division for
UNCACK
forces in Pusan. He enjoyed the job immensely and spared no efforts in doing the very best he could.

But, as in World War II, it taxed him horribly. In 1953 Anne received the shocking news that the Kernel had been sent back to Hawaii for a prostate operation. So she constructed a cheering telegram:

“PROUD PROGENY PLEASED PERFECT PAPA POSTOPERATIVELY PROSPERING. PLEASE PERPETUATE.”

Not to be outdone, particularly when recuperating in a ward full of bored colonels and generals, the Kernel and his wardmates composed this reply:

PATERNAL PARENT POSITIVELY PURRING PLEASURE PAST PERFORMANCE PROMPTED PAEN PRAISE PER PROGENY. PROSPECTS PROMISE PLUS PERADVENTURE. PRESENTLY PEEING PERFECTLY.

His message was held up for three days because the Army censors thought it was a code.

Back on the job, the Kernel continued to work long, hard hours — the least he felt he could do given what the soldiers on the front lines were going through. But a man of sixty-two, who had survived two world wars, multiple coronaries, and diabetes ran a severe risk trying to live as hard as twenty-year olds. The Kernel contracted tuberculosis in 1953.

He was sent back to the States, to Castletown Veterans' Hospital in upstate New York. Anne
went to visit him — and realized that he would never leave the hospital alive. He died
quietly on January 25th, 1954 — before he had a chance to read that day's
Times
.

Soldier, citizen, patriot.

 

J
ust after her return from Germany in the summer of 1963, Anne looked away from the depression of her musical letdown for a new horizon. She returned to science fiction — and discovered science fiction conventions. She had heard of them from the writers at Milford, of course, but had never been to one. There was a big one that year in Washington, DC — just a few hours down the road by car.

A science fiction convention in those days was usually no more than a few hundred die-hard
science fiction readers and writers who collected at a hotel for a weekend, sometimes a long
weekend. There, the fans and the writers would talk about science fiction in the bar, or the
fans would listen to various panels on science fiction by writers or other fans. And there,
Anne could rub shoulders with writers she'd admired all her life: Isaac Asimov, James Blish,
H. Beam Piper, Randall Garrett, and Keith Laumer.

Isaac was a charming genius, great at puns, limericks, and ditties — in addition to writing some of the finest popular science and school textbooks this century — and a science fiction writer to boot. Even though he was a tenor — after her disaster in Germany, Anne would always say, “Never trust a tenor!” — he and Anne got along famously. Years later, a panel with Isaac and Anne on it would be the high point of many science fiction conventions and fans would be in stitches from their raucous displays of barbed good humor.

But more than Isaac's humor, Anne was overcome by James Blish's simple words of encouragement. Anne found him and Evvie del Rey in the hotel bar where they were chatting between panels. The two greeted her warmly, though they had only known her casually before.

Then Jim said, “Anne, what has happened? You've published two lovely stories. What's happened? Why haven't you written anything more?”

“Well I'm
trying
to.”

“Well, you should continue.”

And all the way home in the car Anne kept thinking to herself, “Jim Blish says I can write. Jim
Blish
says I can write. Jim Blish says
I
can write!”

And because Jim Blish said Anne could write, she did. Her next story,
The Ship Who Mourned
, was the first story of hers accepted by John Campbell at
Analog
. That would not happen for another three years.

 

U
nlike Killashandra Ree of
Crystal Singer
, Anne had sweet revenge. When she returned to the States she discovered that all that concentration on her lower range had actually shot her higher notes up to the E above high C — and she continued to sing as a soprano — although the flaw in E, F, and G remained.

Her vocal tutor, who had left Germany in search of a career in the States, one day came to
her house when she was singing along with the radio and burst in, saying: “Who is that
marvelous soprano?”

“Me,” Anne told him. But she had had enough of him and went back to her friend, choral master Ted Huang at the Concord Presbyterian Church. And Robie.

Anne also returned to the Breck's Mills Cronies for many more performances in various roles and positions. I remember the first time that I went to one of her performances. She was playing the wicked Queen Agravaine in
Once Upon a Mattress
. I must have been about eight at the time. She was so convincingly evil on stage — and it was a small theatre with an intimate stage — I was so terrified that she had to come out between acts to reassure me.

 

A
nne started something new upon her return from Germany. We had all become so spoiled by the lovely fresh bread the Germans made that the thought of store-bought bread was too much — so Anne started making her own. Very soon, we were the most popular house in the neighborhood — particularly when the smell of warm luscious fresh-baked bread wafted into the air. A good cook, Anne gained a divine reputation with her marvelous butter-basted loaves. We all got quite good at slicing thick warm bread and lathering it with butter and honey.

But Anne's famous home-baked bread became a thing of the past when the family teased her
unmercifully after she tried to serve us from loaves she'd forgot to put yeast in. We called
it “Lead Bread” and laughed at the idea of serving it to our neighbors and having them sink
to the bottom of their bathtubs. Three decades wiser, I can only shake my head in memory
— and wistfully recall the smell of that marvelous fresh bread.

Fortunately, we learned from our mistake. And, as it turned out, our mother was far more
willing to recognize her fallibility than our father would his. Wright decided that mustard
soup was a brilliant idea, he refused to take “no” for an answer and we were all forced to
finish off the ghastly stuff over the course of days. All in all though, both my parents
were excellent cooks and their rare culinary disaster is all the more memorable because it
was so unusual.

The summer we returned from Germany, we saved up enough
Green Stamps
(anyone remember them?) to buy a hand-cranked ice cream maker. The ice cream was a bigger success than Anne's home made bread. Our favorite was peach ice cream with just a hint of rose extract. Heaven. We would mix all the ingredients in the kitchen, carry the container out through the garage door and fill up the ice bucket with ice and salt, turning that crank until we were breathless. That ice cream never survived long enough to get into the freezer.

Anne could turn out a good dinner from the time she was twelve, when she had made a planked steak with mashed potatoes and lemon meringue pie for dessert for her older brother and his date. She loved to cook.

Wright loved to entertain and was proud to have a wife who could prepare a dinner party.
Cocktails would be served with
hors d'oeuvres
, and dinner would follow after and
all throughout would be laughter, merriment, and good times. A talented wife, three kids, a
car, a nice house — it was the American (male's) dream.

 

L
ife in Wilmington was not perfect. There were the occasional curve balls. Or loaded pistols. Windybush, the estate we lived in, had been built by Mr. Eberhardt — an old, rich man who set himself up in one of the nicer houses.

He had weak eyesight and strong opinions, particularly when it came to his cats.

Our German shepherd, Merlin — Wiz's son — would always follow the paperboy on his route to ensure that no other dogs bothered him. It was traditional and no one ever minded because most everyone knew Merlin.

Unfortunately Mr. Eberhardt decided that Merlin's purpose in life was to torment his cats. Despite all our best efforts, Merlin couldn't be dissuaded from following the paperboy, and Mr. Eberhardt wouldn't believe that Merlin — who had been raised as a puppy with three cats — wasn't the dog who chased his cats.

The situation came to a head one day when Mr. Eberhardt decided to take the law into his own hands and met Merlin and the newspaper boy at the door with a loaded pistol. Elderly, and with poor eyesight, he had the pistol pointing at the newspaper boy, not the dog.

Once Anne and Wright heard of the incident from the poor boy's frightened parents, they made an immediate decision — no matter the injustice of it all, Merlin would have to go. It was heart-wrenching for us kids, particularly for me and Alec, who were old enough to understand what was happening.

As a replacement guaranteed not to scare cantankerous old men into brandishing pistols,
Wright got an apricot-colored miniature French poodle whom he named Michelangelo. We all
promptly shortened it to Angelo and sometimes even Angie. Now, to my mind, a miniature
poodle is no replacement for a German Shepherd. But Angelo was a friendly fellow, and Gigi
decided that he was hers, as Alec and I had previously been the “owners” of the
shepherds.

Anne immortalized Merlin in her book,
The Mark of Merlin
, just as she also immortalized Merlin's father, Wizard, in
The Great Canine Chorus
.

 

I
n 1965, Wright's job with Du Pont moved up to New York City. As a
commute would have been impossible, the family chose to move. Decent housing in the Greater
New York area was unaffordable. Fortunately, Wright's assisant, Jack Isbell, was faced with
the same move and the same problems. They decided to pool together and found a three-story
old Victorian on Sea Cliff, Long Island. Because in 1965 the word “commune” had not yet been
uttered in the United States, we children were told that the Isbells were third cousins.

The house was conveniently located almost in the exact center of the triangle formed by the Franklin Elementary School, North School Junior High School, and North Shore High School. Gigi started first grade that fall, while I was entering third grade and Alec was in Junior High.

Anne soon found that the amateur theatre group in the area was more concerned about appearances and politics than with having fun, so after playing the Eve Arden role in
Babes in the Woods
which she got because she could hold B flat for fifteen measures, Anne gave up amateur theatre for good.

With the kids in school and nothing else to pique her interest, Anne renewed her writing with
gusto. In that year she wrote and sold two more Helva stories and started work on what would
become her first published novel,
Restoree
.
Restoree
was Anne's earliest
blow for women's rights in science fiction. “I was so tired of all the weak women screaming
in the corner while their boyfriends were beating off the aliens — I wouldn't have
been — I'd've been in there swinging with something or kicking them as hard as I
could.”

 

M
eanwhile Wright worked his way into his new job at Du Pont. Being back again in New York was very attractive to him, particularly as his job involved him in various modeling spots. He got a shoot for Alec, and lined one up for Gigi. This glamorous side of Public Relations appealed to him greatly. He liked mixing in the high glamour crowd, and was thrilled when the job connected him with a real Princess, Galitzine.

The evening commute was a frustrating hour or more by car or train. Back home, he liked to relax on the veranda before dinner, sipping Martinis with his wife and the Isbells. As the stress of New York working increased, the cocktails before dinner got more frequent, becoming a daily ritual which grew from a single drink or two to a full pitcher or more. It became harder for Wright, trying to rebound from a day consulting with princesses, to communicate with a wife who very often was
literally
on another planet.

Wright started blaming not Anne's writing — but her choice of genre for the gulf that grew between them, and held it responsible for the great change from their Wilmington life style, forgetting that he had changed, that the children were growing, and that America itself had irrevocably awoken from the old Eisenhower era American Dream.

Anne blamed the friction on Wright's drinking, and in a series of heated discussions got him to switch from martinis to wine. Wright responded by harassing her for writing science fiction. When Anne said that her writing helped to pay the bills, Wright replied, “Your writing will never pay the phone bill!”

Anne kept on writing. Wright took to drinking wine in gallon bottles.

W
hen it was completed, Virginia sent
Restoree
to Betty Ballantine at Ballantine Books. Betty bought it immediately. When I asked Betty what she remembers about reading Restoree, she said, “What I remember is the thrill that keeps editors going — when they first read something that says HERE IS A WRITER!”

Anne finished
Restoree
and
Weyr Search
before the summer of 1967. As the heat and humidity on Long Island grew more oppressive — particularly for those without air conditioning — the family looked for a cool vacation. The Isbells felt the same way. And, as both families were still recovering from the cost of moving up to New York, they agreed to find a place to vacation together.

They settled on a large lodge at the Twin Lakes in the Poconos. It would be the first of several very enjoyable summer breaks. The Twin Lakes were segregated — motorboat and sail — and we were on the larger non-motorboat side. The lodge was a huge wooden affair with rooms for everyone, a good-sized kitchen. It had been the assembly hall of a summer camp.

The lodge came with its own canoe and rowboat. Down a path from the lodge was a short pier where the two boats were moored. I claimed the rowboat for my own most days and just doodled around in it on the lake.

In the evenings we'd build puzzles — big ones of 1,000, 1500, and even 2,000 pieces.
Some were in circles and were quite hard to build. Sometimes we'd play cards.

But the best thing about our times at the Twin Lakes were the blueberries. They grew wild on
bushes where the twin lakes were joined and we'd row or canoe out there with buckets and
fill them up with what we didn't eat.

Anne would rarely go on these trips as she was busy cooking most days, or writing when everyone was out and about. As a cook, Anne will always shine, but here, with fresh blueberries, she made the most marvelous blueberry pies you can imagine.

When we think of
bubbly pies
, we think of those fresh blueberry pies.

 

B
ack at home in the 1967 Sea Cliff, Anne used the proceeds from
Restoree
to buy a Hermes Ambassador typewriter. She had encouraging news from John Campbell at
Analog
— he wanted more dragon stories. Anne wrote the story of Ramoth's growth into a full queen and Lessa's growth into a full dragonrider — the section known as
Dragonflight
. But John Campbell said he wanted something different — he wanted to see dragons fighting Thread.

Anne, who had never done more than punch her elder brother out — he had a glass jaw — tried again and wrote the section
Crack dust, Black dust
. John read it, and said it was fine as far as it went. He gave her some suggestions on how to improve it.

Once more, Anne took over the living room. And she thought over how John had said to do it.
“But that isn't the way I would do it,” she said. She puzzled it over, and remembered John
Campbell's suggestion of time travel. And suddenly it all came together.
Dragonrider
was born.

John Campbell bought it. He invited Anne in to New York City for lunch — he often invited several writers for lunch and would spin off ideas just to see what would come back. He was always very encouraging.

“In fact,” says Anne, “it was his comment on the novelette
Dragonflight
— ‘A
very good bridger for your novel' — that made me realize I was writing a novel.”

Of course it was a good bridger, and became the name of the book,
Dragonflight
. Betty Ballantine, who already had another contract with Anne for
Decision at Doona
, gladly bought it.

 

I
've already mentioned that Anne wrote
Decision at Doona
with her youngest son — me — in mind. Anne's ideas for her books did not all start in the living room at Sea Cliff.
Decision at Doona
was conceived in the Franklin Elementary school auditorium. It started when Anne heard that I was the only child the teachers had to tell to be quieter rather than louder when acting in our fourth-grade play.

Hearing this, Anne asked herself what if you had a very compact society — an overcrowded planet — where just talking loud made you a social outcast? And that's how
Decision at Doona
was born.

May you get what you wish for
is one of the three great Chinese curses. Anne fell
afoul of it with me and my voice. She spent nearly twenty years saying, “lower your voice”
and when I finally learned how — her hearing went. And now it's, “Speak up, I can't
hear you.”

 

E
very book is written differently. The author is the one who gets the words on paper. Very often, the editor helps the writer get the right words on paper. John Campbell helped Anne get the right words for
Weyr Search
, and
Dragonrider
.

With
Decision at Doona
, Betty had Anne re-write the last third of the novel. She had only asked Anne to re-write two scenes in her first book,
Restoree
. No changes were needed for
Dragonflight
.

The relationship between a writer and a publisher is complex. Betty Ballantine says, “The editor/author relationship is second only to marriage. Any publisher worthy of the name needs also to be a psychiatrist, banker, lawyer, and — above all — friend strong enough to withstand some knockdown, drag out fights. Not that that ever happened with Anne.”