Love Letters from my Death-bed

There’s something very strange going on in Fairfax, California. Joe Johnson is on the hunt for dying people while his wife stares into space and flies land on her nose; the Snelling kids fester in a hippie backwater and pretend that they haven’t just killed their grandfather; and Morag, multi-bigamist from the Scottish Highlands, makes some rash decisions when diagnosed with terminal cancer by Manuel – who may or may not be a doctor. Meanwhile, the ghost of Consuela threads her way through all the stories, oblivious to the ever-watching Connie – who sees everything from the attic of the Gentle Valleys Hospice. Cynthia Rogerson’s second novel is a funny and life-affirming tale about the courage to love in the face of death.

Praise for Love Letters from my Death-bed:

‘Witty, wise and on occasions laugh-aloud funny. A tonic for all those concerned with living more fully while we can.’ Andrew Greig

‘Her writing has a lovely spirit to it, an appealing mixture of the spiky and the warm.’ Michel Faber

‘Rogerson’s prose has a wonderful energy and rhythm. She is a master storyteller whose love of language and black humour envelops the reader within the strange and strangely familiar, sometimes reminiscent of early John Irving. A delightfully funny and often deeply touching book.’ Laura Hird, Scottish Review of Books

‘...a comedy of manners, a contemporary romp focused on death and love in a chaotic, cynical world. Rogerson’s deft prose laces each scene with light.’ Anne Macleod, Northwords Now

See a review of Love Letters from my Death-bed online at www.laurahird.com
http://www.laurahird.com/newreview/lovelettersfrommydeathbed.html

About Cynthia Rogerson

Cynthia Rogerson is a Californian living in Ross-shire. Her first novel, Upstairs in the Tent, was published in 2001; her short stories and poems have been short-listed for competitions, anthologised, published in literary magazines and broadcast on BBC radio. She has four children, an ex-husband in her extension, and some hens.

An Interview with Cynthia Rogerson

When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?

I kept a journal for 20 years, then began writing in earnest when I was in my mid-thirties. Inspiration has come from whatever current favourite author I am reading, including: Anne Tyler, Mark Haddon, Alice Hoffman, Hemingway, Grace Paley, Andrew Greig, Sue Mott, Checkov, Katherine Mansfield, Carson McCullers.

Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind Love Letters from my Death-Bed? And about what you were trying to achieve, what ideas you were trying to convey?

I wanted to explore the choices we make when we feel mortal. How we tend to love things that are transitory, more intensely. I wanted the reader to wake up to his or her life.

How do you go about creating your voice on the page?

I daydream. Then I cut out photos from the newspaper and pin them to the wall, and write my character’s history, till I feel I know them quite well. Then I daydream some more. I try to love them, no matter how unlovable they are.

How and when do you write?

Mornings, mostly, in short fast bursts, followed by endless displacement activities. Ideas strike often when I am thinking of something totally different, and I have to scrabble around for a bit of paper to write them down. Later, I transfer them to the story.

What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?

Anything that is well written. I am reading Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam. Read it!

An extract from Love Letters from my Death-bed

Elsewhere, on this final day of Fred’s life:

Joe is asleep, not dreaming about Fred, but football. His hands are twitching. June is wandering around the house, turning lights on and off. Moze has fallen asleep with her mouth still chewing Joe’s slipper.

Manuel is also awake, drinking coffee and plotting how to find another dying person without lying to a healthy one; and into his thoughts, unbidden, comes the smell of home – tortillas, chilli, fried shredded beef, sweat, hot earth, dust in his nostrils. Music. And the sound of waves, for his house had been right near the shore. He stares at his Nescafe, wondering if the coffee smell awoke this memory, since it was always Nescafe they drank at home. Nescafe and tinned condensed milk, since there was no refrigerator. Milk that was thick and sweet, but somehow he never thinks of buying it here. It wouldn’t taste right. With the memory has come a certain feeling – the way he always felt at home. Mildly lazy and calm, bored. Himself. Moving up the social ladder is not relaxing. The perfect solution, of course, would be to cross a life in Baja with lots of money.

Morag can’t sleep. Or, rather, she has fallen asleep already, after the taxi ride to Point Reyes, the epiphany at Golden Hill’s Mall, and the cathartic letter writing. She has fallen like a stone dropping into a pond, a deep dreamless slumber. And then woken up before midnight, completely clear-headed and muscles twitching to be up and about. She tries tricking herself back to sleep, to no avail. Finally gets up and with a blanket wrapped round her shoulders, sits in the chair by the window and draws the curtains open. At first she thinks she sees a young girl, maybe ten, hiding an Easter egg in one of the planter boxes. But she blinks her eyes and the girl is gone, just a shadow. Silly; probably a side effect of the cancer. Cancers. She looks up at the sky. And there they all are. No clouds, just a sliver of a moon low on the horizon. Hello stars, she says in her mind. Tell me again. How small my problems are, how less than nothing is my life. How endless the universe. She takes slow deep breaths. Tell me you shine over everyone, even my sister and my Ian in Oban, and my Teddy in Toronto, and my Desmond in Dublin, but not stupid old Harry, and probably they don’t see you because the sun is outshining you in those places, but you see them anyway. Am I right? Tell me again.

But this time there is no answer. The stars do not answer, nor the moon. And as if to confirm her suspicions, a fog she hasn’t noticed drifts in, muffling the astral bodies, making them seem uncommitted somehow; anonymous and indifferent. It feels demoralising. The stars and moon have not demoralised her before. She has never minded feeling insignificant or humble; in fact, it has often been her consolation – how could her crimes be very bad when her life was so unimportant? But never has she felt truly unperceived. The night sky has, in a way, been her ally all her life. Her personal ally. What has happened? She shivers, tells herself to grow up before it's too late. Of course, it was always only the world, and why should the world take special notice of her, or anyone in particular? It's always just been her childish fancy that she was viewed tenderly, even preferred. Because she fancied that she understood the nature of the world, and more – fancied the world rewarded her for this, like a cosmic guardian angel.

Wake up, she tells herself now. The sky never, ever, not even once, noticed you. There have been no celestial thank-yous. No echoes.

And yet.

When she rises and turns with a deep sigh to go back to her bed, she has to resist the temptation to turn around. She feels a sensation at her back. As if there are eyes on her.

Meanwhile, just visible in the garden of Gentle Valleys, in fact right in the middle of a huge patch of irises, plays the little girl spotted by Morag. She is all by herself, but doesn’t seem lonely. She knows she has half an hour before chores, and kicks her ball around and whistles, and waits for her Mamacita to call. Also just visible, but only from the corner of a careful looker’s eyes, is a teenage Consuela. In fact, the place is littered with Consuelas, once you start looking. She lived here from her birth till the age of twenty-three. There is hardly an inch that is not covered by her feet or hands, or seen by her eyes. She is picking some berries in the part of the garden that is now a gravel driveway. Her hand reaches into the shadows and retrieves ripe red berries, which she tucks into her gingham apron. By the sweat on her brow and her rolled up sleeves, she seems to be in a hot day. You have to look really quickly to see her. But at the same time, not focus on her. Catch a glimpse while swivelling your head to see something else, something more solid. She might catch a glimpse of you, and not think anything about it. Just accept you, maybe talk a bit. When she sees herself, her different selves, she just nods, sometimes smiles.

Don’t forget Fred! Dear old Fred, who lived for a lifetime on one block, who had given up fear as too energetic and time-consuming. He is all right now. Definitely all right, beyond noticing anything; it didn’t take long for Fred. The Fred that could have been measured as an electronic blip has joined all the other blips. Up, out and away. And the rest – the Fred that has weight and volume but no consciousness, that Fred waits in a terribly cool room in Gentle Valleys. Why? He waits because his presence, breathing or not, is still required.

And Connie. She is Connie and she is not Connie. Like most elderly folk, she has already been many different people, as unconnected to each other as distant relatives. Her body has completely changed cellular structure hundreds of times, and she has lived long enough to contain eighteen lives. Nineteen, if you count the time her youngest went off to school and before she got the job at the grocery store, a strangely agonising ellipse of time. Twenty, if you count the life she is in now – the empty days of gazing out of windows, listening for the laughter of children long grown-up, or the whistles of steam trains. These lives, each one of them, lives on in her memories. But this day, September 3rd in consecutive time, has finally bitten the dust. Thump!