Author as Character
Violet isn’t my name. My real name is associated with warmth and a sense of humor. Author Jane, Tarzan’s mate, fond of Dick, rhymes with plain, chose Violet because it’s an old lady’s name.
My grievances against Jane do not end there. John, my husband of 61 years, had a healthy self-regard as most successful men do, but he was not the old blowhard Jane described, and neither I, nor our daughter, would reproach him for a lack of affection.
Jane took care of me in the hospital. I was confused and frightened, and Jane, an entry level employee, barely tolerated by more experienced staff, liked how I’d sit beside her, clutching the hem of her woolen skirt.
Because I was cold. Also, I was attracted to her hair, its bright, artificial tint.
I hate that, writing as if Jane is speaking for me, giving a harsh flavor to what I say.
Look to yourself, I’d like to tell her. So eager to please, always seeking praise.
Leave me alone.
“Do you think she’s your daughter?” the doctor asked me, when he saw how I clung to Jane. That was when I couldn’t speak, selective mutism they called it, but he wouldn’t have waited for an answer anyway. “Does being with her help you understood your daughter is dead?”
I’d never mistake my pretty Wendy for Jane, who could? I never forgot she was dead. Why else
would I be in the hospital and not in my own good life?
But Jane made me into an animal, telling how, crazed with grief, I’d scratched like a cat.
Well, she’s never lost a child. I wouldn’t have said anything about her, nothing cruel, nothing about her high- pitched voice or how she tacks that pointless little laugh to the end of everything she says.
She wasn’t the reason I got better and neither was Dr. Bruce. His real name, by the way. Jane made me call him Pretty Boy in the story. Because he paid more attention to the attractive, self-confident girls that worked there than to her.
Oh, why do I speak in her voice? I can be kind. John and I both were, John sitting with me in silence, staying as long as the hospital would let him, not wanting me to be alone, or to be alone himself. He didn’t know what was coming next, neither of us did, but he stayed. He loved me. That’s what Jane couldn’t see.
Jane Snyder's stories have appeared in Rue Scribe, X-Ray Lit, and Corvus. She lives in Spokane.