She hoped Fancy understood what Joan was after. But so much time had passed since Joan read the Rare Baby stories aloud to Daniel and Fancy, since Fancy had tried to ask when Joan would return to her writing, that it was just as likely Fancy connected up nothing at all. But she could not tell Fancy directly, to do so seemed a betrayal of Martin, even of the kids. She was entitled to keep them in the dark, it was her work after all, to be done in the secret part of her life, but it seemed wrong that someone else should know what she was planning, when they would not.
Fancy reported that Eric loved the pool, was not scared underwater, held his breath until she feared he was drowning, and liked smacking into the other kids in the class, and Daniel swam real laps, back and forth so many times she lost count, and after the swim class, the teacher taught him to do those kick turns, but he would not participate in the relay races, though Fancy said he seemed like a very fast swimmer to her. He insisted that after Eric’s lesson they come home. “I am engaged in serious endeavors and have little time to waste,” is what he had said to Fancy. He had written by then perhaps thirty of his squirrel stories.
So it was not perfect. Barely two hours, not three, those days in the house by herself, at the kitchen table, the typewriter blazing away, but it sufficed. At least, she was moving again, headed in the direction of her original life.
*
It was the year President Clinton was tried by the Senate on impeachment charges and was acquitted. The United States Coast Guard intercepted a ship with over 9,500 pounds of cocaine aboard, headed for Houston, Texas, one of the largest drug busts in American history. A West African immigrant named Amadou Diallo was shot dead by plainclothes cops in New York, inflaming race relations in the city. White supremacist John William King was found guilty of kidnapping and killing African American James Byrd Jr., by dragging him behind a truck for two miles. In a military court, a US Marine Corps captain, with the same last name as Joan, Richard J. Ashby, was acquitted of the charge of reckless flying that resulted in the death of twenty skiers in the Italian Alps, when his low-flying jet hit a gondola cable. The Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions of Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. LEGOLAND California, the only LEGOLAND outside of Europe, opened in Carlsbad. Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar for Best Picture. A Michigan jury found Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man. For the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above the 10,000 mark. In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson pleaded guilty to kidnapping and felony murder, to avoid a possible death penalty conviction for the hate-crime killing of Matthew Shepard. The World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the United States in its long-running trade dispute with the European Union over bananas. The personal fortune of Bill Gates was estimated at exceeding $100 billion. President Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit. Two Littleton, Colorado, teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, opened fire on their teachers and classmates, killing twelve students and one teacher and then themselves. The shooting sparked a media debate on school bullying, gun control, and violence. Norman J. Sirnic and Karen Sirnic were murdered by serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz in Weimar, Texas. The House of Representatives released the Cox Report which detailed the People’s Republic of China’s nuclear espionage against the United States over the prior two decades. The Colombian government announced it would include the estimated value of the country’s illegal drug crops, exceeding half a billion dollars, in its gross national product. Texas governor George W. Bush announced he would seek the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States. Benjamin Nathaniel Smith began a three-day killing spree targeting racial and ethnic minorities in Illinois and Indiana. US Army Pfc. Barry Winchell was bludgeoned in his sleep at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, by fellow soldiers, he died the next day of his injuries. Off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, a plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed, killing him, his wife, and her sister. The Woodstock ’99 festival was held in New York. Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France. The last Checker Taxi Cab was retired in New York City and sold at auction for $135,000. NASA intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the moon, ending its mission to detect frozen water on the lunar surface. EgyptAir Flight 990, traveling from New York City to Cairo, crashed off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 aboard. The NTSB later reported that the co-pilot, Gameel Al-Batouti, deliberately crashed the plane, a claim disputed by Egyptian authorities. The Recording Industry Association of America filed a lawsuit against Napster, alleging copyright infringement. At the end of the year, the United States turned over complete administration of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian government, as stipulated in the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977.
*
Turbulence, dissension, horrific killings and murders, hate and racism and cruelty, the very rich and the very poor, the political with its unlimited ramifications for the personal lives of so many, a world long awry and inching ever closer to an undefined point of no return. Joan kept up with it all, but found herself on the other side.
She was no longer writing about tragedies that blew apart people’s lives, but about something else entirely: how dreams could keep hope alive and fresh. Dreams dreamt by her array of imaginary characters who were instantly more real and alive to her than anyone else she knew in Rhome.