That letter from my sister that I wrote about, where she viciously excoriated me for not agreeing with her husband’s political mindset (you disrespect him, you disrespect me) was handwritten. My dear friend, Nadine, has been studying handwriting analysis seriously so I turned it over to her.

N found so many difficulties and contradictions that she spent a lot of time with it. She discussed it with her handwriting teacher/mentor and they agree on the analysis. N was reluctant to hit me with a report that basically had nothing good to say. She finally E mailed me her results, saying in a phone conversation, that I should sit down with a glass of wine when I read it. I suggested to N that she was being hesitant because the consensus was that Tu is insane. That was it all right. Anyway, when I read her report, I saw nothing to be truly upset about since I had come to the conclusion some time ago that Tu is lost to me on an adult basis. The rest is window dressing.

When N and I get together and talk about this, as eventually we will, I will tell her that I plan to ignore the undercurrents and take Tu at face value, relating to the positive affect she presents to me when she is not being coached by her husband because he has a bone to pick. And, truthfully, the only difficulties we have had between us since Ed and I moved to Florida where they are, has always been because of her husband. If he decides to pick a fight, then I have to get out of range because he will persuade her that, somehow, I am a truly bad and stupid person for not agreeing with him and she jumps on that bandwagon. Tu now insists she does not remember the letter at issue that prompted our most recent alienation. I believe her. She is on constant medication. She doesn’t remember really important things I tell her, such as the fact that a New York friend, Bella, to whom I introduced her and with whom she was totally captivated, always asking about her, died a year or more ago. She still asks about her. There is nothing malevolent about this omission. She doesn’t have a short term memory. I don’t think it is senility.

So my expectations were not grand and N’s analysis only confirms what has filtered through to me over the past 5 years since being in constant touch with her. Before coming down here, Tu and I kept in touch with phone calls and letters because she was in Berywn, Illinois and I was in New York. This separation went on from 1956 to 2003 when we moved here. Distance did not encourage disaffection and disagreement. Not until we were in close proximity did I see how unrealistic it was to have an adult relationship with her, and, of course, age-related issues, and creeping dependence on Don have taken their toll. She adores/hates him, an ambivalent condition born of being totally in his care and totally under his control. She loves him because he takes care of her, she hates him because she can’t have an independent thought.

Her underlying attitude toward me is also ambivalent. She has built up an anger toward me that she suppresses -- I am smarter, have led a more adventurous, interesting life, met people of prominence through my work at the New York Times; even before that, met people of prominence in science fiction. Tu was the SF reader. I occasionally picked up one of her paperbacks. One day in the back, there was an ad asking for volunteers to help prepare for a sci fi convention to be held in Chicago. Hey, I thought, what a great way to meet people. So I signed up and oh boy did I meet people -- Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Willy Ley (the rocket scientist), L. Sprague DeCamp, Algis Budrys, Poul Anderson, James Blish, Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Harry Harrison, Robert Sheckley, and many more – all the greats of the 40s and 50s. A few years later, I married L. Jerome Stanton, a lesser literary light, but a finer human being than any one of them. (Greatness doesn’t always translate into humanity.)

Tu has never forgiven me, I think, for being social with sci fi greats she only dreamed of meeting. She admitted recently that she was awed by my moving on my own to New York in 1956. It was move or drown was my thinking at the time. I had a few sci fi names in my poke from contacts I had made in Chicago. I looked them up and thus became a member of the legendary Hydra Club where I met my husband.

Anyway, she’s my sis, insane or not, and as long as I understand the torturous conditions she endures to stay afloat, her diatribes, should they repeat, cannot reach me. I will just ignore them, particularly since they are orchestrated by her Svengali. This last time, I allowed myself to take her seriously. That was a mistake. She can’t hurt me anymore. She is emotionally beyond repair. So very sad.

xx, Teal