Rediscovering Nancy Drew

25. Nancy and Carlotta: Lives Together, Worlds Apart

Nancy and Carlotta: Lives Together, Worlds Apart Linda Barnes rn ~ 'm afraid there's more to this than appears on the surface." That's ~ what Nancy says in the 1948 Ghost ofBlackwood Hall (138). And I agree with her. It goes back a long way ... I recall the names of my two auditorium teachers as if I'd attended grade school yesterday: Miss Irviline Bruner and Miss Coral Compeau. Both were elderly; one sported dyed blue hair, one wore a red wig. The librarian of the James Vernor Elementary School in northwest Detroit was less of a presence, with sober brown hair and the requisite eyeglasses. Though I can see her face clearly, I cannot recall her name. I know that I read quickly, voraciously, and that she fed me a steady diet of books. Mter the bell rang, ending library hours, she would tap me on the shoulder, often frightening me. I never heard the bell when I was reading. She recommended the inevitable biographies of Madame Curie and Eleanor Roosevelt, but mainly she provided teenage romances by authors whose names have faded from my memory. The stories, alas, have not. Typical plotline: girl at college, or about to begin her Broadway career, falls in love with a young man. They have difficulties , patch things up, and the girl gives up all dreams ofeducation or stardom to grab that brass wedding band. My librarian gave me nothing but "happily ever after" books. I know that she was a Miss Someone, a maiden lady. I wonder about 212 NANCY AND CARLOTTA 213 her life, and why she steered me, avowedly her best student, her most avid reader, toward a stream of dead-end books. Thank God for the series novel. I've never met anyone who read and loved the Maida books who didn't become an instant friend of mine. Then came Cherry Ames, who was a bit of a selfless drudge, Penny Parrish, and Nancy Drew. And what I learned from those books was simple. There is life after the last page. Life goes on. Books do not end at the happily-ever-after-orange-blossom part. Indeed, there is infinite possibility before us. In Dorothy Sayers's Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey declares that "a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths ofthe law ofchivalry" (302). Nancy already knew that; I'm grateful to her for keeping the fun for herself. I can't say that Nancy was anywhere in my conscious thoughts when I created Carlotta Carlyle. In many ways my early life could be titled "The Case of the Missing Childhood," so little do I recall of it. My love ofmysteries comes from several sources. First, a hidden conservative streak. I hate the "C" word, but I need to use it here, although not in a truly political context. Books become very real to me, often more real than the events of my life. And the peril of immersing myself in a nonseries novel is formidable. I'm afraid to get involved with characters because they might die gruesome deaths. I wept through far too many books as a child. I don't have the psychic strength to keep reading Jayne Anne Phillips. I do read her, I read Jane Smiley and Alice Hoffman and many others who threaten my happiness, but I come back to those who write series books because I know the main character will not die and that is very important tome. When I was a child, my family lived next door to a policeman, and one night that policeman shot a teenager to death on my front lawn. I don't remember hearing the shot, but I remember the commotion of sirens and my parents ordering me not to look out the window . Of course I looked. I didn't dream it. The next morning there were bloodstains in the grass. I never understood that death, although I tried to puzzle out the articles in the newspaper, to question my parents as closely as I could. Shortly afterward, the policeman and his family moved away. 214 TRANSFORMING NANCY DREW When I was twenty-three, a very dear friend killed himself. I'd spoken to him within the week. We'd gone to the movies, seen American Graffiti, laughed hysterically when the police car flew off its axle. And then he drove to Leominster State Park and...