Mail() function performance/optimization question

Adding a mail() step to my page increases the page load time from an average of about 2 seconds to nearly 8 seconds. That would be OK if the page completed displaying all the text and then just kind of hung there while the mail() function finished. The page I am using, by the way, is a 5-column/3-row table listing some project information, pulled from a MySQL database. Is there anything I can do to make this appear more responsive for the user? It would be nice if it was actually more responsive, but the illusion will do just fine. I¹ve tried moving the mail() function around in the order, but no matter what it causes part of the page to not finish displaying until mail() has completed. Wes