Authors: Nancy Frederick
I met Paula at Poukipsie
’
s on Third. I had gone there with an old girlfriend and some of her chums. She had called to say a bunch of them were going dancing and would I want to meet them there. I have strict policies about old girlfriends. It
’
s OK to meet socially in a group, but there must be no contact or things can get really messy. You know the singles
’
scene in bars
—
it
’
s all spider and the fly. Once I mentioned this to Liana and she laughed and asked me if I were a good spider. What can I say
—
I told her the truth
—
I
’
m usually the fly.
The music was playing and this blonde came up to me and began talking. It was Paula. At first I told her I was married, because I was with Jamie and her friends, plus I was seeing Liana and one other woman on a real occasional basis and I really wasn
’
t looking for any action at the time. But she didn
’
t seem to care and she sighed a sigh of desire that women often emit when they
’
re around me and said,
“
Ooh, I want to dance with you.
”
Then she was in my arms and I began to respond to the closeness of her and what could I do but decide to change my story. The make believe marriage became an open marriage in which we were both free to be with other parties, and she didn
’
t seem to care either way. Women never have any ethics. No matter what the story is at the beginning, all they seem to want is to be with me on any terms. Then, later on they get mad at me because I
’
m not exclusive or theirs permanently or whatever the circumstances.
I told Liana about my meeting with Paula. I thought she
’
d laugh as she had at all my other women stories, but she watched me silently in such a strange, intense way, and didn
’
t even smile about the open marriage joke or anything. I realize later that this story was happening in the present tense while all the others had been in the past tense and perhaps that was what got to her. I felt bad as I was telling it, seeing the flicker of pain in her clear eyes. Most women would have gotten angry, I guess, which is why I never tell them any of my stories, but Liana stayed calm. I reached for her hand as we walked down the street and she gave it to me for a moment but then pulled it away and put it in her pocket as though she were cold, not rejecting me. There was a long silence, and I know I felt awkward. Finally she spoke,
“
It
’
s OK, Kevin, I understand. You
’
re telling me,
‘
This is what I am.
’”
But there was more pain than love in her eyes and she did nothing to shield me from the naked vision of her soul that her eyes always revealed so uncompromisingly.
I don
’
t know what I felt after that, but we continued seeing each other for quite some time, and I knew that Liana still loved me as much as she ever did because she was the kind of person who would have ended it herself if her feelings had changed. I had Paula to divert me, though, and she was fun. All she ever wanted was sex and stroking, and I like those things very much.
I would arrive at her apartment for a date to find her snuggled naked on the couch waiting for me. I never saw her actually dressed except for the night we met. No matter how many times I told her I liked to go out, Paula didn
’
t care, because she wanted just to stay at home and make love. I told her that I like undressing a woman, that she was depriving me of that pleasure by never bothering to get dressed in the first place but she shrugged and indicated that all took up too much time.
After sex I would try to talk to her about my work, about my life, my career, the issues I struggled with daily. She would lie next to me happily cosseted in my arms and seem to be listening, but she never asked a question and in no way did any of her comments indicate that she comprehended anything at all that I was saying. It was then that I longed for Liana, because Liana had a way of really listening and becoming involved in what I was saying, of asking thought provoking question and offering insights into my problems. I guess I was a fool to trade her in, but where could we really have gone from where we were?
I look back at my childhood and wonder whatever will become of the American family. Mine was average, no more dismal than any other, but still it was not filled with the small layer of satisfaction and deep happiness that the filmmakers promise. My parents were married their whole lives. I think that my mother never slept with a man other than my father. I don
’
t think that she slept with him either. He slept with anything that moved and I think she liked it that way so she had an excuse to reject him. They stayed together but she felt nothing more than disdain for him and I think it was her anger and disappointment over her circumstances that ultimately caused her death. Of course doctors have other terms to describe it, but I saw the reality of her life, not the pathology of her body.
In our house it was the worst thing in the world to be likened to Dad. I still blush at the memory of someone innocently comparing me to my father, for I had learned that was no compliment. When my mother would intone,
“
You
’
re just like Daddy,
”
I would squirm and writhe inside and wish I could sink a thousand feet beneath the floor into oblivion. And she would see the chagrin, the embarrassment on my face and a secret smile would appear on her lips as though she had accomplished some mighty task.
What did she really see of me or the boy I was, for what was there in me then at that age which could have brought to mind the blustery, passionate, womanizing qualities she grew to hate so in my dad? I was a model son and a good scholar, a teacher
’
s pet, on every team, well liked and popular. I was a success, but all she saw in me was the physical resemblance to my father, the face that I did not create but wore like a badge of terror instead of pride.
None of it made any sense to me, not our family, nor my parents, nor the life that they created that we shared. Why did they stay together? Why did they marry at all? I couldn
’
t fathom the answers as a child, and now I am no closer to the sense of it all than I was then. I do know that it was far more typical than the families that litter the airwaves on television shows that promise to represent the heart and soul of
America
. That is not my heart and soul, nor is it my
America
.
I gave up on my family at an early age. I distanced myself from them emotionally, and no matter how many family gatherings I faithfully attended, I knew that it was just a fiction, and I was glad to perpetuate it for their sakes. It was so much more heartening than the truth, which was that I wish I had never met them at all.
I look back now on the memory of my mother and I try to feel the tender sentiments that a good son would have, and it almost works, until I remember our interactions and her comments and always feel a little ill at ease with myself, as though the mere remembrance of my mother can put me in the position of supplicant trying to win approval which will never be forthcoming. I feel dirty and slimy and unworthy of her love and affection
—
that if only I could find the key, the right set of behavior patterns, the right turn of my heart and soul, then I could be the one who would not remind her of Dad, the one who is good and nice and clean and perfect, the son she had wanted all along. What would it have taken for me to have succeeded in her eyes? What if I had graduated from college and had married and settled down in domesticity with one woman and had remained faithful to her forevermore? Would that have done it? I don
’
t know, but that is what I have tried to do, am trying to do, and maybe someday it will work out, and then I will feel a huge sigh of relief and approval coming down from the heavens in my direction and it will be my mother recognizing my worthiness at last.
Fauna
The Identity Crisis
My mother named me Francis after my father. I guess she figured that if I had his name it wouldn
’
t matter that I wasn
’
t a boy and wasn
’
t what he wanted and therefore he would stick around. She was wrong. By the time I was three, he was history and my mother had something really choice to hold over my head: namely that I had ruined her love story, that I was the reason her prince charming had hit the road and that because of me she was forever doomed to spinster status. She never looked at another man again. Oh no, it was too much of a delight to tell people,
“
Francis and I, we have each other, and we don
’
t need any men around here to take care of us. We do just fine without them.
”
We stayed together through my childhood, bound into a unit so tight that no one else dared to enter. I never had a friend over and was never allowed to make any friends outside. If schoolmates would call to make play dates, Mother would politely decline, saying that she needed me at home, that we had other plans, that I wasn
’
t feeling well. Even if she did meet a man who wanted to take her out, Mother gave him the cold shoulder. Later, she
’
d return home and tell me how the new neighbor, or the mail man, or somebody had asked her out but she had said no because her Francis needed her.
Until I was ten or so, I believe her story and I enjoyed being at the center of her world. Mother stayed at home, talking silly little projects to make a living, which she never accomplished very well at all, though she loved to tell me often how well she was taking care of me and about what we could and couldn
’
t afford on her salary. Years later I learned that Mother received a check each month from Francis Senior which she deposited into the bank and withdrew as needed.
“
Francis, get my slippers,
”
or
“
Francis, make my tea,
”
she
’
d demand, and I would happily oblige, believing that we indeed did love and take care of each other. Gradually her tone grew more strained and more strident, and she called and whined throughout my adolescence. By then I had a part time job at the mall and I happily turned over every cent to Mother because I wanted to help take care of us the way she did. She took the money as though it were her due and never said a word about it.
It was just the tone in her voice each time she said my name that made me so uneasy, for no matter how much she protested that she loved me more than anything in the world, it seemed that her hatred for my father was focused on his name and therefore spewed out all over me each time she called me. I began to think that the name Francis itself was unlucky, and besides that it just didn
’
t seem to suit me as I grew into a woman, so I decided to change it to something more likable, Fauna.
Actually, it worked out perfectly, because I entered high school at about that time and none of the teachers knew me by any other name, so when I wrote Fauna on all my papers, they naturally called me that. I tried to convince my mother that she, too, should call me Fauna, and I told her that it was for reasons of good luck, and since she was superstitious, she decided to oblige. The only problem was that she could never remember, so she
’
d whine,
“
Francis oops Fauna…
”
That went on for some time until she managed to delete the oops, making it sound like Francis-Fauna, and I
’
d hear it as Francis hyphen Fauna and that drove me crazy too.
I was the shyest girl you can possibly imagine. Even as I reached adolescence and boys began to call me or to stop me in the hallway at school, I was too inept to talk to them. Mother said not to worry about it, because boys only wanted one thing, and I didn
’
t need that at all. What was it that they wanted? For years I was too shy and scared to ask her to tell me. And when they called up at home and Mother would primly say that Francis-Fauna wasn
’
t in, I breathed huge sighs of relief.
There was something wrong with me, and both Mother and I knew it. Francis Senior would never have left if I hadn
’
t been such a wash out, and lucky for me that Mother loved me anyway, even if my father couldn
’
t and no one else ever would. I just wasn
’
t pretty enough or smart enough or clever or popular or any of the things girls had to be to attract attention.
By the time I was sixteen, I knew it was hopeless. I had boring brown hair, not dark raven brown, or shimmering chestnut brown, or swirling golden brown, just mongrel brown, no big deal hair. And I was small, not even five feet tall. I had to look up to everyone and I knew that they were always going to look down on me. My front was as flat as my back, and never mind that here I was growing up in Vegas, which is practically the boob capital of the world, for once again I had been overlooked.