The Featherberry Girl: A Fable

1969

I'm calling it a fable. And because you never know who you might bump into on the internet, I've changed names and many details. Don Featherberry, for example, is a composite of three different guys I dated back when I was a nut case. But the bones of this tale are true. The Women's Movement was burgeoning, but for those of us coming of age in the transitional generation (and dealing with our own issues too) it wasn't always easy to mesh yearnings with expectations or identify real ambitions and the paths for reaching them.

So it goes something like this:

I used to think I might move to Iowa and marry a laconic farmer with weathered skin, or maybe a burly truck driver whose long absences I would secretly savor. All of the alternative lives I conjured up were based upon my imagined choice of husband. I had not yet found my calling or assimilated the concept that a woman might be the protagonist in her own life.

 In my limbo state, each man I dated was a blank screen onto which I could project a secret slide show of our potential life together, his interests and career the frame upon which I would craft an identity for myself.But when I met Don Featherberry, I was drawn most to his name. It was a name containing feather and fruit, such wonderful nouns so oddly placed together.  It was a name I thought both lovely and ridiculous, a name with lightness and solidity, a name for a character in a novel. The vague possibility of one day becoming Cynthia Featherberry, no matter how remote, appealed to me, for a woman with a name like this could only lead a colorful life.

On our first date, Don pulled up in a little red Comet. He was wearing tight suede pants, a fashion choice that initially embarrassed me, but I convinced myself this might be the garb of a rock star, or maybe something a rodeo rider would wriggle into for his after hours revelries. Suede pants seemed to reveal a kind of confidence that might be considered attractive, as long as it didn’t slide too close to conceit.Don sold plumbing supplies, which was harder to romanticize, but he smoked Lucky Strikes, a serious masculine cigarette. He even owned a sailboat, which he intended to take down to Panama City, Florida for reasons never clear to me, but this greatly enhanced his glamour quotient. I simply liked the sound of it.

This was Madison, Wisconsin, early 1970s, but Don was not a part of the hippie campus community.  He was a local blue collar boy who had lived there all his life, a boy more likely to know where a good neighborhood bar was than the natural foods co-op.  He was handsome, lean and blonde, and he didn’t say much, which gave me lots of room to fill in the blanks.  But it wasn’t hard to discern the simple fact that Don was tired of Wisconsin, hated his job, and was brimming with dreams and discontent. I loved this about him.  It implied that he wasn’t anchored, might yet go places, might launch an adventure and take me with him.

My own employment history was beginning to read like a rap sheet. My most recent job had been a three-hour stint in the housewares section of Goldblatt’s department store in Chicago, tending to fish platters, punchbowls, skillets, and crock pots. It was hot and stuffy down there in the bowels of Goldblatt’s, but I started out optimistically, assuming a helpful, friendly stance, straightening stacks of placemats, conversing with a colleague about cash registers, cookware displays, and how busy the store would be on rainy Saturdays. Call me crazy, but I needed more. Much more. Three hours had never passed so slowly.  I knew I could not endure the remaining five, let alone come back for another day.

So  I deserted my post. I tossed my plastic salesgirl badge into the nearest waste bin and headed out to freedom, stopping only at the personnel office to announce my resignation and mutter something about a family emergency, and I got news of family emergencies often enough that it didn't seem at all far-fetched to me. The woman in the office stared a long moment through her thick glasses, then her lips twitched ever so slightly, and she laughed, a full-blown laugh. I suddenly forgot that I was lying. “I’m glad you can find so much humor in the misfortunes of other people,” I declared indignantly. Then I stormed out, forever ending my career at Goldblatt’s.

Stupidly, I told this story to Don on our first night out, which may have contributed to a hunch he had that I was a very flaky chick, a theory he was never quite able to shake.  It would have been one thing had this been an isolated incident, but you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to observe that there’d been a pattern in my life of false starts, short gigs, and a monumental inability to commit to anything.  I had quit college after one semester of mostly cutting classes, hopped around the country on Greyhound buses, and worked (as little as possible) as a Kelly Girl, where each job was by definition temporary, a condition that appealed to me greatly during this period of my life.But although Don thought my resumé was sketchy, I believe he might have also found it a bit romantic. I was like some wild creature that could not be tamed, no 9 to 5 cage contained me, nor could any city claim me. Being rootless and without function was apparently part of my charm. Because I was still young and pretty, my behavior seemed spontaneous, not irresponsible, and I came across as spirited, not terrified.

And with Don as my partner, I might yet become Cynthia Featherberry – not necessarily accompanying my yellow-haired husband on the boat to Panama City, but certainly meeting up with him there, where we would live on mangoes, moonlight, and mandolin music. I spared myself the mundane details and affixed myself to Don.It was fun. Don bought us Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and thick wedges of sharp cheddar cheese and we drove in his Comet to Picnic Point where we watched the sun set and talked about his yearnings.  I was a good listener, shaping my mouth into every appropriate response, morphing into the perfect lady for him. I loved being Cynthia Featherberry in my head. She was carefree and brave, filled not with the aching desire for safety but wanderlust instead.  She was ready to try anything (other than work), prone to poetry and incense, impulsive and charming, a sort of Holly Golightly adrift in the Midwest, but not nearly as crisp and elusive. (Let's face it: I didn't have that much going on. Being elusive would have required effort, and there wasn't any point in it.)  I was always eager to meet Don as soon as he got off work. I encouraged him to quit his boring job and follow his heart. We could be free spirits together.

And on Madison nights we retired to his waterbed, where every motion rippled and repeated, and afterwards we would hold hands as we floated away into sleep. It was like safely drifting on a great harmless sea. In the morning the alarm would sound and Don would turn it off and light a Lucky Strike in one fluid motion. I found this incredibly sexy, but  I would try to keep the covers over my head, not so much to shield myself from the light as to shield him from the sight of me with mascara and eye liner ghoulishly smudged. After smoking his cigarette and drinking black coffee, he would kiss me good-bye and head off to work.

Later, I would sometimes ride a borrowed bike, probably his, along the lake and bring back gifts of peaches, or a candle, and once a St. Christopher medal for him to wear on a chain around his neck. Mostly I would busy myself doing nothing and find my way back to his apartment. Life is lovely when the entire day belongs to you, even Tuesdays and ten a.m.’s.

Occasionally we went for a sail. I wore an embroidered gauze shirt, heavy levis, and wedge-soled sandals, not a very nautical look, but I topped it all off with a colossal orange life vest and sat stiffly on board, trying to appear at ease. Did I mention that I couldn’t swim? There were few things less appealing to me than venturing out in a small craft. But Cynthia Featherberry wouldn’t think of the deep Wisconsin lakes as gaping liquid tombs. No, I remained enthusiastic, a good sport even when my nose was sunburned, my jeans damp and stiff, my knuckles white from clutching.

Mercifully, our days on the boat were usually gentle, the water mostly calm. (I have always preferred monotony to terror.) Only once did a storm roll in and rough us up. The boat careened about like a flimsy toy, but Don seemed to enjoy the challenge, darting about the deck with great confidence, doing whatever sailors do. It may have been his finest moment. As for me, I silently prayed for good ground under my feet, fighting the urge to be sick. I began to see that the boat thing could become an issue, even for Cynthia Featherberry.

Apart from the sailing, a man who spent most of his time selling pipe fittings and faucet fixtures was apt to have some limitations, although I, a fraud and a parasite, surely had no right to judge him. But it was becoming increasingly hard to sustain my fantasy about Don and the life we might share. I just wasn’t getting enough material to work with. Don was as constant and uncomplicated as a cinder block. He disliked his job but relied on the income, and he wasn’t about to cut loose and take a chance.  

What’s more, he began to suggest that I might consider going back to school, or at the very least, find more substantial employment.  Were we officially living together? Was there a plan? The more I doubted the Featherberry scenario, the more Don seemed to want to pin it down.

Flight held more appeal than fight, particularly as I wasn’t at all sure I liked the way this story was unfolding. I’d loitered in Madison for months trying to be sparkling even when nauseous. It was clearly time for me to take a trip.  After a last romantic evening and vague promises of return, I boarded a Greyhound and headed to upstate New York, for isn't a dreary place with six months of winter a logical default setting? Don was loathe to see me go, of course, but he also thought it was downright gutsy, and he envied my freedom. I had an old friend in Schenectady, a blue grass musician with a house and a comfortable sofa, which eliminated any immediate need to search for housing. Cynthia Featherberry was nothing if not resourceful.

I had never known what beautiful penmanship Don had.  His letters were written in blue ink, with large, graceful loops and curls, sometimes illustrated, and all filled with sweet terms of endearment. He awaited my return. He would drive out to retrieve me. Life was bleak without his lady. He was ready to leave the plumbing supply job and set sail for Panama City, but not without me. Not without Cynthia Featherberry.

I was flattered, but distracted. For I had already met someone else – a boozy old professor named Hubert P. Frickmann whom I fleetingly found charismatic. He was divorced, fourteen years my senior, and connected to a world that seemed to hold potential, a path, perhaps, to completeness.  Now I was preparing recipes by Julia Child for people I didn’t even know were pretentious. I was proclaiming my love for opera, heading to campus to see films by Bergman and Kurasawa, and reading books about rites of passage in New Guinea and the myth of mental illness. I even enrolled in school, primarily out of embarrassment. I guess you could say I was becoming Cynthia Frickmann.

“I’m coming out to see you,” Don told me on the phone.

“That isn’t good,” I said, and tried to explain. “I’ve changed. And don’t you think I needed to? How much longer could I dart from place to place, quitting jobs, hanging around, depending on the kindness of strangers?”

“But I was never a stranger,” Don protested, not even slightly repulsed by my pathetic attempt to sound like Blanche DuBois as an emerging feminist. "I loved you! You actually made me believe in my dreams. I'm a better version of myself when you're with me.”

This was pointless. I was already gone, working on a brand new act with a different leading man. Don’s calls stopped and his letters dwindled. Cynthia Featherberry vanished.And it wasn’t long before the Frickmann edition had also disappeared. Thank goodness.

So there was no man in my life now, and because I had no experience at inventing dreams of my own, I borrowed part of Don’s. I rode a Greyhound for twenty hours and got off in Panama City. I made my way to the beachfront at the Gulf of Mexico, a nameless girl, a backpack and bandana type with long brown hair who stood on a splintered board walk now and lifted her scratched sunglasses to better see the view.  It was all slow motion and alien silence; the air was humid and smelled like fish. I checked into a motel room at four o’clock in the afternoon, drew the blinds, and sat on the edge of a bed, wondering why I was there. The next morning I got back on the bus and returned to New York to finish school.

I survived everything: immense loneliness, immense fear, the horror of believing you’re nothing. In the decades that passed, I lived many incarnations, most of them best forgotten. And I’m fine now. Grown up, real, and settled down.

But sometimes in my sidetracks and impatience, in my fondness for a wander, in the odd sound of my own laugh, and the sense late at night that I am brittle and light and might blow away with the next gust of wind...sometimes I still recognize her...that Featherberry girl. 

(Names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty.)