KarMel Scholarship 2004

“Fred”

By Anonymous

Desciption of Submission: “Alex, a college student, goes to hear his nice but uninteresting Uncle Fred give a speech. During their conversation over coffee afterwards, Fred reveals that he's not as unpassionate and out of the loop as Alex had thought..” - Anonymous

“Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child—ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies whom we thought to have left behind us […]?”

from Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864). The Scarlet Letter & Rappaccini’s Daughter. The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.

Give that my extended family made church a biannual event, it always surprised me that they were more irritated by my Uncle Fred’s perpetual bachelor status than by his strange devotion to theology. My mother was the only one who’d let whole family gatherings go by without asking Fred if he was seeing anyone. Instead, she chose to ask him involved questions about various religious debates, which he answered in his usual quiet monotone. The rest of us always got bored to tears and left to go harass someone’s older sister, since interrupting Fred and my mother would’ve been unheard of. Even as a kid, it had been clear to me that she had a real soft spot for her younger brother, and you didn’t mess around with Mom.

Years later, when Fred was invited to be the keynote speaker at a theology conference at our mutual alma mater, my mother made it crystal clear that my attendance was mandatory. My claim of too much work led to a speech about supporting your family and a reminder of whose bank account my tuition came out of. Reluctantly, I dragged myself to the auditorium, telling myself that I never did homework on Sunday afternoons anyway.

Fred’s speech was entitled “What Child is This? Explaining Religion to the Young.” It was received with standing ovations, to which he gave a tiny little bow and weak smile. The speech itself was quite good, delivered with a quiet strength that I normally only glimpsed in his discussions with my mother. Then again, it was Fred, and nobody expected an outpouring of emotion, least of all me. For all Uncle Fred’s overall good intentions and sweet disposition, he’d always had the personality of a tea cozy. In his muddy-brown suits with sweater vests and a comb-over, it was hard to imagine him excited about anything. Although he was sweet and kind, he was always horribly, unbearably boring. For as long as I can remember, all the other adults in the family—particularly the women—were continually at a loss to explain his lack of a sweet, kind, and equally boring wife. They all knew such women; they saw them each week at the library pushing carts full of impeccably aligned books.

But Fred answered each blind-date proposal with the same sappy smile saying, “Not this time.” It drove them wild. They filled their black notebooks with hundreds of phone numbers of quiet navy-blue wearing women, which they were sure would “just adore” Fred. But years went by, and nothing ever excited Fred except his theology books and, once in a while, kids. He was a total softie for a chubby face in a stroller. Up until I was five he was my favorite relative, if only for the sake of his superb choice of puzzles and board games, which he brought each time he visited.

As I got older, however, Uncle Fred frustrated me more and more. Not because of his bachelor status—me and the other kids never really got into the marriage stuff—but because you could never get a rise out of Fred. None of us had ever seen Fred get so much as mildly irritated. No matter how many water balloons you lobbed at him, or however many times you discussed your little cousin’s diaper habits, Fred always kept that same pasty smile on his bland face. He would just nod his slightly balding head and keep on truckin’.

So standing downstairs at the speech’s reception with my plate full of cubes of cheese and toothpicks, I knew not to expect anything out of the ordinary. I took a seat on a rather ugly patterned grey sofa where I could comfortably gorge myself on the free food while continuing to appear social. Because Fred’s speech welcomed all ages at his speeches, many families with small children were seated around me, glad of an opportunity to save an afternoon of babysitting. Several of them had apparently also fixated on the low buffet table as a good place to sit while waiting for Fred’s fan club to dwindle.

As I reached for a few pig-in-the-blankets, a young girl about four years old or so triumphantly held up something small and white between her thumb and forefinger.

“I lost my thooth! I lost my thooth!” she exclaimed, showing her fawning and adoring parents, and then turning around to show the adults around her. “It’s my firth thooth,” she told a particularly doting older woman, who smiled matronly at her before responding, “And tonight you’ll put it under your pillow and wait for the tooth fairy, right?” The little girl nodded excitedly.

“And what do you think she’ll leave behind?” asked the woman warmly.

The little girl frowned.

“The thooth fairy is not a girl,” she said confidently. “His name is Fred.”

With a wary look the older woman excused herself to get some more punch, and the little girl turned anxiously to her parents and to discuss just what this fairy would bring. The parents assured her that Fred the Tooth Fairy would probably bring her a dollar. I was shocked. My tooth fairy had been named Mom, and lost teeth had earned me a day off from chores. This discrepancy left me speechless with a mouth full of pork and bread. Then I tried to picture my Fred in a pink tutu and glittery wings. Try as I might, all I could see him in was a shapeless brown dress with two argyle sweater vests for wings.

About an hour later, having gorged myself on pigs-in-the-blanket, pretzels, and cubes of cheese, I made my way over to the door, intending to pay my respects and bolt before some minister’s daughter pointed out the banana in my pocket. Fred was standing there, complacently nodding his head and giving everyone a dead fish handshake. As it happened, the tooth fairy girl and her family were a few people ahead of me. Still clutching her tooth between two fingers, the little girl was going on and on about her “firth thooth.” Her equal opportunity parents looked clearly anxious to get out before their daughter told someone that the Easter Bunny only brought carrots and carob cookies.

“C’mon,” said her father, “say, ‘Thank you for speaking today, Mr. Newman.’ ”

“Please—” injected my uncle, his fondness of kids shining through, “call me Fred.”

“Fred?” the little girl inquired. He nodded. She looked at the tooth in her hand.

“Are you a fairy?”

My Uncle Fred should have shaken his head weakly, pasted on a wan smile, and said, “Not this time.” Instead, to everyone’s surprise, he looked like a deer in headlights. If it could have, I’m sure his comb-over would’ve stood up on end. To his credit, however, he managed to eek out his thanks to the family, a small smirk emerging on his beet-red face.

Speechless at this sudden display of emotion, the family rushed to get to the parking lot and hide in the sanctuary of its Dodge minivan. When it came to my turn, I tried to wave him good-bye and slip out, but he caught my coat by the sleeve. With a steady voice, he asked me if I would mind waiting a minute. Stunned, I stood by the door and waited until everyone was gone. He came out in a few minutes, turned to me, and asked me perfectly calmly if I would like to go to coffee.

On the way over, we exchanged trite conversation about the weather, how my mother was, and how I felt about graduating. As we walked, I kept looking at him. He looked okay—his hair was still in place and all that—but something seemed different. His posture was straighter maybe, I wasn’t sure. Anyway, college towns being what they are, we found a coffee shop within a few blocks of the auditorium. He ordered a black coffee, no cream, no sugar, and told me he was treating. I ordered an extra-large vanilla mocha, which was my usual when I wasn’t paying.

We sat down, settled ourselves, and engaged in fully three minutes of awkward silence, during which I examined all of my nails, shifted uncomfortably twice, and stirred my drink until it was in danger of evaporating. Fred crossed his right leg over his left and sat back in his chair. His raised pant leg revealed an olive and brown argyle sock. Slowly, he sipped his coffee with both hands, a serene smile pasted across his face.

I couldn’t bear it.

“That was, um, a nice speech today, Uncle Fred.”

He nodded calmly.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“It was cool of you to let people come with their kids.”

“Otherwise would have been hypocritical.”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess so…”

“Besides,” he said, leaning forward to put down his cup, “the children gave the place a nice atmosphere.” He was looking directly at me. I became very interested in stirring my mocha.

“Um, sure, sure.” I had no idea why I was so nervous.

“Did you see the little girl with the lost tooth? She was cute.” He stared out over my left shoulder.

“Mm-hmm.”

He turned to me again and smirked. “She asked me if I was a fairy.”

I stopped stirring my drink, but I didn’t look up.

“She asked me if I was a fairy.” He began to chuckle. “A fairy.” He started to laugh. “Isn’t that hilarious?!” I looked up at him. He had leaned back in his chair and his chest was heaving with silent laughter. And then my Uncle Fred, who had never to my knowledge so much as guffawed, actually snorted. My nervousness morphed very quickly into mortification, and I frantically scanned the room. I saw no one I knew, thank goodness.

Fred cut into my relief by abruptly leaning forward again. His laughter died down, and he picked up his coffee.

“Do you know why it’s amusing, Alex?”

I shook my head and tried to find something to look at that wasn’t him.

“Really? I’m surprised? But perhaps they’ve stopped calling us that now. Every epithet they find keeps getting reclaimed, so they’ve moved onto new ones.”

All he got was a blank stare.

“Alex. She called me a fairy. It’s amusing because I am one—a fairy, a queer, a faggot, gay, homosexual, whatever you all call it these days... I can’t keep up with the jargon anymore.” He took another sip of coffee. Now it was my turn to look like a deer in headlights.

“You’re… gay?” I spluttered.

He took another sip.

“That’s what I’m trying to get across, Alex. I’m gay. Just like you.”

If my lower jaw could’ve detached from my mouth, it would’ve gone right through the floor. Across town, I’m sure the high school’s marching band was thrown off beat by the pounding of my heart, which had risen into my throat. The room felt strangely warm all of a sudden.

“Um.”

Fred set down his coffee and looked me in the eye again.

“Listen Alex, it takes one to know one, as the saying goes. I’ve known ever since I saw Robert Redford in “Barefoot in the Park” in 1967.”

“Does Mom know?”

“Alex, your mother never misses a beat, you know that. She’s been waiting for you to speak up for years.”

“Me?” Surely he meant the other person sitting across the table from him.

“Yes, you. She thought you’d definitely have come out by now. Not that it really matters, since we all know. We were just waiting for the official word from you.”

I sat there, feeling like a rock. A really stupid, speechless rock.

“Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you gay?”

Deep breath.

“Yeah.” My heart slowly sank back to its normal position and volume, and my lungs were once again willing to expand to full capacity. Finally, someone had asked. At school, no one ever had to, somehow. There, I never had to announce who I was. It was a different world, completely separate from my home or family life. I went to clubs, went on dates, even had sex a few times. I loved sex.

I smiled without meaning to.

“Glad to see you’re not paralyzed.”

I blushed, afraid that he was somehow conscious of what else was not paralyzed. He grinned at me, and asked if I had a boyfriend. I told him no, and asked who else knew about us besides Mom.

“Practically everyone, although some of the over-sixty crowd won’t admit it. They just keep pretending that the right woman will change it all. It keeps me on my toes,” he replied, and inquired if Professor Gardener still taught. Upon learning that he’d recently retired, Fred sighed. “That was the dreamy one in my day. Everyone lusted after him secretly, but only the lucky ones actually got him. Professor-student relationships then were allowed, as long as they weren’t currently teaching you.”

We chatted for about an hour or so about the good old days, the good new days, and Ralph Fiennes. I completely forgot my mocha. Uncle Fred was suddenly animated, and his eyes were smiling along with his mouth. My undone homework was lurking, however, and I had to cut us short. I walked him to his car, a grey ’89 impeccably clean Volvo, and he gave me a lift to class. As I was getting out of the car, I turned to him and asked, “Uncle Fred?”

“Yes?”
“How come you decided to ask me? You could’ve just ignored what that girl said. I never would’ve known.”

He smiled gently and put the car in park.

“Well, it goes like this. Your mother and I were talking about it. Arguing, actually, because we both wanted to get you to come out, but your mother didn’t want to do it. Said talking to her kid about sexuality was worse than a rectal thermometer.” He winced. “So she said that if I did it, she’d make me your godfather. Said she’d forgotten to do it earlier. I always wanted to be a godfather, so I took her up on it.” He grinned his smirky little smile again. “And here I am! Not just any godfather, but a fairy godfather!”

I slammed the door and leaned through the passenger window.

“Does this mean that someday you’re going to call upon me for a service for you which involves wearing glass slippers?”

He shifted into first.

“That day may never come.”

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