Fugue 13 - Spring/Summer 1996 (No. 13)

============ FUGUE # 13, Spring/Summer 1996 ing."

Victoria acquiesced to each demand, though something in her manner suggested ... I don't know what it suggested. I suspected she put up with her mother the same way I used to tolerate my mother's boyfriends- boyfriends who talked down to me like I had landed on the planet yesterday; who would pat me on the head, play catch for ten minutes, then pontificate over how much they loved kids. My mother, normally a perceptive woman, was constantly fooled by these jerks, and annoyed when I didn't warm to each new lover immediately.

"So Victoria," I said, "Is it Vicky or Victoria?"

"Victoria," she said, her irritation unmistakeable. I was probably already suspect in her mind. I could easily imagine Erma dragging home a series of unsavory men who, like myself, having failed to hit on half a dozen other women, ended up with the fat lady on the couch.

"Victoria is the name of a great queen, you know. Are you by any chance a queen?" She didn't answer. She studied my face, trying to decide what to make of me. "How old are you?"

I asked.

Again she didn't answer, looking instead at her doll which was crammed among miscellaneous junk on a nearby radiator.

"She's four," Erma said, joining us at the table. "She'll be five in September. Victoria, answer when grown-ups talk to you."

Victoria shot me a look of annoyance. I had gotten her in trouble asking my stupid, irrelevant questions and her look told me she didn't appreciate it. Why couldn't I mind my own business?

Who was this girl? I thought. Where did she come from?

How could Erma be mother to such a precocious angel? How could life be so unfair?

The other day I was watching Oprah Winfrey, or maybe it was Donahue, but this feminist psychiatrist was talking about single mothers of low self-esteem who pass their psychological hang-ups onto their children. Implicit in this claim is the assumption that kids with mothers like mine-well67