The Northwest Times

FAY IS SUCH AN INTRIGUING NAME
O, God, keep me always a little unsatisfied! I would rather die than be like Fay. Fay could be no more than 35 years of age, but to look at her, one would think she was 45. To talk to her is to feel oneself in the company of a tired old woman of 60. To spend one lunch hour with her is to feel as if one were being choked to death for the lack of fresh air.

Fay does not dream she is an object of pity. She is satisfied with her lot. If her life is not as glamorous as some others she reads or hears about, she believes her life is a lot better than the lives of a lot of people she knows.

So with her job. For almost seventeen years she has been living the same routine, and has seen no occasion to change. She started at seventeen as a stenographer, meekly doing work as it was assigned to her, never doing more than she was asked to do, and biding her time for she certainly was not dumb. She was quick to learn the advantages of a government job and the value of seniority and three weeks with pay. And in seventeen years, she has risen to become secretary to a top man, stepping up, moving with her boss or successor to her boss, as the case might be, as would a good office desk, a filing cabinet or an inkstand. And with every move, she has seen her monthly earnings increase, till today, she knows her earnings, though not fabulous in the world of business, are quite fabulous for what she does to earn it.

And what she does is not very much. Her main job is to answer telephones in a whiny sort of voice, to take a few letters daily, and to make sure her boss signs all the necessary documents sent up for his signature and to finish another sweater or another pair of mitts. The fact that younger, lesser-paid secretaries and clerks often compose the letters or answer the queries she is responsible for, worries her not at all.

And yet she has no interests apart from her job, unless it is the one night of bridge a week with girls like herself. Other evenings she spends watching television. She has only recently reconciled herself to the extravagance of putting out $400.00 for a television set. She discovered that perhaps the outlay will pay for itself in a number of years since she no longer spends money on going to the movies.

I sometimes think ungodly thoughts about Fay. I'm convinced she sits before the television set nightly in sheer spite, just so that she will get her money's worth out of it. She plans her expenditures in minutest detail. She never does anything on impulse. If she takes a luxurious trip, which is rarely, she makes up for three years by merely existing. The glamour and the wonder of any trip for her is lost because she can only remember how expensive the meals were, how expensive the hotels were, and how much more money she had spent than she had counted on spending.

Fay has no opinions. It is considered her redeeming quality. She is always spoken of as a "nice girl who wouldn't say or do a mean thing to anybody." One wonders if this quality is not a lack of respect for oneself, lack of any deep feeling, lack of interest, lack of anything but a redeeming quality. If only once she would flare up and utter some human remark, be it in anger, or envy, or even in lowly cattiness, one could imagine a living spirit somewhere in the layers of muscles and bones and systems which make up Fay. And then there would be hope that some day she would wake up to realize what is happening to her.

And yet I cannot say that I have not seen her come to life. I saw it once. I was discussing crocheting with her when I suddenly realized that she could be an attractive, and even a vital woman. She got all excited because she had knitted herself one of those new-styled toques advertised in Morgan's for $5 for only $1. Her eyes, which I had thought nondescript, became blue as the wild gentians I remember as a child, as she talked of returning one ball of wool and getting her money back for it. The directions had said three balls and she had needed only two. Her voice rose. Her eyes shone.

And yet Fay has no apparent reason to take life as she does. Her people are well established. She supports no one. She has never been called to help any one. She will never have to worry in terms of the future. And yet she continues day in, day out, living her routine life of no highlights and no shadows.

Fay is a lovely name. Her mother must have had lovely dreams when she named her. But Fay will never live up to her name. She folded up her little wings the day her bright little brain learned to be smugly satisfied, the day she became too wrapped up with the idea of security. That, to me, is a tragedy. To me it is a terrible waste of brains, of opportunity, of life itself.
-From New Canadian