The Faces of Freida Fay McBeal

"I thought Debbie was good, but Brittany was a master and she was also a great teacher. She was very critical, often to the point she made me cry, but then she'd explain what I'd done right and what I'd done wrong and how to make it better. After that first year with her, she put some of my paintings beside hers in the art gallery where she sold her work. Three of mine sold within a week. I didn't make a lot of money, only a hundred and fifty dollars total, but I was thrilled.

"Brittany was excited too, and told me once people learned who I was, I could make it on my own. I wasn't sure, so I stayed with her for another two years. Last year on New Year's day she said she couldn't teach me any more than she already had and that I should find a gallery that would exhibit my paintings so I could sell them.

"I paint a lot, so I had lots to sell, but none of the bigger galleries would take my work because I was so new. I found a small gallery that would, and after I figured out that landscapes sold pretty well, I painted a bunch of those and put them up with a few of my other works.

"One day, a man was looking at one of my other paintings, and asked the clerk who I was. It turns out, he was an art professor here at the university and when we finally connected, he asked if I would put a few of my paintings, not the landscapes but the others, in the gallery at the university.

"This week was my first time, and I've sold several. I've made enough money to keep my head above water until I have another showing here. That'll be in about two months."

I told Frieda Fay about being drawn to her painting.

"I admit I've never really understood art, but for some reason that painting just begged me to look at it. It was those faint images behind and in front of the girl. I still don't know what they are, but it's amazing how you put them into the painting so I could tell they were there, but not really see them."

Frieda Fay smiled.

"You weren't supposed to be able to tell what they are, only that they're there."

I smiled.

"You did a great job at that, and I'm dying to know what they are. Are they people or something else?"

Frieda Fay swirled the coffee that was left in her cup, then sat the cup back down on the table.

"That's for you to decide. I really need to be going now."

I couldn't just let her walk away like that. I didn't know why, but I couldn't.

"Frieda Fay, how long are you going to be in town?"

She looked at me and frowned.

"Why?"

"Well, I just thought maybe...I mean, I haven't seen you for almost seven years and you've changed a lot and...well, would you have dinner with me some night? We could talk some more and maybe we could get to know each other better, that's all. I don't get the chance to talk to many people from home and most of them wouldn't want to talk to me anyway. We don't have anything in common anymore except we went to the same high school."

Frieda Fay smiled.

"You think we have something else in common?"

"Well, yes, sort of. You painted the picture I liked. It's not much but it's something."

Frieda Fay smiled a quirky little smile.

"If it's just talk, OK. I'll be in town until next Wednesday. After that I'll take all my paintings down and go home until my next showing."

Dinner with Frieda Fay that Friday night was both interesting and frustrating. She'd talk about almost anything -- what she'd done with Debbie and Brittany, things she'd seen, things she wanted to see -- but every time I steered our conversation to her personal life, she'd find a way to not answer and turn the question back at me. By the time I dropped her off at her motel room, she knew a lot about me and all I'd been able to find out about her was she had paintings at home she never brought out in public and I think even that was an accident on her part.

We were talking about things Brittany had taught her, one of the few things she seemed comfortable talking about. I asked her if Brittany had taught her how to make the faint images on the painting of the girl in the swing.

Frieda Fay smiled.

"No. I don't know how I did that and that painting wasn't the first time. It happens when I'm in a dark sort of mood. I can see the person I'm painting into the picture, but when I step back, what I've painted is just a shadow or wisps of fog or something like that."

I hadn't really looked at her other paintings closely once I'd seen her name. I told Frieda Fay I'd have to go back to the gallery before she left and have a look at those too. She frowned.

"I never show those to anybody. They're too dark and too personal."

Her face went from a frown to a smile then.

"So, how do you like being an engineer?"

Frieda Fay's next showing at the gallery was two months later. By then, the footers for the new addition had been put in and E & E was getting ready to put down the floor slab. That meant the big conduits for the service entrance had to be buried and then stubbed up inside the power room where the switchgear would be located. I spent a couple days double-checking that everything was in the right place, and the first day I stopped inside to see what Frieda Fay had brought with her this time.

She was usually busy with people looking at her paintings and then asking about the price for this one or that one. That Friday, I stayed until the gallery was closed and asked her to dinner again.

That dinner, and the others we had together over the months the addition was going up weren't much different than the first. After her second showing, people apparently kept asking the gallery when she'd be back, so she ended up having a showing every two to three months. I'd ask her to dinner at least once while she was there, and while she always asked if it was just to talk, she always accepted.

She seemed to get more comfortable with me as time progressed, but there was still this mystery about her that kept me wondering if I was seeing the real Frieda Fay, or just the Frieda Fay she wanted me to see. Every time I tried to get her to talk about herself -- what she liked and didn't like and especially what she called her "dark" paintings -- she just changed the subject.

It was developing into an obsession with me. I had to know. I finally just blurted that out one night when we were standing at the door of the motel room where she was staying.

"Frieda Fay, you probably won't believe this, but I really like having dinner with you. You're not the same person you were in high school, but the thing is, I don't think you're really the person I'm seeing either and it's driving me crazy. I know it's sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, but I can't help it. I know there's more to you than you tell me, and I want to find the rest about what I've realized is a very sensitive and very talented woman."

Frieda Fay looked at her feet.

"I've never let anybody see who I really am. In high school, it was too embarrassing, and now...the only two people in my life who ever understood were Debbie and Brittany, and that was because they were like me. You're not like me, not at all. Neither is anybody else. You'd just think I'm weird or maybe even crazy."

I gently lifted Frieda Fay's chin so I could see her eyes, and once I did, I saw her eyes had tears in them.

"Frieda Fay, I think I've learned enough about you that if you were crazy, I'd know that by now. You're not crazy, and as for being weird, we're all a little weird in some ways. The fact that you're different is one of the reasons I keep asking you out."

"What's the other reason? It's what Mom always told me, isn't it?"

I shook my head.

"Frieda Fay, the other reason is I like you, that's all. I don't know what your mother told you, but I just like you and I want to meet the real Frieda Fay."

Frieda Fay wiped her eyes but she still looked like she was about to cry.

"I can't tell you who she is. I'll have to show you my other paintings. You still won't understand, but I'll show them to you if you still want that."

That Friday afternoon, I helped Frieda Fay load her van with all the paintings that hadn't sold, and then followed her out of town. She'd seemed quieter than usual when we loaded everything. She just looked at me and said, "It'll take us about half an hour to get there. If I lose you, just stay on the interstate until you come to Exit 284. Get off and I'll be waiting for you after you make the left turn onto Highway 6".

I didn't lose her, and after about five miles down Highway 6, Frieda Fay turned onto a gravel lane through a thick stand of trees. That gravel lane wound around for about a quarter of a mile and then stopped in front of an old, rambling farmhouse. I saw chickens scratching in the grass beside the front door, and in a pen beside the small barn were a couple of goats.

Frieda Fay drove up to the front door, stopped, and got out. When I walked up beside her, she smiled.

"This is where I live. I wanted a place like Brittany has so I could be alone. I paint better when I'm by myself."

Frieda Fay unlocked the front door and then led me inside to her living room. It looked about like any other living room I'd ever been in except there wasn't much furniture. She had a couch and a chair, a coffee table, and a couple end tables by the couch. On the wall opposite the door was a fireplace, but it didn't look like she'd ever used it.

Frieda Fay put down her purse and then asked if I'd help her get her paintings inside.

It took half an hour to do that, mostly because I kept stopping to look at the paintings hanging from the wall or stacked against the walls in her studio. I'm no judge of art by any means, but she was right about some of them looking dark. The first time I carried a painting into her studio, I asked her about one on an easel beside the window. Frieda Fay shook her head.

"Let's get everything inside before I tell you about that one."

When we carried the last two paintings into her studio, Frieda covered the lot with a big piece of white canvas, then turned to look at me.

"Are you sure you want to know the real me? She even scares me sometimes."

I squeezed Freida Fay's shoulder and grinned.

"You don't look scary to me at all. Now, tell me about this one."

The painting was mostly black except for the woman in the center. She was nude and lying on her back with one arm over her breasts and the other hand covering her mound. Floating above her was one of Frieda Fay's hazy representations of something that looked like a man. She wasn't looking at me when she spoke.

"This is a woman doing what my mother told me women do to men. She said women are evil and entice men to sin by showing men their bodies."

I hadn't missed the fact the woman in the picture had blonde hair.

"The woman in the picture...she's you, isn't she?"

Frieda Fay's voice was so soft I barely heard her say "yes".

"If you're the woman, who's the man?"

Frieda Fay shrugged.

"I don't know. He's just a man looking at me and wanting to do things to me."

"If the woman is trying to entice the man, why is she covering herself like she is?"

Again, her voice was more a murmur than anything else.

"She...I want to entice him, but I don't want to entice him."

She turned to me then.

"See, I told you you'd think I'm weird."

I chuckled.

"Frieda Fay, you're different, but you're not weird. I'd bet a lot of women feel the same way. I see them all the time. They dress sexy and act sexy, but they don't really want to hop into bed with just any guy. They just like feeling like every man would want to do that, that's all. It's the same with guys. We want to think every woman is dying to sleep with us. We don't really want that, but we like to think about it."

She frowned.

"I don't just think about it. I want it to happen. I've wanted it to happen since I was eighteen, but my mother scared me to death. She said it would hurt really bad and I'd get pregnant and have a baby and everybody would think I was a whore. That's what she said...that I'd be a whore just like the whores in the Bible and I'd burn in Hell for it.

"The woman in the painting wants the man, but she's afraid of all that. That's why she's covering herself. If he can't see all of her, he won't think she's a whore."

I was starting to see some of why Frieda Fay had been like she was in high school. If she'd heard that from her mother every day, she probably believed it.

"That's why in high school, you never tried to be attractive, isn't it?"

Frieda Fay nodded.

"I didn't want to give any boy the idea I wanted to do something with him."

"Do you still believe that, that just showing yourself to a man makes you a bad person and that all those things will happen to you?"

"Yes, because it did. I didn't get pregnant, but that was the only thing that didn't happen."

"Want to tell me about that?"

"I can't. It hurts too much. I painted it and you can see the painting."

Frieda Fay took the painting down from the easel and then took it to a row of paintings leaning against the wall. She put the painting in front and then pulled out the third one, walked back, and sat it on the easel.

I didn't tell Frieda Fay, but this one really was weird. It was faces spread across the canvas and each one sort of blended into the ones on either side like the time-exposure pictures you see of traffic in a city where there are tail lights connected by lines of color. It was obvious the faces were Frieda Fay. What was really unsettling was what the expressions told me about her.

The first face looked innocent, but when it blended into the second, the innocent look turned evil with a sly smile and squinting eyes. The third face looked shocked, the fourth was obviously a woman in pain. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and her mouth was open in a scream I could almost hear. The last face was crying.

I looked up from the painting and saw tears streaming down Frieda Fay's face.

"Frieda Fay, this happened to you didn't it? You were with a man and he hurt you. He didn't...were you raped?"

Fried Fay sniffed and then wiped her eyes.

"No. I wanted him to do it. I enticed him to do it to me. I let him see me without any clothes on and then told him to do it to me. When he did, it was like my mother had said. It hurt and it kept hurting. He didn't care. He just kept doing it until he was done. Then he just left me there. I never saw him again, and it was all my fault."

I put my arm around Frieda Fay's shoulders.

"Frieda Fay, you didn't cause that to happen. Whoever that man was doesn't deserve to be called a man. He was an animal. No real man would ever treat you like that."

Frieda Fay looked up at me.

"I used to think that. I saw boys kissing girls at the football games and they were being gentle. I thought sex would be like that and I really wanted to find out, but every time I got up enough courage, I heard my mother's voice telling me I was evil. This man delivered a package for Brittany one day, but she was gone to a showing and wouldn't be back until the next day. When I took the package, he told me I was pretty.

"I should have listened to the voice in my head, but I didn't and that's why it's my fault. I asked him to come in and then I took my clothes off and said he could have sex with me if he wanted. If I hadn't done that, he would have just gone away, but I did."

I had to stop my smile, though nothing Frieda Fay had said was funny in any way, shape, or form. I felt like smiling because on the outside, she was a grown woman, but on the inside, she was still that high school girl who never talked to anybody and looked like she was scared of her own shadow.

"Frieda Fay, most guys wouldn't have taken advantage of you like that. They'd have just walked away."

"You're just trying to make me feel better about what I did."

"No, I'm not. There's no way I could do that anyway. The only way you're going to feel better is if you decide the guy was a jerk and it wasn't your fault. I can help you try to do that, but I can't change your mind."

Frieda Fay didn't say anything. She turned, put her face against my shoulder and started to sob. I held her for what seemed like a long time before she stopped. When she did, she looked up at me.

"Do you really think it wasn't my fault?"

I pushed the hair back from her face and smiled.

"No more your fault than if it started to rain right now. All you did was act like a woman with a woman's natural feelings. It was the guy who caused that to go wrong for you. Most men wouldn't have done that to you. I sure wouldn't have."

Frieda Fay looked at the floor for a few seconds, and then looked back at me.

"Would you show me what you'd have done?"

I hadn't expected anything like this from Frieda Fay. She'd been friendly, but she would never let me know much about her other than her work. Now, she was asking me to do something way more intimate than just talking.

"Frieda Fay, I'd feel like I was taking advantage of the way you're feeling right now. I can't do that to you or I'll be just like that other guy."

"No, Jack, you won't. You said with him I was just acting like a woman. That's all I'm trying to be right now. I cried because you're the first person who ever told me I wasn't weird or crazy. I never heard anything like that at home, and Debbie and Brittany thought they were weird and I was just like them so they never told me that either. I know what I'm asking. I'm asking to know what it feels like with a man who won't do to me what he did, and I trust you and know you won't."

I know a lot of guys would figure Frieda Fay was really screwed up in the head and they'd have just walked away. If I hadn't known her for so long, I might have too, but as she stood there looking at me, I realized I'd known three Frieda Fays. There was the Frieda Fay from high school, scared to death of her own thoughts because of her mother. There was Frieda Fay the artist, carefully telling me about her life after school but never letting me see the third Frieda Fay, the woman standing there and asking me to make love to her.

Fate had brought us together after almost seven years during which I'd met a lot of women, but had never met one who intrigued and impressed me like Frieda Fay. As I stood there thinking maybe there was a reason we'd met and why Frieda Fay had become a woman I looked forward to seeing, she started unbuttoning her blouse. I gently pulled her hands away to stop her.

"Frieda Fay, you don't have to do that to get a man to want you. A man who really wants you would want to undress you himself."

"Do you really want me?"

"Yes, but not here and not like this."

Frieda Fay led me through the house to her bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it wasn't furnished very well, but the bed was a queen and there was a chair and bedtable with a lamp.

She turned down the spread and sheet, then came back to me.

"Is this a better place?"

I put my arms around her waist.

"Much, much better. Unless you've changed your mind, I'm going to kiss you now."

Frieda Fay put her arms around my neck.

"I haven't changed my mind."

I don't think a man ever forgets the first time he kisses a girl. I know I hadn't and Kissing Frieda Fay was the same. She didn't really know how, so after she tried pressing her lips tight against mine, I pushed her gently away.

"You let me do this, and then you do whatever you feel like doing, OK."

She just stood there while I kissed her softly, then inhaled quickly when I brushed my tongue over her upper lip. I felt her open her mouth a little, just like I hoped she would. I kissed her a little harder then, and when I slipped my tongue between her parted lips, she made a little sighing sound. I felt her hand on the back of my head, holding me in place while she started mouthing my lips with hers. When I pulled gently away, she was standing there with her eyes closed and her mouth open a little, so I kissed her again. This time, she didn't wait to feel my tongue on her lips. She opened her mouth and tried to find my tongue with hers. When she did, I felt a little shudder run through her body.