Train of Faith

Ok--so I found out a little more about Becky Doisy.

She disappeared on August 5, 1976. The year of the bicentennial. She was a reader for the blind. She had dinner with someone named Johnny Wright the night before she disappeared. He turned out to have a long rap sheet. He's since disappeared.

That's all I know for now. I'll keep you posted.

Back to West Virginia--

My ex had been hired as the drama counselor at this camp for the high school kids. For the little kids, they'd hired a woman name Sherri Faith. Or maybe it was Cheri Faith.
She was in her mid to late thirties at the time, I guess. I've always been rotten at guessing ages. She had been beautiful, you could tell, but was now a little down on her luck. She was overweight and had long, straight dark hair which was colored with one of those purplish burgundy washes so popular in the 80's--cellophanes? Right? She had a wonderful smile and this sort of "show must go on" quality.

She was definitely out of her element.

She'd once been a fashion model and had, notably, once been engaged to Rod Stewart. (We didn't believe it when she told us, but one of the older camp people remembered it as being true). She had a lot of big stories that seemed too big. She seemed not to know how to relate normally to people--she played instinctively to men, and didn't have any idea what to do with older, non glamorous women--or younger, non-glamorous women, for that matter.

But she tried hard, and the little kids seemed to really like her. She wore brightly colored clothes--tye die mostly. I guess she was sort of grating. It was mainly that she was just uncomfortable. People who are uncomfortable are often sort of annoying. She was so vulnerable, just stank of it. Rob zeroed in on this of course, with his famous tight end instincts.
He was never fully happy unless he had someone to bully--and single, overweight women a few years removed from an ever receding prime were his favorite targets.

He became obsessed with getting her fired. "She has no qualifications." he'd complain to me, in our shack. "Spent her whole life selling herself--now she thinks she can teach acting. There's a lot more to it than just getting up there and smiling. Those kids are getting no training."
He would always convince himself he was getting his mean rocks off to help someone else. He made her life miserable--turned the other counselors against her, viciously mocked her--her hair, her clothes, her way of speaking. I mean, so what? We were only there 12 weeks. So what if the other drama counselor wasn't a real "ACTOR" So what if she was just an aging fat fashion model trying to get a little breathing room--a little time to regroup and gather before she sailed off into middle age. So what if the camp play was under parr?

He got her fired 4 weeks into the summer. She left sobbing, left all her stuff--her beads and bright scarves and tye die. Fred had it all thrown into boxes and dumped in a parking lot somewhere in Hialeah.

I saw her again several years later in the ladies room at the Colony on South Beach. We were standing next to each other in front of the vanity. I had been divorced for a few years then, and my life was completely different. She was more overweight. She smiled at me, recognizing me but not really placing me. "She will," I thought. Her smile froze. There it was.
"We're divorced." I said immediately. Her smile came back. Bright and amazing. "GRRReeaat. That's just great." she said in her showbusinessy-way.

And that was that.

There's this great story by Nadine Gordimer called The Train from Rhodesia. In it a newly married couple are on a train on their honeymoon. The wife has been collecting these little native carved wooden animals from different stops along the trip. There's an old black man selling carved wooden animals at this stop, but his are really good--the work of an artist. And he's charging more--a fair price, but one the bride can't afford. At the last moment, as the train is pulling out, her groom, thinking to please her, throws some money at the man and grabs the animal she'd been admiring. The marriage, essentially, is over. I know I've talked about this before--it's one of my favorite stories.

That was Sherri, Cheri, Sherry, whatever Faith. She was my train from Rhodesia.

Choo choo.

That's my 1/2 hour.