I’ve always had a name obsession because mine never quite fit me. Even my mom agrees I was misnamed. When I ask what she’d name me if she could do it again, without hesitation she says, “Fiona.” Amanda is the name for a girl who wears Laura Ashley dresses and cares about hygiene. “Amanda” helps her mother with domestic chores, wears pink tights on her head pretending it’s a veil, and practices walking down the aisle. I knew my name was wrong for me, just the way I knew I never matched the “normal” student those tests were testing me against, and I never got placed alongside the rest of my peers on the growth charts and percentile curves—I’ve never been where I was expected. Even now, in adulthood, the trappings other people seem to so effortlessly find continue to elude me. My internal has never matched my external and my external has never matched the world.
Since I was small, I’ve kept lists of favorite names I’ve loved. With my worn, broken-in clothes, my proud scrapes and scabs, and short mop of curls, Ramona was closer. Even Pippi. Or a boy’s name would have worked, too. Billie was good. Andy, also.
My pregnant friends always come to me for ideas—by the time I was in my thirties, I’d already named ten babies, not one of them mine. Once, at a writer’s colony, I told a table full of new friends that I was a veteran baby namer, while confessing the belief I’d been misnamed myself. A fellow writer said, “You’re a Frankie.” I remembered instantly that when I was twelve I had read The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and immediately recognized Frankie Addams’s name as my own. Frankie is a name that matches my identity, one that stretches easily between feminine and masculine. Had it been mine from the start, I’m convinced I would have been better able to match the version of me others imagined. Which is why I want to pass down this name to my own child, a preemptive strike to remind myself to love the child who exists, not the child I expected. If she’s girly, she can be Frances, and if she’s boyish she can be Frankie. Frankie Bird. Maybe just Bird. My girl.
In the process of naming people’s babies, a process that’s spanned more than a decade, I’ve given away some names I love and then watched them grow too popular for me to use (Oliver, Declan). I’ve lived through at least three trend cycles, watching my secret list of coveted names pass by on embroidered knapsacks (Atticus, Scout, Mathilda); called out on the street (Vera! Milo! Arlo! Simon!); introduced to me in baby announcements (Agnes, Lulu, Iris, Maeve); and used in my own family (August, Charlie, Nico). All the names I’ve loved have been taken and used by others, but never Frankie. Frankie is mine.
And yet—I’m still no closer to having a real, human Frankie Bird of my own. It still feels like a joke that I’m forty. How can I be this old and feel…not grown-up? I’m waiting to feel the way everyone else my age seems to feel: capable enough for marriage and parenthood and career stability and mortgages. Almost all of my friends are married, even the ones I was sure never would be. Some are divorced and into their second marriages. A few have stepchildren. All my closest friends have children, even those who didn’t want them. I’ve sat through every pregnancy announcement, always happy for them and sad for me. Even if they’re pretending, even if some seem entirely incapable of being parents, spouses, or homeowners, they’re doing it. They’re either brave or stupid, jumping in before they’re ready, but I can’t. I don’t want to accidentally fuck anyone up. I almost ruined Pilot’s life, but not quite.
I’m not ready for another dog, and unlike some of my friends, I have no eggs in the freezer, but the drive to have a family isn’t going away, and that’s why I check the search box for “has kids” on OkCupid.
I write to a guy with a young daughter. He’s so handsome, I decide I can forgive him for living in Jersey City.
Jersey City and I exchange emails and he sends me another photo of himself, one with his daughter, who’s nine and very cute, but she looks sad. I forward the photo to my friend Laurie with a subject heading “Too old?” and she writes back that he’s cute but looks like he might have a ponytail. I feel a splash of disappointment, but Jersey City and I decide to talk on the phone.
Jersey City’s name is Javier. He has a type of accent I can’t place; it’s not exactly British, but it’s not not-British. He’s hilarious, and we make each other laugh instantly. When he tells me about himself, though, it’s a NASCAR race of red flags flying everywhere, and I walk to the other side of the room, as if I could somehow sidestep them. He’s forty-six, divorced from a woman he married impulsively, who left him with their daughter for a year. He doesn’t have a steady source of income. Right now he’s a cinematographer, although he really wants to be a filmmaker, maybe even a photographer; he’s not sure. He’s thinking he might even write a novel, although, of course, playwriting also appeals. My gut says to move on, and when I tell my friend Polly, she makes a face and says, “Hmm…not great for a forty-six-year-old man.” But that’s not what I want to hear, from Polly or my own gut. Besides, who am I to judge someone for not having his life together?
He calls me twice the next day and twice the day after that. It’s a lot, and it’s hard to concentrate on my own writing when he’s calling and emailing so much. But then, on the fourth or fifth phone call of the week, it all clicks into place, and I know I should never listen to my gut again. He tells me his daughter’s name: Frances. Frankie, for short.
* * *
Javier and I spend weeks talking on the phone. He’s been at his summer house in Maine this whole time, but now he’s coming in to meet me in New York. I’m excited but nervous. To make our meeting memorable, we decide to walk toward each other across Fourteenth Street. He’ll start at Seventh Avenue and walk west, and I’ll start at Eighth Avenue and walk east. When we think we see the other person, we’ll stop. The idea is absurd and hilarious, and so right up my alley that I worry I’m setting myself up for a huge disappointment. I’ve looked at his picture a million times and concluded that his face is so excellent that, unlike mine, there’s no wrong angle from which to look at him. Plus, his eyes squint when he smiles, and his smile reminds me of something embedded deeply in my subconscious that I can’t access. Our phone conversations have levity but are satisfying, and although I have questions that gnaw at me, my overall sense is one of certainty that this could work out. But I know my pattern, and it’s this: Out of the scraps of information I have before we even meet, I create a person who is perfect for me—and then when we do meet and he doesn’t match my unrealistic expectations, my disappointment unglues and debilitates me. In other words, I do to others what was done to me all my life—I expect the person I’ve imagined, rather than getting to know the person who arrives.
We text beforehand:
Javier: I’m almost there.
Me: Me too.
Javier: What if you hate what you see?
Me: What if you hate what YOU see?
Javier: I won’t.
I’m sort of laughing as I walk toward Seventh Avenue, praying that this ugly dude isn’t him, hoping that hot guy is. I keep walking, absurdly nervous and excited. Sweating, mildly shaky. Someone is about to walk into me, and I’m annoyed, looking over his shoulder and about to walk around him when he stops, smiling. I almost keep walking, but then: “It’s me!” he says.
Oh no.
“Oh my God!” I say, forcing a smile. This can’t be him. Why can’t I ever meet someone my body doesn’t reject on sight?
I force myself to hug him to hide my disappointment. His profile said “5′6″,” but there’s nothing five foot six about him. He’s barely any taller than I am. It feels like they sent the wrong guy. He’s dressed like a college kid: pageboy cap, checked short-sleeved button-down, jeans, and dark brown huarache sandals. He’s wildly skinny. But the superficial concerns aren’t the real problem. There’s something worse that I’m preventing myself from acknowledging.
Clearly, he’s not having the same reaction. “It’s you! It’s you!” he keeps saying as we walk toward Eighth Avenue, grabbing my arm and letting his fingers linger. When he touches me, something spoils in my belly. I am flushed with mistrust. Can’t I just let myself meet someone I like? No matter whom I choose, my body never tells me what I want to hear. Besides, who says my body’s even right? I try to ignore it.
We decide to have lunch, but before we go inside, he wants to kiss me.
“Right now?” I try not to flinch.
“Yeah, let’s just get the first awkward kiss over with,” he says.
I have no idea how to say no. I wonder if kissing him will help knock this terrible feeling out of me. “Okay. Awkward kiss, here we go.”
We kiss and it’s not terrible. Were he a bad kisser, I’d have no problem ending things now. So long as you have a tongue, there’s no excuse for bad kissing. But he seems to know what he’s doing, and now I’m stuck. I feel nauseated and disappointed and yet, oddly, I’m drawn to a certain sexiness about him.
During lunch, he’s excessively affectionate, as if we’re already a couple instead of two strangers weighing the possibility of a second date. He makes weird kissing faces at me, like he’s suffering from affectionate Tourette’s.
“How’s your burger?” I ask.
“I’ve had better,” he says, then proceeds to explain everything the cook did wrong. I don’t own the restaurant, I just chose it, but still, I take the critique personally.
“You cook?”
“Well, yeah, I owned a restaurant.”
“You did? I thought you were a cinematographer.”
“I am. But my ex, Meredith, decided she wanted to own a restaurant, so that’s what we did. When 9/11 happened, and Frankie was born, Meredith didn’t want to stay in Jersey City anymore, so we moved to Maine, and opened the restaurant there.”
I tried making small talk about the restaurant, and received instead a full rundown of Javier’s codependent relationship with Meredith, who had apparently—after insisting on an open marriage—run off to Florida with Earl, one of their customers, leaving Javier alone with two-year-old Frankie.
“Whoa. That’s brutal.”
“Yeah, Frankie cried all the time, wailing that she missed her mama. I just let her cry and cry and told her it was good to feel her feelings and yeah, it was brutal.” My feelings for him advance with this image, and for Frankie, a child I’ve never even met. There is an empty maternal space that my body wants to urgently fill. “Then Meredith came back, wanting Frankie, and I was like, no fucking way.”
“So what now, do you even speak to Meredith? Does Frankie ever ask about her?” Even as I say it, I recognize the answer I am fishing for: that all he and Frankie want is a mama person.
“Oh yeah, we’re on great terms. She’s an amazing mother.” I blink at him in disbelief. But he’s not joking. “She wasn’t then, but she is now. When Earl got a job in L.A., he and Meredith moved there, so Frankie and I followed.” Does this man have no will of his own? “After a couple of years, Earl lost his job, so we all moved to this small island off the coast of Maine, where she spent a lot of time as a kid, and where my family has a house. But then Meredith left Earl for our friend Leo, and Earl moved out and now Leo is moving in. Great role model, huh?”
“Wow. That’s a lot of information.”
“Too much?” He looks worried but keeps going. “Now she’s a clothing designer. You should check out her blog.”
I hold my eyes before they roll of their own accord. “Maybe I will.”
Since he has traveled all the way down from Maine to meet me, I feel obligated not to ditch him immediately, so when we leave the restaurant we walk around the Village for a while. Besides, he’s not all bad. I like his energy. We can be friends, I think. Not what I’m looking for, but still. We go to Art Bar, where I haven’t been since my early twenties.
With a drink in me, I am better equipped to handle his overly tactile nature, and by that I mean I ignore it. He tells me about a documentary he wants to make in Peru and invites me to come with him. I laugh it away. “I can’t wait for you to meet Frankie,” he says at one point. “You guys will love each other,” he says at another.
It’s too much, too fast, and as much as I’m not interested in him, Javi comes with something I want: a family. So instead of leaving, we order another round. We giggle and poke fun at the other awkward people on their first dates.
“Do you have time for a relationship?” he asks me, suddenly serious.
“Yeah,” I say, because although I’m not certain he’s for me, my insecurity doesn’t want him to rule me out. “Do you?”
“Yes,” he says. “Maybe. I think so. I don’t know.”
What kind of answer is that? Does he need to phone a friend? Now it’s dark and I’m ready to go home, but because I’m drunk and don’t want to hurt his feelings, I find myself making out with him.
As we say good-bye on the street, he gestures to the building behind us. A church. “Let’s get married,” he says.
“Ha-ha,” I say. “Funny.”
“I’m serious. Let’s do it. It’d be fun.”
Alert, alert, red flag, code red, alarm, alarm, abort mission. “I’m Jewish. My rabbi would be very mad.”
This fast-forwarding reminds me of Peter, and I know it’s a danger sign, though my drunk brain can’t remember why. Isn’t having someone who wants to commit a good thing? That’s the problem with red flags, I think to myself. People tell you how to spot them, but they never tell you what they mean. We part with a promise to see each other again, one that I promise myself I won’t keep.
At home, I hop onto Petfinder to cheer myself up. Dogs don’t lie about their height and talk only about their exes. Dogs aren’t uncertain about their ability to make time for you. Dogs don’t say all the right things on the first date, though I suppose dogs will try to marry you within hours of meeting. I pull out my notebook to keep track of the dogs I like and I come across a message.
“You are so super cute and I feel blessed to have met you.” He must have written it while I was in the bar bathroom. Oh, man. This guy is not boyfriend material. But it sure is nice to feel wanted. And Frankie—isn’t Frankie a sign?