The Saga of Fix Millicent by Marlene Hickey

“Mommy, Daddy . . . I want you to meet Fix Millicent.”

“Well, hi there, Fix. How are you tonight?” my husband, Don, said as he peered at the empty recliner chair in front of him. “Where exactly is she sitting, Sue?”

With that, our youngest child, Suzanne, not yet three years of age, introduced to her father the fascinating friend who shared her days of frolic and fun. I, by contrast, had been aware of Fix for quite a long while. In fact, I considered her practically a fifth, if invisible, member of our brood. This, however, was our first formal introduction. Because of his busy work and travel schedule, there had been no occasion to tell my husband anything about the appearance and importance of Fix Millicent (pronounced by Suzanne as Milly-cent.) For a change, we were all together at the dinner table that night. As they basked in the warmth of extra attention, the three older children recounted the small triumphs and tragedies of their school day.

When they had finished, Suzanne took the floor and proceeded, from her high chair, to regale us with her adventures. Secure in her position as Last-Child-Left-At-Home, she was smugly confident that she could outscore these world-traveling siblings with one anecdote tied behind her. Her father expressed interest in her story and asked if we could meet this elusive pal. Suzanne agreed to take us into the living room after dinner to introduce us.
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The year was 1959. Wichita, Kansas, had been our home for just a short time when I began to hear my little girl’s lively conversations with . . . no one. “How sweet,” I thought. “She has an invisible friend.”

I knew that children often turn to imaginary playmates when they lose their real-life brothers and sisters to school. Left alone to entertain themselves, they create their own solitary games. Sometimes she sat on the living room rug with a deck of cards playing one of these imaginary games with two additional invisible characters, Ricky and Pirate. Now and then she would throw down her cards and say, “I quit! Pirate cheats!” Then she would stalk off in disgust.

When Fix Millicent first made her appearance, I was amazed most of all at the unlikely name. As a fulltime stay-at-home mom who monitored all aspects of her children’s lives, I knew that every story familiar to Suzanne had been read or told to her by me. The few television programs the kids were allowed to see, such as Lassie and the Mickey Mouse Club, were watched in my presence. We used no baby-sitters and, as newcomers to the area, no visitors had brightened our door up to that time. So far as I knew, she had never come in contact with names that sounded anything like Fix or Millicent.

One day, as Suzanne and I walked hand in hand to the neighborhood grocery store on sidewalks wet with puddles from a recent rain, she began suddenly to mutter under her breath in an exasperated voice: “Stop! Don’t! You’re splashing me. I’m getting all wet. Stop it, I said!”

Surprised at the vehemence of her accusation, I defended myself, saying, “Suzanne, what are you talking about? I’m not splashing you.”

“Not you, Mommy,” she answered. “Fix Millicent is doing it.”

Another time, as I cleaned near the bathroom, I heard my child moan and say to herself in a frantic tone of voice, “Oh, ooh, I have to go. I can’t wait. Ow, oh, ooh.”

I glanced into the room to see why she was unable to answer nature’s call, and was perplexed to see her squirm and writhe in what seemed to be genuine need.

“So then go to the bathroom, for heaven’s sake! What’s stopping you?”

In a voice both urgent and reasonable, Suzanne explained. “I can’t, Mommy. Fix is sitting on the toilet.”

Other unusual things occurred during our stay in the Wichita house. Often when I was writing a letter at the table, Suzanne, who sat nearby playing with her toys, would suddenly start talking about the subject I was writing about at that exact minute. I thought the first time that it was a funny coincidence, but I didn’t find it quite so amusing when it happened several times after that.

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On the night Suzanne introduced Fix Millicent to the family, she filled us in on the girl’s history,
at least as much as she had supposedly been told: Fix lived with her grandfather in Wichita on Newscome Street. Both parents were dead. She was about six years old with long, blond hair, and she always wore a blue nightgown.

To Don’s credit, he displayed as much interest in his little girl’s fantastic tale as a father can muster after a twelve hour workday. Finally, however, he was ready to settle down with his newspaper and a television show or two, but just as he sank wearily into his easy chair, he was startled by a loud shriek from his youngest child.

“Stop, Daddy! Fix Millicent is in that chair. You almost sat on her.” It was another reminder that life was different now that he shared his existence with a denizen of the unseen world.

In spite of my well-meaning plans to research early Wichita history to see if there had ever been such a street, or to follow up on some of the other details Suzanne had told us, I somehow never got around to it. Raising four small children, sometimes by myself for a week or two at a time while my husband traveled on business, filled my days and consumed all my energy. In addition, our stay in that city lasted only a short time before Don was transferred again.

Fix apparently didn’t accompany us when we moved from Kansas to California a few months later. She preferred to stay where she had always lived, according to Suzanne. In later years when she was teaching foreign languages to high school students, and I had written an account of her Wichita adventures, she translated that tale into French and shared with her classes the story of Fix Millicent. Recently, the two of us reminisced about the days when she played card games with the characters named Ricky and Pirate. They were just make-believe, Suzanne assured me, but Fix Millicent was real.

TEACHER'S PETS

The teacher,
dishes them out:
quotes for appetizers,
facts for entrees,
names and dates
for dessert.

The students,
stuff them in,
gobble them up, choke
them down, leaving
hardly a taste in
their mouth.

The students
swallow them all --
some of them whole;
Then wait...and vomit
them back, all over
the page.

The teacher
smiles, pleased.

Tartar Sauce

The other day at a lovely restaurant I ordered the crab cake sandwich with the tartar sauce on the side. I’m not very fond of mayonnaise, and many restaurants heap so much dressing on salads and sandwiches that all I can taste is the mayonnaise. So I’ve learned to ask for the sauce separate and put it on myself. The waiter brought my plate and set it in front of me. The crab cake was in a sesame hamburger bun and a nice helping of hot French fries were piled beside it. In a small cup was what I presumed was the tartar sauce. It wasn’t the white mayonnaise, pickle and horseradish mixture that I call tartar sauce. This was thinner, a little yellow and had mustard seeds in it. I took a tiny taste, very good, a little sweet, and perhaps lemony, and with a mustard bite. As I spread the tartar sauce on the bun I thought of Mom and Mr. Ghirardelli.

Mom and I visited San Francisco somewhere in the 1980s. As we toured the city she reminisced about the few years she lived there during WWII, I listened. Our wandering took us to Ghirardelli Square, the original home of Ghirardelli Chocolates. Mom offhandedly remarked, “I met Mr. Ghirardelli once when I lived here during the war.” I encouraged her to tell more. “I volunteered at the USO. Mr. Ghirardelli was one of the directors. One night he was there when I was, and I met him. He spent the evening complaining that his cook couldn’t make good tartar sauce. I always remembered that because it seemed such a strange thing to be so concerned about.” I agreed with her, especially during wartime and rationing.

Ever since then tartar sauce and Mr. Ghirardelli go together in my mind. I doubt he’d approve of this mustard concoction as tartar sauce, probably call it something else. It didn’t matter to me. My taste buds told me it is delicious and that is all that mattered.

I need to make one thing clear: I hate travel. The joy of travel is a myth perpetuated by a cabal of airlines, resorts, rental car agencies, travel writers and agents, credit card companies, banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses, with the aid of what used to be called Madison Avenue. You’ve seen the TV ad–ad nauseum. The beautiful, elderly couple (right out of a modeling agency), both trim and fit. He, with a touch of gray at the temples, looking like he just climbed Mt. Everest. She, blonde hair, unlined face, looking like she just swam the English Channel. (Actually, they ain’t so healthy. These are the very same people that are shown on the commercials during the evening news using Imodium, Correctol, Preparation H, Viagra, and hormone therapy just to keep going.) Anyhow thanks to (fill in the blank) this couple is on a tropical island, sipping exotic drinks, as they watch the blue ocean waves caress the beach.

Where did these people come from? Did they rush to the airport, finding no place to park, and then wait in long lines at the check-in counters and security stations? Was their flight delayed or even canceled? Were they finally squeezed into a plastic tube along with hundreds of other exasperated passengers, where they were served plastic food by barely responsive flight attendants? And when they finally landed (late) could they find their luggage? Did the local natives, eager to separate them from the wealth that Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney or you name it helped them amass, bombard them with offers of tours, taxi rides, and trinkets? When they arrived at their destination, did the resort mess up their reservation so that they were forced to stay at the seedy little place down the road? And when they finally ventured out to partake of the local cuisine, did they wind up spending the next two days in the bathroom trying to control the flow of fluids of varying color, concentration, consistency and odor that erupted from both ends of their bodies?

You wouldn’t know that there are problems associated with travel from the commercial. What the advertiser is selling is a dream not a product or a service and the people in the commercial are characters right out of a fairy tale.

Every one of us has experienced some if not all of the difficulties discussed above. Why then do we travel? The most common answer is: “travel is broadening”. But most of us (myself definitely included) go to some foreign land not speaking the language and not having had time to learn much about its history and culture. We spend most of our time there touring with our fellow countrymen and our interaction with the local populace is limited to halting conversations with waiters and the people behind the desk at the hotel. At the end of the trip the only thing that gets broadened is our bottoms and that’s from sitting on buses and planes and eating rich desserts.

There are other reasons for traveling. Some people lead such lives of quiet desperation that they need to get away even if the only adventure they find is being insulted by waiters in Paris. Some people want to go where it’s warmer (or colder). For many it’s the anticipation of the trip. Wasn’t it Shelly (or maybe Keats?) who wrote about the anticipation of the taste of the grape upon the tongue? These people love reading travel books and planning their itinerary. By the time they arrive at their destination, however, it’s old hat and they’re busy planning their next trip. (I bet that’s what the couple in the commercial did when they weren’t in the bathroom.)

I’ve met some people, particularly senior citizens, who have a list (mental or written) of places they want to see before they die. When they visit a new country you can sense them crossing the sites off their list. And, last but by no means insignificant, is the traveler who visits far off places so he or she can boast about the trip–the more exotic the location and the higher the cost, the better. The more subtle practitioners of this art never talk about the trip directly, but always seem to mention it as an aside in the conversation. “That reminds me,” they say, “of when we were in Africa.” They never talk about price but provide enough details (usually too many for the bored listener) to let the victim know that the trip would have put a measurable dent in the bankroll of Bill Gates. “We were on safari. There was a guide, clad in ermine, for each of us, and we rode on our own elephant, outfitted with a diamond tiara headpiece.”

In the last analysis people probably travel with the subconscious wish to fulfill the myth of the commercial. This time it’s going to be perfect. It's like marriage: the triumph of hope over experience.

In the spirit of full disclosure I have to report that I ignored my own advice and at the end of last year traveled on a seventeen hour flight to Bangkok where I promptly took ill with acute gastroenteritis. I was hospitalized for three days and was forced to cancel the trip. So, why did I go to Thailand? Actually for none of the reasons discussed above. I went because our son, Paul, has been telling us what an interesting place it is and my wife wanted to go. It was also her birthday present. And lastly, I hate cooking for myself even more than I dislike traveling. Amos Oz had it right. If you want to learn about a country read a good novel that takes place there.

Cakes My Mother Baked

I’m baking a cake.
To test its doneness,
I use the testing stick
My mother whittled years ago.
It waits in my kitchen drawer.

She used it to test that cheesecake
She always made to greet me
When I came to visit.
It was my very favorite cake
Only she could make it so well.

She served it on a crystal platter,
With the gold-rimmed plates,
With wordless love,
And a small bouquet of flowers
On a hand-embroidered table cloth.

Now I am the age she was then,
And I have an adult daughter
Who comes to visit.
I thought, then, that my mother made the cake
To please my palate.

Now I realize she was saying,
I may not understand your new opinions,
Or talk with you about your new ideas.
But I know you can taste my love
In the cake I bake for you.