March 12, 2003

Today is the day to act crazy and scare somebody on the street.

What's so great about Phoebe Kate Clare Foster? That she could simply go by "Phoebe," "Phoebe Kate" or "Miz Foster," but no, she throws the Clare in there. Also, she is basically one of the prime examples of why I love Southerners. Not convinced of her grandeur? Read this interview as well. Also, if you have anything to add to this festive week, just let me know.

We Are Claire, You Are Not Week Day 3:
A CLA(I)R(E)/(A)'S TALE: Or a Southern Saga
by Phoebe Kate Clare Foster

"What's in a name?" ---William Shakespeare

"Everything -- and nothing." ---Phoebe Kate Clare Foster

I was a Clare when there were no Cla(i)r(e)/(a)s. Least none you wanted to know or be like.

When I was growing up, there were Karens, Susans, Sandras, Lindas, Patricias, Barbaras, Debras, Cynthias, Lisas, Joans, Jeans, and Brendas. There were Carols, and that was about as close as it got, but it didn't count. Carol was a cuter name. No argument there.

Well, okay, there were some representatives with variations of The Name out there, but in the South of the 60s, they lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.

They were granite-faced librarians. Spinsters living with 27 cats in moldering old houses. Old ladies who chatted with dead ancestors at the breakfast table.

Most notably, there was Clara Della Sluss, a woman the size of a grain silo who had a mole under her nose that looked like a big booger, wattles of fat drooping off her arms that you could get lost in if you weren't careful, hair where women oughtn't to have hair, a nervous tic, and varicose veins as large as Interstate 80. She worked in the Piggly Wiggly Market where my mama and I shopped daily for fresh produce and a new meat for supper when I was a kid.

My mama was always looking for something other than pork, chicken or beef to fix. She'd stand there every day at 4 P.M., staring inconsolably at the same old steaks and chops and roasts and fryers, and wail, "Oh God! Why can't You create a New Meat?" (Of course, this was pre-Food Channel days-well, this was pre-cable TV days-and the best we had in the Deep South was Betty Crocker, The Joy Of Cooking, and the ubiquitous recipes in the women's magazines of the day calling for Campbell's Soup and that daring little dash of paprika to lend the concoction a dangerously foreign feel.) Failing daily to find a New Meat, my mother would settle for an Old Meat and go home and fix herself a stiff drink or two or three, of course.

However, Clara Della Sluss was always there when my mother uttered those words. Miz Sluss was invariably stocking a nearby shelf with canned Spam or mopping the floor or putting out packages of chitlins (if you don't know what they are, don't ask) when she heard my mother's pitiful wail. And she would invariably respond, "Aww, honey, just give 'em mayonnaise sandwiches and tell 'em to thank the Lord." Then she'd lay a rump roast-sized hand on my head and say, "Such a darlin' chile. We done got the same name, don't we, now? We're special."

Clara Della was a good woman who loved Jesus, fed stray cats and dogs, baked cookies for kids in the neighborhood, played the organ in the Clouds of Glory Pentecostal Church on the wrong side of the tracks, patiently listened to everybody's problems without telling them her own-which were considerable, I later learned, including a husband who'd gone out for a six-pack and never come back, a son in jail, another son M.I.A. in Vietnam, a daughter who wasn't right in the head, and two grandchildren dumped on her doorstep by her youngest girl who'd run away to live la vida loca in Tijuana with a drifter she met at the Loveless Motel and Cafe. (Yes, that's the real name of the place, and it's right outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Still there today. It was on the Food Channel a few weeks ago. I swear to God.)

But let's face it. Back then, I didn't want to share a name or anything else with Miz Sluss.

Contemporary culture provided no better role models for Cla(i)r(e)/(a)s. Tacky Aunt Clara on Andy Griffith's old Mayberry TV show. Clara Barton, who was about as exciting as a bar of Ivory soap. Clare Booth Luce-impressive and definitely a mover-and-shaker, but a bit chilly and removed from my middle school milieu. And Saint Clare of Assisi, of course, but at thirteen, I wasn't aiming for sanctity and canonization. I wanted to be Hot Property.

My daddy tried to cheer me up by telling me about Clara Bow, the actress of the Roaring Twenties who had "It." I thought he meant she had a social disease. He explained that "It" was sex appeal and would undoubtedly lead to having social diseases if one didn't behave oneself, then he asked me how I knew so much about the subject at such a tender age. I told him I'd learned about it in health class. (Untrue.) He lamented having taken me out of parochial school and put me in public school. Then he went to the library and came home with a book about silent film stars. He showed me the photographs of Clara Bow, but it didn't help to find out that the best of the Cla(i)r(e)/(a)s was a freaky looking chick with a fat face, frizzy hair and a flat chest. I was diligently practicing the Power of Positive Thinking and imagining my boobs to be plump as ripe peaches and my hair to be perfectly straight and a foot longer than it actually was.

Then my father told me that I should be proud, because I was named after my mama. Well, I didn't believe that for one moment, because everyone called her Babby, including him. That was when I learned the appalling truth that this name of Clare had been handed down in my family for generations and not one single human being named it had ever used it in their lives.

My mother, who was originally Nancy Clare, had become Babby at birth because her two-year-old brother couldn't say the word baby. She was named for Great-aunt Clare whom everyone called Bunny instead. Bunny had been named after Great-grandmother Clare who was nicknamed Bitsy, and the female ancestor Bitsy had been named after was, though christened Clare, always remembered as Noonie. And so on and so on, going as far back as our family goes (which is awfully far, Southerners being as obsessed with genealogy as they are.) Clares all of them, and not a one called by their given name.

Except me.

Now, my parents had provided me with two other first names on my birth certificate, in honor of my two grandmothers. However, my parents weren't overly fond of the names (though they liked the relatives just fine) and never used them when addressing me or speaking of me. And they were perfectly fine names, too.

Okay, I take that back. Phoebe was not exactly topping the popular girls' names list back then, either. Katherine was already greatly overused in my family, with a plethora of females nicknamed Kathy and Kitty and Kath and Kat and Kiki-and even a Rinnie, but my parents said that girl was fast, which ended the discussion before it even got started.

And, to add insult to injury, not only I was the only Clare in family history to actually be called Clare, but I was the only person in my entire family not to have a nickname. My mother's brother, who inadvertently named my mother when he was a tot, grew up and changed his first name one day and everybody called him that forevermore without question. My father had several given names but was called Michael, which (of course) wasn't one of them. My uncles were called weird things like Skeeter and Boo and Gummy and Goofah and Moley-all had normal names once, but those were quickly forgotten the moment somebody thought up something more interesting to call them. And these looney made-up names stuck so hard and fast that even the plaque on my uncle Moley's huge polished desk in his enormous, handsomely-appointed office (he was a bank president) read MOLEY FOSTER. I don't think anyone in town remembered that his real name was Morley Foster.

My female relatives were routinely renamed as well: Mary Lou was Moogie, Lila June was Jay-Jay (spelled Ja-Ja), Callie Lee was Clee, Wanda Sue was Kitzy, and Laura Mae was Sis or Sissy-though she was no one's sister. She was an only child and more aggressive than any boy, so neither name suited her whatsoever. There are many more such anomalies in naming in my family. I won't overburden you with this bizarreness.

I only really began to appreciate The Name when my parents moved from Nashville, TN to New York the year I was entering high school. Though there were still Sandras and Susans and Lindas and Karens and the ever-cool Carols, Manhattan Island proliferated with young females with last names for first names (Crawford, Kennedy, Taylor, Morgan), young men called after topographical features (Rock, Cliff, Ledge, River, Hill, Stone), and people who made up their own names as they pleased (Starshine and Dakota and Jet and Freebird and Feather). In this eclectic and freewheeling environment, Phoebe Kate sounded way too much like a relative of the Beverly Hillbillies. I rapidly lost my accent and the extra baggage of folksy names. Clare was my name of choice - crisp and clean and lean and cool. It fit in everywhere. It was all-purpose, distinctive but non-defining (you could be an artsy-fartsy or an astronomer Cla(i)r(e)/(a) with equal ease), and it was pretty easy to spell. (Nobody ever gets Phoebe right. Even I don't. I always type it Pheobe. And so did a literary magazine who recently published a story of mine and should have known better or had more alert editors. But that is a subject for another entire interview.)

In the 90s, there were more Cla(i)r(e)/(a)s to give us role models to be proud of…Ms. Huxtable on the Cosby Show, Claire Danes, Claire Forlani, and my own personal favorite, Claire in Snow Day. I admit the movie was pretty lame (though cute in its own bizarre way - I saw it going as a chaperone on a school bus up to the Raleigh art museum with my son's high school art class, and it was a hell of a lot more pleasant than watching what his classmates were doing to pass the time) - BUT, my point being, who named Cla(i)r(e)/(a) - or anything else, come to think of it -- wouldn't simply die to open her bedroom curtains one morning and have a lawn full of hunks throwing teddy bears, candy, flowers and love notes at her?

Perversely enough (everything in the South is perverse, starting with our secession from the Union a century and a half ago), having come to appreciate the name of Clare in my teens and twenties, I have subsequently abandoned it after leaving the East and returning to the South. I'm Phoebe Kate again. And if I sound like Elly May Clampett's half-witted second cousin once removed who stayed back home after her kin struck oil, hell, I don't care. I'm a Southern writer, and we do as we damn well please (politely, however - always very politely.)

But now, that third name of mine has become a special secret I reveal to only a few close friends and business associates. In fact, there are probably only seven people on the entire planet right now, who know me professionally, that also know that Phoebe Kate Foster's "other" name is Clare.

Uh-oh. How many hits did you say you get on this site, Claire my dear?