It was probably when he was in the third grade that he got that awful nickname. He had beautiful blonde hair, lots of curls. His mother didn't dream of cutting it. And his eyes were the most beautiful shade of blue-green, like the water in some exotic and secret lagoon in the South Seas.Ray was a very pretty boy, people always told his mother he was gonna be a heartbreaker some day, but she just laughed in that way that almost made you feel sorry for her, a palm to her bosom, her eyes glistening. If she laughed for more than a few seconds, she was bound to cry. Of course she wasn't sad, she was quite gay, but her style of laughter was very disarming to some. And she had this one child, this perfect little boy, sweet and beautiful with all that curly blonde hair, like hers. She was proud of it and loved to hear people mention it.
Some whispered close to her, "Is that your daughter?," hesitant to say the word, because while he was a very pretty boy, there was something unmistakably "boy" about him. He had his father's features, his eyes, a strong chin with a slight cleft in it already starting to appear, one dimple on the left side. And he had big hands and feet. Dissected he wouldn't be nearly as pretty. His hands and feet didn't belong on him, not really, but she was glad for them because they were the little bit of her husband left in this country to remind her that he still exists, that he ever existed, off fighting a war.
She was terribly proud of her husband, but ached for him. The bed where they came together to create this beautiful child seemed so big, so cold. He wouldn't approve of Ray's hair being so long. It wasn't the style, not for a little boy, and that's the one secret she kept from her husband in the letters she wrote to him. She never mentioned Ray's hair, just his father's eyes and his dimple and how much Ray reminded her of him and how much she missed him.
A lot of her loneliness was placed on her eight year old, forever stroking his hair, letting him sleep in her big lonely bed when storms blew over their Kansas ranch house. She entertained him whenever he was home. And this caused him to be a little different from the other children, caused him to be particularly different from the boys, who enjoyed picking on him.
Somebody caught him off guard and he screamed, high pitched, loud enough to bend the ears of the stray dog that always hung around the school playground. And from that day and for many years after, his classmates called him Fey Ray.
