At the Far End of Nowhere

by Christine Davis Merriman

  The judges, we are told, will be grading us on poise, personality, personal appearance, posture, and figure as well as our ability to represent the values of the United States Armed Forces.

  Next, we go backstage and change into evening gowns. I’m wearing the same outfit I wore for the senior prom—white satin and lace dress, white heels, and long white gloves, unabashedly virginal. After a second runway walk, this time in our evening gowns, we return to the stage for a “chat with the emcee.” He’s an upbeat local radio personality.

  When it’s my turn to “chat,” I speak in the clear, well-modulated tones I’ve practiced at home in front of the mirror. All the contestants have been given a set of possible questions in advance, and I’ve memorized good answers to all of them.

  The emcee reads my question, “Who is your favorite American hero?”

  I’ve lucked out, I think. It’s one of the better questions.

  I recite my practiced reply, “I would have to say John F. Kennedy. He was a great leader, a great president, and a war hero who had a lot of vigor.” I say this sincerely, with respect and wistfulness for our fallen president, knowing that I’ve chosen the words “war hero” and “vigor” to please the top brass in the audience.

  Though I do admire JFK, it occurs to me that one of the first woman aviators, Amelia Earhart, might be a more genuine choice for me. Her courage and pluckiness remind me of Jimmie. I’ve always wanted to be less timid, more athletic, and more adventurous, like Jimmie.

  After responding to the emcee’s question, each competitor takes one last walk down the runway toward a soldier in dress uniform waiting at the far end, ready to take that girl’s arm and escort her down four carpeted steps to a seat in the audience.

  I take my final turn on the runway, careful to exhibit good posture for the women fashion editors and remembering to flash a winning smile in the direction of the male dignitaries in the judges’ box. I approach the young Marine who is waiting for me. As I take the first step down, one of my heels catches in the red carpeting. The Marine grabs my elbow just in time to keep me from toppling down the stairs.

  “Got you,” he whispers.

  “Thank you,” I whisper back. I keep smiling the whole time—not because I’m poised, but because by now, a perpetual smile is frozen on my face.

  I sit with the other contestants in one of the rows of folding chairs they’ve reserved for us near the rear of the auditorium. We all hold hands, trying hard to control our jitters as the judges make their determinations. Only one of the contestants is black. I sit next to her, and she squeezes my hand tight in anticipation.

  First to be announced is Miss Congeniality, the contestant receiving the most votes from the other contestants.

  “Marion Johnson,” the emcee announces. Marion is the one holding my hand. We hug, and she goes up onstage to receive a small plaque. Next to be announced is the second runner-up, a freckled blonde girl; then the first runner-up, a.k.a. the USO Princess, a dark-haired beauty. I had thought maybe she would win.

  Then I hear the emcee say, “This year’s winner, our 1970 USO Queen, Miss Baltimore USO, is Lissa Power!”

  Somehow, I’m up on the stage. A crystal-studded tiara is being placed on my head by the previous year’s winner, and I feel tears streaming down my face.

  A photographer from the Baltimore Sun takes my picture, and a reporter asks me some questions. I’m not prepared for these questions, so I find myself giving some pretty inane answers.

  “What are your plans for the future?” the reporter asks me.

  “I’d like to travel. I’d like to be a stewardess for Pan Am.”

  “Why Pan Am?”

  “Because I like their uniforms.”

  When the interview is over, still dazed, I make my way down the broad staircase to the row of old wooden phone booths at the basement level. I call home. My brother answers.

  “I won, Spence! I won!”

  “You won?”

  “Yeah. You seem surprised. Can you get Daddy to come to the phone?”

  A pause. Then, “Okay, I’ll get him…you mean you actually won?”

  “Yes, I won!”

  Daddy picks up the phone. “Hello, Lissa. Spence tells me you won the contest.”

  “Yes, I actually won!”

  “I’m not surprised. I knew all along my little girl would win. It was written in the stars.”

  As I leave the phone booth, I see the other girls, surrounded by friends and family. My friends Alice and Grace are not in attendance. They’re out on dates with other soldiers.

  I change into my street clothes and wait outside for Spence to come and drive me home. I realize that being the winner sets me apart somehow. There is only one winner. I leave the USO that night feeling very alone.

  Over the next few weeks, I find myself basking in adoring glances and sheepish grins from Midwestern farm boys who have come east to be soldiers. I reign, white-gloved, crowned, and bannered, as Miss Baltimore USO 1970. My picture appears in the Baltimore Sun, and I’m given a big gold trophy with an engraved nameplate that says Miss USO Queen 1970. All the judges and local USO officials have signed an autograph book for me, filling its gold-speckled pages with their congratulations and good wishes. “Treasure it for your grandchildren,” the head chaperone tells me.

  It’s Preakness Week in Baltimore! Gold and black-eyed-Susan banners blossom overnight on lampposts throughout the city, heralding Baltimore’s most important horse racing event, the Middle Jewel of the Triple Crown. The Preakness won’t be held until Saturday, but today’s midweek racing card features the Miss USO Handicap.

  As the May afternoon sky clears, the USO directors escort me to Pimlico Race Course, along with my traditional court of ladies-in-waiting. I wear my white satin pageant gown and the glass crystal-encrusted tiara. A red, white, and blue banner crosses my chest diagonally, its stitched-on gold felt lettering identifying me as Miss USO.

  After meeting Pimlico’s general manager and dining in the clubhouse on shrimp cocktail and minute steak, I’m hurried down to the winner’s circle to present an inscribed silver platter to the winning jockey.

  “Kiss him,” my princess (first runner-up) whispers, and gives me a nudge. The jockey looks well over thirty, and seems worn-out and harried by the mile-and-one-sixteenth ride. I take one look at this short, mud-spattered South American, and decide he could care less about the USO and its simpering Maryland belles. I just pass him the plate, smile for the photographer, and get out of what seems to be a false situation as quickly as I can.

  On the Sunday after Labor Day, amid floats and marching bands, I ride through Baltimore in the “I Am an American Day Parade.” I’m perched on top of a sleek red convertible’s back seat. The car is draped in swirls of red, white, and blue bunting. I’m wedged between my reigning ruffle-gowned USO princess and the second runner-up. Two medal-decked officers—one army, one Marine—are squeezed into the back seat.

  Up front, a navy guy steers the borrowed convertible as it creeps along the downtown parade route. An Air Force guy sits next to him. I wave to crowds of people lining the sidewalks. In support of the peace marches I’ve seen on TV, I give peace signs to the bystanders. During the ride, the princess leans toward me and whispers, “You know, Lissa, these guys in the car with us? They’re too young to have earned all those medals they’re wearing. Bet they just bought them for show.”

  The Marine turns in his seat to look up at me. He’s the same guy who kept me from falling down the carpeted stairs during the Miss USO contest. He does look pretty young.

  “You remind me of my wife,” he says. “She has long hair—a lot like yours.” He seems sincere, despite what the princess has just speculated about his medals. I decide to take what he says as a genuine compliment.

  “What’s your wife’s name?” I ask him.

  “Betsy. Haven’t seen her for a while. Looking forward to my next leave.” He pulls out his wallet and shows me a much-handled photo of her.

>   “She’s pretty,” I say. “You must really miss her.”

  He looks at the snapshot, gives a quick nod, and puts it away. “Yep,” he says, lips pressed so tight they turn white at the edges.

  I alternate between throwing kisses to the older bystanders and exchanging peace signs with the young kids.

  “Oh, isn’t she pretty!” I hear one woman say. As the parade halts along the way, some kids come running out in the street, asking for my autograph. I sign the notepads or strips of torn paper they hold out to me until the parade marshal comes by and yells at me to stop.

  “Don’t want some kid getting run over here,” he says.

  For the moment, we’re stuck behind a float bearing a green-painted cardboard Statue of Liberty—she must be about eight feet high from base to torch. An attendant is adjusting the torch, which has begun to wobble precariously in the breeze. Finally, the float lurches forward. Though Lady Liberty careens a bit, she extends her right arm firmly, grasps her torch resolutely, and carries it proudly aloft. Our car inches slowly forward behind her.

  In April 1971, I get a letter from Paloma, telling me that Gary has become a conscientious objector and they are moving to Canada, where he can dodge the draft. I, too, am conscientious, but I move in a different direction, one that feels safe and familiar to me. Once again, I find refuge in a world that is separate from my peers. While other kids are following the urgings of Timothy Leary to “turn on, tune in, drop out,” I sign up for a couple of evening French lit courses at college. Spence pays for them. I don’t have a driver’s license. Spence has to drop me off and pick me up from classes two evenings a week, but he is really good about it. He agrees to stay at home to keep Daddy company while I’m gone. Daddy is okay with that. I divide my hours between college classes, books, and time alone at home with Daddy.

  At home, I start reading the newspapers and watching the news again with Daddy. My mind echoes with the feminist rhetoric I read, and my ears ring with the antiwar slogans I hear chanted during fragments of peace rallies aired on TV: “One, two, three, four! We don’t want your ******* war,” “Draft beer, not boys,” “Hell no, we won’t go,” “Bring our boys home,” “Make love, not war,” “Eighteen today, dead tomorrow.” I feel like a fake, a plastic Venus floating on the soapsuds foam of post-JFK Camelot nostalgia.

  The pro-war slogans, “Love our country,” “America, love it or leave it,” and “No glory like Old Glory,” leave me feeling confused, conflicted, unsure, and unsafe. I wonder what Paloma would do. I need her advice, but I’ve lost touch with her since she and Gary moved to Canada. I phone her mother in Virginia.

  “Oh, I’m so glad to hear your voice, Lissa. I haven’t seen the two of them since they moved to Calgary. You know, they stayed here for a while before they left. Paloma was working as a checkout girl at the grocery store. Gary was having trouble finding a steady job. He did get part-time work as a house painter, but he got depressed. He couldn’t stop worrying about being drafted for Vietnam. Tried to kill himself by drinking a bucket of paint. Had to have his stomach pumped.

  “Then one day, not long after that, they both drove off to Canada. I guess Gary really didn’t want to be drafted. Can’t say that I blame him.” Then the phone goes quiet. Paloma’s mom’s breathing is barely audible at the other end.

  Finally, she says, “Lissa, I’m worried about Paloma. I’m so afraid she might be getting into drugs again. She doesn’t answer any of my letters. In fact, the last few have come back marked “Addressee Unknown.”

  The next week, I’m scheduled to make a Miss USO appearance at an Orioles baseball game, but the event gets canceled because of a peace demonstration.

  The USO is perennially low on funds, so the club retains its cracked vinyl sofas, faded pool tables, and battered old TV sets. And now, to me, it seems frozen in time. The walls of the main room—which serves alternatively as banquet hall, auditorium, and dance hall—are lined with smoke-stained portraits of decrepit USO benefactors and chaperones peering out from antique gold frames. The globe mirror lamp continues to revolve and sparkle like a decadent overhang from a bygone dance-marathon era. Shaded lamps on end tables keep the dark corners of the room just luminous enough for the successful vigil of the hawk-eyed matron chaperones.

  I don’t drift blithely through the year, picturing myself a star-spangled emblem of America’s servicemen. I begin staying away from the club as much as possible, avoiding the curious 1940s atmosphere that permeates Baltimore’s USO on Cathedral Street. A dereliction of duty to be sure, but one that is reflected in my fellow students’ change in attitude toward the military establishment. At first, this change is barely perceptible to me. Then, sporadically, as American youths’ beliefs evolve, the nation’s streets erupt in peace marches and antiwar demonstrations. As the months tick past, the war in Vietnam becomes more and more unpopular.

  It’s with a sense of relief that I dress one last time in banner and crown to officiate at the 1971 Miss USO contest; but the onerous crown, once assumed, is not so easily removed. During the ceremony, my hair becomes knotted around the faux diamonds of the tiara. Before a full and uneasy audience, I struggle for what must be a full minute trying to remove the dubious symbol from my head.

  All the past year’s hypocrisies flash through my mind. I feel exposed—an imposter pretending to be someone I am not. Just who do I think I am, a so-called beauty queen, parading around on this stage in an evening gown while we send unwilling young soldiers to kill and be killed on foreign soil? What ideals have I been trying to represent with my makeup and my crown and my high heels? Am I perpetuating the superficial and unhealthy view of women that so many feminists are calling into question?

  At last, I wrench the crown from my head and lay it to rest on the blonde hair of the new blushing, blue-eyed girl seated on the throne. I wince at the pain in my scalp, then stare at the clump of bloody-rooted brown hairs that cling to the crown, looking like an odd hairpiece on the new queen’s head. Below, in the darkened auditorium, the audience roars with applause.

  In the summer of 1971, when school is out, I go back to the USO. I meet Joe Stoddard at the club. He’s just returned from Vietnam, a second lieutenant in the army. He’s a good dancer, tall, sad-eyed. When we talk, he seems attracted by what he calls my “good girl” qualities. He tells me I’m the kind of girl he’d like to take home to meet his parents. Says he’d like to take me out next weekend.

  Theoretically, the USO has a no-dating policy for its hostesses, which, I’ve learned, the other USO hostesses completely disregard. In fact, my friend Grace just got engaged to a Merchant Marine she met there.

  One Friday evening, Joe presents himself at our front door in his dress uniform, and I introduce him to Daddy. Joe goes out of his way to be polite with Daddy. As we leave for our date, Daddy says, “You’ll take care of my little girl, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” says Joe, and I think he means it.

  Even so, when we return to the house from our first date, I can see Daddy, dressed in his long johns, peering down at us from his bedroom window.

  I stand talking with Joe on the back step, hesitant to let him in so late at night with Daddy waiting for me upstairs. For a moment, I think Joe is going to try to kiss me, but suddenly, he recoils.

  “Roaches!”

  He sees water bugs crawling up our back door. Our house has been infested with them for years, so I’m used to them, but Joe is horrified. “Reminds me of the jungles in ’Nam,” he says. Soon after, he says goodnight and drives away.

  As Joe gets to know me better, he seems fascinated with my persistent virginity. He wants me to study Christian Science with him and visit his parents on the West Coast.

  From Joe, I get a vague image of the ugliness of Vietnam.

  “I picked up two things in ’Nam,” he tells me. “Syphilis and fluent Vietnamese.” He assures me he’s cured of the disease.

  He’s just signed up as a lifer in the army, and draws a good salary and extr
as—but because neither Christian Science nor life as an army wife appeal to me, I stop seeing him and continue with evening classes at college.

  Months pass, and I rarely go to the USO anymore, but one January afternoon in 1972, when I’m on a mini-mester break from classes, my friend Alice calls.

  “Hi, Lissa. How about going with me to the USO this weekend, just for old time’s sake?” I agree to go to the regular Saturday night dance, and I meet a veteran whose vacant blue eyes are so haunting, I find them hard to forget.

  When Alice and I arrive, the dance is in full swing. I notice a tall, slender blond man—he seems older than the other soldiers at the club—hovering at the periphery of the dance floor. He wears a long dark overcoat and seems to stare across the dance floor at nothing in particular.

  It’s not long before Alice and I are asked to dance. Dance after dance, the evening slips by. A horny sailor just off the boat pulls me in tight and tries to grind me at the crotch until one of the chaperones intervenes. A timid young farm boy from Kansas leads me out onto the dance floor with cold, nervous fingers. When he clasps my hand in his, his palm is slippery with sweat. As we begin to dance, the fragrance of his fresh aftershave mingles with the acrid scent of his perspiration. At first, his body trembles almost violently; then, slowly, he begins to relax.

  When the music stops, he is red-faced. He thanks me profusely for the dance and offers to buy me a Coke, but before he gets back, a straight-backed academy-trained officer cuts in. I can see the Kansas guy hanging out at the edge of the dance floor holding my Coke. And next to him is the tall blond guy I had noticed earlier. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the blond soldier seems to be watching me.