The Ten Girls to Watch

by Charity Shumway

  I might have tried to talk the subway booth operator into letting me through the turnstiles, even without a card. But apparently, thanks to the flooding, that option was out. If I’d had a few bucks in my pocket I might have tried to hail a cab or flag a livery car. But that option was out too. So finally, I just started walking. At first I wasn’t sure where, and then a few blocks in, I realized. I was heading to midtown, to the Mandalay Carson building. It was, for now, the only place I had left to go.

  Danni Chung,

  Yale University, 2001

  _________

  THE DIVA

  Fluent in French, Spanish, and Mandarin, this multi-talented East Asian Studies major is also a gifted soprano. After founding the Yale/China Summer Academy, which provides teaching opportunities for Yale undergraduates and offers courses that encourage critical thinking among gifted high school students in China, she spent the past two summers as the program’s student director. This summer, Danni will be joining the Apprentice Singer Program at the Santa Fe Opera. “I want to be one of opera’s great performers,” says Chung.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The cloud cover kept the morning unseasonably warm, but even at fifty-five degrees, I’d been shivering standing around outside my building. Now, walking, I was sweating beneath my sopping coat. The heat of my body against the cold of the rain made me feel like I had the flu, that feeling of blazing away under a heavy blanket, knowing chills are coming any second.

  Trudging along Court Street toward the Brooklyn Bridge, I also started to feel like the star of my very own postapocalyptic movie, everyone else vanished, just me and whatever other marauders I would undoubtedly come upon, traveling the open road. It actually was my own postapocalypse. Everything really was in ashes.

  By the time I hit the bridge, the red brake lights of cars and trucks trying to get into Manhattan despite the flooded roads were backed all the way to Cadman Plaza, and I started randomly cataloging my losses. My favorite family photo, starring me and my sister as perfect little versions of our adult selves, my hands in fists at my side, she standing behind me with her hands on my shoulders. My diploma. They replaced those, but still. My retainer. I still wore it sometimes when I felt out of sorts. No more. The pillowcase my grandma embroidered for me. My books. Sure, I could buy them again, but the new copy of Must We Find Meaning? wouldn’t have any of my underlining or Helen’s “I believe in you” note tucked away inside. And there was no re-creating my journal from seventh grade with its details of the triumphs and traumas of my gym class badminton. Then of course there were all the important files I’d scrupulously kept—my taxes, my immunization records, my student loan documents—gone. I’d recently upgraded to some nicer mascara. That was certainly twenty-two dollars wasted.

  I hugged the plastic bag that held my laptop tight against my chest. Here I was, everything else gone, clinging to the files on my computer. It was just me, a bunch of profiles of Charm girls, and the Sound of Music story. For the second time that morning I thought of Teresa Anderson. She became a teacher because she just couldn’t stop thinking about teaching. It was the idea that stayed in her head after all the other ideas were gone. Maybe the fact that it was just me and this laptop meant something? The idea that there was some cosmic message here made me want to shake my fist and yell, “Hello, Universe! You didn’t have to burn my building down! There are less aggressive ways of communicating!”

  The geometric splendor of the bridge never failed to capture my attention, but on my walk across now, I didn’t look up even once. I barely glanced at the Manhattan skyline approaching, the lights of buildings still glowing in the predawn gray. I passed the high point of the bridge, the exact spot where Elliot and I had first kissed, and I didn’t stop to wallow. I walked right by. But I did think, with some satisfaction, that this was the first time he’d so much as entered my brain that morning. I hadn’t fantasized about him rescuing me. Good for me. Except the second I thought about him not rescuing me, I thought just how happy I would be if he and his dented Honda were warm and waiting for me on the other side of this bridge crossing. But they weren’t. I kept my pace, and soon enough I was in Manhattan.

  I could have kept walking, but I decided surely all the city’s subways couldn’t be out. As many people were walking out of the City Hall 6 train stop as were walking into it, but I went down the stairs anyway. I didn’t have a MetroCard, but I figured eventually someone would walk out the emergency gate and I could slip in. In fact, this happened almost immediately, a whole stream of passengers leaving the packed platform, finally giving up on waiting for the delayed train. I pulled the ropes of my drenched hair into a ponytail and wrung out what felt like gallons of water. I wiped my face. I waited for the train.

  It took thirty minutes for a train to come, but I had the time. Finally, after another short walk from the subway, I arrived at the pristine clean of the Mandalay Carson building. The lobby glowed out through the windows, the tree glistening, the floors radiantly white. You could have told me the marble was actually unicorn horn in that moment, and I would have believed. Outside the windows, I ran my hands down the arms of my coat to squeeze out as much water as I could.

  It was just after seven thirty when I pushed through the revolving door. Water squished out of my sneakers with each step. The guard eyed me. If he’d had a gun in a holster, his hand would have been on it.

  Despite my hair wringing, water still dripped on the counter as I leaned forward and cordially said, “Hi, I work for Charm. But it turns out my apartment building burned down this morning, and I don’t have my ID with me since it was in the building, with the fire. My name is Dawn West. I’m not in the directory because I’m a freelancer.”

  The words all came out surprisingly easy, as if I were explaining a minor mishap. Like oops, forgot my keys at home. It felt for a second like I could minimize the trauma this way. Say it breezily enough, and it hardly hurt.

  “Is there someone upstairs I can call?” he asked warily.

  I told him to try XADI. If anyone would be in early, it was XADI.

  “I have a woman down here,” he said when she answered. “Dawn West. Says she works with you?”

  He hung up and begrudgingly nodded. “Up to 18.”

  I could have been upset that he hadn’t been more sympathetic, given my situation, but I was just happy to be inside. I took some deep breaths in the elevator and moved away from tears.

  XADI was waiting at the doors. Instead of her usual magenta lipstick, today she was wearing bright red.

  “My building burned down,” I said. This time it didn’t feel so easy to say. It felt like I was coming in from the snow, the way your hands melt and hurt as the numbness leaves your fingers. I was, in fact, coming in from the cold, and my body shivered all over as it took in the warmth. “My building burned down,” I repeated, feeling even more pain.

  “Come here,” she said, and that was all, she didn’t ask anything or say anything more. I walked toward her and she put her hand on my shoulder, the first time she’d ever touched me. A hand to the shoulder was XADI’s version of a hug. After she lowered her hand, I followed her through the deserted hallways to her office. “Sit down,” she gestured to a chair when we arrived.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, holding out the arm that wasn’t holding my laptop so she could see the water dripping.

  “Sit,” she ordered. “I’ll be back.”

  In the dark of her interior office, the circle of light from the single lamp on her desk felt cozy. I felt warmer. And grateful that XADI was XADI. Had she reacted with cooing or real hugging or shock, I would have cried. But with her steady, calm distance, I could maintain.

  She returned with two towels, a pair of jeans, a sweater, a dress, and shoes. To my inquiring look, she replied, “The closet.” Which I knew had to be strictly off-limits for borrowing, but apparently XADI didn’t care.

  That dry towel against my wet, goose-pimpled skin felt like an angel pat-down.

  She
sat at her desk and dialed a number, pressed a few more numbers, then hung up.

  “There’ll be a car for you downstairs in five minutes. Our block of rooms at the Hilton—we booked an extra for staff. Give them my name at the desk. See you back here at nine.”

  She stood up, which was my signal to stand up too.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She nodded.

  Swiping the key card and entering the hotel room, I felt swaddled by neutral comfort. Perfectly balanced, blank, no smell, no personality, a room that asked for no emotional response. It was exactly what I needed. I stayed in the shower for twenty minutes, long enough to return even the most deeply frozen parts of myself to warmth. I used the blow dryer on my underwear, then turned it on my soggy coat. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I felt almost normal, as if the only thing wrong with the world was my lack of bra and mascara. I turned on my laptop and held my breath. It powered up no problem, like it had been sitting unmolested in this hotel room all along. I shut it down again and stowed it in a drawer in the desk.

  I hadn’t made much headway drying the coat, but the inside felt warm enough, so I put it on anyway, borrowed an umbrella from the hotel concierge, and walked the few blocks back down to the Mandalay Carson building. Ninety minutes since I’d last been there, the office now buzzed. When I arrived, the receptionist at the front desk stopped me and said, “Child, how did you get here today? Everyone has a horror story!”

  “A little walking, a little subway,” I said, and left it at that.

  “Woo-wee!” she said. “I never would have made it if I hadn’t stayed over at my sister’s last night! My cats are at her place too! I caught a car down from Harlem. Never ever would have made it in from Brooklyn. We stopped and picked people up all along the way. We had six of us in there by the time we got to midtown!”

  When I arrived in the pod, XADI nodded at me but didn’t say anything, and I slipped in among the hands XADI and the events manager were rallying to head down to the Morgan Library to help with setup.

  At the library, in the soaring atrium with its four stories of windows and its crisp modern lines, everything was behind schedule. The tables hadn’t arrived yet. The flowers were late. The rain, the rain, everyone said the rain. Finally, at noon, the rain lightened up. And then it stopped. The flowers came. The AV and light crews arrived and began their elaborate ministrations.

  We arranged, we hustled, we ran here and there, and I felt calmed by it all, like I was swept up in a wave and as long as I didn’t fight it, my head would bob just above the water. At four thirty, everything was in place. The tables perfectly arranged. The lights just right. And huge images from the magazine hung around the room. Helen in her Muppet coat. Gerri with her crazy curls. The 1958 girls who were “The Best in You from Sea to Shining Sea.” Robyn Jackson and her history-making cover. The girls of 1996 in their mom jeans. It would be an hour or two before any of the women arrived, but I could already feel the energy in the room.

  After we all returned to Charm HQ, XADI motioned me over with her hand, and I followed her back to her office. I wondered if she was going to tell me to go home. I melodramatically imagined saying “But XADI, I have no home.”

  What she finally said when she closed the door behind us was, “Do you have your wallet?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Pay me back as soon as you do,” she said, reaching into her purse, opening her wallet, and sliding two hundred-dollar bills across the desk. My first thought was that of course XADI was a person who carried hundred-dollar bills.

  With anyone else I would have effused thanks. But this was XADI, and so I just nodded. On the way back to the hotel, I bought a bra at Victoria’s Secret and some mascara, lip gloss, and green eyeliner, a la Helen Hensley, at Duane Reade. I finally tried on the black dress XADI had handed me that morning. It hung a little roomily around my body, but it worked. The shoes were perfect. There was an Express around the corner and I bought the least trashy yet still sparkly earrings I could find and the first black belt I picked up. With it cinched around my waist, I actually felt pretty, in a semitragic-heroine sort of way.

  Cocktail hour didn’t officially begin until seven o’clock, but when I returned to the Morgan Library at six thirty, a dozen or so past TGTW winners were already milling about in the lobby. Before I could check in at the name tag desk, I locked eyes with a woman in an emerald-green silk skirt suit. Approximately one second later, I pegged her: Candace Clarke, ’82 winner, UW Madison grad, advertising executive, ultramarathoner, and mother of two. In her TGTW photo, her hair had been feathered perfection. It was cut short now, but she looked just like herself anyway.

  “Candace,” I said, reaching for her hand, “it’s Dawn West.”

  She gripped my hand in hers. And I barely moved from that spot for the next hour. Woman after woman filed by, and I knew them all. Maybe the photos had been thirty years old, but there they were: Dorothy Wendt, Wanda Linden, Jane Novey, Monica Medina, Donetta Allen, Simran Malik. Every last one of them lit up when I said my name, and I lit up in return. I’d helped bring all these women together. I sank into the warmth of the party. Hugging and chatting with all the winners I’d found was like slipping on blinders—everything before and after this room was blinkered safely away. I spotted Rachel Link across the room, and I wanted to give her an oh-Rachel punch in the arm when I saw that she’d affixed herself to Charm’s advertising director, one of approximately three men at the party. But I was also a touch relieved to see her so fully occupied; it meant I wouldn’t have to tell her how truly unsuccessful TheOne party had been for me.

  And then, I watched as Helen Hensley pushed through the revolving door wearing a smart black velvet tuxedo with an elegant pale blue bustier beneath. She smoothed her hands over her white hair, which she’d cut since I’d last seen her, not short, but to a perfectly swingy shoulder length. I watched her look around, get her bearings, and head toward the check-in table. She didn’t immediately see me. I excused myself and made my way across the room. When her eyes caught mine, she hurried over and pulled me into a Chanel-scented hug.

  I felt like I’d just taken a warm drink, when you can feel it coating you with warmth all the way down.

  “How are you?” she asked enthusiastically.

  I’d tell her after. If I told her now, I’d turn to worthless jelly. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’m sure happy to see you!”

  XADI came by and suggested we start moving to our seats. “I’ll see you after dinner?” I asked Helen.

  “Of course!” she answered.

  My seating chart in hand, I launched back into the crowd to direct women up, down, and over, continuing to accept the hugs and kisses as I went. I watched Regina and Gerri take their seats next to each other at the head table. Gerri looked precisely like her television self. Rather than making me feel like she had entered the real world, it made me feel like this was all TV. I watched Helen take her seat one table over.

  At my table, things seemed less televised. I was seated next to Tanisha Whitaker and Rebecca Karimi. The weeks had treated Rebecca well—in her empire waist navy blue dress she looked like the princess of the pregnant people.

  “You’re stunning!” I said.

  “This is the only time I’ve ever had a nice rack,” she answered, sticking her chest out further. “I’m taking full advantage of it.”

  Tanisha jumped in. “I still haven’t thanked you properly for coming to my show the other night. It was so sweet of you! I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see you after, but I definitely spotted you in the crowd.”

  Before we could say much more, Erin Burnett, the journalisty celebrity MC we’d rounded up for the occasion, crossed the dais to the podium, and the room started to quiet.

  “Ladies,” Erin began. “And the one or two lucky gentlemen I see out there . . . It is a tremendous honor to welcome you here tonight. We’re here to celebrate an absolutely amazing group of women. Five hundred Charm girls who’ve
grown up into doctors, lawyers, mothers, preachers, teachers, writers, singers, dancers, executives, engineers, scientists . . . girls who have grown up into women. If all the winners of Charm’s Ten Girls to Watch contest who are here with us could please stand, we need to start this night off with a round of applause for you.”

  More than half the room slowly pushed back their chairs, put down their programs, and rose to receive their ovation. I felt like I was in the middle of the Oscars.

  When the applause died down, Erin picked up again. “This is going to be a night of inspiration, and to start off our program I want to invite up a woman who continually inspires me with her talent and grace, Regina Greene, the editor in chief of Charm magazine.”

  Regina’s gorgeously draped black dress swished as she walked toward the podium. It would have been suitable all on its own, but she’d topped it off with a heavy swath of a turquoise necklace and matching chandelier earrings. Bulbs flashed.

  “Thank you, Erin,” Regina said, taking the microphone. “Fifty years ago the editors of Charm had an idea. They wanted to pick ten young women who could serve as role models, young women they could feature in the pages of the magazine who would inspire readers. When the contest started, the editors weren’t thinking of where these women would end up someday. They were thinking of image—who carried off the Charm look best. Little did they know there was more than meets the eye to the women they chose. Charm’s best-dressed girls, the first decade of winners of the Ten Girls to Watch contest, went on to become superachievers. Turns out there’s just something about women who enter a contest. Once they enter one, they’re going to be entering them again and again, formal and informal, for the rest of their lives. Women who are willing to compete are the women you want on your side! Anyone here ever heard of Barbara Darby?”