The Ten Girls to Watch

by Charity Shumway

  Applause broke out. “I thought so.”

  “How about Marcy Evans?” More applause.

  “There are dozens of others you may not have heard of, but they’re quiet heroes. Take Teresa Anderson, one of the first class of winners. Here is a woman who taught first grade for forty years. She changed the lives of close to a thousand children. Day after day, year after year. Teresa, are you here?”

  At a table just to the right of the head table, Teresa rose. In a tailored dove-gray pantsuit and red scarf, she was a vision of elegance. Applause thundered. Teresa gracefully nodded and took her seat again.

  “The competition changed into the scholarship contest it is today in 1968, and the winners who came after 1968 made great use of the foundation the earlier winners had laid for them. They went further and they rose faster than any of us could have expected. Among the girls who grew into outstanding women, we have opera singers, media moguls, air force pilots, space transportation engineers, elected political leaders, heads of nonprofits, composers . . . you name it, they’ve achieved it.

  “Here at Charm we’ve been lucky enough to spend the last few months getting reacquainted with all of you. And we’ve even been lucky enough to sit down with a few of you in person. Before we announce this year’s winners and welcome them to the fold, we want them and all of you to understand just what an amazing sisterhood they’re entering.”

  She nodded to the back of the room, and on cue the lights dimmed, the video screen came down behind her, and then, there they were, our girls on the big screen:

  “‘I’m the president and CEO of Madison Capital.’ ‘I’m the mayor of Seattle.’ ‘I’m a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera Company.’ ‘I’m a novelist.’ ‘I’m a physics professor.’ ‘I’m the founder and CEO of TheOne.’ ‘I’m the president of Vans Media.’ ‘I retired eight years ago after teaching first grade for forty years.’ ‘I’m an internationally ranked wheelchair marathoner.’ ‘I’m an architect; I design skyscrapers.’”

  From there it was seven minutes of glory. The images, the interviews, all filled in with clips of Regina talking about the history of the contest and what it meant to Charm. I was even proud of the music we’d settled on. Spirited and decade-appropriate songs in the background, like “Little Deuce Coupe” by the Beach Boys and “Reelin’ in the Years” by Steely Dan. At the end of the video, the magazine profile pictures of every single one of the five hundred winners flashed one after another across the screen. The applause quickly broke into whistling and happy hollering.

  When it was over, Erin Burnett returned to the mic and had to make several attempts to speak before the tables were finally quiet. “That was amazing, Regina,” she said, and the room broke out in another round of applause. “We’ll be taking a short break while dinner is served, but before we do, I want to introduce two very special women. Jessica Winston of the Metropolitan Opera and Danni Chung, one of the Met’s young artists-in-training.”

  We applauded as the two women stood and a member of the AV crew handed Jessie Winston a roaming microphone. Danni wore a simple purple sheath dress, but Jessie’s dress was more ornate—a full-length brown satin skirt with a matching jacket, a look that was two parts mother of the bride, one part divalicious. Paired, they were a lovely picture of mentor and protégé. Jessie smiled beatifically and put her hand on Danni’s arm.

  “Danni and I knew each other six months before we made the Charm connection, but once we did, we couldn’t stop talking about it. There is something about this contest, about being singled out by the magazine you grew up reading, that everyone grew up reading. It gives you confidence you can lean on for years. Eventually, you gain your own confidence, but until then, while your faith in yourself is still shaky, you can always look back and say, all those people at Charm couldn’t have been wrong. I must be something. Danni and I have both felt that along the way, and I know I speak for all of the Ten Girls to Watch winners when I say thank you to Charm for the wonderful gift you gave us.”

  She then handed the microphone to Danni. “Jessie and I thought a lot about what to sing for you today, and we ultimately decided on the flower duet from Lakmé. Not because of what the song is about. But because we both just love the music. If you speak French, pretend you don’t. Just listen to our voices.”

  The pianist began, and then they sang. Their voices rose and intertwined, fell and danced around each other. They caressed the notes. In some moments I couldn’t tell whose voice was whose, and in others it couldn’t have been clearer. They wound together and then unwound. They rippled. They were sweet, smooth, ecstatic, floating, twirling. The resonance shook my heart.

  I could feel all of us hold our breaths as Danni and Jessie held the final note. We collectively jumped to our feet the moment their harmony shimmered away.

  My hands hurt from the clapping, and still we clapped on and on, for the performance, yes, but also for the joy of seeing and hearing two generations of Ten Girls to Watch winners, so beautifully lifting each other up.

  At last Erin thanked them and thanked Charm for spotting two such stars. When she left the podium the waiters began to circle the tables.

  Rebecca sighed. “Now that was something,” she said.

  Tanisha lifted her head. “Mm-hm,” she hummed, as if speaking would pull her too roughly from the dream that still held her.

  I didn’t say anything, just took a deep breath.

  The waiters were still tables away when at last I plunged us back to reality. “Now may not be the time, Tanisha,” I said. “But at some point I’m going to need you to tell me all about the SAT tutoring racket.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” she said, laughing. “It’s a great racket. But you know what I think we should do now? Peek in the gift bags.”

  “There’s some good stuff in there,” I said. “Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner, earrings, the TGTW anniversary issue of the magazine, some fabulous white tea lotion, gym passes—”

  “Shh,” Tanisha interrupted. “You’re ruining the surprise.” She rustled through the bag, then pulled out the magazine. Rebecca followed suit, giggling with excitement.

  “I’ve been dying to see this,” she said.

  In the end, the entire TGTW anniversary had only been awarded eight pages, but I knew every one of them by heart, having spent weeks slaving over every caption and photo. Still, I pulled my copy of the magazine from the bag so I could look through the pages with my table mates. I pointed out my favorite photos: the 1964 girls all in a cheerleading-style pyramid, the 1970s turban mania. As they settled in to actually read the article, I flipped through the rest of the magazine. The issue had only arrived yesterday, and the bag stuffing had been a timed drill, which meant I hadn’t had a chance to look through anything else, including Elliot’s column.

  The magazine fell open to “Winter’s Bold New Lip Glosses,” then to “A-List Alert: Military Jackets,” and then to . . . “Relationship Report, Secret Agent Romance’s Dispatch from the Front Lines.”

  I shouldn’t have wanted to read it. I should have skipped it. Or ripped the “Dispatch from the Front Lines” out of the magazine and crumpled it up, then shredded it, and then torched the shreds. But I didn’t. I read the first line, and then the second, and then I sickeningly plunged headlong into the fire.

  My uncle, a wise man, once told me marriage should be a refuge, not a battle. What I think he meant was that the right relationship is comfortable, easy even. If the person who sparks your passion also sparks your fury and frustration, enjoy it while it lasts but don’t try to build a life on such an unsturdy foundation. Practical though this advice may be, it struck me then and it strikes me now as a downer. Forget about fiery romance, forget about being challenged. Isn’t that why it’s called “settling down” after all?

  Boots called me two weeks ago. Boots, who is unequivocally a category 2 sparkler—oh, who am I kidding, she’s a stick of dynamite. She hadn’t spoken to me in months. Meantime, I’d been seeing someone easy. N
o, not that kind of easy. The kind of easy where I wasn’t constantly watching myself, on edge waiting for her reactions. I could guess her reactions, at least enough to know they would be warm, funny, and sweet. It was comfortable. It made me think of my uncle’s refuge. But the second Boots called I was on that edge again, and I remembered the heart-pumping thrill of it.

  Boots asked whether I wanted to have dinner. After dinner she asked whether I wanted to have another drink at her place. In the morning, she was out of bed before I was even awake. She left a Post-it note on the bathroom mirror—“I’m at yoga. The keys are on the hall table. Lock up and leave them with the doorman. XO.” What was it about the rough edges of that note that did me in? I should have bristled. She was so sure she could boss me around. And bristle I did. But I could scratch an itch with those bristles. I’d show her. The battle was on.

  I lounged around in bed. I showered. I ate breakfast. And when she got home from yoga I was on her couch, reading the paper. “Still here?” she said when she came in the door, an almost perfect impersonation of nonchalance.

  “You bet I am,” I said, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

  She smiled and sauntered my way.

  Here’s to fire and fury. Here’s to dynamite. To passion. To Boots. Maybe we’re not settling down together. And maybe not settling is the best part.

  I didn’t actually cry until the last sentence.

  I wiped my eyes quickly, hoping my face hadn’t gone too red but knowing it had. I said I’d be right back without making eye contact with anyone at the table. The bathrooms were in the basement, and I didn’t even make it halfway down the stairs before the tears were truly spilling. I pawed them away as fast as they came at first, then just let them flow.

  I pushed through the bathroom door, and within seconds I had locked myself in a stall. I wasn’t sobbing. Once in college, I’d cried so hard over Robert I’d thrown up. This was nothing like that. I was like Sylvia on the couch that day, silently pouring everything out of herself, the cascade of tears noiseless but beyond control.

  I tried not to, but I couldn’t help but do the calculations. The latest the article could have gone in was November 1. Elliot hadn’t even gotten his book deal at that point. Were we still cuddling up and talking about our failure complexes when he wrote that column? He’d typed all that and sent it to his editor, probably done some revisions too, and then ordered me up a frickin’ fruit basket? Did he send consolation fruit baskets to all the girls he wrote about? Had Roller Girl and her thick ankles cried themselves to sleep with a pineapple? Even after I should have been sure it was over (whatever “it” had been), I’d eaten that stupid pear and hoped it wasn’t. And whatever our status had been, did he really think a column in a national magazine was the best way to officially end things? Not a phone call? Or even a text? “We’re over 4ever” would have been infinitely better than the “Dispatch from the Front Lines.” Where once I’d felt like a woman serenaded by Chagall, now I felt like the desperate illuminated figure in Goya’s gruesome Third of May, the rifles of the firing squad leveled at my heart. What kind of idiot was I that I’d ever believed any of it? That the word “love” had even come into my head, not to mention that part of me had wanted to read the fruit basket card as a sincere declaration—how humiliating.

  Slowly, I began to feel worst of all about the fact that Elliot was what broke me down. Not my apartment building burning. Not the evisceration of my every worldly possession. A man, one I’d barely known at the end of the day. I was down here crying over him. I was down here feeling hopelessly flawed because this stranger didn’t love me. I was down here missing the event I’d worked so hard on for months. If I was going to be hiding in a bathroom, crying, it should be over something good. I thought of the letters my mother sent me while I was at college, only four of them, but each one had said in one way or another how happy she was for me, off in Boston, having my life’s adventure. I’d stowed them all carefully in a black and green shoebox, and now every word was gone. Thinking about that, I cried harder, but still, I wasn’t really crying for the letters.

  I’d already soaked through the first wad of toilet paper I’d stuffed against my eyes and nose. I grabbed another wad and leaned my forehead against the cold metal wall of the stall. When I lifted my head I saw that I’d left an oily mark. The sight redoubled my tears. I let out my first audible sob and quickly pulled it back in.

  I’d graduated, found a job, started seeing someone who wasn’t Robert, managed a roommate fiasco, kept things together financially . . . all these things that had been so hard. And now it was all falling apart. The job was ending, clearly that whole “relationship” thing hadn’t worked out, and I could hardly call my building burning to the ground a successful resolution of my roommate problems. I tried to do a “Pick yourself up, soldier!” thing inside my head. It didn’t work.

  Finally, after a solid fifteen minutes I left the stall and looked at my face in the mirror. My eyes and nose were red, but I wiped the smudges from under my eyes, pinched my cheeks, and fluffed my hair, trying to pretend all I needed was a little sprucing to look chipper and cheery. I went for the door, thinking I’d slip back into dinner and no one would notice a thing. But before I even reached for the knob I was crying again.

  My hotel room key was in my coat pocket, hanging in the coat check at the top of the stairs. I’d have to traipse through the corner of the gala unnoticed and hope no one watched as I collected the coat and slipped out. And that’s just what I did. The party buzzed with conversation and music (we’d found several of 1978-winner-and-Prince’s-saxophonist Andy Benson’s solo CDs and discovered they made classy background soundtracks), and I don’t know what I’d expected—someone to chase me down and tackle me as I quietly opened the door and walked into the night? But no one did. Helen was going to be worried, but I couldn’t help it. I had to go. Outside on the street, I cried my way north, cold wind drying the tears on my cheeks almost before they fell.

  Geraldine Van Steenkiste,

  Columbia University, 1984

  _________

  THE BROADCASTER

  Founding WQRK (“Quirk” to those in the know), Columbia’s first student-run TV station, wasn’t enough for her. This English major also wrote, directed, and starred in Quirk’s first soap opera, Low Life (named for Columbia’s Low Memorial Library), which went on to win the College Communications Association’s first prize for television drama. After graduation, Geraldine hopes for a future in national broadcasting: “Television is a medium that’s only going to get more interesting in the coming years!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I’d been curled on the bed, still in my dress, for a good two hours, staring at the phone. At this point, even the last of the stragglers had to be home from the party. I sat there a minute longer, my face stiff with tear residue, then picked up the phone. I should have looked up Helen’s phone number and written it down that morning. I just figured I’d see her at the party, and we’d go from there. But that obviously hadn’t worked so well. I hoped Helen was among the hundred-odd women who’d taken advantage of our block of rooms. I called reception. Helen Hensley? Yes. They patched me through. Helen answered.

  I said about fifteen words, including “fire” and “breakup,” and she told me she’d be right there.

  I swiped a washcloth across my face so I’d look half decent before she arrived. After I answered the door, she hugged me and then quietly walked over and sat on the foot of my bed. I took up my position against the headboard again, but now instead of looking out at an empty room, there was Helen.

  “You missed Gerri and all the awards, and I don’t think you got any dinner either,” she said, as if those were the greatest of my worries. I appreciated her starting small.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said.

  Still in her tuxedo, Helen pulled her legs up and sat Indian style, like a fifteen-year-old settling in for a long talk at a sleepover. She looked at me with s
oft eyes that said “go on.” And so I did.

  “Did you see the magazine? Not the Ten Girls to Watch part. That part was great.”

  “It was,” she said.

  “Secret Agent Romance. He’s the guy I was with when the car broke down and I couldn’t visit you for the weekend. Did you see his column?”

  She reached for the gift bag sitting on the floor beside the bed—because I was crazy I’d brought it home with me. She found the article, and then we both sat silently for a minute as she read it.

  When she finished she looked up at me with a pained and sympathetic expression.

  “I’m a sucker.” I wiped my nose on the back of my hand, and she reached for the tissue box and handed it to me. “Thank you,” I said quickly before continuing my rant. “I am a pushover who puts up with rotten guys who don’t love me. Actually, it’s not just guys. I put up with everyone. I let my deadbeat roommate skip out on rent, and that’s actually part of why my building burned down. A bunch of her dumb furniture caught fire in the basement. It’s my fault. If I’d had some backbone, maybe I wouldn’t be homeless right now. I’ve got nothing except for this stupid computer and the stupid stories on it, which I ran back upstairs into my stupid burning apartment building to get. It’s all so stupid.” And with that I threw my face into my pillow and let loose a muffled yet nonetheless resounding sob.

  “May I say something?” Helen said, her voice sympathetic but also a touch arch, clearly responding to the melodrama being enacted before her.