“I think they want to know how girls end up in this crazy circus,” he says. “Which you have already told me is not the right question.”
“The problem is that you have already decided what the answer is. You think we’ve all been roped into this by domineering mothers.” She does not mention the fact that her own mother, in fact, did rope her into this.
“You’re making assumptions about me,” he says.
“No, you’re making assumptions about me.”
He leans back, appraising her. “You’re not like the other girls,” he says, as a smile creeps onto his lips.
“Well, I’ll give you this, Mr. Tate,” she says, as she stands up and begins to walk back to the hotel. “That’s one assumption you’ve gotten correct.”
༶
Like her state, her float is small and unassuming, at least compared to some of the other Tournament of Roses–worthy contraptions gliding down the Boardwalk. It is anchored at the front by two massive papier-mâché blue hens, the mascot of the state university, and festooned with various blue, yellow, and white flowers and ribbons that flutter in the balmy afternoon breeze. She is sandwiched on the parade route in between the St. Joseph Cadets in front of her and Miss District of Columbia’s float behind her, and the marching band’s glistening instruments send both the dazzling sun and their brassy music into her eyes and ears, obliterating her senses. And the crowds! Thousands of people lined up on both sides, cheering and screaming and waving, as if it were a ticker tape parade for General Eisenhower on V-E Day.
She is in yet another gown, this one mercifully sleeveless, though her palms have already sweated through her lace wrist gloves. Her mouth hurts from the relentless Cheshire cat smiling, her arm on fire from the incessant waving, and yet the parade is only twenty minutes old. There is an endless supply of floats: from the hotels, from the American Legion, from the local banks, the electric company, the taffy shop, the trades union. One spotlights Hercules in a chariot; another is made completely of seashells. The Steel Pier float features a live trapeze artist, a seal, and a mechanical elephant. The band from the Baltimore Colts marches, as does the U.S. Naval Air Station color guard and rifle platoon. Even amid the din, she can make out the faint sounds of catcalling and wolfish whistling a block behind her, what she is sure is a standard reception for the Catalina Swimwear float.
Behind her sunny mask, Betty is recalling Eddie Tate’s query: How did I end up in a crazy circus like this? The dreams of so many girls are coming true. Though she cannot deny the steady stream of adrenaline traveling through her body, she knows this has never been her dream.
She has always wanted—or at least thought she wanted—a life like her mother’s: a nice home, a nice husband, nice children. A life fueled by her future husband’s steadiness and her maternal love. She has been brought up with the firm expectation that she will fulfill this vision, and when she’s pictured it she has never rebelled against it, or wished to alter it, or thought of it as anything but a happy dream, like a bedtime story.
But will it be enough? Such a question would have never flown into her head before she came to Atlantic City. This is the first time her life has taken any kind of unexpected turn. She thinks she likes it. She does not need all of this—the hoopla, the tinny glamour, the sensory overload—and she is smart enough to know that it is theater, a giant game of charades that will end Saturday night and be forgotten by Monday morning. But something inside of her has been sparked, nudged, a larger question suddenly emerging. About whether her vision for her life is big enough, ambitious enough. She will have a family as a measure of her own worth, of her life’s work. But what will she have accomplished for herself? A sash, some pictures atop a float?
How will I know what’s enough?
She switches to her left arm for the waving. She should have been alternating the entire time, admonishes herself for not thinking of it sooner. The cadets’ brigade has started up a rousing version of “When the Saints Come Marching In,” and in an attempt to give the crowd something, she begins to sway in time with the music while sitting atop her perch, under a curving blue banner that says: THE FIRST STATE.
“Incoming!”
She hears it clear as day, remarkable considering the cacophony. In the corner of her eye, she has seen something flying toward the float, landing somewhere, but she is still smiling, still waving, still turning, to the right, to the left, so she cannot see what it is or where it has landed. She hopes it is not something vulgar, a dead fish or filthy diaper or, her brothers springing to mind, a trapped mouse, flung onto the float by a group of mischievous boys.
It is another block and half before some clouds overhead momentarily block the blaze of the sun, and in the brief window of shade Betty darts her eyes around the float to try to see what it was that was tossed up from the crowd. She smiles when she spies the massive sunflower, its big brown face staring up at the sky.
Five
The Shelburne is yet another towering hotel dotting the Atlantic City Boardwalk, and the din in the restaurant at eight in the morning hurts her ears. So many girls saying so much about so little. It looks like a WAC convention, a sea of young women in white and navy, with only the occasional yellow or pink, all wearing their gloves and hats and pearls—who wears pearls at eight in the morning?—and Betty looks down at her own outfit, a gingham two-piece suit with bow-pleat skirt. A mistake to sport such a bold pattern?
Oh, why do you care?
“I don’t know about y’all, but I am soooo nervous right now!” Mary Barbara yelps from across the round table. The six other contestants seated with them nod and murmur ascent. The rotating preliminary contests start tonight, the fifty-two of them divided into three groups. Betty’s group will compete in swimsuit, then evening gown tomorrow, and finish with talent on Friday. But the truth is the preliminaries really start now, at the first of the two Miss America breakfasts, where judges will go from table to table to “interview” the girls for several minutes and, one presumes, covertly identify their early favorites. Park Haverstick has laid out the rules at the lectern. There is the tinkling of a bell, and the room falls to a hush as the judges fan out.
Vyvyan Donner pulls out the available chair at their table and sits. She is the women’s editor of Twentieth Century-Fox Movietone News, and in her lavender skirt-suit and matching hat, she looks every inch the iron butterfly that her reputation commands. Pulling off her gloves one finger at a time, she already seems weary from the whole exercise. “Good morning, ladies,” she says, making eye contact with nothing but her gloves. “How are we all this morning?”
And off they go. Predictably, Mary Barbara dives into the conversation headfirst, vomiting her biography and thoughts on everything from Walt Disney (there was a story in the paper this morning about how he conceived his vision for Cinderella) to saltwater taffy. Vyvyan Donner takes no notes but rather simply sits back in her chair, seemingly content to wait for the jingling bell telling her to move on. A few other girls attempt to offer commentary—Miss Illinois gamely expounds on the future of television as a medium—but Betty says nothing. She comes to realize that she is the only one actually eating.
“You’re rather taciturn this morning, Miss Delaware,” Vyvyan says out of nowhere, staring at the folded place card in front of Betty. Vyvyan lights a cigarette, holds it artfully in two fingers in the same hand in which she now rests her chin.
The rest of the table turns its collective gaze to Betty, who chews a mouthful of her fruit cup. She feels like she’s just been caught sleeping in the back of class.
She gulps down the fruit. “I . . . I suppose I was waiting for the right moment to join the conversation,” she says. Could I have said anything worse?
“No time like the present. What’s on your mind this morning?”
For a moment Betty hears nothing but a whooshing in her ears. But then she accesses something, a little voice that reminds her that none of this matters, that she didn’t even want to enter Miss De
laware, never mind Miss America, that she owes none of these people anything. That she doesn’t need to be anyone other than who she is.
“Home” is all she says. And with that, she scoops up another spoonful of fruit, begins chewing thoughtfully.
Vyvyan Donner looks bemused. She leans back into her chair, arms crossed. “Please,” she says, “do elaborate.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Betty can see Mary Barbara’s vicious glare, her face wordlessly expressing, Hijacked! By Delaware, no less! Betty takes her time, swallows the fruit, then gingerly takes a sip from her water goblet. “Well, I suppose I am thinking that I miss home. Which no doubt might sound odd to people, since my home is less than a hundred miles away. But I like my life in Delaware, I like the routine, I like my friends and my studies and even my brothers, though of course they drive me crazy.” There is polite chuckling from several girls.
“I know!” Mary Barbara interjects. “Monroeville at this time of year is so—”
Vyvyan Donner holds up her hand in Mary Barbara’s direction, cutting her off without a word. Her eyes never leave Betty’s. “You’re here in this exciting place with a chance to change your life, and the only thing you’re thinking about is being back in the kitchen with your mother, baking pies? How . . . quaint,” Vyvyan says. She takes a long drag on her cigarette. Mary Barbara shoots over a smug look of triumph.
“Hmm. I would use the word ‘genuine,’ ” Betty replies, holding the eye contact. “It is the mothers who baked for us and dressed us and prayed for us and took care of us and worried about us who built the American family. Who, I might argue, built the country. Without them, none of us would be here. Without my mother, I can most certainly declare I would not be sitting here. You’re indeed correct, Miss Donner. It is exciting to be in Atlantic City. But yes, I am thinking of home. I find it comforting. And grounding. It keeps me aware of who I am, so I don’t get lost in the noise.”
Vyvyan stubs out her cigarette, exhales a cloud of smoke right over Mary Barbara’s untouched eggs. “Well. Well said, Miss Delaware. I can see why you’ve captured the attention of the press,” she says.
The bell rings. Vyvyan Donner grabs her purse and gloves. “Thank you, ladies,” is all she says before she gathers her breakfast tray and travels over to the adjoining table.
Captured the attention of the press?
What does that mean?
There is no time to ruminate. Singer Conrad Thibault plops down, his dashing appearance setting more than a few of the hearts at the table aflutter. He is no Vyvyan Donner. He flirts, laughs, tells jokes (one of them a tad off-color . . . a test to see who laughs?), and then the bell rings again, and it’s former Miss America Barbara Jo Walker, then artist Coby Whitmore, and Clifford Cooper and Vincent Trotta and Earl Wilson, the latter the syndicated columnist who engages them in an odd game of riddles that no one seems to be able to unravel except him. Ten judges, an hour and a half, and the breakfast is mercifully over. The girls are instructed to rest this afternoon before the preliminaries and are dismissed.
Ciji gallops up beside her as the girls begin filing out. “That was completely nerve-racking!” she exclaims. “But fun. I have no idea what I said. How did your table do?”
Betty laughs. “Mary Barbara Adair was at my table. What more do you need to know?”
“Oh my God. Did anyone even get a word in?”
Betty is about to respond when she feels a hand on her forearm. A pageant hostess. “Miss Delaware,” the bony woman says officiously, “Miss Slaughter would like a word.”
༶
Lenora Slaughter gets right to the point.
“I am rather distressed,” she says to Betty, slowly and carefully, enunciating every syllable, “at this breach of the rules.”
They are sitting in the lobby of the Shelburne, in view of, well, everyone, but especially the other contestants, many of whom are still here, window-shopping in some of the boutiques. Betty strongly suspects that Miss Slaughter has done this deliberately. How are scoldings effective if not displayed for all to see? Betty looks about the room, catches Miss South Carolina and Miss Mississippi in a corner, meeting her gaze as they whisper conspiratorially. Betty burns slightly at Mississippi’s judgment, given the reputation she already has. And that hair!
On the table between Betty and Miss Slaughter is today’s edition of the Atlantic City Press. Predictably, it is smothered in stories about the pageant, but Miss Slaughter has circled a particular one, under the headline EARLY FAVORITES EMERGE FOR BIG NIGHT, which mentions several contestants, including her. The problem appears to be that while the others are touted for their talent or appearance, she is mentioned for an entirely different reason.
. . . Miss Delaware, one Betty Jane Welch, dazzled this reporter with her charm, wit, and general confident demeanor. She’s a terrific girl, who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. And she looks like a baby doll, too. She may have made this guy feel like a meatball when he asked a dumb question, but she’s gravy for the finals, we’re sure. Good things do come in small packages—and states.
Betty doesn’t even have to glance at the byline. Eddie Tate.
“It is precisely this kind of vulgar prose we do not wish to have associated with the Miss America Pageant,” Miss Slaughter is saying crisply, “and is also precisely why we do not allow contestants to be interviewed except in the presence of an official pageant hostess. Something which is clearly spelled out in the rules, Miss Welch.”
And Vyvyan Donner wondered why I was thinking about home. Betty briefly considers speaking her mind right now, telling Miss Slaughter what she really thinks, about how absurd all of this is, how she only did this because she is a good daughter who wanted her mother to get into the Junior League. But she knows she will not. She will take her lecture, the rap with the ruler to the hand, and she will fall in line along with the rest of the girls.
Stupid Ciji. This is all her fault, anyway. Funny how she isn’t mentioned in this article.
“Of course, I understand,” Betty responds contritely. “The truth is I didn’t really know who he was until it was too late. And we only exchanged a few brief words. He has taken severe liberties here. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that I was lax in paying appropriate attention to my own conduct. I do apologize, Miss Slaughter. I promise you it won’t be repeated.”
Miss Slaughter spends ten more minutes on admonishments, making sure to get in all twenty lashes before dismissing Betty, who walks out, cheeks aflame, amid the torrid whispers of the various other Misses. She walks in broad strides on the Boardwalk toward her hotel, making eye contact with no one. She is torn between wanting to see Eddie Tate to give him a piece of her mind and not wanting to see Eddie Tate for fear of being disqualified for slugging a reporter.
She is still churned up when she walks into the Chalfonte lobby. And then, in an instant, it dissipates: the anger, the frustration, the doubt, the apathy, the resentment toward her mother. Because leaning against the registration desk is Griff McAllister, in a knit T-shirt, pleated trousers, and a pair of brown-and-white spectators, a crafty grin on his face. He swipes a package wrapped in paper off of the desk, offers it to her.
A whole bouquet of sunflowers.
“A little birdie told me all you girls had the afternoon free,” he says. “Can I entice you to spend it with me?”
Six
“Oh Lord, now she’s humming,” Ciji says to no one in particular, because no one else is in the hotel room except her and Betty.
Betty smiles from her seat at the dressing table. She admits it: she has, in fact, been humming. She cannot remember the last time she felt this happy, filled with a feeling that is unfamiliar but thrilling, as intoxicating as any stimulant could hope to be. It has been one of the best days of her entire life. Is that not deserving of some musical accompaniment?
“You’re simply jealous,” Betty says.
“You’re darned tootin’ right I’m jealous!” Ciji answers. She sits on her bed, snaking a
fresh pair of stockings up her legs, forcefully clasping them. She is wearing nothing but a body corset. Ciji thinks nothing of nudity, of showing her body to Betty inside the room. She leaves the door to the bathroom unlocked. For Betty, modesty is almost a second skin. She has twice now undressed in front of Ciji, mortified each time. But she senses something inside of herself that is becoming unchained, freed. She feels like a colt just out of the gate, running its first race. Quite a terrible metaphor, she thinks, giggling. What would Eddie Tate think?
Ciji looks over at the dressing table, where Betty has finished brushing her hair out from the underside and is now sweeping the left back in place with a sparkly barrette. “I can’t believe I even agreed to this. You’re gonna owe me, Delaware. I mean it.”
“You were going to have to see the Mole anyway,” Betty says with a shrug. “At least now you’ll have company.”
“I could have told him I was sick.”
“He just saw you sing in front of ten thousand people. He knows you are not sick.”
The Boys, as Ciji and Betty have come to call their escorts, were in the audience tonight at Convention Hall, the first night of the preliminary competition. Betty was so on edge, standing in the wings in her swimsuit—thank God for Lastex—that she thought she might actually be physically ill, right there on the stage. She was hardly alone. Girls paced, shook out their hands—Mary Barbara led an actual prayer circle, on their knees. The tension bubbled from every corner of the amphitheater. More than a few girls were crying from all of the nerves. This was it, the first night, the chance to make their second impression before the judges, and either cement a place in the Top Fifteen on Saturday night or fade into the background for good, relegated to Miss America wallpaper. But then Betty had thought of Griff, sitting out there in the audience, waiting for her to appear, and the memories of their afternoon together had flooded back to her, and a spontaneous smile had blazed across her face. She couldn’t have wiped it off if she’d tried.
The Night She Won Miss America Page 5