The heat rises from the base of her neck, flaring up to her cheeks. She can only imagine how she appears in this moment, red as a summer tomato. It takes every bit of resolve to remain calm. “I understand that the newspaper business is competitive,” she says, slowly and deliberately. “But I judged you to be smarter than to listen to such trash.”
“Are you denying it?”
“It’s not worth a denial. It’s not worth anything. It’s idle gossip, and if you print a word of it, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” His eyes are shining, taunting. She has not noticed until this very second how much he seems to be enjoying this.
She swipes her bag off the table, pushes the chair back. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Tate,” she says, a bit too glibly, as she stands. “This grizzled reporter act may impress the girls in the typing pool down at the paper, but it has no effect whatsoever on me. Print whatever you like. It’s your reputation that will suffer far more than mine.”
“Sit down, Miss Delaware.” It’s not a request.
She considers this for a good five seconds before slowly retaking her seat. A few eyes cast glances over. Betty can’t risk making a scene, and he knows it.
“I have no intention of printing this. I can smell a bum rap when I get one. I came here to warn you.”
“About Griffin McAllister?”
“About the girls in this pageant. You may think this is all a lark, but a lot of these girls live for this thing. It’s been their dream their whole lives, since they were little girls. And if they see an opportunity to eliminate a competitor, they’ll take it.”
“I am hardly competition.”
“If you really believe that, then you’re also naïve.”
She cocks her head. “This pageant has been going on since 1921. Everyone knows they never give the crown to the girls from the small states.”
“Marian Bergeron was from Connecticut. They gave it to her.”
“More than fifteen years ago.”
“Everyone also used to say they’d never give the crown to a Jew. But they did.”
“Are you telling me that one of the other contestants Ameched to report this ridiculous story?”
“I am telling you that you are bad business to some of these girls.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s not like I can win Miss America.”
“Holy mackerel,” he says. “You’re awful pretty to be a fathead.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He leans over the table, and instinctively she leans forward, as if she’s about to hear a secret or a particularly serious medical diagnosis. “Let me tell you something, Betty Jane Welch. You’re dynamite. You’re smart, you’re quick, you look like June Haver with Grable’s legs, and I don’t know what your talent is, but I’m sure it’s tops. You could absolutely be the next Miss America.” He looks across her shoulder. “Now you better skedaddle. And go through the kitchen. Old Lady Slaughter just walked into the lobby.”
༶
She feels like a prize steer out at the cattle auction, waiting for the highest bidder. Betty stands in her swimsuit and a pair of slingback sandals, her hair done up in perfect victory rolls, her mouth beginning to ache from all of the happy grinning. My God, is this what it’s like to actually be Miss America? she wonders. The parade had been bad enough, but now she feels like her face is about to crack in half. But she stands, still as a floor lamp, her arms around the waists of contestants on either side of her, and shows off her pearly teeth as Al Gold, the ever-rumpled official photographer of Atlantic City, clicks his camera.
“Thanks, girls!” Al says, nodding and gathering up his many photographic accoutrements. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the sun is again beating down, another unseasonably hot day. Many of the tourists here for the pageant are indoors, sipping iced teas or more potent libations. But Betty—along with Daisy Haggis, Miss South Dakota, and Adelaide Carson, Miss Virginia—have no shade in their future. They are taking their turn on “ambassador duty,” as it is called within the Miss America Pageant, or “the Meat and Greet,” as the contestants call it among themselves. Every day Lenora Slaughter dispatches a few groups of three, in swimsuits and sashes, up and down the Boardwalk, a few in the morning, a few in the afternoon, to pose for pictures and wave to passersby and sign autographs. They started at Illinois Avenue and must make it all the way up to the Inlet, at New Hampshire Avenue, before they can turn around and walk back down the Boardwalk again. And they must not be quick about it. A delegation yesterday returned too early and was given a thrashing by two of the hostesses that was so virulent one might have thought the trio had been caught skinny-dipping with Mr. Haverstick.
“I’d give my left arm for a lemonade right now,” Daisy says as the three stroll up the Boardwalk.
“I’d give your left arm for something with a lot more kick,” Adelaide answers. “I can’t believe I am in this swimsuit all day and then I have to wear it again tonight in front of an auditorium full of people. I’m going to have to wash it out in the room, and then I’ll never get it dry in time.”
“You will in this heat. What do you have tonight, Betty?” Daisy asks.
“Evening gown.”
“Uh! I had evening gown last night. I might as well have worn a paper sack. Did you see that number Texas pulled out? She looked like Scarlett O’Hara at Twelve Oaks.”
“It looked so heavy,” Betty says. “I bet her shoulders ached something awful after she took it off.”
“I thought Nevada’s dress was divine,” Adelaide says.
“It was!” Daisy answers. “But did you see Maine? Good golly! Did her grandmother make that out of old curtains?”
“Ha! Another Scarlett O’Hara dress!” The two devolve into chortling. “That’s why those poor New England girls never win,” Adelaide says.
Betty has heard Texas mentioned much in the last few days. The smart money is on her for at least a Top Five. Though she’s also heard a lot of chatter about Ohio and California as well. Betty is piqued by the horse-race nature of all of this, how the girls are constantly handicapping the competition, trying to see who’s galloping ahead. It’s exhausting.
She smiles some more, waves to an elderly couple, winks at a group of young men whistling as they pass. She is rather amazed at how adept she’s become at all of this in just a few days. She was counting the minutes, and now wants nothing but to slow everything down. Because now there is Griff. She replays their kiss last night for the hundredth time.
“Mmmm-mmm-mmm, there’s that Betty smile again,” Daisy says. She is a dark brunette, with a skinny body and flat chest and a nose that is too prominent on her face. Someone said she was only named Miss South Dakota because no one else would take it. It goes that way in some states. Like Delaware, Betty thinks. “I heard all about your moonlight kiss with Mr. Gorgeous last night.”
“Beat me daddy, eight to the bar! How come this is the first I am hearing this?” Adelaide interjects. Adelaide is shorter, with toned arms and legs from years as a competitive swimmer. She has flaxen chestnut hair and the most beautiful green eyes. “I want the dope! It’s bad enough you got the best-looking guy of the lot. Now you’re going cuckoo for him, too? Sheesh! Are you rationed?”
I’d like to be, Betty thinks, swatting away their line of inquiry with a benign smirk and a turn of the head to wave to more tourists. A small girl runs up to them with a pencil and paper, temporarily halting the inquisition. But the answer Betty desperately wants to give Daisy and Adelaide is Yes, I am most definitely rationed. Griff and I are madly in love. But she cannot. Not here, in the middle of the pageant. She can’t give Miss Slaughter any more ammunition. Or Eddie Tate. Or the mystery girl who telephoned him. Was it Daisy? No. The more she’s considered this, the more she thinks it had to be Mary Barbara Adair, the queen of the dirty look. So much for southern hospitality.
Betty has not told a soul about the small notebook in the bottom of her trunk, where she doodled “Mrs. John Griffin Mc
Allister” several times this morning as Ciji sat, extolling the wonders of her new talcum powder. But Betty can tell Ciji suspects. Even if nothing is said, some girls just seem to have a gift for always knowing other girls’ secrets.
Adelaide grabs her arm. “C’mon, Delaware! Are you crazy about him?”
A new smile, this one spontaneous and gorgeous, not perfunctory and rehearsed, creeps onto Betty’s face and beams out all over the Boardwalk. The two girls break out into near hysteria.
“I knew it!” Daisy says, pointing. “We’ve all been going along, putting up with our dates and their stinky cologne and wise guy attitudes, and you end up with Adonis! And not only that, but now it turns out he’s a gem, too. It’s not fair.”
“I’m from the smallest state in the union,” Betty utters in mock protest. “Isn’t it right that I get some sort of consolation prize?” Never mind that this isn’t true: Rhode Island is actually smaller. But Ciji isn’t here, thank God. She suspects neither of these girls is a geography major.
Adelaide and Daisy glance at each other, then begin laughing together. “No!” they say in almost perfect unison.
They press for details and Betty, despite herself, relents, just a bit. She leaves out the Bath & Turf Club and most definitely leaves out the cocktails she had there, but cannot help but tell the story of Griff’s original song, written and sung just for her. The girls swoon and sigh and chuckle in all of the appropriate places. They spend the next hour and a half strolling up and then back down the Boardwalk, receiving looks of pert approval from wives and looks of a far different nature from those wives’ husbands. By the time Betty walks back into the lobby of the Chalfonte, she is almost giddy, as if she has once again spent hours imbibing alcohol and kissing under the stars. She glances at the clock and sees she is late; Griff will already be here, waiting for her for their afternoon date to Huyler’s Tea Room for ice cream sodas. He made her promise she’d go once the preliminary swimsuit competition was over. Not that she cares. She’d eat a gallon of ice cream right out of the carton if it meant she got to spend another afternoon with him.
Only Griff is not here.
She scans the spacious lobby once, twice, thrice. No sign of him anywhere. Has he been delayed? Betty walks up the desk, asks if there is a message for her. Or perhaps, she thinks fleetingly, a bouquet of sunflowers, along with a note of apology and a pledge to make it up to her after tonight’s preliminary.
But there is no bouquet, no note.
There is nothing.
༶
“And the winner of the preliminary swimsuit competition is . . .”
Betty stands in her evening gown with all of the other contestants onstage, waiting for the verdict. There is no preliminary award given for evening gown, only each night for swimsuit and talent. But now, as emcee Bob Russell draws out a pause and the hushed audience waits for the announcement, she feels the electricity of the moment as if she herself had competed.
“. . . Miss Rhode Island, Catherine Grace Moore!”
A whoop rises up from the audience, the tiny Rhode Island delegation frantically waving hand-painted signs in the rafters, as Ciji walks calmly to the center of the stage in her swimsuit to accept her trophy and pose for photographs. Betty cannot whoop and holler with the crowd—such exhibitions by the contestants are positively prohibited—but inside, she is doing cartwheels. Ciji has won swimsuit!
Fifteen minutes later backstage, there is noise, dominated by the screeching, howling, exclaiming, musing, and shrieking of the contestants. Such clatter! Sometimes Betty can’t hear herself think because of all of it. The incessant chattering of the other girls, the cackling of their hovering mothers, the equally incessant chattering of the hostesses, the barking of the stage managers, the fretting of the state pageant directors (luckily for her, Delaware’s is a sleepy insurance agent), the tuning up of the orchestra instruments, the secretaries rushing through the auditorium telling someone that someone has an urgent phone call from someone. Hours and hours and hours of noise, from the very beginning of rehearsal to the nerve-racking announcement every night of the winners of that day’s preliminaries.
But noise is not really the issue. She slept-walked through the evening gown preliminary. She is thankful the scoring is not released publicly, like box scores in baseball. For tonight, she struck out. Tomorrow night is the last night of preliminaries: Betty has talent, just in time for her family’s arrival. She thinks of the harp, how difficult a thing it is to play, to keep one’s fingers thrumming correctly as they gambol across the colored wires. Her head throbs. But it is the feeling in her stomach that bothers her the most: this dull, deep ache, like someone has just carved a hole inside of her and she will never be able to fill it.
She cannot think about that now. She dashes through the throng of assorted contestants, scanning the crowd, until she finds Ciji, just back from her session with the press. Betty wonders what Eddie Tate will write tomorrow.
“Oh my gosh!” Betty exclaims, throwing her arms around her. “Congratulations! I am so thrilled for you!”
Ciji’s face carries a mix of triumph and embarrassment. “I may not know as much as some of these other girls,” Ciji says, laughing, “but I sure as hell know how to show a little leg.”
“Or a lot of leg.”
In seconds they are besieged by other girls, all of them complimenting Ciji on her win, at least half not meaning a word of it. Betty slowly extracts herself from the growing throng, goes over to wait and take her turn congratulating Miss New York State on her talent win—in Miss America, exhibiting good sportsmanship is everything—and then drifts toward the dressing room. But before she leaves the backstage area, she feels a hand on her arm. Ciji, still holding her swimsuit trophy.
“You don’t get away that easy, Delaware. Something’s bugging you, and don’t lie and tell me it’s not. You don’t live with a girl and not know her moods.”
“We’ve lived together for three days.”
“I’m a quick study.”
And so Betty tells her: about her kiss goodbye last night, about the mystery phone caller she suspects was Mary Barbara, about Eddie Tate, about Griff ditching her today.
“Buck up, Delaware. So he doesn’t show for one date,” Ciji says. “Look, you can’t blame the guy for pulling back a little. He’s been coming on awful strong. He wrote a song for you. And sang it! In public! Maybe he doesn’t want to appear too bonkers for you. Or maybe he and the boys went on a bender. Who knows? He’s not ditching you.”
Betty pulls her into a backstage corner away from the rest of the girls, behind the heavy stage curtains, near a cascade of ropes and cables from the ceiling. She has to tell someone. She has to, or she’s going to die.
“Ciji, I . . . I . . . I’ve never felt this way about a boy before.” She blurts it out, like a confession, which it is. She wants to tell all of this to Patsy, moony Patsy who knows her so well, but Patsy will not be here until Saturday, and she cannot wait until Saturday. By Saturday this hole inside of her may swallow her completely, leave her a pile of smoking rubble in a black sash. “I keep going over it again and again. I mean, he was supposed to meet me. And then he doesn’t show, doesn’t call, doesn’t leave a message?” Briefly, this afternoon, the thought had struck her: Something terrible has happened. An accident. He’s in the hospital. But she has seen his mother, performing her hostess duties with cool aplomb. Honor McAllister would not be here if something untoward had happened to Griff.
Ciji tilts her head, delivers a crooked smile so condescending, so insincere, that Betty wants to slap her. “First love is a tough thing, honey,” she says, and Betty feels the blood again rising, her hurt and anguish frothing into anger. She doesn’t need this now. She needs to be outside, to get some air.
“I have to go,” Betty says, and rushes away, out toward the dressing area. She looks at herself in the mirror, studies her evening gown as she inches the gloves down her arms. Ciji’s gown, by contrast, is like Ciji herself: slee
k, sensual, daring, a satin form-fitting green backless dress with a gathered crossover sash in the rear with flounces on the front right. The kind of dress a siren would wear to sing in a supper club. Betty’s evening gown is sleeveless—that’s daring enough for her—made of white English net with a tiered skirt over a crinoline pleated ruff. She worries that, paired with the triple-strand choker of pearls tonight, it made her look too expectant, too bridal, as if she were waiting for her prince to arrive.
Wasn’t she?
She sinks down onto a padded stool, reaches back to undo the necklace clasp. What is the matter with you, Betty Jane Welch? We came here to have fun. We were supposed to simply fall in line, get it all done with, and go back to college. When did all of . . . this happen? Why did he have to happen?
She tosses the pearls onto the dressing table, begins unzipping the back of the dress. Okay. It’s all going to be okay. We have two more nights here, and then we go home on Sunday. Who cares what happens with Griff McAllister? A week ago you didn’t even know Mr. John Griffin McAllister. Your family will be here tomorrow. Patsy will be here Saturday. You’ll have support. After the Top Fifteen is announced on Saturday night, it’ll all be over. Take a deep breath. You’re fine. You’re fine. Let’s just get back to the hotel and into bed.
She is lying to herself, and she knows it. Because even if she were never to see Griff again—a thought so painful she cannot even consider it—she knows that something larger is happening here. Has happened here. She is different. She is becoming someone, something, else. No matter what girl returns to Delaware, she knows it will not be the same one who arrived in Atlantic City.
Fifteen minutes later, dressed in a red suit and hat, Betty threads her way through the other contestants in various states of dress and undress, gabbing and giggling. She craves an aspirin and bed.
She is almost to the doors of Convention Hall, out onto the Boardwalk, when she hears her name.
“Betty! Betty, could you wait just a moment, please?”
The Night She Won Miss America Page 7