The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

  Mr. Haverstick, proud as a grandfather escorting his granddaughter into her debutante ball, guides her toward the front, where she will mercifully not have to speak, and Betty struggles with the slow pace of the procession, making sure she turns left, then right, then left again, when all she wants is to see Griff, to feel love and reassurance. The scepter is slippery and ridiculous in the crook of her right arm, and her feet and back ache, like she’s spent the day hoeing potatoes.

  When they reach the front, she still has not seen him, though she spies Honor McAllister, standing off to the side with the other hostesses, resplendent as always in a sleek crepe silver dinner dress with matching turban.

  Where is he?

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Bob Russell is saying—where did he come from?—“it gives me great pleasure to introduce our guest of honor, and your new Miss America 1950, Betty Jane Welch!”

  More applause, as Betty gently curtsies like a member of the seventeenth-century nobility being presented at court. Perhaps this will be fun, she thinks. It’s like getting to play dress-up for an entire year.

  And then a burst of something—bright, luminescent, euphoric—seizes her. She is Miss America. She has bested thousands of girls from around the country who entered local pageants and state pageants and this pageant. She has won enough scholarship money to study whatever she wishes, however she wishes. She will have a year of exciting travel, get to see the entire country, meet new and interesting people. And she will have Griff. Surely his reservations must have dissipated in the thrill of watching her achievement. She will write Griff and call Griff to tell him everything that is happening, and he will come and meet her along the way, share in her adventure. It is the chance of a lifetime, and she has done nothing up until now but surrender to doubt and anxiety. For the first time, she sees the opportunity. She has changed more this week than she ever imagined she could. Who will she be a year from now? The thought thrills her and, for the first time, fills her with excitement.

  I’m Miss America!

  Mr. Haverstick is now talking, thanking endless benefactors and sponsors and volunteers and Bob Russell and the orchestra leader—everyone, it appears, except the laundresses and janitors, and they might well be next. His droning allows Betty some time to covertly scan the crowd for Griff, but still she cannot find him. Though she does spy Patsy, jumping up and down like a kangaroo, waving from her position next to her parents. And there, toward the back, leaning against a pillar, Eddie Tate, his arms folded across his chest, his expression inscrutable.

  The microphone is back in Bob Russell’s hands, as he asks the assembled to sit. “And now, a wonderful tradition here at the Miss America Pageant. Our newly crowned queen will dance with her pageant escort for this week, Mr. John Griffin McAllister.”

  The crowd hushes, and suddenly he appears. Griff, so striking in his black tuxedo that Betty actually feels her knees buckle. As he comes closer, extending his hand to her, she searches his eyes but finds nothing to access. She looks and looks, cannot discern anything locked beyond his benign Mona Lisa smile.

  As the orchestra strikes up the first chords of “The Miss America Waltz”—a lilting tune Strauss might have written—Griff takes Betty into his arms, and they begin a slow, circular motion around the vast dance floor, every eye upon them. His eyes remain squarely focused over her shoulder. At one point she moves her head to block his sightline. Nothing. A ball of anxiety expands in her stomach, like a milk spill oozing out in every direction on the kitchen floor.

  She smiles too brightly, trying to hide her yearning. “You’re being very ungallant, Mr. McAllister. You haven’t even congratulated me.”

  His eyes finally meet hers, and the chill in them jolts her even further. “You’re right. My apologies. Congratulations, Betty. Truly. I’m sure you’re going to be a wonderful Miss America.”

  Calm. Stay calm. “It’s been the craziest week of my life. I could never express how much it’s meant to me to have you here to support me through it.”

  “Well, that’s what the escort is supposed to do. I’m glad you enjoyed the experience.”

  The waltz continues, but she knows it will not continue forever. Even as they glide in circles around the floor, she feels him slipping away. Waltzing right out of her life.

  She fights the panic manifesting itself, doubling, then doubling again and again. “It sounds like you’re saying goodbye.”

  He looks directly into her eyes, and for the first time the mask slips, just a little. There is a hardened determination in his face, but at the edges she can make out other emotions: regret, longing. Love. He loves her. She knows he loves her.

  “I told you when we were on the beach, Betty,” he says. “I told you I couldn’t be Miss America’s boyfriend, and why. You said you understood.”

  “I never said I understood!” she says, in a whisper so laced with urgency, she’s afraid she has been overheard. She works ferociously to keep a placid appearance, even as her insides begin to crumble. “I . . . I love you, Griff,” she says, almost unable to get the words out. “I love you with all of my heart. I know you feel the same way. A girl knows something like that. Please tell me this is not the end. You . . . you can’t mean it. You simply can’t.”

  The music stops.

  There is polite applause, and for a moment it is simply Betty Jane Welch and John Griffin McAllister, standing in the middle of the Steel Pier ballroom, looking into each other’s eyes, the world outside of their ethereal bubble oblivious to everything transpiring between them. He folds her into a short, stiff embrace.

  “I’m so very sorry, Betty, truly I am,” he whispers into her ear. “But I can’t. I wish you every happiness.”

  With one deft movement, he takes her hand and kisses it through her glove. And then he is gone, retreating gallantly off the dance floor and into the crowd, as Betty is once again retrieved by jowly Mr. Haverstick, who doesn’t notice the tears now streaming down the face of his newly crowned Miss America 1950.

  ༶

  “So we’ll be on the beach at nine,” Lenora Slaughter is saying, balancing a slim black binder on her lap, “and the good news is that the water should actually be temperate. We’ve had years where girls have almost caught pneumonia from having to splash around in the morning surf in the middle of September. But it’s a tradition, and the photographers come from all over for it, and those photos will appear all over the world.”

  She peruses several papers, penning notes in various margins, as a phalanx of hostesses dash about, packing trunks, ironing, barking orders into the suite telephone by the bed. “Then, we’ll be back here for you to change—we have that navy suit for her, don’t we, Lois? Do make sure it’s pressed—then we go on to the Brighton for your farewell press conference. This will be a bit longer than tonight’s, since the boys have more time to meet deadline. But no pictures. We have to be on the train to New York at twelve thirty; we have coffee with the New York pageant people at four, and then a cocktail reception and dinner with some of our national advertisers at seven at the Plaza. Monday morning we have your wardrobe fittings with Everglaze—they’re giving you an entire new wardrobe! Isn’t that exciting?—and, oh dear, I forgot. We’ll have to sneak in a radio interview or two somewhere along the way—Katherine, have we heard anything from Barry Gray’s people? Do check in with them, will you? And then we have tea with Earl Wilson, which is something of a tradition, but one we must adhere to, and then . . .”

  Betty sits in a plush armchair, still in her gown. The crown and sash have been dutifully removed by someone, locked away for safekeeping. The scepter and cape, she has been told, do not travel with her. She is in the “royal suite” at the Claridge, reserved each year for the winner, and it is indeed sumptuous, a warren of tasteful rooms dutifully appointed with the right amount of art, mahogany tables, fluffy towels, and cut crystal. Betty can hear Miss Slaughter talking, but it is simply noise, infernal static that says nothing and means nothing. Betty says nothing her
self. She simply sits and stares out of the windows, able to neither see nor hear the ocean below in the midnight darkness.

  Miss Slaughter’s hand touches her shoulder and Betty looks up. “Please don’t feel frightened, my dear. It’s a busy schedule, but it calms down considerably after the first week, when we get you on the road out to the Midwest. Have you ever been to that part of the country? Very beautiful, and the people, so lovely! They are going to adore you, and you them. And don’t worry—we’ll try to wedge a breakfast in with your parents and brothers tomorrow before they return to Delaware. And of course you will have Maude here”—she points to a stocky woman of about sixty, wearing a plain brown dress and thick square-toed leather shoes—“as your chaperone for the next few weeks. Perhaps we can convince your mother to join you for a few days somewhere along the way, for a little touch of home, yes?” She straightens up, clasps her hands in front of her. “Do you have any questions, dear?”

  Just one. How do I get out of this?

  “No, I understand,” Betty says quietly, enveloping herself in her good-girl shell like it’s a cocoon. “I’m just rather tired.”

  “Of course you are! You must be ready to fall over, and we must be up promptly at six thirty to get your hair and makeup ready for the beach. Just remember that Maude will be right next door if you need anything. Now get some rest and I will see you in the morning.” She leans back over, clasps Betty by the chin. “You are going to be a marvelous Miss America, Betty. You’ll see.”

  And with that she departs, marshaling her flock and shooing them all out of the suite, until the door finally closes and it is just Betty, still immobilized in her chair—her throne, as it were—the bitter reality of her new life slowly seeping through her pores, like a virus. And to think she had almost convinced herself this would be fun. She will have no say over anything for the next year: what she wears, what she eats, who she sees, what she says, when she sleeps, when she sees her family. Miss Slaughter thinks she can allow Betty home for the day for Thanksgiving but cannot promise Christmas. There is simply too much to do.

  She gets up, wriggles out of the gown while still standing in the living room, letting it drop into a sad heap of satin and crinoline. She begins taking the pins out of her hair, feeling it fall, one section at a time, around her face.

  I had it. I had the real prize. I had Griff. I had love. Someone I loved, who loved me. And he told me he couldn’t do this, but I didn’t listen, because I didn’t believe it would ever happen. And now I’m trapped in this prison, this jail that will move from state to state, to school gymnasiums and city halls and pep rallies and car dealerships, for the next year. And by then it will be too late. Griff will have found someone new. I’ll have lost him forever.

  She looks around the room, hoping to discover a decanter full of liquor. But of course there is none. Miss America does not imbibe alcohol. Miss America does not do anything impure or impolite or human. She is a marionette, dancing for the crowd.

  Betty removes her shoes, tosses them atop the quickly wrinkling dress on the floor, heads to the bedroom. It’s like she is underwater. She cannot remember ever being this tired.

  She puts on the hotel bathrobe, still in her slip, garter, and stockings, and slides onto the bed. She wants to turn out the lights, to sleep, and to wake up in Delaware, to wake up in June, before her mother has baked her a lemon cake, before she has come to Atlantic City and met John Griffin McAllister.

  She wants to go numb, to not feel anything.

  The tears bubble up once again, and this time, in the safety of her aloneness, they spiral into sobs, heaving, gulping, gasping, moaning cries of despair so violent they shake her body as it contracts and folds, as if trying to make her disappear. I can’t do this, she thinks. I can’t do this. I can’t do without him. I can’t give up the man I know I’m meant to marry. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

  Oh, what am I going to do?

  It takes twenty minutes for the tears to first subside, twenty minutes for the answer, obvious and as clear as a fine spring afternoon, to come to her. At the twenty-first minute, she reaches for the phone by the bed.

  Fourteen

  Weekes’ Tavern is a nondescript lounge at the corner of Baltic and Illinois—Ciji still can’t shake the feeling that she is constantly hopscotching about a Monopoly board—that looks like an igloo with glass block windows. Jerry—she mercifully has trained herself not to refer to him as the Mole in his presence—holds the door for her as she steps inside. It’s almost two in the morning and she knows she looks a fright, but desperate times call for desperate measures and all of that. She has repeated it more than once tonight, and there is little doubt circumstances may be even more dire than merely desperate.

  She almost hung up when she got the call after midnight. The voice on the other end was unrecognizable, a mix of weeping and wailing fit for a war hero’s funeral. It took her ten minutes just to calm Betty down enough to get the pieces of the story out. Griff had ended everything, right there on the Marine Ballroom dance floor. The cad. Listening to Betty’s longing and sorrow, her pleading to help find Griff, Ciji felt fury froth in her blood. With one part of her brain she’d listened to Betty lament; with the other she’d fantasized about socking Griff right in the kisser. What kind of buffoon was he, anyway? Poor him, having to date the girl who was just anointed America’s princess. Men!

  The bar is dim but not as enveloped in darkness as the last two. They’d been to two of Griff’s other haunts, the Around-the-World Room at the President and the Torch Club—thank God boys, when thrown together, talk of nothing but sports and booze, or she wouldn’t have known any of this—and now were at the last. If he wasn’t here, there was only one other option, which was to drive to Longport, wake up the entire McAllister household, and hope that Griff was there, already in bed. But that risks having Griff’s mother call Miss Slaughter. And that will not do.

  “There,” Jerry says, touching her arm and nodding toward the end of the bar.

  And indeed, there he is, his bow tie undone, his shirt open, sitting alone and sipping something brown. “Wait here for a minute,” Ciji says. “I think it’ll go better if I talk to him alone. But stay close. If he blows a fuse, I’ll give you a signal.”

  She walks down the length of the long bar, slides onto the stool next to him. As she places her bag on the bar, he glances at her briefly, then stops the second time.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Romeo,” she says. “I had a heck of a time finding you.”

  He looks away, takes another sip of his drink. Scotch. The good stuff. “You shouldn’t have bothered. I’d like to be alone.”

  She nods to the bartender, orders a sloe gin fizz. This is one thing she has come to love about Atlantic City—that a woman can sit at the bar and order a drink and no one blinks an eye. She loathes “ladies’ entrance” signs, their unspoken implication that women are far too delicate, too sensitive, to have the right to sit at the bar and get as good and scrooched as any unshaven lout sitting on either side. When she gets to Hollywood, she’s drinking wherever she damn well pleases.

  “We’ve got a problem, you and me, Griff,” she says as the bartender deposits her drink. “Betty’s a complete wreck. But of course I’m sure you already knew that, given you’re the heel who’s put her in this state.”

  He says nothing, then, “She’ll be okay. She’s better off.”

  “Well, that’s rich. What? So you don’t care about her ’cause now she’s got a bunch of rhinestones for a hat? This was all a big game for you this week, your Boardwalk strolls and beach picnics and moony dinners and bouquets of sunflowers? It was all a lie?”

  His jaw hardens. “Of course not.”

  “Then what is all this hooey about? Griff, you have no idea the shape she’s in. I’m afraid she might do something . . . terrible.”

  For the first time, his face registers something other than self-pity. Alarm.

  “Wh-what do you mean? She wouldn’t hurt herself
! Tell me that’s not what you mean.”

  Success. Ciji clamps down on his arm, trying to close the deal. “Griff, listen to me: That girl loves you something awful. And I believe you love her, too. Now she says she doesn’t want to be Miss America, which is just crackers. A big part of that is you, yes, but it’s also that she’s just a girl from Delaware who never thought this would happen to her, and now she’s looking at a year away from her family and her friends and she’s scared out of her wits. And the only person who can possibly understand, who can help, has gone cold on her. You need to help her. You’re the only one. There’s no way she can get through this year as Miss America without you.”

  He looks at her wordlessly for what seems like minutes. She can almost see him arguing with himself inside. “Please, Griff. Just try. If you really ever cared about her, please try.”

  His features soften, the film over his eyes lifts. “I do care about her. Deeply. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “I’m not the one you need to convince. You’ve got to come with me right now. Right now, Griff! We haven’t much time.”

  They slide off their stools as Griff tosses some bills on the bar. “But . . . how can I see her? I know how this works. There’s no way they’ll let me near her room.”

  Ciji is already in front of him, signaling Jerry as she darts toward the door. “With Ciji,” she says over her shoulder, “there’s always a way.”

  ༶

  When Betty flings open the door and sees him standing there, she freezes.

  He’s here. He’s really here.

  “Oh, Griff, my darling!” she exclaims, lassoing her arms around his neck, pulling him into a suffocating clinch. He kisses her fervidly before they both feel a shove from behind.