The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

  “Of course not. Not for a minute.” She sighs, looks away.

  “But?”

  She cannot stop thinking about her family never getting her letter. She’s tried to argue with herself that it might have been lost in the mail. She does not want to admit the likelier scenario: that Griff lied to her about sending it.

  “Today is September twenty-first,” she whispers.

  He caresses her hand. “What’s September twenty-first?”

  “It’s Ricky’s birthday. He’s eleven today. And not only am I not there, but the whole day is probably being overshadowed by the fact that I am not there. I know we did what we had to. I do. But our families, Griff. They’re paying a price for it. It makes me sad.”

  “It’s not like you’re never going to see your family again, Betty. We talked about this. We just need—”

  “To go back when everything’s settled. I know, I know. But when will that be? How long? What are we waiting for, exactly? We’ll go to Buffalo, save some money. But I need to know when this is all going to end. I can’t live like this indefinitely. I want to go home; I want my family to know you.” Fresh tears come. “I want to plan my wedding.”

  “Oh, baby . . . baby,” he says, sitting upright in the tub and taking her into his slippery arms. His beard tickles her cheek. “I’m sorry. I know it’s been hard. But it’s temporary. And we’ve had fun, haven’t we? I did this all for you, you remember? You asked me to do this.”

  She nods over his shoulder. He’s right. She did. Though he seems to have forgotten that it was his decision to break her heart at the Steel Pier ball that started this snowball down the slope. What might have happened if he hadn’t?

  There is no time for that now. “Yes. Yes, I did.” She breaks from his embrace. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I’m just being silly. I’ll . . . I’ll go make us some breakfast while you get dressed.”

  Betty closes the door behind her, hears the gentle splash of the water a few seconds later, the sounds of him stepping out of the tub, vigorously drying himself. She walks to the kitchen, retrieves half a cantaloupe from the icebox.

  He did this for her. When he told her he had a plan, she had not asked a single question about what it was. What right did she have to ask him to give it all up now? To possibly go to prison? It would be easier to negotiate from afar, to grease the wheels, call his family, negotiate a return. To have time. Except they are out of time.

  Eddie Tate is expecting them tonight at his hotel. And if they don’t show, the jig will be up. It will be worse. So much worse.

  She thinks again of Ricky, his birthday ruined due to her selfishness. And what of Simon, Patsy, her parents? Was her father walking around the bank, seeing nothing but serious faces pitying the father of the kidnapped Miss America? And her mother. Her mother, no doubt now avoided by the Junior League, whispered about as she passes through every market and shop, worrying about her every night, wondering if she’s safe, with no one to tell her otherwise. How much worse will it be when Betty finally does come home, when she has to face the truth of her own deception and its consequences? When she is unmasked not as the kidnapped Miss America but merely the wayward one, plastered with a scarlet letter her mother will wear with her for the rest of her life?

  The consequences of her actions collapse on top of her with the weight of a building being demolished. She slumps against the kitchen counter, begins sobbing.

  What have I done?

  She can no longer outrun the truth. They cannot go to Buffalo. They can’t go anywhere but home. She must call her family, tell them where she is, beg their forgiveness, hope that their collective relief will be enough to mitigate the pain she’s caused them. She must get Griff to phone his mother, tell her the truth, tell her they are coming back to sort it all out, how sorry they both are. She will call Eddie. He’ll be sympathetic, tell a measured story, lay the groundwork for emerging from whatever legal entanglements they face. A narrative begins to form in her head, of being overwhelmed by the entire week in Atlantic City, of feeling trapped, of reacting badly. Betty will explain that she dragged Griff into it. That he only did what he did out of love, a sense of duty to her, and because she begged him to.

  It’s been less than two weeks, not months. The damage is reversible.

  It’s a plan, and the thought of it steadies her. She slices the cantaloupe, puts in two slices of bread for toast. She hears Griff getting dressed in the bedroom, the humming now turned to whistling.

  I need to tell him, she decides. I need to tell him now.

  ༶

  She has dithered for the last hour. How to do it? Was it better to be sitting at the breakfast table, calmly broach the idea, as if it were nothing more than discussing what to do that afternoon? Or was it likely to be more palatable in a closer, more intimate repose, the two of them lying together on the daybed, engaging in midmorning pillow talk?

  Betty watches him gulp the last of his orange juice, push back from the table. “I should get going soon. I said I would be there sometime around noon to swap the cars. It’s better if we leave after dark.” He meets her stare. “Sugar? What’s wrong?”

  She takes a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about something very important.”

  His look telegraphs confusion rather than expectancy.

  “Sweetheart,” she begins, in a voice that registers somewhere between a plea and a warning, the kind you might give to a child who was drifting into the deep end of a swimming pool, “I have to ask you something: Did you really mail that letter to my family?”

  His face darkens. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because I need to know. And I need to know the truth, Griff. Did you post the letter? Just please be honest with me. I promise I won’t be cross.”

  She can see him thinking.

  “Baby, I couldn’t. Don’t you see? It would have had a postmark on it. They would have found us right away. We needed that time. For us. But now, now we’ll go to Buffalo, and you can call them as soon as we get there, I promise.”

  She pictures her mother sitting at their kitchen table at this very moment, wringing a dishtowel in her hands, crying. “My parents, Griff. My mother. We’ve been gone almost two weeks! Do you have any idea how devastated they must be, what I’ve put them through? My brother—”

  “You said you wouldn’t be cross! And . . . and we talked about this.” His voice climbs, cracks like an adolescent boy’s. “Honey, we went over all of this. And remember, this was all your idea—”

  “You need to stop saying that!” She leaps up from the table. “It’s horribly unfair. Yes, I asked you to get me out of being Miss America, that’s true. I accept that. But I only had to do that because I loved you, because you told me you wouldn’t be with me unless I wasn’t Miss America. I . . . I didn’t know . . . it would be like this. I can’t live like this. I miss my family, my life.” She scurries around the table, drops to her knees before him. “I’m not blaming you, my dearest, I swear to you I’m not. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I want to be your wife; I want us to grow old together. It’s just that things are clearer now. We can’t stay engulfed in the shadows.”

  “We’ll go to Buffalo—”

  “No, no. No. Listen to me. We can’t go to Buffalo. You mustn’t be afraid. We’ll go back, and I will explain everything. And then we can start making our plans together. Make sure you’re well.”

  Instantly, she wants to take it back. But it is too late.

  His hands are quick, darting down and grabbing her roughly by the arms, lifting her up as he rises from his chair. “What did you say?”

  “You said you couldn’t be under stress. I only meant—”

  “Who have you been talking to? Who? Who?!”

  “No one, I promise. Stop. Griff, you’re hurting me!”

  He pushes her away, stalks into the living room. She looks on as he paces, over and over, over and over, clutching his head. His lips are moving, faster now, the muttering audible bu
t unintelligible. There is a look on his face, a slow, frightening devolution, as if his senses are melting right before her eyes. An expression takes over, a look she has never before seen, not on him, not on anyone. The remnants of the cantaloupe rumble in her stomach, threaten to rise into her throat.

  She startles backwards against the kitchen counter as he grabs a table lamp and flings it against the exposed brick wall, where it shatters into pieces. His face is wild, feral, painted in hues of anguish. He reaches for the floor lamp.

  “No!” she screams.

  Betty dashes into the living room, flings her arms around him. “Darling, no! No! The police will come! We can’t have that. We can’t have that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

  His chest heaves and she pulls him closer. If I can just calm him down, she thinks. If I can just calm him down.

  Okay, okay. We can do this. He’s not moving. We can do this.

  Then he staggers away from her, like a drunkard trying to find his way home. He collapses onto the daybed, throws his head into his hands. “You don’t understand, you don’t understand . . .” He’s crying, gulping for air.

  She creeps over to the daybed, slowly sits down next to him, starts lightly rubbing his back. “What, darling? What is it I don’t understand? I’m listening. I love you, I’m here, I’m listening.”

  He looks at her, tears now streaming down his cheeks, disappearing into his short beard. “You don’t hear them, do you?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The voices.”

  Betty indeed hears something—the echo of Eddie Tate. He hears voices in his head. He doesn’t have a firm grip on reality.

  “They’re so loud sometimes,” he continues. “You can’t understand how loud they are. It’s not my fault God speaks to me like this. The Devil doesn’t like it. And then he gets angry. So very angry. And the voices start yelling at me, all at once. Why? Why do they pick me for their battles? Why can’t they just leave me alone?”

  “Honey,” she says, with as much equanimity as she can summon, “what are the voices saying to you? What do they want?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “So they are speaking to you right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both of them?”

  “There’s not just two!” he screams, hopping up from the daybed, running about the room, flailing his arms. “You don’t understand! No one understands! Don’t you see? There’s four main ones. But there can be hundreds! Hundreds! I’ve been chosen. I didn’t ask to be chosen. Why was I chosen?” He turns back, registers the fear in her eyes. “Doll baby,” he says, sliding on his knees toward her on the hardwood floor. A piece of the broken lamp slices his trouser leg; a small circle of blood begins to form on his right knee.

  “You’re hurt,” Betty says.

  “You have to help me. You’re the only thing that keeps them quiet. When I met you . . .” He trails off.

  “What, Griff? What about when we met?”

  “Do you remember the moment we met?”

  Of course she does. His sauntering across the ballroom floor, her breathlessness at his beauty. Two weeks ago. It feels like a hundred years. “Of course.”

  “That moment . . . that was like a veil lifting. It was . . . liberating. Because for the first time in my life, my heart was in charge, not my head. You make me better. You heal me. I can make it. I know I can, as long as you’re there with me. But not if we go back. We can’t go back. Not yet. She’ll—”

  “She’ll? She’ll what, Griff? Who? Your mother?”

  He nods, almost imperceptibly. She can barely hear his voice. “She’ll put me back there. They’ll hook me up to all of those wires.” He looks at her, his eyes pooled and vulnerable, in his softest whisper issuing a deafening plea for understanding.

  For love.

  Betty takes his hands in hers, interlacing their fingers together as tight as a knot. She cannot say anything except the truth.

  “I am going to take care of you, sweetheart,” she says, bending down and kissing his forehead. “I promise.”

  ༶

  Honor McAllister dials the number.

  “I got your message,” she says when he picks up. “You’re certain it was her.”

  “Positive. I wasn’t sure at first: she’s dyed her hair black. It makes her look completely different. But I followed her to a restaurant. She met some guy there.”

  “My son?”

  “No.”

  “Then who?”

  “You hired us to find her, I found her. You want me to look up everyone she interacts with, that’s gonna cost extra.”

  His impertinence irritates her, but she has little leverage. For God’s sake, the FBI was out looking for Betty—allegedly—and yet Honor’s own private detective had found her first. Whatever his lack of manners, his reputation as being the best around was clearly not hyperbole.

  “So what about my son? Have you seen him?”

  “Not yet. But he’s gotta be in this apartment. I mean, obviously they don’t go out much, and I can’t be across the street twenty-four hours. You didn’t want to hire any extra help here.”

  She exhales coolly. It had been her idea for the two of them to split up, to cover more ground. Now the skinny one was God knows where. She couldn’t risk losing this chance by waiting for him to get to New York.

  Because she knew what Griffin was like in the middle of one of his episodes. There was no telling what he’d do if he thought there were a bunch of brutes outside his door, waiting to drag him back to Longport. Or somewhere worse. He would never come peacefully, and she needed him, more than anything, to come peacefully. There was only one possible way that was going to occur.

  She’d already wasted so much time, investing in wild-goose chases with Griffin’s known friends and acquaintances up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The big detective had finally gone to NYU, found out who had roomed with him that one semester. Reeve Spencer. Now they had his address in Chelsea—and, more important, Griffin and Betty.

  And oh, Betty. Pretty, kind, well-mannered Betty, who had stunned everyone by winning the Miss America title for Delaware. And all of these tabloids with their ridiculous headlines, fed by that incompetent Atlantic City police force, which couldn’t find sand. Kidnapped! Griffin, a kidnapper! The very idea was ludicrous. He was ill, yes. He occasionally had . . . unseemly thoughts, which needed to be controlled. But he would never have taken her against her will. It wasn’t his nature, nor the nature of his illness. Everyone thought that schizophrenics were these wild creatures, spinning in every direction. Griffin was nothing like that. He was gentle, well-mannered, loving. He fought to live every single day. The only thing he needed was simple: to avoid stress.

  Honor recalls that horrible night a few years ago, of getting the telephone call from the office at NYU, of rushing up to New York and having to admit him to Bellevue to avoid the police, everything that came after. I cannot put him through that again.

  I cannot put myself through that again.

  Yet here they were. He was on the run with the abdicated Miss America. So many questions, all unanswerable: Why did she have to win? Honor remembers going to Miss Slaughter, suggesting, in a very banal, backhanded manner, that it might be best if Griffin was paired with a girl with little prospect of earning the title. Miss Delaware? Miss Delaware sounded divine. The state had not sent a contestant in five years!

  It was all her fault. But what was done was done. There was only one thing to do now. Get to Griffin before anyone else.

  “My driver is on his way here,” she tells the detective. “We should be in Manhattan by dinnertime. Make sure you sustain surveillance of the apartment until I arrive. I mean it—no cigarette runs. Pee in your pants if you have to. But you are not to let your eyes off of that apartment. We’ll pull up to you on Twenty-First Street and you can get in, and then we can discuss the best method for retrieving my son.”

  “And the girl? We retrieving her, too?”

 
“We shall see,” Honor McAllister replies icily. “Griffin is my priority.”

  She is not a religious woman by nature—she attends the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer every week because her husband and her community expect her to, but she finds little comfort in the words and rituals of the church. She has learned, in the most brutal way possible, the value of dealing with hard truth, with coping with life as it is, not as you wish it to be.

  But it does not stop her from placing her palms face-down on the secretary, turning her eyes to the ceiling.

  Please, dear God, she prays, don’t let this be another Helen Stevens.

  ༶

  Betty wakes first, momentarily disoriented. They’re on the daybed, the late afternoon September sun tinting the living room shades a deep gold. She is lying behind Griff, her arm around him, protective, like a mother with her sleeping child. They’re in their clothes, no shoes. That’s right. She’d removed his shoes, then her own, convinced him to lie down with her, “just for a few minutes,” until they’d both drifted into the shallow, medicinal sleep that always follows emotional tumult.

  She remains still for a moment, watching his shoulders slowly rise, up, down, up, down, tracking his steady breathing. Her darling love, betrayed by a mind that won’t let him rest. And now she has awoken the beast inside him, sent him spiraling downward.

  Betty creeps slowly away from the daybed, grabs her shoes, scurries off into the bedroom. I need to think.

  But what is there to think about it? The answer is clear, even if it smacks of betrayal. She loves him. But when you love someone, you do what is best for them, what they need, even if they themselves cannot see it. But she sees it. She must.

  Over the next two hours, she goes over everything: every option, every misstep she’s made, and how to correct it. A plan takes final shape in her head. She hears Griff stirring in the living room. She plasters a knowing smile on her face and walks back in, sits down beside his stretched-out form.

  “Do you feel any better?” she asks, stroking his hair. “Can I fix you something to eat?”

  His eyes flutter, as if he’s trying to concentrate. “What time is it?”