The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

  “Did you look for it? When he was sleeping?”

  “I can’t risk that. If he were to wake and find me snooping . . . I don’t know what he might do. That’s why we have to handle this very, very carefully. He’s . . . fragile.”

  “Fragile? When are you going to finally start using the right word? He’s sick in the head. He needs help. Medical help. His mother—”

  Betty zips back to the newspaper clipping, the report of Honor’s accident. “How is she? Do you know?”

  He reports what he told Ciji, registers her visible relief. “Too bad Reeve Spencer didn’t fare quite as well,” he says.

  She nods, almost imperceptibly. “It wasn’t what you think.”

  “Then tell me what it was.”

  So she does. The telephone calls to him and to Griff’s sister, her plan to coax Griff out, to come home. How Reeve had come back early, circled her like a panther, attacked her, pinned her to the bed. “He did it to save me.”

  “I doubt that’s how the cops will see it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Betty, don’t be daft. Griff is what, six-one, six-two? Reeve didn’t look big at all. They’re going to wonder why he didn’t just pull Reeve off you, pummel him, toss him into the next room. But instead he picked up a heavy object and bashed his head in. That’s third-degree murder, Betty. Maybe even second. Manslaughter at the very least. And then there’s the fact you two fled the scene. You’ll be lucky not to go down with him.”

  “Do the police know?”

  He shifts uncomfortably, kicks a pebble in the path. “Not yet.”

  “So no one even knows we were there,” she says. “Except Honor. And . . . you.”

  He nods. “And me.” He stops, turns back to the water, because he cannot bear to look at her as he says what he must say. “I love you, Betty. I have from the moment I laid eyes on you in that swimsuit that first day on the Boardwalk. But I cannot—I will not—be an accomplice to a murder. I’m already in this thing deep enough as it is. I’ve already lost too much. And for . . . for . . . what?” He fights it, this slow crumpling in his face, and he is silently grateful she cannot see his face, spy the tears forming in his eyes.

  She turns his shoulders back to her. “For me, Eddie,” she says, gently removing the sunglasses. She takes his face into her palm, caresses his cheek. “You did it for me.”

  She does not see the figure standing by the window of the room under the gable three stories up, looking down at them with dead, dispassionate eyes. Does not see Griff’s mouth settle into a long, grim line, as the voices again rise up and deafen him from the inside.

  ༶

  Chick Kaisinger pulls into the parking lot of the diner, his sore back twitching like a son of a bitch. He’s never taken his temperamental Plymouth this far on the road. He just hopes it’s hale enough to make the trip all the way back to Jersey.

  He sidles up to the counter, hops onto a stool. “Coffee?” the waitress asks.

  “Yes, please,” he says. “I’m looking for Shirley.”

  The waitress points to her name tag. “You found her,” she says, sliding over the sugar and creamer.

  Chick retrieves his press badge, slides it onto the counter. “Chick Kaisinger, of the Atlantic City Press. We spoke on the phone?”

  She gives it a cursory glance. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “You called about that Miss America who’s on the lam.”

  Indeed he had. He’d gotten a tip that the New York cops had found a dead body in Chelsea of a guy who used to be Griffin McAllister’s old roommate in college. Then the news of Mrs. McAllister’s accident northbound on the WSE had come in. It was too much to be coincidental. Were Betty and Griff heading north? Hadn’t Betty roomed with a girl from one of the New England states?

  Chick had spent the better part of yesterday mapping out the most logical route from New York to Newport, then calling every diner and gas station between the two, hoping to confirm a sighting of Griff and Betty. And then, yesterday, pay dirt. Shirley, the waitress at the Lucky Strike diner. He’d win a Pulitzer for sure.

  “Is this the couple you saw in here yesterday?” He plunks down a photo of Betty and Griff, dancing at the Miss America Ball on the Steel Pier.

  Shirley scrunches her face. “I dunno. Could be. The girl in here was a brunette. And he had a beard and a mustache, kinda scruffy-like. Didn’t you say on the phone there was some kind of reward?”

  “I said I’d be happy to give you a bonus if your information was copacetic.”

  Shirley picks up the photo, studies it more closely. “Yeah, I mean, she looks a lot different. It’s the hair. It’s not done like it is here, and like I said, it’s almost black now. But that’s him. I remember he sat there slap-happy, eating his eggs and toast.”

  “Did they say where they were going?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t ask a lot of questions after ‘Whaddya having, folks?’ ”

  Chick throws a fin onto the counter, tips his hat.

  I knew it! They’re in Newport, he thinks as he jumps back into the Plymouth. And I’m going to tell the whole world.

  Twenty-six

  “Try it on. I bet you’ll look very dashing.”

  Betty extends her arm, holds the hanger with the Colonial costume up so she can assess it better. The coat is brocaded, a bright canary yellow—admittedly no one’s best color—but the ruffled shirt gives it a certain historical panache. There are pale beige breeches, and, on the dresser, some white hose and a pair of buckled black shoes, along with a tricorn hat and a mask.

  “I’ll do it later,” Griff mutters absently, sitting with his legs folded on the bed, as if in an Indian prayer, eyes still fixed on the window. He looks waxy, sallow, gaunt. His nap seems to have had little restorative effect. Ciji has procured an electric razor, and Betty hopes that Griff will feel better when he’s able to trim the wildness of his hair and beard, able to look into a mirror and see more of himself staring back.

  He’s been unusually quiet since she returned from her bath and unscheduled stroll with Eddie. In these last few days, Griff has materialized in two shapes: normal, the confident, handsome young man she met in Atlantic City; and shifty, the tortured soul fighting his demons. But this one—this wan, vacant Griff—this is new. He unsettles her even more than the latter.

  “I can’t wait to see what Ciji found for me to wear,” Betty says too enthusiastically, like a schoolteacher attempting to rally her pupils for a math lesson. “We’re going to be the most swell couple there.”

  He finally breaks his gaze from the window, turns to her. “I still don’t understand why we’re going. It seems awfully risky, when we’ve spent all of this time trying to stay out of sight.”

  An excellent point, she thinks. One she cannot easily refute. On her way back in, Eddie had said cryptically, “Ciji and I are working out a way to get Griff the help he needs without anyone knowing, and without risking anyone’s safety. So whatever directions you get from her, even if they seem cockamamie, follow them. You have to trust us, Betty.”

  She knows he’s right, that he’s been right about more than this. So when she entered the tiny room and saw the Colonial garb hanging on the back of the door, she’d rushed to read the note Ciji had left:

  You two have been cooped up so long, and we are hosting this big costume ball tomorrow night. I am getting outfits for you both; this is Griff’s. You can wear your masks and roam about, and no one will be the wiser. Please accept this invitation as my way of giving you some joy during your trying journey of the last few weeks. Love, Ciji

  There is certainly more behind the invitation than respite. But what? She has to trust them. And so she has spent the last ten minutes cheerleading for Griff, doing everything but a cartwheel across the room to get him enthused about the ball. Even if it indeed does not make any sense as to why two people hiding out in the attic of the servants’ wing would suddenly roam the grounds in period costume amid hundreds of people.

  Betty
hangs the outfit back up, slides onto the bed, and places her arms around him. “You’ll feel better after a bath,” she says.

  “I washed up in the basin.”

  He smells of strong lye soap and mint. “You don’t want to show me how spiffy you’re going to look in your Colonial best?”

  He tilts his chin up. “You really want to see me in this, I see.”

  She grins, thrilled by his sudden animation. “Yes!”

  “Hmm.” He hops off the bed, strips off his shirt. In the bright light of day, his weight loss is noticeable. But looking at him, at the fine, sinewy lines of his torso, she can still feel her breath shorten, feel the flicker of her own desire, even now, even after everything. “I guess I have to take these off, too,” he says, unzipping his pants and stepping out of them. Then he unexpectedly tugs down his drawers, stands by the bed completely nude.

  His eyes are piercing. She holds them in her own, despite the fact she wants to look away, she most desperately wants to look away, but something tells her urgently that she mustn’t, that this is a test and that she must pass it. So she stays frozen in place, casually resting on one arm on the bed, laid out in her borrowed polka dot dress like a calendar pinup, and he continues staring down at her, unflinching. Trying to decipher what’s lurking behind his gaze has become an impossible task, for only he can hear the commands barking inside his head. But still she tries, studies his eyes, glassy and impassive and . . . something else, something she faintly recognizes but cannot identify right away.

  “You used to like seeing me like this,” he says softly.

  She intakes a small breath through her teeth. “I still do.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m the girl who accepted your marriage proposal in Times Square three nights ago.” It stuns her how easily the words come, words she doesn’t mean. When did she become this person, this girl of the cool lie? Sometime after taking off her tiara and sash and throwing them away. She thinks of the artless, trusting girl sitting in her mother’s kitchen, how gullible she’d been, packing up her crepe and taffeta and dismissing everything at every turn as yet another silly adventure, as if life were a game played in the penny arcade. She remembers hearing stories during the war, stories she wasn’t quite old enough to comprehend, about women in Europe, the things they’d done, the tactics they’d resorted to in order to survive. She looks at his face and she knows she loves him, knows part of her always will. But their road together is coming to an end. A casualty of a different kind of war.

  “Come here, my darling,” she says, patting the bed, and he does, and as he climbs on top of her, she runs her hands lightly up and down his body, feeling him thicken and harden, hearing his breath grow short as he kisses her neck, her ear. He reaches under her dress, explores her with his fingers, and she arches her back, cries out softly as his finger plunges inside her. “Oh, Griff,” she says, “I love you.” She means it and yet she does not, wants him and yet does not. She knows that this may be the last time they ever make love. She wants it to matter, to signify something, to mark something, and so she kisses him, hard, their mouths wet and ferocious on each other. And she finds that she suddenly needs this as much as he, that she needs to remind herself of what this was all for, what her heart fought so hard to attain, even if the battle has already been lost.

  He undresses her slowly, achingly. He slips the panties from underneath her, hikes up her skirt, pulls her off the bed just long enough to lift the dress above her head and toss it onto the floor. He unhooks her bra, discards it, and now the two of them lie naked, bodies rubbing together, Betty reaching for him, wanting him inside her, but he resists, teases her nipples with his tongue, makes her wait. The frottage builds and builds, and he can feel the friction, can see what it is doing to her body from the inside out, until finally she reaches her hands above her head, grabs hold of the iron slats of the headboard as if clinging to a life raft as she topples over the edge of her own desire.

  For a moment he considers simply falling over to the side, of having the act finish right then and there, but he knows she will not allow this, that she will want him to climax, to feel she has given him what he has given her.

  But she has not given him what he has given her. He can see that now, even as he guides himself inside her, feels her breath catch again in his ear as he moves rhythmically back and forth. He buries his face in her shoulder, her arms tightly encircling his back, and yet they will not even allow him this. They give sound to her betrayal, now not the competing voices of argument but of one damning verdict.

  She doesn’t love you! She is making a fool of you! Why can you not see it?

  Where is the gun? Where is the gun?

  They’re all laughing at you. Look to the window! They’re all there, looking in on you, laughing at you!

  There is a microphone in the basin, recording every movement, every thought. They know everything you do. They’re waiting, waiting to put you away, just like your mother did. Is that what you want?

  Where is the gun? Get the gun!

  Look at her, writhing underneath you. She’s a whore. A dirty whore! You watched her get all moony over that reporter. She loves him, not you. Can’t you see him? He’s floating right above your head, looking down at you from the ceiling, joking about you!

  You must get the gun.

  Save us.

  Kill them all.

  ༶

  The knock at the door elbows her out of shallow sleep.

  Betty springs up in the bed, her breasts exposed as the sheet falls to her waist. Griff is on his side, facing her. His eyes are open, unblinking. She shivers, as if a bitter cold wind has just blown through the room.

  Another knock, louder this time. A whisper. “Betty, open up.” Ciji.

  “One minute,” Betty replies as she reaches over the side of the bed, retrieves her clothes scrunched up on the floor. She shimmies into them quickly, trying in vain to smooth out the dress, even as she feels Griff’s eyes following her around the room like a prison guard. His passivity, the cool detachment during their lovemaking, rattles her. She wants to both know what he’s thinking and not know at all.

  “Coming,” Betty says in the direction of the door, hustling over and undoing the latch. Ciji steps in, takes in Betty’s disheveled appearance, Griff’s bare torso tangled up in the sheets. “I see,” is all she says. “So sorry to . . . interrupt. But I’m afraid it’s time for Betty’s fitting.”

  “My? . . . Oh, right. The costume.”

  Griff sits up, suddenly alert, like a sculpture suddenly magically animated to life. “You’re leaving me again?” he asks tremulously.

  Betty turns to him, gestures Ciji to button her up the back. “You know how it is, darling,” she says. “I can’t just slip into some breeches like you boys. Ciji has arranged this lovely gown for me to wear tomorrow night, and I have to go try it on, get it pinned so that it will fit.”

  “I don’t want to go anymore. We’re not going to go.”

  Without turning around, Betty can register the alarm in Ciji’s eyes. She does not know why she and Griff must attend this ball, but she knows there is a reason. A good one.

  “All right, honey,” Betty says slowly, walking over and sitting at the bottom of the bed. “If you don’t want to go, we don’t have to go.”

  Griff looks at her for several seconds, then over to Ciji, who stands perfectly still. “I’m sorry,” Griff says to her. “I know you went to a lot of trouble to get these getups for us and to get us in. But I just don’t think it’s a good idea. We only came here to get money.”

  “Griff!” Betty says.

  “No, it’s fine,” Ciji says. “I appreciate your candor, Griff. Betty has told me about your need for funds, and of course I am happy to help you. But as I said earlier, there’s no way I can get to the bank today. There’s too much to do for the ball, and I’m already taking a risk stealing these few moments here with you. But I can get you the money on Monday morning, and you can be on you
r way.”

  Betty frowns. “We’re being terribly rude, Griff. Ciji has done nothing but help us, going back to the night of the pageant. We wouldn’t be together if not for her. I don’t understand.” She feels like she is playing a game of chess in the pitch-dark, carefully moving a rook across the board, a bishop diagonally, with no idea where her opponent’s pieces are approaching in return. “These past few days have just been so very trying and . . . upsetting.” A Reeve reference, to bolster her argument. “I just wanted us to have one nice evening before we go back onto the road. I didn’t think it was so much to ask.”

  He says nothing for a little while, simply looks back to the window. Finally he says flatly, “A fitting, then? Now?”

  Betty and Ciji exchange furtive looks. “Yes,” Ciji says. “It won’t take long.”

  Betty reaches over to the table and grabs her hairbrush. “You can come if you’d like,” she says airily, and she knows without even looking over that Ciji must be in open panic, that this is not at all part of the plan, whatever the plan is, but she needs to say it, needs to show Griff that nothing untoward is happening behind his back, even if it is.

  There is always more spirit in attack than in defense.

  “No, I think I will stay here,” he says. “You go on. I’ll be surprised when I see you in your lovely dress.”

  Awkward quiet descends. It’s like all sides have agreed to a peace treaty that none believe will hold.

  “Thank you for not being a crumb,” Betty says, leaning over and kissing him. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  “I can come back with some food for you while they’re pinning the dress,” Ciji says. “Some goo and the moo sound good?”

  “Oh, pancakes,” Betty echoes. “That does sound delicious.”

  He hates this, the way they’re talking to him, as if he’s a five-year-old about to devolve into a tantrum if he doesn’t get his way, as if he must be constantly monitored and mollified. Something isn’t right, he knows it isn’t right, but he needs time, time alone to go back to sleep, to quiet the voices and just rest. Then he can decide what to do. “It does,” he says.