The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

  “Then I guess it’s all peachy,” Ciji says. “C’mon, Betty. The seamstress is waiting and she’s got other dresses to hem.”

  Griff waits for a few minutes, making sure they’ve gone, then gets up, pads around to the other side of the bed, where the floor lamp stands. He moves it, drops down to his haunches. He pries the loose floorboard, wiggling it a bit this way, then that, until it finally pops up. He lifts it and reaches down into the black hole beneath, until he feels the beaded grip of the Browning. He retrieves the gun, studies it, the way he used to study the rare flowers they would sometimes get in the nursery. He thinks of the sunflowers, his special signature flower; remembers the day he stood on the muggy Boardwalk as Betty’s float drifted by, how proud he was of his excellent aim in sending the sunflower arcing onto her platform. Why couldn’t it be like that again? How had it all gotten ruined?

  But it had been ruined.

  He replaces the floorboard, slides the lamp back over to cover it, then picks up the Browning again. It feels heavy, significant in his hand. He crawls back into bed on his side, the gun still in his hand as it slides under the pillow. There is much to be done. It’s time to rest.

  ༶

  “I cannot believe you.”

  They are twisting down the servants’ stairs of the Cliff Lawn, Betty trying to keep up with Ciji, who wants to stay quiet, to stay focused on the task at hand, but now finds that she cannot.

  Betty catches up to her on the landing. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  Ciji checks to make sure no one’s in earshot. “I mean you sleeping with Griff,” she hisses. “I mean, really, Betty. In the middle of all of this? With his . . . state? And this is what’s important to you, a romp in the hay with a psycho?”

  “Hush!” Betty’s eyes blaze back at her. “Don’t you dare call him that! Do you hear me? I don’t care what you’re doing for us. You have no right to use such language!”

  “Well, I’d be careful if I were you, dearie. Eddie and I are the only two people who stand between you and disaster.”

  “I didn’t ask you to bring Eddie here.”

  “No, you asked me to help you. Which I am doing. Now: Do you want my help or not? Because if you don’t, you and lover boy up there can just pack up and move on, and you can figure a way out of this mess all on your own. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got four hundred people coming for dinner tomorrow night.”

  A young maid comes up the staircase, brushes by them; Betty tilts her head downward, a reflex she’s picked up ever since leaving Atlantic City. Never let anyone see your face, remember your features.

  Betty slides her hand down Ciji’s arm until she finds her hand, knots their fingers tightly together. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so torn, can’t you see? There are these moments when I still think he’s still in there, the boy I fell in love with on the Boardwalk. And then it’s not just about getting him safe, in ending this in a way where no one gets hurt. Sometimes I look at him and I wonder . . . I wonder if I can reach him. If I can . . .”

  “Cure him?”

  “I’m not that much of a pistol to believe that.”

  “Listen to me, Delaware. We’ve been through a lot together in a very short period of time. We can’t quit on each other now. But I need you to trust me. You asked me to get you out of this pickle, and I’m gonna try. But I can’t do it if you muck up the works by going soft. You know Griff needs help. You owe it to him to put your own feelings aside and make sure he gets it.”

  Betty hugs her. “How did you not win Miss America?”

  “That damned harp. Gets ’em every time.”

  A few minutes later they are in the calling room, waiting by the door. Guests and workers mill about, immersed in the anticipation and frenzy surrounding tomorrow’s ball. Betty feels exposed, being out in the open like this, where anyone can see her, identify her. “Why are we here?” she murmurs. “Where is the seamstress?”

  Ciji points outside. “You have a more pressing appointment. The brown sedan. Just run out and get in the back. He knows where to take you.”

  “What? I don’t underst—”

  Ciji shoves her out the door. “Now!”

  The sedan soon pulls out of the carport and onto Memorial Boulevard, Betty in the back seat.

  Twenty minutes later the car turns right onto a long gravel drive that leads to the front of a sweeping sea captain’s house with weathered brown shaker shingles and a porch extending all the way around to the rear. A bulky man in a black suit walks gingerly down the front steps, opens her door. She thinks she recognizes him but can’t recall from where. She alights, falls in step behind him.

  They walk slowly down a long hardwood hall lined with appropriate art: oil paintings of dunes and oceans, a larger one of a whaling captain, photographs of beaches. Their footsteps echo through the hall ominously, like those of a prisoner being led to the courtroom to hear the verdict.

  He steps aside, ushers her into a drawing room that overlooks the water. There is a hearty blaze crackling in the fireplace, and a long figure sitting at the end of a large tufted sofa, sipping a cognac.

  “Ah, Betty,” Honor McAllister says. “We are reunited at last.”

  Twenty-seven

  Betty sits in an armchair, balancing a Wedgwood teacup on her lap, cautiously eyeing Griff’s mother across from her. She is expecting wrath, knows she deserves it, but something in her has toughened up in these past few weeks, changed her, probably forever. And so she holds the cold eye contact, watches impassively as Honor daintily sips her cognac, shifting ever so slightly on the sofa. A walking stick is propped over to the side, a gilded accessory no doubt necessary to help her walk on her injured foot. It only adds to her general grand dame–ness.

  Betty decides at last to jump in, get it over with. “Mrs. McAllister, I know you must have questions, so many, many questions. And I am sure you are quite cross with me, for making all this muddle.”

  Honor arches an eyebrow. “Muddle! Is that what you call it, dear? You undersell yourself.”

  “I never thought things would—”

  “Do you know who Margaret Gorman is?”

  Betty stops, thrown by Honor’s sinister serenity. “No, I cannot say that I do.”

  “She was the very first Miss America, almost thirty years ago now. A slight thing she was. Fifteen years old! On the day they went to tell her she had been selected as Miss Washington, D.C., they found her lying on her stomach in a dusty old park, shooting marbles. Isn’t that enchanting?”

  Betty sits motionless as her tea turns cold.

  “Such wonderful girls we’ve had over the years. Pat Donnelly—Jack Warner personally offered her a contract at Warner Brothers. He thought she could be the next Ann Sheridan. And Jo Dennison, Jean Bartel. Even Bess Myerson was a delightful queen, once everyone got past her being a Jew. Somehow, the pageant has always managed to correctly identify the right young woman to lead us. To inspire the country.”

  Betty places her teacup on the side table. “I owe you an apology, Mrs. McAllister, and I extend it to you with a full heart. But I am not going to sit here and—”

  “Quiet.” It is not a request.

  Betty feels her hackles rise but says nothing. She silently curses Ciji.

  Honor stands, struggling for a moment to maintain her balance. She reaches for the walking stick, begins to make a slow circle around the room. “Griffin was always an impetuous little boy. I always knew he was different, in that manner all mothers know their children. Martha is studious, a good observer of things. But Griffin . . . he always seemed off somewhere, slightly out of reach. Even as a child.

  “He was eight years old when he first told me about the voices. I thought he simply had an overactive imagination. I often wonder about that, about whether I could have made a difference had I taken it all more seriously straightaway. But as a parent one cannot flagellate oneself over every past ill-advised decision. It serves no poin
t.

  “By the time he reached puberty, Griffin was having these terrible delusions. Paranoia. The wireless was emitting brain-controlling waves. His teachers were plotting to kill him. We even had to fire the gardener because Griffin was convinced he was a Nazi spy who was going to burn down the house and take us all to Germany as prisoners. We tried everything. Or at least I did. My husband was not a man equipped to deal with . . . such deficiencies. I tried my best for Griffin, not only for his sake but also because I needed to protect Martha. It was very difficult for her, explaining away Griffin’s odd behavior. I fear she lost a good part of her girlhood to it.

  “And then things leveled out, as they might say. He seemed better, more like a steady young man. He loved the nursery, threw himself into learning all about the flowers and the plants. He was outgoing and convivial with the hotel managers. I cannot express how relieved I was. The doctors warned me that his condition was not cured, that it would never be cured, that the best we could hope for was that it would abate for periods, that the symptoms would fade, like scars. But I was convinced they were wrong. Once we got him home from Lawrenceville, he blossomed. He filled out, so strong and handsome, joined the rowing team. Being on the water had a very calming effect, so we bought a motorboat.” She shoots over a scathing stare. “Your getaway vehicle.”

  She keeps circling, as if giving a lecture in a great college hall. “He was the beau every girl in Atlantic City wanted. After a time I began to have periods where I even forgot he’d ever been ill at all.

  “He graduated high school, wanted to go to NYU. I was terribly nervous having him that far away, because his experience at boarding school had been brief and difficult, and because New York is such an unruly place. I knew Griffin needed order, quiet. I begged him to go to the University of Pennsylvania, where he would be closer to home. But he wore me down, because that’s what sons do: they wear their poor mothers down.

  “We didn’t know Reeve—he was not Griffin’s original roommate—but Griffin told us about his family: mill owners, from upstate New York. Good people. I assumed—incorrectly, it turned out—that he would be a good influence on Griffin. The boys seemed to get along and lived in an apartment near Washington Square. I tried to assuage my nerves as best I could. But it didn’t take long for my worst fears to become realized. Griff met a girl. Her name was Helen Stevens.”

  Helen Stevens. Betty’s mind boomerangs back to that horrible day in the apartment in New York, to Reeve’s ominous warning: Ask him about Helen Stevens. She was cuckoo for him, too. Ask him what happened to her.

  Honor meanders to the fireplace, stares intently into the flames, lost in her recollections. “Poor Helen. A nice little girl, actually. Bright, sunny. But a bit of a flibbertigibbet. She and Griffin were quite the pair for a while. He brought her to Longport for a weekend to meet us. She seemed very smitten with him, and he simply adored her. But she was young, and when you’re young life seems endless, and there is always a better possibility somewhere ahead, and so after a few months she told Griffin she’d met someone else and she wished him well and that was to be that. Those things happen in first love. But not to Griffin. He was heartbroken. But more than that, he was triggered. His illness roared back almost instantly, like a forest fire being sparked. Of course, I had no idea any of this was happening—he was in New York, and I was a hundred miles away. But then he phoned, and the moment I heard his voice I knew. I knew.”

  She comes back to the sofa, settles wearily back onto the cushions. “He didn’t mean to do it, you see. You have to understand that. That’s not who he is. He’s not violent. The voices may sometimes suggest such things, but he’s never acted on them. Instead he gets flummoxed, confused, suspicious. It takes him out of balance.

  “He went to her apartment, begged her to take him back. She refused, and from what I can gather was rather cold about it. Everyone paints boys as the unfeeling cads, but I’ve been around enough young ladies to know they can be equally cruel and careless in matters of the heart. I don’t know. Perhaps she’d simply had enough by that point. After all, she didn’t know about his condition. Neither did Reeve. Another error I made.” She smiles ruefully. “So many.”

  Betty leans forward. “What happened? To Helen?”

  “Griffin was agitated, began arguing with the voices aloud. I’m sure by now you’ve unfortunately witnessed one of his episodes. They can be quite terrifying. Helen became frightened, ran for the door. Griffin attempted to intercept her, and in the altercation she fell backward. Her head hit the corner of a glass coffee table. It was an accident. A horrible, horrible accident.” She pinches between her eyes. “It was a disaster, as you might imagine.”

  “She died?”

  Honor nods, almost imperceptibly.

  “But it was an accident.”

  “It seemed very unlikely that the Stevens family would see it that way. And Griffin was in a very bad way. It took some doing to clean it all up.”

  Doing. Betty knows what this means in the world of people like the McAllisters. Payoffs. Bribes.

  “We became much more aggressive in getting Griffin help,” Honor continues. “There was so much gossip on the campus. We pulled him out of the university, brought him home. We tried medications, therapies, counseling. My husband wanted to put him away. But I knew he was still here—my little boy was still here. We put him through electroshock treatments, which I can tell you is the worst thing a mother can ever see her son endure. But I was desperate. I did it because I wanted him well, I wanted him . . . back. A doctor we knew began prescribing lithium, which helped enormously. He told us we just had to have Griffin avoid stress. So we eased him back into the family business. We installed an intercom system in the house so we could hear him when he was out of sight. And it was working. He was getting better.”

  “And then he met me.”

  “And then he met you,” she answers mournfully. “Feisty Miss Delaware.”

  “Mrs. McAllister, I am so, so very sorry.” Betty has more she needs to say, but the words are caught, trapped in the emotion now clogged in her throat.

  “There is neither the time nor the luxury for blame, Betty. I bear the responsibility for all of this as much as you. Now we must fix it. We need to get him to a hospital, where he can be properly treated.”

  “How can we do that? He almost ran you off the road in New York. He’s not going to go with you peacefully.”

  “There is a method. But before we get to that, I must insist on knowing one detail: which is exactly what happened to Reeve Spencer in that apartment.”

  So she knows that Reeve is dead. Of course she knows.

  Betty explains it all. Through the entire recitation, Honor’s expression remains staid, implacable, as if she’s listening to a report on the nursery’s third-quarter sales. If she’s shocked or alarmed by any of Betty’s lurid tale, she doesn’t show it.

  Honor rings a bell on the end table, and soon the burly man comes back through the door. “Bring the car around. It’s time to return Miss Welch to the hotel.”

  Betty rises. She feels clumsy, like a gawky teenager trying to decide whether she should hug her forbidding aunt before departing. “Sam will return you to the Cliff Lawn. He’ll give you the dress for your costume tomorrow night. After all, this was supposed to be your fitting.” She rises slowly from the couch. “Miss Moore will fill you in on the details.”

  Ciji. Ciji and Eddie and Honor, all of them. What a peculiar image, of the three of them together crafting a plan to mop up her mess. “How can you be sure this will work?”

  “Because, despite everything, there is one thing I know for certain,” Honor McAllister says. “And that is that my son loves you.”

  ༶

  Chick Kaisinger is wired; he has driven from the diner without making a single stop. Now he strolls through the front door of the Cliff Lawn, takes in the surroundings. The foyer is a handsome mix of dark woods, tapestries, and Edwardian furnishings, all set on an ornate floral area
rug, the wood underneath a weathered pine. A small circular mahogany table sits in the center, a spray of artfully arranged hydrangeas springing from a pale green porcelain vase. There is a small silver tray as well, a nod to the space’s former use as “the calling room” of the house, even if no one comes to call anymore.

  He pulls out his notebook, begins scribbling down descriptions. You never know when the desk is going to want a few fancy details to fluff up a piece. He’s surveying a gilt-framed oil portrait of an aristocratic-looking bearded gentleman in an ascot and waistcoat, hanging against the striped wallpaper, when a voice behind interrupts.

  “John Winthrop Chanler,” the voice says. Chick turns to see an officious woman in a light wool skirt suit and unadorned white blouse. Her hair is dark brown, pulled back from her face in a bun so tight it looks like it might provoke a headache. She carries a clipboard against her body and has the erect posture and faintly dour look of a Depression schoolmistress. “I see you are carrying a notebook. May I assist you with information about the hotel?”

  He reaches into his breast pocket, flashes his badge, with PRESS in big block letters across the top, then quickly puts it back. He doesn’t need her to read the fine print, see the words Atlantic City Press at the bottom. “Chick Kaisinger,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m a writer for Holiday magazine. Up here doing a story on great New England hotels. Somebody gave me the dope on this place. Said it was really the cat’s meow.”

  He can’t tell what’s impressed her more: that he’s an alleged writer for Holiday magazine or that the hotel’s reputation is so keen. She visibly brightens, her smile a tattered row of small, coffee-stained teeth. “Well, I can see you are well informed. Mr. Chanler was a well-respected congressman who built this mansion for himself and his wife as a summer residence in the 1870s. She was, of course, the former Margaret Astor Ward, the great-granddaughter of John Jacob Astor.”

  Chick makes some nonsensical notations on his pad. He couldn’t give a hoot about some old congressman and his rich wife. But he cares very much about this woman, who he suspects knows everything that goes on in the hotel. Her type always does. “Can I get your name, for the story?” he asks earnestly. “Uh, Miss . . . ?”