The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

  It is now on to Plan B, which Ciji has hastily whispered in her ear not five minutes ago.

  Betty will keep glancing over to the far side of the tent, where Eddie stands nursing a drink, until Eddie gives her the signal that they’re ready. Betty will tell Griff she must go back into the hotel to use the lavatory. He will, of course, insist on accompanying her. So she will calmly take his arm, exit the tent. Eddie will discreetly follow. Honor’s muscle will be waiting right outside, silently subdue Griff with the chloroform, and with Eddie’s assistance they’ll put Griff in the back seat of the car. It’s more public, riskier with people coming in and out. But they’re out of options. Anyone approaches, then Ciji goes back to the original plan: they are helping a partygoer who has imbibed a bit too much champagne. Honor drives Griff off to a private hospital for treatment. And Betty goes home, at last.

  What if Griff pulls out his gun? She must hope the element of surprise will prevent it.

  Betty takes Griff’s arm, places it around her. He is jumpy, sullen, his momentary interest in the music and frivolity dissipated. She glances over at Eddie, waiting for the nod that tells her it’s time to go. It seems like hours are passing. It’s all taking too long.

  I just need this all to be over.

  ༶

  Chick carries the Hawkeye by his side, and if it were just the boxy camera, he’d be on Easy Street. But the flash attached is big and bulbous, and Chick knows he has no shot at getting a decent frame without one. So he has to risk it, hope that the shadows offer enough cover, that the flow of party guests and general gaiety provide enough diversions so that he can get to the rear of the tent undetected.

  He creeps along the Cliff Walk, passes the left side of the buzzing circus-size tent, listens to the laughter and exclamations and music and clinking of glasses. His eyes roam, shift, circle, trying to spy the slightest sign of a wrench in his plan. I’m so close to getting the biggest story of my life. I’m so close.

  He darts off the walkway to the right, dashes across the lawn lugging his heavy camera, hunched and quick, like he’s running underneath helicopter blades. Once he reaches the back of the tent, he crouches down, like he’s in a battlefield bunker, stops to catch his breath. He’s got to give up those damn Old Gold cigarettes.

  Chick glances farther up the lawn, spies a few men enjoying cigars in the night air near the back entrance of the hotel. They shouldn’t be a problem. By the time they figure out what’s going on, he’ll be in his car. Out of the corner of his eye, he spies a lone figure—a man—walking down the Cliff Walk.

  He’s gotta move. Now.

  Chick scurries around to the other side of the tent, hastily begins untying two of the ropes securing the flaps together. The first comes apart fairly quickly. But the second is knotted more tightly, and as he sits on his haunches, camera at his side, he struggles to undo it.

  Damn it!

  Rustling. Is someone coming across the lawn?

  The knot finally loosens, and he grabs at it, quickly pulls the flaps apart. He picks up the Hawkeye and charges into the side of the tent, right behind Betty and Griff.

  “Say cheese, Betty!” he thunders, and as Betty and Griff spin around in stunned surprise, Chick Kaisinger begins clicking his camera, the flashbulb blinding them as assorted guests look over, curious about the unfolding scene.

  He’s gotten off three, maybe four frames when he feels a hand at the back of his collar, jerking him off balance. He whirls around, still holding the camera, and sees sheer fury in Eddie Tate’s eyes.

  Chick never sees the punch coming, just feels the spray of blood explode from his nose and onto the expensive dresses of two nearby matrons, who howl in horror.

  A few male guests charge in to break up the ruckus just as Eddie rips the camera out of Chick’s hands, raises it, and smashes it onto the dance floor. The orchestra stops, women start screaming, men yell, swarms of costumed guests descend on the scene from every direction. A thickset man dressed as a sea captain grabs Eddie from behind, barks, “Easy there, fella!” Chick is on the ground, frantically searching for his handkerchief to staunch the bleeding.

  All the while Betty has been frozen, trying to sort out the bedlam erupting around her. She spies Ciji, both hands holding up her gown, furiously charging over from the far end of the tent toward them, then spins back to see Eddie being roughhoused. Instinctively she cries out, “Eddie! No, no!”

  Griff’s hand clenches her arm with the force of a leg iron.

  His eyes whirl about the room as the voices explode.

  They’re coming for you. Look at them coming!

  They’re going to strap you back onto that table and throw the switch.

  They want to kill you. All of them. They’re all in on it.

  He looks over at Betty, disbelieving.

  Her! It’s her! She’s leading them!

  “How could you?” he asks.

  “Darling, I don’t know who that man with the camera is! I—”

  He jerks her to him, circles his arm tightly around her waist as more guests pour in around them to check out all of the commotion. “We’re leaving,” he whispers.

  She shakes her head. “No, Griff, no . . .”

  As he forcefully backs them away from the tumult, he removes the gun from the back of his waistband, throws his hand inside his jacket, the barrel now pointed directly at her. “Don’t make me do it, Betty. I don’t want to. But I will.”

  “Griff, please! I’m begging you!”

  Griff glares over at Eddie, who is trying to extricate himself from the grip of the sea captain. Griff recognizes him. The guy Betty was hugging by the water. “Or maybe I should just point this at your friend over there.”

  “No!” she screams, but in the chaos her protest goes unheard. “All right, Griff, all right. Let’s just stay calm. We’ll go. Just you and me.”

  A bunch of older gentlemen have now removed their masks and are barking questions, demanding an explanation, as their flustered wives attend to the two hysterical women with the bloodstained clothing. The orchestra conductor, momentarily befuddled by the hubbub, commands his musicians to their feet and strikes up a muscular version of “The Merry Widow Waltz” in an effort to restore civility. Mrs. Hensley flies about like a squawking blackbird, ordering ice, towels, first aid. Ciji tries to elbow her way through the thickening throng to reach Betty and Griff. In all of the chaos, she momentarily loses sight of them.

  When her view finally clears, they’re gone.

  ༶

  Betty’s body floods with panic as Griff prods her through the open flap in the tent, then hurries them down the rear slope of the lawn toward the Cliff Walk. The moon-washed water of the Sound ripples in the moonlight, and Betty wonders if this expanse of beauty is the last thing she will ever see. An image of her mother, doubled over in grief, rams into her brain, and the brute force of it almost knocks her over. She barks out a keening sob.

  They reach the Cliff Walk by the slope that curves down twenty feet to the water and rocks below. It is not an imposing cliff, like those of Amalfi or Moher or Malta or the imaginations of the Brontës. It is quieter, more expansive, more horizontal in scope. On another night, in another moment, it is a place for possibility and romance. But it is not another night. It is now, where her world has come crashing down from every corner.

  “You’re right,” Griff says, his chest heaving, the gun now out, pointed directly at her. “You told me all along she was bad, she was out to get me, she was lying. Why didn’t I listen to you? Why do I not listen to you?!”

  He’s answering the voices out loud.

  He’s gone.

  Betty takes a small step toward him, then jumps back as he waves the gun wildly in her direction. “Griff, you must listen to me. The voices, they aren’t real. I am real. We are real. You must believe me, you must fight back—”

  “Shut up! Shut up! You were going to betray me! You just wanted your picture in a magazine! You were going to leave me there, run
away with that other man, weren’t you? Just go! Just leave me! Admit it! Admit it!”

  “Griff, I don’t even know—”

  He steadies the gun, points it right at her. “You knew his name!”

  Her knees fail her, and in a combination of fatigue and despair she collapses onto the Walk, mewling, too tired to think anymore, too tired to fight. Regret swamps and drowns her. “Oh, Griff, my sweet Griff . . .” she whispers, clutching at herself in grief—for what she’s done, for this illness she has awakened that now roars inside of him, for the suffering she’s caused with her selfishness.

  And then another voice, calm, steady, from farther down the Walk, growing slightly louder. “Griffin,” it says slowly, almost trance-like. “Griffin, it’s Mother, sweetheart. Mother’s here. Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be all right now.”

  Griff turns and cocks the gun, directs it toward his own mother, who now stands regally a few yards away, leaning on her walking stick. But it is his voice—suddenly equally calm, strong, clear, dispassionate—that terrifies Betty more than anything. “Not another step, Mother. I mean it.”

  “Griffin, I need to talk to you. Just you and I. Let Betty go, and we’ll talk all of this through, sort all of it out. All of this unpleasantness is past now. I’ve come to take you home, to get you well again.”

  Ciji drifts up a few feet behind Honor. She says nothing, but her eyes confess their own abject fear.

  “Stand back!” Griff yells out. “You, too!” he says, pointing to Ciji. “Nobody takes another step, or—”

  He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Honor and Ciji freeze.

  For a while the only sounds are the whistle of the breeze coming off the water and the waves gently washing up on the rocks below. In the distance there is the lilting music of the orchestra, the din of the party once again building inside the tent. The show always goes on.

  Betty remains on her knees, trying to catch her breath, willing herself to summon something inside she doesn’t even know if she possesses. Her breath is shallow, staccato, as she gazes out onto the Sound. I have to do something. I got us all into this. I have to try to get us out. I owe it to them.

  She looks up at Griff, his face a twisted map of torture and anguish. She can see his lips moving, rapidly muttering responses to the voices.

  I owe it to him.

  “Do you know the moment I fell in love with you?” she asks.

  “Be quiet,” he snaps, but there is something, a yearning, in his voice that reveals him, that says, Tell me.

  “It was that first night we met,” she says, staring up at him, her eyes shining. “That night we first met, and you whisked me away from the horrible mixer for the contestants and we went to the restaurant and you ate half the menu and I had to eat a lousy shrimp cocktail. Do you remember?”

  Griff keeps babbling to himself, keeps the gun aloft, though it seems to be getting heavier in his hand, painstakingly lowering, half inch by half inch. He does not respond to her. But he does not tell her to stop talking, either.

  “That’s when you told me about the sunflowers, and how they can only go to very special girls. And I so wanted to be your special girl. I could feel myself falling in love, right there sitting at the table, looking into your eyes. You were the most charming boy I’d ever met.”

  A tear splashes down his cheek.

  “You felt it, too. At least I hoped you did. I think that’s why I ended up winning Miss America, you see: because I didn’t care about it. I was relaxed, I was me, I came out of my shell that week with you, I found the girl hiding inside, the girl you brought out with your heart. And she was spunky and high-spirited, and she sat at a nightclub and listened to the boy she loved sing her a song he wrote just for her. Do you remember it?” She begins singing. “ ‘I was searching, for so long . . . though I kinda didn’t even really know it . . .’ ”

  She crosses both her hands over her heart. “I’ve made mistakes, my darling. And you got hurt in the process, and I am so, so very sorry for that. You can’t imagine how sorry I am. Because the only thing I have ever wanted—the thing I wished for when I sent that penny into the wishing well outside the restaurant—was for you to love me. You must believe me. You must!”

  Griff remains still, begins sobbing. Whispers, “Oh, Betty . . .”

  It is Ciji who spies him first, emerging out of the shadows behind Griff and Betty.

  Eddie.

  He moves furtively, skulking up from behind.

  One step. Stop.

  Three more steps. Stop.

  Honor sees him, too, but her face betrays nothing. Her eyes remain squarely fixed on her son. She is trying to reach him as she has always strived to reach him, her little boy lost, scared and alone in a horrible and confusing world of angry noise.

  “My sweet son, you’re not alone,” Honor says, once more taking slow, cautious steps toward him. “Give Mother the gun, sweetheart.” She extends her hand out, reaches toward him. She is now only a few feet away.

  And this is when it happens.

  This is when Griff attempts to shake out the voices, shake away his tears, and in the process from the corner of his eye he catches sight of the figure behind him, spies Eddie Tate running at full bore toward him, about to pounce, as Honor rushes in from the front, hands outstretched, reaching out for the barrel of the revolver.

  “Betrayed,” Griff whispers, as Betty shrieks “No!!” from her knees.

  And Eddie is just a bit too late, because before he can get to him, Griffin McAllister raises his gun, points it directly at his mother, and pulls the trigger.

  Thirty

  April 1950

  The car hums through the thicket of towering trees on the other side; the road seems to stretch forever, one long line going on and on toward the horizon. Her eyes feel heavy, both from the length of the trip—she alighted from a two-hour bus ride, only to walk through the bus terminal, push out onto the sidewalk, and open the passenger door of a sedan and settle in for another long journey—and from the gravity of the last six months. Betty thought once she left Newport it would be over. It wasn’t.

  The irony had been that the ridiculous plan had almost worked.

  Almost.

  If only Betty could have pleaded a bit longer. If only Eddie had leapt a second sooner.

  If only Betty had defied her mother and never entered Miss Delaware, almost a year ago now.

  She had looked on, powerless and aghast, as Griff had aimed the Browning at his mother and fired. It wasn’t for several minutes before she realized that Honor had moved—either flinched or been pushed by Ciji, she still wasn’t certain—just inches enough to the left so that the bullet rocketed into her shoulder rather than her heart. She left her feet from the force of the shot, tumbling backwards onto the Cliff Walk as Betty screamed and Ciji screamed and Eddie tackled Griff to the ground a few seconds too late, the gun skittering across the Walk and down the cliff side.

  So many people. Hotel guests, curious partygoers, Mrs. Hensley, Honor’s driver. The police were on the scene instantly, the price of splashing blood onto the expensive gowns of two socialites. That was the problem with the rich: when they are compromised or inconvenienced, they instantly telephone the police. Then came the medics and the Newport city detectives, astonished to find out they had America’s most famous missing couple in their midst. And then there had been Chick Kaisinger, who through his bandaged nose had managed to dictate a story to the Atlantic City Press that was soon racing its way across the wire services. The jig was up.

  Honor had been taken away by ambulance to the hospital, leaving a helpless Betty to try to ensure that Griff was not lost in the chaos. It was Eddie who had come to her rescue, as he had so many times in the previous weeks, explaining Griff’s condition and getting him whisked away in his own ambulance before any ravenous reporters had been able to feast.

  She’d spent the night at police headquarters, saying little, sitting in a small windowless room wrapped in a bla
nket, waiting for judgment. It came the next morning when her parents had arrived, their joint expression one of relief and fury. Her father had taken control, hired an attorney to represent her as they attempted to sort out the whole sordid mess. Her mother had appeared stricken, her thin pink lips set tightly above her rock-set jaw, a veil of bitter disappointment draped across her eyes like a lace curtain. Life would churn slowly onward, never as good as it was or should have been, Betty’s disgrace a stain on the family that would fade but never quite be scrubbed out.

  The FBI had come, two detectives from Atlantic City had come, and Honor McAllister’s private detectives had given statements. It had taken days—and, Betty suspects, significant money from her father to various parties, none of it recorded—to unravel it all. The subsequent press accounts had been lurid, and that was with most of the details still kept under wraps. At least Miss Slaughter had not come. That might have been enough to end Betty for certain.

  They’d indeed given her title to Eleanor Wyatt, Miss Texas, who said all of the appropriate things about wanting to be an example to young women around the country. A twelve-minute press conference was held where Betty’s name was mentioned only once, by a Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reporter who was quickly hustled out onto the street for violating Miss Slaughter’s command about inquiring about She Who Must Never Be Mentioned Again.

  Betty understood. What she could not understand was the relentlessness of the newsmen, their fedoras tilted up on their foreheads like baseball caps, who had sat parked outside her house, day after day, week after week, yelling at her through the dining room windows, who dropped off disingenuous letters and cards promising that they only wanted to get the story right, that America’s readers had a right to know how she was and that she had some sort of moral duty to tell them. That by betraying their trust the night she won Miss America, she now owed them repentant piety and moral rectitude in return.

  And where were her friends? Ciji had sent a few letters from California, where Hollywood had been piqued by her supporting role in the real-life drama. Betty had felt too depressed, and too guilty, to reply. Patsy had drifted away, miffed about being kept afar from the spectacle. There was no way Betty could return to Towson, walk the campus as every head turned, every mouth whispered. Her brothers had been, bless them, surprisingly protective of her, as if she were made of glass. But the house was now a prison. This was her first day out in months.