When Polly looked up again Karen -was once more clapping and shouting to get the attention of the group. “We haven't done the final tabulation, folks. This is complicated. But we do have some lists to start passing out. When we call your name, please come to the front.”
Polly watched the girls who got called dispersing through the crowd, waving their flapping trophies. She caught sight of a couple of the lists. Each showed at least five agents. All the girls were gathering around, wanting to know. One girl's list fluttered by and Polly saw she had at least twenty names.
What if Polly didn't get any? What if she didn't get any paper at all? Would she just go back to her room and pack her suitcase to go home? She tried to gauge her own level of disappointment, but she was preoccupied with thinking about Genevieve and her mom and she couldn't quite discover it.
More girls. More lists. She saw longer ones, shorter ones. One had meetings listed all the way to the bottom of the page and continuing on the back. Would that girl be the one who got the shopping spree and the TV tryout and her pictures in the magazine? Would she be the one whose name was announced as the -winner?
What would it be like to be that girl? Polly tried to imagine it, but she stopped, because she couldn't. She wondered if her mother -was waiting for her.
When Polly heard her name called, she didn't recognize it at first. It didn't sound like her name in this setting.
“Polly!” Mandy shouted. She gave Polly a thumbs- up.
Polly stumbled to the front. Karen's assistant folded the paper and handed it to her. “Nice work,” she said generously.
Polly was suddenly afraid to open it. Had the other girls’ sheets been folded? She wished she was half a foot taller than the rest of these girls rather than half a foot shorter so they could all look in. You had more privacy when you were tall. She opened the paper a little and peered in.
There was a name. There was a meeting. There was just one, but there wasn't none.
She held the paper tightly in her hand as she went back to her chair. The paper -was damply -wrinkled as she opened it again and studied it more closely. She had a meeting -with a person named Rod Meyers at 2:10 in Meeting Room 4. Was he an actual agent? Or a talent scout? Did he -work for one of the big companies the other girls talked about?
Maybe Genevieve and her friend -were -wrong. Maybe Rod Meyers saw something in Polly that Genevieve and the others had missed.
Polly had a meeting. Just one. But one was a number. It was an infinite amount more than none.
Ama surprised herself again by getting teary -when she was saying good- bye. Especially with Maureen. Even -with Carly. She tried not to show it. She promised Carly she would stay in touch and she really meant it. Now that Ama knew Carly hadn't made out with Noah, Carly's penchant for making out with everyone else didn't seem so problematic.
Noah kissed her, even though everyone could see. She caught Maureen smiling and blushed.
“Write me an e-mail tonight when you get home,” Noah whispered. She liked his breath against her ear. It made her shiver.
“I will,” she said.
Later, Ama sat on the plane, enjoying the neatness of it, loving the feeling of going home. She sank back into her seat with a sweet exhaustion, thinking about her parents and Bob. She thought of Esi. She kept thinking of Jo and Polly.
Ama looked down at her thighs on the seat, proud of how much stronger and more muscular they were than -when she'd started. She examined the delicate ballet flat at the end of each of her legs. She'd been so excited for -weeks about putting on her favorite shoes again, but now they struck her as trendy and insufficient.
In wonderment at herself, she stood up and opened her overhead, rummaged around in her pack, and took out her boots. She put them on.
She walked up and down the aisle in her boots. She couldn't sit still. She was burning to talk about Noah. She was burning to tell about her rappel and Carly, and Maureen and the view from the top of the cliff. And Noah.
She had expected she'd want to call Grace as soon as she got back, but it wasn't really Grace she wanted to tell. She pictured Grace's surprise and disapproval at the idea of her having a boyfriend. Grace was pretty judgmental about girls who had boyfriends. “You notice it's the girls with boyfriends who always bomb the bio quizzes,” Grace had said to her last year. Ama shook her head. Really it was Polly and Jo she wanted to talk to.
Jo finally reached her mom on her cell phone to tell her she didn't want to go back to the beach house.
“Dad says it's okay if I stay. The summer's almost over anyway.”
“What about your job?” her mom asked. She was in the car on her -way back from Baltimore.
“It's over.”
“It is?”
Jo stood at her bedroom window and watched her father in the backyard pulling -weeds from the garden. He was wearing flowered gardening gloves.
Jo didn't feel like holding back from her mother at that moment. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“I got fired.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yes. I dropped a tray full of glasses of red wine and cranberry juice on four customers.”
“Oh, Jo.”
“The glasses shattered and wine went everywhere.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yep. And one of the customers was a pregnant lady in a white dress.”
Her mom made an unexpected sound, and it took Jo a second to recognize that it was a laugh. It was a nice sound.
Jo laughed too. “Not even you could have gotten that dress clean.”
Jo decided not to explain that Effie had pushed her or the reason -why Effie had pushed her. That was a less funny story for another time.
Their laughter -was like a blossom, lovely but short- lived. When it faded the silence stole in.
“Can I tell you something?” her mom asked.
“Of course,” Jo said.
“I'm going to look at an apartment in the Bethesda Tower on Friday.”
“Dad told me that,” Jo said.
“Did he?”
“Yeah. He said usually the woman stays in the house and the man moves into an apartment, but that you wanted an apartment and he realized he wanted the house.”
“You'll still be with me every other -week,” her mom said. “We'll be at the new apartment together.”
“I know. He said that too.”
“It's not permanent. Not at all. But for now I could use something smaller and more manageable. It'll be a lot easier to keep clean.”
Jo nodded without saying anything. Out her window she watched her father pouring soil around the azalea bushes and getting a lot of it on his feet. She wondered if he had fired the gardening service, because in spite of his weeding, it all looked quite lush and overgrown.
“And it won't have the … memories,” her mother said.
Jo pressed her palm against the window glass. “I know,” she said. She remembered the week after Finn died, her mother on her knees on the old rug in Finn's room trying to scrub out the stains.
•••
Polly went up to the hotel room. Her mother -wasn't there.
Polly brushed her hair and her teeth. Her ice- skating dress was scratchy and uncomfortable, but she felt like she should keep it on until after the meeting.
At two o'clock she went downstairs and stood outside Meeting Room 4. When it was her turn to go in, her hands -were nervous and cold as she reached out to shake with Mr. Meyers.
“And you are …” He looked down at his paper.
“Polly,” she said. “Polly Winchell.”
“Right,” he said. “Why don't you sit down?” He gave her a big, very -white smile.
“Okay.” She sat. Her posture -was straight.
“Polly, go ahead and smile for me, -would you?” He -was leaning forward a bit, looking at her closely.
Self- consciously, Polly smiled a small smile. She thought of-what the -woman, Genevieve s friend, had said
about her teeth. Polly reminded herself that she should not smile big anymore. She should smile small from now on and keep her teeth in her mouth.
“A little more,” he said.
Polly didn't -want to smile more. It -was so unnatural in the circumstance it felt to her like a grimace or a leer.
He nodded. “Polly, I think I could really help you out.”
“Really?” she said.
“Yes. Do you know what I do?”
“Aren't you a—”
“I'm a cosmetic orthodontist. One of the best in the business. I've fixed a lot of very famous teeth, a lot of faces you would recognize, but confidentiality prevents me from naming them. Not everybody starts with perfect teeth, right? But there are things we can do. Even in the most difficult cases.”
Polly watched his mouth. He had very large, square teeth, and he was saying such unexpected things, she couldn't make sense of them. He worked on people's teeth? He was some kind of an agent who worked on people's teeth? Did that make any sense?
“Are—are you some kind of agent?” she asked.
He laughed. “No, but I do have contacts. Polly, the kind of work I do can make all the difference in getting an agent. That's why I -wanted to meet with you.” He clicked his pen and began -writing. “Polly, I see here you live in—”
“So you aren't an agent at all.”
“No.”
“You're a dentist.”
“An orthodontist.”
“Oh.”
“One of the best. I'm very -well known in my field, as you'll discover if—”
“And you -wanted to meet -with me because—”
“Because I think I could really help you through ortho-dontia.”
“Because of my overbite?” she asked. Her voice had gotten very quiet.
“Yes. I can see it's a difficult case. It's clear you have an overbite and a lateral misalignment. That won't work in front of a camera, of course. You'll need to take care of that if you want a career.”
“And you can take care of it?” she said numbly.
“Yes. I can. It sounds drastic, Polly, but we'll need to break and reset your jaw. You see, that way we can address the most serious issues. We can really change the shape of your face.”
Polly sat blinking. She heard with her ears and she thought with her mind, but she couldn't get the two to go together.
“Polly, we could have you back here competing next year to win,” he said with a confident nod. He considered for a moment. “Well, realistically, probably more like two years.”
Polly stared at him in bewilderment. “You would break my jaw?”
“I know it sounds—”
Polly stood up. “Thank you,” she said.
“Let me give you my card,” he said.
“No, thank you,” she said.
•••
Luckily the meetings were done for the day in Meeting Room 8. Polly closed the door behind her and sat down in the corner. She put her knees up and rested her head on them. At first she sat quietly and after that she cried. She thought she cried for a long time, but she wasn't sure. There were no clocks or windows in Meeting Room 8.
When she pulled herself together, she navigated the halls back to the lobby and up to the hotel room. Once again, there was no sign of Dia, -which -was probably just as well.
Polly flopped facedown onto the bed. Her cheek pressed into the thick polyester cover. It reminded her of the texture and pattern of her ice- skating dress. She thought of her mother and Genevieve. She thought of lurching down the runway on her four- inch heels. She felt her tears sinking directly into the bedspread, leaving no evidence they had ever been cried.
Polly let a snuffle out of her nose, but to her surprise it sounded more like a laugh than a cry. She felt her rib cage shaking, and it took her a second to realize it wasn't sobs. She thought of Rod Meyers s teeth. They were funny.
Am I laughing? she wondered. I think I am. She laughed until her tears stopped. She reached for a tissue on the bedside table and blew her nose.
She lay down, this time on her back. She looked at the cottage- cheese ceiling and the dead bug in the light fixture. “What was I thinking?” she shouted straight upward.
She took a deep breath and sat up. She felt the sense of rising from a dream.
She went into the bathroom and gratefully shed the alien clothes. She quickly showered off the sooty makeup and the hair spray. She watched it all loop down the drain, feeling like she was changing out of a costume she'd worn in a very long play. She put on her soft, plain clothes.
Her vision cleared as she went down in the elevator and walked through the lobby. She had more than an hour before she was supposed to meet Dia and take the train home.
She felt grateful for her flat, comfortable shoes. She wanted to walk. She walked along Forty- fifth Street and turned onto Fifth Avenue. She kept careful track of her turns so she could find her -way back.
She saw everything together and nothing in particular. She took in the colorful rush, the multitude of faces, the shiny surfaces of buildings and cars. The sounds wove together into a giant hum in her ears. The world seemed to get bigger and wider as it washed around her. She looked up at the tops of buildings poking at the clouds.
Polly had the strange sensation that she had been living in a tunnel, watching it get dimmer and narrower day by day. And now, suddenly, it was blown open and the world was all around her, just as big as it had always been, and she was part of it again. She had to ask herself, God, what was I doing in there so long? She had to ask herself, How lonely have I been?
She tried out a thought: she was never going to be a model. Never, never. Even if she did look like her grandmother. She was never going to be tall enough or flat enough. She was never going to be the kind of person -who didn't stick out in all directions. To want it was the same as hating herself. That was the truth.
She breathed those words. She could have repeated them a hundred times and they wouldn't have hurt any -worse. Reality was stubborn for sure, but it was large and it had possibilities. It was a sweet relief when you let it come.
In the days since Polly and Dia had returned from New York, Dia hadn't gone to her studio. It was strange for Polly to leave for her first babysitting job of the day with her mother sleeping and come home to have her mother still there, sometimes still sleeping, sometimes watching television, and sometimes just sitting on the screened porch doing nothing.
It was kind of a fantasy at first. Polly had always wished her mother -would stay home. She'd dreamed of a mother -who made her lunch and wanted to be called Mom. But by the third day of Dias being home, Polly felt a little spooked by it. Dia wasn't making her lunch or renting movies for them to watch together. She was just lying around.
“Jo called,” Dia told her when she got home on the second day. Dia looked uncommonly pleased. It hadn't been lost on her that Jo didn't call much anymore. Dia paid more attention to some things than Polly realized. “She said she's home from the beach. She wants you to call.”
Polly wasn't sure. Did Jo really want her to call? And if Polly did call back, -which Jo would she get? The Jo who had kicked her to the curb or the Jo who was sorry? Getting discarded by Jo felt bad, but getting the benefit of Jo's guilt didn't feel much better.
On the third day, Polly came home from the Rollinses’ in the middle of the day and Dia was lying on the couch. “Ama came by,” Dia reported.
“She did? She's home?”
“She just got home. She wants to see you. She looked great.”
“Really?” Polly pictured Ama and she felt a pang.
“Yes, go call her.”
Polly didn't make a move toward the phone. She was happy to think of Ama, but she didn't want to be disappointed by her.
“Are you okay?” Polly asked Dia.
Dia shrugged. “Just feeling tired,” she said.
Polly wanted to ask -why she wasn't going to her studio as she'd done roughly every single day for the la
st fourteen years, but she was afraid to. “I have another babysitting job this afternoon,” Polly said. “I have to go in a couple of minutes.” Did Dia wish she would stay? Was she lonely? Polly didn't know how to ask.
“Okay” Dia said. She lay on the couch -while Polly changed out of the shirt that Nicky had spilled yogurt on and drank a glass of water.
“Call your friends!” Dia shouted after Polly as Polly walked out the door.
It was late by the time Polly returned from the Thomases’ house. She was tired from her long day of babysitting, but she'd stopped by Dias favorite café on the way home and picked up two chocolate éclairs. It was a nice feeling, coming home to someone.
It was dark out, but as she approached the house, she saw that Dias bedroom light was still on. Maybe they could watch TV together for a -while. Maybe they could hunker down under Dias special chenille blanket and make snide comments about the amateur singers and dancers on the reality shows. Dia had always enjoyed that. “You need to learn how to be more judgmental,” Dia had said to Polly the last time they'd -watched.
Usually Dia -was too tired at night to -watch TV -with Polly. Usually she came home from the studio and practically passed out on the couch or in bed. But for the past few days it seemed like she'd done almost nothing but sleep. She must have caught up by now.
“Dia?” Polly said as she let herself in the door.
The house was quiet. Polly put her bag down in the front hall. The house looked messy and dusty, more so than usual, even in the dark.
“Hey, Dia?” She wasn't asleep already, was she?
Polly ran upstairs, carrying the bag of éclairs along -with her. Her mom loved eating in bed.
“Dia?”
Polly's heart started beating faster before she'd even turned the corner into her mother's room. Why -wasn't she answering?
The TV was on, loud. Two candles spluttered on the dresser. The light was on and Dia was sprawled in her chair. There was a glass next to her on the table, a bottle of wine and an empty bottle of vodka tipped over on the carpet.
“Dia?” Polly went over to her mother and prodded her. “Hey. Are you asleep? I brought you chocolate éclairs.”
3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows Page 18