Authors: David Marlow
Amy doodled while Ro-Anne demonstrated.
The cheerleaders then ran off, single file, still clapping, still yea-yea-ing. An aroused audience cheered its approval.
The program ended after the singing of the alma mater, and students were told to report to second period class.
Disoriented, Guy got lost in the flow of traffic, briefly enjoying the anonymity. He ascended the mobbed Up staircase to the second floor. When he turned the corner, he saw them coming down the hall.
Corky and Ro-Anne.
Freezing, Guy stared. To be blessed with so much happiness …
Corky and Ro-Anne strolled down the corridor hand-in-hand. The aura from their cosmic harmony almost glowed as they greeted passing friends.
Guy wished he could run over and join the others greeting Corky. He wanted to be part of their group. To be cool. To be one of the boys, one of the cats. To be Corky.
No doubt about it. He was in love.
As Corky and Ro-Anne passed, Guy stood straight and offered his warmest smile, hoping by off-chance one of them might smile back, that a drop of their radiance might fall to him. Hey! Over here! Look this way! Please.
But, with eyes only for each other, they passed without noticing. As they wandered off into Paradise, Guy slouched into Social Studies.
THE WOMEN IN THE LIVING ROOM
looked up from their canasta tournament and four voices spoke at once: “Amy, you’re home!” “How was school?” “How nice she looks!” “Try a sandwich!”
Amy greeted her mother and “the girls,” then excused herself. She had homework.
“First day of school and already she has homework?” Mrs. Kessler, apartment 3-F, thought it odd.
“That’s a bright cookie, that one is!” Mrs. Fine from down the hall rearranged her hearts.
“Better not to be so bright a cookie!” Mrs. Abrams, 2-D, put down her cards. “Better she should find a man and let him be bright for both of them.”
Amy’s mother picked up a porcelain dish of tiny candies and offered it around the circle. “Mints?”
In her room Amy quickly got her chemistry, French and English assignments out of the way and then whipped together her article on the opening day assembly.
Homework was easy. Had always been easy. Even when everything else was not.
Determined to shed summer flab, Coach Petrillo stretched and strained his athletes. Twice more around the track at a fast jog and into the showers. It was five o’clock.
Corky showered and dressed quickly. His body ached and he looked forward to a big meal. He wasn’t interested in the water fight or towel snappings going on between Butch Fowler and some of his junior varsity pals.
No one dared douse or snap at Corky when he wasn’t in a playful mood. And to be sure, Corky was not in a playful mood. His concentration was intently, exclusively, focused on football.
Out of the locker room in fifteen minutes, he jogged to his dilapidated thirdhand ‘52 Chevy convertible. Pulling into his driveway seven minutes later, he parked behind his father’s bought-on-time Edsel. Damn! His old man was already home and that meant they’d go through one of their reunion routines. Though exhausted, Corky decided to make a show of it anyway. His father would like that. He counted on it.
By the time Corky slammed the Chevy door, Carl Henderson was well past the screen door, barreling straight toward the gravel driveway.
“There’s my boy!” Carl sounded the war cry as he plowed into his son, throwing Corky to the ground.
His mother Dora ran out too, as always. A small woman, she yelled at them to stop fighting … the neighbors might think they were serious.
Carl and Corky wrestled around the front lawn for a few minutes until, bored with the ordeal, Corky decided to let his father pin him.
“Uncle?” Carl pushed his son’s face into the grass.
Corky gritted his teeth.
“Uncle!?” Carl shoved the handsome face deeper into the ground.
“Uncle.”
“Get off him, Carl!” Dora pleaded from the driveway. “He’s turning blue, for God’s sake!”
A grin spread across his beet-red face, Carl Henderson relaxed his grip and stood up. Corky spat out a few blades of grass.
His father extended his arm, helped him up and the two of them walked into the house. Dora followed close behind, her face turned to the ground, as if she was expecting to pick up missing pieces.
“Didn’t hurt ya, did I?” Carl proudly put an arm around his boy.
“No, Dad. You didn’t hurt me.”
“I’m still the toughest, huh? Gotta get up pretty damn early to beat Carl Henderson, ain’t that right?”
“Pretty damn early,” his son agreed.
“You’re just in time,” chirped Birdie as Guy walked through the kitchen door. “Where’ve you been all afternoon? This cherry crumb pie could really be something. I used three eggs instead of one, and two less teaspoons sugar. The idea is to make us appreciate the natural tartness of the canned cherries.”
Guy’s mother pressed a firm finger on the boy’s shoulder and sat him on one of three stools at the kitchen counter. “Just take a small taste, I wouldn’t want you ruining whatever appetite you might have for dinner.” She placed a piece of pie on a plate and presented it to him with a glass of Coca-Cola. “Don’t mince words. Tell me where I’ve gone wrong.” Guy bit into the dessert.
“Well?” prompted Birdie anxiously, her fingers crossed.
“Too soggy,” said Guy, after due consideration. “Take out the extra eggs, put back the sugar.” He took a sip of Coke.
“That’s what I figured.” Birdie moped back to the enormous refrigerator to start all over again.
Guy picked up the remaining portion of his pie and the gla
ss of
soda and took them both to the sink, then kissed his mother on the cheek and hurried upstairs.
Guy was careful about how his free time was spent. He allocated hours and allowances into three priorities.
The first was the movies—every weekend, a must.
Second was photography. Guy drained his savings and cajoled his parents into helping him purchase the extensive supplies and secondhand equipment that kept him locked up for hours, shooting, processing, enlarging.
Last, not least, came the fish. Tropical. Guy could sit, his nose inches from the glass of his fifteen-gallon tank, staring for hours.
While the rest of his family was downstairs watching “Bonanza,” Guy was upstairs, watching his fish. He was always cleaning the filter or changing the color of the gravel or rearranging the plant life inside his private aquatic world.
Besides some thirty guppies, there lived an angel fish named Gabriel and a kissing gourami named Romeo. There was a snail that diligently sucked up algae, a catfish who worked overtime scrubbing the slimy bottom, and even a slinky salamander which just snuck about, a miniature Loch Ness Monster named Irving. Guy was fond of them all.
He was, in fact, so preoccupied with his films, his fish, his photography that there just seemed no time left to have friends.
Staying young and beautiful was no easy business.
First came the leg raises. Three sets. Then shoulder twists and hip bumps against the wall. Then, after rocking from thigh to thigh and crawling across the floor, bosom stretches and tummy tightenings.
Monday evening, and a pooped Ro-Anne was working out.
She steamed her face, shaved her legs, clipped her toenails and tweezed her eyebrows. She shampooed and conditioned her hair in the sink, then wrapped it all up in a fluffy white towel.
Next, with Albolene greased all over her face, she fell into a bubble bath and polished her fingernails.
Half an hour later Ro-Anne sat at her vanity table, gazing at a freshly laundered image. She had to set her hair in bobby pins and curlers, but not before her nightly one hundred strokes. She picked up her hairbrush. One, two, three—thank God for her beauty. Seven, eight, nine—she’d always have that. Always—’leven, twelve, thirteen—What in the world, she wondered, did less attractive girls do with their lives? Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four …
Ro-Anne stroked her hair, and as she did so her thoughts drifted, allowing past to become present—thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight. She stared at her reflection, remembering… .
Wherever Ro-Anne Sommers looked, bright lights burned her eyes, made her skin itch beneath her white tulle dress. The pressure was on.
Determined not to squint, not to scratch, she smiled.
Drops of perspiration, tiny beads, popped out on her forehead. No, she thought. Don’t. Whatever you do, don’t sweat. You’ll ruin everything.
She stopped sweating, and continued smiling.
Stretching the sides of her mouth she let everyone see each of her splendid teeth. She kept her back straight, shoulders high, feet pointed forward. The lights blinded and cooked. Still, she smiled.
The emcee moved slowly to the microphone, center stage.
Ro-Anne and the other contestants stiffened.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” announced the emcee. “I have in my hand the names of the five finalists!”
Drum roll.
Ro-Anne steadied herself and remembered her rules of poise, grace, position and stance. What to do when she became a finalist. Where to walk. How to freeze a smile and show excitement for others if she didn’t make it… .
Didn’t make it?
How could she not? Round blue sparkling eyes. Patrician nose, stolen from a museum. Sensuous lips, shining in the glimmer of raspberry-ruby lipstick. Teeth, whiter than winter. Skin, soft alabaster, rouged just enough on high cheekbones for an innocent blush. Golden hair, not a strand out of place, shimmering beneath the hot lights.
And of course the perfectly proportioned body. Ro-Anne knew from the judges’ smiles how high she’d scored in the swimsuit competition.
And of course the intelligence displayed during her interview: “J
plan to become a nurse in order to relieve some of the suffering in the world”
“
Fourth runner-up!” announced the emcee, himself now beginning to sweat. “Linda Miller, Miss Ulbright County!”
Linda Miller s hands flew to her face. Walking forward to the winner s circle, she received her bouquet of flowers and stood, toes pointing.
Nine remaining finalists moved, as previously instructed, closer together, filling Lindas gap. Behind them stood the forty other contestants, losers all, who had failed to make it to the top ten.
“Third runner-up!” barked the emcee, a handkerchief wiping his brow. Breathless, the entire auditorium waited. “Ida Davenport. Miss Tappan County.”
Finalists on either side of Ida Davenport screamed with delight. Miss Tappan County forced a smile and moved to the winners circle. She had expected nothing less than the winner’s spot.
Eight girls moved closer together, all smiles. Ro-Anne felt a tightening knot encircle her stomach.
Three to go. She had to be one of them. It was always the winner and two runners-up who got their pictures in the papers. She had to get there. She’d come too far, had won too many preliminaries to lose now.
“Second runner-up!” The emcee sweated. A smiling Ro-Anne braced herself. “Lois Worthington, Miss Sullivan County!”
Touched and thrilled, Lois Worthington accepted hugs, kisses and broke into streams of tears as she joined the winners’ circle.
The seven remaining finalists again inched closer together, eyeing each other, smiles in place.
Ro-Anne worried. What if she didn’t get into the top five at all? What if she had to settle for being a dumpy semi-finalist? She’d kill herself, she really would.
“Ladies and gentlemen … the first runner-up!” Sweat from the emcee’s brow dripped onto the microphone. Butterflies invaded the auditorium, tickling everyone’s insides. “Mary Liggett, Miss Cisco County!”
Mary Liggett hollered and jumped in the air—a clear loss of poise and control, a clear case of bad taste.
Hugs and kisses, congratulations and tears, and Mary joined the winning beauties.
This was it. Down to the wire. One to go.
The six remaining girls broke formation. No longer tall and stoic, they reached out and held on to each other.
Ro-Anne squeezed the hand of the girl crunched next to her and prayed. God, let me win. Please, God, don’t make me a semi-finalist. Please. This is only the regional round-up, if I don’t win this I can’t go on to the nationals next month… .
No matter what happened, though, she knew she couldn’t cry. Her mascara would run and ruin everything.
Please, God, please. Don’t let my mascara run!
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new Little Miss Eastern United States …” Not a sound in the hall, not a breath. “From the Long Island town of Waterfield, New York … Ladies and gentlemen, Ro-Anne Sommers, MissNassau County!”
Slapping an open hand to her chest, Ro-Anne rolled her eyes and opened her mouth.
The five surrounding girls went after her, to touch and hug, to shower her with excited affection.
Ro-Anne, serene, head high, humbly accepted the two dozen roses from last year’s winner. Her ladies-in-waiting helped her on with her cape, bobby-pinned her crown in place, presented her with the commanding scepter.
Glowing, Ro-Anne floated to the foot of the stage, greeting her loyal subjects in the audience, all standing to receive their queen. Marian Sommers was in the audience too, a proud parent, clapping loudest of all.
Ro-Anne took in the warmth of the applause, bathed in the comfort of the lights—somehow no longer hot—and stood there radiating charm, poise, ail-American beauty.
Bowing, she allowed a modest smile to express her gratitude. She would have liked to cry, just a bit, a few joyful tears, but dammit there was the problem of the mascara…
Ro-Anne pivoted and walked back upstage to the winners’ circle. The orchestra finished playing “Lovely to Look At.”
And so, sitting on her throne, surrounded by her court of also-rans, Ro-Anne Sommers became Little Miss Eastern United States of 1949.
She was, at the time, eight years old.
GUY RETURNED HOME from school on Tuesday, gathered his camera gear and bicycled to the nearby marshes. It was the height of duck season so he wore his plaid jacket, the better not to be mistaken by some zealot-on-the-trigger. Though the woods were not too crowded with hunters, Guy still heard a steady stream of distant popping.