The Night She Won Miss America Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Sample Chapter from SEARCHING FOR GRACE KELLY

  Buy the Book

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael Callahan

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Callahan, Michael, 1963– author.

  Title: The night she won Miss America : a novel / Michael Callahan.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016045994 (print) | LCCN 2016054728 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544809970 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780544810013 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / General. | GSAFD: Love stories. | Romantic suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.A44336 N54 2017 (print) | LCC PS3603.A44336 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045994

  Cover design by Mark R. Robinson

  Cover photograph © Roger Prigent/Getty Images

  Author photograph © Zoey Sless-Kitain Dougherty

  v1.0317

  “(There She Is) Miss America,” words and music by Bernie Wayne. Copyright © 1954, 1955 (Renewed) by Bernie Wayne Music Co. All rights controlled and administered by Spirit One Music (BMI). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music.

  For Matt and Sean,

  “The Boys”

  This is a work of fiction. Except as set forth in the author’s note, all of the characters and circumstances are invented.

  The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty

  Can come true in Atlantic City.

  —from the song “(There She Is) Miss America,”

  by Bernie Wayne

  Prologue

  Don’t pick up don’t pick up don’t pick up.

  Two rings, three rings. Only one more and the office voicemail kicks in, and he’s off the hook. He has his message already rehearsed.

  He hears the click of the receiver being retrieved, silently curses to himself. He thinks about hanging up, but Caller ID makes that impossible.

  Fuck.

  “Where are you?” she says. No hello. Not that he can blame her. Half of her job is spent trying to figure out where he is at any given moment.

  “I finally got the break I was looking for on the Miss America story,” he replies with as much gravitas as he can muster. “I shook out an address.”

  She sighs, the way every managing editor he’s ever worked with has sighed. The job of a managing editor is to enforce deadlines and discipline, and he is abjectly terrible with both. But he is talented, the most talented writer at Philadelphia magazine, and his boss knows it and he knows it and even stern managing editor Emily Lawrence knows it, so he is cut more slack than everyone else. Which has only ensured that he is hated by everyone else.

  “You knew that the monthly staff meeting was this morning at eleven,” Emily says, the ice creeping into his ear. “Everyone needs to bring two ideas for the Shore Guide. You already missed the Best Things for Kids meeting last month.”

  He exhales wearily. “Em, we both know I suck at the service stuff, which is why I don’t write it. So why would anyone want my ideas? This is a great story—”

  “That’s always your excuse for not pulling your weight. ‘This is a great story.’ ”

  “And they always are.”

  “Hold on. He just walked by. I’m transferring you. And don’t dare hang up. He knows you’re on the line. Good luck.”

  She says these last two words with enough sarcasm to fuel a late-night television monologue. It’s justified, of course. He is aware that he makes her life more difficult. But he also knows he makes the magazine better, and in the end that is the only thing that should matter, especially in an age where print is dying quicker than a carnival goldfish. He wonders if this is how it felt to be working for a company that produced vinyl records in the 1980s. Or to have been a blacksmith, and then watched Henry Ford putter by in his Model T.

  Fletcher clicks on. “Where are you?”

  “On my way to Gladwyne. I finally tracked down an address for Betty Welch. Turns out she’s been here for the past few years, hiding in plain sight. I told you my source said she was local again. Her husband died about five years ago, and she moved here from Colorado to be closer to her son and grandkids.”

  “For a guy who has written pieces uncovering payoffs in the judicial system and a toxic waste dump in the middle of Bucks County, you seem oddly fixated on an old Miss America. I hope this story is going to prove to be worth all of the energy you’re putting into it.”

  “Not a doubt. Look, she’s never talked about what happened. Ever. She’s been dodging the press for decades—she even stopped using her first name. She’s gone by Jane since it all happened. She’s in her mid-eighties now. If ever she was going to say, ‘Oh, what the hell,’ it’s going to be now, when she’s near the end of her own road. It’s a fascinating tale and she’s never told it. This could be like the Philly version of having gotten Jackie Kennedy to tell the whole story of what it was like in Dealey Plaza.”

  Fletcher snorts. “Gee, I’m glad you’re not overselling this.”

  “Look, Fletch, will you just trust me on this? I know everyone thinks I am a total pain in the ass—”

  “You are a total pain in the ass.”

  “Yes, but I am a pain in the ass who delivers. Trust me here. My instincts are good. We know she has an amazing story to share. It’s just a matter of getting her to open up and actually share it.”

  A deep sigh on the other end of the line. Sometimes Bron pictures the entire staff sighing in unison when his name comes up, one gigantic, weary whiffle. The same one he has heard from his parents, his grammar school teachers, every one of his girlfriends. The wordless expression of What are we going to do about Bronwyn?

  “Well, you’re halfway there, so okay, fine, go see if she’ll talk,” Fletcher says. “But when you get back into the office, we are having a serious sit-down about your lax attitude about staff meetings, idea generation, writing for the Web, everything. Whether you like it or not, you are part of a team here, Bron. It’s time you start acting like it. You are not irreplaceable. Are you hearing me?”

  “Loud and clear,” Bron replies. “Talk later.” Team my ass, he thinks, shaking his head as he continues up the Schuylkill Expressway. What you need me to do
is to get great stories. And that is exactly what I am going to do.

  ༶

  The center-hall Colonial is Main Line standard issue, white with pine-green trim, matching shutters, side garage, and a nicely manicured lawn sloping down to the street to a ye olde black lamppost. Bron checks the address again, flips his notebook closed. He grabs a ballpoint pen from the cup holder and steps out of the car. The road curves up from Route 23, transforming from busy highway to bucolic street in mere seconds. Bron wonders how many doughnuts have been consumed on this block by cops sitting in their sedans, speed-trapping driver after driver making the exit at 60 only to suddenly find themselves in a 25 with almost no warning. But what the hell—someone has to pay for the fancy public schools.

  In journalism circles, it’s called “doorstepping.” You eschew calling someone because you know they won’t talk, or you leave five hundred messages and then figure you have nothing left to lose, so you just show up on their doorstep. The power of the element of surprise. Bron has done it before many times. But in those cases it was someone who was running from the law, or at least ethics charges. Here was someone who had been running from her past for decades.

  Bron pulls at the lapels of his wrinkled tan corduroy blazer with the elbow patches—he wears it when he wants to look writerly—and strolls across the street. Instinctively he tries to tamp down his hair, a pouf of competing angles that is always messy despite the amounts of goo he glops on to tame it. No matter. He’s confident. He’s good with old women. Actually, he’s good with all women. Another reason his coworkers hate him.

  He squares his shoulders, rings the bell.

  Minutes pass, and he is about to ring it again when it opens. And, like the song, there she is. It has been more than sixty years since anyone has taken a picture of her for public consumption, but Bron knows it’s her. The hair is shocking white and Barbara Bush–like, but the eyes are a dead giveaway. Exactly the same, hazel and piercing. She wears a knit top, navy slacks, and sensible flats, the uniform of the retired affluent housewife.

  “Mrs. Proctor?”

  The eyes narrow. “What do you want?”

  He bends over, places a hand on his chest, his wan demonstration of warmth and sincerity. “My name is Bronwyn McCall. I’m a writer at Philadelphia magazine. I wanted to know if I could ask you a few questions about your time as Miss America.”

  She stiffens visibly. “There is no Miss America here.”

  “I understand. Mrs. Proctor, please. I know you haven’t spoken to the press in a long time, but if I could just—”

  She begins to close the door. “You’re mistaken. Now please go. And don’t come back.” He goes to say something, but it’s too late. The door shuts. He hears the thud of the deadbolt, the sound of her eighty-six-year-old footsteps slowly retreating. There is a television on somewhere in the house. He hears frenzied bidding on The Price Is Right.

  He stands still for a moment, weighing his options, none of them good. He’d known this was likely. He recalled the story of another reporter, maybe twenty years ago, who’d tracked her down when she was still living in Boulder and who had been given the exact same response: There’s no Miss America here.

  The thought of going back to Fletch empty-handed turns on a spigot of dread. He’ll be lucky not to have to write the whole damned Shore Guide by himself. But he’ll figure it out. He always does. One way or another, he’s going to get the story of Betty Jane Welch.

  He walks slowly down the driveway, plotting his next move, spins around to take one last look at the house. What is she doing now? Is she calling someone, nervous that a news van will pull up next? Is she peering from behind the curtains, making sure he’s going?

  What is it like to spend your whole life denying the one thing that defined it?

  These are the questions running through his mind as he backs off of the curb into the street, still studying the house. He never sees the car rounding the corner from Route 23 until just before it hits him.

  One

  June 1949

  Lemon cake, her favorite. The smell she would recognize anywhere, but especially here, in the front foyer, hanging up her jacket. It is the aroma that tells her it is her birthday, or that she has just done something very special to make her parents proud, or that Aunt Edith is coming to visit and Betty, I need you to be nice to her, because Aunt Edith is trying even on her sunniest days, and those are infrequent at best.

  For Simon, it is double-fudge chocolate cake with cream-cheese icing, served with a tall, chilly glass of milk. He once pruned not only their rosebushes but the Webbers’ next door for one, and Simon is rarely vertical when gardening or any other form of household chore needs to be done. For Ricky, it is ice cream, vanilla and strawberry, in equal portions, which does not carry a scent but whose presence is signified by her mother’s sly smile and singsong chant, “Somebody’s got something special in the icebox!”

  But the lemon cake is Betty’s and Betty’s alone. Her mind scrambles, hoping to locate a recent achievement, a cause for honor temporarily forgotten, but she knows that this is in vain. Her mother wants something. Aunt Edith is coming, or worse.

  She walks casually into the kitchen. “Hi,” she says, as her mother turns around from the stove. The scent of the lemon cake is even more pungent, intoxicating. It couldn’t have come out of the oven more than fifteen minutes ago.

  “Hello, darling!” her mother replies, a tad too cheerily, and the verdict is confirmed. “I didn’t hear you come in. How was Abbotts?”

  It is summer, the summer between her freshman and sophomore semesters, and Betty is working at one of the most fashionable dress shops in Delaware, Abbotts on Main, earning spending money. Her father’s idea. Idle hands, the devil’s workshop, all of it. Her father is big on axioms. Especially when he is foreclosing on someone’s house. Betty thinks platitudes help him shove the truth about what he does, the misery he inflicts on other people, out of his mind. She wonders where he hides it.

  “Mrs. Summerhays was in again. She keeps insisting she’s a ten, and it wreaks havoc every time. Patsy keeps threatening to quit if she has to wait on her.” Patsy is Betty’s best friend, the one who got her the job. No college for Patsy. She’s biding her time until the husband and kids show up, hopefully in that order, but with Patsy one never knows. Betty drops onto a chair at the kitchen table, inhaling deep whiffs of the lemon cake without letting on. She takes a furtive glance around, spies the covered cake dish on top of the icebox. “I think we’re going to have to put aside some size twelves, rip out the labels and sew in tens, and then just keep them for her when she comes in. ‘Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.’ ”

  “Who said that?” Her mother, showing she is listening attentively. She prides herself on her active listening.

  “Jane Austen. Perhaps she knew Mrs. Summerhays.” They laugh. Her mother turns back to sprinkling something on the meat cakes she is preparing, and Betty is struck by an odd thought, for she is forever having odd thoughts. She wonders if her mother ever gets angry. Not cross or silent—she has seen both of those, most recently after Daddy had too much brandy at the Webbers’ Christmas party—but truly, outrageously, screaming angry. Try as she might, she can’t picture it. She wonders if her mother, in her starched collars and crisp white aprons and two-inch heels, will one day simply erupt, like a long-dormant volcano, after some minor infraction perpetrated by her or Ricky or Simon, and send dishes and glasses flying all over the house. Betty cannot imagine always being this composed, this restrained. It seems like it would take unimaginable effort.

  “I smell lemon cake.” Enough preliminaries.

  Her mother does not turn around. “Just took a notion,” she says, the way you tell a police officer you had no idea you were speeding.

  “Moooommm.”

  Her mother grabs a dish towel, wipes her hand on it a bit too aggressively as she sits across the kitchen table. “Well, there is something I was hoping to discu
ss with you.”

  Here it is. Aunt Edith, due on the morning train.

  “I bumped into Elizabeth Howell the other day at Peggy Claiborne’s. We were there for cards and a few cocktails. Don’t tell your father. Anyway, we got to talking about something she’s very involved in . . .”

  Definitely worse than Aunt Edith. Elizabeth Howell is the president of the Junior League of Delaware, which Betty’s mother has been desperate to join since, oh, who knows how long. On more than one occasion, Betty has asked her mother why she simply doesn’t ask one of the women she knows in the League if she can join, and the query is always met with the same response: That’s not how it’s done. It is somehow preferable to suffer for years, your face pressed to the window like a small child yearning to be allowed into the kids’ birthday party every other schoolmate was invited to, rather than simply assert yourself and pose a simple question. Betty thinks it explains how her mother ended up with her father. He was merely the first to ask.

  She tunes back in to her mother’s soliloquy but finds she has evidently missed key information. “. . . and I told her I was, of course, extremely flattered that she would inquire about such a thing, and that of course I couldn’t commit for you, but that I would certainly discuss it with you.”

  “Discuss what?” Betty blurts it out, a bald admission that she has not been actively listening.

  “The pageant.”

  “The pageant?”

  “Betty Jane Welch—I swear sometimes I wonder if you hear a word I say!” Cross, but not angry. Calm quickly descends, like the beam of a summer sun that had been momentarily eclipsed by a drifting cloud. “I said that Mrs. Howell is on the committee for the revived Miss Delaware scholarship pageant, and she’s seeking entrants, and she asked if you would be interested. You know, it’s been five years since they’ve sent a contestant from Delaware to Miss America. It’s a very great honor to be asked.”