The Night She Won Miss America Read online

  Betty chuckles. It is the first time she has felt somewhat at ease since arriving in Atlantic City. “So close! Delaware.”

  “Delaware! Oh, killer-diller, we would have been here all day if I’d had to guess that. I didn’t even know Delaware sent anyone.”

  Betty spreads her hands in “ta-da” fashion. “The first in five years.”

  “Well, isn’t that the cat’s meow,” the girl says, grinning. “We’re the two smallest states here!” She extends a hand. “Catherine Grace Moore, of the Newport Moores. Though call me Ciji. It’s pronounced C period G period, but I spell it C-i-j-i. It’s a better name for a movie marquee, I think. I came up with it myself.”

  Betty shakes her hand. “Betty Jane Welch, of the Nowhere Welches,” she replies, smiling. Perhaps this week won’t be so bad if the girls are like this. Though Betty very strongly suspects the rest of the girls are nothing like this. “So you’re going into pictures, then?”

  “No other reason to be here, cookie. My wants are very simple: my name on a movie screen and Eve Arden’s apartment in The Unfaithful,” Ciji says, stubbing out the cigarette. “They give the winner a screen test. And I figure if a Jew like Bess Myerson can become a celebrity, then so can I.” She takes in Betty’s slight look of shock. “Oh, don’t be so soft, Delaware. You should hear some of the mouths on these girls when they think no one’s listening. And make no mistake. I can put on my gloves and be as dainty and moony as any of them. And I sing a hell of a ‘My Happiness.’ ”

  “How y’all doin’ today?” Another voice, breathy and viscose, above them.

  MISS ALABAMA, the black sash, perfectly angled from top left shoulder to right hip, blares in white block letters. The girl has skin so pale, so flawless, that for a moment Betty wonders if she’s wearing cold cream. Her hair is jet black, swept up in a tight updo that matches her meticulously arched brows, hovering over her eyes like two perfect half-moons. The eyes, a chocolate brown, seem a little too small for her face, but her mouth—full and pouty and accented by dark ruby lipstick—is sublime. Betty takes in her efficient two-piece rose suit with a cloverleaf collar, the barrel sleeves and trumpet skirt.

  Ciji scoots over, waves the girl onto the settee. She is Mary Barbara Adair, from Monroeville, Alabama, “the hometown of Mr. Truman Capote, the famous writer,” though Mary Barbara quickly confides that she doesn’t know a single person in Monroeville who’s read a thing he’s written. In the space of ten minutes, she has relayed her entire life story—her father is a vice president at the Vanity Fair textile mill, her momma’s a housewife, she has four siblings, she’s majoring in English at Birmingham-Southern College, and she is grateful to be attending there, because if you live in Monroeville and you want to do something exciting, you need to travel more than two hours away to Montgomery, “ ’cause Monroeville is mighty pretty, but there is absolutely nothing to do.” Then come the questions: where they’re from, their talents, their state pageant experiences, the hotels they’re staying at. Ciji behaves, perhaps to prove to Betty that she can back up her claims of pageant propriety.

  “Sooo,” Mary Barbara says in a conspiratorial whisper, “do you have any guesses about who all you’ll get?”

  Betty and Ciji look briefly at each other in puzzlement, then back to her. “ ‘Who we’ll get’?” Ciji asks.

  “The escorts, of course,” Mary Barbara says, an “I shouldn’t be talking about this, but it’s too fun not to” look planted squarely on her porcelain face. Betty flashes back to Patsy, how excited she was fantasizing about Betty’s pageant escort, how much she would adore this absurd conversation.

  “Tonight we get introduced to the young men who are going to be our dates for the week,” Mary Barbara continues. “All of the local college boys fall all over each other to be one of the fifty-two selected. Although I am sure they all want Miss California or Miss New York. Because they’re probably, well . . . you know.”

  “Tall?” Ciji quips. She winks at Betty.

  “Fast,” Mary Barbara whispers. “I mean, I enjoy a nice-looking boy’s time as much as the next girl, but if he thinks he’s getting a look at anything under here, he’s got another thought comin’.”

  Romance. Betty admits that it would certainly make the week pass more quickly. She has not dated much her first year at college. She is afraid going steady will take too much energy, too much focus. A thought flickers into her head that perhaps she is simply afraid of too much, too much of the time. Her thoughts return to Patsy. She is now convinced that there is some awful fraternity boy awaiting her.

  Mary Barbara spies two other states, hurriedly pops up from the settee with an airy “So nice to meet you girls,” and dashes off. Betty turns, takes a quick glance around. More contestants meander in. Miss Slaughter has shifted into army general mode, herding entrants toward the Rose Room to register as she answers nervous questions. Betty glances at her watch. Two o’clock. “Well, I guess it’s now or never. Are you coming?”

  “Okay, Delaware, let’s go,” Ciji says, standing and dropping her cigarette case into her clutch. She threads their arms together. “The runway has no idea what’s coming.”

  ༶

  Don’t do anything. This, Betty decides, is the one general rule to emerge from the grueling, almost-two-hour orientation at Convention Hall that she has just endured. No alcohol, no swearing, no exposed shoulders during daytime except for pageant-sanctioned beach excursions, no padding of swimsuits, no skirts above the knee, no smoking (Ciji delivering a side-eye), no male guests—not even dads or brothers—in their rooms at any time, no gum chewing, no nightclubs (there was audible moaning), and no going to official pageant events without proudly wearing your sash. “During this exciting week, we want to remind you that all of you have been selected as ambassadors, here to serve not only as contestants in a spirited competition but also to project a beacon of youthful vigor, optimistic spirit, and refined femininity to the world,” Miss Slaughter said in her best Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Miss Slaughter had greeted Betty warmly at registration, handing over her sash and then calmly directing her upstairs for her bathing suit fitting and then on to her photography session. Catching snippets of the pageant hostesses’ gossiping, Betty knows that Miss Slaughter has a reputation for being very feminine, stern, and demanding, not always in that order. She instituted the scholarship program; when it came to talent, she was said to favor musicians. (Miss Montana’s talent, horse jumping, will be shown on a projected screen; ditto for Miss Indiana’s alacrity at diving. After an afternoon culling whispers, Betty has quickly ascertained that no one is particularly hopeful about the chances of either.) Miss Slaughter single-handedly changed the “bathing suit” competition to the “swimsuit” competition to promote an image of health and vitality rather than one of a pinup, though there is healthy skepticism that it has made any such difference to the general public. She hates the color black—eyeing one girl’s evening gown selection two years ago, she is said to have witheringly snapped, “This is a pageant, not a state funeral, Miss Iowa”—and does not encourage as much as insist on as many pastels, taffeta ball skirts, and elbow gloves as can be displayed. She has no time for Negroes and makes little secret of her intent to keep them from ever competing. She isn’t too fond of the Catholics, either, but tolerates them.

  Betty listens to the band inside the ballroom of the Hotel Dennis, watches Miss Slaughter greeting contestants at the door. She sips a ginger ale that she’s asked the bartender to pour into a champagne coupe, so she can pretend she is interesting and dangerous.

  The Miss America Contestants Reception is where the pageant’s organizers and sponsors get to mingle with—and covertly leer at—the girls. Betty has changed into a green brocaded empire dress accented by a smart gold bracelet. She recalls Mary Barbara mentioning their escorts appearing, but so far the only men she sees are Park Haverstick, the jowly, bespectacled president of the pageant, and similar fogeys she suspects are the sponsors and husbands of the pa
geant hostesses. Betty spies Ciji wandering over in drapey fire-engine red, replete with shoulder pads—that girl! She silently curses herself for not wearing something more daring, even if Ciji’s ensemble does make her look a bit like an able Grable.

  “Did Miss Slaughter hand you a demerit for that dress?” Betty asks, taking a sip of her not-champagne.

  “Well, well! Look who’s coming out of her shell,” Ciji says, sidling up to her at the bar. “I will take some credit for that.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Ciji has arranged to be Betty’s roommate at the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall. (“Strength in numbers,” she remarked when broaching the idea.) There are now large poster-size photographs of the two of them on display in the Chalfonte lobby, along with those of several other contestants who are staying there. All of the girls have been sprinkled among the hotels, like fairy dust.

  “I met Missouri on the way in. Seems nice enough. Not quite as smiley as some of the rest of them,” Ciji is saying. “We were both asking why Miss Canada is here. Is Canada now part of the United States? And have you met Mississippi? She’s a card, that one. I didn’t know you could make your hair do that. One thing’s for certain: she has no intention of obeying the ‘no nightclubs’ rule. Neither do any of the others, from what I can tell. And here I thought I’d be the only one making trouble. Old Lenora is going to have her hands full.” She orders a soda water with lime. “God, I wish I could have something in this. Met anyone interesting?”

  “Not really. After the orientation I took a walk. My Lord, the aroma coming out of that White House Sub Shop! I was positively salivating for a hero. Which I am happy to say I did not have.”

  Ciji scans the room, her shiny gold button declaring RHODE ISLAND catching the light. Tonight the sashes are put away; each girl has been given a button that declares her home state. Some of the other contestants have been querying each other about the change, with various theories for answers. Betty wishes she could muster enough curiosity to want to hear them.

  “Ladies, may I have your attention, please,” Miss Slaughter states from a podium at the top of the dance floor. It takes a few minutes for the talking to subside, hostesses fanning out like theater ushers and shushing in every direction. “Thank you. We are all so delighted to have you with us and to be here at the Hotel Dennis to officially begin the Miss America Pageant.”

  Polite applause. “Some of you may have been wondering why you are wearing buttons with your home states tonight rather than your sashes,” she continues, “and it is because we wanted you to enjoy your dancing without worrying about them. We are to have a little fun. In a moment, the fifty-two young men who have been selected as your escorts for the week will be coming through here”—she waves a gloved hand over to two doors to her left—“and each of them will be wearing an identical button on his lapel to your own. It is up to you to find your matching state beau!”

  From the reaction, one might have thought Tyrone Power had walked in. Betty wonders how many of these girls will be crushed when the doors swing open and they find themselves approached by a boy with buck teeth and bad breath whose father owns a local peanut shop. And yet her heart speeds up a beat or two, and she feels self-conscious, as if the other girls can see her nerves. She is going to be with this young man for the entire week. It’s only natural to be a tad jittery, isn’t it? Every girl here is. Though Ciji projects an air of apathy worthy of her ambitions as an actress.

  The hostesses quickly disperse the girls around the ballroom, including the two of them (“Come now, ladies, no young man wants to meet his date slouched over the bar”), and Betty and Ciji find themselves separated. Betty is standing in a small cluster with Nevada, Maine, and Louisiana when the doors whoosh open.

  The room, bathed in golden light and soft music, is hushed, the contestants holding their collective breath. At first there is nothing but the partial view of a hallway, and then they come in—rush in—tall and short and lanky and lean and stocky and broad, every sort of boy in every sort of packaging. They wear suits, almost all of them double-breasted, with ties and matching pocket squares and shoes that have been buffed to a waxy shine. The first wave is smiling, laughing, shouting the occasional cheer—“Where’s my beautiful Miss Minnesota?!”—while the second group walks in more casually, circumspect, confident, not wanting to appear too eager. Betty freezes. The young women around her slowly peel away, gliding onto the ballroom floor like swans. There are friendly handshakes and the occasional hug (quickly admonished by the hostesses), and Betty cranes to discern the locales on the buttons pinned to the boys’ lapels: New Jersey, Texas, Chicago, Nebraska. She smells the boys’ peppermint aftershave and oily hair cream, her eyes scanning, scanning, noting the dwindling number of unattached bachelors. For a fleeting moment, she is stricken by the thought that hers has decided not to come. She feels conspicuous, already a loser with the pageant barely begun. She pictures Miss Slaughter walking over, gently placing a hand around her shoulder, saying, “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll find you someone.”

  Her palms are slicked in sweat. She craves something stronger than ginger ale.

  And then she sees him, walking toward her.

  Three

  Her own hair color has often been described, including in the Miss America program book, as strawberry blond, but the only thing Betty can think of as he approaches is that men’s hair color is never described this way. And yet his, with its perfect left part and symmetrical razor lines cascading across his forehead, is the closest thing she has ever seen to her own on a man. She wonders if the Miss America matchmakers have done their duty based on hair.

  He is in a soft navy pinstriped suit with a starched white shirt and a pale blue tie. His face is square and perfectly symmetrical; he has haunting pale gray eyes the color of ice water. As they hold each other’s gaze, his face breaks into a smile that is pleasant if a bit forced. “Were you afraid I wasn’t coming?” he says.

  “I had faith.”

  He extends his hand, shakes hers as if he is meeting her father to discuss a loan. “I’m John Griffin McAllister, though my friends call me Griff.”

  “What do your enemies call you?” An attempt to be flirtatious. Awful.

  He laughs tepidly, the kind of laugh you give a child who has just performed a card trick. “A girl with spirit. That’s great.” She suppresses a groan and concentrates on how crackerjack handsome he is instead. She stares at his lapel button, which clearly states: DELAWARE. Confirmed. This is her guy. He has the fine, square jaw of an athlete. Quarterback, if she was guessing. Her disbelief at her luck is palpable. She has planned for Peter Lorre and landed Guy Madison. Hubba-hubba. She will not win the Miss America contest, but she’d bet her grandmother’s pearls that she has just won the Miss America escort derby.

  She scans the room, trying to spy Ciji’s and Mary Barbara’s dates. She wants a witness, someone to envy her good fortune. “Am I boring you already?” he asks, the edge in his voice unmistakable. A stifling awkwardness blooms, like a moat bubbling up, separating a castle from the fields.

  “No, no, I’m sorry. I was just trying to see who my friends ended up with, to be honest. There was a lot of speculation about all of this before you fellas showed up.”

  She catches his dismissive look. “I bet,” he replies. Every time she makes eye contact with him, all she can think of is how many girls have probably thrown themselves at him, how many unopened love letters are sitting in the chest of drawers in his bedroom. She tries to wish away how utterly bored he looks.

  “So how did you get coerced into this?” she asks.

  “I was volunteered,” he says, now casually scanning the room behind her. “My mother is one of the muckety-mucks on the hostess committee. Said it would look bad if her son wasn’t an escort. I was kind of dreading it, to be honest.” He looks at her, catches the momentary fall of her face. “Though, of course, now I’m glad I came.”

  No, you’re not.

  She asks a few r
ote questions, and he tells her all about himself, because, as Betty learned early on, boys love nothing as much as telling you about themselves. He flatly recites that the McAllisters own the largest nursery in the region, which provides flowers to almost every major hotel in Atlantic City. The family lives down in Longport, at the southernmost end of Absecon Island, evidently not far from a six-story cement elephant. “They call it the Irish Riviera,” he says of the town, not the elephant, “because all of the lawyers and high-falutins live there.” He attended New York University for a year but dropped out. He does not elaborate.

  They stand in silence for several minutes, each looking out onto the ballroom floor, where several new couples have begun to dance. At one point Betty turns to say something and swears she can see his lips moving, as if he’s whispering urgently to himself.

  Inside she deflates, even as the mannequin she has quickly become for this terrible week remains perfectly intact, beaming synthetic gaiety. She wants him to be provocative, exciting, suave. Most of all, she wants him to be interested. But he is gorgeous and surface, like a glittery piece of jewelry. She catches him looking at his watch and reaches for her clutch. “I need to go to the powder room,” she says.

  He promises to order her another ginger ale. She wonders if he will still be here to watch her drink it.

  The band is playing “Ole Buttermilk Sky,” and she finds Ciji in the middle of the dance floor—her date is nominally attractive, save for a large, distracting mole under his right eye—and Betty quickly makes apologies to him as she hustles Ciji off toward the ladies’ lounge, though of course she has no intention of actually entering the ladies’ lounge. Inside it will be a herd of other states, already comparing notes, awarding points like judges at the Olympics.

  They come to a stop near the phone bank at the end of the hall. “So?” Ciji asks. “What’s the deal with Mr. Handsome? You certainly hit the jackpot.”