Abruptly Essie asked, “Am, am I l-like him, do you think? My grandfather Wilmot.”
Every thick fabric in the hotel room had been soaked in the lonely tobacco smoke of travelling men. Momma sat in a hotel armchair, green plush like the chairs in a railroad club car, in her white cotton underwear, red marks on her soft fat leg where the brace fitted and a white hotel towel draped around her shoulders while her hair dried. She appraised her daughter in earnest, woman to woman, her normally round eyes narrowed. “Well, you’re a Wilmot, there’s no denying that. The chin, and the jaw, and the lips. They don’t have very generous mouths, as a tribe. But you’re a Sifford, too. When you were little and so dear in your tap shoes and sailor collar I used to get compliments on the resemblance, back when I still had a shape. What your father used to call my glow, in our courting days. But the person I’ve been seeing in your face lately has been my mother, strange to say. I say ‘strange to say’ because she’s spent her whole life hiding from attention, and yet there she is, the way I used to see her as a child, right in your face—the wide cheekbones, and the something—how can I put this in a nice way?—the something savage. Exotic and a little dangerous. Your father and me, we are not dangerous people. The Wilmots are not generally dangerous, except maybe for your Uncle Jared—I don’t know, it’s been years since I’ve seen him.”
Essie’s heart raced, as it always did when she was the topic of conversation. She had seen it, too, in the mirror—the childish blobbiness at the middle of her face had been replaced by a Moorish tension, a taut pulling-together of planes that took the shadows edgily as she turned her head this way and that, a fraction of an angle at a time. There was a wistful precision to her lips and her nostrils had a sensuous flare. Turned frontally, her face had a slight flatness that seemed to offer her thoughts and feelings bluntly to the viewer, the dark honey of her gaze served up in her mother’s curved pink lids and glossy eye-whites. She loved her Sifford grandparents, poking along together in their well-kept greenhouse, but they were earth to her, fragrant and friendly humus; it was the dead, unearthly grandfather she aspired to. In his unreality he held a promise of lifting her up toward the heavenly realm where movie stars flickered and glowed and from which radio shows, with movie stars as guests, emanated. When Essie prayed to God, she felt she was broadcasting a beam of pleading upward to a brown cathedral-shaped radio and her shadowy grandfather was sitting in a chair beside it listening. She would make his sadness up to him. She could not tell her mother this; it was one of her many secrets.
On the stage inside the fairground stadium, where they had country-music bands and hog-calling contests at other hours of the day, Essie stepped into the harsh light and the cool night air dressed only in a powder-blue bathing suit of elastic nylon, with a low zippered back and a small stiffened skirt that still allowed the judges seated under the lip of the stage to see her thighs up to where they became crotch and bottom. The other ends of her legs, with their painted toenails, were in ankle-strapped wedge sandals so high in the cork heel she had to concentrate on not turning an ankle, which would make a bad impression on the judges. Their faces—four men and three women—were vaguely under her, beyond the footlights. They had been introduced at that afternoon’s rehearsal, when everyone was in casual clothes. One of the women was an actress who had had some parts on Broadway ten years ago and one of the men was a du Pont but none of them were what Essie could consider real celebrities. The most interesting person she had met in the afternoon was a blond boy, with fine short whitish hair like Benjy Whaley but altogether more civilized and clever, who was a photographer for the Philadelphia Bulletin but told her (they had been thrown together at the side of the stage during the interminable wait while things got organized for the evening presentation, which went from a windy introduction by the mayor of Dover to a singing group like the Ink Spots, four young Negroes right there joking and milling around with everybody else) that he wanted to be an art photographer, like Dorothea Lange and George Hurrell. Essie had never heard of them but she knew the intonation in which he named them; for him, they were stars. Then she and the thirty-seven others had to go onstage to rehearse the number they were going to sing with some high-school orchestra from Wilmington playing in the old-fashioned big-band style: a medley of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” “Almost Like Being in Love,” “A Fellow Needs a Girl,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” The words were all printed up on sheets you were supposed to memorize. During the rehearsal Essie could tell that the girls on either side of her had never had a minute of voice lessons: their breath came right from the top of their throats and out through their noses. Whereas her voice just poured up out of her, from the diaphragm, as Mrs. Loring had taught her. When they had finished the ragged, tittery daylight run-through, the sounds from the surrounding fairgrounds washed in—the carousel calliope, the clatter of the roller coaster ascending, the mooing of some terrified prize cattle, the oceanic murmur of the midway crowds, the amplified snarls of the sideshow barkers, the ecstatic squeals from the roller coaster descending—and her photographer friend had vanished, and the pageant and its innocent Lower Delaware pomp all suddenly seemed pathetic.
But at night, with the humid blue-black sky and its clusters of unreachable stars hanging close above the blazing stage lights, everything was more intense and focused, the earth a fruit being pressed to yield its juice. The distant fairground sounds were sharper, more momentous; the underlying scents of dung and hay and cotton candy and car exhaust suffused the night air like an atomized perfume. The rectangular banks of stadium lights made rays in the corners of Essie’s dazzled, dewy vision. The cooling air prickled on her skin as her turn came to parade herself into the stage light, while the Wilmington band pumped away at a speeded-up version of “To Each His Own.” Her nervousness evaporated; the lights and all those eyes pressed on her body with a ghostly love that sealed in an ecstatic calm. There was a popping of flashbulbs; she didn’t wince. She could hardly see: beyond the lip of the stage, blurred expectant faces; beyond the lights, a close black sky with its own geography of thickly starry valleys and thinly populated heights. Holding her head as if on a string pulled taut from above, as Mr. Josephs had drummed into her years ago, she walked to the circle chalked on the scarred stage-boards; she turned once slowly, giving the crowd and the judges the backs of her ankles and thighs, and her ass (which she sometimes worried had become too round, too perkily protuberant from her slim long-legged frame), and the daring big V of exposed back (which was still tanned with a honey tinge from the summer days spent at beaches or pools with this boy or that; white as her smooth skin was, she took a good tan, with her touch of Moorish blood). She gave them the nape of her neck (exposed by the upsweep she and Momma had worked a good half-hour on, trying to control the stubborn brunette mass with a tumblerful of hairpins) and a Grable peek-a-boo smile; then she walked to the opposite corner of the stage, at a right angle like a tightrope, her feet in their wobbly wedge sandals seeming miles below her chin. The applause that followed her turn sounded in her ears a little louder than that which the other girls had received, but then it merged with an applause of greeting for the girl behind her, a redhead stunning in a sheer white strapless sharkskin.
Backstage, behind the shabby flats—braces of raw pine supporting cutouts of some thick cardboard all spangly with tinsel on the painted side that showed—Essie felt chilled, and vaguely dirty, with the string holding her head erect cut. She looked around for Momma, who was carrying a velour robe bought specially for this adventure. But she had left Momma back on the opposite side of the stage. The Bulletin photographer touched her on her bare shoulder. She jumped, wound so tight. He said, “Sorry. Just wanted to tell you you looked fantastic out there. You’ve got it.”
She smiled, trying to settle down. A one-to-one encounter seemed so dry and meagre, after being the food for all those eyes at the center of the stadium.
“Got what? As if we didn’t know. The usual. Every girl’s got
it, bub.”
He had the grace to be embarrassed, there in the uncertain, jostling light. “No, really. The unusual. The magic, the presence, great looks, whatever. Look, my name’s Doug, your name’s Esther—right?—and I’d love if you could spare me an hour tomorrow sometime for a shoot.”
“A shoot,” she said, not quite discarding her smile.
“Take some pictures of you. All I can get now is flashes. They’re brutal. I’d like to do some studies, in natural light, to show around.”
“T-t-to show around to who?” She had for a second forgotten his name, though he had just said it. That’s how excited she still was, from being onstage. She remembered. “To whom, Doug?”
“The Bulletin, first. And for me, just to have. There’d be something in it for you—I’d make you up some eight-by-ten glossies, for submission to agencies.”
“Agencies now. How often does this line of yours work?”
“Modelling agencies—you know what I mean. Come on, don’t waste my time. I should be out there snapping. Look: I’m real, honest. Here’s my card. I’ve written my room number on it. Give me a call in the morning. Or don’t. Either way, what I said is true. You’re special.”
She hesitated to touch it—the scrap of paper seemed part of the shabbiness, the shamefulness she felt offstage—but relented. It was a real business card, with raised engraving she caressed with her thumb. “W-where would we d-d-do this shoot?”
He looked at her again, not having heard the stutter the first time. It gave him a slight power over her, and she in turn over him, as a weakness does when it is exposed. He spoke more slowly, taking care to sound businesslike. “Outdoors, not far. If you’re really strapped for time, the hotel has a courtyard, with a swimming pool nobody uses this time of year. The light might be nice, out of direct sun. There would be chairs and things for you to sit on. I’ll shoot some rolls of black-and-white and a little Kodachrome. Bring a couple switches of clothes, including this bathing suit. There’s changing rooms for the pool. Maybe you should allow two hours.”
“But I—”
“I know. You’re not sure. Well, get sure, Esther. What’s to lose? It can’t hurt and might help.” Softening his voice as if not to scare away a child, and twisting his lips in a curious flash of a pout, he said, “Don’t get ideas. I’m on the up-and-up; I’d really like to do it.” His lips were fleshier and more mobile than Benjy’s; he was used to fast-talking.
“Why?”
“Purely business for both of us, Esther. I’m a professional photographer, and you’re a Delaware peach.”
Momma, limping up with the velour robe, heard this, and gave a look that would have withered Doug, if he hadn’t already turned his back, to go back to the beauty parade with his flash camera. As Essie knew she would be, Momma was against it. They had a day planned in which after the morning rehearsal they were going to drive down to Lewes to see the old Sifford homestead once more; they had heard that the developer, who up to now had been renting the farmhouse, was going to tear it down for more little summer houses to sell. The barn, the corn crib, the cow shed were long gone, but the house and the little orchard behind it had been spared, all through the Depression and the war. “He said it would just take an hour,” Essie told her.
Momma snapped, “A lot can happen in an hour. A lot can happen in twenty minutes.”
“Right in the hotel courtyard, by the pool,” Essie pleaded.
“So he said. Watch if this boy doesn’t suggest you move to his room. Already he’s given you the room number. You may think I know nothing of men.” Momma blushed angrily, as if Essie had called her a cripple.
Essie flushed in turn. “Come watch, then. Do. Be a chaperone. Nothing is going to happen. Momma, honestly. If I can take care of myself in Basingstoke, I can take care of myself here.”
“Basingstoke boys are one thing—” Momma began, and then left off. She was not absolutely forbidding it, Essie saw—she, too, was tempted by this unforeseen opportunity. Hadn’t they come here in hope of something happening, something neither could quite imagine? “I didn’t like that young man’s manner,” Momma said, stalling. “He’s a wolf.” Even she sensed that the term had become, in the last year or so, quaint.
Now the other girls were pushing and hissing directions around them; it was time to go back onstage, for the concluding medley. It sounded much better and stronger under the stars than it had beneath the sun. “… There’s no business I know.…” They linked arms, the girls in bathing suits, two rows of them swaying in opposite directions like a flexible valve opening and closing, and when it was over amid the applause they all spontaneously hugged and kissed and wished each other good luck tomorrow. That was one more new experience for Essie, being embraced by another girl, wearing only a bathing suit and high heels—the redhead in the white suit especially. Her hair held more fragrance, and her front was more springy, than a boy’s.
Back in the room, she sensed how sad Momma was to miss the drive down to Lewes. This had been a big part of her life, and Essie’s life was almost all ahead of her. They compromised: Esther would pose for Doug right after the rehearsal tomorrow morning, and be done in plenty of time for them to drive down to Lewes and back by five-thirty. The contestants were supposed to assemble in the hotel ballroom fully gowned for the farewell banquet before being taken with their escorts in two buses over to the stadium for the decisive night. Essie was afraid she would be too stirred-up to sleep, and prayed, Dear God, let me sleep so I can be poised and not make a misstep or stammer onstage tomorrow and look radiant enough. Then with her eyes she did crisscrosses on the shadowy ceiling of the room while Momma was already raspily deep-breathing in the bed next to her. The light from the street below came in through the Venetian blinds like that scene in Casablanca or for that matter The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart not so handsome this time and The Killers with Burt Lancaster as this broken-down boxer destined to be killed. Essie felt threatened by these movies about seedy cities and men and women desperate to escape and bitter about their lives. The Postman Always Rings Twice, with Lana Turner, left her hurting for days, like a stab with a dirty knife. She liked musicals: The Harvey Girls, where Judy Garland tames the West and even the town prostitutes pitch in to rebuild the burned-down restaurant. She liked movies where you feel a woman’s confident power, like Gilda with Rita Hayworth doing that dance with the gloves, and The Outlaw, which she wasn’t supposed to have seen but Jamie Ingraham took her, his arm creeping around her shoulders and his other hand up from her knee, and Duel in the Sun, which had Jennifer Jones painted brown and in tight blouses after being Bernadette; that movie was so moving and terrifying, with Vincent Price dying of throat cancer clinging to the fence and believing too late, that Essie cried though she was far from being a Catholic. She shut her eyes and tried to shut her ears to the traffic five stories below and thought of the redheaded girl in the white bathing suit she embraced at the end tonight, the different silkier feel a woman’s skin has, not to mention the chest, a woman would know just how to touch her, here, and not stop too soon. The next thing she knew she was awakening from a tumble of exasperating dreams and Momma was moving about the sunstruck room in her hippy-hoppy way. Nobody was perfect but God always answered Esther’s prayers: that was the curious thing.
She let Momma call Doug’s room number and say that her daughter could meet him down by the pool at twelve-thirty. Doug must be saying that the light was too much overhead because Momma said, “Very well. One o’clock at the latest. And we must be off by two, young man—my daughter and I have an important engagement elsewhere.”
It was agony to have Momma sound so prissy and scolding; Essie vowed to talk to Doug privately when she had a chance. He was nice, the bony shape of his head showing intelligence, and the way he made quick faces between his sentences. The rehearsal went on for much longer than anybody expected, trying to cut down the part where each contestant before showing off her talent answered in one sentence or two the question “Ho
w Would You Make the World a Better Place?” Some of the girls wanted to talk forever, about the Iron Curtain and all the killing in India and so on. Then there was a weaving thing at the beginning, like a march routine, while the band played “Ole Buttermilk Sky” and then “They Say It’s Wonderful.” It was after one when they got back to the hotel, all breathless and not having eaten, but Doug wasn’t mad, and in fact ordered them sandwiches from a bellhop before they began. She had never posed for a photographer before, just fussy little Mr. Purinton in his studio upstairs two doors down from the Blue Hen when she was five and then at thirteen in her confirmation dress that Ama had made. Doug told her to lift her chin and part her lips slightly but let her face relax: “Sometimes it’s best when you think of nothing. At me, Essie.” Doug heard Momma call her Essie and took it right up. But then: “Look off, and then back to me with your eyes. Nice. Again? Very nice. Your hair, that piece of it—my goodness, what a lot of hair to keep under control! Maybe your mother could take this comb—” He wanted to touch her hair himself, she knew, but was inhibited by Momma’s being there, sitting upright by a round glass table. The pool hadn’t been cleaned in some days and cigarette butts and yellow leaves were floating in it. When Essie threw her head back from the canvas poolside chaise he had her posing on, with one leg lifted so the skirt of her sundress fell upward from her thigh, she saw three walls of windows framing a square of blue sky that she mentally drew an X on, connecting the corners. “Lovely,” Doug said. “Lovely throat. I know it feels awkward, but could you bend back even more? Yes. The hand. Could you do something with your left hand, Essie? Lift it from your side, as if—as if you were holding something very gently. Yes. Nice.” Last night he was using a big clunky Graphic but today he had in addition a smaller flatter camera called a Contax. “Thirty-five millimeter instead of four by five,” Doug explained. “Much more maneuverable, and it gives you a whole sequence of shots to choose from. The Germans make it.”