Diary of an Ugly Duckling (33 page)
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happy confidence, but she lost the rest until Dr.
Jamison intoned something about “skin lightening
medication used to minimize scarring and obtain
the desired beauty effect.”
Desired beauty effect?
Audra let the words wash
over her, hearing them but not hearing them, know-
ing she would see it all later—much later—after the
Reveal and the lengthy process of editing Shamiyah
was already complaining about.
“Thirty seconds.”
More tugging on her hair, more swishing of the
dress, another swipe of lip gloss, while from be-
hind the curtain she heard her own voice from her
Audition tape, saying: “Just once I’d like to not be
the tough broad, one of the guys. Just once, I want
to be the beauty queen. I want to be the one who—”
“Ten seconds! Curtain ready? Strike your pose!
Spotlight in five, four—”
Audra’s right foot shot out behind her, lifting the
heavy weight of the gown as she pointed her toe and
balanced seductively on one foot. One gloved hand
found its way under her chin, the other stretching
forward, supplicating an unseen lover: Audra
Marks as Audrey Hepburn blowing a kiss . . . with a
tan.
A spotlight hit the curtain, and Audra knew her
pose was visible in silhouette on the other side. A
roar went up from the small audience that she knew
included her family and Bradshaw, but God only
knew who else.
“Curtain in five . . . four . . .”
Audra bent her lips into a smile, a smile it seemed
like she’d been practicing her entire life. Her heart
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fluttered nervously, and for a second she wondered
if after all she’d been through, she was going to have
a stroke and die now, now that it was almost over. It
would be the ultimate irony to pass out and die right
here without ever seeing what she’d starved and
sweated for, cried and wished for . . .
“Pull curtain!”
It started to move, slowly at first, in mere inches,
then more swiftly, until Audra was blinded by the
spotlight and deafened by a collective gasp of sur-
prise, followed by the noise of applause.
“Go!” someone hissed from behind her, and she
dropped her pose and started to walk, kicking down
the long red carpet of the stage like a runway model,
adding a little Bronx-born something something,
just to make sure the people watching at home
wouldn’t forget when it got time to make that big
vote for the Top Three winners.
Seated at a long table at the end of the red carpet
were her experts, and when Audra glanced in their
direction, she saw they were all on their feet, ap-
plauding, nodding with approval and pride. Even
stern Dr. Jamison was bringing his big hands to-
gether, and it looked like grouchy old Dr. Koch had
paused to wipe away a tear.
The hostess, a willowy-looking blonde chick
whom Audra had only seen once before—at the
dress rehearsal yesterday—stepped up to hug and
kiss her like they were old pals.
“Audra, you look mahvelous,” she exclaimed in
an odd accent. Audra couldn’t place her: it sounded
like an English accent by way of the prince of Den-
mark. Something about it made Audra suspect the
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girl was totally perpetrating and that between the
funny way of talking and the fact that she made her
red side-slit evening gown look more elegant than
whorish were the sole reasons she had gotten the
hostess job. “Absolutely smashing!”
“Thank you,” Audra said, returning the woman’s
hug. It was a little like squeezing a collection of
bones in a soft skin sack.
“The audience seems really impressed with your
makeover.” She pronounced the word “mackovair”
and it took Audra a brief, blinky second to decipher
it and respond.
“Thank you, audience,” she said, executing a
slight, Miss-America-style turn and waving at them.
“I love you!”
More applause, whistles and even a little laughter
greeted her. Basking under the lights and the love,
Audra couldn’t resist hamming it up. She turned
fully toward the audience and struck a Marilyn
Monroe, blowing airy kisses at the audience and the
cameras between them and her.
“You’re enjoying this attention, aren’t you?”
“I’ve lived most of my life in the shadows,” Audra
said, using the sentence she’d practiced almost since
the first day of her arrival in L.A. “It’s time for me to
step out into the sun . . . uh . . .”—what was this
chick’s name again?—“Cassandra.”
“I know you’ve worked very hard,”
veddy ’ard
.
“And it shows. You’re an Ugly Duckling no more.
And now it’s finally time for you to see yourself at
long last.” She gestured toward the end of the stage
where a black curtain covered a long rectangular
shape Audra knew concealed a mirror. “When
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you’re ready, cross the stage, stand in front of the
mirror and say the word
Reveal
. The curtain will fall
away and you’ll see yourself at last. Are you ready?’
Am I Ret-tay?
Audra mimicked the woman in her
mind, but aloud she simply said:
“Girl, I was
born
ready.”
Hostess Cassandra gestured toward the black-
draped mirror. “Then off you go.”
Audra didn’t need to be told twice. She turned,
balancing carefully on the stiletto heels they in-
sisted were a must with a dress like this—a gleam-
ing sheath of blue, beaded with sequins from breast
to hem, the scarf draped dramatically around her
neck as much to hide the slight mottling from the
lightening drug as for effect, and strode across the
stage toward the mirror.
She paused before it, like Shamiyah and the oth-
ers had coached her to do, but their words had been
utterly unnecessary. Audra felt the dramatic weight
of the moment nestle around her like a mantle as the
crowd noise settled down to a hush and her own
heart beat loudly in her ear. She couldn’t compare it,
it was unlike any movie scene she’d ever known.
She knew what her body must look like—she
could tell by looking down at her legs and her
breasts, at the color of the skin on her arms and
over her body. She knew she was thin from the way
her old clothes fit, and from the size 4 sewn on the
inside of every gown she tried in that designer shop.
She knew her hair was long and light-colored,
swishing on her shoulders like a horse’s mane.
None of these things would be a surprise.
The face. Only the face was still a mystery. Until
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now . . . when all that stood between her old self and
her new self was a canopy of black cloth and a single
word. She spoke it now.
“Reveal.”
It was the moment in
Meet Mr. Jordan
—or its
many remakes—when the dead boxer sees the face
of his new body in the mirror and realizes he’s no
longer his old self, but his old self in someone else’s
skin.
Audra stood, stunned, her mind unable to pro-
cess the image in front of her, even as the cameras
rolled and the crowd cheered.
The woman was lovely: caramel skin stretched
over high cheekbones and a neat little nose, in per-
fect proportion to the sculpted brows of her fore-
head and the luscious red bow of her mouth. Only
the eyes seemed familiar, still a smoky black but cir-
cled now with false eyelashes and some kind of
midnight eye shadow Audra knew she’d never be
able to duplicate at home.
Her eyes traveled down her body: her boobs had
never stood so high, her waist never seemed so
long, or her stomach so flat. As though she were
home alone, she turned sideways toward the mir-
ror, examining her profile, then again, to inspect
her round, firm rear end and shapely thighs, before
turning back to examine the front view once
again. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to
shout or shiver, and so she contemplated herself
without making a single sound of dismay or ap-
probation.
“Well?” Cassandra was at her side, draping an
arm around her shoulder, and Audra realized all of
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the experts were crowded around her now. “What
do you think?”
“I think . . .” Audra said, finding her voice again,
thankful for its familiarity, at least. “I think . . . I’m
beautiful.”
And then, at last, a smile spread across her face.
She had the vaguest recollection of what happened
after that.
She remembered hugging each of the doctors and
experts in turn, thanking them for their efforts.
She remembered her mother and her little niece
coming out from behind the stage to gawk and gape
and make pleasant comments about the drastic
change, even while Audra read in her mother’s eyes
her uncertainty about both Audra’s look and its im-
pact on the days to come.
She remembered bending close to Kiana. “Don’t
you have a hug for your Auntie A?” she asked, with
her arms wide.
“You’re not my Auntie A,” the girl said decisively
and refused to be persuaded otherwise.
She remembered Penny Bradshaw squealing in
her ear as she embraced her, her young face a mask
of teenaged amazement.
And she remembered Art Bradshaw: lifting her
off her feet in a bear hug she doubted would have
been possible at her pre-Ugly Duckling weight.
Audra loved it: loved the feeling of being swept off
her feet princess-style, of being enveloped and pro-
tected. She held him a little tighter, feeling as though
she had stepped out of herself and into a fairy tale
with Art Bradshaw cast in the role of the prince.
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He released her, bit by bit, and Audra tilted her
face toward him, expecting to see happiness shining
in the bright amber of his eyes and in the broad
gleam of his face.
And it was there . . . along with something else.
Something she hadn’t expected to see:
Disappointment.
“It’s amazing . . . amazing . . .” Penny Bradshaw
kept saying the word over and over again, until
Audra was on the verge of snapping something not
very nice about needing to work on her vocabulary.
“Just . . . amazing . . .”
Audra, her family, Art Bradshaw and his daugh-
ter Penny sat in a limousine, hurtling toward the air-
port in a thick, nervous silence.
Just like that, it was over: the ugly duckling had
visited the wide world, time had passed, and now
she was returning home. Only she was no longer a
duckling, inside or outside or on any side. She was a
prettied-up version of Audra Marks on her way to
the airport in the company of her irritated mother,
her confused niece, the silent Art Bradshaw and his
awestruck daughter.
Audra washed her eyes over him again: He was
massive, taking up almost half the long backseat of
the limousine, and Audra had to talk to herself to
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keep from snuggling up beside him and thanking
him for his help and support in a far more intimate
way . . . if he’d let her. For all their conversations—
and all her erotic dreams, day and night—Audra
had to admit she had no idea what the man’s feel-
ings were. But that embrace . . . that hug . . .
Ask him, just ask him
, Dr. Goddard whispered in
her brain.
As soon as we’re alone . . .
Of course, there was also something she was sup-
posed to have told him . . . something about skin
lightening procedures and the shift from dark to
light . . .
It’s a little late for that now.
She peered at him closely, but the confident man
she’d been talking to on the phone for the past three
months was nowhere visible at this moment. He was
sweating a little, patting his hands on his thigh ner-
vously, glancing around the car like a lost man.
“Amazing,” Penny Bradshaw breathed again,
and her father patted her on the arm in a futile effort
to silence her, but an instant later, another soft
“amazing” escaped from the girl’s mouth.
Art cleared his throat. “Good dress,” he rumbled,
interjecting a few new syllables into the silence. He
didn’t sound like the well-spoken man she’d come
to know—or even like John Wayne. He sounded
more like a Neanderthal struggling to navigate the
modern world. “Green. Color.” He seemed to put a
little emphasis on that last word .. . but Audra
couldn’t have sworn to it. It might have been a trick
of her own guilty conscience.
“Thanks.” Audra flashed a smile in his direction,