She Walks in Beauty (35 page)

“How did you know?” asked Gloria.

“Because when he said your name and your son’s, I remembered my dream. I didn’t know what it meant before that moment, and when I did, a knife turned in my heart. I could feel your pain. So, I did some water-gazing on it. Like I said, Junior did bad, but it’s silver, gold, or green. We’re talking about money, here, Gloria, not murder. Though—” And then she hesitated.

What? said Gloria.

What? said Lavert.

“—Junior
could
be in danger. He and Rashad and somebody else. A blonde. Little blonde. I see pictures that could do them harm. I don’t think they know it, though.”

“What do you mean, pictures?” asked Gloria.

“Photos. Or maybe a movie. I’m not sure. I do think they ought to watch where they step, and who they step on.”

After they left, Big Gloria sat up for a long time, reading her Bible, praying, meditating—and when none of that worked, she went back to old-fashioned worrying.

Evil
would
out. And how did she know that the silver Magic saw wasn’t
her
silver, the money
she’d
stolen from that Kurt Roberts? And the pictures? Rashad made movies. Maybe that’s what Junior was doing, out late every night. Making a movie with Rashad.
Dirty,
probably, boys being boys. And a blonde? That
could
be little Rachel Rose. But then, Miss New Jersey was a blonde, too, and look at the evil she’d helped Darleen do to that girl. Oh, Lord, chickens
would
come home to roost.

35

The Miss America Pageant began as a scheme concocted by Atlantic City hoteliers to extend the summer season. By 1921, bathing beauty contests at the shore had been around for some time, but that particular year the city fathers decided to ask regional newspapers to choose contestants from submitted photographs. The hopefuls were brought together
after
Labor Day, the traditional end of the commercial season, where one among their number was ceremoniously crowned.

Margaret Gorman (16 years of age, 5′1″, 108 lbs., 30-25-32) who was to become the first Miss America, has been quoted as saying she does not remember who sent her photo to the Washington
Herald.
But when reporters came to her home to tell her she was Miss Washington, they found her with other kids in a nearby park shooting marbles. Miss America 1921 won a trophy worth $50 and then went back to high school.

But for Atlantic City, the show had been a hit. The next summer, the production budget was doubled to $51,000, and the city fathers got down to some serious planning. Contestants, who this second year arrived from as far away as Los Angeles, paraded down the Boardwalk in elaborately decorated rolling chairs. Girls competed in both evening gowns and swimsuits. In fact, everyone paraded in bathing costumes—city commissioners, firemen, policemen, lifeguards, and the entire pageant committee.

In those days the Miss America pageant included neither talent competitions nor scholarships. But there was controversy aplenty. When newspapers were still choosing the contestants, an occasional lady with a “professional” reputation showed up. In the 1923 pageant, Miss Alaska turned out never even to have been close to the Great White North,
and
she was married—which at the time was frowned upon but not yet a disqualifier.

Today, Miss America must meet residence requirements from her qualifying state and be a U.S. citizen between the ages of 17 and 26. She must never have been married or have had a marriage annulled. She must never have been pregnant or convicted of the slightest misdemeanor.

The 1926 winner, Norma Smallwood, married an oilman who later divorced her in proceedings involving adultery charges. She was also alleged to have served alcohol to her underage daughter, Des Cygnes L’Amour, or “Of the Swans the Love.” Norma, refused to return to Atlantic City to crown the 1927 queen because the pageant refused to cough up her requested fee.

By this time, the pageant was under fire from a growing number of hoteliers who felt that, hang the money it brought in, the hoopla was tainting a family resort with a tawdry showgirl image. From 1928 to 1933, the contest was mothballed.

Even after its revival, scandal continued to dog the pageant. In 1936, there were cries that the pageant was fixed when Miss Philadelphia—who lived only a hop, skip, and a jump up the road from AC—won. No one, however, has ever proved that any Miss America pageant was anything but on the up-and-up—though the hue and cry has resounded every time a Miss Philadelphia (and later Miss Pennsylvania) takes the title.

But nothing, before or since, has quite equaled the scandal of 1937—except perhaps the Vanessa Williams debacle. This was the year Bette Cooper, Miss Bertrand Island, New Jersey, won the crown.

Bette, 16, blond, blue-eyed, and so innocent she hadn’t even had a first love, had visited an amusement park located on Bertrand Island in Lake Hopatcong, near her home in Hackettstown, NJ, earlier that fateful summer of 1937. Posted about the park were advertisements for a beauty contest, and Bette, challenged by her friends, entered it.

Much to her astonishment, she won. The next surprise was that Miss Bertrand Island was franchised to the Miss America Pageant, and she was expected to participate.

Bette and her parents, unsophisticated folks, were chagrined. Bette attended a private day school where she was captain of the track team. She was a regular suppliant at the Presbyterian Church. Beauty contests were about the last thing on her mind.

However, the Coopers decided, what the heck. A week in Atlantic City might be a nice way to end the summer. So they packed up and moved to the beach the first week in September. Bette, however, as did many girls before and after her, exposed to the damp nights and cold ocean air, caught a cold. She was miserable.

Nonetheless, Bette made a good showing, though—modest to a fault—she certainly had no thought of winning. She did well in the optional talent competition singing “When the Poppies Bloom Again.” Then she was named winner in the evening gown competition, and things became serious.

“What if you were to win?” asked Lou Off, the very handsome, urbane and sophisticated 21-year-old from one of Atlantic City’s best families who had volunteered to be Bette’s chauffeur for the week. “What if you were?” he asked the sniffling Bette, who had become sicker throughout the week with her miserable head cold. (And more in love with Lou, said some.)

Others said that Lou’s family had reservations about the pageant, and Lou shared those views.

In any case, when Lou took Bette for a long drive Saturday afternoon before the final judging, he told her that if she won, she could forget about him, because he wanted nothing to do with publicity.

And when she did indeed win, Lou didn’t show at the ball following her coronation.

Bette’s father thought she ought to forget the whole thing and go back to school.

Now let us not forget she was only 17 years old and still had that terrible head cold.

In any case, in the middle of the night, Bette called Lou Off and said she wanted out.

He said he’d be right over.

She didn’t want to go to the Steel Pier in the morning to greet the press, she sobbed. She didn’t want to stand beneath a huge electric sign that said COME SEE MISS
AMERICA
1937. She didn’t want anything to do with any of it, and her family didn’t either, and they’d come to rely on the sophisticated Mr. Off who could even find his way around New York City, 60 miles away from their home in Hackettstown, as if it weren’t Sodom and Gomorrah.

Lou Off said, in that case, he’d help.

*

Rashad, who was still filming his movie about Bette and Lou, said to Rachel Rose, “Now, what we’re going to do next is you’re going to climb down the fire escape there and jump into the waiting car. That’s how Bette made her getaway with Lou.”

“I’m going to break my neck in these heels. Do you really think Bette wore her evening gown when she split?”

“No,” Rashad said patiently, “I do not. But we are not dealing wholly in fact, Rachel Rose. We are dealing in fantasy. That’s what movies are. And I have neither the time nor the money to lay the whole thing out exactly as it happened. So by having you, as Bette, wear the gown and the tiara, you get the picture that she’s Miss America escaping, running
away
, forget
the pageant. Do
you
get the picture, Rachel Rose?”

“I get it, Rashad.” Then she whispered, “God, he’s so touchy,” to Junior, who was playing Lou Off, which would have been a racial incongruity considering the politics of 1937, except that after all, they were making this little ditty for Spike Lee to see, right?

“Rashad’s touchy because he’s afraid the cops are on our tail,” said Junior. That’s what Junior was afraid of. That and Big Gloria skinning him alive for sneaking out of the house every night to practice the art of filmmaking. Practice, your
butt,
Momma would say, she got hold of him.

“I am not,” Rashad insisted. “And I wish you’d stop with that racket and help me get this show on the road. You know, Harry’s not gonna be here forever, man. It’s Thursday night and counting. I only have till Saturday, Sunday morning at the latest, you know they’re gonna blow.”

“You could mail Harry the videotape, Rashad,” said Junior. “There’s no law that says you have to put it in his very hand. Besides, you don’t even know that he can get it to Spike, and even if he does, what’s to say Spike—”

“Stop!” Rashad commanded. “Just because you choose to operate with limited ambition in this sinkhole called Atlantic City which is hardly, believe me,
hardly
representative of the larger world, because you choose to be pessimistic and small-minded, because you choose not to look up at the stars—”

“He’s about to launch into his ‘I Have a Dream’ routine any second,” Junior said to Rachel Rose.

“I most certainly am not,” said Rashad. “I am about to roll this camera, and Rachel Rose is about to skinny down that fire escape and land her sweet little booty in that convertible, and you’re about to lean over and give her a big hug and a discreet kiss and a thumbs-up that she flew in the face of convention and abandoned all the Miss America folderol—”

“We got it, Rashad,” said Rachel Rose. “Now can we do it? I’ve got to get home. If my parents catch me out again with my dad’s rental car, they’ll start with the tar and feather routine.”

“Your folks are
so
charming,” said Rashad. “I keep meaning to invite them to an NAACP meeting. Or maybe we could introduce them to the Reverend Dunwoodie. You think we ought to include the Revin our video for local color, as it were, Junior? Nawh. That would be an anachronism. They didn’t have crazy marching niggas back then. No marching niggas of any description, for that—”

“My mother really is okay, in her crazy kind of way,” said Rachel Rose, who’d learned that you just butted in if you wanted to talk around Rashad. “It’s my father who’s the jackass.”

“Rachel Rose!” said Junior who might be very confused about his values these days, what with one thing and another, but he knew they did not include calling your father names like that. Of course, Junior never called his anything, since he hadn’t seen the man since he was two.

“Rolling!” said Rashad.

36

Mr. F hadn’t answered any of his calls. Wayne didn’t know
what
to think. Unless, of course, that Crystal, in cahoots with Dougie, had never put them through.

Which is more than likely what happened. Which is why Wayne had parked himself on the floor outside Mr. F’s office at the crack of dawn. He’d just catch Mr. F on his way in. Show
them
who was stupid.

But that was two hours ago, and Wayne had dozed off. Which is why he was now being subjected to the ignominy, a word he’d heard Mr. F use before and had asked him what it meant, of Dougie and Crystal staring at him like he was a bug.

“Absolutely
disgusting
,”
Crystal said. Well, his shirt
was
wet, but sleeping people weren’t responsible for drool.

“Was there something you wanted to see Uncle Tru about?” Dougie grinned, as if he didn’t know.

Wayne didn’t know exactly how to answer. He didn’t want to give Dougie the satisfaction of saying yes. So he scrambled up and pretended he hadn’t heard the question.

Crystal gave him a little smirk as if she knew anyway, thank you very much. She unlocked the door to the executive offices and slipped in, closing it sharply behind her.

Wayne wanted to slap her.

He wanted to slap them both.

No, slapping was too good for Dougie. He’d stick with his original plan of taking Dougie with him when he walked. One way or another. Any time now.

“So, Wayne. I was telling Crystal about your collection of sexy videos, and she said she’d like to see some. You know what I mean?” He gave Wayne a big wink like they’d gone out scouting tail together, which they most certainly hadn’t. “I told her you had some pretty exciting stuff, and I was wondering—”