Hollywood and Maine

by Allison Whittenberg

  As they came closer, I moved out from Raymond’s umbrella and got soaked while standing in the middle.

  “No, we’d be fourth wheels,” Cissy said.

  “Cars have four wheels,” Raymond said.

  Millicent and Cissy still shook their heads.

  I guess King Solomon would have suggested splitting me in half, but without his wisdom, I made up my own mind. Since I already had plans with Raymond, I decided to go with him. A similar thing had happened the other day when we saw Robin Hood. Millicent and Cissy were invited but they said they didn’t want to be hangers-on. Even after I assured them that Tracy John was coming along, they declined.

  Not until quite some time later did it dawn on me that I’d spent less and less time with Millicent and Cissy. How do people who have gobs of close friends work this out? How do they keep everything straight? Moreover, how are you supposed to hang out with people if they always say no?

  “Some other time,” Millicent said.

  “Tomorrow?” I asked.

  They just smiled. They took the shortcut through the William B. Evans Elementary School playground. By then, the rain was really coming down.

  In life there are provincial, local yokels and then there are wild-minded adventurers. Even though I rarely went five miles outside Dardon, Pennsylvania, I was convinced that I was the latter. But each visit to the Newell household made me rethink that.

  Maybe if they weren’t so vegetarian. I went the entire evening feeling forsaken, thrown into all this “health.” In my family, even the collard greens were seasoned with fat-back, so the Newell way of eating really threw me. Besides that, where were the rolls like Ma made for every meal? Where was the rice or, at the very least, potatoes?

  Of course, you don’t go over someone’s house to eat. It isn’t about cuisine; it’s about inspection. Them of me. Me of them.

  Mr. and Mrs. Newell both wore glasses and had impeccable manners. It was so bizarre to spend supper with no one reaching across the table and everyone speaking in complete, well-modulated sentences.

  Mr. Newell wore a necktie and long sleeves, on this, a Tuesday.

  I bet he didn’t have a tattoo on his arm like my daddy did.

  Judging by her ruled forehead and crinkly eyes, I had no doubt Mrs. Newell was of age when she married, unlike my ma.

  They both started nearly each sentence to me with “So Raymond tells us …” After that ran its course, our constricted talk was limited to the tight perimeters of “How’s school?”

  After forcing down the roots and sprouts that they called dinner, I volunteered to help with the dishes but was glad when Mrs. Newell said I didn’t have to.

  We moved into the living room, where Mr. Newell said, “Raymond tells us your uncle is a musician.”

  I shot a distressed look to Raymond, who appeared just as surprised by the comment as I was.

  “Yes, he plays the guitar and sings, but right now he works at a furniture store,” I said.

  “He must be at a crossroads. What line of work is he looking to get into?” Mr. Newell asked.

  Daddy told us, “Always tell the truth but don’t strip down to your long johns.” I gulped and blurted out, “I don’t know. As long as I’ve known him, he always picked up a few things here and there.”

  Home at last, I was safe with a hunk of dead flesh on my plate.

  I didn’t bother to heat it up; I would have eaten that chicken piece with ice cubes on it. When Leo caught me gnawing on a drumstick, he asked, “Didn’t you just come back from dinner at Raymond’s?”

  I held up one finger asking for a moment. I swallowed and then said, “Yes.”

  Like this was weird behavior.

  ten

  Our mailman always delivered by a quarter to three. On days that I came straight home, I’d see a small pile of letters on the table. I customarily regarded this with low interest. Aside from an occasional card from Horace, most everything was for Daddy, or for just plain “Resident.”

  As I cleared things away for supper, I noticed one was addressed to me. It was from the Thomas Sharpe Talent Agency.

  “Ma, how come you didn’t tell me?” I called to her in the kitchen.

  “What?” she called back.

  I frowned. “Never mind.”

  I held the thick envelope to my chest, thinking this was it.

  I ripped the letter open. Sure enough, the first line read “Congratulations.” Was there ever a more beautiful word in the English language? I let out a yowl.

  “Stop your yelling in the house, Charmaine,” Ma told me.

  I ran into the other room. “A modeling agency wants to see me.”

  Leo cocked his head to the side, refusing to be taken in. “Yeah, right.”

  “Look for yourself.” I handed him the letter.

  Leo perused the note without much expression.

  “This just says that you are chosen as a semifinalist. A regional semifinalist.”

  I growled and walked toward Ma to show her.

  “What do you think?”

  She read over the letter I held out to her. “Oh, that’s nice, Charmaine.”

  “Nice? Nice?” I asked her.

  When she didn’t give me anything more, I sped out of the room.

  I knew one person I could count on to give the reaction that I wanted. I sought Raymond’s number.

  “I want to thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Raymond. I want to thank you so much. I owe this all to you.”

  He said something I’d never forget: “It’s your face, Maine.”

  There was something about the way he said it was my face that went to my head.

  I guessed I was beautiful. Or not. What difference did it make? I was a winner.

  I rang Cissy, and her sister told me that she was over Millicent’s. I dialed Millicent’s number and was informed by her grandma that Millicent and Cissy had just gone to the five-and-dime store. I had to relay the message or else I’d rupture, so I went ahead and did.

  “Who’s gonna be a model?” Millicent’s grandma asked.

  “Me!” I spoke up because she was hard of hearing.

  “You?” she asked, baffled. “I thought I was talking to Charmaine.”

  “You are!”

  “What’s that you say?”

  “This is Charmaine.”

  “Of course, honey.”

  At that point, I gave up.

  “Congratulations on your reward,” Tracy John said during supper.

  “Thank you, Tracy John, but it’s not a reward,” I corrected him, and explained the difference between a reward and an award.

  “What do they mean by ‘tristate’?” Leo asked. “Does that include New York?”

  “Don’t make no difference which three states it is,” Daddy answered for me.

  Leo wasn’t budging. “New York has a lot of people in it.”

  “Now, now, let’s not nitpick, Leo. Charmaine, this is wonderful news.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I said, because right then he made me believe he was on my side. Later that night, during my eavesdropping, I would learn something different.

  “Modeling? Well, if that don’t beat all. How did she get mixed up in such a thing?”

  “Peyton, that nice boy she’s been seeing sent in her name.”

  “Miss Sweet Thang, that is the last thing I’d ever, ever expect her to be interested in. I thought she would do something to help people.”

  From behind the door, I wanted to scream, Models help people. They help millions of people pick out clothes, and choose what makeup they want to wear. Models couldn’t be any more helpful to humanity!

  Daddy bemoaned some more. “I had hoped Charmaine would do something worthwhile with her life.”

  Modeling was as substantial as what Leo and Tracy John were into. I’d never heard of a tap dancer becoming a Nobel Laureate or a football player finding a cure for cancer.

  I listened on as Daddy ran my dreams down to the dogs, wondering how
could he be against modeling, such a nice, wholesome American institution.

  When the subject changed, I retired to my room, thinking how shortsighted Daddy was. This could be big! We could all be rich! Not just kind-of-sort-of rich, I was talking so much money the Rockefellers would be hitting us up for a loan! All for my occasional thirty-second commercial and my periodic stroll down the runway.

  eleven

  The Bible says it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to make it into Heaven.

  But what about models? Wouldn’t they be the exception?

  They make a lot of money, and they are thin enough to fit through a needle’s eye.

  “There’s a star!” Millicent and Cissy sang out as I entered homeroom.

  I put both hands up as if to quell the public outburst. Giggles and hugs followed. I guess Millicent’s grandma had been able to understand some of what I was saying.

  After loved ones and friends heard my good news, who was left but acquaintances? Next period, our regular math teacher, Mrs. Trice, was absent, so I had the opportunity to tell some of my classmates.

  Unfortunately, Dinah was in earshot. She had the nerve to stick out her already prominent chest and proclaim: “The people at that agency must be between eye exams.”

  I thought before I responded to her. Did I really want to get this rivalry kicked up again? After all, Dinah and I had been existing on each other’s periphery since Christmas break, pretending that we had no history. Though she occasionally made faces, Dinah had till now taken a hiatus from making rude comments to me.

  Against my better judgment, I pushed my chest out too (though the visual effect wasn’t nearly as convincing) and fired back, “Maybe you’re just jealous.”

  “Of what?” she asked. Then she went into her other trademark, she swished her hair.

  A voice came from far behind me. “I think Charmaine has all the makings of a model.”

  Every neck craned in the voice’s direction. I turned to look, but I didn’t know how I couldn’t have recognized that voice as Demetrius’s. Why was he, of all people, supporting me? Who would have thought that my fake boyfriend of last year, who dogged me out, would ever be of use?

  My eyes went back to Dinah. After another swish of her mane, she asked, “Who would want a magazine with you on the cover?”

  Before I had a chance to mount a defense, that same voice from the back of the room said, “One thing’s for sure, Dinah, you weren’t picked.”

  The class clamored with laughs and claps.

  Dinah got all huffy and tomato-soup red.

  Right then, the substitute came back in the room, and we went back to pretending we were deciphering word problems.

  After class, Demetrius caught up with me. “Hey, Maine, I did a good job sticking up for you just now.”

  “I didn’t need your help. I can take care of myself.”

  “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said.

  That made me half turn my head to him. “You mean with me doing all your homework last term, and you treating me like crap.”

  “Yep, that wrong foot. Think of this as a new day.”

  “Every day’s a new day, Demetrius.”

  “I mean between us.” He smiled, showing his shiny teeth against his dark complexion. “My half brother and your cousin are like best friends. It doesn’t make sense that we barely speak to each other.”

  “It doesn’t?” I asked, failing to follow his logic.

  He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Besides, going out with the same person is so dull. Don’t you think?”

  I brusquely shook his hand off. “Maybe it’s who you choose to go out with.”

  Off by the lockers, Dinah cleared her throat and stomped her foot. She might as well have stood on her head for all the attention Demetrius gave her. Her gaze went to me and went icy.

  What to do? The good side of me told me, Don’t be petty.

  The bad side said, Make her suffer.

  Just then, the bell for the next class rang, and we went our separate ways.

  The next day, after chemistry, Demetrius tried to talk me up again. This time he told me about the talent classes he’d taken when he lived in Baltimore. He said he had studied not only modeling but acting. When he said that, something clicked. Acting? I never knew he was interested in that, but the more I thought of it, the more I realized it would be perfect for him, with his vast background in plagiarism. It only made sense that he’d be good at saying words that someone else wrote in a way that someone else directed him to.

  Demetrius’s smile was wide and frank. A few steps behind him, Dinah’s spooky gray eyes burned with indignation.

  Many of my classmates would rush home after school to watch General Hospital or Guiding Light. No need that day, we were smack-dab in the middle of the corridor. Dardon Junior High had its own home-grown soap opera moment. And in this episode, I was the lead.

  twelve

  Tracy John wheeled his bike—which used to be Horace’s before it was briefly mine and before it was Leo’s—into the back shed.

  I noticed the care he took as he placed an old blanket on it.

  “Don’t worry about that old thing, I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “You’ll get me a new bike?” he asked.

  “I’ll get you two new bikes.”

  His penny-colored eyes widened. “How about five bikes?”

  “Deal,” I said.

  A mischievous smile grew on his face. “How about ten bikes?”

  I pinched him on the cheek. “You got it.”

  “How about twenty bikes?”

  I wagged my finger back and forth at him in playful admonishment. “Don’t get greedy.”

  We had a good laugh together as we walked inside the house. Leo interrupted our mirth. “Have you two lost your minds?”

  “I can assure you that we are both quite sane and soon we all will be quite rich.”

  “How?” Leo asked.

  Tracy John broke ranks and asked me, “Yeah, how?”

  I breathed on my fingernails and buffed them on my blouse. “You know I won that modeling contest.”

  Leo said, “You can donate my cut to charity.”

  That very same day, a Saturday, Ma and Tracy John accompanied me to a consultation at the agency. The place was located on Chestnut Street near the Broad Street intersection in one of those big, stately buildings with a doorman and everything. We took the stomach-flipping elevator ride to the twenty-first floor and ambled into the kind of place where you didn’t want to touch anything for fear that you might leave a smudge.

  A woman with arched brows and a dark green skirt suit stepped from behind the desk and asked Ma, “May I get you a cup of coffee?”

  Tracy John raised his hand. “I’ll have a cup.”

  “No, thank you,” Ma said.

  The woman in green next led us over the glistening marble floor to a large room that was already filling up with young ladies and their guardians. This was the competition, other tristate hopefuls who had received the summons. I eyed them closely and took account of their movements. The way their bones pushed against their skin. (Nobody wants a bone but a dog, old folks always say.) I also studied the manner in which they tossed their small heads or sucked their lower lips. One loomed against the wall. Another’s foot was tapping the floor. Another was pondering her nails, bending her hands and bringing each one close to her eyes, looking for a fault.

  The woman from the front office counted our heads. I got a better look at her this time and noted how her hair was drawn away tightly from her face and was held by two strong combs. With her eye hollows and soaring bone structure, I wondered if she was a former model. “Ann Marie Sharpe-Adams will be right with us,” she announced.

  At last the presentation started. A screen came down in front of the room just as a vision swept in from the hall. A heavily bejeweled woman entered, draped in white chiffon. “Good afternoon, stars of tomorrow,”
she said.

  Everyone clapped.

  She went on to say that she was the granddaughter of Thomas Sharpe and that the agency had been around since 1926. She directed our eyes to the screen, the lights went out, and an aquamarine-eyed woman appeared in a blouse so sheer it was see-through.

  Ma scrambled over me to cover Tracy John’s eyes.

  “You can see her—” was all Tracy John was able to get out before his mouth too, was covered.

  Next a wispy brunette, followed by a cherubic-faced blonde, materialized on screen. Then another blonde, this time an icy Kim Novak type, then another blonde, then a freckled redhead, then a fiery auburn-haired lass.

  I kept waiting for the sisters. We were definitely represented in the room, about one out of every five, just over the blacks-to-whites ratio of the U.S. population. By this time, Thomas Sharpe’s granddaughter had shown thirty slides, yet no one of my background had been showcased.

  Finally, a picture came on of a young lady with raven eyes and hair and deeply pigmented skin. It wasn’t Naomi Sims or Beverly Johnson. She was a model I’d never seen before, but that was all right. I nodded and clapped loudly.

  Picking up on this, Ms. Sharpe-Adams said, “The ethnic market is hot right now. We are definitely looking for more ethnic faces.”

  Tracy John tugged at Ma. “Auntie, are we ethnic?”

  Next came a picture of a woman in an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny string bikini. Though Ma didn’t shield Tracy John from that photo, it gave me another thing to worry about. If I ever did make it in modeling, I’d have to put in a modesty clause regulating how much skin I would show. I don’t want to be photographed in see-through clothing or skimpy swimwear. The last thing I wanted to be known as was a bombshell. I wouldn’t want a bunch of strange men drooling over me. I am a lady.

  The next couple of shots featured models standing in front of a mountain. There were some ohhhhhhs and a couple of ahhhhhs.

  “We strongly suggest you use our photographer for your portfolio.”

  She flipped the pictures very quickly now. “Aren’t these lovely?”

  “How much are you charging for this portfolio?” someone’s mom asked.