Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  Still, as Cassie correctly pointed out, the Pork Queen competition, looks-wise, wasn’t that stiff. The really good-looking girls couldn’t bear the thought of having the word pork anywhere on their body, much less on a banner across their chest. If this was just about appearance, we maybe had a shot. At least, I did. I had recently discovered the magical substance known as concealer in the CoverGirl section of the local drugstore and so, when properly made up, I looked quite nice—as long as I didn’t show my teeth or hair.

  But I always trusted my gut feelings, and my gut told me this would be a mistake. I was pretty sure that I couldn’t cover my hair with a ball cap during the competition. And the judges would expect me to smile. And then, there was the problematic talent element. (Because what, really, would a Queen of Pork be without talent?) I didn’t play an instrument. Or sing. I didn’t twirl baton and I most certainly did not dance. My family never had money for lessons. And anyway, we weren’t so inclined. It never occurred to my parents that as good American children, we should be creating a portfolio of expensive hobbies.

  I also was completely lacking in any of the athletic arts, not that they generally lend themselves to talent competitions anyway. A neighbor boy, Kevin Ford, would sometimes invite me to shoot basketballs in his driveway, but always ended up laughing at me. “Are you looking at the basket at all?” he’d ask. My performance on the archery test in PE became legendary. The class scattered. I guess it would be fair to say that I did not have true aim.

  Cassie had been given more talent-developing opportunities. But she had not used them to any advantage, having constantly changed instruments and sports until she had a similar level of mediocrity in all of them.

  If we were to participate in the Pork Queen talent contest, it was going to have to involve prose reading, the lamest of talents, or—in Cassie’s case—hog calling. (A talent that might win her more points with pork producers than with most judges, but still.) Rumor had it that Desiree Johnson was going to belly dance in a red bikini. We did not have a chance, and I told Cassie as much.

  I said: “Look, Cassie. Let’s just hit the movies and then cruise the square.” But she stood up unusually straight and said, “Well, you can give up, Addison McGhee, but I’m just going to believe in myself.”

  She came in third.

  There were, exactly, three contestants. And while she never publicly wavered from her oft-repeated statement that just being in the competition was a privilege and a joy, I think she came to see my point. Perhaps it takes self-confidence to make it in the world, but that is not, actually, all it takes.

  (Ask Simon Cowell. This is a pet topic for him. He trots out numerous examples from that little show of his. He would go on and on about it.)

  It occurred to me, as I watched Cassie accepting her third-place banner, that there are at least two competing standards of womanhood. There is the standard of my parents, who value humility, fertility, and the ability to do backbreaking work without complaint. And there was the standard of Slater County, Nebraska, which valued elegance (as measured by the ability to gracefully climb onto a flatbed in heels and a swimsuit), talent (as measured by the likes of baton twirling), and toothy smiles.

  It appeared to me that I did not measure well by either gauge.

  That night, in a moment common to American girls, I cried in front of the mirror and told my mother that I feared I was ugly, fat, and lacking in talent.

  “Oh please,” my mother replied, in an answer that reflected a lifetime of perspective. “Take a look around. You’re not much worse than most.”

  At least that’s what I think she said. The sad truth is that we do not communicate well. We didn’t then and we still don’t.

  Here in prison, I watch the other inmates sometimes, easily chatting with their mothers during their collect calls, arguing with them even. I’m stunned and envious. There is no repartee or banter with my family. I am no longer fluent in Arabic, the language that my blended family had used in the camp. And my parents did not, truthfully, learn English well. Oh, they can order a hamburger pizza by phone. They can rent an apartment or apply for a job. My mother can argue with the butcher if she thinks the cut of the meat is not right.

  But we have trouble communicating the more mucky sentiments common to family relations—unruly mixes of pride and disappointment, hope and fear, sorrow and rejoicing, that familiar guilty feeling of glee about each new season of a reality dating show. (My mother loves those, for they remind her of the awkward matchmaking efforts that prevailed in her homeland. “That Trista,” my mother said more than once, “would look better in a scarf.”)

  They are not bad people, my parents. My mother is inspirational, really. And my father is the best man in my life, not that there is much competition. But they were just ultimately unprepared for me. My parents, with their modest ambitions, could not have imagined in those early days, as we first gathered around the television, what awaited their little girl.

  If someone had told them then that I would someday be paid more than a bus driver’s yearly wage to unbutton my blouse in front of George Clooney and a large camera crew, that I’d be the primary factor in the revival of—tight—parachute pants, that I’d be famously photographed on the lap of a US president . . . well, it would have filled them with wonder and awe.

  It would have sickened them and broken their hearts.

  But it would have filled them with wonder and awe.

  By contrast, the part that American parents would consider truly shameful, my arrest and imprisonment, has not shamed my parents at all. They are worried and fearful but not ashamed. Where they come from, all the best people are arrested eventually.

  My mother was, in fact, awfully disappointed the first time she visited me here in prison. She looked at all the other inmates—who were generally, shall we say, rough around the edges. She was expecting, I think, a more refined bunch of dissidents and agitators, not bank thieves and check kiters.

  But she didn’t say so. She just put her head in her hands and looked at me with pity. “Ada, honey,” she asked. “How did you get yourself into this mess?”

  Chapter 3

  How did I get myself into this mess?

  I thought about that again a little while ago. The Monday-morning visiting hours began and the guard surprised me by saying I had a guest. “It’s that guy,” the guard said. “The grumpy one?”

  She was not the type to utter sentences as if they were questions, so I was a little puzzled. Was she uncertain about the visitor’s mood?

  “You know,” she added, still sounding unsure. “And the bow tie.”

  “Baxter,” I said.

  I squealed with glee. His visits had become the highlight of my time here in prison. I practically danced all the way to the visiting room. “Baxter,” I whispered excitedly. “Baxter. Baxter. Baxter.”

  I checked my hair in the one-way mirror and cursed—not for the first time—the dreadful orange of our prison uniforms. (It did not favor my Amber Glow complexion and, judging by the looks of my cellmates, it didn’t flatter any other complexion either.) I sat very straight in one of the stiff chairs and tapped my toes as I waited for the guard to bring Baxter in. I imagined what was about to happen. I pictured him running his hand through his shaggy hair, stuffing his bow tie into his pocket, and greeting me with the usual, “Hey, Ada.” He’s the only one other than my family who calls me that.

  But when I heard the door open, I nearly fainted. It wasn’t Baxter at all! Hughes Sinclair stood before me, wearing a cheap, shiny wig and a terrible pink bow tie with green stripes. The scar that ran down his left temple was barely noticeable.

  “Hi, Addison,” he said gently as he pulled up a chair. “You’re looking good.”

  My shock dissipated into a surge of anger. What gave him the right to sneak in here under false pretenses? He knew perfectly well that I would never have agreed to see him if he’d been honest with the guards. At least, I might not have. Besides, he’s got some nerv
e to leave me in a cell for six months—no calls, no cards, no visits—and then show up and say I’m looking good. I crossed my arms in a defensive posture.

  But then he grinned at me. His eyes got that crinkly look I love and that made him look so boyish. (It’s so unfair. Eye lines make women seem positively ancient, but on men they can actually look youthful—as well as impossibly sexy. I’ve always been a sucker for smile lines on men. I guess it was all that Magnum, P.I. viewing in childhood.)

  Hughes’s grin succeeded in softening my anger. It always did. I tried, however, not to indicate that. I started off sarcastically.

  “You’re looking your usual dapper and dashing self as well,” I said, gesturing to the bad wig and the tie. (People always described Hughes as “dapper and dashing.” It had come to annoy me. What was I? Dowdy and—I don’t even know what the opposite of dashing would be—dawdling? So I knew it must pain him to dress like Baxter, with the bow-tied look that screamed tenured professor of economics. I’d have been remiss not to rib him a little.)

  “I wasn’t sure if they’d let you see me,” he whispered, glancing back at the guard. “So I thought I’d try to pass myself off as Baxter. Picked his work ID off his desk and used it to sign in.”

  “A bad wig and a bow tie, that’s all it took?” I asked skeptically. I refused to whisper, and he cringed and looked around to see if anyone was listening. There were visits going on all around the big room, but the other prisoners were too busy crying over their kids or arguing with their husbands to be concerned about Hughes and me. The guard was engrossed in a magazine, the latest issue of Celebrity Gourmet. (It had the cast of Charmed on the cover. Do they still count as celebrities? Hasn’t that show been canceled?)

  Hughes adjusted the tie and the wig. He cast his eyes down at his “Baxter clothes,” then glanced back up at me with another crinkly grin. “It’s humbling,” he said.

  Especially for Baxter, I thought. I felt another surge of anger at Hughes. If he was going to pass himself off as Baxter, couldn’t he at least invest in a decent wig? I mean, really. That hair was practically plastic. It didn’t look at all like Baxter. Sure, Baxter had, as often as not, a bit of a rumpled look. Recently loved is the way one of the women on the online discussion boards had put it. But his hair was lush and soft looking, not AstroTurf-y. I started to say something, but then I just rolled my eyes and changed the subject. “How’s things on the show?”

  “Oh,” he sighed. “You know.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I don’t. Haven’t the faintest.” Baxter and I never talked about it during his visits. And all the televisions in prison are permanently parked on the Lifetime channel. “I don’t get to watch these days,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, Mia’s okay. I guess it’s working out.”

  “Mia?” I felt my eyes narrow.

  He looked at his feet.

  “Uh, Mia Hamm,” he said. “I thought you knew.”

  My heart clutched. No wonder Baxter never talked about it. I was replaced by Mia Hamm? So Hughes really did have a thing for her. He’d always said he did, but I had thought it was an act.

  He shrugged. “It’s not the same anymore,” he said. There was a long pause. “The ratings are down.”

  I found that hard to believe. With Mia Hamm? Her Q Score—the index that measures both your recognizability and your likability—had to be through the roof. She’s so all-American. In fact, I’m sure they did that on purpose, after this whole thing with me and the deportation and all. I can just hear network executive Cal Gupton blasting around the studio, saying: “Get me someone all-American!”

  “Besides,” Hughes continued, “it’s kind of boring.”

  I glanced around the gray visiting room and simply repeated that word. “Boring.”

  He leaned toward me. I imagined I could feel his breath on my face, but surely he wasn’t really that close.

  “I think about you every day,” he said.

  It was silent, except for the sound of each of us breathing.

  “Why didn’t you come sooner?” I said in a weak whisper. “Why didn’t you do something . . .”

  He put two fingers to my mouth to silence me. My lips tingled at his touch.

  “I never thought it would go this far,” he said. He pulled his fingers back, used them to pinch the top of his nose, as if fighting off a migraine. He looked so tired. I suddenly remembered how it felt to be doing the show each morning, getting to the studio at 4 AM every day, which meant waking up at 3. Katie had warned me during one of her “Farewell Today!” parties that you never get used to the schedule, and she was right. You never do. At least I never did, and I could tell by looking at Hughes that he still hadn’t. He sighed.

  “I don’t see what I can do about it anyway,” he said.

  And then, quick as that, he left.

  It took me hours to settle down enough to write this account of Hughes’s visit. Getting a visitor always throws me off. It’s so strange to be reminded that my old friends are still out there in the world as if nothing had happened—getting up early, going to work, having migraines, flirting with Mia Hamm. Meanwhile, I sit here in a cell, alone.

  I paced around my cell probably a thousand times after Hughes left. I wished I had my pedometer. All those steps, not even counted.

  At first, as I paced, I just thought about Hughes and Mia. But eventually I settled into the question of how on earth I went from sitting at the top of the world—or at least the top of the celebrity B list—to where I am now. I guess I should begin with the story of how I got into acting.

  My parents greeted my decision to move to Hollywood with the same stoic resignation that they brought to all of life’s trials. A ten-year civil war and famine? A long stint in a quickly deteriorating Turkish refugee camp? A daughter in television? Is there a difference, really?

  They sighed dramatically and clucked their tongues and muttered, but they did not try to stop me. I eventually convinced myself that my parents understood; even, in some limited way, approved. They had, after all, each disappointed their own parents by marrying outside their culture, and my father mopped up pig blood for a living. We had lived here only three years when my mother gave up her objection to shaking hands with men. “I still think it’s disgusting,” she said to me, after I saw her exchange the greeting with a used-car salesman. “But these American men insist.”

  So my parents understood the world of compromise and disillusionment. Surely they did not think that I would survive in America without giving up some of the old ways, without—on occasion—letting them down.

  I was not rash about the move. I graduated from high school and even took some drama classes at Omaha Community College. My instructor there was quite encouraging and, when she learned I was moving to LA, she arranged for me to stay with her cousin, a cranky, vain, delusional guy who was himself pursuing a rap-star dream. He was in a group called Pharm Boyz. (They considered themselves the first great rural rap act, but they never really caught on.)

  Pharm Boy and his friends let me use their sofa for what I considered an astonishingly high three hundred bucks a month. That sum did not even get me exclusive rights to the sofa. Pharm Boy would, after Thursday nights on the town, insist on sitting up, watching ER on videotape until the wee hours of the morning, interrupting the commercials to slur through an assurance that if I wanted to go on to sleep, I could just stretch my legs out right over him. He would not mind at all.

  I declined.

  And I feigned interest in ER to politely explain my rejection, though I was not so much a fan of those early episodes. I thought it unnecessarily gory and found Dr. Carter increasingly insufferable. Still, I would point to the screen during a finely acted moment and say: “I’m going to be on that show someday.”

  And I was.

  The story of my casting on ER is the very stuff of Hollywood dreams. I struggled along, spent loads of money sleeping on that nonexclusive sofa, paying for it by waiting tables at a crudd
y, touristy establishment called Sports Illustrated: The Restaurant. All the waitresses wore swimsuits. (No, I did not mention that detail to my parents. Why do you ask?)

  I dragged myself into one miserable audition after another, being rejected in innumerable ways—including the humbling day in which I was turned down twice by the same studio for being “too ethnic” and, alternatively, “not ethnic enough.” When the tips were good, I took acting classes and got my teeth straightened. When the tips were bad, I dropped out of class or skipped orthodontist appointments.

  Then one day at SI, I saw a bored-looking young man vainly trying to corral a gaggle of giggling characters at one of my tables. It’s a scene all too familiar at theme restaurants. The young man clearly lived in LA; the giggling characters were visiting Midwestern relatives. Vacationing family from out of state is the only thing that can drag a true LA resident into a place like SI.

  The relatives had made all the usual special requests and substitutions when the young man’s niece looked at me and asked—well—if “they” were “real.”

  I gave my practiced smile. (They were and are, but I did not really feel the need to explain that to her.) The young man clamped his hand over his niece’s mouth and smiled wearily back at me. “Forgive them,” he said. “They’re visiting from Oklahoma.”

  I leaned down to place the drink in front of him and whispered, “No problem. My family is from Nebraska. I know the drill.”

  (This was not strictly true, as my parents never visited me in LA and would not have insisted on going to any place remotely like SI: The Restaurant even if they had. Furthermore, I found those sorts of dismissive remarks about the heartland baffling at best and tiresome at worst—as if the middle part of the country somehow had more than its share of boorish louts! Still, I did “know the drill,” simply from having observed it so many times while waitressing. I also knew that mentioning Nebraska was good for tips. Poor plucky Cornhusker trying to make good in the city, the tipper thinks. Let’s round up, shall we?)