He held the door for me, and I followed him into an expanse of neon lights, buzzing above steel cages that separated us from shelves and shelves of books and magazines. Our footsteps clicked and clacked on the cement floor. The smell was the exact slightly musty but glittering-with-possibility smell of the stacks in my college library.
“The archival materials for Charm are all on level two,” Ralph said, passing me to take the lead. My, what a lot of neck hair he had.
When we entered the elevator, he pressed –2, which seemed to imply that level two was in the basement. Down we went. So far, Ralph and I appeared to be the only two people in the building, no other signs of life. I expected that maybe level –2 housed all the action, but when we arrived, the elevator opened on an identically barren-of-persons-but-full-of-books landscape. He unlocked one of the steel cages, and I followed him through sets of shelves. Upon closer inspection, I realized that all the books were bound volumes of magazines. First we passed the back issues of Invest, then came the back issues of Couture.
After these shelves, we reached an open area with a grouping of four desks, all equipped with computers and scanners. No sign or sound of people near the desks, however.
“We’re working on digitizing everything,” Ralph said. “In addition to overseeing the library, I also oversee the online archives project.” And then perhaps sensing my confusion given the lack of bodies, he said, “Most of the scanning team works the night shift.”
So maybe it really was just me and Ralph, and “head librarian” actually meant “only librarian.” Finally, we reached the shelves where the back issues of Charm resided. The warehouse archives had up to this point proved far from the gleaming Mandalay Carson experience I’d fantasized about, but the bound volumes of Charm gleamed in their own way. White spined, with the capital letters C-H-A-R-M emblazoned in gold down each one, they looked like treasure.
“We’ve got ten copies of every issue. The loose volumes are on the shelves over there,” Ralph said, gesturing to the row behind us. “And we’ve got photos and correspondence and all sorts of other materials there too. But the bound copies are here. And they’re the easiest to work with. Every copy since 1946, with a book per year.”
“Great!” I said, truly excited by the reams of materials, but in the quiet, it sounded louder than I’d intended, like a strange yelp.
“Let me show you where we’ve got your desk,” Ralph said eagerly. I’d figured I’d be using one of the four desks back in the middle of the floor, but Ralph led me past the shelves and out of the cage and opened the door to what was clearly a storage room, half full of boxes. On one wall, amid the boxes, a computer and a phone were perched atop a small table.
“They set you up with a login and everything yesterday, right?” Ralph said.
I concurred.
“Good. I’ll let you get started then. Oh, before I forget, you need your keys.” He reached into his pocket. “This one is for your office.” Generous use of that term, I thought, as he set the silver key on my desk. “And this one is for the security screen on this floor.” By which I figured he meant the steel cage. Apparently my access was limited to this floor only. And with that, Ralph gave me a big pearly smile and said, “I’m upstairs if you need anything. You can also just call my extension. I’m extension 1. You’re extension 2.” Which sounded suspiciously like he might just be the only other extension in the building.
After Ralph’s departure, I plunked down in my swivel chair and gave it a slow spin, taking in the 360 view. Yes, it was a closet, but it was my closet. I had a job. And yes, there were boxes, boxes, and more boxes, but I like the smell of cardboard boxes and have a long and loving history with cardboard in general. My current coffee table was just the start of it. My “nightstand” and all the “end tables” in my apartment were made of cardboard too. In college, I’d been even more of a cardboard connoisseur. As far as I was concerned, a sturdy box plus a folded sheet equaled completely passable furniture.
But perhaps most important, in my first glance at my new office space, I’d overlooked the bulletin board. I loved that scene in the Sabrina remake where Sabrina posts a photo of the man she’s obsessed with on her bulletin board and then, in subsequent scenes, tacks other pictures up until he’s completely covered, thus physically manifesting her psychological transformation. What other Staples product can do that for you? With visions of color copies and thumbtacks dancing in my head, I headed to the shelves and loaded myself up with the 1957, ’58, and ’72 volumes—1972 because, if I remembered correctly, that was Helen Hensley’s year.
I hadn’t heard back from her yet, which had me a touch worried. She usually wasn’t the sort of person who didn’t return e-mails.
When I returned with the ’72 volume, I flipped pages until I landed on the TGTW coverage. Our gals were looking pretty groovy, long hair, a few showings of fringey vests . . . And then, as I’d known I would, I saw her face. She may have been wearing the Muppetiest brown and white pile coat ever, and her hair may have been topped in a knit cap, but there was no doubt about it. It was Helen, who had apparently been Miss Social Action back in the day. Why had I never heard a single thing about her marching history? I didn’t want to pester, but I imagined she’d get a kick out of my discovery, and somehow I suspected that whatever was going on with her, she might need to smile.
Helen, You won’t believe what I’m looking at. You! “Helen Thomas: Campus Crusader.” Yes, it’s your Ten Girls to Watch contest photo! Nice coat.;) And I had no idea you were such an activist! I’m sure you’re swamped, but just had to pop into your inbox again to share!
With that done, I began at the beginning, per XADI’s explicit instructions. Charm, August 1957.
_________
The very first spread of the inaugural Ten Girls to Watch featured a brunette girl in a red coat, cinched at the waist, walking down the stairs outside an ivy-covered building, amid a throng of smiling fellows, all with Ken-doll hair. Headline—“Let Her Inspire You.”
A page over, another pretty girl, this one in a blue velvet tea-length dress with a huge diamond brooch, peeked out from under an umbrella held by a tuxedo-clad gent, her palm up, testing for rain. Beside her, a list of the official criteria by which Charm’s Ten Girls to Watch had been selected:
1. Her grooming is not just neat. It’s a picture of perfection.
2. Her hair is glossy, gleaming, and well kept at all times.
3. Her figure is well proportioned and appealing.
4. Her posture and poise are impeccable.
5. Her use of makeup is deft, highlighting her best features. She never wears too much.
6. Her campus attire is in keeping with local customs but is never rah-rah.
7. Her weekend and party attire is stylish, flattering, and reflective of good taste.
8. Her clothing is not just attractive; it is in pristine condition at all times. Wrinkles and runs are unthinkable.
9. She is an individual dresser with a unique look and an awareness of her fashion type.
10. She represents the best in college girls today.
It was hard to tell which rule pleased me most. Gleaming hair? Campus attire that was never rah-rah? The individual dresser who was nonetheless aware of her fashion type?
And then there were the descriptions of the winners that year. Charming young ladies, one and all. For instance, the dark-haired beauty from the red-coat-walking-down-the-stairs photo:
Janet Bell is as sweet as a spoonful of ice cream (not surprising given that her father owns Bell Creameries, one of the biggest dairies in the South). But when it comes to completing her degree in English before setting off to spend a year in Europe to study painting, Janet is a woman of unmelting determination.
Why modern editors trimmed away such high-flying rhetorical flourishes I simply couldn’t understand.
In 1958, the rules ran once again (as I soon discovered they would every year until the contest got all academic-merity in 1968) and t
he girls were photographed in locations around the United States. “She is you, from Sea to Shining Sea,” read the headline above the spread of the winners in technicolor skirts and jackets, arm in arm along a rocky outcrop on the California coast. A page over, the caption beside two girls photographed on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial read, “She is monumental in spirit,” following which the girls’ coats, hats, gloves, shoes, and so on were described in detail. At the end of the color photos was a black-and-white page with detailed diagrams of curler patterns that readers could use to achieve the girls’ hairstyles.
I wanted to cut out every page and frame it, and I also wanted to hunt down a number of the outfits. The bouffantish hairdos, well, I could pass on those, though I had to admit that upon close inspection the “Winged Peak” curler pattern used to create one of the girl’s wavy little bobs was not without merit.
I swiveled my chair around, readying myself to retrieve more issues, but then, outside my door, in the stillness of the archives, I saw something move. I froze, startled. We’d had rats in my apartment, honest-to-goodness-much-bigger-than-mice rats, so I’d developed a keen eye for scuttling movements. But what caught my eye had been too big to be the darting of a rodent. I rolled my chair so I could see down the rows of shelves a little better. And just like that, it became official—I hadn’t made it up. I was not alone. There, in the Charm aisle, was a man. Who was not Ralph.
He was tallish (taller than Robert), and nicely angular, in a button-up shirt and jeans. From his profile, he looked young, thirty maybe, with dark hair and preppy good looks that leaned away from frat boy and toward struggling poet. I made lots of noise, clearing my throat and stepping loudly out of my office, hoping not to startle him. I ran my hand through my hair to give it a quick fluff.
“Hi there,” I said, cautiously stepping into the aisle as if I were Robinson Crusoe approaching some unknown intruder.
“Oh, hello!” He held one of the white Charm hardbound books open in his arms, and juggled it from right to left so he could shake my hand.
“I’m Elliot,” he said, smiling.
“Dawn West.” I smiled, suddenly feeling a little warm. “So what brings you to the forgotten land of the magazine archives?”
“Ah, well, do you read Charm?” he asked, then continued without waiting for me to answer. “I’m the dating columnist, Secret Agent Romance. Sometimes I come here to read the columns of the various Secret Agents Romance from eras past, so I can subtly steal their best ideas. That, and it’s a quiet place to work.”
“I see,” I said.
“Though now that I’ve admitted my secret identity, I might have to lock you down here unless you swear never to tell. No one wants to know that the laudable male opinion is coming from Elliot Kaslowski. It’s much more compelling coming from a mysterious everyman.”
The sleeves of his blue Oxford shirt were rolled to just below his elbows. It may be based on some leftover Dead Poets Society crush, but I almost always think rolled-up sleeves are hot. Is it because I like wrists? Forearm hair? The teacher-really-getting-into-the-fray look? Robert always wore his sleeves this way. I loved Robert’s wrists and hands. He had nice pronounced wrist bones and long fingers that would have made him a good pianist, with just enough hair to be manly but not enough to be hirsute. Elliot’s wrists shouldn’t have been making me think of Robert. Why was I still thinking of Robert?
“Your secret is safe, I swear it,” I said to Elliot, closing out my internal melodrama.
“And what brings you to the Charm archives, Dawn?” he asked in a mock overdone tone, like he was asking me my sign.
“Well, turns out this is my new office. You know Charm’s Ten Girls to Watch contest? I’m working on the fiftieth anniversary of the contest, tracking down all the past winners. I’m set up right back there in the fancy storage closet.”
“Ah, very nice,” he said.
“Well, nice to meet you,” I said, abruptly ending things.
I hadn’t meant to do it! But it just slipped out thanks to a very bad habit I’d developed in elementary school, a surefire cover for all my embarrassing crushes called “being mean so they’ll never suspect you like them.” Unfortunately, unlike most people who outgrow this behavior after age eleven, I never got over it. Spending all four years of college with one person had further stunted the growth of my game. Clearly, I needed to work on my flirting abilities.
Elliot looked at me curiously as I awkwardly grabbed another couple of volumes and headed back down the aisle to my office. This was the exact sort of social faux paus Ms. Lily Harris would never commit.
“Well, good luck,” he called. “See you around.”
Once back in my office, I intended to get right down to business, but alas, I didn’t succeed. I felt edgy, wondering how long Secret Agent Romance Elliot Kaslowski was going to be lingering on floor –2, and I turned myself into a little actress in a play just for him. Just in case he should come around the corner and peek in, I flipped pages with the most graceful wrist movements. I thumbed through the volumes just so. I posed, looking at the covers with an appreciative face. I typed with immaculate posture. Because, of course, people fall in love with your posture.
After twenty minutes of such nonsense, I finally decided to see whether Elliot was still around. This I did with a notebook in hand, so it might appear as if I were on a journalistic foray. Shelf after shelf, no Elliot. And no one else either. Passing the shelf with the current year’s issues, I noted that they were as of yet unbound, and I grabbed June, July, and August. Just a little homework reading to find out the latest and greatest in Secret Agent Romance’s dating life.
Then back I went to the sixties. After the sixties, despite XADI’s instructions, I skipped to the eighties, then the nineties. I’d brought a sandwich with me, so I didn’t even leave for lunch—just reading and note taking and typing names into a spreadsheet for hours on end. At six, I turned off my lamp and didn’t see a soul on the way out of the building. When I emerged onto the street, I squinted like a mole coming into the sunlight.
Kathy Knowlton,
Ohio State University, 1969
_________
THE GLOBETROTTER
Brains or beauty? With her top-of-the-class grades and her sleek chestnut hair, Kathy is a clear case of the obvious answer: both! Future work: Kathy wants to be a teacher or a doctor. Epidemiology—the study of the spread of diseases—excites her the most. Future play: There’s no place she doesn’t want to travel.
Chapter Three
In the end, I’d e-mailed Robert to tell him the news about my job and had asked him to forward along my profuse thanks to Lily. I’d said it just like that: “Please pass along my profuse thanks,” which you could read with utter sincerity or with an edge, like lace so starched it scratched. I meant it more or less both ways, because even if I didn’t want to be indebted to Lily, even if I wanted to dismiss and ignore her, she’d done something major for me, I had to begrudgingly acknowledge it. Though that didn’t mean I had to correspond with her directly.
Lily, however, didn’t seem to feel any such desire for distance. That night when I got home, she’d sent me a note from her fancy Craven & Swinton law firm e-mail:
Dawn, Robert told me the great news. I’m so excited for you! Also, another connection, turns out my sister’s college roommate was a Ten Girl. You know TheOne.com? She founded it. She’s in town from Dallas, and Robert and I are having her over for dinner tomorrow. I know this is absolutely last minute, but Robert and I are wondering if there’s any chance you’re free to join us?
Friendliness at the Pretzel Party was one thing. We all play parts at parties. But this? Was she really so secure that she didn’t see me as any sort of threat? Or maybe she was masking over a sort of perverse curiosity, wanting to know exactly what Robert’s old girlfriend was like, the way, in high school, I could never help looking at the disturbing pictures in my biology textbooks—burrowing parasitic worms, birth canals. I felt that way
about Lily. Thoughts of her and Robert together were like a sore in my mouth I kept worrying, unable to keep myself from the precise and reliable pain they delivered.
Or maybe she was just generous. One of those famous connectors. Not that I read them, but I knew there were business books that categorized people like that. She was a maven or a hub or an axle, some moniker, the discussion of which was supposed to be worth the cover price. Maybe that was it.
But there was something else I didn’t like: “Robert and I are wondering . . .” I could just hear the words in her husky, alluring voice, the ease with which joint invitations were already rolling off her tongue. Robert and I would like to invite you to dinner. Robert and I would like to invite you to our wedding. Robert and I would like to console you on the lifetime of loneliness ahead of you.
I thought about the time I had tried to host a party with Robert. A Christmas party, sophomore year of college, in his room. I’d used the dorm’s kitchen to bake cookies and cakes and cream puffs and thought it was all just spectacular. The pièce de résistance, just before guests arrived: I whipped up the punch my mother had made for every special occasion at home: four liters of Sprite with a half gallon of rainbow sherbet scooped in. I loved this punch. I made it without thinking that it might not fit in my new world. When Robert came into the room, he looked at the punch, and an awful smirk took possession of his face. I felt like I would have at age fourteen had someone caught me stuffing my bra—embarrassed for the act itself, but even more deeply humiliated to have been exposed as a person who wants to be something she’s not. I was a person who thought sherbet punch was elegant and festive, masquerading as someone who ordered cheese plates for dessert. The unmasking of my aspiration was horrifying. Lily, undoubtedly, bought cases of fine wine, and all their future parties would be smashing, catered affairs.
The Ten Girls to Watch Page 5
