Diary of an Ugly Duckling

by Langhorne, Karyn

  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.

&n
bsp; 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.

  PART THREE

  The Final Package

  Chapter 24

  “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,

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  hoping to ease him back into the connection that

  had lived so vibrantly between them on the phone

  for the past several months. “It’s a present from

  Dr. Koch—the plastic surgeon who did the body

  work.” He said he picked it because it reminded

  him of the dress Barbara Stanwyck wears in the be-

  ginning of Double Indemnity. He rented the movie

  after he watched my audition tape; he’d never seen

  it.” Audra chuckled. “I seem to have introduced a lot

  of people to the glory days of film.”

  “Mmmfph,” Edith muttered, making her first

  sounds since they’d left the studio. “I thought they

  was supposed to be changing you, not the other way

  around.”

  “That’s the funny thing about people, Ma. We all

  impact each other in ways we can’t always antici-

  pate.”

  Edith rolled her eyes. “Here we go! Here goes the

  blame game. I swear, Audra, if this is how it’s gonna

  be with you day after day, I am not—”

  “What? I didn’t say anything!” Audra shot back.

  “Don’t be so—”

  “If this is how it’s gonna be—” Edith repeated

  even louder and more stridently than before.

  “Okay, okay,” Audra said briskly. “Forgive me. I

  only meant—”

  Her mother looked up at her, smoky eyes agi-

  tated. “No, never mind. I guess I’m . . . just not used

  to seeing my daughter this way,” she admitted.

  “They did a good job on them extensions. Is that the

  same stuff Oprah got?” But before Audra could an-

  swer, she turned her head toward the window,

  pulling the shade and closing her eyes as though she

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  were exhausted. “I thought sure that girl Shamiyah

  said they would at least put us up for the night . . .”

  “Are you really my Aunt Audra?” Kiana asked,

  staring at her with big eyes from her place beside

  her grandmother.

  “Really,” Audra said, leaning toward her with a

  smile on her face.

  “You sound like her . . . but you don’t look like

  her,” she said with a frown. “You don’t look like her

  at all.”

  “Don’t you like the way I look?” Audra asked.

  The little girl stared at her for a long while. “You

  look nice . . . but you just don’t look like Aunt Au-

  dra. Aunt Audra had skin like midnight and eyes

  like fire. And she was soft all over when she hugged

  me.” She sighed. “I miss her.”

  The words stung like a lash and Audra felt tears

  prickling behind her eyes. She was about to say

  something, something reassuring and familiar that

  might regain Kiana’s trust, when Penny Bradshaw

  interrupted with, “Did he give you the shoes, too?”

  She nodded at the emerald green pumps on Audra’s

  feet. “The plastic surgeon—”

  “Oh . . . no. The shoes were from Dr. Bremmar.

  He did my face. They work together—they’re part-

  ners. I guess they must shop together, too!” Audra

  laughed like maybe someone else might find the im-

  age of the two doctors shopping together amusing,

  but got no takers. They didn’t know either man
. . .

  and you had to know them to get the joke. “No,” she

  said not bothering to explain. “I’m sure they had

  their assistant shop for them or something. Actually

  I got gifts from all of them—all the experts,” and she

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  291

  proceeded to tell them about how her old black duf-

  fel had been emptied of the things she had brought

  at the beginning of her Ugly Duckling journey and

  every item replaced by a trinket from each of the

  people she had worked with over the past three

  months. There was a pair of tiny black yoga pants

  and three crop tops in different colors from Juli-

  enne; a lovely wide-brimmed hat and gloves from

  Dr. Jamison; the clingy silk dress and shoes from

  Drs. Koch and Bremmar; the black handbag she was

  carrying from Shamiyah, and a gold necklace from

  Camilla. But the most unusual gift by far was from

  Dr. Goddard: a delicate hand mirror, edged in gilt,

  on which the word beholder was engraved in fili-

  gree.

  “Beholder?” Edith frowned. “Why ‘beholder’?

  What kind of message is that?”

  “It’s a reminder,” Audra said quietly. “That beauty

  is in the eye of the beholder . . .” She glanced in

  Art’s direction, but to her dismay, he lowered his

  eyes almost as soon as she captured them. “And that

  my own perception of myself is the most important

  one of all.”

  “Amazing,” Penny Bradshaw breathed again, in

  the same tone of absolute wonder. Then silence

  reigned in the car again.

  “I want to know all about it . . . everything. Did it

  hurt? How much of the hair is yours? What did they

  do to your skin to get it so . . . so . . .” Penny Brad-

  shaw settled herself into the seat Audra had been

  hoping her father might take and started talking a

  blue streak. “Light?”

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  They had first-class seats . . . which should have

  provided a prime opportunity for them to talk, but

  Art must not have wanted that. Audra glanced at

  him: he leaned over the seat ahead of them, helping

  Kiana buckle her seat belt. With that accomplished,

  he excused himself for the lavatory, keeping his

  head down.

  Audra stared after him, confused and let down, a

  vague feeling of depression replacing the elation of

  only hours ago. For months, she’d been at the center

  of her own little Ugly Duckling universe, where