3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows (22 page)

She couldn’t resist asking Maureen about it when she came over to help Ama with her gear. “How come they didn’t put me in one of those groups?” Ama asked, gesturing toward the two buses parked across the way.

“What do you mean?” Maureen asked.

“I mean -when they divided up the groups, why didn’t they put me with other black kids?”

“Oh.” Maureen shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t ask for that information on the application. I didn’t know you were black.”

Polly tried to walk down the runway in a manner that was strident and seductive, as she’d been taught, but the shoes were very difficult to walk in. Without the dark stockings, she was afraid her short, bias-cut dress looked like a bad figure-skating outfit.

She felt like her skirt was sticking to her bare leg and she wanted to look down and fix it, but she was scared that if she did, she would lose what tenuous grasp she had on her runway walk and pitch into the photographers.

Cameras flashed. Spotlights roved and music blared. The audience was in darkness.

As Polly teetered to the end of the walk and executed her turn, a spotlight roved over a face she knew. It was Dia. Dia, who’d said she wasn’t coming but had come. Dia, who was supposed to be meeting -with the people at her art gallery this afternoon.

Suddenly Polly felt like her posture was crumbling. Dia never came to any of her things, but she’d come to this. She was clapping for Polly and Polly had to resist the urge to wave at her. Polly stumbled a little on the way back to the curtain. She was desperate to get to the end of the walk. She was aiming forward, walking too fast, tipping on her heels, not remembering about being seductive or strident. She just wanted this part to be over and to go see Dia.

As soon as Polly got through the curtain and out of the view of the audience, she scrambled through the backstage madness and went out the side door of the ballroom, -where the audience was assembled. There was a break before the next group of models and Polly wanted to see Dia, to let her know she knew she had come.

One song ended and it took a few moments of apparent DJ scramble to get another one started. Polly got stuck a few rows behind where Dia was sitting and tried to squeeze past some of the folding chairs to get through. She waved her arms in the hope that Dia would see her.

In the absence of music, Polly heard a familiar voice. It was a gift of Polly’s that she never forgot a voice. “I tried to do her makeup,” Genevieve was saying to another woman whose voice Polly didn’t recognize. “I don’t know how much good it did. She’s the sweetest kid, but God knows -where she got the idea she could model.”

“She needs braces, obviously,” Genevieve s friend said.

Polly froze. She brought her arms down to her sides. The runway was temporarily empty. The music hadn’t begun. Polly knew they were talking about her. She started to back away, because she didn’t want them to see her there.

Polly saw her mother directly in front of Genevieve, but she no longer felt like getting anybody’s attention. She hoped her mother hadn’t been paying attention to Genevieve. She hoped she wouldn’t turn around. Polly wished that the music would start again and the next model would go and that the conversation -would be swallowed up and forgotten in the ensuing noise. Polly -would flee backstage and see her mother after the show -was over. But it -was not to be.

Polly -was standing behind some tall people, -waiting for her moment to make a run for the side door, -when she saw Dia turn around. From the set of Dias body, the look of her face, Polly sensed there -was trouble.

“Excuse me, but -what is that supposed to mean?” Dia demanded, glaring at Genevieve. Her voice -was angry in a -way that cut through the frivolity of the place like a hatchet.

Genevieve stared at Dia in surprise. “I’m sorry. Are you talking to me?”

Polly knew the look on her mother’s face. She wished she had stayed backstage. She felt cursed by her combination of soft feet and fine ears. She took a step forward. “Dia, it’s fine,” she said, forcing her voice up and out. “She didn’t mean anything.”

Dia barely registered Polly’s presence. “Yes, I am talking to you,” Dia raged toward Genevieve.

Polly was suddenly afraid Dia was going to shove Genevieve. She took another step toward her mother.

“What I meant was— What I said was—” Genevieve did not know what she was dealing -with, and she was too staggered to ask.

“What you said was what?”

Genevieve glanced briefly at Polly. She was mortified, flustered and defensive. “I said she’s a sweet kid who maybe isn’t cut out to be a model.”

The music finally scratched back on, but not loud enough to muffle anything.

“Dia, it’s fine. Seriously,” Polly whispered. She was shaking.

Dia still had her death glare trained on Genevieve. “And why do you say that?” The contortion of her features made Polly look away.

“She’s—she’s not tall,” Genevieve said haltingly. “She’s—”

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Dia cut in, her voice ragged and raw.

Polly put her hands to her face and closed her eyes. When she looked again, she saw her mother’s face, no longer angry but desolate.

Polly didn’t want to go back into the audience. So she waited backstage for the lists to be handed out. All the girls were screaming and giggling in groups, reliving the big moments. Polly stood by herself with her hands clasped near her face, trying not to cry.

A lot of them -were grouped around the refreshment table, downing bagels and turkey wraps and mini-brownies. Polly wasn’t the only girl -who hadn’t been eating much the last few days. She wanted to feel hungry, but the feeling didn’t come.

Karen’s three assistants were feverishly -working on computers in the office area at the back of the room. Polly heard the huff of the printers going and going.

Mandy came by and hugged her again, but a little more awkwardly this time. “Good job,” she said.

Polly just blinked and nodded. She didn’t trust herself to open her mouth. She wondered if her mom -was waiting for her or if she’d left.

When Polly looked up again Karen -was once more clapping and shouting to get the attention of the group. “We haven’t done the final tabulation, folks. This is complicated. But we do have some lists to start passing out. When we call your name, please come to the front.”

Polly watched the girls who got called dispersing through the crowd, waving their flapping trophies. She caught sight of a couple of the lists. Each showed at least five agents. All the girls were gathering around, wanting to know. One girl’s list fluttered by and Polly saw she had at least twenty names.

What if Polly didn’t get any? What if she didn’t get any paper at all? Would she just go back to her room and pack her suitcase to go home? She tried to gauge her own level of disappointment, but she was preoccupied with thinking about Genevieve and her mom and she couldn’t quite discover it.

More girls. More lists. She saw longer ones, shorter ones. One had meetings listed all the way to the bottom of the page and continuing on the back. Would that girl be the one who got the shopping spree and the TV tryout and her pictures in the magazine? Would she be the one whose name was announced as the -winner?

What would it be like to be that girl? Polly tried to imagine it, but she stopped, because she couldn’t. She wondered if her mother -was waiting for her.

When Polly heard her name called, she didn’t recognize it at first. It didn’t sound like her name in this setting.

“Polly!” Mandy shouted. She gave Polly a thumbs-up.

Polly stumbled to the front. Karen’s assistant folded the paper and handed it to her. “Nice work,” she said generously.

Polly was suddenly afraid to open it. Had the other girls’ sheets been folded? She wished she was half a foot taller than the rest of these girls rather than half a foot shorter so they could all look in. You had more privacy when you were tall. She opened the paper a little and peered in.

There was a name. There was a meeting. There was just one, but there wasn’t none.

She held the paper tightly in her hand as she went back to her chair. The paper -was damply -wrinkled as she opened it again and studied it more closely. She had a meeting -with a person named Rod Meyers at 2:10 in Meeting Room 4. Was he an actual agent? Or a talent scout? Did he -work for one of the big companies the other girls talked about?

Maybe Genevieve and her friend -were -wrong. Maybe Rod Meyers saw something in Polly that Genevieve and the others had missed.

Polly had a meeting. Just one. But one was a number. It was an infinite amount more than none.

Ama surprised herself again by getting teary -when she was saying good-bye. Especially with Maureen. Even -with Carly. She tried not to show it. She promised Carly she would stay in touch and she really meant it. Now that Ama knew Carly hadn’t made out with Noah, Carly’s penchant for making out with everyone else didn’t seem so problematic.

Noah kissed her, even though everyone could see. She caught Maureen smiling and blushed.

“Write me an e-mail tonight when you get home,” Noah whispered. She liked his breath against her ear. It made her shiver.

“I will,” she said.

Later, Ama sat on the plane, enjoying the neatness of it, loving the feeling of going home. She sank back into her seat with a sweet exhaustion, thinking about her parents and Bob. She thought of Esi. She kept thinking of Jo and Polly.

Ama looked down at her thighs on the seat, proud of how much stronger and more muscular they were than -when she’d started. She examined the delicate ballet flat at the end of each of her legs. She’d been so excited for -weeks about putting on her favorite shoes again, but now they struck her as trendy and insufficient.

In wonderment at herself, she stood up and opened her overhead, rummaged around in her pack, and took out her boots. She put them on.

She walked up and down the aisle in her boots. She couldn’t sit still. She was burning to talk about Noah. She was burning to tell about her rappel and Carly, and Maureen and the view from the top of the cliff. And Noah.

She had expected she’d want to call Grace as soon as she got back, but it wasn’t really Grace she wanted to tell. She pictured Grace’s surprise and disapproval at the idea of her having a boyfriend. Grace was pretty judgmental about girls who had boyfriends. “You notice it’s the girls with boyfriends who always bomb the bio quizzes,” Grace had said to her last year. Ama shook her head. Really it was Polly and Jo she wanted to talk to.

Jo finally reached her mom on her cell phone to tell her she didn’t want to go back to the beach house.

“Dad says it’s okay if I stay. The summer’s almost over anyway.”

“What about your job?” her mom asked. She was in the car on her -way back from Baltimore.

“It’s over.”

“It is?”

Jo stood at her bedroom window and watched her father in the backyard pulling -weeds from the garden. He was wearing flowered gardening gloves.

Jo didn’t feel like holding back from her mother at that moment. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“I got fired.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes. I dropped a tray full of glasses of red wine and cranberry juice on four customers.”

“Oh, Jo.”

“The glasses shattered and wine went everywhere.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yep. And one of the customers was a pregnant lady in a white dress.”

Her mom made an unexpected sound, and it took Jo a second to recognize that it was a laugh. It was a nice sound.

Jo laughed too. “Not even you could have gotten that dress clean.”

Jo decided not to explain that Effie had pushed her or the reason -why Effie had pushed her. That was a less funny story for another time.

Their laughter -was like a blossom, lovely but short-lived. When it faded the silence stole in.

“Can I tell you something?” her mom asked.

“Of course,” Jo said.

“I’m going to look at an apartment in the Bethesda Tower on Friday.”

“Dad told me that,” Jo said.

“Did he?”

“Yeah. He said usually the woman stays in the house and the man moves into an apartment, but that you wanted an apartment and he realized he wanted the house.”

“You’ll still be with me every other -week,” her mom said. “We’ll be at the new apartment together.”

“I know. He said that too.”

“It’s not permanent. Not at all. But for now I could use something smaller and more manageable. It’ll be a lot easier to keep clean.”

Jo nodded without saying anything. Out her window she watched her father pouring soil around the azalea bushes and getting a lot of it on his feet. She wondered if he had fired the gardening service, because in spite of his weeding, it all looked quite lush and overgrown.

“And it won’t have the … memories,” her mother said.

Jo pressed her palm against the window glass. “I know,” she said. She remembered the week after Finn died, her mother on her knees on the old rug in Finn’s room trying to scrub out the stains.

•••

Polly went up to the hotel room. Her mother -wasn’t there.

Polly brushed her hair and her teeth. Her ice-skating dress was scratchy and uncomfortable, but she felt like she should keep it on until after the meeting.

At two o’clock she went downstairs and stood outside Meeting Room 4. When it was her turn to go in, her hands -were nervous and cold as she reached out to shake with Mr. Meyers.

“And you are …” He looked down at his paper.

“Polly,” she said. “Polly Winchell.”

“Right,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down?” He gave her a big, very -white smile.

“Okay.” She sat. Her posture -was straight.

“Polly, go ahead and smile for me, -would you?” He -was leaning forward a bit, looking at her closely.

Selfconsciously, Polly smiled a small smile. She thought of-what the -woman, Genevieve s friend, had said about her teeth. Polly reminded herself that she should not smile big anymore. She should smile small from now on and keep her teeth in her mouth.

“A little more,” he said.

Polly didn’t -want to smile more. It -was so unnatural in the circumstance it felt to her like a grimace or a leer.