Prettiest Doll (3 page)

“Are you from here?” I asked.

“No,” he said, turning back to his milk shake. “Just passing through.”

We ate for a minute in silence.

“You know, there are a lot of good things about pageants,” I said.

I didn't know why I was even telling him anything. Usually, when people made nasty comments about pageants, I just ignored them.

“Like what?”

“Like, they give you poise. They make you confident.”

“Why? Because everyone claps and cheers when you smile?”

“You have to answer questions. It's hard, speaking in public, with everyone watching.”

The interviews are one of my favorite parts of pageants. I like coming up with good answers. I always wish I could be the one asking the questions, though.

“You can do that in school. Or playing sports,” the boy said. He sucked hard on his straw, not looking at me anymore.

“Do you play sports?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He almost sounded mad. I thought we were done talking until he added, “I play chess.”

“Oh,” I said, getting it now. “You're smart.”

“Like there's something
wrong
with being smart?”

I was surprised that he could tell what I thought. “I just meant I get why you don't like pageants.”

“Why, because smart people can't be pretty?”

What was the matter with this boy?

“Look,” I said. Then I stopped, thinking how to say it. “Usually, there are different boxes for different kinds of kids. Smart kids, jocks, good-looking girls. Good-l ooking boys are usually jocks, so they don't need a separate box. All the average kids go in another box together.”

The boy was staring at me again. “Are you frickin' kidding me?”

“I'm not trying to be mean. That's just how it is. Don't you know that?”

After a long pause, he said, “Yeah. I do.”

“I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying that's how it is.”

The boy leaned toward me. “But don't you get sick of being in a box?”

“Not really.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess it's easy being in the good-looking-girl box.”

One of the things Miss Denise always says about pageant interviews is not to let your real feelings show. Smile with your words, she says. Smile, smile, smile.

“Not easy, but nice,” I said. Smiling.

“Couldn't you be in the smart box, too?” he asked. “You seem pretty smart to me.”

It was a good thing I didn't have a piece of fudge in my mouth, because if I did, it would have fallen on the floor. No one had ever said I seemed smart. No one. Ever. Not one time.

“Probably not,” I said.

“I've been in a lot of chess tournaments. You're just as smart as lots of the girls there. Maybe not all of them,” he said.

“You look pretty young to be in chess tournaments. How long have you been doing them?”

“Eight years. Since I was seven.” He sucked on his milk shake, making a gargly, bottom-of-the-glass sound.

Fifteen. He was
fifteen.
He looked as though he would only come up to my shoulder. His face was smooth and hairless and just a little chubby, the way boys' faces are in fourth grade, before everyone starts getting tall. His voice was kind of high.

I thought,
Oh, my Lord,
and then,
A tenth-grader thinks I'm smart.

“I didn't know seven-year-olds could play chess,” I said, struggling to cover up my surprise.

“That's what all the smart kids were doing while you were smiling and waving, I guess.”

I remembered Miss Denise and realized I was late. I slid off the stool.

“It was nice talking to you,” I said. “I'm Liv Tatum, by the way.”

“I'm Danny Jacobson.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “Maybe I'll see you around.”

I'd forgotten about the duffel bag.

“Nah,” Danny said. “I just have to pay for this. Then I'm catching a bus.”

I wanted to thank him for saying I was smart, but I didn't know how. I didn't have enough money to pay for his milk shake, but I would have if I'd had any extra change. Something about his being short made it seem okay for me to want to do this.

“I hope you win your next tournament,” I said, setting my money next to my plate.

“I hope you win, too,” Danny said.

MISS Denise lives on a cul-de-sac off Mound Street, in a little white house with a gray roof and a fenced-in covered cement porch. Sometimes I have to wait on the porch if she has someone in the kitchen getting her hair cut, which is her real job. But today, when I knocked, she opened the door almost right away and said, “Come on in, Olivia,” like this was a social call and not something my mama was paying her for.

The front door opens onto the living room, which has paneled walls and worn beige carpeting. Miss Denise stood next to her maroon La-Z-Boy while I set down my backpack and pulled off my hoodie. She had her arms crossed, but that doesn't always mean she's mad. It's just how she stands, watching even when she doesn't have to. It's like she can't help it, like she's so used to analyzing every single move you make that she can't turn off the judging part of herself.

When I'd dropped my hoodie onto my backpack, she said, “Well, come on now,” and lowered herself into the recliner.

Miss Denise is in her thirties, with dark bobbed hair and long fingernails painted cherry red. It's hard to believe she was in pageants when she was a girl, but she has trophies on the little shelf next to the wood stove to prove it: Diablo County Fair Queen, Arkansas's Ultimate Little Miss, Rock City Firemen's Festival Princess. Now she's thick in the middle and her skin is blotchy, but she still knows what she's talking about. She charges $250 for ten hours of coaching, and if you pay her more money, she'll go with you to the pageant. Mama was working on saving up for that. She had a couple of mule deer in the freezer at Grandma's.

“Let's see you walk, Olivia,” Miss Denise said, crossing her legs delicately at the ankles. She wore neon green mules with tufts of green feathers across the tops. Her toenails were painted the same red as her fingernails. “Come on now. Like it's showtime for real.”

I stood across the room from her and willed myself to concentrate. Walking isn't just walking, Miss Denise always says. Walking is also thinking about walking.

When I was ready, I began to make my way toward Miss Denise. Keeping track of everything in my head: where my eyes were looking, whether my hands were flat at my sides, whether I was smiling. When I'd walked about halfway across the living room, I did my turn. Smiling over one shoulder, then the other. Just like I'd done in front of Mama. Just like I'd done a million times. Then I posed long enough for the judges to look at me.
Don't rush,
I told myself. Like Miss Denise always says, the whole point is for them to look.

When I was finished, Miss Denise said, “Where were your eyes?”

“On the TV.” Miss Denise has a big plasma TV in the corner. That's where you're supposed to focus.

“No, they weren't. They were looking down.”

“I was looking at the TV! At the buttons!”

“Olivia, you were looking at the ground. Now, where are the judges gonna be? Down on the floor or up here?” Miss Denise put on her pageant face: big, hard smile, eyes upturned.

“But—”

“Do it again, Olivia.”

I sighed. I knew there would be something wrong every time I did it.

After the next time, Miss Denise said, “Do you need glasses?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you're squinting.” She made a terrible face, with eyes all crinkled into lines.

“I didn't do that,” I said.

“Well, now, yes, you did, Olivia, and what am I always telling you about talking back?”

I sighed. “That part of being a winner is agreeing.”

“Not
agreeing. Being agreeable.
And not arguing.” Miss Denise reached for her dental floss, which she keeps on the table next to her recliner, and unrolled a length of thread. She's obsessed with flossing. “No one likes a little know-it-all,” she said, angling the floss up between her two front teeth.

I wondered if she knew what she looked like, doing that.

I waited while she flossed. Finally she said, “Let's see you do it again.” She was hard to understand, talking with her mouth wide open, working the floss between two back teeth, but I was used to her and knew what she meant.

I walked again. This time it was the way my shoulders weren't even. The next time my smile was too big. “You look like a jack-o'-lantern,” Miss Denise said.

“You said to smile!”

“Natural! You want to look natural!”

“But what if I naturally don't smile the right way?”

Miss Denise crossed her arms. This time she was mad. She gave me a look.

“I know, I know. Quit arguing,” I said.

She dropped her floss into a little metal wastebasket next to her recliner. “Let's take a break from all this walking,” she said. “Let's do a little singing.”

My heart sank. “No. I'll walk some more.”

“Now come on, Olivia. Let's hear it.”

“Can't I wait until next week? I'm still working on it.”

But she was already reaching for her portable CD player. Miss Denise assigns songs to all her pageant girls. Then she buys CDs of the songs, only without the singing, so there's musical accompaniment.

I heard the familiar opening, the old-fashioned piano notes. Keeping my eyes on the plasma TV screen, I started to sing.

 

Oh! You beautiful doll,
You great big beautiful doll!
Let me put my arms about you,
I could never live without you.

 

Oh! You beautiful doll,
You great big beautiful doll!
If you ever leave me how my heart will ache,
I want to hug you but I fear you'd break.

 

Oh, oh, oh, oh,
Oh, you beautiful doll!

Miss Denise switched off the CD player. She closed her eyes.

“Lord, child,” was all she said.

“I told you I was still working on it,” I said.

I was surprised when she said, “Why don't you sit on the couch for a second? I'm going to get us some 7-Ups.”

I never got 7-Up at home, unless I was throwing up.

While she was in the kitchen, I took a look around the familiar living room. It looked different from where I was sitting. The seat part of the La-Z-Boy was old and frayed, the maroon worn to almost gray. The little wastebasket was full of used floss, tangled together like a nest.

Miss Denise came back and set one of two pink plastic cups of 7-Up on the TV tray next to the couch. “Don't worry,” she said. “It's diet.”

I brought the cup up to my lips and smiled at the tickle of popping bubbles against the bottom of my nose.

Miss Denise took a long sip and set her cup on the table next to the floss.

“Olivia,” she said, “I got you in for a lesson with Mrs. Elsie Drucker. Next Monday. I told her you were preparing a song for Prettiest Doll, and she graciously made time in her busy schedule. I told her you were a hard worker. I told her you needed help.”

“Monday! ”

“Well, the pageant is only three weeks away, Olivia! You've got to get a move on. You're running out of time.”

“But I'm not ready for her. I still need to practice. I can do better if I practice on my own first.”

The idea of singing in front of Mrs. Drucker made me nauseous.

“You been practicing on your own for months, Olivia. And I got to tell you: it's not helping. And your mama's not helping. Even
I'm
not helping.” She looked at me, eyes serious. “Mrs. Drucker's your last chance if you don't want to get up there and make a gol-darned fool out of yourself.”

I could feel my face going red. “I'm trying,” I said. “I'm trying as hard as I can.”

Which wasn't exactly true. I'd sort of given up trying.

“Well, then trying's not helping, either,” Miss Denise said. “You need Mrs. Drucker.”

“But I've heard stories,” I said. “The other girls say she's mean.”

Backstage at Little Miss Missouri Starburst, Amber Dickerson said Mrs. Drucker called you names and smelled like B.O.

“What kind of names?” I asked.

“A stuck pig,” Amber said. “She says that if you're singing it
right
.”

“What's she say if you're singing it wrong?”

Amber flashed her biggest beauty pageant smile at me. “I don't know,” she said. “I always sing it right.”

“It's not B.O., exactly,” Candace Hebert said. She lives in Durham, which is all the way across the state. She's another one I've done pageants with for years. She was born with a cleft palate. After it was surgically corrected, her parents kept entering her in pageants so she would know they thought she was beautiful, no matter what anyone else said. Candace says she doesn't care that she's never won.

“Well, what is it, then?” I asked.

“It's old-lady smell,” Candace said.

“Yeah, when the old lady hasn't taken a bath in a week,” Amber said.

Candace waited until Amber's name was called for her interview before she whispered to me, “It's not like that at all. Amber is such a bitch.”

I nodded. On the other side of the curtain, I could hear Amber saying how her favorite pet was her canary.

“It's like maybe she hasn't taken a bath in
three days,”
Candace whispered.

Now I said to Miss Denise, “Why can't I just dance? I'm pretty good at dance. I don't see why I have to do something I suck at.”