The Shortest Distance Between Two Women (43 page)

Emma’s throat remains lodged somewhere between her chest and her knees. Stephie was in a panic when she found Emma, fretting about everything from her poetry number to the way the other contestants were treating her when the pageant director was out of earshot.

“Be yourself, Stephie, and do not worry about them,” Emma
advised as she took Stephie’s head in between her hands and made Stephie look into her eyes. “Now repeat after me, okay?”

Stephie nodded as if she was in a trance and Emma started talking.

After she had finished and Stephie had repeated everything she had said, Emma realized that she was doing something that Marty used to do with her when she was growing up. Marty had started her “Repeat After Me” ritual when Emma was about ten and had just had her first encounter with girlfriends who are nasty and the ritual kept up even as Emma left for college.

And it always worked and was one of the most empowering memories of her childhood.

“You can do this, Stephie,” Emma said now, believing every word that she was saying to her niece. “We are all here for you, but you know what? You could do this standing on your head without anyone you know for support.”

“Okay,” Stephie said timidly. “And …”

“And what, sweetie?”

“Remember that night I was drunk and you saved me?”

“How could I forget?”

“I remember what I said to you. I’m sorry. It was something I needed to get bombed to say. You were rescuing me and I wanted
you to know that it was okay to be rescued yourself once in a while.”

“Stephie, it was just what I needed to hear. My sisters did the same thing for me that I did for you. That’s how life works. It’s a very cool circle.”

“And one more thing, Auntie Em.”

“I’m afraid to ask. What?”

“Tonight is for you, too. You always make me feel beautiful, like a winner. I couldn’t be who I am without you.”

Emma is so touched she can barely squeak out a “Thank you, baby.”

By the time Emma made it back to her seat the pageant was under way.

And it was pretty much the last place most every Gilford in attendance ever thought they would be on a weeknight in the middle of summer just days after they had let loose at the family reunion, which had turned into a wedding and an almost all-night-long bash. Especially as they sat through the introduction phase of the contest where each one of the twelve girls gave an opening statement that talked about her purpose in life.

Emma turned and saw Rick jab his knee into Bo’s thigh when a cute little contestant in an aqua blue gown that glittered as if it was on fire, who also had on so much makeup it was impossible to see what color her eyes were, declared, “I want to make as many people happy as possible,” and Bo replied, not so quietly, “You can start with me, baby.”

This is how it went.

One of the contestants would say something and one of the Gilfords, mostly those under the age of sixteen, would say something curt, hilarious or rude, and be kicked, jabbed or looked at with such disgust that it’s a wonder none of them fell out of their chairs and landed on their heads.

“She’s adorable,” one of the gay guys who was sitting behind Emma commented. “She’s classy and beautiful and I can see she belongs to this wild Gilford group. I’m thinking of asking them to adopt me.”

“Consider it done,” Marty said while they put down their signs and waited for the next contestant.

Even Joy, who actually did not have a purse large enough to carry a mini liquor bottle, was mostly behaving and when Emma turned to look at her it was more than obvious from the constant flow of tears that Joy was proud and, for the time being anyway, sober.

It was also obvious that the talent competition was going to be the highlight of the pageant. Debra and Erika and their husbands, the other gay guy, and Robert Dell were passing a piece of paper around that had each contestant’s name and number on it and they were guessing what each one would do. Susie Dell was looking at the sheet as it came across her lap and would occasionally snort into her arm as if she was trying to stifle a sneeze.

When the paper passed by Emma she could not resist, and it’s a good thing she looked when she did, because Marty snapped it out of Robert’s hand on the next go-around and tucked it into her purse without so much as taking her eyes off the stage.

Britney Sue, Number 1—Flute playing and head bobbing at the same time.

Ardis, Number 2—Naked tap dancing.

Paulette, Number 3—Makeup application.

Maggie, Number 5—Flower arranging to rap music.

Emma wondered for a brief moment if any other families were engaged in these sinister pageant antics. Then she quickly erased that thought because obviously the Gilfords were one-of-a-kind.

When it came time for the talent, everyone had already witnessed one unfortunate contestant tripping, another one stumbling over her one chance to answer a random question from a judge that went something like “… with declining high school test scores, what would you do to motivate today’s students to want to learn more?” another contestant being so terribly shy it seemed ridiculous for her to even be on stage, and yet another girl turning in obvious view of just about everyone in the building to reapply her lipstick during a brief moment of wild applause.

“At this rate Stephie will win this damn thing,” Rick whispered to Emma.

“She’s already won,” Emma told him. “But Marty will yell at us if we don’t shut up.”

They did get a sideways look and Emma stuck her tongue out at her mother and grinned just as the talent competition began and one of the contestants, not Britney Sue, did play the flute without actually moving her hair.

There was the requisite fabulous singer, two dancers, one photographer who gave a rambling talk about light and how to enhance color when touching up photographs, and this is when the bus driver rather appropriately fell asleep and gently landed against the arm of the man who got on the bus with his wife and kids.

Then, if the program was correct, it was time for Stephanie Gilford to do something that was called “Pageant Poetry Perfection” that had everyone looking at their programs and then the stage and back again in anticipation and partial wonderment.
Poetry?
The last time a pageant contestant had done a poetry thingamagig she had simply stood in one spot under a glaring white light and recited a poem someone else had written.

Emma knew that was not going to happen. And from the moment every light in the community center went out for at least a minute, as a brilliant mixture of spotlights converged on stage to form what looked like a real rainbow, and Stephie stepped out onto the stage and began speaking, the crowd was mesmerized.

This was not just a poetry reading; it was a performance unlike anything most of Higgins had ever seen. And Stephie was
brilliant
.

She started with her almost naked back, which looked like the back of a gorgeous white swan about to take flight, turned to the audience. Her legs were together and the first several lines of the poem seemed to float past the soft music that was playing, something new ageish but not whiny, and her head was bent as if she was speaking into her toes.

And this is when Stephie turns around and the light explodes into dozens of circles that start fanning themselves out into the audience and creating a ripple of “ohs” and “ahs” and that not just startle and surprise the audience, but make them also feel as lovely as the poem.

The poem was a statement about the real truth of beauty, about how so many people succumb to the societal norms, and how someone who wears a lime green dress and feels comfortable
enough to dye her hair pink can be just as beautiful as a thin model, as the so-called perfect woman, as the girl in a thousand dreams.

When Stephie finishes her poem, every single light in the community center goes on and what the crowd finally realizes is that Stephie has removed all of her makeup and jewelry, has taken off the pink wig that everyone, including Emma, thought was her own hair, and there she stands in all her magnificent plainness, with her hair dyed back to its natural color, as she closes her eyes, raises her hands and says,
“… beauty then is in the eye of the beholder
.”

And the crowd does go wild as the Gilfords jump up and down and holler and wave their signs as if the end of yet another war has been announced and as Emma turns to catch her mother’s eye and smiles and sees Marty mouth the words, “You are wonderful,” and then it doesn’t matter that Stephie will not win. It didn’t matter to begin with, or last Friday, or right this moment, and it will not matter next Thanksgiving.

It doesn’t matter that the pretty girl with the professionally trained voice will be the new Miss Higgins. It doesn’t matter that Stephie, much to her amazement, was named Miss Congeniality, which is a title that is voted on by all the other contestants. It doesn’t matter that Stephie will become a local celebrity and much called upon to do poetry presentations at just about every civic and private function in South Carolina for the next ten years.

What matters, everyone tells her, as the pageant ends and the crowd swarms the stage, is simply that she did it and she did it well and with class and with every inch of a heart that is already outlined in gold and most likely glittering as if it is a diamond-studded tiara.

And they are definitely also all over the garden and gazebo and Emma’s kitchen, where Stephie’s post-pageant celebration tangoed itself after the bus driver pulled the Gilford chariot up onto the sidewalk and almost took out three bushes and a tough old creosote-coated telephone pole while the entire bus sang “Moon River” because the summer moon was rising like a ripe melon over the rooftops just behind Emma’s yard.

Stephie had taken off the lime green dress and it was hanging on a long pole in the middle of the garden, as if it was the new Gilford family flag, and she was more than relieved to be finished with the pageant business even as she proudly wore her Miss Congeniality banner over her bib overalls and a T-shirt that looked as if it had popped out the side of a lawnmower.

Susie Dell and her apparently new boyfriend, Uncle Mike, came up with the hilarious and magical idea of playing Kick the Can with the teenagers who were too busy with their iPods and Game Boys growing up to have learned yard and alley games. Robert and Marty opted out of the game, as did the bus driver who was sleeping like a baby on the porch swing, but everyone
else—all the sisters and brothers-in-law as well as the two gay guys, the nice old lady, and the family of four—was playing.