Famous last words, I wanted to say. Instead, I pulled off Bella’s saddle, hung it on the wall, and tried a different tactic. “You’ve heard Aunt DeeDee’s stories about other pageants. You remember that one lady who slept with every judge in the state of California in order to secure her win? Or the mother who threatened to ‘cut’ the coordinator at Florida’s Little Miss Pageant if her daughter didn’t win? That world is vicious.”
“For the kind of money they’re offering this year, I’d think about competing myself if I wasn’t helping run the show.” Lacy looked up at the fluffy white clouds and reframed her argumentas I started brushing Bella. “Look, I get it, I really do. I mean, it’s not like your mother had the forethought to sign you up for an event that might help you earn the money you desperately need and force you to leave your house for more than”—she looked at her feet and wrinkled her nose—“for more than literal horse shit.”
“I can get money other ways.”
“Oh yeah?” Lacy raised her eyebrows. “Have you started turning tricks instead of just teaching them to Bella?”
“Ha-ha.” I put a hand on Bella’s rump to let her know I was behind her before moving to the other side as I batted my eyes at my oldest friend. “Lacy, dearest, I’m not a slut like you.”
“More like a cloistered nun.” Lacy glanced at my lady regions with a look of pity. “How long has it been for the old girl?”
I gave her a bland smile. “I’m saving myself for marriage.”
“Right. Just don’t let her dry up. It’s easy to get parched in this summer sun. Seriously though…” She tilted her head and gave me a half-smile as she gestured to the mountains in the distance. “You used to hike those ridges from dawn to dusk. You were the one taking names and getting shit done. By the time you were thirty, you were going to open your own practice and heal all the animals within a hundred-mile radius, remember?”
Once upon a time, sure, I’d been salutatorian of my high school, class president of my undergrad, a top pick with a full ride in the veterinary program at Cornell. But I was no longer those things.
“This could be a chance for you to get back out there. To reconnect with… you know, actual people… to start acting like yourself again.” Lacy knew where my mind was at. “You’ve grieved for almost a year, and it’s been a long one. Will you at least try?”
I didn’t answer, busying myself with Bella’s final preparations for the evening.
I might not have been a beauty queen, but I was a fab stable hand. Bella’s stall was pristine enough for a human to sleep inside each night. Thankfully, I hadn’t yet had to stoop that low, but with the late notices coming from the mortgage company every month, the clock was ticking.
“I’ll pick you up Wednesday,” Lacy said matter-of-factly, as if the question was settled. “Oh… and your aunt will be at your house tonight to start preparations.”
“Preparations?” It sounded like Aunt DeeDee would be readying me for sacrifice.
Lacy turned to leave, calling back over her shoulder, “You’re about to find out the kind of work it takes to look this good.”
TWO
Aubergine—yes, like the purplish eggplant color—in Virginia just happens to be the capital of the oldest beauty pageant in U.S. history.
We’re nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, named for a compound that conifers release, scattering blue light across the hazy ridges. Because we’re at the tip-top of Virginia, only a four-hour train ride from Manhattan, we’ve got the reputation of having more… we’ll call itje ne sais quoithan other run-of-the-mill small towns. Still, we offer the delightful oddities expected of a Southern hamlet of fewer than three thousand residents, and whose economy thrives off of women in flouncy dresses. If you take a stroll past the red-brick buildings on Main Street, you’ll not only find Morning Brew, a coffee shop that sells lattesandpotions to help contestants win, but also Fixin’ To, a mechanic shop that features a sewing machine and doubles as a quickie alterations depot for all emergency pageant wardrobe needs.
The Rose Palace Pageant pulls from residents of the Eastern Seaboard and acts as a stepping stone for Miss Universe, Miss America, and Miss Whatever the Hell Else Is Out There. Plus, asI soon discovered, our town’s show offers one of the biggest cash prizes in the pageant world.
I know the one-hundred-year-old history well because, regardless of how you personally feel about the pageant, if you live in Aubergine, the show is in your blood. You’re either related to a former contestant, you’ve been a former contestant, or a former contestant has bullied you. My great-grandmother—a woman I’ve never met—won the damn thing in 1928. All that to say that for one week a year, our town exists for the sole purpose of showcasing sparkling tiaras and choreographed dances and women strutting around in high heels. The rest of the year, it eagerly awaits for that week to arrive again.
What the annual beauty pageant worshippers don’t realize when they flock to Aubergine on their pilgrimage is that we also know all the pageant secrets—or we make guesses and spread rumors, which is about the same thing. Even though Momma kept me out of that scene, as a child I heard stories of the missing winner, Miss 2001. The fact of her disappearance has become local lore, whispered about every year though no one has any new information.
The first time Momma took me to the pageant was the very same year, and it didn’t go well. I was four years old and running around in the dressing room when I accidentally knocked into a contestant who was in the middle of putting on her makeup. That lady toppled, creating a domino of half-dressed contestants who eventually got to their feet with smeared lipstick, boobs spilling out of duct tape push-up bras, and a murderous look in their sparkling eyes. Suffice to say, we didn’t go backstage after that, but each year I did get roped into folding pageant programs or organizing contestant applications for Aunt DeeDee—and of course, I attended each grand finale. I still remembered my favorite talent: Miss 2007 kickboxing a man in a paddeduniform. That memory alone made me think that perhaps I could win—or at least place.
After I told Bella and the other seven horses in my care good night, I drove my beat-up ’99 Honda hatchback to the two-story, four-bay-window house on the edge of town, the place where I’d grown up with two of the best women in the world: Momma and Aunt DeeDee. Both never married, both part of every good memory I had.
Not that Aunt DeeDee lived with us—she had her own little loft above the shops on Main Street so she could entertain when she felt the urge—but while I was growing up, she was there every afternoon with a plate of snickerdoodles. Even after I was old enough to be on my own until Momma finished her shift at the hospital, she would stop by to drop off a pie, to tend to her corner of the garden, to give me advice about the goings-on at Aubergine High. Still, Aunt DeeDee, for all her home cooking and good intentions, wasn’t Momma.
As I pulled into the driveway, the sun was setting behind the mountains, the orange-pink light casting a serene hue on the robin’s-egg blue of the hand-split weatherboard. At first glance, you wouldn’t notice the treehouse Momma had built me or the nails where we hung multicolored Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving. You might also miss the rotted boards at the base of the house, the clogged gutters, and the dangerously outdated electrical wiring that could set the house aflame at any moment. A couple of years ago, Momma and I had walked the property and made a list of all the things we’d fix on this hundred-year-old house as soon as I finished school and started my own practice. Then she got sick, and any dreams of repairs or money—or a real life—vanished.
Our last happy memory is from the day before she died, when she’d had a few conscious hours and asked me to open the curtains in her room so she could count the bluebirds andwarblers at the feeder I’d made in sixth grade. Her cheeks, long pale, had pinkened as the two of us communed with nature one last time, and I’d understood why I loved the outdoors and animals. It was because of Momma, because she’d encouraged me to observe and explore, to take a chance and have an adventure.
I blinked back tears and peered into my rearview mirror to see Aunt DeeDee emerging from her Cadillac. My first instinct, I’m ashamed to say, was to crouch low in my seat to hide from her. Aunt DeeDee can be…a lot, and I didn’t feel like talking about the one thing I knew she’d want to address: me competing in the pageant.
Before I could duck, she knocked on my driver’s side window with her elbow.
Unlike Momma, who mostly dressed in scrubs or comfy jeans, Aunt DeeDee always dressed to kill. Tonight she wore a tailored lavender dress suit with matching pumps, and in her hands was a casserole dish.
“Hey, Aunt DeeDee.” I crawled out of the front seat and, like a good niece, took the oven mitts and hot dish from her. She slid them off, and I could see that she’d painted her long nails fuchsia and added tiny diamonds to her pointers.
