I looked at Lovey, expecting her to say something. But she had that faraway look in her eye, the one that was becoming increasingly familiar. I understood her reasons—no matter how silly they might have seemed to others—for not wanting to dwell on the past. But, even still, though she might not have talked about her memories, I could tell that now, more and more, Lovey was with us in body. But her mind was wandering to a happier time, with D-daddy, when life was simpler and the world was a little less of a fight.
Lovey
Proper or Fitting
April 1945
Spring is so beautiful because that’s when our Lord rose from the dead. From then on, Momma said, God made the chicks hatch and the birds chirp and those azaleas all around the church burst into bloom to remind us of the Resurrection.
That must be why spring has always been my favorite season in Bath. Walking barefoot down the dusty dirt road to my white clapboard church, sitting cross-legged by the river, dreaming about falling in love. I’d been in love once. Well, Momma said it was puppy love. I was just a little girl, she’d said, too young to know what real love was. Ihadbeen just a girl, far from the woman of nineteen that I was now. But I knew what it was to feel like every day was the first day of spring. The boy that made me feel that way might have moved away when his daddy was transferred to another parish. But I knew I’d always hold him in my memory, he’d be the yardstick againstwhich I’d measure any other. No matter how far and wide the world took me, I’d never let him out of my heart.
Of course, the world hadn’t flung me too far and wide yet. I’d never even left North Carolina, and I’d scarcely been out of the county. Daddy was a small-town farmer through and through, and, by all accounts, he expected me to marry a boot-wearing, tractor-driving vestige of himself who could take over the tobacco business.
But, from the time I was small enough to sit on his lap, dozing on his chest between stories about the trouble he got into on this, the very land he grew up on, I knew that I was destined for bigger things. I grabbed every last opportunity like a momma does a child too near the stairs, gripping it tight as I could so it couldn’t slip away from me.
So, when I heard Daddy telling Momma over coffee, before they knew I was awake, “What sorta fool would let his daughter have her pictures taken like that? Splattered all over the newspaper for the world to see like some sorta harlot,” my interest was piqued.
I peered around the corner, inhaling the smell of fresh bacon and coffee that had floated all the way to the tip-top of the fifteen-foot ceilings in my bedroom, just in time to see Momma shake her head. “I’d never let my Lynn do something like that. Doesn’t seem proper or fitting.”
How a large cosmetics company chose a backwoods map dot that no one had ever heard of as one of the towns where it would host a makeover contest, I’ll never know. But it wasn’t really my business to find out. All I knew was that it was advertised right there smack in the middle of the front page of that paper. I’d never in my life counted on being pretty to buy my bus ticket out of town. But I sure wasn’t above trying it.
I’d never dreamed, like some girls do, of becoming a glamorous movie star, of seeing my picture on the cover of a magazine orflashing across a big screen. But when Daddy whistled and said, “Three whole weeks in New York City for the winner,” my ears perked right up.
New York was a concept so foreign, such a bright and shining pinnacle, that I could scarcely imagine what being there might be like. I didn’t even stop by the breakfast table for my toast that morning. I said, “Morning, Daddy. Morning, Momma,” and skipped right out that kitchen door, the screen slamming behind me in the soothing cadence of near summertime.
I ran down the dusty street, barefoot as could be, totally outta breath, until I got to Katie Jo’s house. Katie Jo was my best friend, and, for every buttoned-up, straitlaced, rule-following thing I did, Katie Jo did the most eye-widening, unladylike, derelict thing you could conceive. She smoked cigarettes and swished whiskey and did things with boys that made me blush just hearing about them. I liked living vicariously through her, imagining myself being that free.
Her vibrancy, the way she loved living her life, made her beautiful to me. So, when she came to the front door, her blunt, cropped hair with the split ends, her wide-set eyes and general tomboy appearance caught me by surprise. They weren’t the features of great models by any stretch of the imagination. But, nevertheless, I exhaled, “They’re having a modeling contest at Town Hall tomorrow. We have to go!”
Katie Jo sat down on a rocker on the front porch, and I sat down beside her. “Sweetie pie,” she said, putting her fingernail up to her mouth, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but—how should I say this?—I don’t photograph so well.”
I smiled. “Well, they’re giving makeovers first, silly.” I gave her my most enthusiastic grin, using the tone she was always using to trick me into one of her schemes. “Come on, Katie Jo! You gonnalet something little like makeup keep you from getting to go to New York for three whole weeks?”
“New York City?”
I nodded, that grin popping up on my face like the daffodils on the first warm day. Wasn’t a thing in this world I could do to stop it.
Katie Jo pumped her fist like those Rosie the Riveter posters down at the post office and said, “Well then, let’s get our faces painted and our hair curled!”
The next morning, I snuck out before the sun. I’d told Momma and Daddy the night before that Katie Jo and I were going to take the bus to New Bern to catch a matinee. There was no point in getting them all worked up about this contest if nothing was going to come of it. Which it almost certainly wasn’t. Katie Jo was waiting at the end of the dirt road. When she saw me, she started singing, “New York, New York, a helluva town, the Bronx is up, but the Battery’s down...”
There’d been talk about changing the curse word in the song but I think it felt sweet coming off Katie Jo’s lips, like the muscadine wine her grandmomma made in those big oak barrels in the tractor barn.
“There’s no censoring you, is there, Katie Jo?”
She whistled. “There’s no censoring you either. Pretty thing like you, you’re gonna win for sure!”
Looking back, I know good as gold I was the poorest hick that crew had ever seen standing in that line—doesn’t matter that by Bath standards we were right well off. They put me in a chair and applied my makeup and curled my hair and stood me in front of a man with a camera. I’d never had my picture taken by a professional before. Daddy had gotten Momma a Kodak 35, with Kodachrome film and all, so she could take a photo on Easter and Christmas. Butthat was only for special occasions. I tried to act comfortable, mimicking the laid-back way I’d seen the actresses smile and bat their eyelashes.
“You’re a natural!” the photographer called, right before he shouted, “Next!”
The only thing I knew I was a natural at was picking corn, so I didn’t give the contest a whole lot more thought. A month later, standing at the mailbox, the cool air starting to turn to the creeping warmth that, in another month, would scald, the mosquitoes could have flown right in my mouth it was hanging open so wide.I’ll have to get them to teach me how to put on all this new makeup I won,was my very first thought. It was a ridiculous idea, that one, completely beside the point. I knew standing at that mailbox that there wasn’t any way on God’s green earth my daddy was letting me tear off to New York City of all places by myself.
All the same, I had never won anything in my life besides the English award. And it was like Edison discovering electricity. The light was on. And I didn’t ever want to go back to the dark.
When my daddy got home that night, dirt under his fingernails and overalls covered with dusty straw and manure, I handed him the letter.
He curled his fist and said, “If you think I’m letting my nineteen-year-old daughter fly in some tin can across the country and fall in love with a damn Yankee, you’ve got another think coming.”
