Ten Girls to Watch (34 page)

“What?” Danny asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“Ideas,” I urged. “Any ideas for new superheroes?”

Joel jumped to the rescue. “How about the Cabbie. His superpower is intuitively knowing which streets will have the least traffic so he always gets you where you need to go just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“I like it, I like it,” I said. “Okay, I’ve got another one,” I continued. “The Pope Tart. He looks like an ordinary breakfast pastry, but when there’s danger, he kicks into action and starts hurling blessings right and left. Eh? Eh?”

“I don’t know about that one,” Danny said.

“Okay, maybe we should go back to the job theme. Like the Cabbie. That was a good one.”

We all sat in silence for a minute until I jumped in again. “Ooh, ooh. How about the Cow Hand? He actually has a cow for a hand. Which totally scares criminals when he takes off his gloves, and which means dairy whenever anyone needs it.”

“You are a unique individual, Dawn.” Danny chuckled.

Joel flipped on the radio, and thus ended the superheroes list. I’d been hoping to prove Elliot was nothing special when it came to car conversation, and by extension, nothing special in general. I’d failed, but I was still pretty pleased with myself for coming up with the Cow Hand.

_________

When we arrived at Teresa Anderson’s home, she showed us into the kitchen. The whole house smelled just like my grandparents’—a mix of lemon cleaning products, leather, and baked goods—and the kitchen gleamed in red and white, the table itself a vision in light green Formica. The Andersons, it appeared, had succeeded in waiting out the trends of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Now, their sixties kitchen was retro chic. Every frugal instinct in me rejoiced.

In 1957, Teresa had been the pretty girl in the blue velvet tea-length dress, peeking out from under an umbrella held by the fellow in a tuxedo. She was seventy now, but her white hair was cut to the chin in almost the exact same style she’d sported in the magazine, and she still had that same look of investigation about her. When she trained her eyes on you, you felt her attention keenly. She was really looking, and you couldn’t help but notice the energy of it.

I got her to deliver her opening lines, prompting her just the way I’d prompted everyone else.

“I’m Teresa Anderson, I was one of
Charm
’s very first Ten Girls to Watch back in 1957,” she said, “and I retired eight years ago after teaching first grade for forty years.”

For a few minutes she told tales of that first year of the contest.
Charm
had organized a party for the girls at the penthouse of some famous designer. Teresa had never seen a home so opulent. It had curved staircases like the ones in the von Trapps’ house in
The Sound of Music,
and wildest of all, in the center of the party was a splashing fountain of perfumed water. “The entire place smelled of White Shoulders,” she said, giggling.

They’d spent a month in the city and another two weeks touring Europe. They’d been the toast of the town—concerts organized for their benefit, outings put together for their amusement—and they’d gone home famous. For years, she’d carried her
Charm
reputation with her. When she’d started teaching, all her students’ parents had clamored to meet her, the famous and elegant
Charm
girl.

I asked her about teaching all those decades, what kept her going. Forty years of anything amazed me.

“I suppose I just never got over the pleasure of watching a child learn to read. You’re watching the world open. It’s a miracle every single time.”

“Was that what drew you to teaching in the first place?” I said.

“This might sound funny to a modern ear,” she said. “But I feel like teaching was a calling for me. I’ve always been good with children. Maybe I’m just too patient.” She laughed. “That was the start, and then to be honest, I prayed and asked God to tell me what I should do with my life.”

There was no way a thread about prayer was making it into the final video, and I could practically feel Danny and Joel giving me the evil eye when I kept her going. But she was quieter, calmer, surer in a way than any of the other women. I wasn’t going to cut this short.

“And then you just knew?”

“I remember when I was in college and I just couldn’t stop thinking about teaching. It was just always there, in the back of my head. I have always been a voracious reader. I always loved school. So that was the start of my answer. And then we had a nice life here. Three kids, and my husband owned a car dealership just down the road. The rhythm of the school year was just the rhythm of life. And I guess that was the rest of the answer. And it still is in a way, now it’s just all about our grandchildren. I take care of my daughter’s children most afternoons. You’re sitting at the homework table right now.”

She smiled, and then she went on. “It’s just in me. I’m always going to be a teacher. Actually, once I thought of trying to be a writer like you, Dawn.”

My heart tightened when she said my name and “writer.”

“But it didn’t last. I didn’t want it enough. And when I got over that, the idea of teaching was still there. And so that’s who I became.”

So many of the other winners had had these larger-than-life ambitions and careers, and truth be told, Teresa Anderson wouldn’t have made the cut in 2007’s contest. But the scale of her achievement seemed as great as anyone’s. How many children had she taught to read over all the years of her career, after all? There was such radiant purpose in Teresa Anderson’s modesty. Here she was, fifty years later, clearly fulfilled and at peace with her choices. Next time I started fixating on splashy success, I wanted to remember the sense of steadiness and contentment I felt sitting at Teresa’s table.

I could have stayed with Teresa all day, but we had a flight to catch. We finished the interview, and after Joel and Danny packed up their gear she walked us to the door. I’d hugged all the rest of the women—I was an instinctual hugger—but Teresa put her hand out, and we took turns shaking her hand farewell. The formality of it felt right. I even bowed my head just a little bit as we walked out through her front door.

_________

After yet another flight and yet another drive, we set up the shot for Barbara Darby, spy novelist (and former CIA agent), in her Augusta, Georgia, garden, surrounded by Spanish moss.

“Of course you know when I won the contest, it was a best-dressed contest,” Barbara said with pride, as if to say,
Who cares about all my bestselling books. What really matters is that I look fabulous!
And it was true, she did.

She won the contest in 1962, which meant she had to be in her sixties. But she didn’t look it. She looked more like a mysterious forty-something, draped in a beautiful red silk shell that showed off her triceps.

“I spent months sewing my outfits,” she said. “One school outfit, one weekend outfit, and one party dress. I had to wear them all in a fashion show in the dining hall while a bunch of department heads, deans, and club presidents scored me.”

I barely had to ask any questions. She just rolled along.

“I think I won the school contest because I wore a white wool skirt suit with kick pleats, red piping, and red spangle buttons. I was this close to wearing a brown herringbone skirt and jacket. I really couldn’t decide. But at the last minute I went with the bold choice. Ever since then, when I have a hard decision, I ask myself, ‘What’s the red spangle button choice?’ And whatever it is, that’s what I do.”

She laughed a little, which made her sleek brown bob and square-cut bangs swing a bit. Her cheekbones sat so high and full that I couldn’t look away. Whatever her age, Barbara still had the loveliest facial structure I’d ever seen. Until meeting her, I’d disbelieved the cheekbones theory of beauty, but she stood as such a compelling case that I was now entirely convinced.

I didn’t know how, but I hoped upon hope we’d be able to get that spangled-button line in the final video.

Before I could say anything, Barbara went right on. “You know I was on the cover in 1962? Well, the day I hit the stands, I got eleven calls for modeling jobs. And that’s what started it all.

“I meant to turn the jobs down,” she said. “I talked it over with my fiancé, Tom, and we decided that’s what I would do—say no and get right back to Augusta. But that’s not what I did. I told him
Charm
had invited me to stay on for another couple of weeks, and I scheduled every last one of the jobs, one after another. But of course they just turned into more jobs, and at the end of the two weeks, I had to fess up. Later on, when they first approached me about spying, I thought, no way, I could never carry on that kind of double life. I couldn’t lie like that. But I thought back to what happened with Tom, the way he would call and how I would tell him all about what the
Charm
editors and I had been up to that day even though I had spent all day on a modeling job, and I knew, actually, that I could lie quite well.”

Danny, who was holding the boom mic, was starting to tremble, the boom, an extension of his arm, shaking with exaggerated fatigue. I wanted to give him a rest, but I didn’t want Barbara to stop.

“I imagine you get this question all the time,” I asked, “but how close are your books to your experiences in real life?”

She smiled, her ample cheeks moving up toward her deep gray eyes. “I’m sure you can imagine that’s a very hard question to answer,” she said. And after lingering with that smile, she winked, brushed her hands across her lap, and said, “I’m getting awfully hungry, aren’t you?”

Tanisha Whitaker,

Vanderbilt University, 2003

_________

THE COMEDIENNE

Her goal: to be the head writer for a hit comedy. Her track record: Winning the National College Improv Tournament as part of Vanderbilt’s team inspired Tanisha to found “Schooled,” an improv after-school program for underserved teens. In two years, over eight hundred Nashville-area high school students have participated. This summer, Tanisha interned at the
Late Show with David Letterman
and performed at the famed comedy club Carolines on Broadway. “Comedy can change your life,” she says. “It stretches your mind in surprising ways.”

Chapter
Fifteen

“W
eather Delays, See Agent,” read the Departures board at the Atlanta airport. Everything had been so smooth till then. Although the drive from Augusta to the airport in Atlanta featured a long stretch where only talk radio stations came in, that constituted comparatively minor trouble. I was still getting quite a kick out of the whole business-travel thing, and even when the agent told us there were no flights in or out of New York for the foreseeable future due to high winds and rainstorms there, my mood remained relatively buoyant. This just meant
Charm
would foot the bill for some TCBY and magazines while we waited. Four hours and three TCBYs later, I was scraping bottom and reading the recipes in
Silver,
that magazine for hip retirees. When it finally became clear we weren’t making it out that night, the airline gave us vouchers for forty-five dollars off a hotel room, and I finally began to see that business travel might have its occasional downsides.

Before we retired to our rooms, we sat down in the bland bar of the Airport Quality Inn. Danny asked Joel how his wife had taken the news of the delay.

“She said she didn’t care, as long as I was home tomorrow in time to make flan for our dinner party with the McCallisters,” Joel said. “Come to think of it, she didn’t seem that concerned about me actually attending the dinner party either. Just so long as there was flan.”

“And how about you, Dawn? Anyone anxiously awaiting your return?” Danny asked.

“Anyone?” I said. “Why, absolutely everyone!”

That got the smirk it deserved. Finally, I said, “No one, really. Maybe the guy outside my subway stop who hands me the
amNewYork
every morning?” And it felt very sad and true. Maybe Ralph, I thought to myself.

Friday arrived, and the morning flights were canceled just as the previous night’s had been. But finally, after five more hours of semimiserable airport waiting, we brushed the Dunkin’ Donuts crumbs from our laps and boarded our plane home.

Now that it was December, the dreary sun disappeared in New York at four thirty, and the cab I caught at five o’clock carried me home over dark, wet streets. Outside my building, a branch, apparently cracked by the wind, perched precariously atop a garbage can.

I lugged my bags up the stairs, expecting to be greeted by Sylvia sprawled on the couch, with or without sad-girl ice cream, I wasn’t sure. But upon opening the door, I found no such greeting. The lights were off, and the apartment was almost silent. Except it wasn’t. It sounded like the faucet was on. Except it wasn’t. I flipped the light switch by the door, but nothing happened—no light. Then I stepped from the front entryway toward the kitchen.