Ten Girls to Watch (38 page)

She returned with two towels, a pair of jeans, a sweater, a dress, and shoes. To my inquiring look, she replied, “The closet.” Which I knew had to be strictly off-limits for borrowing, but apparently XADI didn’t care.

That dry towel against my wet, goose-pimpled skin felt like an angel pat-down.

She sat at her desk and dialed a number, pressed a few more numbers, then hung up.

“There’ll be a car for you downstairs in five minutes. Our block of rooms at the Hilton—we booked an extra for staff. Give them my name at the desk. See you back here at nine.”

She stood up, which was my signal to stand up too.

“Thank you,” I said.

She nodded.

Swiping the key card and entering the hotel room, I felt swaddled by neutral comfort. Perfectly balanced, blank, no smell, no personality, a room that asked for no emotional response. It was exactly what I needed. I stayed in the shower for twenty minutes, long enough to return even the most deeply frozen parts of myself to warmth. I used the blow dryer on my underwear, then turned it on my soggy coat. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I felt almost normal, as if the only thing wrong with the world was my lack of bra and mascara. I turned on my laptop and held my breath. It powered up no problem, like it had been sitting unmolested in this hotel room all along. I shut it down again and stowed it in a drawer in the desk.

I hadn’t made much headway drying the coat, but the inside felt warm enough, so I put it on anyway, borrowed an umbrella from the hotel concierge, and walked the few blocks back down to the Mandalay Carson building. Ninety minutes since I’d last been there, the office now buzzed. When I arrived, the receptionist at the front desk stopped me and said, “Child, how did you get here today? Everyone has a horror story!”

“A little walking, a little subway,” I said, and left it at that.

“Woo-wee!” she said. “I never would have made it if I hadn’t stayed over at my sister’s last night! My cats are at her place too! I caught a car down from Harlem. Never ever would have made it in from Brooklyn. We stopped and picked people up all along the way. We had six of us in there by the time we got to midtown!”

When I arrived in the pod, XADI nodded at me but didn’t say anything, and I slipped in among the hands XADI and the events manager were rallying to head down to the Morgan Library to help with setup.

At the library, in the soaring atrium with its four stories of windows and its crisp modern lines, everything was behind schedule. The tables hadn’t arrived yet. The flowers were late. The rain, the rain, everyone said the rain. Finally, at noon, the rain lightened up. And then it stopped. The flowers came. The AV and light crews arrived and began their elaborate ministrations.

We arranged, we hustled, we ran here and there, and I felt calmed by it all, like I was swept up in a wave and as long as I didn’t fight it, my head would bob just above the water. At four thirty, everything was in place. The tables perfectly arranged. The lights just right. And huge images from the magazine hung around the room. Helen in her Muppet coat. Gerri with her crazy curls. The 1958 girls who were “The Best in You from Sea to Shining Sea.” Robyn Jackson and her history-making cover. The girls of 1996 in their mom jeans. It would be an hour or two before any of the women arrived, but I could already feel the energy in the room.

After we all returned to
Charm
HQ, XADI motioned me over with her hand, and I followed her back to her office. I wondered if she was going to tell me to go home. I melodramatically imagined saying “But XADI, I have no home.”

What she finally said when she closed the door behind us was, “Do you have your wallet?”

I shook my head no.

“Pay me back as soon as you do,” she said, reaching into her purse, opening her wallet, and sliding two hundred-dollar bills across the desk. My first thought was that of course XADI was a person who carried hundred-dollar bills.

With anyone else I would have effused thanks. But this was XADI, and so I just nodded. On the way back to the hotel, I bought a bra at Victoria’s Secret and some mascara, lip gloss, and green eyeliner, a la Helen Hensley, at Duane Reade. I finally tried on the black dress XADI had handed me that morning. It hung a little roomily around my body, but it worked. The shoes were perfect. There was an Express around the corner and I bought the least trashy yet still sparkly earrings I could find and the first black belt I picked up. With it cinched around my waist, I actually felt pretty, in a semitragic-heroine sort of way.

Cocktail hour didn’t officially begin until seven o’clock, but when I returned to the Morgan Library at six thirty, a dozen or so past TGTW winners were already milling about in the lobby. Before I could check in at the name tag desk, I locked eyes with a woman in an emerald-green silk skirt suit. Approximately one second later, I pegged her: Candace Clarke, ’82 winner, UW Madison grad, advertising executive, ultramarathoner, and mother of two. In her TGTW photo, her hair had been feathered perfection. It was cut short now, but she looked just like herself anyway.

“Candace,” I said, reaching for her hand, “it’s Dawn West.”

She gripped my hand in hers. And I barely moved from that spot for the next hour. Woman after woman filed by, and I knew them all. Maybe the photos had been thirty years old, but there they were: Dorothy Wendt, Wanda Linden, Jane Novey, Monica Medina, Donetta Allen, Simran Malik. Every last one of them lit up when I said my name, and I lit up in return. I’d helped bring all these women together. I sank into the warmth of the party. Hugging and chatting with all the winners I’d found was like slipping on blinders—everything before and after this room was blinkered safely away. I spotted Rachel Link across the room, and I wanted to give her an oh-Rachel punch in the arm when I saw that she’d affixed herself to
Charm
’s advertising director, one of approximately three men at the party. But I was also a touch relieved to see her so fully occupied; it meant I wouldn’t have to tell her how truly unsuccessful TheOne party had been for me.

And then, I watched as Helen Hensley pushed through the revolving door wearing a smart black velvet tuxedo with an elegant pale blue bustier beneath. She smoothed her hands over her white hair, which she’d cut since I’d last seen her, not short, but to a perfectly swingy shoulder length. I watched her look around, get her bearings, and head toward the check-in table. She didn’t immediately see me. I excused myself and made my way across the room. When her eyes caught mine, she hurried over and pulled me into a Chanel-scented hug.

I felt like I’d just taken a warm drink, when you can feel it coating you with warmth all the way down.

“How are you?” she asked enthusiastically.

I’d tell her after. If I told her now, I’d turn to worthless jelly. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’m sure happy to see you!”

XADI came by and suggested we start moving to our seats. “I’ll see you after dinner?” I asked Helen.

“Of course!” she answered.

My seating chart in hand, I launched back into the crowd to direct women up, down, and over, continuing to accept the hugs and kisses as I went. I watched Regina and Gerri take their seats next to each other at the head table. Gerri looked precisely like her television self. Rather than making me feel like she had entered the real world, it made me feel like this was all TV. I watched Helen take her seat one table over.

At my table, things seemed less televised. I was seated next to Tanisha Whitaker and Rebecca Karimi. The weeks had treated Rebecca well—in her empire waist navy blue dress she looked like the princess of the pregnant people.

“You’re stunning!” I said.

“This is the only time I’ve ever had a nice rack,” she answered, sticking her chest out further. “I’m taking full advantage of it.”

Tanisha jumped in. “I still haven’t thanked you properly for coming to my show the other night. It was so sweet of you! I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see you after, but I definitely spotted you in the crowd.”

Before we could say much more, Erin Burnett, the journalisty celebrity MC we’d rounded up for the occasion, crossed the dais to the podium, and the room started to quiet.

“Ladies,” Erin began. “And the one or two lucky gentlemen I see out there . . . It is a tremendous honor to welcome you here tonight. We’re here to celebrate an absolutely amazing group of women. Five hundred
Charm
girls who’ve grown up into doctors, lawyers, mothers, preachers, teachers, writers, singers, dancers, executives, engineers, scientists . . . girls who have grown up into
women.
If all the winners of
Charm
’s Ten Girls to Watch contest who are here with us could please stand, we need to start this night off with a round of applause for you.”

More than half the room slowly pushed back their chairs, put down their programs, and rose to receive their ovation. I felt like I was in the middle of the Oscars.

When the applause died down, Erin picked up again. “This is going to be a night of inspiration, and to start off our program I want to invite up a woman who continually inspires me with her talent and grace, Regina Greene, the editor in chief of
Charm
magazine.”

Regina’s gorgeously draped black dress swished as she walked toward the podium. It would have been suitable all on its own, but she’d topped it off with a heavy swath of a turquoise necklace and matching chandelier earrings. Bulbs flashed.

“Thank you, Erin,” Regina said, taking the microphone. “Fifty years ago the editors of
Charm
had an idea. They wanted to pick ten young women who could serve as role models, young women they could feature in the pages of the magazine who would inspire readers. When the contest started, the editors weren’t thinking of where these women would end up someday. They were thinking of image—who carried off the
Charm
look best. Little did they know there was more than meets the eye to the women they chose.
Charm
’s best-dressed girls, the first decade of winners of the Ten Girls to Watch contest, went on to become superachievers. Turns out there’s just something about women who enter a contest. Once they enter one, they’re going to be entering them again and again, formal and informal, for the rest of their lives. Women who are willing to compete are the women you want on your side! Anyone here ever heard of Barbara Darby?”

Applause broke out. “I thought so.”

“How about Marcy Evans?” More applause.

“There are dozens of others you may not have heard of, but they’re quiet heroes. Take Teresa Anderson, one of the first class of winners. Here is a woman who taught first grade for forty years. She changed the lives of close to a thousand children. Day after day, year after year. Teresa, are you here?”

At a table just to the right of the head table, Teresa rose. In a tailored dove-gray pantsuit and red scarf, she was a vision of elegance. Applause thundered. Teresa gracefully nodded and took her seat again.

“The competition changed into the scholarship contest it is today in 1968, and the winners who came after 1968 made great use of the foundation the earlier winners had laid for them. They went further and they rose faster than any of us could have expected. Among the girls who grew into outstanding women, we have opera singers, media moguls, air force pilots, space transportation engineers, elected political leaders, heads of nonprofits, composers . . . you name it, they’ve achieved it.

“Here at
Charm
we’ve been lucky enough to spend the last few months getting reacquainted with all of you. And we’ve even been lucky enough to sit down with a few of you in person. Before we announce this year’s winners and welcome them to the fold, we want them and all of you to understand just what an amazing sisterhood they’re entering.”

She nodded to the back of the room, and on cue the lights dimmed, the video screen came down behind her, and then, there they were, our girls on the big screen:

“‘I’m the president and CEO of Madison Capital.’ ‘I’m the mayor of Seattle.’ ‘I’m a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera Company.’ ‘I’m a novelist.’ ‘I’m a physics professor.’ ‘I’m the founder and CEO of TheOne.’ ‘I’m the president of Vans Media.’ ‘I retired eight years ago after teaching first grade for forty years.’ ‘I’m an internationally ranked wheelchair marathoner.’ ‘I’m an architect; I design skyscrapers.’”

From there it was seven minutes of glory. The images, the interviews, all filled in with clips of Regina talking about the history of the contest and what it meant to
Charm.
I was even proud of the music we’d settled on. Spirited and decade-appropriate songs in the background, like “Little Deuce Coupe” by the Beach Boys and “Reelin’ in the Years” by Steely Dan. At the end of the video, the magazine profile pictures of every single one of the five hundred winners flashed one after another across the screen. The applause quickly broke into whistling and happy hollering.

When it was over, Erin Burnett returned to the mic and had to make several attempts to speak before the tables were finally quiet. “That was amazing, Regina,” she said, and the room broke out in another round of applause. “We’ll be taking a short break while dinner is served, but before we do, I want to introduce two very special women. Jessica Winston of the Metropolitan Opera and Danni Chung, one of the Met’s young artists-in-training.”

We applauded as the two women stood and a member of the AV crew handed Jessie Winston a roaming microphone. Danni wore a simple purple sheath dress, but Jessie’s dress was more ornate—a full-length brown satin skirt with a matching jacket, a look that was two parts mother of the bride, one part divalicious. Paired, they were a lovely picture of mentor and protégé. Jessie smiled beatifically and put her hand on Danni’s arm.

“Danni and I knew each other six months before we made the
Charm
connection, but once we did, we couldn’t stop talking about it. There is something about this contest, about being singled out by the magazine you grew up reading, that everyone grew up reading. It gives you confidence you can lean on for years. Eventually, you gain your own confidence, but until then, while your faith in yourself is still shaky, you can always look back and say, all those people at
Charm
couldn’t have been wrong. I must be
something.
Danni and I have both felt that along the way, and I know I speak for all of the Ten Girls to Watch winners when I say thank you to
Charm
for the wonderful gift you gave us.”