Chapter Twenty-two

" You hag, stop trying to change me. Goddammit, I can't ever remember a single moment in my life when you weren't trying to twist me into something other than who I am. "

" Are you through yet, sweetie? "

They were in Denver for the Miss USA Teen competition. Mother and daughter were conducting their conversation through clenched teeth, mouths smiling. They were breakfasting in the Alpine Room of the Denver Marriott. It was seven-fifteen Thursday morning, at an orientation meeting and " Prayer Wake-Up with Turkey Sausage—Turkey, the Low-Fat Pork Substitute. "

Such pre-event meals were standard pageant procedure, and at them, gown lockers and keys were assigned. Susan also filled out sign-up sheets to set up a time slot for a video photo-op tour of the city of Denver, the footage to be edited into a big-screen montage and shown during the Sunday night awards ceremonies.

Meal time changes were announced, and lunch that day was to be shared with a local den of Rotarians. " So we can hook ourselves up with a fuck-buddy" Susan laughed.

" Susan! " Marilyn slapped her daughter, who smiled, because as with most slappings, it's the struck who wins the match.

" Classy, Mom. Real swankeroo! I don't think anybody in the room missed it. There goes my Miss Congeniality trophy. "

" Only losers win Miss Congeniality, Susan. Aim higher. "

Since the move to Cheyenne a few months before, just after her cosmetic surgery, Susan had grown positively mutinous. She had no friends in that surprisingly flat and dusty Wyoming city, and her high school days were finally over after having received a C— average from an exasperated McMinnville school, blissful to have Marilyn out of its hair. Susan lived her days as might the favored member of a harem, painting her toenails, foraging for snack foods and absorbing anything possible from the local library up the street, eager to broaden her world's scope and to learn of possible ways out of pageant hell: Thalidomide, the Shaker religion, witch dunking, the Yukon Territory and Ingrid Bergman.

On the drive to Denver from Cheyenne, Susan did some math in her head. She realized that counting all of her wins over the past decade, little if any money was ever fed back into improving the Colgate family's quality of life. All the loot, she figured, was cycled right back into gowns, surgery, facials, voice and singing lessons. Susan had, until that math exercise on the drive down to Denver, thought of herself as the family breadwinner, the plucky little minx who kept her family away from the destructive intrusion of social workers and the rock-bottom fate of shilling burgers at Wendy's. She now understood that in continuing the pageant circuit, she was only fueling the fire of her own pageant hell.

The Miss USA Teen pageant was a national contest, but not one that Marilyn would concede was A-list like Miss America, Miss Teen America—or even Mrs. America. The winner of the Miss USA Teen pageant would receive a Toyota Tercel hatchback, a faux lynx fur evening coat, $2, 000 toward college tuition, and $3, 500 cash, along with a gown endorsement contract.

Susan had easily clinched the Miss Wyoming Teen title, andMarilyn acted like a crow raiding another bird's nest as Susan twinkled her way through a competition that was hokey amateur and pushover. It was essentially four car-stereo speakers, a borrowed room at the community center (the sound of basketballs from the next room punctuated the event like a random metronome) and a feedlot of tinseled yokels who knew nothing about ramp walking, cosmetics, accessorizing, stage demeanor or the correct manner of answering skill-testing questions. The question asked of Susan had been: " If you could change one thing about America, what would it be? " Marilyn knew that the easy and obvious answer would be peace and harmony, but Susan's answer, delivered in tones Marilyn found suspiciously heartfelt, was, " You know what I'd change? " A pause. " I'd like to make us all stop squabbling for just one day. I'd have citizens sit down and talk about what it means to live in this country— all of us sitting down at the world's biggest dinner table, agreeing to agree, all of us trying to find things that bring us together instead of the things that keep us apart. "

Storms of applause.

Title clinched.

Marilyn found that Susan had been difficult of late, alternately insolent, silent, crabby and apathetic. The Miss Wyoming title, rather than making Susan buoyant, merely threw her into some sort of moody teenage dungeon, and afterward each time Marilyn and Susan needed to talk about pageant business, Susan would merely roll her eyes, moo, and return to one of what was an ever growing pile of books with disturbingly uncheerful titles like Our Bodies, Our Selves and Mastering Your Life. The drive to Denver had been particularly taxing, owing to both Susan's sulkiness and to an Interstate pileup outside of Colorado Springs that left one trucker dead, six cars munched and a confetti of broiler chickens and Nike sneakers strewn across the median.

The remainder of the drive was somber, and nearing the hotel, Susan seemed to have reached a decision of some sort, and cheered up once more, the way she'd been back before—back before when?

Marilyn watched Susan flow through that evening's pageant with a previously unseen ease. She walked like a Milanese model and held her head up high like a true Wyoming cowgirl. She was good, and Marilyn knew it and, like most show moms, kept one eye glued to her offspring, the other on the evening's quintet of semi-loser judges: the local modeling school doyenne, a drive-time FM radio jock, a disco-era Olympic gymnast, a walking hard-on from the local baseball team, his leg in a cast, and " Steffan, " a humorless local designer with a midlife-crisis pony tail. Marilyn looked at the faces of the judges, the speed and confidence with which they jotted their numerical ratings onto the score sheets, and knew Susan was a shoo-in as a finalist. Backstage during the final costume change, Marilyn couldn't help but preen: " Sweetie, you're just killing them out there. "

Susan removed her key from where she and many other contestants stored theirs—duct-taped to her belly just above the pubic hair so as to preclude vandalizing of gowns and accessories in the locker areas. She and Marilyn prepared the final gown. " You'll never guess why I'm doing so well tonight, " Susan said.

" Whatever it is, just keep on doing it. "

" You sure about that? "

" Win, sweetie, win. It's all there is. " Marilyn zipped Susan up and checked her hair. " Turn around—lint check. "

Susan turned and the overhead lights blinked: time to get back onstage. " What's tonight's secret then, sweetie? " Marilyn asked. " Let me in. "

Susan stood in the wings with the four other finalists, Miss Arizona, Miss Maine, Miss Georgia and Miss West Virginia. Thestage lights glowed like the sun through a grove of leafy trees. " The reason is, " she said, just before the emcee called out " Miss Wyoming, " " that I no longer give a rat's ass. "

Marilyn's heart chilled. Susan went onstage. With dread, Marilyn returned to her table, where a broad assortment of now drunk show moms and show dads were clapping with near Communist precision and zest. Irish, living in Denver that summer, was along for the evening's ride. She occupied a $45 seat to Marilyn's right. She asked Marilyn if she was okay.

" Just fine, hon. Just fine. "

The emcee introduced the skill-testing-question portion of the evening's events, and asked the five finalists to enter the " Booths of Silence, " which were actually a series of plywood stalls painted robin" s-egg blue, fronted with a sheet of clear Plexiglas. Inside, Whitney Houston music blared to the exclusion of all other noises—just the sort of yesteryear propping that Marilyn thought kept this particular pageant entirely B-list.

Susan was fourth out of her stall, having watched Miss Maine, Miss Georgia, and Miss Arizona come onstage before her. She left her booth, hearing the click of Plexiglas on plywood. She sashayed up to the green electrical tape strip that was her floor marker. She saw that the emcee was as handsome as Eugene Lindsay—Why is there never a woman emceeing these things? Why is it always some variation of a Qantas pilot crossed with a Pentecostal evangelist? His teeth, lips, Adam's apple and chin worked in symphony, and Susan heard: " Susan Colgate: A UFO lands in your back yard and a little green man pops out of it and says to you, 'Hello, Earthling—please tell me about your country. ' What do you tell this little green man? "

Susan thought about this question. Why would an alien even know about the concept of countries? Were countries a universal Concept? Did they have countries on Betelgeuse or on Mars? She thought about what a ridiculous spot she was now in. How

many times had she been in just such an artificial situation where she was put on trial with fatuous, clownlike questions like something out of the Salem witch trials? Susan looked into the emcee's eyes and she could tell he was hosting the evening's event because he needed the money. Gambling debts? An addiction to sexual novelties or to Franklin Mint collectible ceramic thimbles? What was with his hair? Was that a trace of a scar on his left eye? Oh God, there still remained this idiotic question to be answered. The audience was so quiet. The lighting was so bright!

Aliens. . . She thought of cartoon aliens endorsing presweet-ened breakfast cereals. Pictures of Mexicans flashed through her head. She recalled the moods she had when she was on the road, driving to pageants—the hotel rooms and freeways and taxis and forests and grocery stores and all of the people she'd ever seen across the country, churning, scrambling and going— going forth—into some unknown.

She replied, " I'd tell that little green man that we're a busy country, Ken. " Marilyn safety-pinned the names of the emcees onto gowns before storing them in backstage lockers. " I'd tell him that we like getting things done here in the USA, and that we're always on the lookout for newer, better ways of doing them. And then, Ken" —Susan decided to speak to the emcee as a person and not a robot— " and then I'd ask the little green man if he'd take me for a ride in his UFO, and I'd say, 'Take me to Detroit! Because there's tons of people there who'd like to learn from this little UFO ship of yours—because you know what? These UFOs look like a dandy new way of doing things faster and better. That's the American way. ' Then, I guess, the two of us would lift off and cross this big country of ours. You might even call it a date. That's what I'd say, Ken. That's what I'd do. "

Her smile was clean, her eyes direct, and the crowd loved her. Miss West Virginia was next. She was going to tell the little green man that the USA was a free country and that if he had a problem with that, he could leave, then and there. This was a negative reply and only garnered weak clapping, and sure enough, Miss West Virginia came in as fourth runner-up. Miss Maine was third, Miss Georgia was second runner-up and then, " In the event that Miss USA Teen is unable to fulfill her duties the first runner-up will assume those responsibilities. The first runner-up is Karissa Palewski, Miss Arizona, making Susan Colgate, the new, Miss USA Teen! "

A flash of kisses, flashbulbs and roses. A sash. A scepter. The previous Miss USA Teen, Miss Dawnelle Hunter, formerly Miss Florida USA Teen, emerged from the wings with a platinum tiara which she nested and pinned onto Susan's hair. From all sides came clapping, and a gentle tickle in the small of the back from Ken propelled Susan up to the front where she was to make the briefest of acceptance speeches.

Marilyn was at their table, electrified. The runners-up, or, as Marilyn would say, " the losers, " formed a sparkling multicolored backdrop behind Susan.

The floor calmed.

All was silent.

Susan wondered how to be truthful without giving offense. She said, " Thanks all of you. Thanks so much. As we know, this is an important pageant, and winning means a great deal to me. " She paused here, looking for words. " And I think one of the traits we value most in any Miss USA Teen is honesty. So it's only fair I be honest with you now. " She looked at Marilyn, and waited an extra few seconds for full impact. " The truth is that I've got my nose in the books these days—I got a C— average in high school and I know I can do better than that—I'm even thinking of applying for college. I simply won't have the time to

fulfill my duties as Miss USA Teen. To properly give justice to the role is a full-time job and requires a girl who can give it a thousand-percent dedication. " Susan was winging it now. " It's only from winning that I can see how sacred the role of Miss USA Teen is. And so, in the spirit of truth and pageantry, with a clear head and a happy heart I pass the crown on to Karissa Palewski, Miss Arizona Teen and now, Miss USA Teen. Karissa? " She turned around and beckoned Karissa who, so recently awash in loser's hormones, failed to immediately register her bounty. " Please come forward so I can pass along my crown to you. " The sound technicians sloppily cued up Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Marilyn's tortured " No! " was drowned out in the applause as emcee Ken shrugged and escorted Karissa to Susan for a transfer of the tiara, sash, scepter and roses. Mission accomplished. Susan hopped efficiently off the stage and said to Marilyn, " Sorry, Mom, but this is a jailbreak. I'm no longer your prisoner. " She left the banquet room while a confused Trish, justifiably wary of Marilyn's wrath, darted after her.

A week passed in which Susan holed up at the home of Trish's aunt.

Marilyn and Don were back in Cheyenne, where Don was making pay phone calls to Susan, as he didn't want any telltale evidence of communiques with Denver on the monthly phone bill. " I've gotta tell you, Sue, your mom's pissed as a jar of hornets on this one. "

Susan could easily imagine Don fumbling with a roll of quarters in a booth beside a shoe store. She said, " You know, Don— what else is new? I mean, you're married to her, I'm born to her. Neither of us has any illusions, and I just can't take her anymore. I'm out of high school now. Do you really want me hanging around the house for weeks on end with nothing to do but bask in Mom's loving glow? " There was silence on Don's end, and a cash register kachinged in the background. " I thought so. For the time being I'm here with Irish and it's a harmless enough life. I've got a job flipping dough at Pizza Slut. It's a start. "

" Well, Sue, that sounds good to me. " Don possessed no initiative but considered any trace of it in others a good sign. " What else is new down there? I used to have a brother in Denver. He's in Germany now, Patches Barracks, outside of Stuttgart. "

Susan said, " I hang out with Irish by the pool at the Y. She's into numerology now. She's changing her name to Dreama. " Susan could sense every fiber of Don's body instantly spasm with boredom. " Not much else, I guess. "

" A guy called. From Los Angeles. An agent. Named Mortimer. Larry Mortimer. He says you should give him a call. He read about your chucking the pageant in the paper. " Susan took down the number and then she and Don exchanged polite good-byes, both happy to leave the business of what to do to calm Marilyn to some other call, another day.

A few hours later, Susan and Trish, armed with fake IDs and Irish's aunt's Honda Civic, whooped it up in keggery bars and hot spots, releasing sugary bursts of energy with the fervor and desperation of the young. The partying went on for two weeks, after which Irish's aunt Barb suggested the two girls accompany her on a road trip to Los Angeles in her car. They could share in the driving duties.

And so they left, and yet again Susan saw and participated in the country's landscape—hostile, cold and magnificent, dull and glowing. They pulled into Los Angeles around sunset, arriving in Rancho Palos Verdes on the coast just as a full moon pulled up over the Pacific. They were just in time for a dinner of sloppy joes at Barb's friend's house, and they watched the lights of Avalon over on Catalina sparkling in the distance. Dinner was almost ready and adults and teenagers scurried about. Susan found a quiet den and dialed Larry Mortimer's number. She connected to a personal assistant and then a few breaths later, Larry was on the line. " Susan Colgate? You're one brave woman to go and quit that pageant the way you did. "

Susan was flattered to be called a woman. " It wasn't quitting, Larry. It was—well—there was no way around it. You go and do a hundred pageants and then write me a postcard. We'll compare notes. "

" Such spark. You could really harness that—make it work for you. "

" I'm happy enough just having my mother off my back. "

" Have you ever acted before? "

" Have you ever been in a pageant with cramps before? Or the flu? "

" Touche. How old are you? "

" I'm out of high school, if that's what you mean. "

" No—I meant—"

" With a beret and a kilt I look fourteen. With makeup, cruel lighting and two beers in me, I can pull off thirty. Easy. "

" What's the most ridiculous pageant you ever did? "

" I was Miss Nuclear Energy three years ago. I had this little atom-shaped electric crown over my head. It was pretty, actually. But the pageant was dumb. It was organized by men, not women, and the only other thing they'd ever organized was a Thanksgiving turkey raffle. The whole thing was so—corny. Instead of sashes we had name tags. "

" We should meet. We should get together. "

Susan's stomach made a dip, like cresting a roller coaster's first and biggest hill. She was excited. She hadn't expected this. " Why's that? "

Barb passed by the door to tell Susan the sloppy joes were ready.

" You could really go places, " Larry said. " Like where? "

" Movies. TV"

" Be still my heart. "

" Come into town. Tomorrow. "

" We're going to Disneyland tomorrow. "

" The day after then. "

Susan had the sensation that this was just another emcee calling her up onto some stage where she would be judged again. After a few weeks of freedom from pageantry, she felt old strings being tugged and that spooked her. Trish, now answering only to " Dreama, " called Susan to the table. " Dinner time, Larry. I ought to go. "

" What's for dinner? "

" Sloppy joes. "

" I love sloppy joes. "

" It gives me cellulite. "

" Cellulite? You're a child! "

" I'm seventeen. "

" Ooh. I'll back off now. "

They were quiet.

Larry asked her, " Meet me? "

" What do you look like? " Susan asked.

" If I were in a movie, I'd be a sailor like back in the old days, with a sunburn and a duffel bag, and I'd be on shore leave wearing a cable knit sweater. "

Two days later Susan, Dreama and Barb met Larry for lunch at an outdoor cafe where the linen, china and flowers were white and the service was so good they didn't even realize they were being served. Larry was late, and when Susan saw him rush toward the table, her heart did a cartwheel. Larry was older, curly-haired, gruff and in a glorious twist of fate, a clone of Eugene Lindsay, the winking judge.

Susan fell into a reverie. She hoped that Larry's breath would smell like scotch. She realized that Larry was to be her devir-ginizer, and a wash of sexual energy and nervousness bordering on static cling came over her. She caught his eye as he approached, and sealing his fate with Susan, he winked.

" I'm late, " he said.

" You're just in time, " she said. Their eyes locked and they held each others' hand a pulse too long. " Larry, this is my friend Dreama and her aunt Barb. " They shook hands, and Barb sized Larry up in a manner that was blatantly financial, embarrassing and amusing.

Lunch was a blur. Afterward, Susan left with Larry, ostensibly to test for a new TV show. Once inside his Jaguar, Aunt Barb and Dreama out of sight, Larry told Susan that the test was actually for the next day. He then looked up at the sky innocently. Susan wasn't fazed. She told Larry this was pretty much what she'd figured. Oh God, she thought to herself, I'm a jaded harpy and I'm only seventeen. Mom did this to me. She's gone and turned me into... her.

Larry asked, " So where do you think we might go now? "

Years later, with hindsight, Susan would find it appalling that Barb had left her so readily in the hands of an L. A. predator.

Later that night, after Susan and Larry had exhausted themselves in Larry's bed, they would briefly chuckle over the clunky roving eye Aunt Barb had focused on Larry, then phone Barb and say, " Barb? Larry Mortimer here. We're late like crazy. We didn't even get a chance to audition. The tests were slowed down by a union walkout. It'll have to be tomorrow. We'll be back at your hotel in an hour. Here. Susan wants to speak with you. " He passed the phone over the sheets to Susan.

" Barb? Wasn't lunch today a dream? "

The next day at the actual audition, Susan clarified in her own mind one of the larger lessons of her life so far, the one whichstates that the less you want something, the more likely you are to get it. As she uttered her very first line, " Dad, I think there's something not quite right with Mom, " the character of Katie Bloom, two years younger than her, melted onto Susan Colgate's soul, and as of 1987, the public and Susan herself would spend decades trying to separate the two. Katie Bloom was the youngest of four children, a distant fourth at that. Her three onscreen siblings were played by a trio of better-known TV actors who couldn't seem to make the bridge into film, and they chafed madly at any suggestion that their Bloom work was " only TV" Off-screen, the three were patronizing and aloof to Susan. On-screen they looked to their younger free-spirit sister Susan to give them a naive clarity into their problems, and as the years went on, their problems became almost endless.

When Susan emerged as the keystone star of the series, it was in the face of outright mutiny by her costars. At the beginning she thought their coldness was the angst of tormented actors. Then she realized it was essentially fucked-up bitterness, which was much easier to handle. Far more difficult to handle was the issue of Marilyn's continued involvement in her life. The procedure, for insurance reasons, demanded that Susan live with a family member near the studio. The glimmer of TV fame quickly outshone the gloom of pageants lost. Marilyn and Don rented the upper floor of a terrifyingly blank faux-hacienda heap in deepest Encino. Susan did the easier thing and lived in Larry's pied-a-terre in Westwood. Thus, Marilyn's presence was minimized to that of a bookkeeping technicality.

Larry was like all of the pageant judges in the world rolled into one burly, considerate, suntanned package. He knew how the stoplights along Sunset Boulevard were synched and shifted his Porsche's gears accordingly. He had a writer fired who called Susan an empty Fez dispenser to her face. He made sure she ate

only excellent food and kept her Kelton Street apartment fully stocked with fresh pasta, ripe papayas and bottled water, all of which was overseen by a thrice-weekly maid. He lulled Susan to sleep singing " Goodnight, Irene, " and then, after he nipped home to sleep with his wife, Jenna, he arrived at work the next day and saw to it that Susan received plenty of prime TV and film offers.

When she thought about her new situation at all, it was with the blameless ingratitude of the very young. Her life's trajectory was fated, inevitable. Why be a wind-up doll for a dozen years if not to become a TV star? Why not alter one's body? Bodies were meant to photograph well. Mothers? They were meant to be Tas-manian devils—all the better reason to keep them penned up in Encino.

Every night she took two white pills to help her sleep. In the morning she took two orange pills to keep from feeling hungry. She loved the fact that life could be so easily controlled as that. Inasmuch as she had a say in the matter, she was going to keep the rest of her life as equally push-button and seamless. In the mornings when she woke up, she couldn't remember her dreams.

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