The southern girls in particular, Dawn told him,...
The southern girls in particular, Dawn told him, could really lay it on: "Oh, you're just so wonderful, your hair's so wonderful The veneration of hair took some getting used to for a girl as down-to-earth as Dawn; you might almost think, from listening to the conversation among the other girls, that life's possibilities resided in hair--not in the hands of your destiny but in the hands of your hair
Together with the chaperones, they visited the Steel Pier and had a fish dinner at Captain Starn's famous seafood restaurant and yacht bar, and a steak dinner at Jack Guischard's Steak House, and the third morning they had their picture taken together in front of Convention Hall, where a pageant official told them the picture was one they would treasure for the rest of their lives, that the friendships they were making would last the rest of their lives, that they would keep up with one another for the rest of their lives, that when the time arrived they would name their children after one another--and meanwhile, when the papers came out in the morning, the girls said to their chaperones, "Oh God, I'm not in thisOh God, this one looks like she's going to win
Every day there were rehearsals and every night for a week they gave a showYear after year people visited Atlantic City just for the Miss America contest and bought tickets for the nightly show and came all dressed up to see the girls on the stage individually exhibiting their talent and performing as an ensemble in costumed musical numbersThe one other girl who white chanel watch ceramic played piano played "Clair de Lune" for her solo performance and so Dawn had to herself the much flashier number, the currently popular hit "Till the End of *' Time," a danceable arrangement of a Chopin polonaise"I'm in show businessI don't stop all dayYou don't have a momentBecause New Jersey's host state there's all this focus on me, and I don't want to let everybody down, I really don't, I couldn't bear it--"
"You won't, DawnieEarl Wilson's in your pocket, and he's the most famous of all the judgesDawn didn't make it even into the top tenIn those days the girls waited backstage while the dinners were announcedThere was row after row of mirrors and ables lined up alphabetically by state, and Dawn was right in the liddle of everyone when the announcement was made, so she had i start smiling to beat the band and clapping like crazy because she had lost and then, to make matters worse, had to rush back onstage and march around with the other losers, singing along with MC Bob Russell the Miss America song of that era: "Every flower, every rose, stands up on her tippy toeswhen Miss America marches by!" while a girl just as short and slight and dark as she was--little Jacque Mercer from Arizona, who won the swimsuit competition but who Dawn never figured would win it all--took the crowd at Convention Hall by stormAfterward, at the farewell ball, though it was for Dawn a terrific letdown, she wasn't nearly as depressed as most of the othersThe same thing she had been told by the New Jersey pageant people they'd been told by chanel bags pink their state pageant people: "You're going to make itYou're going to be Miss America So the ball, she told him, was the saddest sight she'd ever seen"You have to go and smile and it's awful," she said"They have these people from the Coast Guard or wherever they're from--AnnapolisThey have fancy white uniforms and braid and ribbonsI guess they're considered safe enough for us to dance withSo they dance with you with their chin tucked in, and the evening's over, and you go home
Still, for months afterward the superstimulating adventure refused to die; even while she was being Miss New Jersey and going around snipping ribbons and waving at people and opening department stores and auto showrooms, she wondered aloud if anything so wonderfully unforeseen as that week in Atlantic City would ever happen to her againShe kept beside her bed the 1949 Official Yearbook of the Miss America Pageant, a booklet prepared by the pageant that was sold all week at Atlantic City: individual photos of the girls, four to a page, each with a tiny outline drawing of her state and a capsule biographyWhere Miss New Jersey's photoportrait appeared--smiling demurely, Dawn in her evening gown with the matching twelve-button fabric gloves--the corner of the page had been neatly turned back"Mary Dawn Dwyer, 22 year old Elizabeth, Nbrunette, carries New Jersey's hopes in this year's PageantA graduate of Upsala College, East Orange, N where she majored in music education, Mary Dawn has the ambition of becoming a high school music teacherShe is 5-2V2 and replica chanel jewelry blue-eyed, and her hobbies are swimming, square dancing, and cooking(Left above)" Reluctant to give up excitement such as she'd never known before, she talked on and on about the fairy tale it had been for a kid from Hillside Road, a plumber's daughter from Hillside Road, to have been up in front of all those people, competing for the title of Miss AmericaShe almost couldn't believe the courage she'd shown"Oh, that ramp, SeymourThat's a long ramp, a long runway, it's a long way to go just smiling
In 1969, when the invitation arrived in Old Rimrock for the twentieth reunion of the Miss America contestants of her year, Dawn was back in the hospital for the second time since Merry's disappearanceThe psychiatrists were as nice as they were the first time, and the room was as pleasant, and the rolling landscape as pretty, and the walks were even prettier, with tulips around the bungalows where the patients lived, the huge fields green this time around, beautiful, beautiful views--and because this was the second time in two years, and because the place was beautiful, and because when he arrived directly from Newark in the early evening, after they had just cut the grass, there was a smell in the air as fresh and sharp as the smell of chives, it was all a thousand times worseAnd so he did not show Dawn the invitation for the 1949 reunionThings were bad enough--the things she was saying to him were bizarre enough; the relentless crying about her shame, her mortification, the futility of her life was all quite sad montre cartier enough--without any more of the Miss New Jersey business
And then the change occurredSomething made her decide to want to be free of the unexpected, improbable thingShe was not going to be deprived of her life
The heroic renewal began with the face-lift at the Geneva clinic she'd read about in VogueBefore going to bed he'd see her at her bathroom mirror drawing the crest of her cheekbones back between her index fingers while simultaneously drawing the skin at her jawline back and upward with her thumbs, firmly tugging the loose flesh until she had eradicated even the natural creases of her face, until she was staring at a face that looked like the polished kernel of a faceAnd though it was clear to her husband that she had indeed begun to age like a woman in her mid-fifties at only forty-five, the remedy suggested in Vogue in no way addressed anything that mattered; so remote was it from the disaster that had befallen them he saw no reason to argue with her, thinking she knew the truth better than anyone, however much she might prefer to imagine herself another prematurely aging reader of Vogue rather than the mother of the Rimrock BomberBut because she had run out of psychiatrists to see and medications to try and because she was terrified at the prospect of electric shock therapy should she have to be hospitalized a third time, the day came when he took her to GenevaThey were met at the airport by the liveried chauffeur and the limousine, and she booked herself into Dr
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