The Home for Wayward Supermodels (4 page)

Now I felt like not only did I not know what Mom was talking about, I didn’t know Mom. And my dad wasn’t my dad. I felt like I was going to throw up all over the starched tablecloth.

“Am I adopted?” I said, practically choking on the words. “Are you my real mother?”

“Of
course
I’m your real mother,” she said, her voice rising to that hysterical pitch I knew from the day the pie shop was robbed, or when Grandma died. “When I saw you all done up for that shoot today, it took me back to my own modeling days. I felt like I was looking in the mirror. And meeting Alex, being in that studio, speaking French again—it just all came flooding back.”

“
What
came flooding back? You better tell me the truth now, Mom, and I mean the whole truth.”

Here it is: She’d been to New York before. That’s why she started crying when we first saw the city. She’d come here when she was eighteen, my age, to model. Very quickly, she’d met a photographer, a Frenchman, and they’d fallen in love. Or at least
she’d
fallen in love. He went to France for a visit, and while he was gone she found out he was married. At about the same time she discovered she was pregnant. With me. She went back to Eagle River, where my father, I mean Duke, had been her high school boyfriend. She told him everything, and he wanted to marry her anyway. They agreed that he would claim me as his own. No one would ever have to know who my real father was.

“So why are you telling me now?” I asked her. I was more furious than I’d ever been in my entire life, partly for her having lied to me for all these years, and partly for her now spilling the truth.

“Seeing you there today at that shoot, so beautiful, such a natural, I thought: If you’re going to be in modeling, you’ve got to know the truth. You might meet your father, you might even work with him, and it’s wrong if you don’t know who he is. His name is Jean-Pierre Renaud; he’s quite well-known. I thought you’d stay in Eagle River your whole life….”

“I just told you I am
not
going to be ‘in modeling,’” I said, slamming my hands down so hard on the table that the silverware and the crystal glasses leaped into the air, Mom’s wine toppling and draining like blood across the tablecloth.

“I think that’s a mistake,” Mom said, fumbling to right her glass, her face so red it seemed like she was about to start sobbing—though at that moment I couldn’t have cared less. “Though I’d love it if you were with me in Eagle River….”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, staggering to my feet, jostling the table again so that the flames of the candles quaked in the reflection in the window. I couldn’t see the city anymore; all I could see was myself, enormous, looming over Mom.

“All I know,” I told her, “is that I don’t want to be with you.”

What I did want to do, and why I couldn’t do it:

1. Sit down in a dark corner and cry. Reason I couldn’t do: Might get raped and murdered in all available dark corners.
   
2. Get in a taxi or even on the subway and go to Desi’s house. But I didn’t have any money because I was wearing my sari, which naturally had no pockets and which didn’t go with any of my purses so I’d asked Mom to carry my wallet.
   
3. Talk to Tom. But no cell phone, no money to use pay phone.
   
4. Go back to hotel. Did not want to see Mom.
   

So I just started walking. It became apparent pretty quickly that I could either continue walking along the waterfront, veer off into darkest Brooklyn, or head onto the Brooklyn Bridge itself. At least the bridge was easy to find: All I had to do was look up, and keep walking toward the majestic span. In the cab on the way over here, I’d seen people walking and jogging—including families, women alone, even old people—along the bridge’s official walkway. I’d thought at the time that it looked like a really fun thing to do and tried to calculate whether I’d be able to squeeze it in before our plane left for Wisconsin tomorrow night. Now I had my answer.

It was a warm night and there were even more people on the walkway now than there had been before. With all the people around, I was less afraid walking by myself there than I was on my own street in Eagle River at this time of night, which would be completely deserted. It was an amazing feeling being there, like walking on a rainbow over heaven.

But no matter how transcendent the setting, I wasn’t able to lose myself to the experience of being there. There were too many voices banging around in my head. How could my mom have lied to me all those years? Did Dad—I mean Duke—really love me, or was he always thinking of me underneath as something tainted? And who was my real father, this Jean-Pierre whoever? Was it
him
that I looked like? Would I ever meet him? Did I
want
to?

When I reached the Manhattan end of the bridge, I knew what I was going to do. I’d been to Desi’s apartment once, when she wanted to change her shoes. Now I headed there. Or I should say I
tried
to head there, but in the maze of downtown streets, all with names instead of numbers, it was next to impossible to figure out which way to go. My only guiding light was the Empire State Building—that was north. But the streets on the Manhattan side of the bridge, around the big court and government buildings, were dark and deserted, and the few people I saw, people in suits hurrying to the subway after a late night at the office, ignored my request for directions.

I finally sank onto a park bench near City Hall and started crying, because I was lost in every way. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself out of this whole huge mess back into Tom’s arms. If only I’d never come to New York, had stayed in Wisconsin and married Tom. But that wouldn’t have made any difference, I reminded myself. Even if I’d never found out about my real French father, it still would have been true.

I didn’t even notice that a homeless person had sat down beside me until she slid closer and held out a McDonald’s napkin, which I gratefully took.

“Man trouble?” she asked.

“No,” I sobbed. “My mother lied to me. And I’m not who I thought I was.”

“I’m not who I thought I was either,” she said.

“And I’m trying to get to my friend Desi’s apartment,” I told her, “but I can’t find my way.”

This
she could help me with, giving me amazingly detailed directions that included the kind of bark on a tree and the color of a sidewalk grate. I wished I could give her some money or some food, but that night I had even less than she did.

Once I made it to the crowded streets of Chinatown and Little Italy, and then to the cool part of the Lower East Side, there were at least lots of people to point the way. By the time I reached Desi’s building, which stood between a vacant lot and a tenement where guys lounged on the front steps smoking something highly illegal, my feet were blistered and bleeding and it was so late my heart was pounding in fear as well as exhaustion. I was relieved when I rang the bell downstairs that she was home and buzzed me in immediately, before I had a chance to get killed. I moved as quickly as I could through the dark hallways of her building, definitely a less privileged side of New York than the rich restaurant where I’d so recently been gorging myself on a dinner that might have fed one of Desi’s neighbors for a week.

The last time I’d been to Desi’s apartment had been in the middle of a weekday and nobody was around, but tonight it was packed with people, the stereo going, the TV blaring, guys in baseball caps and gold chains sprawled on the couch, kids running screaming across the rug, while in the kitchen Desi’s mom was frying eggplant. Desi herself stood serenely in the middle of all the chaos, pinning vintage fabric on a mannequin.

“Which ones are your brothers and sisters?” I asked Desi.

“They all are,” she said, smiling slightly. “Except Chico, the guy in the Yankees cap. He’s my cousin.”

“Wow,” I said.

I’d never seen a family that looked more alike in more unusual a way. Desi’s mom was the same size and shape as Desi—tiny and round—but a completely different color, with pale red hair and even paler freckled skin. The room was filled with other people who all had the same basic shape, but with a range of skin tones, from one blonde little girl to a boy with skin the warm color of a chestnut, with Desi and the two guys on the couch somewhere in between.

“So I thought you were out to dinner with your mom?” Desi said.

That’s when I burst into tears again.

She maneuvered me into her tiny bedroom, where I had to lift my legs up onto the bed to make room for Desi to shut the door.

“Tell me,” she said, sitting down on the bed with me and taking my hands.

So I told her. I told her everything my mom had told me, how I’d felt, what I’d thought on my walk across the bridge and through the streets of Lower Manhattan. When I finished, there was a long pause before Desi spoke.

“Is that it?” she said finally.

I nodded, sniffing back tears.

“That’s all?” she asked again.

Again I nodded.

“But what’s the big deal?” she said.

I blinked, squeezing out two more fat tears. I thought Desi and I were soulmates. I couldn’t believe I had to explain this to her.

“I’ve never met my father,” I said. “I don’t even know what he looks like, what kind of person he is.”

Desi shrugged. “So I’ve never met my father either. Did you get a look around out there? All five of us have different fathers and we haven’t met any of them. It doesn’t mean we’re any less happy. We’re probably
more
happy. The guys were probably bums, or my mom would have kept them around.”

“Yeah, but my mom lied to me. It’s like my whole life is a lie. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Desi considered this. “Lying is no good,” she said.

“I’m so mad at my mother, I never want to see her again.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do mean it. I hate her.”

“Oh, come on, Amanda. She’s a good mother. Maybe she made this one mistake but…”

“I can’t see her tonight,” I told Desi. “Can I stay here? I mean, I know you don’t have much room but…”

“If you don’t mind squeezing into this bed with me,” said Desi. “I’ll call the hotel so your mom doesn’t worry. You’ll feel different in the morning.”

In the morning, I was still mad. I still felt as if my life had been turned inside out. But I was ready to talk to Mom about it.

To my astonishment, when I called her at the hotel she answered the phone with the cheeriest of voices, as if she’d just come from her Monday afternoon poker game, where she and her girlfriends were known to mix themselves a few cosmos and pretend they were characters in some North Woods version of
Sex and the City: Sex and the Pine Trees.

“I am so angry at you,” I snarled, going for the kind of slap that would wipe the smile I could tell was on her face right
off.

But Mom was not to be deterred. “Oh, I know, dear,” she said, trying to sound concerned and contrite. “And I’m really sorry I sprang that on you like that, and that I ruined your birthday, and upset you so much. But the most exciting thing has happened. That woman from the modeling agency, Raquel, has called about fifty times. Apparently the pictures Alex took of you yesterday are
amazing
—that’s the word she used—and they’re ready to sign you right away. This morning. Each time she calls she keeps offering more money!”

“Mom, what are you
talking
about? We’re in
crisis
here. This thing about my father is a lot more important than any stupid modeling contract.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Mom said. “Oh, I know it’s important, but we have a whole lifetime to work this out. But your big chance for a career is here and now. We have to set all these other problems aside and think about that.”

“I can’t just set these problems aside so easily,” I told her. “And I don’t want to be a model. I want to marry Tom.”

There. I’d finally struck her silent. So silent that I began to fear the line had gone dead and ventured, “Mom?”

“I’m here,” Mom said. “Oh, Amanda. It isn’t that I don’t like Tom. He’s a wonderful young man. He reminds me of your father—I mean of Duke. But you have a chance at something so much more than that. This would be an opportunity for you to travel the world and make more money in a few years than Tom’s going to make in a lifetime as a fishing guide. And if you give the modeling a shot and you and Tom still want to be together, then you can marry him.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to give her the benefit of knowing she was making a good point.

“Maybe Tom wouldn’t want to marry a girl who’d lived in New York and worked as some hot-ass model,” I said finally. I said it to keep arguing with Mom, but once it was out of my mouth I realized that was what I was really afraid of.

“Then maybe he’s not the man for you,” Mom said quietly.

I was nervous I was about to start liking her again when she said the thing that tipped me over the edge.

“Listen, honey, I just want the best for you,” she said. “I know what it’s like to settle down in Eagle River at a young age, to realize this is it, and I wish I’d had the chance you have, to go further as a model, to go to Europe…”