PIECE: Lee Krasner, Hieroglyph, circa 1969. Oil, collage, and gouache on paper.
Outside Poughkeepsie, the leaves were still green, but a chill swirled in the air, causing Annie to pull the sleeves of her poor boy sweater down over her thumbs, trying to keep her hands warm. She sat down on a fallen tree trunk and rubbed her palms together. She hadn’t been counting on the cold temperature this morning. Back at Vassar, where Annie was a freshman, summer seemed to linger through the first few days of classes, with girls wearing cotton blouses and pulling their hair off their necks in the middle of lectures, securing their buns with crisscrossed pencils. But here, next to the open highway in the early morning, you could smell the promise of the changing season—a damp, earthy coolness on the wind.
Dolores, Annie’s traveling companion, who went by just Dee, stood on the shoulder of the highway just a few feet away. Her long hair flickered like prayer flags around her face. She stuck out her thumb as a Buick blew by them. The dust settled behind it and the road went quiet again.
“Fascists,” Dee muttered. She wore a sleeveless top and, as she waved her arm at another passing car, Annie could see fine, dark hair at her armpit.
“Want me to take a turn?” Annie asked. “You’ve been at it for a while.”
Dee flopped her hand to her side and took a step back. “Have at it. You might as well wait until we see a car coming, though. No use tiring out for no reason.”
Annie had never hitchhiked before. And, until today, she’d never met Dee. She’d just seen her flyer on the student center bulletin board about going to Atlantic City to protest the 1969 Miss America pageant.
Now, Dee picked up her knapsack and sat down on the log next to Annie. When she set the bag back down on the ground, it made a clanking sound.
“What you got in there?” Annie asked.
“A couple of pots and pans,” Dee said. “I’ve been talking with the group from New York who organized this whole thing, and the plan is to gather on the boardwalk outside the pageant. Someone is making a freedom trash can and we’re all gonna throw stuff into it and burn it—you know, symbols of women’s oppression and traditional roles. Me and some other girls said we’d bring pots and pans. Some others are bringing mops, makeup. I think one girl is bringing some bras to toss in there. Did you bring anything?”
Annie patted the backpack on her lap. “Straitjacket.”
“You serious?”
Annie nodded. “Dead.”
A smile spread across Dee’s face. “Right on.”
Annie had spent a good chunk of her summer at the branch of the New York Public Library in her parents’ neighborhood, reading up on feminist theory and the role of art as an agent of social change. Now that she was living away from home, this was her first chance to add to that conversation with her own art. If she could get to Atlantic City on time to put together her piece.
“I need to get my hands on a mannequin when we get there,” Annie said. “I was thinking I’d have plenty of time before the pageant gets started this evening, but now I’m not so sure.”
“You should be okay.” Dee shaded her eyes from the sun. “If someone picks us up anytime soon.”
It was already late morning by the time the next vehicle came into sight. A truck, this time.
Annie sprang to her feet. Her first instinct was to wave her arms like she was hailing a cab, but Dee laughed.
“No, just the thumb out,” Dee said. “You gotta look calm.”
Annie did as Dee said. She also straightened her miniskirt and smiled her best coed smile.
The truck slowed down and pulled over to the shoulder. The driver, a deliveryman, leaned across the front seat and greeted them through the open window.
“Where you headed, ladies?” he asked.
“Atlantic City,” Annie said.
“Same here,” he said. “Go ahead and get in if you’d like.”
Annie looked back at Dee, beaming with accomplishment. Dee just gave a nonchalant shrug and picked up her knapsack.
Once they’d pulled back onto the highway, Annie said, “Thank you so much. Can we give you money for gas or anything?”
“Nah,” he said. “It’s no trouble. I’ve gotta go there no matter what, so might as well have company. Gotta deliver some rental equipment for the Miss America pageant.”
“Oh yeah?” Dee said. “We’re headed there, too.”
“Y’all are contestants?” The driver turned to look at them. Annie could feel his eyes sliding over her legs, exposed to high thigh on the vinyl seat. She noticed the pause in his gaze as his eyes fell on Dee’s chest, where her nipples made two little bumps like marbles under her thin shirt.
Annie snorted. “Hell no. We’re going for a—”
Dee shot her a warning look.
“Art program,” Annie said. “I’m an art student.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s your favorite artist?” he asked.
“Living or dead?”
“Let’s go with living.”
“Then I’d have to say Lee Krasner.”
The driver shrugged. “Never heard of him.”
“Her,” Annie said. “She’s a woman.”
Dee was coloring in a flower she’d drawn on the knee of her jeans with a pen. “Is she the artist who was married to Jackson Pollock?”
Annie rolled her eyes. “Yes. But that’s not why I love her. She was a pioneer in abstract expressionism, a field dominated by men. When she married Pollock, she was actually better known in the modern art world than he was. If it weren’t for her, we’d probably never have heard of Pollock.”
“I thought I read that he and his wife both died in a car crash years back,” the driver said. “Drunk driving. It was in all the papers.”
Annie shook her head. “Pollock died. And there was a woman in the car with him who survived the accident, but it wasn’t Krasner. It was his mistress.”
“Can we not talk about car crashes while we’re driving?” Dee asked.
“Fair ’nuff,” the driver said.
They kept up small chatter for the rest of the four-hour ride, with the driver talking about his job and the girls talking about the classes they were enrolled in that semester. Dee bitched about how everything was going to change now that the college had started admitting men.
The delivery driver seemed nice enough, mentioning his wife and kids sometimes. Still, Annie was glad when he dropped them off a block from Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.
“Good luck with your art project,” he said, waving.
After he pulled away, Annie said, “I’ve gotta get my hands on a mannequin.”
Dee laughed. “Right.”
“One of the girls from my dorm told me there’s a department store just off the boardwalk.”
When they found it, they saw that the display windows were decorated for the pageant, with mannequins wearing sashes and dressed according to motifs associated with their states—a dress printed with embroidered stars for Texas, a rainbow-striped miniskirt on Miss Hawaii. Annie pulled at the glass doors, but they wouldn’t budge. Dee walked over to a second bank of doors and tried those. No luck.
Inside, Annie saw movement. She shielded her eyes from the late-day glare reflecting off the glass. A woman swayed back and forth, as if dancing. A power cord trailed behind her.
Annie tapped on the glass and waved.
Dee shot Annie a withering look. “She’s vacuuming. She can’t hear you.”
Annie waved her arms higher and wider.
Dee rolled her eyes. “Listen, I’ll leave you here with your mission, now that you’ve found the place. I’m gonna try to get a snack somewhere. Meet you back in front of Boardwalk Hall?”
“Sure,” Annie said.
Dee turned and walked back in the direction they’d come, her long hair swishing against her back.
The woman inside the store turned toward the window then, swirling in a circle with the vacuum. As she did, she squinted in Annie’s direction, then bent down to flip a switch. She left the vacuum behind her, came over, and unlatched the door.
“May I help you?” the woman asked.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” Annie said. “But I was hoping you could help me with a somewhat unusual request. I’m wondering if I could borrow one of the store’s mannequins this evening.”
The woman crossed her arms in front of her chest, looking skeptical.
“I’m doing a project, you see. I’ll get it back to you tomorrow morning before the store opens. I promise,” Annie said, flashing her most innocent smile. She was glad, then, that she had dressed as she did after all. That morning she’d felt square and childish, standing on the side of the highway in her sweater and skirt, next to the much more worldly Dee, braless and bell-bottomed.
Annie studied the woman, noticing the crease in her forehead, the strands of gray winding in and out of the mass of brown hair pinned away from her face. “Listen”—Annie glanced at the name embroidered in red above the pocket of the woman’s blue uniform dress—“Mary. I know it’s a lot to ask. I bet your boss wouldn’t be too happy if he found out.”
“My boss isn’t happy with pretty much anything.” Mary played with her necklace, a small gold cross. “I’d tell him where to go, except that I need this job more than ever now with Bobby off in Vietnam. I used to be able to stay home with my kids, back when he was just in the reserves. Never thought he’d actually get called up. I get checks, but it’s not what he made before he left. We used to get two checks, one from his regular job and a smaller one from the reserves.”
Annie nodded. “How many kids do you have?”
“Three,” Mary said. “After Bobby got called up, I was having a hard time coming up with enough money to pay my kids’ Catholic-school tuition. And Bobby’s mother won’t hear of them being raised as heathens at the local P.S. ’Course she won’t spare a dime of her own money to help out, even though I know she’s got it. She doesn’t know I’m cleaning floors.” She stopped then, as if she’d just realized she was telling too much to a complete stranger.
“Nothing wrong with working,” Annie said. “Surely your husband must appreciate the extra money coming in.”
“At first he didn’t want me to work at all. Thinks it reflects badly on him, like he can’t provide for us. I say it’s just reality. When I explained how much we needed the extra money, he agreed to let me do some interviews. He asked me why I couldn’t get a job at a bank or an office or something. And I told him, sure, that sounds great, but nobody at a bank is gonna hire a lady with zero job experience. I can’t type, I don’t know shorthand. I just married Bobby straight out of high school and started having babies. So that’s how I ended up doing cleaning work here.”
“Do you like it?”
Mary shrugged. “I don’t mind it. I just wish I saw more people at work. The girl who got me the job here, she works at the lingerie counter, and that’s where I initially wanted to go. Thought it would be nice to be able to work together, and talk with some other women outside of church and the grocery. But Bobby put the brakes on that idea real quick. Said he didn’t want me selling women their unmentionables.” She put her hands on her hips. “I’m tired of always thinking about what men think and what men want, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” Annie said. “That’s actually why I’m here.”
Mary raised her eyebrows, appearing interested all of a sudden.
“There’s a demonstration organized for outside the Miss America pageant today. Protesting traditional women’s roles. I’m doing an art piece to go along with it.”
Mary looked intrigued, but skeptical. “You think you’ll have many people?”
“A few hundred have signed up,” Annie said.
“You think anyone will listen?”
“I don’t know if it will change anyone’s mind about anything, but it will definitely get some attention. All the media will already be there for the pageant. We’re just adding to the conversation.”
Mary leaned out the door and took a look up and down the sidewalk. “Okay, I can show you where you can find a mannequin that’s not being used right now. But you better not let on to anybody where you got it.”
“Promise.” Annie put a hand to her heart, then followed Mary through the department store.
The overhead lights were off, with just a few service lights illuminated here and there. In the dim light, without all the customers and the piped-in music, the store seemed frozen and eerie. They went down a cement stairwell to a basement storage room. A dozen or so mannequins lay sprawled about, some fully assembled and some limbless like ancient Greek statues.
“I’m not sure what goes with what,” Mary said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Annie said. “I’m putting it in a straitjacket and I’ve got lots of glue.” She chose a slim, plastic body from a heap in the corner and found a blond head sitting atop a worktable. “You’ll do,” she said, looking into the mannequin’s painted blue eyes.
Mary grabbed the mannequin’s feet and, together, the two women heaved it upstairs and out a back door.
“I can take it from here,” Annie said. She stuffed the mannequin head into her backpack and balanced the stiff body across her shoulders, like a milkmaid carrying a bucket yoke. “Thanks again. I wouldn’t be able to create my piece without this.”
Mary waved her off. “It’s no problem. I’d go with you and watch the whole thing if I didn’t have to pick the babies up from my sister’s. Just remember not to tell anybody where you got it from, okay?”
Annie nodded. Then she made her way toward the boardwalk—a young girl carrying the weight of a plastic one.