EllenWittlinger

Lucy sat squirming in the parked car outside the modeling agency while her mother, Linda, pushed the naturally blond locks her daughter had inherited out of Lucy’s face, then fluffed the hair up with her fingers. Manicured, pedicured, and dressed in tight jeans and a pink silk blouse, Lucy felt she’d been refurbished quite enough; besides, all this grooming was making her nervous. When Linda pulled the silver tube from her purse, Lucy rebelled.

“Get that stuff away from me!” she said, knocking her mother’s lipstick-wielding hand aside. “It’s way too dark—I’ll look like Lolita.”

“You need some color in your face,” her mother said, but reluctantly capped the tube.

“I have plenty of color,” Lucy said. “You got me with that copper blush junk.”

“It brings out your beautiful cheekbones.” Linda continued to fuss with Lucy’s long hair, which, released from the usual braids, fell in waves around her face. “I don’t know why the boys aren’t flocking around you,” she said.

“Why would I want boys to flock around me?”

“It’s those silly braids you insist on wearing to school,” Linda continued. “And why you wear glasses when you have contact lenses, I’ll never understand.”

“OK, OK.” Lucy threw open the car door and pulled herself out of her mother’s clutches. “Let me get my cheekbones inside and get this over with.”

“I’ve got your pictures,” Linda said as she climbed out of the car on the driver’s side, waving the black portfolio.

“You’re coming in with me?” Lucy was appalled.

“I told you, honey, I know the office manager. Any little bit of pull might help you get signed. You never know.”

Lucy stamped one foot in frustration. Her ankle, not used to being so far from the ground, turned slightly to the side. “Ow! Dammit! I hate these shoes!”

“And please, Lucy, try to act like a mature person when we get inside. They want you to be fourteen, but not to act fourteen.”

How, Lucy thought, am I supposed to know how to act older than I am? I’ve never been older. “And how mature am I going to look if my mommy has to come inside with me?” she muttered.

Linda gave Lucy a big, excited smile as they entered the building. “Break a leg!” she said.

In the platform shoes Linda had forced her to wear, Lucy thought she probably would break a leg. The two of them climbed the stairs, and Lucy pulled open the door that said BACK BAY MODELING AGENCY. The reception room was all marble and chrome—white, silver, and shiny, like the hair salon her mother adored. Would she ever feel comfortable in places like this, Lucy wondered. This polished kind of environment seemed to be the required backdrop for women like her mother, whose personalities were as glossy as their lipstick.

“May I help you?” the receptionist asked, her eyelids barely able to hold up her heavy lashes.

“I guess I have an appointment,” Lucy said.

“You guess?” the woman asked.

“She does have one,” Linda said. “I’m her mother—and I’m a friend of Mary Crawford’s, the office manager.”

“Mary isn’t here today,” Heavy Lashes said. “Her dog got sick.”

“Oh,” Linda said, her shoulders drooping. “That’s too bad.”

The receptionist turned back to Lucy. “Name?”

“Lucy Furness.”

“Furnace?” The woman paged lazily through a large book.

“Furness,” Linda interrupted, pushing Lucy slightly to the side. “F-U-R-N-E-S-S.”

“Here you are. You’re seeing Hartwell. But we’re kind of backed up this afternoon. Take a seat. I’ll call you when he’s ready for you.” She pointed one long, lime green fingernail toward the waiting area, where a number of other females were already perched on the edges of bright red chairs, staring at the newcomers.

Lucy probably would have bolted right then, but Linda took hold of her elbow and steered her toward the seats. Linda said hello to the others in a polite but not particularly friendly way. Lucy smiled halfheartedly at the other girls while all of them sized up the competition.

Two of the girls seemed to be friends, or at least to have come together to the agency. They looked so alike, Lucy wondered if they were sisters; both had long dark hair, but one had unnatural red highlights running through hers, and the other wore dark red lipstick of the sort Lucy’s mother had tried to force on her. When Lucy smiled, they put their heads together and whispered to each other.

The other couple in the chairs, Lucy was happy to note, was another mother-and-daughter duo. At least she wasn’t the only girl who had a parent hovering over her.

“Sarah, when you get in there, don’t forget to stand up straight,” the mother was advising. “You always slump.”

Sarah, a strawberry blonde who looked like she hadn’t had a good meal in a month, rolled her eyes and sucked in her already concave stomach.

“Get off my back,” she said. “Go eat a doughnut.”

Sarah’s mother, who was two or three times the size of her daughter, pulled back as though she’d been slapped, which, in a way, she had.

All three of the other girls were very pretty, Lucy thought. But were they pretty enough? Were they pretty in the right way? Did they have that magic something—her mother called it “sparkle”—that would get them chosen for modeling jobs? Lucy had no idea if the others had it or if she had it or even if she’d know it if she saw it.

Linda, who’d been a model herself in her teens, thought Lucy had it, but Lucy suspected that a mother wasn’t the best judge of something like that. Besides, Lucy wasn’t sure she wanted to sparkle. Of course, the money she could make modeling would be a huge help in paying for college, which was the reason her mother gave for pushing the idea. It had paid for business school for Linda, which, as Linda always reminded her, had paid for everything else after the divorce.

“Don’t expect your father to pay for college,” Linda had told her. “He’s got his new family to spend all his money on.”

When Lucy had suggested she might be able to get a different kind of job, Linda had shaken her head. “You’ll never make as much at some burger joint as you can modeling. It’s the best money a kid can make. Besides, when you’re a model, people pay attention to you.”

“I don’t want people to pay attention to me,” Lucy had said.

“You will,” Linda had assured her. “Soon.”

So there she was, a girl who had always tried her best to be invisible, applying for a job in which she would spend large amounts of time standing in front of cameras in revealing outfits. Trying to make people pay attention to her.

Katherine, her best friend, had been shocked. “You? A model?” she’d said, glancing over Lucy’s standard school apparel: an olive green T-shirt stuffed into baggy pants from the Salvation Army, belted with a man’s tie. Not to mention her ancient Teva sandals held together, barely, with silver duct tape.

“Not that you aren’t pretty enough,” Katherine had said. “You definitely are; if I looked like you, I’d be ecstatic. But, you aren’t the model type. I mean, you wear braids.”

“What’s wrong with braids? Why does everybody have to look the same, anyway?”

“We don’t all look the same, goofball. You look way better than most of us. Except you don’t really want to, which is why I love you. But I don’t think that’s how models feel.” Katherine had cleaned her glasses on the hem of her T-shirt. “Models are like those A-list girls who spend hours dressing themselves and working over their faces in front of a mirror. They’re all about being noticed. That’s not you.”

“I know,” Lucy had said. “But the money is so good. Maybe I could learn to sparkle while I’m there and still be the old me here. Like Superman and Clark Kent.”

“Maybe,” Katherine had said doubtfully. “But right now you’re the antisparkle.”

Lucy was jostled from her daydreams by the banging of the door. Everyone in the waiting area turned to stare at the woman who had just entered the room on six-inch heels, her frosty hair swinging around her broad, tan shoulders, a miniskirt grazing her muscled thighs.

The receptionist managed to pry open her heavy lids. “Celia! You’re here! They’re waiting for you in back!”

“Is Kent here?” the model said. “I won’t have anyone else touch my hair. You know that.”

“He’s here. Go on back.”

Celia patted her own hair as though it were a beloved animal. “The last time, that awful woman ruined me. I’m not even going in there if Kent isn’t here.”

“He’s here,” the receptionist repeated. “And they’re waiting.”

“He better be,” Celia said. She turned briefly to flash her eyes over the girls in the waiting area, wrinkled her lip, and walked off down the hallway.

“That was Celia Johnson,” Sarah whispered to no one in particular.

Red Highlights nodded. “I know. She’s the highest-paid model at this agency.”

“I worked with her once,” Red Lipstick said, tossing her hair.

“You did?” Sarah’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, when you were a baby!” Red Highlights said.

“No, I was seven! It was a back-to-school layout for Macy’s. She was supposed to be a teenager, but she was already at least twenty.”

Highlights nodded. “She must be in her late twenties by now. Can’t last much longer.”

“Yeah, get out of the way, Celia! Here we come!” Lipstick laughed.

Linda poked Lucy in the side. “That’s why you start doing this young. You’re lucky if your career lasts until you’re thirty. I was finished by twenty-five.”

“I don’t want to do this until I’m thirty,” Lucy said. “I just want to make money for college.”

Sarah and the sisters stared at her. “Not a good attitude,” Sarah said. “Don’t let them hear you talk that way. Although, I shouldn’t tell you that. If you hang yourself, there’s a better chance for me. Especially since we’re both blondes.”

If Lucy hanged herself? Nice. Were these the people she’d be working with if she started modeling? Girls who hoped you’d hang yourself so they’d have a better chance? Women like Celia who thought they were royalty just because they were shaped like coat hangers? She couldn’t wait.

Her mother patted Lucy’s knee and leaned over to whisper, “Don’t let them get you rattled. They’re just scared because you’re the prettiest girl here.”

They were scared of her? That was just ridiculous.

After a few more minutes both Sarah and the lookalikes were called to the back. Lucy waited with the two mothers.

“Has Sarah done much modeling?” Linda asked Sarah’s mother.

“Some, yes,” the mother answered. “But not as much as she’d like. She’s quite ambitious. How about your daughter?”

Linda smiled serenely. “She’s just getting started. But I’m sure she’ll do well. I modeled for many years and got so much out of it. Not just financially, either. I made lots of friends, and I actually met my husband through modeling. He’s a photographer.”

“Really?” Sarah’s mother seemed fascinated. She looked down at her own large dress sadly. “I was never the right size for modeling, but it looks like fun.”

“Oh, it is,” Linda assured her. “I loved it.”

What? First of all, that wonderful photographer had walked out on them when Lucy was only four; Linda normally didn’t have a good word to say about him. Lucy couldn’t remember ever meeting any of her mother’s other modeling “friends.” And Linda had always said that modeling hours were long and tiring—it was a job, and never as much fun as you might think. So why was she giving this woman a snow job? Maybe this was what Linda liked about modeling—impressing people who thought being a model meant you were some kind of a celebrity.

“Lucy Furnace, you can go in now,” the receptionist said. “Hartwell is ready for you. Room Six.” The green nail pointed the way.

“Knock ’em dead!” Linda said, handing over the portfolio.

Lucy walked down the long hallway and opened the door to Room Six. It was a large room with a desk in one corner and a rack full of clothes in another. One wall was all mirrors. There was a man seated behind the desk who she imagined must be Hartwell, though whether that was his first name or last, she didn’t know.

“Mr. Hartwell?”

He looked up, his eyes immediately taking her in—face, shoulders, breasts, waist, hips, legs, feet. She felt he was absorbing her.

“Just Hartwell is fine,” he said. “Sit down, please.” He motioned Lucy to a chair that was set off by itself about six or seven feet away from his desk.

Lucy sat down, her back rigid, her legs held tightly together.

Hartwell got up from his desk and paced around her. “Relax, Blondie. You’re not at Lady Astor’s tea party. Are those your pictures?”

“Oh, yes,” Lucy said, handing them over.

Hartwell flipped through the pages, making little murmuring sounds. He squinted at Lucy. “You’ve got Sarah Jessica Parker’s hair, lucky girl—it frames those dynamite cheekbones.”

No, Lucy thought, I’ve got my own hair. And why did everybody care so damn much about cheekbones, anyway?

Hartwell was motioning to her to stand up, so she did. “How tall?” he asked.

“Um, five feet, eight inches.”

“Weight?”

“About one-fifteen.”

He peered up at her. “Not anorexic, are you?”

“No.”

He snorted. “Like you’d tell me anyway.”

“I’m not,” Lucy said. “I’ve always been skinny. I eat a lot. I eat—”

“Whatever.” Hartwell motioned for her to turn in a circle. “Measurements?”

“Thirty-two, twenty-five, thirty-four,” she said, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. She hated having to tell personal stuff like this to a man. He wasn’t even a doctor.

Hartwell looked straight at her breasts. “A-cup?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“So a size-zero dress, then?”

Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t wear dresses very often.” Like, never. And anyway, what kind of a size was zero?

“Well, blouses, skirts . . . You wear clothes, don’t you?”

“I . . . yeah. I guess I might be a size two.” What difference did it make? When she bought clothes at the Salvation Army, she just got things she liked. She didn’t really look at the sizes—if they were too big, she wore a belt.

“Shoes?”

Lucy was puzzled. “Yes, I wear shoes.”

Hartwell looked as though she was trying his patience. “What size?”

“Oh, right. Eight and a half.”

“Eyes?”

She wanted very much to say “two,” but refrained. “Green,” she told him.

He made a few marks on a piece of paper, then strode to the clothing rack and pulled a few items from their hangers. “Put these on and let me see how they hang,” he said.

Lucy took the clothing and looked around for a changing room. “Where?”

“You’re shy?” Hartwell asked. He seemed surprised, as though he couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to strip to their underwear in front of him. “I’ll turn my back.”

Quickly Lucy slipped off her blouse and jeans and pulled on the short skirt and skimpy top he’d handed her. “OK,” she said.

Hartwell turned around and surveyed her as though she were an inanimate object, yanking on the hem of the skirt, pulling the strap of the shirt down over her shoulder.

He stared at her rear end and said, “You’ve got kind of a devilish-angel thing going on. I might be able to make you hot.”

A shiver ran through Lucy’s body, and she put the strap back up in place.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“It wasn’t comfortable like that,” she said. “It felt like it was falling off.”

“Modeling is not about comfort, dear.” He yanked the strap back down.

Lucy pulled it back up, then turned to face him.

“Do you have a problem?” he said.

“Yeah. I don’t like you adjusting my clothes like that. Or staring at my butt, either.”

Hartwell smiled as though he’d rather be poking out her eyes. “Well then, honey, maybe you wouldn’t like being a model.”

“I wouldn’t like being a model,” Lucy said. And she knew as soon as she said it that she wouldn’t be a model, no matter what her mother wanted. Nobody was going to treat her like a poodle at a dog show. Forget it.

Hartwell seemed amazed. Apparently he thought everyone wanted to see themselves in The Boston Globe wearing slingbacks and a tankini.

“What?”

“You heard me. I think modeling is dumb.”

Finally he stammered, “Well . . . but, you . . . you’re here!”

“My mother used to model—she thought I should too. And I need to earn money for college, and there aren’t many jobs you can do when you’re fourteen. But I don’t like people looking at me all the time. I can’t do it.”

Hartwell nodded. “Well, I can see why your mother wanted you to come; you certainly look like you ought to be a model.”

“Maybe right now I do. But not usually. I don’t like to dress up. Or wear makeup or contacts. Or have my hair flying around my face like this. I usually wear it in braids.”

“You do, huh?” Hartwell stared at her another minute and then smiled for real. “So, you honestly don’t want to be a model?”

Lucy shook her head. “I think I would rather dig graves, or be the person who holds the Stop sign in the middle of the street when it’s a hundred degrees out and they’re tarring the road.” She’d done it now. Lucy could just imagine the look on her mother’s face when she told her she’d sabotaged the audition. Fur would fly.

“My God,” Hartwell said. “I didn’t think they made girls like you.”

Her mother was talking on her cell phone when Lucy came out of the office. She hung up immediately and looked at Lucy expectantly.

“So? What happened?”

Lucy took a deep breath. “Well, I got a job,” she said.

Linda’s eyes got huge. “Already? They took you on and got you a modeling job in the same day? I’ve never heard of that. When I started—”

“It’s not a modeling job, Mom,” Lucy said. “I’m going to be a gofer on the weekends they do shoots.”

Her mother stared at her, the grin on her face slowly subsiding into a jowly frown.

Lucy kept talking. “It’s not like the animal, gopher. It means I’m the one who has to ‘go for’ things. I do stuff like make coffee, pick up lunches, move things around—”

“I know what a gofer is,” her mother said. “You weren’t applying for the job of gofer.”

Linda threw the cell phone into her purse and stood up. “Let’s get out of here.”

Lucy followed her mother down the stairs. “It’s a better job for me, Mom. I won’t make as much as I would modeling, but I’ll probably get more hours. And I’ll learn some stuff about photography, too.”

“Since when do you care about photography?”

“I’m only fourteen! I don’t know what I care about yet!”

“You think you can be a photographer just because your father is?”

“No, that’s not why . . .” But her mother had slammed through the door at the bottom of the stairs and was stalking across the sidewalk.

Once they were both in the car, Lucy tried again to explain. “Hartwell was glad I didn’t want to be a model. He said everybody else who applies for any kind of job there does, and he’s tired of dealing with all the wannabes. He said I can wear whatever I want—the worse I look, the better—because then the real models won’t feel threatened by me.”

Finally her mother spoke. “And that’s what you want out of life? To be nonthreatening? Why did we waste our day in that agency if you don’t want to be a model?”

Lucy shrugged. “I didn’t know what it would be like. Once I got there and saw those other girls, and the way everybody treats you like a thing instead of a person, and how they’re all jealous of each other . . . I didn’t want to do it.”

Linda shook her head, and they drove home in silence until, a block from their house, she said, “I can’t believe you just threw over an opportunity like this. Most girls would kill for a chance like this.”

“I’m not most girls. I’m me.”

“I’m well aware of that,” her mother said, spitting out the words.

The anger in the air was infecting Lucy now, too. “Well, who am I supposed to be? You?”

Her mother swung the car into the driveway and shoved the gearshift into park, then turned on her. “Don’t you understand that this is for your own good? That I’m trying to help you?”

“How is getting my picture taken wearing a bunch of slutty clothing going to help me?”

“It will make you proud of yourself!”

Lucy almost laughed at that, but knew she’d better not. “No, it won’t!”

“You’ll learn how to dress, how to look your best. Then people will see you differently, see how beautiful you are.”

“What people? Are we talking about boys, again?”

“Men like beautiful women—that’s just how it works, Lucy, whether you like it or not. They want somebody with a little pizzazz!”

“Is that what Dad wanted?” Lucy knew it was a mean thing to say, but she was angry—and curious, too, whether her mother would be truthful. “Did you lose your pizzazz? Is that why he left you?”

Her mother’s face slammed shut. “We aren’t talking about your father.”

“Well, maybe we should be. Why is it so important to you that I show off my hair and my legs and my stupid cheekbones? Just because you did? You act like my looks are the only valuable thing about me. Why do you want me to attract a bunch of shallow jerks who just want to go out with models? Did that work out for you?”

Her mother stared at her for a second, then looked away. “That’s not what I’m saying, Lucy.” But the anger had been swept from her voice.

Tears had started to gather in Lucy’s eyes as the truth became obvious. “I don’t want somebody to notice me for the way I look! I want them to notice me. The deep-down me! I don’t want a boy who’s going to leave me as soon as somebody prettier comes along!”

The way Dad left you. The words hung in the air between them, but Lucy didn’t say them out loud. She didn’t need to. Her mother closed her eyes and let her head fall back onto the headrest while Lucy swiped her arm across her face, taking off what makeup remained.

“The world can be hard for a woman,” her mother whispered. “I only want to help you.” Which Lucy believed was the truth.

“Don’t worry,” Lucy said. “What happened to you is not going to happen to me.” She opened the car door and got out. As she walked across the lawn to the front door, she took off the uncomfortable shoes and let her bare feet dance through the tall grass.

On Saturday morning, Lucy woke up early. There was a shoot downtown at noon, her first paying job, but before that she had an appointment, and her mother had agreed to drive her.

The hairdresser swooned over Lucy’s long, pale hair. “You just want the ends trimmed, right?” she asked.

“Nope. I want you to cut it short—very short. The kind of hairdo that doesn’t even need to be combed.”

“Really?” The woman sighed and bit her lip. “I’m afraid you’ll regret it.”

“Not a chance,” Lucy assured her.

Soon, yellowy locks littered the floor. “I would have killed for hair like this at your age,” the hairdresser said sadly.

“Yeah, but I’d just as soon not be murdered for my hair,” Lucy told her.

When the woman finished up, Lucy put on her glasses and looked in the mirror. She ran her hand through the multilayered thicket. It felt good, and she decided it looked right—right for Lucy Furness. It was time for the change; she wasn’t in grade school anymore, but she didn’t intend to be a bimbo stereotype, either. Without the creamy, dreamy hair surrounding her head, it was clear she was nobody’s devilish angel. This was the hairdo of a young woman with a responsible job.

This haircut said, I’m more than you think you see. Look carefully. Blondes can be smart, and smart girls can have cheekbones.