The Home for Wayward Supermodels (14 page)

Tati put her head in her hands and moaned more loudly.

Again, a knock.

“Amanda?” Alex said tentatively. “Are you all right in there?”

“Just a minute,” I called.

And then, to Tati, “You can’t keep this secret anymore, you know.”

She just shook her head without looking up.

“You’re going to need some help, Tati. We’ve got to talk to Alex and Minty, because of the shoot. But I also think I should call Raquel.”

“No!” Tati said, looking fiercely at me.

“Tati, I know she can be awful, but she really helped me when I was trying to figure out the Desi thing.”

Alex knocked again. “Amanda?” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m going to tell Alex,” I told Tati. “I’m letting him in right now.”

I pulled Alex inside and shut the door quickly behind him. He saw Tati hunched on the floor and rushed to her side, kneeling beside her. “What is it, sweetheart?” he said, rubbing her back. “What is wrong, beautiful girl?”

“I’m pregnant,” Tati mumbled.

Alex looked with alarm at me. I nodded.

“Six months,” I told him. “I think I need to call Raquel.”

“Ohhh,” Tati groaned, clutching her side.

“Tati, what is it?” I asked, moving to put my arm around her.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just little thing.”

But I could tell from the twisted look on her face that it was not a little thing.

“You’ve felt this before?”

She nodded, her face still reflecting the pain. Then suddenly she relaxed. “Better now,” she said.

“Tati, I’ve got to call Raquel. She controls our medical insurance, our contracts—I don’t even know what the provisions are for maternity leave. You’ve got to safeguard your health and your baby, and you’ve also got to do whatever is necessary to protect your career.”

I was already moving to get my cell phone and dial Raquel’s number. Leaving Alex to comfort Tatiana, I went outside the cottage and strode down the beach where I knew the reception was better and that nobody else could hear me.

“Raquel,” I said, when she finally came to the phone after leaving me on hold for ten minutes. “We have a problem down here. Tatiana’s pregnant.”

“So what?” Raquel snapped. “On the rag, pregnant, you still show up for work.”

“No, Raquel, she’s six months pregnant. She’s not fitting into any of the clothes. You have to send down a different girl to finish the shoot, get Tatiana out of here and to a doctor…”

“Shit,” Raquel said. “She can’t have a baby, especially with Billings off the scene. I’ll have to find somebody to get rid of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“An abortion, stupid!”

“Raquel, I just told you, she’s six months pregnant. That’s too late for an abortion, even if she wanted one, which I think she doesn’t.”

“Well then, she’s got to go back to the Ukraine,” said Raquel. “Get her on a plane back to New York and I’ll meet her at the airport with the ticket.”

“Raquel, are you nuts?” I said, horrified. “Tati doesn’t want to go back to Ukraine. She just wants to have her baby and stay in New York and keep working.”

“Did you call me
nuts?
” Raquel said. “
Nuts?
I will not be talked to like that, do you hear me? Not by a know-nothing little
farm girl
who I picked up out of the
street…
”

She was still ranting when I hung up on her. Then I just stood there for a minute, listening to the sounds of the wind in the palms and the birds and the surf. I turned around and saw Minty and the rest of them, clustered around the cameras and lights set up in the sand. I walked over to where they were waiting.

“We can’t shoot today,” I said.

“Why ever not?” asked Minty.

“Because Tati’s sick.”

Then I started walking through the sand toward my cottage.

“What’s bloody wrong with you?” Minty called after me.

“I’m busy,” I said. And kept walking.

I already knew at that point what I was going to do, but first I had to settle down Tati and then I had to confer with Alex and then I had to walk by myself to the farthest reaches of cell phone service on the island. There was nobody around there—I could hear them in the distance getting drunk, at Alex’s urging, though it was still the middle of the morning—and I sat in my bathing suit in the sand, gazing at the waves, imagining Wisconsin somewhere beyond the horizon.

As I dialed I pictured it: Mom in the pie shop getting ready for the lunchtime crowd. She was setting out single-serving pies for the workmen and shop clerks who came in for something sweet after their midday meal, plus full-size pies for the tourists and housewives doing their dinner shopping before spending one of the last warm afternoons of the season on the lake. School would be starting next week; this was the end of high season for Mom, for all the store owners in Eagle River. She’d be looking forward to shutting down a few days a week, to baking only a third as many pies as she did in the summer, to putting her feet up in the middle of the afternoon. But at the same time, she’d be sorry to see all the excitement end for another year, to be facing another very long winter ahead. A long winter without me.

The phone was ringing and I sat up straighter, butterflies in my chest.

And then there was her voice, wheezing and out of breath from (I could see it) setting down the pies she had been balancing in each hand and then rushing to the phone before the person on the other end (someone with an order for tonight, she undoubtedly figured, or Duke) hung up.

“Mom,” I said, wishing in that instant that I could leap into her arms.

Instead of answering me, my mother just started sobbing. Crying into the phone.

“Oh, Mom,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it took me so long.”

“I’m sorry too,” she said. “It was wrong of me to hide so much from you for so many years.”

“I’ve missed you,” I told her. “More than you could know.”

“I’ve missed you too, sweetheart. But I understand. I really do. You have to make your life now.”

“But I don’t want a life without you in it.”

My mom was silent for a moment, and then she said, “You had to come to that yourself, Amanda. You know how much I love you. I don’t think you ever doubted that.”

“No.”

“So tell me,” said Mom, her voice warming. “How is it? Are you having a ball?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Alex, the French photographer you met—he’s turned out to be really nice.”

I felt the heat gather in my face as I said this, and took a deep breath. I didn’t want to go there with Mom right now. “And I’ve made some other good friends, and I’ve learned a lot. But there are some problems too.”

Mom lowered her voice. “I read something,” she said. “On the internet. About you and Desi.”

“Oh God,” I moaned. “How did you see that?”

“Google alerts,” she said. “I have one set to your name.”

Without my computer, I’d missed so much—though in this case, that was a good thing.

“Has Tom seen it?”

“Well, I don’t know, sweetheart. Has he said anything to you?”

No, he hadn’t, and even with Tom’s accepting nature, I didn’t think my reported lesbianism was something he’d let slip by.

“If you don’t know this already, Mom,” I said, “it’s not true.”

“Oh, I figured that,” Mom said.

“Really.”

“I know, dear. You’re a big star now! Goodness knows all the things they’ll say about you.”

I took a deep breath. “I need your help, Mom.”

“What is it, dear?” she said, alarm creeping into her voice. “Just a minute.”

I heard the phone thunk onto the shop’s counter, and then heard Mom’s heavy steps cross the creaky wooden floor of the shop, heard the squeak of the door opening, and then listened as she told a customer that no, she wasn’t open yet. Then she returned to me.

“What do you need?” she said.

“It’s not me who’s in trouble, Mom. It’s my friend, Tati, Tatiana. She’s another model.”

“Oh, I know who Tatiana is,” Mom said. “The Ukrainian girl.”

Mom had always read the fashion magazines as avidly as I did, and followed the top models the way Duke followed the Packers.

“That’s right. She’s been my roommate since I got to New York. Well, anyway, Mom—she’s pregnant.”

Mom took an audible breath. “And she’s unhappy about this?”

“She’s confused. She’s been keeping it a secret. The father doesn’t know—they broke up a while ago—and she just told me mainly because she couldn’t hide it anymore. She’s six months along.”

“Her family…” Mom said.

“Back in Ukraine, and out of contact as far as I can tell. Raquel wants to send her back there, but I’m afraid Tati will do something crazy first—run away somewhere, or even hurt herself.”

“But surely she has plenty of money to take care of herself.”

“That’s the thing—Raquel controls all the money. She can withhold Tati’s earnings long enough to make things very uncomfortable. And she’s also in charge of Tati’s working papers.”

“Oh my,” Mom said. “I really feel for that poor girl.”

“I knew you would,” I said in a rush. “That’s why I was thinking—Mom, could I bring her to Eagle River?”

“You want to bring Tatiana here?”

“It makes sense. She can’t work right now anyway, and if we go back to New York, I’m afraid Raquel will force her to go back to Ukraine. I was hoping you could take care of her, get her to a doctor, help her stay healthy till the baby comes. And I just want to come home.”

“Of course, Amanda. Of course I’ll take care of Tatiana. I know just how she must be feeling. But you…you don’t have to come here with her if you don’t want to. I’ll understand.”

“No, Mom, I want to. I want to see you, and Duke, and Tom. I need to step back from this whole crazy world and decide what I’m going to do next.”

“We’re all here waiting,” said my mom, “with open arms.”

Alex orchestrated the rest of the day like a genius. After I talked to Tati about my plan, to which she eagerly agreed, Alex instructed her to stay in the cottage, theoretically sick in bed, but actually packing up everything for both of us. Then he told the already sloshed Minty that, given Tati’s illness, they would spend the afternoon shooting cover tries—magazine lingo for photos that might end up on the cover—with me. A good cover shot, Alex reasoned, would placate both the magazine and the agency after Tati and I disappeared.

Minty had downed too many piña coladas to notice when Alex’s assistant/busboy, Winston, slipped away to arrange things with the charter pilot—who also happened to be his cousin and a groundskeeper at the hotel—to fly us off the island that evening. While the entire crew assembled for a festive evening, arranged by Alex, of fresh-caught fish and frostier-than-ever drinks, Tati and I followed Winston through the palms to where the plane waited around the curve of the beach.

To my surprise, Alex was there waiting for us. I was worried that he wasn’t keeping the crew from becoming suspicious, especially since I had disappeared along with Tati, but he only grinned.

“Winston managed to procure some additives for this evening’s piña coladas,” he said. “Believe me, they won’t think about where you are until morning.”

“Thank you, Winston,” I said. “For everything.”

“You’ll be seeing Winston in New York,” Alex said, putting his arm around Winston’s shoulder. “He’s agreed to work for me permanently. Or maybe I won’t see you again until Paris?”

Paris. In the crisis of figuring out what to do about Tati, that quandary had blessedly flown from my head. And now that it was back, the answer seemed no more clear.

“I don’t know,” I told Alex. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“I understand,” he said.

But then, as the plane’s propellers started spinning, as Winston lifted our suitcases into the hatch and then helped Tati onto the plane, Alex leaned in close to me.

“Come,” he whispered.

Then we kissed. Winston was watching. Tati, inside the plane, was watching. Everyone—even my mother, even Tom—could have been watching, for all I cared. I had to kiss him, as long and as sweetly as I could. Because it seemed entirely possible that this would be the very last time.

T
he minute we stepped
off the plane in Wisconsin, Tati breathed in deeply and sighed, “It
is
like Ukraine. Even
smells
like Ukraine.”

I pointed out that we were still on the tarmac of the Rhinelander airport, which in the late summer sun fairly reeked of fuel and exhaust and melting blacktop. “It’ll smell a lot better when we get to Eagle River, with all the woods and the lakes,” I said. “I promise.”

Tati looked at me as if I were crazy. “Better than
this?
” she asked, amazed.

Right inside the door of the terminal, Mom and Tom were waiting, with Duke hanging shyly in the background. Mom rushed forward to enfold me in her arms. Fat might not be chic, but it definitely made for the best hugs. It felt so great that at first I felt like I never wanted Mom to let me go, though then I grew afraid that she never
would
let me go.

Finally, though, she stepped aside—moving, I was happy to see, to welcome Tati—and Tom came forward. He was shy at first, approaching me as if to ask me to dance for the very first time. But then, suddenly he swooped in and lifted me clear off the ground, swinging me around as if I were a little tiny girl. Now
that
was sexy, especially when you were used to, as I was, being the tallest person in any room. But Tom was taller, his shoulders broader, his arms strong as the limbs of a full-grown maple.

I’d gotten unused to the feel of Tom in the months we’d been apart, and the unfamiliarity of his feel was heightened by his difference from Alex, who was sleek where Tom was muscled, compact while Tom was large. The contrast between them reminded me of Alex and all that had happened between us, and made me feel as guilty as I was excited to see Tom. I was unable, then, to surrender to him completely, and felt myself pull back from his grasp.

“Tom,” I said, feeling shy. “Meet my friend, Tatiana.”

Admitting to her pregnancy seemed to have made it blossom. In the time it had taken us to fly from our little island to Nassau to Miami to Chicago and on up to Rhinelander, Tati’s stomach had popped, a perfectly round basketball protruding from her otherwise sleek body. Maybe she was relaxing too, and maybe I was noticing what I’d let myself overlook for so long.

“So,” said Tatiana, smiling for what I think was the first time since the day of the bikini shoot, “this is your mountain man.”

Tom raised his eyebrows at me.

I shrugged. “That’s what they call you in New York.”

While Tati reached out to squeeze Tom’s biceps, I moved toward Duke, who was still standing back, not quite meeting my eye.

“Hi,” I said, hesitating, “Dad.”

He pulled me into a bear hug, but I sensed some tentativeness, and I was holding back a bit myself, so many questions still between us. Part of me wished everything was the way it had always been. But I couldn’t pretend that everything was the same, and I couldn’t let my family or Tom pretend so either.

Eleven Things that Felt New About Wisconsin

1. The flatness. When I first went to New York, I felt hemmed in by the tall buildings. Now I felt unprotected with the land stretching out to the horizon on all sides.
   
2. The sky. So big!
   
3. The people. So blond. And so big too.
   
4. The road names. Highway Q. State Road XX.
   
5. Cars. XXL.
   
6. Fields, fir trees, lakes. Everywhere.
   
7. Tom. How male he was.
   
8. Mom. How nurturing she was.
   
9. Dad/Duke. How sweet he was, behind his quietness. And how much he really, really didn’t look anything like me.
   
10. The House O’ Pies. How amazing it smelled. Tati stood there breathing deeply, her eyes closed, not saying anything about Ukraine, until Mom walked over to her holding a warm piece of apple pie. Then Tati did something that amazed me: She ate it. And asked for another slice.
    
11. Our house. How small it was, and how badly in need of paint. Plus, how absolutely it felt like home.
    

Mom cooked us a huge dinner, which, despite the heat, included bratwurst, sauerbraten, sauerkraut, warm German potato salad, and warm noodle pudding. In a nod to the season, she also served two kinds of Jell-O salad: red with sour cherries and green with little marshmallows. Dessert was a pie smorgasbord, with a choice of whipped cream, ice cream, or cheddar cheese for topping.

Tati ate more than I’d seen her eat in the entire two months we’d lived together. Then she burped loudly, rubbed her newly round stomach, and said she thought she’d go to bed.

When we were alone, Mom said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Amanda, but they canceled the Amanda Day Parade.”

I hadn’t known anything about such a parade, and the very idea was completely embarrassing.

“Oh,” I said, figuring the people of Eagle River had judged it just as ridiculous as I had. “That’s okay.”

“In fact,” said Mom. “They canceled all of Amanda Day.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mom,” I assured her. “I would have felt silly anyway.”

But Mom still looked uncomfortable, and then I noticed that both Tom and Duke were looking away and not saying anything—not unusual in itself, but Tom was also blushing. And I’d never seen Tom blush.

“Why?” I said. “What is it? What was the problem?”

“It’s that story about you, Amanda,” said Mom, looking away too. “About you and your friend Desi.”

Duke jumped up from the table and rushed to start clearing the dishes—a measure so extreme that it confirmed the subject could only be equally excruciating.

“But, Mom,” I said. “Duke.
Tom.
That story isn’t true!”

“Oh, we know, we know,” Mom said hurriedly. “It’s just that there was this
picture.
”

Oh, no. Not the picture.

“Where did you see this picture?” I asked.

“Where was it?” Mom said, thinking. “I guess the first place was
Us Weekly.
Or
People.
Or, I guess, both. And then yesterday it was on the front page of the Eagle River
News-Review.
”

“It was in the
News-Review?
” I squeaked. Everyone in Eagle River read the
News-Review,
the county’s weekly paper, religiously. A news event could make the front page of the
New York Times,
the lead headline of Reuters, the top story on the nightly television news. But if it wasn’t in the
News-Review,
as far as much of Eagle River was concerned, it hadn’t really happened.

Mom, Tom, and Duke nodded mournfully.

“But people in Eagle River aren’t
that
naïve. They know that a lot of that celebrity gossip stuff isn’t true. I mean, of course Desi hugged me, after our fashion show, but that doesn’t mean we’re
gay.
”

Duke cleared his throat. “There was that interview with your friend, in the magazines, explaining everything,” Duke said. “The
News-Review
picked that up.”

“An interview with Desi? So she said…”

“She explained that she was gay but that the two of you weren’t a
couple,
” Mom chimed in. “But you know how people up here are. They think if there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Remembering how quickly a girl could get branded a slut at Northland Pines High, or how thoroughly everyone turned against the Presbyterian minister after he got divorced, I believed that was true.

“Tom,” I said, laying my hand on his arm. “You told them, didn’t you? You told them that you and I were still together, that all of this was a lie.”

Tom swallowed and nodded. But there was something in his demeanor that made me feel he was less than convinced.

I looked hard at him. We hadn’t had even a minute alone yet. I didn’t really want to ask him this in front of my parents. But I had to know right now.

“You don’t think it’s
true,
do you?” I asked him.

He shook his head no, but almost too quickly. “I just don’t like it.”

I went over and sat on Tom’s lap. I wanted to reassure him, even protect him from the pain of all this attention. But at the same time, I felt myself growing angry on Desi’s behalf. After all, I
did
love her, even if I wasn’t interested in sleeping with her.

“What if I wasn’t your girlfriend?” I asked Tom. “What if it was even
true?
Are you saying you wouldn’t like
me?
”

Duke snapped on the water and began washing dishes, something I’d only seen him do on Mom’s birthday.

“I don’t like people talking trash,” Tom said, reddening.

“But why is it talking
trash
to say that someone is gay? Why is it even anybody’s business what gender someone prefers in bed?”

At this, Duke shook the water off his hands and walked out of the room, my mom staring worriedly after him.

“Everybody here thinks everything is their business, you know that,” Mom said, still looking after Duke. “I’m sure once they stop talking about you, they’re gonna start in on Tatiana back there.” She nodded her head toward the back room, where I could hear Tati snoring.

I had to laugh to myself, thinking that Tati would be more than a match for the townsfolk of Eagle River. But it was probably not so easy for Mom twenty years ago, which made me understand a little bit better why Mom pretended all along that Duke was my real father, why she hid the true details of my conception and her pregnancy. She didn’t want me—didn’t want any of us—to be an outcast.

“I better go after him. It’s been a long day,” said Mom, hurrying into the living room after Duke.

Finally Tom and I were alone. Though that wasn’t an entirely comfortable feeling.

“So are you here, Amanda?” Tom said softly. “Are you here to stay?”

I sighed. Our departure from the shoot had been so frenzied that there was no chance to consider what it meant. Certainly once Raquel discovered that we’d run away, I might not
have
a career to go back to, and Paris might not even be an option anymore. But I realized that I wasn’t sure, even if I had no other choice, that I would want to stay here in Eagle River.

“I don’t know,” I told Tom, drawing closer to him, laying my head on his substantial shoulder. “Tati’s here at least until she has her baby, and I—well, I’ll stay as long as I can, depending on what happens with work.”

I could feel Tom holding himself stiff, holding himself back.

If Tom had been a different man, there were any number of things he might have said to me, things that would have been true. He could have said that he still loved me, he still wanted to marry me, and he hoped I felt the same way. He could have said that I had to make up my mind, that he wasn’t willing to continue on in some halfway relationship. He might even have gotten angry and broken up with me, hoping to provoke some reaction from me—or just hoping to get away.

But Tom being Tom, he sat there with his fingertips resting lightly on my ribs—neither returning my embrace nor pointedly keeping his hands off—until I lifted my head from his shoulder and drew back. He kept his eyes from meeting mine until I finally got up off his lap. Then he stood and jammed his hands in his pockets, and though he remained resolutely the tough guy, still refusing to look directly at me, I could see that his eyes were glistening with tears.

After several days of languishing in bed, rising only to chow down yet another of Mom’s hearty meals and visit Dr. Greenberg, our gynecologist and the only Jew in Vilas County, Tati emerged looking round and healthy and happier than I’d ever seen her. True to my prediction, she didn’t care a fig what people in Eagle River had to say about her—in fact, the pointed stares and whispered comments merely seemed to excite her.

“What? You never see baby belly?” she called, smiling, to the woman gaping at her on Wall Street, Eagle River’s main thoroughfare. “That’s right—sex put baby here!”

I had to admit, I could understand why the other woman was staring. Tati was, after all, wearing a white tank that stopped above her belly bulge and a white miniskirt slung way south of it, plus her tiny denim shirt as a vest. Oh, and red cowboy boots. Although she’d packed on maybe twenty pounds in less than a month, she was wearing the same tight clothes she always had. And if something was
too
tight—like the tank she had on now—she simply cut off the fabric that didn’t fit. If that meant baring her entire basketball belly to the world, so be it.

“I love to be pregnant!” Tati crowed to me now. “I love not giving shit!”

I laughed. “I didn’t think you ever really cared what people thought of you.”

“Oh, yes, I care,” Tati said solemnly. “I care what mommy in Ukraine think of me, and teacher, and husband, and of course Raquel, and you.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. “You care what I think of you?”

“Of course, Amandskala! You are dear one to me, dear to take me to this wonderful place, dear to put me in care of your beautiful mommy.”