So they thought nothing about sticking me in the middle of an adult dinner party or pulling me out of school for their vacations or arguing at the volume they'd used the whole of their married lives. And it was because of this that I learned that my mother had what's mine is yours'ed her inheritance to my father and his every attempt at for richer had ended up for poorer. It wasn't clear how much money we did or did not have; what mattered was there was far less than she thought there should have been, and somehow less every year. Each trip to New York was weighted with her anger that she should be able to buy me a finer coat or loafers made of softer leather. We did not skip those stores. She made me try on skirts and blouses that she believed it was her right to afford and then she'd sniff at the help and tell them it wasn't quite our taste. And then I'd have to do it all again at a place that was within our budget. Or, if she was in a particular mood, she'd take me to the best department stores and shove me into clothing that she would have wanted at my age and then buy her girlhood at me, kneading her bottom lip between her front teeth as she signed the credit slips, gearing up for the fight she would have later, a fight she could always win because it had been her money, even if the credit wasn't in her name. Once I suggested I didn't need all these things. Just once was enough to make clear that these trips were for her, not me.
* * *
It was only because of the doctor that my mother started telling me to stand up straight. It was only because she ramrodded her index finger into my spine as we walked into her favorite New York City department store that I was standing up straight at that moment. And it was only because I was standing up straight that day that I was discovered.
I wasn't paying attention. Later, I wished I had been and so I spent a lot of time constructing the scene, trying to see what Harriet Goldman had seen that afternoon. Me, being marched through the door, the pressure of my mother's insistent finger forcing my shoulders back and creating a scowl on my face—a scowl that could be interpreted as a pretty pout, depending on the ambitions or agenda of the beholder. My mother, half a foot shorter, dressed in one of those suits that was supposed to last forever and had, the fabric at least. The style was from another era, a jacket and skirt that would not have been out of place worn by a girl getting discovered at a shop counter in the 1950s. Her blond hair was dyed and set; mine flowed down my back. And leaving from that very same door, a woman I was too irritated to notice but who had been watching me through the window. Sunglasses engulfed her face like two dark moons and she did not wear clothes so much as she allowed the fabric to drape across her thin shoulders. Her dark hair was pulled back in what I would learn to call a chignon. But first, before I could take the time to be intimidated by her, she was just a hand reaching out for my mother's wrist and a deep voice unfurling into a Long Island accent asking, "Darling, does she have representation?"
The way it felt: the three of us melted onto the sidewalk, a flurry of business activity. But that couldn't have been how it really was, not in the city, not with other customers coming in and out and pedestrians with places to be. And she couldn't have signed me that day, of course, not before my mother called the ancient family lawyer and pretended to run it by my father. But even the following night, it was already a blur, like trying to tell a memory from a dream.
* * *
The question was about letting me model, not whether I wanted to. And what girl wouldn't want to? Maybe a girl who went pink if a teacher called on her, who hid behind her hair at the market. Maybe, but not in this case. I was pleased that I'd been discovered; I separated it entirely from the fact that it meant people would have opinions about me.
Discovered was Harriet Goldman's word. "Look at her," she said to everyone she had me meet in those first few weeks. "I discovered her going into Saks, can you imagine?" Discovered was more soothing than exciting. I took it literally. I didn't think about it as validation of my physical appearance, even though I spent more time afterward staring at myself in my bedroom mirror. Someone had seen me. Someone had done the looking and the math and found the result and it was me. Imagine having spent your entire life blending in with the furniture and then to be noticed as decoration.
Discovered was just the beginning. My entire vocabulary changed. Comp cards, go-sees, my book—it became a new language, light on my tongue when I whispered the words to myself at night.
The first time I stood in front of a camera, it wasn't in beautiful clothes or with my hair and makeup done. I was in a tank top and bell-bottom jeans, my hair pulled back from my bare face in a low ponytail. These were the pretest shots. The quiz shots? I thought about making the joke but kept it to myself. Harriet believed I had what it took, but she wanted to see proof before ink was put to paper.
"We just need to see you," the photographer said. "Show me you."
* * *
