Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [7]
Reddening and clutching my purse to my chest, I flinched when the other draped his arm around my shoulders and said, “We just want to get to know you a little, that’s all.” Running from the room, I smeared off the Jungle Red lipstick I’d applied and hurried across the street to work. An hour later, I was summoned to my manager’s office.
“Miss Blakeley,” he said frostily. “I was in the lobby of the Leyton Hotel this morning and saw you get off the elevator at a very early hour. We can’t have that kind of carry-on here!” Mortified when he didn’t believe my story—even when I assured him we’d been on the same bus—I quit.
World War II was coming to an end, but it didn’t seem to affect us much apart from drills at school and the fact that my uncles, Kelly and Bill, had been stationed abroad with the U.S. Air Force. As my eighteenth birthday approached, I began to defy my mother’s curfews more blatantly. Claudine’s brother-in-law owned a roadhouse called Swingland, where recruits from the Hutchinson army base would go to drink their own hooch. I’d sneak out of my bedroom window at night and run across the alley to wait for Claudine to pick me up in her car. After a fun night at Swingland, where I finally got to try out my jitterbug, I’d creep back home without my parents ever knowing.
I started to date the local basketball hero, but my mother had forbidden me from seeing him, so when she caught me talking to him on the telephone one night we had a huge fight. Furious, I packed my bags and went to Claudine, whose parents took me in. My teen rebellion didn’t last. Living with them was fun at first, but it wasn’t home. I began to miss my folks, even their dull routines. I’d wanted to be free, but now that I’d had a taste of freedom, I wasn’t sure the streamlined kid from Bosworth was quite ready.
My dilemma was solved when my uncles came home from abroad and were stationed in Long Beach, California. In an exact replay of our final days in Missouri, Mother was determined to follow her sisters. In the end, she simply announced, “We’re going.” Thrilled by the prospect of a more exciting life on the West Coast, I jumped at the chance too. My father and sister would stay on in Wichita until she graduated from high school, and then they’d join us. My boyfriend was forgotten as Mother and I flew the fourteen hundred miles to the Golden State. Staring out at the unfamiliar landscape far below, I was giddy with expectation. When we reached Long Beach and I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time, my knees almost gave way beneath me. I’d never seen that much water in my life. I sat on a bench and stared at it for hours. The ocean still fascinates me in the same way.
We moved into my aunt Mary’s house in the suburb of Lakewood, and my mother secured herself a position in an elegant fashion store called Lerner’s. I wasted little time too and applied to the Robert Edward School of Professional Modeling—reputed to be the biggest and best in Long Beach. Although I was starting to develop some curves by the time I walked through the door in my best dress, white gloves, and straw hat, I was as nervous as a bride. “You’re perfect!” cried a chubby, pink-faced man at the reception desk. “Come on in.” His name was Mr. Finney, and he would become my champion. His business partner was Mary Kaye, who was mean—meaner still if she’d had a few drinks—but she taught me so much.
In a room lined with mirrors, I learned how to show off my full five-foot-eight-inch height. “Stand up! Don’t slouch!” Miss Kaye would bark. “The world is a stage, we are all stars, and we must shine!” She and Mr. Finney taught me to walk like a model by imagining a glass of water balanced on each shoulder. I learned how to enter a room “rubber-limbed and straight-backed.” In lessons twice a week for three months, they showed