Then Again - Diane Keaton [2]
Mother never told me of her dreams for herself. There were hints though. She was president of the PTA as well as the Arroyo Vista Ladies Club. She was a Sunday-school teacher at our Free Methodist church. She entered every contest on the back of every cereal box. She loved game shows. Our favorite was Queen for a Day, emceed by Jack Bailey, who began each episode, five days a week, with “Would YOU like to be … QUEEN … FOR … A … DAY?” The game went like this: Bailey interviewed four women; whoever was in the worst shape—assessed by the audience applause meter—was crowned Queen for a Day. With “Pomp and Circumstance” playing, he would wrap the winner in a velvet cape with a white fur collar, place a sparkling tiara on her head, and give her four dozen red coronation roses from Carl’s of Hollywood. Mom and Auntie Martha wrote their sad stories on the application sheet more than once. She almost made the cut when she wrote, “My husband needs a lung.” When pressed for details, Mom told the truth—well, sort of. Jack Hall, an ardent skin diver, needed to dive deeper in order to put more food on his family’s plates. Mom was eliminated.
One morning I woke up to a group of strangers walking around our house examining every room. Mom hadn’t bothered to tell us she had entered the Mrs. America contest at our local level. Mrs. America was a pageant devoted to finding the ideal homemaker. Later she informed us kids it was a competition of skills that included table-setting, floral-arranging, bed-making, and cooking, as well as managing the family budget and excelling in personal grooming. All we could think was WOW.
I was nine, so that made me old enough to sit in the audience of the movie theater on Figueroa Street when she was crowned Mrs. Highland Park. Suddenly my mother, the new greatest homemaker in Highland Park, stood high above me on a vast stage in front of a huge red velvet curtain. When the drapery opened to reveal an RCA Victor Shelby television, a Philco washer and dryer, a set of Samsonite luggage, a fashion wardrobe from Ivers Department Store, and six cobalt-blue flasks filled with Evening in Paris perfume, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. What was I seeing? Why was Mom standing in the spotlight like she was some sort of movie star? This was terribly exciting yet extremely unpleasant at the same time. Something had happened, a kind of betrayal. Mom had abandoned me, but, even worse, much worse, I secretly wished it would have been me on that stage, not her.
Six months later Dorothy Hall was crowned again, this time as Mrs. Los Angeles by Art Linkletter at the Ambassador Hotel. My brother, Randy, and I watched on the new RCA Victor Shelby television. Her duties as Mrs. Los Angeles included making local appearances at supermarkets, department stores, and ladies’ clubs all over Los Angeles County. She wasn’t home much, and when she was, she was busy baking the same German chocolate cake with walnuts over and over, in hopes she would be crowned Mrs. California. Dad got sick of the whole ordeal and made it known. When she lost the coveted title of Mrs. California, she appeared to accept her failure as easily as she resumed her normal household duties, but things were different, at least for me.
Sometimes I wonder how our lives might have changed if Mother had been chosen Mrs. America. Would she have become a TV personality like Bess Myerson, or a spokesperson for Philco appliances, or a columnist for McCall’s magazine? What would have happened to my dreams of being in the spotlight if hers had been realized? Another mother took her opportunity away, but I didn’t care; I was glad I didn’t have to share her with a larger world.