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“Girls!” Christine hissed at them. “I’m trying to hear!”
Rebecca shrank in her seat while Jane mimicked zipping her mouth shut. While their hands remained intertwined on the armrest between them, Jane politely watched while Mrs. New Mexico explained her thoughts on the First Amendment and how it applied to schools. To her credit, she gave such an elegant answer that she could have said,“Oh, burn them all down and start over again,”and Jane would have given her the award.It is all in the delivery. Trust me.Caitlyn had said as much over the years.
“Here we are, halfway through our top ten!” the host exclaimed when he made it to Caitlyn, whose beautifully made face appeared on the large screens hanging over the audience. She laughed at the host’s joke.Look at that radiant smile.Sure, Jane knew that Caitlyn’s smile was already bought and paid for by the time they met, but Caitlyn knew how touseit. Wasn’t that the same smile that entranced Jane at the hotel bar where they first flirted?
I wanted to see that smile every day.
…And thrust between those glorious thighs every night, but Jane was a woman of super complex duality.
“Now, you have come out of retirement for this pageant, haven’t you?” The host waited for Caitlyn to accept the stage mic before continuing. “You have been in overtwentypageants before, starting when you were in middle school! How wonderful. What made you retire several years ago, and what has brought you back to represent Iowa here at the Mrs. United States of America pageant?”
Caitlyn answered as if she knew the question ahead of time.No, she’s smart enough to anticipate it.
“It was fate, really,” she said. “All of it. When I originally retired, I had been doing this for quite a while and was at a point in my young life when I was ready to take on a new challenge, go down a fresh path. That was around the time I met my wife Jane.”
Oh, God, Jane, brace yourself, girl.
Caitlyn had warned her that a camera might be on her if Iowa made it to the top ten.“We’re a bit of a novelty at this pageant, I think,”Caitlyn had explained at dinner Friday night.“They like to show the family in the audience, but with them knowing you’re a woman, they won’t waste the opportunity. Good or bad, it creates a reaction, and that’s good for ratings. Let’s practice your smile!”
Jane had some practice of her own. Back when she was a girl in Hong Kong and her mother made her look the part whenever they attended a garden party or, god help Jane,church.
So there she was, suddenly on the screen with a camera hovering over her head as it passed on a railing hanging from the ceiling. The only thing Jane regretted was immediately untangling her hand from Rebecca’s because they had all agreed to keep their polyamorous lifeoutof this.
“What a lucky woman she is,” the host said. “How long have you been married?”
“That’s a bit of a trick question, because this is the second time Jane and I have been married, although we’ve been together in between, too.” When everyone around her either whistled or gaped at such candidness, she continued, “We’ve been in love for so long that the years beautifully run together at this point.”
“Isn’t that something?” the host asked the camera. “You’re the only contestant here who is currently married to another woman, truly putting a new spin on Mrs. United States of America. Which brings us to the question I have for you tonight, Caitlyn.” He paused to give her a moment to refocus herattention. “In the year 2024, what place do you think a married woman has in American society?”
Rebecca’s hand was over her mouth again. Jane had a feeling that question hadn’t been in their practice arsenal.
“Glad that ain’t me,” Cecelia muttered, still looking at her phone.
Or me.Jane would look like an arse trying to answer that. Caitlyn, though?
Maybe Caitlyn had this.
“I doubt there isn’t a woman out there who hasn’t thought about this,” she said. “I know that, for myself, the mere act of being married to anyone instantly brands us in ways that have been part of our consciousness since we were little girls. Naturally, I always imagined myself growing up and marrying Prince Charming, because I had no other frame of reference outside of my parents’ lovely marriage. But I saw the way my mother loved my father, the way they worked as a team to create a good life for their children, how they delegated in ways that were unique for their generation while also cultivating mine. By the time I fell in love, I knew I wasn’t going to marry a man, but I also never knew I was going to marry a woman. But it felt exceptionally right. To really answer the question, the role of married women in the current climate is as it has always been: to create a framework that allows us to work as a team. Our marriages are microcosms in the general American life. Failure or success speaks to how our current state of affairs is in this country. The mere fact that I could decide to never marry at all speaks volumes. The fact that I could marry a woman from another country has always felt exceptionally American to me, or at least the perception of America that I grew up with in her heartland. We are independent women through and through, and part of being independent women who participate in the economy, pay our taxes, and lead the next generation is decidingwho we want to marry and who we team up with to forge our identities within our communities. I wouldn’t be where I am orwhoI am today if it weren’t for my wife. While I will wholeheartedly say that I would be as valid as an American citizen whether I was married or single, there is something unique about domestic partnership that is always malleable and forever a boon to our society. How married women feel is an excellent barometer for how we’re doing as a country. So, I think that part of our place in American society is to show what can be done, whathasbeen done, and what we will accomplish if allowed to live in peace and cultivate what happiness and productivity means to us.”
If she had taken a breath during her monologue, Jane certainly hadn’t heard it.
“Wow,” the host said over the applause. “There you have it, everyone. Mrs. Iowa here to tell America that there is still a place for married women and how valuable you all are, however your marriage manifests!”
Jane carefully studied the faces of the other women standing with Caitlyn on the stage. Most had poker faces, but some like Mrs. Ohio smiled through gritted teeth. That was how Jane gauged that Caitlyn had given a good answer because as far as she was concerned, a lot of that was word salad.Tasty word salad, but Caitlyn knows how to talk around people and make them feel something.Now Jane understood it came from the pageant days.
One by one, women filed off the stage to change for the talent portion of the evening. Once they gauged it was probably safe, Jane and Rebecca took each other’s hands again, grateful that nobody had asked Caitlyn about her actual home life.
“How does her mum think she’s doing?” Jane asked Rebecca.
“She got all teary over the married women question.”
“She understood all that bollocks?”
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Maybe it wasn’t British enough for you.”
“I doubt I’d understand it in proper English either, love. You have to say it in Cantonese with a decidedly Confucian flair that makes me want to bang my head against the wall while my mother sagely nods and tells me once again this is what makes me a failure as a daughter.”
“Doesn’t she say that about all her kids?”
