The following Saturday Mommy absolutely forbid Winston and me to go sailing. She said there were just too many things left to do for the party and I needed to rest and be a good hostess. Instead I went up to my room and sulked. We couldn't go sailing the day after, either. because Winston and Mommy had to attend a charity luncheon. She was insisting I go with them. too.
"You have to mix more with people and let more people get to know you. Grace. Whether you like it or not, we are now important people in this community," she told me.
I didn't want us to be important people in any community. If it weren't for how wonderful Winston was to me. I would have wished she and he had never met and we were still living in the small condo. It got so I couldn't wait to see him after school, to talk to him, to do things with him, to learn from him. Mommy was right about one thing: Winston was a man of the world, sophisticated, and very selfconfident.
One afternoon just before dinner I referred to him as Daddy Winston. and Mommy's mouth gaped. I didn't plan to say it: it just came out in reference.
"Daddy Winston? You make him sound like Daddy Warbucks." she finally commented.
"Maybe he is," I replied. I certainly felt like Orphan Annie a good deal of the time,
She grimaced every time I said it, but after a while she stopped and even referred to him as Daddy Winston herself on occasion.
There was never any doubt in my mind that he was her Daddy Warbucks.
Whether she had said anything to him about it or not I wasn't sure, but one night at dinner he put down his knife and fork and looked at me with a smile on his face.
"What?" I asked.
"I have a requ
est to make of you," he said. "I have my lawyer working on it so it will be fast."
"What?" I asked again, looking at Mommy, who did seem confused herself, and then back at him.
"I'd like to adopt you officially. Grace. I'd like you to be Grace Montgomery," he said.
Mommy gasped and then, almost immediately, started to cry softly. I looked at him, my breath catching. I would be giving up Daddy's name, I thought.
Winston anticipated. "just call yourself Grace Houston Montgomery from now on," he said, shrugging as if it was nothing. It would make me a happy man. Grace." he added.
Mommy stared at me. I could see it in her eyes. This was very important to her as well,
"Okay," I said in a small voice, and that was that. I had put a piece of my heart away forever.
.
The day before my party those who were invited did go out of their way to speak to me at school. but I didn't feel any of them was sincere about it. What they did want to know was exactly who besides them was invited and what sort of music we would have. A few asked about the food, wanting to know who was catering it. I wanted to shock them and say, "No one, My mother's making everything." The truth was. I didn't know whom Mommy had as a caterer. I didn't even know what the menu was, and the only reason I knew we had a four-piece band was they had come over one day to see about how they would set up out at the pool and I had met them. I did remember they were called the Renners after their lead singer and his English wife. Bill and Diane Renner. Denise Havington said she had them at her Sweet Sixteen party and they were great because they got everyone up and dancing. It seemed to raise my popularity quotient a few centimeters. but I sensed it might last only until the party.
I was half tempted to invite Basil. He knew about the party because for that week at least, it was one of the topics of conversation flawing through the high school, Actually I felt sorry for him, but when I brought it up with Mommy, she almost burst a blood vessel.
"If the other mothers even heard you were considering such a thing, they wouldn't let their daughters and sans come. Don't you dare." she warned. I had to promise I wouldn't, but that didn't mean she would believe me.
Naturally she took me to buy a new dress just for the party. Someone. I suspected Thelma Carriage, had told her about a new designer who was becoming the rage in Palm Beach as well as in Europe, and she looked for one of his creations. The dress had a price tag close to three thousand dollars. I almost couldn't move when she ordered me to try it on.
"Stop giving me those big eyes of yours. Grace. This is similar to a coming-out party for a debutante, and those sorts of occasions arc very big and important here. It's not unusual to be a little extravagant,"
"A little?"
"Just try on the dress," she snapped.
Mommy was determined to belong, determined to become accepted and part of this world, and if she had to she would drag me into it crying and screaming. I did what she asked. The boutique had a tailor there instantly to discuss the adjustments.
From there we went to the beauty salon, and Dawn Meadows, who had become Mommy's personal beautician, set out to give me a striking new hairstyle. I complained she was cutting my hair too short. but Mommy stood right beside her agreeing with every snip and disregarding my protests as if I "as nothing more than a manikin. What I thought at the end was that I had been made to look like most of the other girls in our new world. Slowly, inch by inch. I was losing myself. My identity was sinking into the mirror, and what replaced it could be found on almost every page of the Edith Johnson Wood School yearbook.
As soon as we were finished at the beauty parlor. Mommy insisted I go with her to her cosmetic shop. All these boutiques, shops, and stares had suddenly become "hers." It was the way all the women she now had as acquaintances spoke about places in Palm Beach and elsewhere. Their patronage and the special attention it brought them qualified a place to be "theirs." It gave the impression everyone else who frequented it was simply tolerated or being done a favor.
At the cosmetic shop I was taken through a series of lessons about makeup, what shades complemented my complexion the best, and what creams I just had to have to prepare my skin before and after. Once again, whatever objections I had were totally disregarded. I was even unsure I had spoken. Maybe I am a manikin now, I thought, and while they discussed my face I daydreamed about Palm Beach. Going over the Flagler Bridge was like passing through some magic door. On the other side, like same of the characters in The Wizard of Oz, I turned into a life-size doll. I moved like a doll, had this habitual happy smile on my face, and when squeezed said things like. "How tickytacky."