Chapter 10
When she was three years old, Brenda won a blue ribbon and several prizes at the county fair, when she was crowned Most Beautiful Baby of the year. At five, she started taking dancing lessons and when she entered the first grade her mother saw to it that she took baton and piano. By the time she was in the eighth grade, Brenda had appeared on every talent show the television stations around the area offered. She won several more beauty contests and walked away with first prize in every competition around. She was an accomplished pianist, had an excellent voice, danced like a dream, made good grades in school, and her ambitious mother dreamed of bigger things. If her father had anything to say, it was within the confines of the home.
Brenda's senior year in high school was a blaze of glory. She was the Sweetheart Queen, most admired cheerleader, editor of the yearbook, valedictorian of her class, and on top of that, she'd been on two national television shows. She showed off her glorious voice on one and delivered a well-written speech against drug addiction on another. Her mother's plans for the following year included entering Brenda in the Miss America contest. After that, the mother was sure her daughter would automatically become a Hollywood star. "After all," she repeated over and over to anyone and everyone, "Brenda has everything it takes to become rich and famous. Look at that naturally blonde hair. Look at that gorgeous figure. And those eyes. Absolutely perfect. We've spent a small fortune on her teeth, but with a million-dollar smile like that it was certainly worth it. She even has dimples. But she's just as talented and smart as she's beautiful. And she's wholesome. Nobody can top my daughter in anything."
Brenda was still a virgin when she graduated from high school. No doubt her mother had seen to that, too. So there she was, all set to go all the way to the top, with her mother right behind her, pushing hard.
The year she was eighteen, Brenda made it easily through all the elimination contests from Kaliocaski County to the state level. Back home the local papers and television stations followed her every move, and at the end of each blazing victory they reminded everyone that Brenda had everything going for her to become Miss America. She would put the small town on the map.
Something happened. Another girl walked off with the state crown. Brenda took it with good grace but her mother didn't. That dear lady's protests included accusations of bribery among the judges and harlotry within the ranks of contestants. Brenda kept saying, "Mother, please...."
But the mother was not to be stopped. Maybe hell has no fury like a woman scorned, but anybody who was the victim of her wrath will swear there's no fury like a mother whose ambitions for her child have been thwarted.
Embarrassed almost to the point of tears, Brenda turned to her father for support. "Daddy, the contest was fair. Mother is making a fool of herself, and me too. Can't you do something to stop her?"
The father committed suicide. He blew his brains out a couple of nights after Brenda asked him to do something about her mother's scurrilous tongue. Her mother had to be hauled off to a mental hospital before the hapless man was buried. Brenda saw to her father's funeral arrangements and quietly took a job in the local bank, a has-been at eighteen.
There were tremendous financial obligations Brenda hadn't known about. To make matters worse, her father's insurance company refused to pay off because of his suicide. Brenda sold the house in order to pay off the tremendous bills her mother had run up to showcase her talented daughter. Every time Brenda went to the hospital to see her mother, she left in a state of depression. The older woman had to be restrained all the time, but she could still talk, and talk she did. She babbled on and on about the future in spite of the heavy sedation she was under. She said things like, "Just wait until you walk off with the crown, honey. After you've won at the state level, mother is sure you'll be Miss America."
Because she didn't know any better, Brenda tried in the beginning to talk reasonably with her mother by reminding her as gently as she could that the state beauty contest had already been held, and she'd lost. But her mother wasn't going to have it that way. She turned against her daughter completely, believing Brenda was a spy for one of the other contestants. From then on, the poor woman didn't recognize her own child.
Wearily, Brenda continued to work at the bank, where she smiled nicely at the people who came to her window. Finally she met a nice young electronics engineer who asked her to be his wife. She accepted and they lived together happily for two years. Then the engineer fell in love with another woman and asked Brenda to go to get a nice, quiet, civilized divorce, preferably in Reno or Las Vegas. She did as he requested, then came right back home where she went back to work in the bank.
In time, she began dating a handsome stranger, a government engineer who came to town to work on a big new man-made lake that was touted by the town chamber of commerce as a future boon to the community. Before long, Brenda was sleeping with the handsome engineer, which she enjoyed tremendously. She loved him and deep within her traditionally-oriented soul, she expected him to ask her to marry him.
They made a striking couple. Brad had dark hair and eyes which contrasted nicely with Brenda's blonde beauty. He was divorced and had no children. She dated him for a year and slept with him almost every night, but she was careful about not being seen when she went over to his apartment, because she was very conscious of her reputation.
About a month after she began her relationship with Brad, Brenda's mother died, following a violent session with a therapist who was trying to bring her back to reality. She thrashed around against her restraints and had a stroke.
One snowy January afternoon, Brad called Brenda at the bank and asked her to drive over to the city. It was forty miles away, but they went there often, like most of the people who lived in the area, when they wanted something more than the few entertainment spots the town had to offer. She said she'd meet him at Holly's, a bar where they'd met before. He said to wear something glittery. They were going to a place that required evening dress. She agreed and came dressed in a gorgeous blue gown that showed off every luscious line of her body. The dress was new. She splurged and paid two hundred dollars for it. The wrap was old, but she'd only worn it once before, the night she had lost the state crown. It was a full-length mink cape, one of the many items Brenda's mother had obtained on the unlimited credit that had become immediately limited after Brenda lost the contest.
Brad said they were going to a dinner party at an expensive hotel, and she was going to meet some influential friends of his. Brenda was delighted.
She sparkled, showed her dimples as she dazzled everyone with her perfect smile and charmed all of Brad's good friends with her wit. There were six couples, and one elderly man at the dinner party. Her brilliant smile went off when Brad told her what he expected of her and why. "Al is more than just a friend of mine, Brenda." At the time, they were dancing cheek to cheek. Then Brad went on to tell her that Al could be instrumental in getting him where he wanted to go, which was to leave the government and step into private enterprise. His salary would be three times as much as he was making. And so on and so on. Finally, he said, "So I hope you'll understand why I'm asking you to go to his hotel suite with him tonight. I knew you'd appeal to him. Even with all his money, he can't expect to find a girl as lovely as you are."
Brenda felt the room whirling around her. Everything turned black for a second or two while she reeled back and forth. But Brad had a firm grip on her so she didn't fall to the floor, and she didn't faint all the way, either. She turned icy cold, but her voice sounded almost normal when she said, "So you want me to do you this favor. You want me to make love to him."
"Right."
Brenda lifted her chin. She looked Brad square in the eyes and managed a shadow of her dazzling smiles "I'll be happy to, Brad."
.Brad was offered the position with the company old Al owned the very next day. He told Brenda he wanted to take her out that night. "We'll celebrate."
"Sure," she said. "That'll be wonderful."
So they went out that night and went to bed later. Afterwards, when Brad was having his usual after-sex cigarette, Brenda sat up in bed and put her hand out. "That'll be a hundred dollars, Brad."
He told her not to say things like that. "Christ, honey, you sounded serious!"
"I am serious, Brad. Just count your blessings. I could ask for retroactive pay, you know."
He didn't want to, but Brad paid Brenda the hundred.
She said she would always consider Brad her second customer. Al was her first, although she didn't receive any pay for balling the elderly man.
After that, she went into part-time hooking. Before the episode with Al, she'd been offered other deals, usually jokingly, sometimes frankly. She'd pretended she didn't understand, and nothing had ever come of any of those previous offers, thinly veiled or otherwise.
A jolting experience with a delegation of local ladies came a year later. Brenda left town the following day. Included in the group of do-gooders were the wives of the mayor, the banker, two doctors, a dentist, the baker and the major stockholder and president of a sprawling furniture company, the area's main industry. There were other women, most of whom pretended that their husbands had not been entertained by the ravishing blonde. They said, as they gnashed their teeth and made clawing motions with their hands, that they came along because they wanted to help keep their fair city clean of trash like Brenda.
It was no trouble for the fantastically beautiful girl to feather a new nest for herself, and the city she chose was a big one, the nest a far cry from the modest little apartment she'd maintained since she sold her family home.
Brenda remains loyal to her early upbringing. She seldom swears, uses no four-letter words, and drinks only an occasional cocktail before dinner. She's an asset at a dinner party, and often acts as hostess to important men when they entertain business associates. Even though she seldom goes to bed with the business executives for whom she arranges lavish dinners and coordinates everything so tastefully, her fee is the same as if she had five hundred dollars.
She is now thirty-five years old and even more beautiful than she was at seventeen, when she thought, because she'd been brought up to think it, that the world would soon be hers. She owns a lavish town house, a few condominiums, a downtown office building, and other real estate. Her diamonds, emeralds and amethyst necklace with matching earrings are usually kept in a safe deposit box along with other, less expensive jewelry. She dresses well, but not ostentatiously, and drives a Volkswagen sometimes, although she owns a Lincoln.
At the time of her mother's death, Brenda hadn't accumulated the wealth and comforts she has today. Once again she was faced with the expense of a funeral, and there was no insurance to cover it. Brenda will never forget the genuine help of a funeral director some twenty miles from her home.
"I have a soft spot in my heart for these people. Oh, sure, some of them are totally mercenary individuals who lie to people. They use the natural shock and sorrow of having to put a loved one away for all it's worth. But there are unethical, unscrupulous individuals in every profession. When my father died I was very young. The funeral director in my home town was both sympathetic and helpful. He was an old man himself at the time, and not too long after my father's suicide, he died. Even though he let me have everything at cost, I still owed him two hundred dollars when he passed away. And do you know, that dear, kind old man wrote that debt off just three days before he went to the hospital for his final illness. I learned that I wasn't the only person in town who owed him money at the time of his death, but that all those debts were canceled.
"Then I had to cope with the same thing when my mother died. Again, I had a heartwarming experience. That's why I do what I can to make funeral directors happy."
The April convention of funeral directors was arranged by Brenda. The rooms were both comfortable and quiet. Those whose wives came to the convention were housed in a separate section of the hotel, far away from the girls Brenda imported from a well-known brothel. The men who were expected to require the services of the girls were in another section of the hotel, which Brenda explained would cut down on confusion as well as misunderstanding.
"These men are, for the most part, an orderly group. They don't like trouble. As I said, there are exceptions to all rules, but I've learned that even the most rowdy kind of man tends to calm down and behave himself when he's in the company of other men who tend to be conservative."
The convention food was the solid steak, baked potato and salad type, exquisitely prepared under Brenda's expert supervision. Everything went off without a ripple during the three days of the convention. The fact that Brenda cleared more than fifteen thousand dollars for her many services only proves, she said with simple dignity, that she was worth every penny of it.
After that statement, I said, "Yes, but aren't most Funeral Directors' Conventions pretty quiet anyway?" I was thinking about the few men in the profession I know on a personal basis.
Brenda smiled. "Not really. It's part of their image, which is why I am invaluable when it comes to planning and coordinating conventions. You see, people like to think of undertakers as sober, dignified people. Not just because they don't want to turn the funeral of a relative into a carnival, but because everybody knows that death is something they have to face for themselves some day. It isn't fitting for a funeral director to run around town wearing bermuda shorts, riding a motorbike, or visiting houses of prostitution. If they get too folksy, people tend to back off. I think this is because of the built-in knowledge that we're all going to die some day, and nobody likes the idea of the person in charge of things running around acting like a clown."
"But you said funeral directors aren't any different from other men. They need to let off steam now and then. Yet you've put together a convention that doesn't allow them to."
"Oh, they let off plenty of steam all right. It's just that my method and arrangements are safe. The wing of the hotel where the girls were was jumping."
I said I would have appreciated seeing some of that action. Brenda told me my presence would have put a damper on things. "But I've arranged for you to talk with some of the girls."