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Harriet Goldman sat me in her office the day I signed the contract. My mother settled into the white leather chair next to me. Behind Harriet: the expanse of the city, shrunken by the height of the building and alive under the glass. On her desk: several 8x10 black-and-white photos of me. Harriet delicately ashed her cigarette into a marble ashtray next to the pictures and nodded toward the lobby. My mother didn't move.

"Mrs. Rhodes," Harriet said finally. "She'll come out when we're done."

"I'm her mother."

"Of course you are. I'm the agent. She's the model. We'll see you in a few."

I held my breath, thinking this was it. My mother was going to take back her permission, rip up the paper. But she took a signed document seriously, and so she rose from the chair and left the office, moving as though she were balancing a book on top of her head.

"It's just easier to do this without the mothers," Harriet said once the door was shut. "Sometimes they hear things that aren't there." I nodded. She lit another cigarette and crossed one leg over the other as she slid a hand across those first photos of me. "These are nice." Later I would learn that nice could mean fine or good or phenomenal. For now: just nice. She held up a picture so I could see myself—plain but also not. I remembered the Greek myth about the boy who fell into the water staring at his reflection as I leaned forward to get a better look. It wasn't a reflection, though. It was seeing myself for the first time. One eye slightly darker than the other. The chicken pox scar on my cheek masquerading as a dimple. She put it back down before I could fall in.

"So. Birdie. You're very lucky. Know that. Remember it. I get a hundred pictures from girls like you every day, girls who want to be sitting where you're sitting right now." She let that hang like a threat in the air between us. I nodded again. I understood, I thought. "Alright, then. There's a lot of possibility here. You're younger than some editors normally work with, but you're tall enough." She waved off any concern about my youth like it was as inconsequential as a gnat. "We could get you some acting lessons if you think that's something you'll be interested in. And there's the possibility of runway. If you stick with this, you'll go to Paris. Do you have your period yet?" This was spoken in the same matter-of-fact tone she'd used for everything else and it was a moment before I realized what she'd asked. "Oh, darling, there's no use in getting shy now." I told her yes. "Good. Hopefully we're behind the awkward phase, then. That's a mess for everyone."

Harriet stood. She turned toward the enormous window behind her desk. The day was not particularly beautiful, no sun glinting majestically off the Empire State Building, too early for the lights to cast a soft glow to the taxis and sidewalks. It was simply regular. "When you're on a go-see or a shoot, your job is to make them like you. That's how we both get paid. That's how you get more and better work. If you have a problem on a set or if you're not comfortable, you can tell me. Dealing with that is my job. But if a client calls to tell me one of my girls was difficult, it only happens the one time." She was silent for so long that I thought it was my dismissal, and just when it seemed like I must have been failing some sort of test for understanding what she would need from me, she spoke again. "Get your passport if you haven't already. And you're going to need a wardrobe. Basic, quality pieces. Nothing flashy. Show that you know how to wear clothes, they don't wear you. Ask Therese for a list of appropriate designers on your way out."

It wasn't that we couldn't afford such clothes, that it would be a true hardship to purchase them. But if my mother found out there was a cost to modeling, I could see it all slipping through my fingers faster than it had landed in my grasp. I opened my mouth to explain.

Harriet held up a hand. "Expense it to the agency. We'll take it from your earnings." She paused, then her eyes drifted toward the door. My cue to go.

My mother wanted to ask what was said in that office, I could feel it in the purse of her lips, the way she'd glance at me and then look away as we walked back to the car. And I could have told her, but she wouldn't have understood. I had the feeling what Harriet didn't say was just as important, but what that was wasn't clear to me yet.

This was the first time I had something that was mine. I spent too much time around adults to ever feel comfortable around the other kids at school; other than as a target for their teasing remarks about my height, I wasn't of any use to them. I had people to eat next to in the lunchroom, but I wouldn't say I had friends, no one outside of the confines of school hours. Modeling was a decent consolation prize. And my mother wasn't interested in being a stage parent; despite her initial enthusiasm, that would have been too much work. She appreciated Harriet Goldman's eye because it confirmed her long-held belief that she was special, different, even if only through me. A daughter who was a model would probably not get her into the elite circle at the country club that she insisted they belong to, but it was something. And it meant, in her mind, I would be like her.

"I've always been glad you're pretty," my mother said when we were driving back to Connecticut. "It never mattered that you don't have a personality—no one wants that anyway. They want pretty.

"Obviously you'll still want to think about your prospects, and this should help you with poise at your debut in a few years. Perhaps we can do a custom-designed dress—it's never too early to start thinking." She switched lanes sharply. She was a terror on the road, in an absolute boat of a Chrysler: a silk scarf knotted under her chin, sunglasses, lambskin driving gloves. From afar, she might have appeared to be channeling vintage Jackie Kennedy but she most certainly had voted the other way. A well-connected cousin had thrown a fundraiser for Richard Nixon out in the Hamptons during the 1960 election, and for a long time my mother would bring up how Pat Nixon had complimented her hairstyle that night. She only retired that anecdote after Watergate.

"Anyhow," my mother said, "you'll have your own money. That means you don't have to marry for it."

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