were her experts, and when Audra glanced in their
direction, she saw they were all on their feet, ap-
plauding, nodding with approval and pride. Even
stern Dr. Jamison was bringing his big hands to-
gether, and it looked like grouchy old Dr. Koch had
paused to wipe away a tear.
The hostess, a willowy-looking blonde chick
whom Audra had only seen once before—at the
dress rehearsal yesterday—stepped up to hug and
kiss her like they were old pals.
“Audra, you look mahvelous,” she exclaimed in
an odd accent. Audra couldn’t place her: it sounded
like an English accent by way of the prince of Den-
mark. Something about it made Audra suspect the
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
279
girl was totally perpetrating and that between the
funny way of talking and the fact that she made her
red side-slit evening gown look more elegant than
whorish were the sole reasons she had gotten the
hostess job. “Absolutely smashing!”
“Thank you,” Audra said, returning the woman’s
hug. It was a little like squeezing a collection of
bones in a soft skin sack.
“The audience seems really impressed with your
makeover.” She pronounced the word “mackovair”
and it took Audra a brief, blinky second to decipher
it and respond.
“Thank you, audience,” she said, executing a
slight, Miss-America-style turn and waving at them.
“I love you!”
More applause, whistles and even a little laughter
greeted her. Basking under the lights and the love,
Audra couldn’t resist hamming it up. She turned
fully toward the audience and struck a Marilyn
Monroe, blowing airy kisses at the audience and the
cameras between them and her.
“You’re enjoying this attention, aren’t you?”
“I’ve lived most of my life in the shadows,” Audra
said, using the sentence she’d practiced almost since
the first day of her arrival in L.A. “It’s time for me to
step out into the sun . . . uh . . .”—what was this
chick’s name again?—“Cassandra.”
“I know you’ve worked very hard,” veddy ’ard.
“And it shows. You’re an Ugly Duckling no more.
And now it’s finally time for you to see yourself at
long last.” She gestured toward the end of the stage
where a black curtain covered a long rectangular
shape Audra knew concealed a mirror. “When
280
Karyn Langhorne
you’re ready, cross the stage, stand in front of the
mirror and say the word Reveal. The curtain will fall
away and you’ll see yourself at last. Are you ready?’
Am I Ret-tay? Audra mimicked the woman in her
mind, but aloud she simply said:
“Girl, I was born ready.”
Hostess Cassandra gestured toward the black-
draped mirror. “Then off you go.”
Audra didn’t need to be told twice. She turned,
balancing carefully on the stiletto heels they in-
sisted were a must with a dress like this—a gleam-
ing sheath of blue, beaded with sequins from breast
to hem, the scarf draped dramatically around her
neck as much to hide the slight mottling from the
lightening drug as for effect, and strode across the
stage toward the mirror.
She paused before it, like Shamiyah and the oth-
ers had coached her to do, but their words had been
utterly unnecessary. Audra felt the dramatic weight
of the moment nestle around her like a mantle as the
crowd noise settled down to a hush and her own
heart beat loudly in her ear. She couldn’t compare it,
it was unlike any movie scene she’d ever known.
She knew what her body must look like—she
could tell by looking down at her legs and her
breasts, at the color of the skin on her arms and
over her body. She knew she was thin from the way
her old clothes fit, and from the size 4 sewn on the
inside of every gown she tried in that designer shop.
She knew her hair was long and light-colored,
swishing on her shoulders like a horse’s mane.
None of these things would be a surprise.
The face. Only the face was still a mystery. Until
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
281
now . . . when all that stood between her old self and
her new self was a canopy of black cloth and a single
word. She spoke it now.
“Reveal.”
It was the moment in Meet Mr. Jordan—or its
many remakes—when the dead boxer sees the face
of his new body in the mirror and realizes he’s no
longer his old self, but his old self in someone else’s
skin.
Audra stood, stunned, her mind unable to pro-
cess the image in front of her, even as the cameras
rolled and the crowd cheered.
The woman was lovely: caramel skin stretched
over high cheekbones and a neat little nose, in per-
fect proportion to the sculpted brows of her fore-
head and the luscious red bow of her mouth. Only
the eyes seemed familiar, still a smoky black but cir-
cled now with false eyelashes and some kind of
midnight eye shadow Audra knew she’d never be
able to duplicate at home.
Her eyes traveled down her body: her boobs had
never stood so high, her waist never seemed so
long, or her stomach so flat. As though she were
home alone, she turned sideways toward the mir-
ror, examining her profile, then again, to inspect
her round, firm rear end and shapely thighs, before
turning back to examine the front view once
again. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to
shout or shiver, and so she contemplated herself
without making a single sound of dismay or ap-
probation.
“Well?” Cassandra was at her side, draping an
arm around her shoulder, and Audra realized all of
282
Karyn Langhorne
the experts were crowded around her now. “What
do you think?”
“I think . . .” Audra said, finding her voice again,
thankful for its familiarity, at least. “I think . . . I’m
beautiful.”
And then, at last, a smile spread across her face.
She had the vaguest recollection of what happened
after that.
She remembered hugging each of the doctors and
experts in turn, thanking them for their efforts.
She remembered her mother and her little niece
coming out from behind the stage to gawk and gape
and make pleasant comments about the drastic
change, even while Audra read in her mother’s eyes
her uncertainty about both Audra’s look and its im-
pact on the days to come.
She remembered bending close to Kiana. “Don’t
you have a hug for your Auntie A?” she asked, with
her arms wide.
“You’re not my Auntie A,” the girl said decisively
and refused to be persuaded otherwise.
&n
bsp; She remembered Penny Bradshaw squealing in
her ear as she embraced her, her young face a mask
of teenaged amazement.
And she remembered Art Bradshaw: lifting her
off her feet in a bear hug she doubted would have
been possible at her pre-Ugly Duckling weight.
Audra loved it: loved the feeling of being swept off
her feet princess-style, of being enveloped and pro-
tected. She held him a little tighter, feeling as though
she had stepped out of herself and into a fairy tale
with Art Bradshaw cast in the role of the prince.
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
283
He released her, bit by bit, and Audra tilted her
face toward him, expecting to see happiness shining
in the bright amber of his eyes and in the broad
gleam of his face.
And it was there . . . along with something else.
Something she hadn’t expected to see:
Disappointment.
PART THREE
The Final Package
Chapter 24
“It’s amazing . . . amazing . . .” Penny Bradshaw
kept saying the word over and over again, until
Audra was on the verge of snapping something not
very nice about needing to work on her vocabulary.
“Just . . . amazing . . .”
Audra, her family, Art Bradshaw and his daugh-
ter Penny sat in a limousine, hurtling toward the air-
port in a thick, nervous silence.
Just like that, it was over: the ugly duckling had
visited the wide world, time had passed, and now
she was returning home. Only she was no longer a
duckling, inside or outside or on any side. She was a
prettied-up version of Audra Marks on her way to
the airport in the company of her irritated mother,
her confused niece, the silent Art Bradshaw and his
awestruck daughter.
Audra washed her eyes over him again: He was
massive, taking up almost half the long backseat of
the limousine, and Audra had to talk to herself to
288
Karyn Langhorne
keep from snuggling up beside him and thanking
him for his help and support in a far more intimate
way . . . if he’d let her. For all their conversations—
and all her erotic dreams, day and night—Audra
had to admit she had no idea what the man’s feel-
ings were. But that embrace . . . that hug . . .
Ask him, just ask him, Dr. Goddard whispered in
her brain.
As soon as we’re alone . . .
Of course, there was also something she was sup-
posed to have told him . . . something about skin
lightening procedures and the shift from dark to
light . . .
It’s a little late for that now.
She peered at him closely, but the confident man
she’d been talking to on the phone for the past three
months was nowhere visible at this moment. He was
sweating a little, patting his hands on his thigh ner-
vously, glancing around the car like a lost man.
“Amazing,” Penny Bradshaw breathed again,
and her father patted her on the arm in a futile effort
to silence her, but an instant later, another soft
“amazing” escaped from the girl’s mouth.
Art cleared his throat. “Good dress,” he rumbled,
interjecting a few new syllables into the silence. He
didn’t sound like the well-spoken man she’d come
to know—or even like John Wayne. He sounded
more like a Neanderthal struggling to navigate the
modern world. “Green. Color.” He seemed to put a
little emphasis on that last word .. . but Audra
couldn’t have sworn to it. It might have been a trick
of her own guilty conscience.
“Thanks.” Audra flashed a smile in his direction,
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
289
hoping to ease him back into the connection that
had lived so vibrantly between them on the phone
for the past several months. “It’s a present from
Dr. Koch—the plastic surgeon who did the body
work.” He said he picked it because it reminded
him of the dress Barbara Stanwyck wears in the be-
ginning of Double Indemnity. He rented the movie
after he watched my audition tape; he’d never seen
it.” Audra chuckled. “I seem to have introduced a lot
of people to the glory days of film.”
“Mmmfph,” Edith muttered, making her first
sounds since they’d left the studio. “I thought they
was supposed to be changing you, not the other way
around.”
“That’s the funny thing about people, Ma. We all
impact each other in ways we can’t always antici-
pate.”
Edith rolled her eyes. “Here we go! Here goes the
blame game. I swear, Audra, if this is how it’s gonna
be with you day after day, I am not—”
“What? I didn’t say anything!” Audra shot back.
“Don’t be so—”
“If this is how it’s gonna be—” Edith repeated
even louder and more stridently than before.
“Okay, okay,” Audra said briskly. “Forgive me. I
only meant—”
Her mother looked up at her, smoky eyes agi-
tated. “No, never mind. I guess I’m . . . just not used
to seeing my daughter this way,” she admitted.
“They did a good job on them extensions. Is that the
same stuff Oprah got?” But before Audra could an-
swer, she turned her head toward the window,
290
Karyn Langhorne
were exhausted. “I thought sure that girl Shamiyah
said they would at least put us up for the night . . .”
“Are you really my Aunt Audra?” Kiana asked,
staring at her with big eyes from her place beside
her grandmother.
“Really,” Audra said, leaning toward her with a
smile on her face.
“You sound like her . . . but you don’t look like
her,” she said with a frown. “You don’t look like her
at all.”
“Don’t you like the way I look?” Audra asked.
The little girl stared at her for a long while. “You
look nice . . . but you just don’t look like Aunt Au-
dra. Aunt Audra had skin like midnight and eyes
like fire. And she was soft all over when she hugged
me.” She sighed. “I miss her.”
The words stung like a lash and Audra felt tears
prickling behind her eyes. She was about to say
something, something reassuring and familiar that
might regain Kiana’s trust, when Penny Bradshaw
interrupted with, “Did he give you the shoes, too?”
She nodded at the emerald green pumps on Audra’s
feet. “The plastic surgeon—”
“Oh . . . no. The shoes were from Dr. Bremmar.
He did my face. They work together—they’re part-
ners. I guess they must shop together, too!” Audra
laughed like maybe someone else might find the im-
age of the two doctors shopping together amusing,
but got no takers. They didn’t know either man
. . .
and you had to know them to get the joke. “No,” she
said not bothering to explain. “I’m sure they had
their assistant shop for them or something. Actually
I got gifts from all of them—all the experts,” and she
DIARY OF AN UGLY DUCKLING
291
proceeded to tell them about how her old black duf-
fel had been emptied of the things she had brought
at the beginning of her Ugly Duckling journey and
every item replaced by a trinket from each of the
people she had worked with over the past three
months. There was a pair of tiny black yoga pants
and three crop tops in different colors from Juli-
enne; a lovely wide-brimmed hat and gloves from
Dr. Jamison; the clingy silk dress and shoes from
Drs. Koch and Bremmar; the black handbag she was
carrying from Shamiyah, and a gold necklace from
Camilla. But the most unusual gift by far was from
Dr. Goddard: a delicate hand mirror, edged in gilt,
on which the word beholder was engraved in fili-
gree.
“Beholder?” Edith frowned. “Why ‘beholder’?
What kind of message is that?”
“It’s a reminder,” Audra said quietly. “That beauty
is in the eye of the beholder . . .” She glanced in
Art’s direction, but to her dismay, he lowered his
eyes almost as soon as she captured them. “And that
my own perception of myself is the most important
one of all.”
“Amazing,” Penny Bradshaw breathed again, in
the same tone of absolute wonder. Then silence
reigned in the car again.
“I want to know all about it . . . everything. Did it
hurt? How much of the hair is yours? What did they
do to your skin to get it so . . . so . . .” Penny Brad-
shaw settled herself into the seat Audra had been
hoping her father might take and started talking a
blue streak. “Light?”
292
Karyn Langhorne
They had first-class seats . . . which should have
provided a prime opportunity for them to talk, but
Art must not have wanted that. Audra glanced at
him: he leaned over the seat ahead of them, helping
Kiana buckle her seat belt. With that accomplished,
he excused himself for the lavatory, keeping his
head down.
Audra stared after him, confused and let down, a
vague feeling of depression replacing the elation of
only hours ago. For months, she’d been at the center
of her own little Ugly Duckling universe, where