The Home for Wayward Supermodels by Pamela Redmond Satran Page B

must have been shot in Manhattan not Milwaukee, as I had always assumed. I could see it in my mind’s eye: Mom in a velvet leggings and cowl-neck knit tunic and suede booties, chin lowered, eyes sparkling, smiling into the camera. It was a fall 1987 issue, which meant, I now knew, that it had been shot in the summer of 1987. Which happened to be about nine months before I was born.
    Moving as if in a dream, I approached the librarian and asked for the specific 1987 issue of Glamour Mom was in. Hands trembling, I carried the magazine to one of the long shiny tables and sat down, opening it slowly to page 221, the page number I’d long memorized as the one Mom’s picture was on. Then I sat there gazing down at my young mother’s smiling face and at the tiny photographer’s credit beside the picture: Jean-Pierre Renaud.
    It was like being present, in a way, at my own conception, or at least at the first twinkle in my father’s eye. My mother’s smile took on a new significance: It was directed at him. She looked so happy—happier than I’d ever seen her. She looked in love.
    But what about him? Was he in love with her too? Or was it just an affair? He was significantly older than she was, and he had been married, she said. Maybe I had brothers and sisters— French ones! He’d never known about me, but would he even remember her?
    If I hadn’t been having all these thoughts and feelings in such a calm and beautiful place, I might have lost it completely, but as it was I just sat there blinking hard and breathing deeply.
    And then someone tapped me on the shoulder.
    I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I leaped off my seat as if I’d been given an electric shock and let out a little scream—though even a little scream in that temple of silence caused all the other patrons to turn around and glare at me.
    “Oh God, I’m sorry,” said the tapper, a young woman with elaborately waved hair who was dressed the way I’d expected the Vogue editors to be dressed—like a fashionista. But despite her high-style clothes and hair, she had a sweet face and seemed horrified that she’d scared me.
    “Sssssh,” someone hissed.
    “I’m sorry,” whispered the young woman, hunching down so she was closer to me. “It’s just that…didn’t I see you in Us Weekly ?”
    I frowned, running through the jobs I’d been doing. There was Vogue, of course, something for Glamour, Men’s Fitness, InStyle, and ads for lipstick, bathing suits, and fruit punch. They all tended to run together, because the truth was, one shoot was pretty much like the next, none of them nearly as glamorous as they looked when you were on the other side of the photograph, reading the magazine. But I’d done nothing for Us Weekly , which as far as I knew was a celebrity gossip magazine and didn’t even hire models.
    “I don’t think so,” I whispered back.
    “You’re a designer, right?” the young woman said.
    I shook my head. “No. You’ve got the wrong person.”
    “I’m sure it was you,” she insisted. “I was just reading it. You’re also a model?”
    A not very educated guess. “Yes,” I admitted. “But I wasn’t…”
    “Amanda. Right?”
    This was getting a little creepy. “How did you know that?”
    “I told you—you’re in the new Us Weekly ! Just a minute. I’ll get it.”
    She scurried over to where she’d been sitting and came back holding the magazine, thrusting it onto the table in front of me.
    There I was, all right, that first night I’d gone out with Tatiana. But Tati wasn’t in the picture, just me. “Hot new supermodel Amanda,” the caption read, “hits Bar 13, here wearing a dress of her own creation. Will this multitalented newcomer end up designing more of these beautiful clothes, modeling them—or both?”
    “Oh God,” I said, lurching to my feet. “I’ve got to call Desi.”
    “Who’s Desi?” said the young woman.
    “The real designer,” I said. “And my friend.” Though I was walking