The Home for Wayward Supermodels Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t see the city anymore; all I could see was myself, enormous, looming over Mom.
    “All I know,” I told her, “is that I don’t want to be with you.”

    What I did want to do, and why I couldn’t do it:
Sit down in a dark corner and cry. Reason I couldn’t do: Might get raped and murdered in all available dark corners.
Get in a taxi or even on the subway and go to Desi’s house. But I didn’t have any money because I was wearing my sari, which naturally had no pockets and which didn’t go with any of my purses so I’d asked Mom to carry my wallet.
Talk to Tom. But no cell phone, no money to use pay phone.
Go back to hotel. Did not want to see Mom.
    So I just started walking. It became apparent pretty quickly that I could either continue walking along the waterfront, veer off into darkest Brooklyn, or head onto the Brooklyn Bridge itself. At least the bridge was easy to find: All I had to do was look up, and keep walking toward the majestic span. In the cab on the way over here, I’d seen people walking and jogging—including families, women alone, even old people—along the bridge’s official walkway. I’d thought at the time that it looked like a really fun thing to do and tried to calculate whether I’d be able to squeeze it in before our plane left for Wisconsin tomorrow night. Now I had my answer.
    It was a warm night and there were even more people on the walkway now than there had been before. With all the people around, I was less afraid walking by myself there than I was on my own street in Eagle River at this time of night, which would be completely deserted. It was an amazing feeling being there, like walking on a rainbow over heaven.
    But no matter how transcendent the setting, I wasn’t able to lose myself to the experience of being there. There were too many voices banging around in my head. How could my mom have lied to me all those years? Did Dad—I mean Duke—really love me, or was he always thinking of me underneath as something tainted? And who was my real father, this Jean-Pierre whoever? Was it him that I looked like? Would I ever meet him? Did I want to?
    When I reached the Manhattan end of the bridge, I knew what I was going to do. I’d been to Desi’s apartment once, when she wanted to change her shoes. Now I headed there. Or I should say I tried to head there, but in the maze of downtown streets, all with names instead of numbers, it was next to impossible to figure out which way to go. My only guiding light was the Empire State Building—that was north. But the streets on the Manhattan side of the bridge, around the big court and government buildings, were dark and deserted, and the few people I saw, people in suits hurrying to the subway after a late night at the office, ignored my request for directions.
    I finally sank onto a park bench near City Hall and started crying, because I was lost in every way. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself out of this whole huge mess back into Tom’s arms. If only I’d never come to New York, had stayed in Wisconsin and married Tom. But that wouldn’t have made any difference, I reminded myself. Even if I’d never found out about my real French father, it still would have been true.
    I didn’t even notice that a homeless person had sat down beside me until she slid closer and held out a McDonald’s napkin, which I gratefully took.
    “Man trouble?” she asked.
    “No,” I sobbed. “My mother lied to me. And I’m not who I thought I was.”
    “I’m not who I thought I was either,” she said.
    “And I’m trying to get to my friend Desi’s apartment,” I told her, “but I can’t find my way.”
    This she could help me with, giving me amazingly detailed directions that included the kind of bark on a tree and the color of a sidewalk grate. I wished I could give her some money or some food, but that night I had even less than she did.
    Once I made it to the crowded streets of Chinatown and Little Italy, and then to