A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

  “Well, it turns out Crown actually makes most of their money off of prisons. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Hotels and prisons. It’s kind of like that housing project in Chicago, those big towers that were made into luxury apartments. The apartments were just the same, but some were luxurious—”

  “Yeah, Cabrini. They’ve been torn down now,” said Sadie impatiently. “But, yeah, I’ve read all about Crown. They kind of dominate the prison industry.”

  “Yes,” said Rose, “well, they made it an industry and, it seems, they’ve been building prisons faster than the courts can”—she clicked her tongue—“drum up prisoners. They just keep building prison after prison. All on government commission, of course. Some are half empty. Even though there’s some ridiculous number of prisoners now, twice as many as ten years ago. Ten million. Or something like that. All from drug crimes, of course. Reagan.” She shook her sleek head. Reagan was a continual source of trouble for her. Sadie’s father had voted for him the first time he ran (“We were in a recession; he had a strong domestic policy; you didn’t live through the Depression, Sadie, you don’t understand”) and, thus, Rose blamed poor James Peregrine for every failure of the administration, as well as the one that followed. “Anyway, people are starting to think that there’s some sort of conspiracy: Crown and the government in cahoots to build more prisons and make more money for Crown—and the politicos approving the prisons—imprisoning every black man in the country in the process. I keep reading about it in The Nation. Your father thinks it’s all a load of bunk, but the company stock is dropping—”

  Sadie could stand it no longer. “Mom, Mom, Mom”—Rose stopped talking and shot Sadie a wounded look—“I know. What happened with Tuck?”

  Rose raised her black eyebrows. “There’s no need to be short with me.”

  “I wasn’t being—”

  “Just the facts, ma’am, right? If that’s the way you want it. Fine by me. I need to get dressed.” She stood up, her mouth set in a hard line, and sighed dramatically.

  “Please, Mom,” said Sadie, struggling not to laugh. “Tell me what happened. Sit down.”

  Rose complied petulantly. “Well,” she said, “it seems that Tuck participated in a, a theatrical protest against Crown. The company was having some sort of executive dinner at the St. Allen on Central Park South, which isn’t called a Crown and everyone thinks it’s still an independent hotel. It used to be, when I was your age, but now everything is owned by some big company. Anyway, Tuck and these people crashed the dinner.”

  “But why is it in the Style section?” Sadie laughed.

  “Some designer had something to do with it.” Sadie tried, quietly, to peer over her mother’s shoulder. “Shall I read it to you?”

  “Yes,” said Sadie, and Rose smoothed the paper and began:

  A Fashionista Finds Her Cause

  In the 1960s, countercultural types—protesters of the Vietnam War, back to the landers, hippies, yippies, residents of communes, and other bohemians—could be easily identified by their uniform: raggedy hipster jeans, peasant blouses, fitted leather jackets, Frye boots, small round glasses and, of course, the long, flowing locks memorialized in that summer-stock staple “Hair.”

  These days, it’s a bit harder to tell a bona fide radical—not that there are all that many in our apolitical, apathetic age—from your average college student, with the entire country’s twentysomething population clad in standard-issue Gap jeans, Patagonia jackets, and Timberland boots. That is, unless you’re talking about the loose network of young people affiliated with überactivist Rob Green-Gold’s fledgling organization Wise Wealth, which helps the young and loaded “lead ethical lives,” by making “lifestyle choices”—like adopting a vegan diet and refusing to patronize chain stores—and donating part of their inheritance to left-of-center causes. Such causes might include PrisonBreak, another of the energetic Mr. Green-Gold’s ventures, this one devoted to dismantling the country’s “prison industry,” in which—according to Mr. Green-Gold, and a number of other prominent antiglobalization advocates—large corporations make fat profits off the labor of mistreated prisoners. Mr. Green-Gold’s innovative ideas and approaches have won him no small measure of fame, and as a result, his organizations have attracted the fiscal and personal attention of any number of Hollywood’s left-wing elite. Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Debra Winger and Leonardo DiCaprio have all pledged money to PrisonBreak, as have rock stars (Kim Gordon and David Byrne), literary luminaries (David Foster Wallace, Junot Diaz), and technomoguls like Steve Jobs and Ed Slikowski.

  But perhaps the most interesting adherent of Mr. Green-Gold’s ideas is a person generally not associated with radical causes: Soho dress designer Susanna Chang. Known for her charming, retro frocks—rendered in lush silks, adorned with ribbons and bows and beads—Ms. Chang has “never had any interest in politics.” “For ten years, I had tunnel vision,” she explained, speaking over the phone from her Greene Street atelier. “I didn’t think about anything but building my business.” All that changed six months ago when Mr. Slikowski—a former beau of Ms. Chang—introduced the designer, a petite brunette habitually clad in kitten heels and knife-pleated skirts (“I run them up myself on my old Singer . . .”), to Mr. Green-Gold. The activist—a self-described “anarchist” who “doesn’t know anything about fashion”—and the fashionista immediately hit it off.

  Rose cast her eyes down the page. “All this is about the designer. Okay, here we go.”

  Upon their initial meeting, Ms. Chang told Mr. Green-Gold that she’d love to help out PrisonBreak in whatever way she could. The two stayed in touch, but it wasn’t until last week that Mr. Green-Gold called Ms. Chang into action.

  And so it was that on Friday evening, sixty attractive young people marched into the Grand Ballroom at the St. Allen, clad in sumptuous evening clothes designed by Ms. Chang and constructed by her Brooklyn seamstresses over a feverish five-day period. Though the styles of the women’s dresses differed—from a full-skirted strapless gown that called to mind Dior’s New Look, to a close-cut, curve-hugging number with a plunging V-neck—they were all cut from the same cloth: bold black and white stripes, the sort that once adorned prison uniforms. The men’s tuxedos used this same cloth, to alarming effect.

  These well-dressed young people were not exactly invited to the event they attended: Crown’s annual executive dinner, attended by 200 of the company’s top executives and big investors. Crown operates most of the nation’s prisons—as well as many of its top hotels, including the St. Allen—and, as such, is the leading target of the PrisonBreak campaign. “Crown has a direct interest in keeping our prisons filled, which means they have a direct interest in perpetuating the racist, classist inequities of contemporary American society,” said Mr. Green-Gold. Ms. Chang’s costumes were meant to show Crown exactly how “fine the line is between prisoner and hotel guest.”

  At 7:00 p.m., Crown executives and investors arrived in the Grand Ballroom for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. At 7:30, Mr. Green-Gold’s “operatives”—as he jokingly refers to them—began to filter into the crowd, a few at a time. At 8:00 p.m., when the group moved into the seating area for the banquet, the rest of the prison activists—including Mr. Green-Gold, his wife, Ms. Chang, Mr. Slikowski, and Ms. Gordon—joined them. Slowly, the protesters formed a human chain around the curtained edge of the ballroom. The first speakers stepped up to the podium, the guests wondering exactly what the silent young people, in their matching outfits, were doing. At 8:45, Charles Harris, the company’s chief financial officer, strode over to one of the protesters—journalist William Hayes—and asked, sotto voce, what was going on. “I didn’t want to make a scene, call security, that kind of thing,” said Mr. Harris, speaking from his midtown office yesterday. “There were a lot of very pretty girls. And they were all very quiet and well behaved.”

  Initially, perhaps. After Mr. Harris approached Mr. Hayes, the protesters began mil
ling through the banquet hall, passing out leaflets emblazoned with the phrase, “Stop Building Prisons.” After a brief period of confusion, Mr. Harris and a group of executives tried to force the protesters out of the ballroom. Hotel security was called. But before in-house officers arrived, a skirmish broke out involving Mr. Harris, Mr. Hayes, Mr. Green-Gold, and several unidentified protesters and Crown employees. Hotel security officers broke up the fight and turned Mr. Green-Gold and Mr. Hayes over to the city police officers who arrived soon after. Several other protesters were detained for questioning, but their names have not yet been released, for reasons of security. The matter has been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been monitoring Mr. Green-Gold’s activities for “at least a year,” according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

  As Mr. Green-Gold was led out of the hotel, into the waiting police car, he cried, “I’ve already got my uniform” and “A thousand more bucks for Crown.” And he looked great as he did it.

  Rose stopped. “The rest is about the designer,” she said. “She avoided the fracas, it seems.” Sadie nodded, then met her mother’s eyes. Suddenly, the two women burst out laughing. “He looked great as he got into that police car,” said Sadie, through giggles. “Actually, he does look pretty swell,” said Rose. Sadie took the paper from her hand. On the first page, bottom left, was a color photo of Rob Green-Gold, smiling broadly and clad in what would indeed have been a smart tuxedo were it not for the white stripes. His eyes, she saw now, were a bright, appealing green. Off to one side, she saw Caitlin, in a floor-length, tailored gown, her hair pulled to the top of her head in what looked to be an elaborate chignon. Long gloves covered her arms. And—was that . . . yes!—a small tiara glittered atop her head.

  “So do you know this boy?” asked Rose. “Is he a friend of Tuck’s?” Sadie nodded.

  “A very old friend, from childhood. I don’t know him, really. He married a woman named Caitlin Green, who was in our class at Oberlin. She and Lil are friendly, and the four of them hang around together. Partly because of proximity, I think. They live right down the street from each other.” Sadie pointed to Caitlin. “That’s his wife.” Rose laughed.

  “The glamour puss? With the long gloves? She’s bad news.” Sadie stared at her mother.

  “What makes you say that, Mom? Just from a picture?”

  “Look at her,” Rose cried. “The gloves! The tiara! She’s completely ruined that lovely dress by piling on all that junk. Where did she even get a tiara?” Sadie laughed. “I bet this whole thing was her idea. I mean, the girl’s married to this boy who probably walks around in jeans and a Save the Whales T-shirt all the time. And he’s some kind of vegetarian. He’s devoted his life to this cause.” Rose Peregrine had no patience for people who devoted their lives to “causes,” placing them in the same camp as born-again Christians and devotees of avant-garde theater. “She probably dreamed up this whole thing just so she’d have a chance to get dressed up, poor thing.” And there I was, Sadie thought, smiling, telling her to get dressed up. Then a phrase came floating out at her—“constructed over a feverish five-day period.” Had she had a hand in this? It could be. The thought, strangely, pleased her.

  “You’re probably right, Mom,” she said.

  “Of course I’m right, Sadie. Give me a little credit. I’ve been around the block. That girl set this whole thing up and roped Tuck into it, too, no doubt. There’s a certain type of girl who wants to have men fighting over her all the time.”

  “You really think Caitlin set up this whole elaborate protest to get attention for herself?” Sadie asked.

  Rose considered. “No. The boy was probably planning the protest. The costumes were probably her idea. No straight man would think of something like that, right?” She took the paper back from Sadie and opened it to the middle page, where the story continued. “Look, there’s another picture.” She ran one manicured finger along a large black-and-white shot of the protesters lined up against the back of the hall. It was a rather remarkable sight—the row of young people in identical stripes, the women beautiful and dewy, the men handsome and stalwart. Ed Slikowski, Sadie thought, could stand to wear a suit more often. In person, he’d seemed much more slight, boyish. “There’s Tuck,” said Sadie, tapping her finger on the page.

  “Yes, yes, I saw Tuck,” said Rose, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. “But where,” she asked, “is Lil?”

  That same day, Beth took the train up to Scarsdale to spend the day with her mother. She and Will had set a date for their wedding (the third Saturday in September) and chosen a site (her family’s place in Maine), but she had yet to begin looking for a dress or to select invitations or to register for gifts. They’d only been engaged for two weeks, of course, but, according to her mother, September was just around the corner: the invites needed to go out within four weeks (“You have to give people eight weeks notice”), and if she didn’t pick a dress immediately, she wouldn’t have enough time to order the thing and have it fitted (“three months is the standard, Bethie”). And so Beth had agreed to come to Scarsdale for the day to look at card stock and gowns, even though she didn’t care much about either—she didn’t see why she needed an actual bridal gown, rather than simply a nice dress (and did it have to be white? She hated white), but her mother had simply, somehow (she tried to trace the thread back through their daily conversations but couldn’t), assumed that Beth would want a real wedding dress and everything that went along with it, and Beth was too tired—or too something—to correct this assumption, in part because she didn’t know exactly what she wanted.

  Will was still in San Jose. She’d spoken to him in the early morning—five o’clock his time—and he’d said, “Choose whatever you like for the invites. Just no flowers or birds.” After she hung up she realized that she’d forgotten to ask him about the wording on the invitation, as she’d promised her mother she would. There were, Mrs. Bernstein had explained, two approaches to a wedding invitation: the traditional, in which the bride’s parents were named first (“Dr. and Mrs. Donald Bernstein request the honor of your presence as their daughter Elizabeth Anna is joined in matrimony with William Henry Chase), or the modern, in which both sets of parents are listed at the top (“Dr. and Mrs. Donald Bernstein and Mr. and Mrs. Harold Chase request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their children Elizabeth Anna and William Henry”). The latter was more egalitarian, but Beth thought it would seem weird, seeing as Will not only had been married before but also had a child—and presumably did not need his parents’ permission to marry. Beth herself favored simple things and wondered why they couldn’t just have a plain white (or cream?) card that said, in plain black (or brown?) letters, “Please join Beth Bernstein and Will Chase as they start their lives together.” Okay, well, maybe not “start their lives together.” But some simple, clear statement. Lil and Tuck’s invitations were very modern and elegant—a designer friend of Tuck’s had done them—but then Lil had planned her wedding in defiance of her mother, rather than with respect for her wishes.

  Beth adored her mother—secretly, she considered her mother her best friend, though she knew how deeply uncool this was—and didn’t want to argue with her about small things, like invitations, which didn’t matter much to her, but seemed, like everything else about the wedding, very important to her mom, who was already asking questions like “Do you think you’ll wear your hair up or down?” and “Would you like to have those little disposable cameras on the tables?” Which was strange, since Beth’s mother wasn’t one of those mothers, the Scarsdale mothers, though in certain, superficial ways she resembled them: blonde pageboy, tailored slacks, Tod’s driving mocs. But the details betrayed her hippie past: embroidered Chinese jacket, “ethnic” jewelry, ancient Subaru (she refused to trade it in for a new model), and unwavering affection for The Moosewood Cookbook. She’d married Beth’s father, then a bearded dental student intent on opening up a free clinic in the Bronx, at his fa
mily’s house in Maine—just where Beth planned to do it—with as little pomp as possible, barefoot and clad in a gauze sundress, potluck-style meal, surrounded by close family and a few friends.

  There weren’t many pictures of this humble event, but Beth, as a dreamy little girl, had studied them all, trying to fit them to the images of weddings she saw on television or in books: princesslike women in enormous dresses, slowly gliding toward an elderly robed figure. In those embarrassing days before adolescence, she’d wished fervently that her parents’ wedding had been the fairy-tale sort, particularly when she visited friends’ houses and looked at leather-bound albums filled with photos of grand ceremonies and grander receptions at the Pierre or the St. Regis or the Scarsdale Country Club. Of course, in college, it was cool to be able to say, “My parents were total hippies. My mom got married barefoot in a Mexican dress.”

  Now, as she sat on the train, sipping hastily bought coffee from Zaro’s and staring at the passing trees, the paper unread on her lap, she wondered what her children would say about their parents’ wedding. She smiled and pressed her forehead into the chill window. Children, she thought, I’m going to have children. I’ll give them something to talk about, she thought, closing her eyes. But what?

  Beth was coming in on the 8:34 train, which meant Mrs. Bernstein needed to be at the station at 9:20 in order to catch her daughter as she disembarked at 9:22, provided there were no problems, as there so often were, with Metro-North. Beth had wanted to come later—“Mom, it’s Sunday”—but they simply had too much to do. There was no way around it. They needed the whole day. Mrs. Bernstein, who was used to rising early for school, woke at seven (late, she thought), skipped down to the kitchen, tamped some grounds into her little moka pot, and leafed through the Times magazine, which contained an article about how kids of Beth’s generation lived in a state of perpetual adolescence, stowing their belongings in Hello Kitty backpacks and playing video games. It’s true, thought Mrs. Bernstein. Beth—who had been such a good, mature child, neat and reasonable and temperate in her moods—had lately been behaving like an infant: insisting on moving to New York (signing a lease on an apartment, even!) without a firm job (though that, thankfully, seemed to be resolving itself), rushing headlong into this romance with Will, and, now that it appeared to be working out (Mrs. Bernstein had been, honestly, doubtful), refusing to get started on planning the wedding. She refused to think about even the most basic things—buying a dress, booking a caterer—the things other girls looked forward to doing. It was as though she expected Mrs. Bernstein to simply take care of the details for her. And that absolutely was not going to happen. Though, of course, Mrs. Bernstein was happy—truly happy, what mother wouldn’t be?—to assist Beth in any way she could.