“Bummer, we’ll miss you,” Karina reiterated, raising her voice.
“Um,” Jen said. “Do you need any other information from me?”
“I’m good, I’m good,” Karina said. “Give us two weeks?”
“Right, sure.”
“Should I tell Leora?” Jen asked.
“I can tell her,” Karina said.
“Are you sure?” Jen asked
Karina blinked and beamed. “Is that all?”
“I think so,” Jen said, getting up to leave. She hesitated. “It’s just that—I just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving to try to do my art full-time. I did a portrait for Mrs. Flossie Durbin, the philanthropist—”
“Ah, yes, we tried to get her for our board of directors,” Karina said. “Could the woman even try to return a phone call?”
“Right, yes, I’d heard that—and so, you know, that vote of confidence, it really seems to be opening some doors for me. I got a commission to do a magazine illustration of a reclusive mining heiress who’s rarely photographed. I’m doing wedding portraits, baby portraits, someone even mentioned holiday cards to me, which seems so far away—”
“I think I got it!” Karina said.
Bertha Mason laughed. Bertha had rattled at the door all these years not seeking freedom from confinement or retribution. She rattled only for approval.
“Okay,” Jen said. “Okay, this is great—I mean, not great in all senses, but—”
“Jen, what can I say—you’re a real pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps story,” Karina said. “A real Horatio Alger tale.”
“Actually—and most people don’t know this—but Horatio Alger stories weren’t really about pulling oneself up,” Jen said. “They’re more about being in the right place at the right time, about earnest young people happening to cross paths with a wealthy benefactor in a generous frame of mind.”
“Aren’t you Miss Smartypants,” Karina said, grinning widely and crinkling her nose impishly. “I will miss all the ways you educate me. The foundation will, too.”
“Also,” Jen said as she turned to leave, “just FYI, Horatio Alger was a pedophile.”
We’ve Met Many Times
“Julie.”
Jen was standing in line at the coat check in the red-carpeted, red-walled arcade outside the ballroom where the annual Bluff Foundation Revel was winding down. Meg, her date, was in the ladies’ room. Jen pulled her spangled black-cashmere wrap a bit tighter around her midsection and turned toward the voice to see Leora Infinitas. Structured mosaic-print dress and gladiator spikes. Smoky eye. Caramel-butter extensions. Shoulders thrown back, one hand on waist, hip turned and corresponding leg stepped out. Anxious handler—not Sunny, but Sunny-like in her force field of high-strung cheer, her flat-footed quickness—levitating nearby, BlackBerry in one palm and two handbags in the other.
“Oh, wow, Leora—Ms. Infinitas! Yes—it’s Jen—but that’s okay—what an amazing dress—it’s so nice to finally meet you,” Jen said, holding out her hand.
Leora Infinitas turned both palms upward, the cuffs and clatches encircling her wrists winking with light, in a gesture that Jen couldn’t instantly decode as either a proposal for a hug, an invitation for a double hand grasp, or a dispensation with all tactile formalities. After a second’s hesitation, Jen reached out her hand, knuckles to ceiling, and wrapped her fingers around Leora’s limp right palm in a 90-degrees-turned handshake. The Sunny-like handler checked her watch.
“But we’ve met many times,” Leora Infinitas said, extracting her hand and aiming her head in a quizzical tilt.
“We have?” Jen’s voice squeaked. She felt as if she’d been caught committing a crime, but didn’t know which one.
“Through our work,” Leora said. Her eyes were black and bottomless, a sea seen churning through the pinholes of a painted porcelain mask. “Through the work that we do. Through the work we have done.”
“Oh, of course, but we’ve never spoken—directly—I mean, with each other.”
“But we have.” Leora Infinitas did not break eye contact. She beamed like a hologram. “You have heard me. And I have heard you. I see what you do.”
“Oh, of course. It’s funny, isn’t it? I totally feel that way, too, about you, and it’s so cool to know that it goes both ways, Leora.”
“We’ve got—the thing—” the Sunny-like handler said.
“We have always known each other,” Leora Infinitas said. “We always will. I will always be with you. And you will always be with me.” She turned and glided away, handler scurrying beside her, forever attended to and somehow alone.
Another Spring
Jen came home and sat down on the couch next to Jim and Franny.
“So. I think we can officially start talking about it now,” Jen said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s time,” she said, rubbing her knuckles against Franny’s brow. “We’re out of the woods. The anatomy stuff. Testing. And it’s becoming obvious. A lady gave me her seat on the train today. Although that happened once before.”
“When it happened before, was it the yellow dress with the sailboats on it?”
“Yeah, good call. The waist kind of billows out.”
“I love that dress. I wondered why you never wore it anymore.”
“I guess now I can wear it again.”
“How do you feel?”
“You have to be more specific.”
“How do you feel about starting to talk about it?”
“I don’t know. One time I blurted out to someone that we were ‘trying,’ and I felt like I was saying, ‘We are having sex.’ Now I’d be saying, ‘We have had successful sex.’ ”
“But you don’t have to say that. Your body will say it for you.”
“Well, my body will start a conversation that I won’t want to finish.”
“Do people still say ‘bump’?”
“Never under any circumstances ever say that again.”
“Does starting to talk about it involve talking about all the unsuccessful sex-having?”
“When Genevieve from my old book club had her twins, everyone asked her if they were science babies.”
“Did Genevieve make science babies?”
“I never asked her.”
They sat silently for a moment.
“We should call some people in the morning,” she said. “We should call my parents.”
“We should definitely call your parents.”
“They will be so happy,” she said.
They sat silently some more.
“We are starting to talk about it,” he said. “That’s true. Does starting to talk about it involve you starting to talk about it with me?”
“Of course it does. I feel like I’ve been talking about it with you all along. I know I haven’t—it’s odd; something would happen and I’d just assume you would know, because if it happened to me it meant it was happening to you, too.”
“Maybe someday we’ll become so close that we won’t have to talk to each other at all.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s weird that something can be so private and so public at the same time. It’s like, inside and outside—I get confused about which is which.”
“You’re inside now.”
“I know. I’m inside now.”
They sat silently for a long time.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
She couldn’t answer right away.
“Honey, look at me,” he said. “Look at me. Come on. Look at those tears, so heavy with nutrients and minerals. They heal the sick and awaken sleeping princesses. They slake the thirsts and nourish the soil and moisturize the pores of Tiger Canyon.”
“Stop,” she said. “I appreciate what you’re doing, honey, but stop.”
They sat silently some more.
“I’m fine,” she finally said. “I’m fine. I’m a little panicked. I’m extremely happy. I’m tired. I’m a moist, leaking grocery bag of wilted clichés an
d adjectives full of empty calories. I’m hungry.”
“Do you want me to make some dinner?”
“Yes, that would be great. Thank you.”
“While I make dinner, should we think about how everything is about to change, and soon we won’t even remember the people that we are right now?”
“Yes, that would be great, too.”
“Because we’ll have amnesia associated with extreme sleep deprivation?”
“Yes.”
“Which is, when you think about it, a kind of psychic death?”
“Yes!”
“Are you ready to stage a household coup d’état and then fall victim to it, and all the screaming mayhem and poverty and squalor that will follow?”
“Yes!”
“Are you ready to destroy your life?”
She climbed on top of her husband, wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her face in him. “Yes. I am ready to destroy my life.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jynne Dilling Martin, this book’s first reader and first champion, and to Katie Arnold-Ratliff, who dug through an early draft and made every line of it better. I am preposterously lucky to have such dear and brilliant and beautiful friends. I love you both with all my heart.
Thanks to Claudia Ballard, whose blazing intelligence, compassion, and generosity never cease to amaze me.
Thanks to Jordan Pavlin, for her keen editorial eye and boundless support and kindness. Thanks to Jordan, Josie Kals, Nicholas Thomson, and everyone at Knopf for believing in this book.
Thanks to Andrea Lynch, who schooled me in how charitable foundations work (and don’t work). Thanks to Scott Indrisek, Ava Lubell, Dushko Petrovich, and John Swansburg for bringing their technical expertise to bear on specific sections of the manuscript. Thanks to Jesse Dorris, Dan Kellum, Josh Levin, Farah Miller, and Chandra Speeth for talking me through dilemmas and moments of doubt. Thanks to Julia Turner, David Plotz, and all of my colleagues at Slate for fostering a workplace that is as creative, congenial, and dissimilar to LIFt as an office can possibly be.
Most of all, thanks to Adrian Kinloch, without whom I never would have started writing this book, and to Devon Kinloch, without whom I never would have finished it.
A Note About the Author
Jessica Winter is features editor at Slate and formerly the culture editor at Time. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Bookforum, The Believer, and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.
An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide
Break in Case of Emergency by Jessica Winter
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s conversation about Break in Case of Emergency, Jessica Winter’s sharp and compelling novel about the inner politics of a feminist start-up helmed by a washed-up celebrity, and how one employee struggles to integrate into its culture.
Discussion Questions
1. The conversation around how to define feminism has become a cultural hot topic in recent years. Explore this phenomenon alongside the mission of LIFt. How does feminism become a commodity in the world of Leora Infinitas? How does this relate to the rise in feminist-related products or endorsements in the media today? Why does Leora reject feminism for “humanism”?
2. Financial security, or lack thereof, plays an important role in Break in Case of Emergency. Discuss the points of the novel wherein Jen’s class consciousness affects her well-being. How does financial insecurity affect her relationship with her friends? Her colleagues? Jim? When is she most acutely aware of how her relationship with money differs from that of her peers?
3. The culture of LIFt is heavily satirized, yet it is grounded in the realities of the modern workplace. Describe the office culture of LIFt—the language they use, the interactions between employees, and the expectations from management. How does Jen’s attitude toward LIFt fluctuate over the course of the novel? When does Jen conform to their standards, and why?
4. How female friendships evolve over time is an important component of Break in Case of Emergency. How would you describe the relationships between Jen, Meg, and Pam? What binds their friendships? How do their relationships change over the course of the novel? After Jen and Pam stop talking, how does Meg act as a conduit between them?
5. Mental health is a through-line in Break in Case of Emergency. At what points in the novel does Jen’s inner monologue seem brushed by depression and anxiety? How does she counteract the effects of her illness?
6. Describe Jen and Jim’s relationship. What comforts are afforded by their marriage? Why do you think Jen fought with Jim before the LIFt party? By the end of the novel, how did you interpret the health of their marriage?
7. Discuss Jen and Daisy’s working relationship. How does Daisy embolden Jen to rebel against her job? What is Jen’s greatest act of rebellion at LIFt? Do you think that Daisy emerges as the secret heroine of the book?
8. How is the identity of “artist” explored in Break in Case of Emergency? Why does Jen hesitate to describe herself as one, even as her friends and her husband define her that way? What is the true mark of being an artist, in Jen’s mind? Does she identify as one by the conclusion of the novel?
9. Jen’s miscarriage is an important aspect of the novel, yet it is never specifically called out as such in the text. Why do you think Winter chose to do this, from a stylistic perspective? How does this relate to the culture of silence around miscarriages? How does Jen derive comfort or solace in this situation? How does it affect her attitudes toward sex?
10. Describe Jen’s relationship with her mother. How does Jen’s mother’s chilly approach to parenting affect Jen’s self-worth? How does Jen view family as a result of her upbringing?
11. The scene wherein Jen asks Pam to participate in LIFt’s campaign is damaging to their relationship and acts as a turning point for Jen’s own mental health during the novel. Discuss the lead-up to this decision. Knowing the environment at LIFt, as well as Pam’s principles, why would Jen invite Pam into this situation? What was your reaction to the interview itself?
12. Discuss Karina and Jen’s trip to Belize. What was the purpose of Jen’s meeting with Baz? How did you interpret her conversation with Jim afterward? How did this trip affect Jen’s understanding of herself? Her ambitions?
13. On this page, Pam asks Meg, “If a snake ate its own tail, do you think Jen would apologize to the snake?” How does the import of this statement echo throughout the novel? How does Jen’s lack of assertiveness affect her relationships? When does Jen seem most confident?
14. Describe Jen’s interaction with Flossie Durbin. How does Durbin’s evaluation of Jen’s art relate to the class consciousness that Winter describes throughout the novel? What compels Jen to ask for a commission for the painting?
15. How does the news of Pam’s marriage and pregnancy affect Jen? How does it destabilize her understanding of her friend? Their relationship?
16. Jen and her friends are at a very transitional point in their lives: marriage, children, home ownership, and career moves are all described and dissected in great detail. What did you find most relatable about Winter’s portrayal of this stage of life?
Further Reading
Jennifer Close, Girls in White Dresses
Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End
Jessica Grose, Sad Desk Salad
Sam Lipsyte, The Ask
Camille Perry, The Assistants
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