The Bag Lady Papers

by Alexandra Penney

  She looked at me as if I didn’t exist.

  “There’s no such word as ‘no,’” she pronounced with icy finality and proceeded down the hall in an urgent but somehow stately pace to her lair. No other human moved like Miss G.

  I needed the job but my son needed me more. For just this one time, I knew I had to find a way to do what she asked so I could hold on to the job. I have blocked from my memory how I finagled someone to stay with him that night. I carefully packed Miss G’s elegant Vuittons and learned one of the great lessons of my professional life. There is no such word as “no.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Rich Bitch

  MF + 24 HOURS

  I haven’t told Carmina that I must let her go. She comes in three mornings a week, whirlwinds around, and voilà! The Frette sheets are changed, the floors are polished to a dark gleam, and even my white shirts are ironed. Smart and wise, she’s worked with me for eight years and is a trusted adviser on clothes and men and plastic surgery.

  Carmina needs money (who doesn’t?). She sends it to her family in Bolivia. In the years she’s worked for me, she’s become a beloved part of my family. How am I going to tell her that I have no money, that I can’t afford to pay her? I told her on Friday a disastrous thing had happened to me, but I just don’t have the guts to say anything about letting her go. I’ll wait until Wednesday.

  Every day I wear a classic clean white shirt to my studio. I’ve hoarded them since college days, and carefully stitch up my favorites when they get frayed at the collar. A few have fancy designer labels but most are “100 percent pinpoint cotton” from Lands’ End. White shirts look great on pretty much everyone, but for me they also perform a psychological task: I feel crisp and confident and ready for work when I head out the door.

  My work for the past two years has been at my studio. I wanted to be a painter when I graduated from college, and since then my dream was to someday have a studio of my own. I hadn’t summoned the courage to rent one until recently, because my hopes of becoming a full-time artist had been put to the side many times, as I took other jobs to make money to support myself and my son. Now that I finally have a small but beautiful sun-washed space—Room 803, “A P Studio”—I am heartbroken to have to give it up, but the art market is dead and if I can’t sell work, I won’t have money to pay my bills. I need cash.

  Tina Brown, an urgency queen like many of the editors at Condé Nast, where she and I worked for many years, has set a deadline for my first blog: it is due in twenty-four hours.

  I haven’t “written” anything in a long time. And I am a wreck from no sleep, no money, and insanely attacking bag lady fears. My friends Richard and Alex, both journalists, offer to help. They coax me out of my apartment to have breakfast in Zé Café, a friendly little place on the corner of my block. We discuss what I might say about the MF for The Daily Beast, and before I can order a second latte Alex has paid the bill and is pulling on her coat and saying, “Let’s go up to my place. We’ll help you write!”

  Richard is the brilliant editor of a major magazine. He gave me a big break with my first editorial photography assignment. I’ve known Alex since we were both editors at Glamour. She drips smarts and style—and kindness. I call her Saint Alex and sometimes Nurse Alex, as she tends to a flock of friends, making sure we are well and thriving.

  Uptown at Alex’s spacious apartment, she hands us pens and pads of paper and offers us tea, coffee, and M&M’s. Byron, her husband, another award-winning magazine editor, joins the group.

  “What’s the title of your blog?” someone asks.

  “Oh Lord, oh Lord! Never wrote a blog! Don’t even read blogs!” I am moaning, with many fake grimaces, much to their amusement. “The last thing I wrote was at least a century ago and it was a sex book.”

  “Okay,” Richard says, donning his editorial demeanor, “let’s hear about what happened when you heard about Madoff.”

  I start to talk. They take notes. I mention my deepest fears of becoming a bag lady. I remember the time when I was six, holding my mother’s hand, and I saw an old woman using her stuffed and tattered shopping bags to shield her face from the arctic air near our home. Her bare ankles were red-veined poles stuck into cracked black shoes with torn newspaper sticking out at the heels. Her layers of shredded sweaters were held together with safety pins. Even when I was a kid I somehow knew she didn’t have a place to live, that she was frightened and alone.

  I vividly recall the image and tell the group that I have always feared being abandoned and penniless and ending up on the streets.

  One of us—we are so conjoined in our thinking that later I don’t remember if it was one of the other three or me—says, “That’s it, that’s the blog—The Bag Lady—it will be about your worst fears.”

  “Bag Lady Chronicles,” someone else calls out.

  We finally settle on The Bag Lady Papers. It’s a perfect title that says exactly how I feel and what I want to write about. Half an hour later, with notes in my clammy-with-anxiety hands and some idea of how to proceed, Richard and I hop into a taxi, and he drops me at home.

  I’m dazed but energized; I write several hundred words and shoot them through cyberspace to Tina. A few hours later, one of her editors, the sympathetic and smart Jane Spencer, arrives at my apartment and we work deep into the night on the first installment of The Bag Lady Papers.

  I am totally unprepared for what follows after the first blog hits The Beast. I read a few comments on the first day. Then I stop reading.

  There are hundreds of vitriolic readers who think I’m a rich bitch and an uncaring elitist who was greedy and a fool to put all my money with the MF. They say I’m exploiting Carmina, that I am completely out of touch with the world, prancing around in my starched white shirts and haughty attitudes. A friend who is horrified by the rage and the cruelty tells me that a commenter—anonymous of course—has written that he wishes I would fall seriously ill. Someone else wishes I’d “be cornholed in a dark alley.”

  But hundreds of others, the same friend reports to me, write that they understand and know what it’s like to be in my shoes (Manolos then, Keds now), and to have lost every hard-earned cent that I saved for retirement. Or, to be more precise, to have it stolen.

  I consider responding directly to the bloggers. Of going mano a mano with a challenge: Here’s my personal e-mail, write me without the cloak of anonymity that lets you say any damn thing you like. Tell me about your own life and your own fears. Call me on the phone. Meet me in a coffee shop. I’d like to know more about you.

  Meeting the bloggers via e-mail, phone, or even face-to-face could be a valuable experience or a waste of energy. I must use the hours I have to figure out how to make money, how to stay afloat, how to stay sane and stable and decent in a world that is unkind and unfair most, but not all, of the time.

  My pay for the blog adds up to what I used to spend treating a friend to lunch at the Four Seasons restaurant. But it’s a mountain of money to me now. I’ve also written a long piece for The Sunday Times of London. They’re wiring me the fee. It can’t happen fast enough.

  Every day I still go to the studio, trying not to think about how soon I will have to give it up. I arrive around six in the morning. I make notes for another blog and then focus on my photography with fanatical concentration.

  Normally I would leave the studio around six or seven to join Paul or other friends for dinner. But since the MF catastrophe, I stay until nine or ten at night. Nonstop work helps to keep the ever-circling demons at bay. And really, I don’t know what else to do with myself.

  I’ve e-mailed and called the agent of the building to see if it would be possible to renegotiate my studio lease now that the real estate market is lurching downward with no bottom in sight. I mentioned bartering some art, but he hasn’t called me back yet.

  I don’t think about eating while I’m working, so when I finally get home, I’ve been subsisting on what’s around, some Progresso soup, nonfat eighty-calor
ie yogurt, Egg Beaters, and the last of the Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. And hallelujah! In eight days I’ve lost four pounds! Maybe I should write a book about the MF diet. Lose all your money, lose weight—guaranteed! A best seller!

  One night two of my Major Life Saver friends (MLS!), Barbara and Eric, phone and say, “We’re on our way to take you to dinner—now!” I haven’t been out once in the evening since I was “Madoff’d,” as people are calling it.

  As I button on a clean shirt, I start to visualize the MF, who has been parading around town with that rictus smile on his greedy bloated face while, back at his glam penthouse, his personal chef is sweating in one of the kitchens, preparing moist, exquisitely rare Kobe beef for him.

  Eric and Barb arrive in what seems like two seconds, whisk me away from my visions and into their car, and take me to a small Greek restaurant. I can’t believe how good real food tastes and how comforting it is to be out with dear friends.

  I fall sound asleep the minute I hit my bed but wake up at four a.m. with the terrors beating down in full force. What is to become of me? What happens when I am old and wizened and can’t take care of myself? What happens if I get sick, what if I’m diagnosed with something the next time I see the doctor? Paul would be there to comfort me but he’s an artist, always struggling with financial miseries himself.

  I start compulsively adding numbers, trying to figure out every cent I could make if I sell everything I have that’s salable. I’ll become the queen of Craigslist! Finally I give up on the math and brew a cup of coffee. It’s not even six, but I head downtown to SoHo to start the day’s work.

  I still haven’t said anything to Carmina. When I tell a friend of mine about Carmina and what she means to me, she says, “I’d rather give up my husband than part with Jolene, who’s been with me eighteen years.” I am not alone; these relationships run deep, and it’s about much more than cleaning.

  One Saturday night I lock the studio door behind me, and think, “Okay, enough of this work. It’s time to treat yourself.” I call Paul and we decide we’ll watch some TV and eat a pizza. There’s a Domino’s on my corner so I sally in and order two pies, no salads, no extras. When I hear the piped-in Christmas carols, a deep sadness overwhelms me. As a child I went to church almost every Christmas Eve with my grandmother. Just the two of us. We always sat in the left front pew so she could keep her eye on her old buddy, the archbishop, who was offering up the holy Mass. She knew almost everyone in the cathedral by name and I was proud to be with her in that sanctuary of pious persons.

  “Keep your knees together, don’t cross your ankles, sit up very straight,” she would admonish me. The world seems so bright and full of promise when you’re a child and there are gifts under the tree.

  “Suck it up,” I say to myself in Domino’s, dragging myself back from that memory of happy anticipation. “Don’t waste valuable time on self-pity.” Time is money, and I no longer have all the time in the world.

  The plain cheese and veggie feast pizzas smell delicious and are ready to go. But the tab comes to over $20!

  “I thought the ads say, ‘Buy one, get one free,’” I protest. That’s why I ordered two!

  “Only on Tuesdays,” the cashier replies with a sympathetic nod. Are the rip-offs ever going to stop in this country? I pay for the two pies and leave, but that feeling of being tricked stays with me all night.

  I wake up at 4:46—exactly—almost every morning now. Sometimes I take a tranquilizer to get back to sleep for a couple of hours but mostly I bolt out of bed as fast as I can, before the anxiety demons rev their engines, ready to mow me down emotionally.

  This morning, though, I sit back on a tangle of pillows, with my steaming coffee in a Herend mug with its beautiful gold and deep red design. It better never break; I won’t be able to afford another one. In a short while the rising sun will ricochet off the glass skyscrapers in the distance and my room with turn pale gold in the morning light.

  How long will I be able to live here? Bob, my tax attorney and old friend, actually paid an emergency house call the day after the MF debacle and laid out some short-term plans.

  “You’re too traumatized to move,” he advised. “Just assume you’ll be staying here and let’s revisit the situation in a few months. I know you. You’ll make money again. I’m sure of it.”

  Bob’s words and confident attitude helped restore in me a scintilla of calm. I was dead certain I’d have to find somewhere else to live—a dark, small, porcupine hole of a place—but at least now I have some time!

  I must sell the little cottages in Florida and the Hamptons as soon as possible and pay back the loans. But I am one of many sellers looking to get rid of property in the middle of a recession. How long will it take for someone to buy them? What if no one does? Then what will I do? It’s painful to part with places I’ve scraped and painted and furnished and made my own. But I cannot let myself become sentimental. I need money and they have some value.

  I command my brain to SNT (Stop Negative Thinking)! This takes an enormous effort of will but it’s something I must do. Otherwise I’ll just get paralyzed by the frightening reality of my situation. And I’ll never leave this bed.

  I’m in a beautiful apartment and I’ve lived a great and interesting life. I admit that I love beautiful things—high-thread-count sheets, old china, watches, jewelry, Hermès purses, Louboutin red-lipstick-soled shoes. I like expensive French milled soaps, good wines, and white truffles. With long years of steady work, I have been able to afford such things, and they’ve brought me pleasure. I have given extravagant gifts like diamond earrings and even a Rolex watch, and that has brought me pleasure, too. I’ve traveled a lot and loved every minute of it. In this past year, I’ve been to Laos, Cambodia, India, Russia, and most recently to Berlin for my first solo art show. Will I ever be able to explore exotic places again? Probably not.

  Negative thinking again! Stop immediately! Self pity, too. Get over it!

  I will myself to concentrate on the sun as it begins its magic, and as its rays transform my room I muse about the parts of my life that I am most proud of. About trying to better women’s lives with the pink ribbon, about giving money to a friend’s daughter to send her through college (no, she never knew it was from me), about secretly paying to have my mother’s memoirs published (by a vanity press, but she never realized it), about the years I spent helping those who cannot read and mentoring retired schoolteachers, about helping friends and even strangers in any way I could. I sit back and wish I’d done much more. I will do more, I will give more back, I vow, and it is this impulse that finally rouses me out of bed.

  I’ve written two blogs for Tina and I’ve been paid for them. I have enough to last for only a few more months but the small check means I can still earn money.

  I will need to find a job. But what? But how? Here’s an idea: set up a lemonade stand on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach and charge a million bucks a glass, save a few dollars for myself, and give the rest to the charities that the MF wiped out. That thought elicits a chuckle. It feels so good to laugh. A sense of humor and a sense of the absurd are crucial in my situation. When Paul dropped by yesterday to check on how I was doing and saw me head down on the kitchen counter, he said, “Hey, you look a lot younger. Crying makes your face puffier, much better than Botox.” He took me by the shoulders and said, “Don’t lose your sense of humor. It’s the only thing that will really get you through this.”

  In fact, I am not a weeper and have shed no tears over my situation. And yet when a friend wrote me yesterday about the death of her husband after a horrible illness, the e-mail undid me. There are so many worse things happening in the world—and I remind myself of this all the time—but still, each of us, no matter how bad things are for others, has his own worries, his own horror stories, especially now with the deepening economic turmoil.

  I think of that grieving friend again for a few moments and I am surprised to realize that some good has come out of the MF debacle. I
jot down a quick list of the positive aspects beginning to emerge from the horror of the experience:

  Agonizing but energizing

  Terrifying but clarifying

  Frightening but strengthening

  And then I add:

  Weight loss from money loss!

  The sun has vanished suddenly and the morning light has turned a most forbidding opaque gray. The windchill factor has fallen by a steep eighteen degrees. On my windowsill are four orchid plants. Three were gifts from friends and the fourth I bought a few months ago at the flower market on Twenty-seventh Street.

  Those poor plants are living in the worst conditions, but I love them and talk to them like some sort of lunatic—this is what green thumbs recommend. The sill is freezing in the winter and hot as a pancake griddle in the summer. I water them from a pretty copper watering can, and feed them, but they never seem to blossom. What would, under such circumstances? But this morning, looking out at the moody gray city, I see a shoot with some unmistakable buds on it. My orchid will bloom again. I will see the pristine white flowers by the new year.

  CHAPTER 5

  Road Trip with “The Girls”

  MF + 2 WEEKS

  On a cold December day, I set out in my dented white ’95 Mercedes wagon for Florida. I need to make sure my cottage is in shipshape order for a potential buyer. The newspapers have announced that the real estate market is worse in Florida than anywhere else in America and the broker who is trying to sell the place says, “The buyers are bottom feeders and they’re all out for blood—if indeed there are any buyers at all.” I will have to sell the tiny house for much less than I paid for it two years ago, not to mention that I will lose the money and effort I put into rejuvenating it from its previous trashy state. But no matter how much I lose, I must sell the little house. I need the cash for daily living.