What Doesn't Kill You

by Virginia DeBerry

  I made my way to the placement office at school and searched the board for a part-time job. Nothing heavy—enough to keep me in pocket change and a few used textbooks to show my folks I was down for the cause. Waitressing was out. I’d have told somebody off because a tip did not mean I would put up with ignorance. So were jobs that required prior experience. I didn’t have any. I happened to be there when new postings went up and one caught my eye. “Assistant to fragrance entrepreneur. Typing, filing, phones, etc. Flexible hours. West Side location.” Right part of town for me to scoot in after class. The hourly wasn’t bad either. I swiped the card.

  It took until the next morning for me to screw up the nerve to call, so I was disappointed to hear an answering machine with wind chimes in the background and a cheery voice saying, “You have reached Markson & Daughter, purveyor of creams and lotions crafted from nature’s finest botanicals.” I got the beep before I figured out if I liked the sound of purveying botanicals, but as soon as I said my name and why I was calling a winded voice broke in.

  “Don’t hang up. Can you come right now?”

  I wasn’t prepared for the impromptu interview, so I told her I didn’t have my résumé with me—like I actually had a résumé.

  “Doesn’t matter. You’ll tell me what you can do.”

  Couldn’t argue with that, and she sounded desperate, which improved my chances. I didn’t look bad for a student that day, so I said I could be there by one. She told me the address and that her name was Olivia, and as I trudged along West Fifty-fifth Street trying to keep the gritty wind out of my eyes, I wondered what my desk would look like. And how soon I’d get paid. And how much further I had to walk. I didn’t even know there was an Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan. Finally I got to the squatty red building. It looked so dilapidated I almost left, but I was too cold not to go inside, so I buzzed and she buzzed back before I changed my mind.

  The job was on the third floor, up six long flights. Maybe that’s why Olivia was winded on the phone. By midway I was dragging. Then there was all this weird art on the landings, like the photo of a woman’s hand covered in bees. She was holding a rose. That still makes my skin crawl. I was about to turn around when I heard this “Yoo hoo,” like she was Heidi and these were the damn Alps, so I kept climbing and concocting excuses why this wasn’t going to work out.

  Judging by her voice, I expected Olivia to be petite, like a pixie. And the chimes made me think she’d be some kind of left over hippie. I was half right. She was a hippie from the bottoms of her red hightops to the tips of her fat pigtails, her lame attempt to control a mess of curly black hair. In between there was the denim shirt covered in hand-painted flowers and what looked like a lace tablecloth wrapped over her jeans like a sarong. And I was worried how I looked? Olivia was definitely out there but petite she was not. I looked up and this six-foot flower child was galloping down to meet me, fringes waving behind her.

  “I’m Olivia and you just saved my ass! I didn’t get one call until you. Destiny, huh?” I didn’t bother telling her destiny had a lot to do with the listing being in my pocketbook.

  Her loft was like Paradise Island meets Manhattan Island—plants and flowers hanging from the ceiling, on shelves rigged across the windows where sunshine spilled over them and onto overflowing terra-cotta planters on the floor. It made me forget winter was outside. And it smelled alive, like cut grass or Christmas trees—better than Mom’s air freshener. I guess I looked stunned because Olivia explained she grew a lot of the herbs she used. “You make your own corn flakes too?” I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. She laughed. “If I had time.” She brewed raspberry tea with Tupelo honey and told me she did make the blue earthenware mug. I laughed and took a sip—it wasn’t like Lipton’s, but it was warm and sweet and I was freezing. It hit the spot.

  I could tell by the piles of toys that had taken over the pea-green corduroy sofa that this wasn’t just a business. Markson, her daughter and whoever else went with the package lived there too. It wasn’t like anybody’s home I’d ever been to. Then it occurred to me I’d never been to a white person’s home before, which explained why I was feeling a little jumpy. And this didn’t look like the ones on TV, but it was kind of cool. I’d only known Olivia a few minutes, but it suited her.

  She shoved books and magazines to one side of the wood-plank table, and we sat on mismatched chairs while she made up some kind of interview. When she got to the part about what I wanted to do after graduation, I had learned enough not to say “make money,” so I said, “I’m undecided,” which was definitely the truth. Olivia nodded her head like she could relate and after a few more questions, she led me to the kitchen—her laboratory.

  It was kind of industrial—no teapot collections, cookie-cutter displays or flowered dish towels. But it was as neat as the other room was chaotic. A stainless-steel vat and a scale sat at one end of a metal worktable, with wide-mouthed apothecary jars lined up nearby. Olivia reached into a carton on the floor and handed me a jar filled with shiny white cream. “Try some.”

  Definitely different from the ninety-nine-cent, no-name brand I used. The cream was smooth and thick and it smelled good enough to eat. She told me that when she and her husband lived in a village outside of London, there had been a field of lavender growing near their cottage. Cottage? She said it turned her on to the amazing scents in nature and she lost the nose for the toxic chemical perfumes in so many products. Olivia was the only person I ever met who could say stuff like that and make it sound normal. It also explained the sort of English accent she talked with, but there was something else in her voice I couldn’t quite place. Anyway, I was wondering how she felt about Jovan Musk, since I thought that might be natural, when she told me how she started making creams while she was pregnant. They had moved back to the States and she detested the stuff in the pink bottles. I had to agree with her. Baby lotion always made me kind of gag too, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me in a hundred years to make my own. Nobody I knew just made things like that—it was like making water. I said her cream was great. She told me to keep the jar, which I thought was really nice. People don’t just give you stuff.

  Then she passed me a stack of labels and a mug full of pens. She printed something for me to copy and explained she’d been so busy making cream to fill her first order that she forgot about labels. “Don’t know what your handwriting is like, but it’s got to be better than mine.”

  Now, I was never the greatest student, but people used to borrow my notes to copy when they were absent because they were always so neat. Handwritten labels sounded old-fashioned, but if that’s what she wanted…So I sized them up, figured out where the words should go. Then in my best script I wrote, “Markson & Daughter, Almond Ginger Body Crème, 8 ounces.”

  “Brilliant.” Olivia practically hugged me, but I’m sure I looked at her like I don’t know you that well. “Definitely destiny. Keep writing. I’ll go fill jars. The order is due tomorrow.”

  So I wrote and thought how this job was a piece of cake so far. Olivia worked in the kitchen and told me how she had made diapers, crib sheets and baby food for her daughter Hillary too, so I knew for sure she was a little off. That, and she didn’t eat meat, fish or anything with eyes. I told her I loved my burgers and fries and she didn’t hold it against me—said she’d make me a veggie burger one day. A few weeks later she did, with some soy cheese. It was nasty.

  I didn’t say much about myself. What was there to tell? I lived with my parents in a semi-attached house in Brooklyn. I didn’t make anything interesting or dream anything big. Not much to find exciting, especially for somebody like Olivia. Besides, I could hear my mom. “Don’t tell everybody your business, ’cause then it’s theirs.” And she was my boss. Or at least she ran the place. Dad always said people can supervise you on the job, but don’t let anybody boss you.

  Anyway, around five minutes to three Olivia jumps up and says she has to get Hillary from school. I get my stuff together too and she says, �
�You don’t have to leave now, do you?” like she’d lose it if I did. I assumed she’d want me to go. Daddy wouldn’t have let the mayor stay in our house with nobody home. She said she’d be right back, and I didn’t budge from the chair. Now that I know Olivia, I’m sure the thought that I might take something never occurred to her.

  Hillary, who looked about nine, wore a blue pleated skirt and cable-knit sweater—pretty much the opposite of her mother’s getup. But they both had dark curly hair and talked faster than the speed of sound. It was Hillary who told me her father lived in London and that she missed him a lot. That’s when Olivia went to get oatmeal cookies, but not before I saw a look that said she missed him too. Later, she told me she and Eliot Markson were divorced, but she kept his name—because it was Hillary’s, and because it sounded better than Schaeffer on fine botanicals.

  By the time we labeled the last jar it was after nine o’clock. Olivia took me down on the freight elevator and showed me how to operate it, which improved the job 100 percent. Then she hailed a taxi, gave me cab fare home to Canarsie, since it was so late, and said she’d see me tomorrow.

  I could tell the driver was pissed—probably never been to my neighborhood. He rattled over the Brooklyn Bridge, and the blur of city lights made me giddy, or maybe I was just excited after day one with Olivia. I looked forward to day two way more than I did to Intro to Economics.

  When I told my father about my job experience, he chuckled. “Sounds like a Looney Tuney to me. Let’s see if the check clears.” It did. And a few months later, when a local weekly named Markson & Daughter’s Almond Ginger Crème as one of its skin-care must-haves, it mentioned the special touch added by the handwritten labels. I started Olivia’s book of press clippings with that article. I still have a copy too. And when the time came to switch to printed labels, we had the type specially designed to look like I wrote it.

  Working for Olivia was never exactly a regular job, especially in the early days. She needed me to reassure her for the whole week before she took samples to the “Open See” at Bendel’s, which was pretty funny since I couldn’t have sold ice to a bunch of strangers, even in August. When she came back with an order, I was so psyched. She taught me about eucalyptus, rosemary, lemongrass, and that nasturtium flowers add color and spice to salad. I taught her principles of accounting. She never exactly got it. I kept her organized and on schedule, purchased the practical things like a typewriter, staplers and eventually our first computer—which neither of us knew how to use. When I made a suggestion, she listened, like I had some sense. I was starting to believe I did. Olivia had better instincts about marketing and sales than my professors. And I was pretty good at accounts receivable—people should pay what they owe. How else was I supposed to get a check? We made a good team.

  In a way I was sad when the business got big enough for Olivia to move into a floor-through on Riverside Drive and make the loft her business address. I was in my last semester, and she said she wanted to keep the company small—exclusive but homegrown, she said. Still, she had to hire people to help with bottling, consult with chemists. But my desk was near the window, next to hers, which was still the big old table. I even brought in my own plant—a philodendron in a plastic pot the size of a teacup. Not even I could kill that. Olivia brought me samples of whatever she was working on. When I suggested Apricot Sage, she gave it a try. It’s my favorite and it’s still a Markson & Daughter best seller. And when I received my associate’s degree in business administration, Olivia announced she was taking me to London.

  I didn’t even have a passport before then. Daddy didn’t believe it until I showed him the round-trip ticket with my name on it. My mother, always one to take lemons and make a sour puss, asked if I was sure I wouldn’t be the baby-sitter. I told her Olivia was going to deliver Hillary to her father for the summer, which had nothing to do with me, and kept right on trying to figure out what to pack in my borrowed American Tourister. England seemed formal, so I took clothes I would wear to church. Even got a new hairdo for the occasion—the infamous Jheri curl. I sort of wanted it to look like Olivia’s hair—and Chaka Khan’s. Nobody saw the resemblance.

  Anyway, I, who had never set foot in an airport, was served a four-course meal with cloth napkins in business class. I never thought about how much money Olivia had, but hippie girl was not hurting. We checked into a swanky two-bedroom suite in Mayfair. I mean, the place had gloved doormen and chauffeured Bentleys out front. Olivia looked way more polished than usual in a slim white pantsuit and matching black luggage. And I’m sure I looked like cousin Mabledene from Doozerville in my plaid polyester A-line dress and powder-blue suitcase. I promised myself that day I’d never go anywhere looking so homely again.

  We spent the afternoon riding double-decker buses past Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, which bored Princess Hillary. She’d seen it all before. I tried not to walk into bass ackwards traffic. And that night I met Eliot Markson.

  I wouldn’t have put the two of them together if there was nobody else to choose from. Olivia must have been part of some phase he grew out of, but it sure explained Hillary’s fondness for Fair Isles sweaters and tartan skirts. Eliot was pure Savile Row, and Hillary was Daddy’s girl. “He’s a bit of a prig,” Olivia had whispered on a trip to the ladies’ room after dinner. I had a few other choice names for him after I overheard him ask why she brought the nanny out to eat.

  Transfer complete, Olivia and I were on our own. It was a little odd at first, hearing her snore in the bedroom down the hall, figuring out who was going to be first in the marble bathroom. I mean, it wasn’t like we were running buddies or anything, but she kind of taught me things about the world outside of Brooklyn. But it was all so foreign, even the language, and they were speaking English. Once I relaxed I had a good time, and I think playing ’enry ’iggins took her mind off missing Hillary. We prowled the stalls at Portobello Market and she bought me antique garnet earrings. We sniffed and fingered our way through about a million plants at the Columbia Road flower market. In Harrods we fantasized about the day Markson & Daughter would have a counter there. And we took a train about half an hour outside of London to a town called Dorking, where Olivia got weepy walking by her beloved field of lavender. It was nice, but I think the tears were mostly because we were near that cottage she used to share with Eliot.

  Everywhere we went Olivia had me take notes, since this was a “business” trip, therefore tax deductible. She learned that strategy from Eliot, who was involved in his family’s wholesale jewelry business. Right. I never saw Olivia wear so much as a diamond chip. It would not be me.

  And as if showing me a new country wasn’t enough, when we got back, Olivia offered to help with my tuition at Baruch, where I transferred for the next two years. It wasn’t some fancy school with a hefty tuition, but I still said, “Are you crazy? You are not my mother or the United Negro College Fund.” And in an accent I knew quite well from my neighbors but never heard from Olivia, she said, “I know a little something about being a Brooklyn girl who’s undecided about her future.” Then she winked. Olivia Schaeffer—from East New York? Who knew?

  That’s when I entered my seriously studious period—or tried to. Truth is, I could never get as worked up over solving problems for hypothetical companies in class as I did negotiating booth rates for trade shows or finding the best way to ship to Palm Beach. At that point, we were mostly in boutiques and pharmacies, but business was growing every day. Olivia spent most of her time showing the line, checking out suppliers and developing new products. I held down the fort. I liked that. I felt useful, and I had reached a reasonable work-school balance.

  Then I met my ex. It was one of those April days that make you believe winter is really over. I was booking it up Broadway when I heard this voice behind me saying, “You are looking positively hypnotic on this polyphonic afternoon.” What?! Well, I was feeling cute so I was glad somebody noticed. I was all set to give whoever it was a hard time when I realized that a br
own-skinned beanpole with a floppy ’fro, a shredded jean jacket and big black motorcycle boots had fallen in step beside me. Now, I was not in the habit of picking up strange men on the street, but everything he said seemed like poetry to me. What is it they say about birds and bees and spring? Probably the same thing they say about too much champagne and weddings. Anyway, by the time we hit Forty-sixth Street he had talked me into stopping at Howard Johnson’s, at least for coffee.

  Two hot dogs and a shared black-raspberry sundae later I was severely in something—like, love, lust? Who can tell at twenty? I asked what made him pick me to talk to. He said I had a beautiful vibe, and I got all tingly and tongue-tied. He was a musician—played a lot of instruments, but mainly keyboard—and although he wasn’t with a band, he said he did lots of session work. DeBarge was planning to record one of his tunes. It was a big whoop at the time. He was heading to a gig and invited me to stop by the studio after work. I debated all afternoon until finally Olivia said, “Nothing good ever happens if you don’t take a chance. If he’s a creep, you’ll come to my place.” Well, I wanted something good, so I went for it.

  Whatever happens in springtime happened to me while I sat on a lumpy sofa in the corner of that dark, crowded studio, smelling cigarettes and sweat and watching them lay down the music. It was the instrumental tracks for a ballad, but I didn’t need words to make me swoon. In the booth he was all business and he sounded great—like “I’d buy his record” great. I was killing myself acting like I did this every day, and I couldn’t believe somebody that talented had walked into my life. By the time we left I was under some kind of spell—probably lack of oxygen. It was late, and I knew I should call home, but what for? My parents wouldn’t get anything about this and I wasn’t about to wreck the mood so they’d just have to be mad at me. Wasn’t the first time.