About Face

by Carole Howard

  About Face

  by

  Carole Howard

  GLENMERE PRESS

  WARWICK, NEW YORK

  ABOUT FACE Copyright © 2011 by Carole Howard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact publisher Glenmere Press at info@glenmerepress.com.

  About Face is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to a real person is intended or should be inferred.

  ISBN for eBook edition: 978-0-9852948-6-1

  ISBN for paperback edition: 978-0-9852948-5-4

  Velcro is a registered trademark of Velcro Industries BV. Post-it Notes is a registered trademark of 3M. Scrabble is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. M&Ms is a registered trademark of Mars, Inc. Crayola is a registered trademark of Binney & Smith. Barbie Doll is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. Oreo is a registered trademark of the Nabisco Division of Kraft Foods.

  GLENMERE PRESS

  WARWICK, NEW YORK

  For Geoffrey, forever

  and for Lisa, Jason, Nina, and Ezra

  Contents

  Part I

  Under the Table

  David’s Bombshell

  Face-to-Face in the Women’s Room

  Jeremy Rules

  Unwrapping the Big Idea

  Part II Fear of the Cosmic Courtroom

  The Brain Trust Weighs In

  Some Things Never Change

  What’s Wrong With This Picture?

  Part III Knowing When It’s Right

  Old Is New

  Running Into Herself

  In Shopping Veritas

  Unmasking the Truth

  Money Talks

  Refocusing

  Part IV Profit or None

  Focus

  One Hundred Ten Percent

  Off the Wall

  Suffocation by Stuff

  Filling Ruth’s Sneakers

  The Cost of Failure

  Picnic Rapping

  Ads Sell Stuff

  Two Ruths

  It is About Me

  Part V Lying Outside the Box

  The Personal is Professional

  Working it Out

  Changing Patterns

  Joy

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Part I

  CHAPTER 1

  Under the Table

  RUTH TALBOT LOOKED DOWN and winced. She couldn’t believe today, of all days, she’d forgotten to change out of her commuter’s red high-top sneakers into the pumps that would complete her corporate camouflage. From the knees up, she fit right in at the big meeting with the new CEO in the ultra-elegant conference room with small oil paintings in ornate frames. But her feet belonged in the playground.

  “I want that list of criteria to go out to all our vendors right away. Right away. So they’ll know exactly how Mimosa Inc. will decide whether they’re in or out,” Jeremy said.

  The guy from Purchasing—was his name Ralph?—answered, his voice dissolving around the edges like a milk-dunked Oreo. “We use quite a lot of vendors, actually. We always have. And some of the criteria we use for them are difficult to quantify. They’re intangible, really. We’ve always—”

  “Intangible won’t do. No, no. Won’t do at all. We need to know exactly, precisely, how to decide who we’ll do business with. Right away. Criteria on my desk by close-of-business tomorrow. Then out to the vendors next week.”

  Poor Purchasing-Guy. “Intangible” turned out to be a poor word-choice.

  “Next, the splashy launch of ‘Lipsticks & Scarves,’” Jeremy said as he looked at Ruth with raised brows. “The results are … shall we say … very disappointing.”

  Disappointing? What’s he talking about? Ruth cleared her throat and spoke a little louder than was necessary. “These results are well within our standard for pilot programs. We can make them better, yes, you’re right about that. But that’s why we pilot, so we can tinker with the variables. Price, size, packaging. Meanwhile, they’re quite decent.”

  “Decent? Dee-cent, you say?”

  Uh oh, she thought. Looks like “decent” goes in the garbage heap with “intangible.”

  “Maybe they are what you call … decent … but no more than that. Maybe under previous management, that was good enough.” He looked around, making eye contact with everyone at the table, one by one, as if they didn’t already know he was the new management. “But not now. There’s a new sheriff in town, and now we need better than decent. We need a grand slam.”

  “I agree, that’s the goal, a grand slam, but pilots are almost never grand slams. They’re usually singles. This one, I think, was even a double.”

  I’m using baseball metaphors? How low can I go? Her disappointment in herself triggered the day’s first hot flash, a bit earlier than usual. The fire started somewhere in her chest and galloped through her neck, up to her head, while also traveling south. She felt every thread of her clothing against the sweat-sheen on her skin. To her amazement, people had said they didn’t notice anything, even when she thought she was ablaze.

  “I was referring to a grand slam in bridge. All the tricks. Doubled and re-doubled. Lots and lots of points.” Jeremy smiled a quick, minimal smile, managing to move only the muscles at the edge of his lips but not engage his cheeks or eyes. With his dry skin, sharp nose, and darting tongue, he looked like a snake. Or maybe he just needed moisturizer.

  “What do you plan to do about this, Ruth?”

  Rather than walking around as she spoke and revealing her feet of canvas, she stood in place and grabbed the edge of the table. Richly grained walnut, highly polished, the color of dark rye toast with honey, it was the centerpiece of this room of beauty and good taste. Being here stimulated and calmed her senses at the same time, like walking along the beach.

  The first few times at the table, she’d thought she could only say very important things. Now she knew the setting itself made anything sound very important. She concentrated on the rare pleasure of towering over people as she reviewed the figures that backed up their decision to launch the innovative packaging of lipsticks with matching scarves.

  “The data told us loud and clear this was an idea worth pursuing. And the data were right, of course, based on our preliminary results. People didn’t mind buying a lipstick to match one scarf if the set was appealing and the price was right.” She looked over at Jeremy.

  Disappointing? Don’t be ridiculous.

  “Just out of cur-i-o-s-it-y…,” Jeremy dragged out each syllable with a deep, slow cadence to his voice, and Ruth could almost hear mournful cello music as accompaniment, “… who came up with this idea? Marketing? R&D? Perhaps even … even Dean himself?”

  After forty years at the helm, Dean had sold Mimosa to B&D, a conglomerate looking to “feminize their offerings,” as it said in the press releases. Jeremy had been B&D’s Senior VP of Operations and was chosen to transform Mimosa from a small touchy-feely family-owned business to a rootin’-tootin’ buttoned-down operation.

  “You know, I honestly don’t remember,” Ruth said, catching a glimpse of Judy staring down at the table to avoid giving away her authorship. “Anyway, we work as a team, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  She shuffled her papers for a second. “But you’re right, we can make our results better. Why don’t we turn our attention to how to do that.”

  Disappointing, indeed.

  The rest of the meeting was no more boring than usual, and they did come up with a plan to redesign the Lipsticks & Scarves campaign. Ruth hoped she and her s
neakers could be the last to leave.

  Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have cared so much—she was senior management, after all, and had been at Mimosa for twenty-five years, so people paid more attention to her track record than her track shoes. But Jeremy had gotten rid of a bunch of people soon after he took over, quietly, no muss no fuss. Certainly, sneakers were not grounds for dismissal, but she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. So to speak.

  She took as long as she could to put her papers together and enter notes into her organizer/planner. Red for meetings, green for phone calls, blue for To-Do List entries. Pat Givens, Ruth’s Assistant Product Specialist, made nice to Jeremy on her way out. Did she actually say she enjoyed the meeting?

  But Jeremy out-waited Ruth. “I’ll see you at the benefit tonight,” he said to her.

  Facing Jeremy in his perfectly-tailored suit, conservative tie, and bookish horn-rimmed glasses, she was glad she’d dressed the part for today’s meeting, invoking her standard rationalization for eschewing her normal less-than-formal garb: “It’s not phony, it’s effective packaging, as if I’m one of our products, sitting on the shelf to be seen and evaluated.”

  She knew she undercut the gray suit and pearls by gelling a few spikes—the kind of spikes usually seen on 20-year-olds with multiple pierces—in her short, dark hair. Oh well, her whole life was a mixed message anyway. There was the normal middle-aged middle-class corporate executive who lived in the suburbs, and then there was the overgrown hippy. Trying to integrate the two parts of her identity felt like juggling three live chickens. On an inclined plane. In high heels.

  “I’m glad you’ll be there,” she said. “It’s clear we disagree about the status of the Lipsticks & Scarves results, but I’m sure we’ll agree about raising lots of money for a worthy cause. I think we’ll set a record tonight. And we’ll get great publicity in the process.”

  “I love opera. Turandot is one of my favorites.”

  Then Jeremy told Ruth he wanted to follow the re-design of the Lipsticks & Scarves campaign very closely. It was his way of delving into the actual work at Mimosa. He was in high guy-talk mode as he said he wanted to penetrate, wanted to get his hands dirty. Especially the Marketing Department, which he called the heart and soul of any company. He told her to let him know about everything connected to the campaign. Everything.

  This is not good, she thought. Yes, the Marketing Department is important. Yes, he needs to understand the work of the company. No, looking over her shoulder is not the way to do it. She wasn’t some entry-level newbie who needed close supervision. That second “everything” put her on alert.

  “How about if I—”

  “Just send me the relevant material as it comes up.” He looked at the antique clock on the wall, then at the expensive watch on his slim wrist. “I’ve got to go.” He looked down at her feet. “And I guess you’ve got to jog back to your office.”

  On the way back to her own little piece of Mimosa real estate on the other side of the eighteenth floor, Ruth thought it was going to be hard to break in this new CEO. It was clear he wasn’t going to be the “I want to be your friend” type of boss. More like the “Me Tarzan, You Jane” kind. Or maybe “Control Freak.” Two control-freaks battling it out, she thought. Not a pretty sight.

  And someone was going to have to teach him the value of intangibles. She hoped it wouldn’t have to be her.

  Once, as a Peace Corps volunteer, she’d tried to convince a villager to incorporate vegetables into the traditional fish-and-rice diet because of good things called vitamins. The woman shifted the baby on her back, reached into her basket for a lumpy whitish tuberous yam, and held it close to her eyes.

  “You can’t see them, they’re very small,” Ruth had said. “But they’re there.”

  Thankfully, she was more successful than Purchasing-Guy had just been. She wondered what that twenty-three-year-old version of herself would have thought of this fifty-three-year-old version, the Marketing Director of a cosmetics company. Actually, she didn’t really wonder, she knew.

  Back then, she lived in a hut with one orange crate for clothes and one for books. She was saving the world, or at least making a difference to the people in her village. Every moment of every day was, if not giddy—she did experience homesickness and doubt, not to mention diarrhea—at least related to every other moment, directed either at her worthy goals or physical needs. The individual cells in her body felt more than just alive, they fairly vibrated. A far cry from talking about selling cosmetics.

  Had it been thirty years or thirty light-years? Why can’t her past and present finally learn to shake hands and play nice?

  Rather than explaining to her imaginary younger self that the compromises she’d made in her life were justified—“I had to earn enough to send Josh to college; besides it’s not just makeup, it’s skin care, too”—she strong-armed the thought from her consciousness with an audible “Oh well.”

  Her staff had gotten to her office before she did. When she joined them, they were ready to pounce. “Lordie, lordie, Ruth, that was … well … it wasn’t great, you know? Don’t you agree? I mean….” Judy somehow managed to wring her hands and bite her thumbnail at the same time.

  “It was abundantly clear that Jeremy didn’t like our results,” Pat said. “But I wouldn’t disagree with his priorities. Profits are the name of the game.” Her deep voice, always surprising from such a small body, made crankiness and anxiety difficult to distinguish.

  “Profits certainly are important, Trish,” Ruth said. Pat flinched and start to tap the toe of one tasteful navy-blue pump like a metronome. Ruth knew that using Pat’s childhood nickname was a low blow. But so was disloyalty.

  Tom interrupted his choppy, disconnected gait. “What did you think of the meeting?”

  “It was the first launch under Jeremy’s watch, so let’s assume he’s being a little defensive. He did pretty well at B&D, so he must know something. And he clearly has his own style,” she said with as straight a face as she could muster, “but that’s the way it goes. He’s the boss. We have to get used to it.”

  No need to worry them yet.

  Turning to the Lipsticks & Scarves redesign, they constructed an action plan and divided the tasks to be done, from manufacture to packaging to advertising. Later, when their work started to bear fruit, she’d think about “keeping Jeremy informed,” whatever that meant.

  For the moment, though, the few last-minute details for tonight’s benefit were numero uno on her prioritized To-Do list. She’d take care of them and then, she hoped, be able to leave early. It probably didn’t even pay to change out of her sneakers.

  CHAPTER 2

  David’s Bombshell

  SHE STARTED SHEDDING HER WORK CLOTHES the instant she was inside her house. David, a teacher at the local high school, had gotten home even earlier than she and started an early dinner by inspecting the fridge contents and giving his creativity free rein. Tonight’s palette had consisted of chicken thighs, left-over Brussels sprouts, peas, rice, and beets. Had it been her turn to cook, she’d have looked for a recipe.

  Over dinner, she filled David in on Jeremy’s interpretation of the Lipsticks & Scarves campaign and his “I want to get my hands dirty” speech.

  “Dirty hands are bad?”

  “Dirty hands are bad?”

  “No one needed to look over my shoulder on ‘Glamorous Glimmer.’ A big success. Same with ‘Red, Red, More Red.’ Hundreds of others. I’m good at this stuff, I have a great record.”

  “Maybe he’s not doing it to check up on you, but, like he said, to get to know the business. It doesn’t seem—”

  “It may not seem so bad to you. Believe me, you had to be there.”

  She speculated that maybe Jeremy wasn’t happy about being sent from a mega-corporation to a little bitty company. But then why micro-manage? Maybe he just didn’t like her because she wasn’t cut out with the standard corporate cookie-cutter. Didn’t worship at the altar of buzz-wo
rds, didn’t like professional associations, didn’t dress like a store-dummy. He’d probably even call her a “women’s libber.” Maybe he was planning to put a B&D guy, a Big Daddy, in her job. Then why hadn’t he done it yet?

  “It feels like he’s marking his territory, pissing on the hydrant.”

  “Why don’t you think about—”

  “There’s got to be more to him than meets the eye. Because, really, not much meets the eye. Judy said she has a friend who used to work for the Big Daddies so maybe she can get some gossip.”

  David had cooked, so she insisted on cleaning up, even though it was the night of the benefit. “Fair’s fair. I have time.”

  Just before leaving the kitchen and switching off the light, she adjusted a plate in the dishrack. It was the one they’d had made from Josh’s drawing, years ago, with a face whose eyes were V-shaped blue birds and the big smiling mouth was a series of red flowers. When the face was right-side-up, she smiled back at it.

  “I can’t put it off any longer.” She walked over to David and stood between him and the TV. “Time to get dressed up.”

  He picked up the newspaper. “It’s still early. I only need fifteen minutes to put on my tuxedo, and, really, seven of those minutes are spent putting on my tuxedo frame-of-mind.” He peeked over the top of the newspaper.

  “Yes, but I need your help. As usual.” She pulled him out of his chair.

  He saluted and started towards the bedroom. She took the paper from the chair, folded it and put it on the side table.

  They headed down the corridor, plushly-carpeted in forest green, past walls that could barely contain the jumble of photos. Ruth thought she must be the only person she knew whose favorite room in her own house wasn’t a room at all, but a hallway.