Their comfort with physical proximity was very different from her own experience on the subway that morning, when she’d been lost in thought, inventing lives for the usual subway denizens: The scruffy teenagers in their too-long pants and backwards baseball caps, lost on planet Walkman, came from homes where they were ignored by career-oriented parents, so they took comfort by numbing out to music. The androgynous businessmen and women couldn’t get taxis, so were daring and took the subway, looking to their left, to their right, and at their watch with anxiety. The slow-moving senior citizens who talked to each other too loudly must be on their way to museums and lectures about ornithology. The young mothers, harried with strollers and baby-paraphernalia, were trying to expose their children to the cultural wealth the city had to offer.
At forty-second street, everyone on her side of the subway car left except her and the man next to her. Five minutes earlier, surrounded by other commuters, their touching thighs had meant nothing. Now she felt monumentally uncomfortable. She got off one stop early.
But Tom and Judy stayed. They didn’t even look uncomfortable. Strange. Interesting.
“I promised to get you out by ten-thirty, so let’s get started.” She distributed the focus group results.
Ruth knew Pat would be defensive about anything resembling criticism, since she’d supervised these groups. In fact, though, she’d done a good job and what had happened was not her fault. Once she was reassured of that, she’d probably concentrate on feeling vindicated by the results.
Ruth asked for their reaction and out-waited everyone’s reluctance to go first until Tom eventually started by stating the obvious. “These results are surprising.”
That was enough for Pat. “I’ll say,” she said. “Surprising but interesting. Our customers are telling us they’re not interested in this product. It’s a good thing we tested first, so to speak. It will wind up saving the company a lot of money.”
“Pat, sometimes it feels like….” Judy’s blinking ended with closed eyes instead of open ones, so she wound up speaking with shut, trembling eyelids. It was disconcerting, like watching a movie whose sound and video are out of sync.
“… feels like … you’ve wanted this project to fail from the get-go.”
Impossibly, Pat got stiffer and straighter. “No, Judith, I haven’t wanted it to fail from the get-go, as you put it. I will admit I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as the rest of you. Maybe I’m enthusiasm-challenged, who knows. Instead of jolly-jolly-jolly.”
Judy locked her eyelids in their full-open position. “Pat, are you—”
“I’m just saying, everything we need is right in here.” She held up the sheaf of papers. “If you take someone’s temperature and you don’t like what it says, you don’t doubt the thermometer, do you?”
Judy glared at Pat. Ruth didn’t like Pat’s smugness, either.
“Maybe yes, maybe no. I want to show you something that might help us decide whether to doubt the thermometer.”
Ruth showed excerpts from a few of the focus group tapes. Judy saw it right away.
“That skinny one with long hair … it’s like she’s … I don’t know … like she’s some kind of … magnet.”
It was subtle, and Ruth was surprised Judy saw it so fast. But as soon as she pointed it out, Tom saw it too.
During the background part of the session, all the women seemed to be perfect middle-aged target customers. But the next part was a “projective techniques” designed to elicit under-the-surface attitudes that people aren’t always able to locate and articulate on their own. The moderator distributed pictures and asked respondents to invent stories for them. Things shifted and kept shifting for the rest of the session, including the part when the Violins & Wine concept was presented.
One woman—very attractive, very articulate, a former model—had profound problems with aging. She came across loud and clear and negative. She didn’t seem to be trying to sway others’ opinions, but they lined up behind her. Who’d not-mind looking their age when they could imagine looking like Ms. Model?
The moderator should have seen it or sensed it and changed course.
“It’s not exactly ‘group think,’” Ruth said. “But it’s not independent thinking, either. And the same thing happened in one of the other groups.”
She showed two more excerpts. Tom got as excited as the one who’s first to find Waldo in the crowded picture. “Look, look. That blonde one. She’s the lodestone. Right? Don’t you think?”
“I do. She’s not a model. She’s a dancer. Just as bad.”
“I’m not so sure I agree with you all,” Pat said. “Maybe we have some group think going on right here? But I suppose this means you’re going to want to run more groups. Can the budget tolerate that?”
“No to group think. Yes to more groups. Yes to budget.”
Three hours later, getting to Jeremy’s office was more of a trip than she’d expected. The local elevator that would have taken her from the eighteenth floor to the twenty-sixth was out of service, so she had to go down to the lobby in the elevator that stopped at all floors between one and twenty. Then the one that went directly from the first floor to the twenty-fifth before stopping at all floors between twenty-six and fifty. The zigzag was an aggravating delay.
THE TIME SHE WENT from Djembering to Ghana with Vivian was worse. First they’d taken a bush taxi from their village to Dakar, where they met up with Vivian’s friend from home who’d come over for a visit. The friend was a hippie-turned journalist, with long jet-black hair and blazing eyes to match. She was doing research for a story, she’d said. Maybe the story was about the Peace Corps, maybe it was about Africa, she wasn’t sure yet.
“A journalist?” Ruth had asked Vivian. Does that mean I have to be careful about what I say? After living with you, I don’t know if I can.”
“Nah, she’s one of us, she just happens to have that job.”
From Dakar, the three caught a flight—an extravagance for Vivian and Ruth, financed with Christmas presents from home—to Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, a city with the only ice-skating rink in sub-Saharan Africa, where Ruth and Vivian knew a volunteer they could stay with. The volunteer borrowed a car from her Ivorian boyfriend, a colleague in the school where she taught English, for the drive to Ghana, one country due East.
It was sixty kilometers to the border, along the coast. Two-thirds of the way there, they found the direct road was closed and they had to take a long detour: 200 kilometers north on bone-jarring red-dirt washboarded roads to the next border crossing, then east to cross over, then south for another 200 kilometers back to the coast, only thirty kilometers due east of the “Road Closed” sign.
They had a grand time in Ghana, with the journalist paying for everything, including gas, from her expense account. They loved the food, they loved speaking English. They stayed in the old slave-trading castles along the water where, for a dollar a night, they slept on straw bedding on the dirt floor, ate whatever nameless meat the guardian cooked, inhaled the wood-fire smoke, and heard harrowing stories of the castles’ terrible history. They visited fellow volunteers, all of whom welcomed them warmly. Finally, they returned the way they’d come, driving the 200 kilometers north to the border crossing, where they encountered a different guard from the one when they’d entered. Tall and handsome in a military uniform and red beret, he said they couldn’t cross because they didn’t have the right papers for the car.
“But we just came in a week ago,” they protested.
He put his hand on his gun. “The papers were so good for the coming in, miss, but for the going out not so,” he said. His lips moved, but nothing else did. His eyes were locked straight ahead, somewhere over their heads.
Ruth thought the guard might be looking for a bribe and suggested, “Perhaps there’s a fee we need to pay. We’ll be happy to pay any fee that’s necessary, sir.”
The guard didn’t look at her as he said, “No, miss, no money, miss, I need the pap
ers.”
The four women looked at each other in bewilderment. These were the only papers they had.
Vivian burst into noisy tears, remonstrating loudly that her husband and baby awaited her in Abidjan and she needed to get back to them right away. As she walked, she gestured wildly and cried real tears. Her hair flew around her face, some of it sticking to her wet cheeks. She walked in circles and got more and more excited, talking about her husband and her baby, over and over. The other women watched in wonder.
“My husband is having an operation tomorrow. I need to be there. Tomorrow.” And on and on.
The guard’s face melted from stern military man to bewildered boy, someone who wanted to be rid of a crazy white woman. “Just go, misses, go now.” The women got back in their car and, as soon as they were out of earshot, laughed for 100 of the 200 kilometers back to the coast.
THE ELEVATOR doors opened.
She knocked on Jeremy’s door and he greeted her with a big imitation-smile but his usual wimpy handshake. They agreed the sun had finally broken through and the weekend promised to be fair. He didn’t offer coffee this time.
He sat on the couch and indicated Ruth should sit there too.
“Do you have the data for me?”
So much for it being a conversation. She handed him a thirty-seven-page report, but hung onto a smaller packet. “How about if I give you a tour of the highlights, big picture, that kind of thing.”
“No thanks. I’ll look it all over. All over. Big picture plus details.”
He read and she followed his page-by-page progress. Was he taking longer than he really needed to?
“Let me just say that the most important material is on—”
He looked up and seemed to choose his words carefully. “I prefer to look through it myself and make my own judgments about what’s the most important.”
Some conversation, she thought.
He continued to read. Sometimes he ran his finger down the tables of numbers, and sometimes he returned to a page he’d already read.
When he was on page twenty-six, he said, “This is just what I’d feared.”
She’d been expecting it on page twenty-five. “I know what you mean. But there are a few interesting verbatims on pages twenty-seven to thirty. My team and I are convinced that—”
“Ruth, Ruth, Ruth.” He looked up at her. “Focus groups are like science. Create a situation, test it, see the results. Data. Individuals may say one thing, but the composite data reveal the truth. And the truth, as I said, is just what I feared. We may or may not like the idea of makeup that’s about … about … loving your wrinkles. But our customers don’t.”
“Let me just read one verbatim to you. It’s on the bottom of page twenty-nine.”
He returned to the precise point where he’d previously stopped, held up his hand in a “Stop” sign, and continued his plodding. She held her tongue and her breath.
Finally, he said, “It doesn’t look good.” He looked above and behind her.
Here was the tricky part of the so-called conversation. She had to explain that she wanted to run more groups, this time paying more careful attention to the selection of the respondents, but without implying they hadn’t done a good job the first time around. She had to prove there were different results out there, waiting to be uncovered, that it wasn’t a question of throwing good money after bad.
“Right. They don’t look good at first, but there’s is a nugget of gold. These women have shown us something very important. It’s in that verbatim.”
“I see it. ‘After all these years of showing me beautiful young women in your ads, you’re telling me you’ve changed your minds? So I’ve been making a mistake to listen to you? And why should I listen to you now?’”
“That’s the one.”
That comment had gotten Ruth thinking that maybe they were asking too much of women to disbelieve the old advertising messages and believe the new. It was conversion fervor, like brand-new EST idealogues who try to convince everyone to jump onto their magic EST carpet, only to find people crossing the street to avoid them.
She still thought her ideas about authenticity were right, but knew it wasn’t enough simply to state them. So it wasn’t just about new groups, which she was confident would yield the expected results. It was also about the message.
She told Jeremy about her plan for additional groups, with different screening techniques, and her new concept. She’d never prepared anything so fast and knew it wasn’t as polished as she’d have liked. But, with a couple of “Oh well’s,” she’d patched together photographs and possible message statements.
When she was done, he said, “You think you’re going to change their minds this way?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Before I was CEO here at Mimosa Inc, before I was SVP at B&D, even, I ran a project for my company, even though the numbers told me maybe I shouldn’t. Like you. I let my hopes and dreams cloud my judgment. Feelings, the bad “F” word.” He smiled in what was, for him, slow motion.
He’s making a joke?
“We lost a bundle. I vowed never to do that again. When I do make a mistake, I try to learn from it.”
He flipped through the rest of the thirty-seven-page report, then reached over for the smaller packet with the new plan, which he looked at more carefully. As he thought, he licked his lips, slowly and thoroughly, as luxuriously as if someone had told him to clean the sugar from a powdered doughnut off his mouth.
“On the other hand….” He paged back and forth through the document, a few times, then snapped it shut. After a long pause, he said, “Maybe, just maybe. But be sure you keep me informed. And have you made any progress on a new name?”
“We’re working on it.”
That’s it? An abrupt and unexplained U-turn? And then ‘Keep me informed’? No questions? No snide comments about the slap-dash presentation of the new approach? No deadlines or ultimata? Does he have another meeting he’s late for?
She was glad he said yes, and didn’t even resent the hoops she’d had to jump through. But she wondered why good sometimes felt bad.
Part IV
CHAPTER 17
Profit or None
THE RED BRICK BUILDING that housed The Brooklyn Shelter for Women could have been an old-age home, a nursery school, an apartment building, an armory. Square and squat, with no nod to decoration or beauty, its heaviness was slightly intimidating, which seemed fitting, as if the building welcomed its broken and bruised inhabitants and promised to protect them.
“No one can know about the shelter in a casual sort of way, if you know what I mean,” Vivian said, as she and Ruth approached. “The women have to sign a confidentiality agreement. The residents are here so they won’t be found by husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends even, not by anyone. We found out a little while ago that some people in the neighborhood think it’s still a barracks, which it hasn’t been for a long time, so every once in a while we blast some military music to keep the illusion alive. I love that.”
A week ago, Vivian and Ruth had been talking about their jobs. They ventured beyond questions of exactly what they did to the satisfactions and frustrations therein. With uncommon restraint, Vivian didn’t actually lecture Ruth on finding another kind of work; she just asked if Ruth wanted to see the Shelter or, as she called it, the BSW.
Ruth accepted the invitation partially as a way to get to know the contemporary Vivian better, but also for her periodic re-evaluation of her long-ago choice of profits over non-profits. Was it really just about the money and Josh’s college fund?
David thought the visit was all about female bonding and she didn’t disabuse him. He still wanted her to retire, she still didn’t, and they rarely discussed it any more. But secretly she thought maybe she’d consider leaving Mimosa for something else. If it were the right thing. Just the exactly right thing. Something that fit her perfectly.
Vivian had to work for a few hours on Saturday and Ruth tagged
along. Carlos was going to meet them, then Ruth would drive all three of them to her place, where David, at this very moment, was getting lunch ready for the four of them.
She’d been gratified that Vivian looked less like a vagabond than she did at the concert or the shopping trip, but not so much as to disguise who she really was. Her blue slacks were loose-fitting and, therefore, flattering as well as comfortable. The fabric was a second cousin of denim, but with a fine and handsome finish. On top of it was a colorful knit, not so colorful as to be wild, merely uninhibited. Her bright-yellow shoes matched her top in only the loosest sense of the word, with clunky heels that used to be found on old-country grandmothers’ feet. Her hair was formed into a loose-weave single braid and was moderately well-behaved.
As they drew near the entrance, Vivian stopped to face Ruth. “Listen, Ruthie, visitors are sometimes really uncomfortable in here, and they just don’t know how they should talk to the women and kids. There’s only one golden rule. No pity. No ‘Oh, you poor thing.’” She started fumbling for her keys. “Other than that, just do what feels right, what feels like you.”
“Yeah, it’s true that some of them are pitiable. They’re physically and emotionally bruised and you want to scoop them up and say ‘Poor baby’ over and over, and rock them to sleep. But believe me, ‘poor babies’ don’t really help them get their lives in order. We’re protecting them and nursing them back to health, but we’re also trying to prepare them for the rest of their lives. We’ve got three months to do it. Remember, these women are the lucky ones because they’re here. Save the pity for the ones who are still out there.”
She found a small brass-colored key with a red string, separate from the densely-populated and noisy key-ring that advertised its whereabouts in Vivian’s huge tie-dyed canvas purse. She unlocked the ten-foot-tall metal door, heavy and thick, unadorned, unwelcoming. Ruth expected it to creak, but it didn’t. They walked through a cavernous empty room with high ceilings and barred windows. Ruth could imagine troops practicing here, or school kids playing “Duck Duck Goose” during recess. They crossed to the far side of the room, footsteps echoing like a film noir soundtrack, to a cheerless stairway which took them to Vivian’s office.
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