About Face

by Carole Howard

  “Sort of. The project itself is going along fine. More politics than usual, and that part’s horrible, but that’s not really the problem. I don’t think.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  The problem, as she explained it, was her inability to get excited about the project. She’d thought she would be on fire and, instead, was lukewarm. When she wasn’t having a hot flash.

  “I can’t help seeing the way I feel about my work now and comparing it to the way I felt when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Back then I just felt so very alive.”

  “So young?” Jane said.

  “It was great to be young. Although, of course, I never realized it. But it was more than that. I thought I was doing something worthwhile. Looking back, I don’t know if my work there really was worthwhile. But I felt like I was making a difference, whether I was or not.”

  “Ruth, you’ve been working at Mimosa for a long time. Why is this such a crisis?”

  “I don’t know. Is it part of some clichéd middle-aged angst? Or is it just part of getting older that you don’t feel passionate about stuff anymore?”

  There was no answer. Was that her answer?

  Then Ruth told them about the new business she was thinking of leaving Mimosa to start. On the one hand, she thought maybe it was stupid to throw away a good career for an idea that might be half-baked. On the other, she thought if she stayed she might regret it later on.

  Blanche volunteered to tell her how difficult it was to run a small business. It was a coin-toss whether it was worse dealing with employees or customers.

  Sarah’s voice let everyone know to get out of her way, when she said, “What I see is a talented, healthy, affluent woman trying to decide between safety and excitement. I think you’re damned lucky to have those two choices and you should just choose one. You’ve been talking about leaving for years now. Frankly, I never really thought you meant it, thought you were just playing with yourself. Now you sound like maybe you do mean it. So enough about self-actualization and authenticity and passion in middle age and doing something worthwhile. You’re stuck and you’re floundering and the only way to get unstuck is to just pick one or the other. I say this with only the greatest of love and respect, you understand.”

  No one spoke. Some looked at Sarah, some at Ruth.

  Sarah continued. “Look, there’s no one right answer. Life is not a Chapter Quiz, trying to get it just right. Just do one or the other. So you’re not frozen anymore.”

  “You know, Sarah,” Jane said, “we can’t all be—”

  “No, it’s okay, really,” Ruth said. “I asked. I’m listening.”

  “It’s late and we should wrap up soon,” Blanche said, “so I’ll be brief. I think you should stay at Mimosa. Because you might find that you wouldn’t be excited by the new venture just like you weren’t excited by About Face. And then you’d regret having left. And also because running a small business is, in my opinion, anything but exciting.”

  “Not me,” Jane said. “I think you should jump ship. If the new business doesn’t work out, like Blanche says, you’ll be in a different place and something else will present itself.”

  “Well, I remember that Ruth said she’s not really looking for us to solve her problem for her,” Maria said, “so I won’t vote. But I will say that I sort of agree with Sarah, that either one is fine. It’s the not-deciding that’s making you miserable. Flip a coin. Do plusses and minuses. Consult a psychic.”

  DAVID WAS UP AND DRINKING his second cup of coffee by the time Ruth got out of bed and went down to the kitchen. She gave him the look that said, “Don’t-even-think-about-talking-to-me-before-I’ve-had-some-coffee,” grabbed a steaming mug with a pinch of sugar and a splash of milk, and shuffled into the living room in her own isolation bubble.

  She flipped through the local paper. The floats for the Memorial Day parade were proceeding. Larry’s was having a sale. Taxes were going up. The photo of the little league team on page three caught her attention. The smiles on the kids’ faces were irresistible. She especially liked one little girl in the second row who had clearly been visited by the tooth fairy recently. More than once. Adorable.

  The leaves on the maple tree behind the kids were filling out, becoming round and protective. The kids fit under it perfectly, as if the tree were cradling them. And she realized she’d dreamed about the autumn tree on the vest Charlie had been wearing at The Brain Trust’s meeting. The tree had been like a jigsaw puzzle, a big one, 1,000 pieces or so, with lots of straight edges that made it difficult to assemble. But when the pieces were put together, the tree wasn’t a jigsaw puzzle any more, nor Charlie’s vest, it was a real tree.

  What was it about that tree? It was colorful and beautiful and somehow a jigsaw puzzle and a vest and a real tree all at once. Wait, that was it: It had virtually all its brilliant leaves, making it a fanfare of color, but it also had mounds of dry leaves around it, as if they’d fallen a few weeks before. They were raked into piles, smelling crisp and earthy, the kind of piles you’d want to jump into.

  She stretched, leaned back, and looked out the window while she tried to think how this dream-fragment might relate to her life. The sky was a soft dusty blue, outdone by the intensely red leaves of the cherry tree in their yard. Without warning, a nest-building bird flew right into the window with a loud smash, then plopped to the ground.

  David came in from the kitchen, mug in hand. “What was that? Are you okay?”

  “It was a bird,” Ruth managed to whisper. “It just flew right at me. Like it was aiming.”

  He went outside, took a quick look, and came back. “It’s dead, honey. Broken neck, I think.”

  “Let’s wait and see if it comes back to life?” she suggested.

  With previous bird-crashes, the victims sometimes only imitated death, stunned and still for a few minutes before flying away. But not this time. A minute ago, that bird was building a nest. Now it was dead.

  It was like a speeded-up stop-action version of her mother’s dying, five years before, with little warning. But the bird episode, so compressed in time, was starker.

  Ruth’s sobs were as unexpected as they were uncontrollable. David held her gently until the grief passed. As soon as it did, she looked at David with her mouth open, her brow wrinkled tightly, as if she were going to ask a question, and said “Ohmygod, I got it.”

  “What?”

  “The bird. The dream. And the campaign. And what you said. I got it. It’s been staring me in the face all along.”

  “Look, maybe you—”

  “It’s about me. I know, I know, not everything is about me, but this is. Not a demographic slice of the country. Not society and its pressures. Me. Like you said. Imagine that. Where has my brain been?”

  “Like I said?” He offered a dry sleeve.

  “You said it was about it being okay to get older. And it was myself I was talking to.”

  Her parents’ deaths, her uncooperative body with its hot flashes, its aches, and the emerging road map on her face, her fear of an aimless retirement, it was all weighing her down. She no longer had an infinite number of possibilities for the future. There would be fewer new chapters and more chapters closing. It had all snuck up on her when she wasn’t paying attention. She’d been struggling mightily against it, like trying to hold back the waves at the beach.

  The dream-tree, too. Even though the tree’s cycle was nearing its end, with dead leaves at the base, it was at its most beautiful. Of course.

  That’s what it was, her very own struggle with decay and death. She was simultaneously glad to have finally realized this and sheepish that it took her so long.

  “How come I never realized this before? Did you know?”

  “Kind of. Well, I suspected. But I didn’t exactly know.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I thought I did.”

  Part V

  CHAPTER 28

  Lying Outside the Box

  IT
TOOK A LOT of hard work over the summer and all her relationship skills—not to mention the IOUs she’d built up over the years—but Ruth was able to mobilize the troops to get About Face up and running for the September launches. September had been her target. It always felt like a beginning: New school year, crisp air, new books, new clothes. New product line. New way of looking at middle aged women. At herself. And this year, a new life for David.

  The preliminary sales figures were so good it was a little unnerving and she cautioned herself not to project them into the future. Preliminary results didn’t always tell the whole story, people could be excited about something new but then lose interest.

  She remembered reciting this same party line to Jeremy, but in the opposite direction, when she’d told him not to project the “perfectly decent” Lipsticks & Scarves results into the future, explaining that they could get much better. Of course, if she’d known how he was going to tinker with that campaign—so much for “looking over her shoulder”—she might have joined him in his pessimism. She’d tried to advise him that the advertising was condescending and the price was too high for the size of the product, considering herself a saint for doing so.

  “Jeremy, marketing cosmetics to women is different from the kinds of marketing that went on at B&D. Those were different kinds of products with different kinds of appeals. Also, the demographic—”

  “I know what I’m doing. I’ve studied the numbers. It will be fine.”

  As it turned out, the product did all right. Not as well as it would have done, she was sure, if she’d made the decisions. But, she had to admit, not as poorly as she’d have predicted. Perhaps they both learned a little? Nah, probably not.

  Meanwhile, even though she managed not to broad-jump to grandiose conclusions based on About Face’s preliminary sales figures, it was hard to ignore the growing word-of-mouth. Buzz was even better than sales, at least at first. It seemed to be one of those ideas that captured the right idea at the right time, and people were talking about it. And not just middle-aged people. That was the best part.

  Yes, AARP loved it, and so did the late-night TV shows watched only by insomniacs. But mainstream media were also paying attention to About Face, and to Mimosa, now seen as a forward-thinking, progressive-minded, avant-garde kind of company. It was getting a little heady, never mind the pun. She was keeping a low profile for now, and was gracious whenever one of her colleagues congratulated her. “It’s a team effort,” she’d say. Or “You win some, you lose some.” All the while, she knew her moment in the sun was coming.

  It was the kind of beautiful day that autumn brings. David had his Thursday evening golf dinner. She’d planned to have dinner with Josh, but he’d cancelled in favor of taking care of a sick girlfriend. On the spur of the moment, she decided to go to the meeting of the Cosmetics Association of America. Maybe she just wanted to be with other people who did the same kind of work she did so she could feel good about her successes. Maybe she was expecting a few pats on the back. And the program didn’t look too-too boring.

  She called Jeremy to see if he was going and to let him know she was finally going to be a good corporate citizen. She’d also tell him that if he was going only to show the Mimosa flag, he didn’t need to because she’d show it. She hoped, when she didn’t get through, it didn’t mean she was going to have to hang out with him at the meeting.

  Two buses later, she entered the meeting a few minutes late and realized almost immediately she’d been crazy to think this meeting wouldn’t be boring. Now she remembered why she never went. Thank goodness she got a seat near the back and could slip out easily. She’d miss the post-speech networking, but it was worth it.

  “Folks, I’d like to take a very short departure from our program,” the moderator said, “and just bring up to the stage for a quick hello the man behind some of the current cosmetics marketing headlines—hahaha—the product line people are starting to talk about. And buy for their mothers.”

  Laughter.

  “Jeremy, come on up here.”

  Applause.

  “Let’s all give a hand to Jeremy Crater, the man who took over at Mimosa and very quickly put middle-aged women on the map with About Face.”

  So much for the meeting being boring. Was she really hearing this? The man who put middle-aged women on the map?

  “Thanks, Stan. I appreciate the kind words. But, you know, it wasn’t me who put middle-aged women on the map.”

  Good boy, she thought. Give credit to the folks behind you, under you, around you. Not only is it truer-than-true, and the right thing to do, being humble looks good.

  “No, they’ve been there all along. I just made them a little prettier.”

  Were people really laughing at this stuff?

  “No, actually, even that’s not true.” And with a serious, sanctimonious voice, he continued. “They’ve actually been pretty all along; I just helped people understand the way in which they’re pretty. If you know what I mean.”

  Ooohs and aaahhs.

  He’s got to say something about the team behind him. Everyone does. Doesn’t he know that?

  “So, Jeremy, tell us. What does it feel like to have nudged an existing paradigm aside a little bit to make room for another one? The Holy Grail of any consumer product.”

  “I just want to tell you all that, when things are … are revolutionary and … when they’re the result of thinking outside the box, if you will, like … like wheels on luggage—now didn’t that change everything?—or like About Face … there are always nay-sayers. Yes, nay-sayers all over. About every detail. Even the name of the product. But you need to stick to your guns if you know you’re right, like I did. And you’ll get here too. Thank you.”

  Ruth needed air. She snuck out, knowing there was an advantage to knowing what Jeremy had said without his knowing she knew. She didn’t know yet how she’d be able to use the advantage, but she knew she surely was going to use it somehow. The gloves were now officially off.

  Next morning, she got to the office early so she could work on the article she’d long since promised the editor of “Mimosa’s Faces,” the company organ. Projects of more urgency or interest had kept her from doing more than an outline and very rough draft, but now she knew exactly the way to revise it. It would use About Face as a case study of the evolution of a new product line, culminating in its marketing challenges. At 9:10 she called Phoebe.

  “Ruth, I haven’t seen you for ages. And congratulations on About Face, by the way. Don’t tell me you’re calling to say you won’t write that article after all, are you?”

  “Thanks for the congratulations, I have a great team behind me. And no, not at all. I’m going to ask a favor. A different kind of favor.”

  Ruth asked if Phoebe could run the article sooner than the date they’d agreed upon, some three weeks away. Phoebe said she’d have done it anyway but, as it turned out, she was ecstatic because, “Someone didn’t make their deadline. I won’t mention names, but the initials are Joan Robinson. I know, it happens all the time. But it’s aggravating all the time.”

  “I’ll bring it right up.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Now.”

  “Ruth, you are an angel.”

  “So are you.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Next, she called Artie Conover, David’s childhood friend. As one of the editors of the weekly trade publication The American Cosmetics Journal, he’d always been after something interesting from Ruth—though she understood that something juicy would be even better. She told him she’d written a piece for her company newsletter on the subject of About Face—how the idea arose, how it was developed, and the marketing challenges it presented. She wondered if he’d be interested in it? He asked her to send it right over. But he made no promises.

  Then she gathered her papers with her article and called Jeremy to say she’d be stopping by in about twenty minutes. He wanted to know how much time she’d need. When she said she w
asn’t sure, it could be anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, he asked her to speak to his secretary to “put herself on his calendar.”

  “This time, Jeremy, it needs to be now. Do you think you’ll be there in twenty minutes?”

  “It’s not a question of whether I will or won’t be here. I’m in the middle of something important. I can’t possibly—”

  “I’m sorry to break into your day this way. And I know it’s not the way you usually do things, and ordinarily I’d be happy to oblige, but, believe me, you’ll want to make an exception in this case.”

  Twenty minutes later, as promised, she walked into his office with every one of her sixty-two inches at its stretching point.

  “Hi, Jeremy, sorry about the interruption.” Not really, she thought.

  He barely looked up. “Yes. What’s so important?”

  “About Face is doing well, so far, don’t you think? I know we can’t project sales figures so early, but so far, so good.”

  “Yes, yes. So far so good. Surely that’s not why you came up here?”

  She asked if he remembered the memo she’d written him a few months ago.

  “What memo?”

  She’d hoped he’d say that. She reminded him it was the one where she’d promised to take responsibility if it were a flop. The one where she appreciated his confidence in her judgment.

  She didn’t wait for an invitation to sit.

  “No, I don’t. But what’s this got to do with anything?”

  “I heard your gracious speech at the CAA meeting last night.”

  “Oh, that. You were there? I didn’t see you. I thought you didn’t go to those things.”

  “I saw you. And I heard you.”

  “Is that what this is all about?” He smiled, and this time it lasted more than a millisecond, probably because it was a smile for himself, not for an audience.

  She was surprised he’d taken credit the way he did. She was about to explain all the reasons the world at large should think of Mimosa as an integrated team, when his condescending smile did its disappearing act.