“What?”
“I especially loved the part about the nay-sayers. And the paradigm. Like wheels on luggage. I wouldn’t have expected you to give me credit by name, but there is the part about, ‘I had a whole team behind me, some very talented people, blahblahblah.’ You forgot that part of the speech.”
She knew scolding a CEO who already didn’t much care for her was dicey. Maybe it was that smile-imitation that tipped her over.
He folded his hands like a principal addressing a naughty child. Being CEO, he explained, meant he was the public face of the company. It’s not important who gets credit for things. It wasn’t important at B&D and it isn’t here. It’s all for the company. That’s what being a team means.
“Now, no more hysterics, no more temper tantrums. It’s not personal, it’s business. I’d have thought you’d know the difference by now.”
“Maybe it was different at B&D, but here at Mimosa, the personal and the business are on speaking terms with each other. This is a very different culture.”
“Things are much more complicated than that. It may not be evident to you, but I can assure you, this is one of those complex situations where there’s a lot going on under the surface and behind the scenes.”
“No, things aren’t always so complicated. This one’s simple. Give credit to the team. It’s good for them. It’s good for you. And it’s true. Believe me.”
Didn’t he know it was his turn to speak? Was he trying to figure out what to say? And did it have to do with firing her? Let him just try.
“Besides,” she continued, everyone here knows About Face is my baby.”
“Fine. So you do get the credit you want.”
“Jeremy, you’re forgetting that memo.”
“Ruth, my dear. Anyone with half a brain can write a memo and back-date it. Take my advice and forget this whole thing. And I will try to forget this interchange, though I can’t be sure I’ll be able to.”
“Funny how things work. In a funny quirk of timing, next week’s newsletter has an article about us. It’s all about the process of developing the idea behind About Face.”
Jeremy’s phone rang. He picked it up before the first ring had finished. “Yes.”
A few tongue-darts while he listened.
“I’ll call him back. I know, but tell him I’ll call in the next hour or so.”
He wrote something down on a green sticky note, then looked up, semi-vacantly. When his eyes came back into focus, he said “Right, the newsletter. Right. Well, you’re right. Everyone here knows what an important role you played. And anyway, people here are not the point. It’s people out there”—he gestured stiffly outside his window—“who count.”
“You’d be surprised.” She got up to leave. When she got near the door, she hesitated, then turned back and added, “Did I ever tell you the editor of The American Cosmetics Journal is a friend? Not a professional friend, a personal friend. The article that appears in the newsletter will be lengthened, lots of quotes from all the members of my team—Tom, Judy, even Pat who originally didn’t like the project so much but seems to have come around these days—and photos, and it will be in The American Cosmetics Journal. In the next week or two.”
He asked Ruth to come back in. He asked her to take a deep breath, demonstrating how.
“Maybe I should have mentioned you last night. My wife tells me…. Well, anyway, let’s just say we’re clear. We understand each other. I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about getting credit for things.” Tongue-dart, right on schedule.
She hated how the word “sensitive” was always used by a man about a woman. When the woman was criticizing him for something. Something he deserved to be criticized for. To belittle her anger. This is how he was calming her down? Try again, Jeremy.
“I come up with a great idea, I champion it, I overcome your objections, I put myself out on a limb, then you say you did it all. How did you put it again? You thought outside the box and held onto your convictions? In spite of all those nay-sayers? And when I call you on it, you call that being sensitive?”
“Nonetheless, I don’t think The American Cosmetics Journal is a good idea. The house newsletter, well, all right if you really … if you really want to, but … Ruth, I insist that you not publish that article.”
Oh really? she thought. Insist? She was starting to enjoy herself.
“Maybe there’s something I can do for you in return?” he said.
“For starters, I’d like to have 100% of Colleen back.”
“Oh that. I’d already decided to—”
“And I’ll think about what else.” She thought maybe she’d gone too far, but when he didn’t answer, she knew she hadn’t. She turned on her heel and strode out, straightening one of the pictures on the wall on her way.
All she had to do now was make sure Artie ran the piece. On its own merits or as a favor to her, she didn’t care which. He just had to run it.
CHAPTER 29
The Personal is Professional
“AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, you still expect me to be on time?” A red-faced Vivian approached the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, where Ruth had been enjoying the people-watching while she waited.
“I don’t know that I actually expect it. Hope, maybe?” She looked at her wrist only to realize she’d been in such a rush she’d forgotten to put her watch on after her shower. “But even if I knew you’d be late, what would I do, be intentionally late? It would make me crazy having to figure out how late is really late and how late is okay-late?”
“Your brain is very complicated, isn’t it?”
“What time is it anyway?”
“Ten-fifteen,” Vivian said. “I think. I’m actually not sure because the other day I thought my watch was running fast so I re-set it but now I think it might have been on time after all, it was just that my assistant at work was even later than me, so I—”
“Only fifteen minutes. Not bad. So here we both are. Wanna start again?”
“Hi Ruthie. Nice outfit.”
“Hi Viv. Thanks. You too.”
They were both wearing a black sweater with black slacks for their Saturday girls’ outing, though Vivian’s pants had a gusset that provided comfort as well as flattering an ample body. She also wore a turquoise-and-silver necklace and wildly colorful shoes, while Ruth had on a blue-and-green scarf and black flats.
“Let’s go in.” Vivian hooked her arm in Ruth’s as they started in.
Vivian asked Ruth where she wanted to go first. Arts of Africa/Oceania/Americas? For old times’ sake? Or the Eygyptian Art, except that’s what she’d done the last time she visited. She narrowed her choices down to European Paintings, Greek and Roman Art, or Modern Art. Or maybe Islamic Art. She asked Ruth to choose.
Ruth reached into the outer compartment of her purse for an article she’d clipped years ago and located the day before, “The Highlights of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Only an Hour.”
“A cheat sheet? You want to use a cheat sheet? To go to the museum and look at art? Are you serious? Ruthie, a museum is for pleasure, to look at beautiful things, or maybe they’re not beautiful, they’re just intellectually stimulating, or maybe they’re beautiful and intellectually stimulating, but anyway they’re supposed to be something you want to do, not something you have to do, not something you want to get through as fast and as efficiently as possible, like reading a summary of War and Peace before the test.”
Ruth’s defense—she didn’t get to come to the museum very often, she wanted to make the most of her visit, and if someone else had evaluated it for her ahead of time, so much the better—was logical, she knew, but she also knew logic wasn’t all there was to it. She felt every molecule inside her start to shrink away from her skin, into a ball.
Vivian didn’t get to the museum very often, either, but figured that whatever she got to see would just be what she got to see. If she didn’t see every single work of art that someone else had previously decided was import
ant, it didn’t bother her.
“Part of the fun is the unpredictability. Otherwise I’d feel like I was back in school.”
“I once did this at the Louvre and—”
“Don’t sulk, Ruthie, please. I just can’t do it that way. Maybe it is a good idea, after all, and I shouldn’t have jumped down your throat. I’m sorry for that. But I just can’t do it that way. Can we please do it my way? Less planned? Think of it as a spontaneity exercise. Wait, I wasn’t making fun. I’m asking. Okay? Please?”
“Okay, but you know what this means.” Ruth lowered her voice, both in pitch and volume, as she intentionally furrowed her brow.
“What?”
“It means I’m going to have to come back another day with my article to see the things we missed.”
“Ruthie, I don’t really think you—”
“I’m kidding.” She cackled. “Lighten up, will you?”
Vivian did a Jeremy-type smile, then whirled her index finger in the air and brought it down on her museum map with her eyes closed. She looked at her finger’s location and said, “How about if we go to European Paintings?”
Wending their way through the art proved easier than choosing their approach to the wending process. They wanted to spend the same amount of time in front of each painting. And they liked about the same amount of discussion. They even wanted lunch at the same time.
They found a Chinese restaurant; it was cheap, it was fast, it had a table available. As they sat down, Vivian said, “Remember the last time we had lunch in a Chinese restaurant?”
Guess she does remember after all, thought Ruth. But she’s laughing about it. Laughing?
“I think so. It was when we had that fight, right? Well, actually, it wasn’t really a fight. A fight is where two people argue. You just got mad at me and stormed out.” Her voice betrayed her.
Vivian had been fiddling with her chopsticks, trying to get just the right fingers in just the right position. She looked up. Her laugh faded and she blinked a few times. “Don’t tell me you’re still mad at that. You sound like you’re mad. No, you couldn’t still be mad.” She frowned. “Nobody could be mad this long. Could they?”
“It just always felt like you threw away our friendship more easily than I would have. As if it were a spur of the moment idea and didn’t really matter to you all that much.”
A waitress deposited a pot of tea on the table. In her high-pitched voice, she asked, “I take order, ladies?”
“Just about ready,” Vivian said. “I’ll have the Szechuan Chicken, and no MSG please.”
“Very good, miss.”
“Me too,” Ruth said. “The same.”
“Now that you say it, I guess I can see how it would look that way. But it’s just where we were at, at the time. We were in different places.”
“I don’t want to fight about it again, but—”
“It’s like looking at art. All those paintings we just looked at, don’t people evaluate them in their historical context? ’Cause otherwise, if it’s about the composition or the color or the draftsmanship, then if someone painted the Mona Lisa today, would it be just as famous? You know what I mean? It’s just that what I’m trying to say is that the other stuff going on in our lives when we fought is important.”
“You didn’t seem to think that at the time. It was more like ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, get out of my life.’”
“Maybe I wasn’t so nice about it, but I didn’t think it through ahead of time. And, anyway, would it have hurt less if I’d broken up with you all rational and polite?”
Ruth had never thought about it that way. Was it the break up itself or the anger, the lack of respect?
“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Ruthie. I knew at the time I had, but it’s just the the way it was. And….”
“Yes?”
“And I’m glad we’ve made up.”
“Me too.”
They waited for the waitress to arrange the food.
“While we’re on the subject of working things out, I need to talk about some clothing business stuff,” Ruth said.
“Good. Shoot.”
Ruth told Vivian that she was continuing to think about it, doing some figuring and planning and conceptualizing. She wanted to go over some of the numbers she’d come up with. But mostly she wanted to talk about some as-yet-undiscussed issues.
Vivian kept eating and nodding during Ruth’s little speech. But as soon as Ruth was done, she said she never really understood why Ruth was thinking about starting this business. With all the money she and David must have, and with Ruth having such fun with the old-lady makeup thing, she needed to know if this was just a passing fancy. Which would quickly pass?
“And, anyway, aren’t we too old to be starting something new?”
Ruth moved her chair back a few inches. “I guess that’s exactly the point. The age thing, I mean.”
Ruth described her recent epiphany about her own aging and the forces that seemed to be closing in on her—menopause, David’s retirement, her desire to do something more worthwhile than selling makeup. She wanted to find the way to accept aging without necessarily giving into it. And she thought that, for her, the clothing business was the fine line between acceptance and surrender.
She knew making clothes wouldn’t be the same kind of “doing good” Vivian did at work, but it would do enough good for her, especially with the charitable giving.
“I’ve been thinking about it more and more, too,” Vivian said.
“You have? A business thing? Capitalism and all that?”
“Are you making fun?”
“No, really, I swear.”
“Don’t make fun. This is hard enough as is. You have no idea how hard.”
“What’s hard?”
“I can’t believe this is happening in a Chinese restaurant again but … ”
“You and Carlos aren’t splitting up?”
“It’s not that bad. At least I don’t think it’s that bad, but we’ll see what you think.”
“My God, Vivian, what is it?”
“I need to clear up some issues, some personality issues, I guess you’d call them.”
“I want to talk about that too.” What a relief. Ruth had been worrying about broaching the topic of Carlos. Would she say he was volatile? Or prickly? No, too many puns with that one. How about strong-willed? Or provocative? No, she was going to have to go with the truth, that he was a pain in the ass. But Vivian was going to talk about it first. Hallelujah. Ruth didn’t need to be so nervous after all.
“You do?” Vivian clipped her hair behind her neck, exposing sweaty armpits but not any self-consciousness about them.
“You’re not surprised, are you? I mean, Carlos and I don’t exactly get along like you’d think of business partners getting along. I’m sure Fisher and Price, or Pitney and Bowes, or, let’s see, who else, Sears and Roebuck had a better—”
“Enough. You and Carlos?”
“Of course. Me and Carlos. Isn’t that what you meant?”
“No, not at all. It’s….”
Vivian’s search for the right way to begin seemed to take an hour. Ruth didn’t know if it was the silence or the unusual damming of Vivian’s stream of consciousness that was more worrisome. Everyone else in the restaurant conspired to be particularly quiet at that moment; no voices, no glasses clinking, no plates clattering.
When Vivian finally launched into an opening with some traction, it was about David. She had a big problem with David’s always being so unruffled, as if he were surfing above the emotional undertow. It was dishonest.
“It’s not like I have anything against being rational, some of my best friends are even rational. But rational all the time is something else, something kinda abnormal. No one can really be so unconflicted, no one’s glass can always be half full, it’s just not natural, so I figure this Mr. Nice Guy stuff must be an act and I hate acts. You hate conflict, I hate acting because you just don’t know what’s re
al and what’s part of the act, so you don’t know what’s what and that feels dangerous to me. And to Carlos.”
“Dangerous? He’s just an easy-going guy with an even keel. A very even keel. He’s always been that way.”
“I don’t think anyone’s keel is really quite so even.”
“If this weren’t so amazing to me, it would be funny,” Ruth said.
“Ha-ha funny? Strange funny? What?”
“Well, both really.”
Ruth told Vivian how she’d been dreading talking about her own misgivings at the idea of working with Carlos. And for the opposite reasons: you always knew what Carlos was thinking and feeling, and it was usually negative. Unless you agreed with him 100%. Ruth didn’t think she could stand up to the bullying on an on-going basis.
“He’s gotten a lot better. If you’d seen him—”
“I know. He’s even gotten better since that brunch at your house. But better than terrible is still not so great.”
They briefly toyed with the idea of the two women doing it by themselves. In the end, though, Vivian said she just couldn’t do it that way. She looked at the ceiling, at the floor, at the walls—everywhere, in fact, but at Ruth—as she explained that if Carlos weren’t involved, he’d make her life miserable for being in a business. Things were tricky enough between them without adding this additional strain to the mix.
Vivian suggested she and Ruth and Carlos do it without David, since he didn’t seem to want to un-retire, anyway. Ruth refused, though she knew it just might work. For one thing, she knew he’d want to come to some of the business meetings, if only to hang out with friends. She was not, absolutely not, going to tell him he couldn’t. She also knew, though she didn’t say it, she needed David as a buffer between her and Carlos.
“What do we do now? Just forget the whole thing?” Ruth asked.
The waitress’s sing-song voice came out of nowhere. “I can take plates, ladies? You finish?” She started gathering the dishes. “You want dessert? We got kumquats, we got ice cream, we got—”
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