About Face

by Carole Howard

  “We’re finished,” Vivian said and got up to pay.

  Ruth didn’t know if Vivian was talking to the waitress or to her.

  CHAPTER 30

  Working it Out

  TEN DAYS LATER, The American Cosmetics Journal printed an edited version of Ruth’s piece, but with a twist. An editor had been at the ACA meeting when Jeremy took credit for developing About Face. Noticing the discrepancy between Jeremy’s account and Ruth’s article, he wrote a sidebar about the internal conflict that can accompany success. He’d called Ruth before running the sidebar to see if she could give him a reason to pull it, like an inaccuracy or point of view he hadn’t considered, but “No comment,” was what she’d said at first, then just, “Run the sidebar, it’s fine.”

  After the article appeared, she was called to Mark Bloom’s office. He was now the Group President of B&D’s Personal Care Products Division and, by all accounts, was happy as a Big Daddy, even though Personal Care was a small division. And he was doing a good job. She would have been glad to see him if it weren’t for the circumstances.

  She got there a little early, having even remembered to change out of her sneakers first. While she waited, she chatted with Mark’s secretary, who warned her something was going on in there that involved words like “honor” and “team” at high volume. Uh-oh.

  Mark’s door opened, Jeremy emerged and walked by her without a word, a glance, or a faux-smile.

  She braced herself and refrained from asking Mark how he liked his new job or how his family was. He launched the topic immediately: he was not happy about the article calling attention to B&D’s little bit of dirty linen.

  It was clear to him, he said, after being at his new job for about fifteen minutes, that B&D’s corporate culture was quite different from Mimosa’s. He’d expected it to be different, as anyone would. Jeremy’s credit-stealing ploy was right out of the B&D playbook, nothing but ‘business as usual’ in his old position, so it was understandable in that context. But it was disappointing that he hadn’t yet learned things were different at Mimosa. It wasn’t rocket science. And he would need to learn it if he wanted to be a good leader.

  Mark went on to praise her for the sterling job she’d done with About Face, referring obliquely to her long-term career path. He told her he thought B&D was an interesting and intellectually challenging place to work, if she should ever be interested. Down the road, that is.

  Once upon a time, she would have been walking on air for weeks over her political success and the praise from the big boss. Now, though, it seemed to complicate matters. Retire? Become an entrepreneur? Move up the corporate ladder? Yikes.

  When she got back to Mimosa’s headquarters and emerged from the elevator on the eighteenth floor to confront the contrived white landscape and smelled the floral “Toujours Mon Amour,” it struck her. She was winning her battles, yes—things were going pretty well with About Face, with Pat, and she was even beating Jeremy out at office politics—but maybe winning wasn’t so important if she was playing the wrong game. Validation, yes. Happiness, no.

  She thought of the activist and the investment banker she’d met at a community awards presentation a year or so ago. The activist had said, “I don’t have much money, but I sure have a lot of fun.” The investment banker said wistfully, “Funny, with me it’s exactly the opposite.”

  She went to her office and located the green “Clothing Business with V & C” folder, remembering and mourning the exciting fantasies it had unleashed. She flipped through the many “Plusses and Minuses” lists, trying to soothe herself by concentrating on the minuses.

  And then she noticed a pattern. There were six plusses-and-minuses lists, each written about a week after the previous one. When she looked at them in order, she saw that each one had more plusses and fewer minuses than the last. From time to time, she’d broken down a “plus” item from one list into two smaller “plusses” on the next. That’s how the plus list got longer.

  “Doing Good” became: “Changing perceptions about how women are supposed to look,” and “Helping women feel better about themselves.” The latter became, in an iteration two weeks later, “Helping women feel comfortable in their skin” and “Giving women confidence to walk down the street and just be themselves,” which later became further divided.

  Likewise, she’d occasionally combined two details that were in the “Minus” column so that they were one, making that list shorter. “Financial risk” and “Long hours of entrepreneurship” became combined into “Life will change dramatically.”

  She’d always thought her Plus/Minus lists sprung entirely from her left brain, but this time something else had gone on. Like a Ouija board? Something inside her knew she wanted to do this business, knew she wanted the Plusses to outnumber the Minuses, and made it happen.

  I don’t know much about intuition but I know it when I see it, she thought. Now she knew why people made such a big deal about it.

  That’s why she was so unexcited when Jeremy gave the go-ahead for About Face. It was her intuition, overruling all the plusses and minuses, dampening false enthusiasm, begging to be heard. It just took her a little while to open her ears. Or whatever part of the body hears intuition.

  She crumpled and discarded her lists, breathless with a cocktail of fear and excitement at the thought of leaving what had always grounded her so she could take a chance on soaring. Like those crazy hang-gliders she’d once seen step off a cliff at a restaurant in France.

  Before she had a chance to think about it, she called Vivian at work.

  “Viv, let’s get together on Saturday. Or Sunday. Or Friday night. Or any night. Let’s work it out. The personality thing. We can work it out, I know we can. I really want to do this. Don’t you?

  “Yes.”

  VIVIAN AND CARLOS OPENED the door together. They didn’t say much, but their abundant marital eye contact was either conveying a secret message or enabling them to avoid eye contact with Ruth and David. Vivian wasn’t struggling to get her words out fast enough to dump the contents of her speeding brain. Carlos’s reticence, on the other hand, wasn’t newsworthy but had a grumpy overlay.

  When they were settled, Vivian said, “So you’ve come here today, or rather we’re all here today, to talk about, well, about getting along is I guess what you could say is what we’re here to talk about. I guess. And thanks for coming over.” She lifted her frizzy hair off her neck, holding it with her left hand while she fanned her neck with her right. She put on some music by Dr. John.

  Ruth said, “Maybe we can start by nailing down a little more precisely what we want to accomplish. Sometimes framing the question in the right way can help you come up with the answer?” She uncapped her pen and turned to a clean page on her legal pad.

  “Very organized,” Carlos said.

  “Is that good or bad?” Ruth tried not to sound bitchy.

  “It just feels kind of corporate. Like, man, do we need a flip chart? Should I change my clothes?”

  Vivian said, “Give it a rest, Carlos. Don’t you have meetings at work? Don’t you decide what you want to talk about? Wake up. Get some caffeine in your system. Make an effort, here.” She raised a mug to his mouth. He took it from her and drank with loud slurps.

  Ruth tried again. “It’s like Vivian said, that if we’re going to think about working together, we need to know we can get along and make decisions together.”

  “Is getting along really the point? Anyway, I have an announcement.” He got up in one motion from his cross-legged position on a pillow and turned up the volume of the music. He grabbed a wooden statuette, an African fertility symbol, and held it to his mouth like a microphone. Speaking in a public-announcement voice, he said, “I’ve decided I can’t do this. Giving money away is very nice, muy bueno. But I can’t be in a manufacturing business.” He put the statue down and spoke in a normal voice to Vivian. “You want to do this, babe, fine, but count me out.”

  “Turn down the music. And no w
ay it’s gonna work for me to do it without you,” Vivian said. “You’d come home from work and—”

  “I can’t believe you think—”

  “I’m right, you know I’m right.”

  “Babe, you’re just having one of your—”

  ”You’re right, Carlos,” Ruth said.

  “About…?” Carlos said.

  “About the business. But not the music. Turn it down, please.” He did.

  “You can’t be involved in a manufacturing business. I know that. I’ve known it all along, really.”

  “You do surprise me, Ruthie. Mucho.”

  “Right. But you can be involved in a foundation, right?”

  He didn’t need to be involved in the business, she explained. In fact, it would be better if he weren’t. She and Vivian would do that. He’d have nothing to do with the design or manufacture or marketing of the clothes. He’d only be involved with the business’s foundation.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Carlos crossed the room and resumed his cushioned cross-legged position. “This could work. Maybe. So maybe we don’t have to talk about relationships?”

  “Yes we do,” Ruth and Vivian said simultaneously.

  “It seems only right that I go first.” David walked over to a newly-hung photo of the four of them in Africa and stared at it as if he were speaking to it, not them, as he told Vivian he knew what she’d said to Ruth about him. And it didn’t bother him. He turned around and looked at her. “My feelings don’t get hurt very easily.”

  Vivian shot back that his unhurt feelings were exactly what she was talking about. Some people might be relieved that he never got mad, but she thought it was more like he never got engaged with what was going on. Like he was above it all, looking down. Like he was hiding something. She went over to where he was standing, as if she were going to confront him nose-to-nose. Instead, she just took the photo from the wall and held it in her lap.

  “If I am, then I’m hiding it from myself, too,” David said. “Which, I admit, is a possibility. But not one I can do….”

  “It’s like Vivian says, man. You think you’re above it all. Condescending.”

  “Maybe if I sat down and you stood up? Then I wouldn’t be above it all? Sorry, not funny.”

  “Condescending? Carlos, you are the Emperor of Condescending,” Ruth said. “Interesting that you don’t like being condescended to. Neither do I.”

  “I have strong opinions, that’s all. It’s not condescending. You’re just being adolescent about this.”

  “You don’t think it’s condescending to let everyone know that you’re better and smarter and more moral than them? And holier, too. That’s the definition of condescending.” Her doodling got darker and more emphatic. More spirals, less geometric patterns.

  He folded his arms. “Maybe I do think that what I’m saying is better. Everyone does. Or they wouldn’t say it. I may not always be right, but I can’t help it if I think I’m right. And, besides, I am right a lot of the time.”

  “This is good, guys, really good.” Vivian filled everyone’s coffee cup, then returned the photo to its spot on the wall.

  “Well, babe, other than cheering us on as we argue, what do you think? I’ve never known you to be at a loss for words.”

  Vivian agreed that Carlos was condescending when he made like he was better than everyone. And David was condescending when he made like he was above it all. The two sides of the condescension coin: one doesn’t get involved and the other gets too involved.

  “I don’t much like it either way, but when I don’t like it, I don’t sulk like you do, Ruthie, I push back.” She punched the sofa pillow.

  “I know, believe me I know.”

  “It’s better to push back.” Another punch for the pillow.

  “It’s not my way.”

  “You can force yourself.” Carlos’s tone was softer. “Like sticking your finger down your throat when you feel sick. Even if you don’t want to, it feels better after.”

  “I don’t think so. I am what I am.”

  Carlos stared at his empty mug as he said, “I know I’m sometimes argumentative. And other things.” He put down the mug and caressed his bracelet. “But it’s like what you just said. I am what I am. I’m here to give money away, punto. If we fight, we fight. We’ll get over it.”

  “That doesn’t work for me,” Ruth said.

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “For example, Carlos,” Ruth said softly, “I’m not completely okay about the little disagreement we had last time we were here.”

  “What disagreement?”

  “About my being a capitalist on the backs of labor. That one.”

  “Really? But we made up,” Carlos said.

  “I guess we did. Partly. On the what part, but not the how part. When you say things in that way you have—like calling me adolescent a minute ago—it interferes with my hearing what you say. You may feel all made up. I don’t. Punto, punto, the end.”

  Carlos cleared his throat and looked around. He said that until very recently, he would have said that was stupid. “‘Black is black and white is white whether you say it with a smile or a temper tantrum’ is what I would have said.”

  “But now…?” Ruth asked.

  A few days before, he’d been confronted with the same “stupid”—finger-quotes let everyone know he was actually being self-aware—point of view at work. During a team-building role play exercise, he and his colleagues tried to reach consensus about a complicated decision. There, too, he’d antagonized the others so much they refused to listen to his opinions, which turned out to be largely correct. Even worse, some of their opinions, which he’d derided, were also correct.

  “So all your wisdom was wasted,” Ruth said.

  Carlos turned towards her with his previous softness replaced by flint. “You mockin’ me?”

  “Hey, man, Ruth was just saying—”

  “Don’t do that. Ruthie fights her own battles pretty good. You want to fight, fight your own. Oh, but I forgot, you don’t do that.”

  “I wasn’t mocking you, Carlos. Just saying what I think you were saying, that you knew a lot but they didn’t hear you,” Ruth said. She wrote something on her pad.

  Carlos offered to apologize to Ruth again for last time, if it would help. But he said, the softness once again in his voice and his face, he knew he might not have all the answers, but he was pretty much what he was. He wanted to give money away. He wasn’t up for a personality transplant.

  “You need to know I’m never going to be a Mr. Play By The Rules, a Mr. Reasonable Tone of Voice kind of guy like David.”

  She bit off the thumbnail it had taken three weeks of willpower to grow. Damn, she thought. She couldn’t even muster an “Oh well.”

  “The truth is,” David said. “I hate conflict. I even hate talking about conflict. But I guess I’d agree that if we’re going to have it—”

  “And we are,” Ruth said.

  “—then I’d want for it to come into the open, we deal with it, and it goes away. Quickly. And maybe …” He looked at Vivian. “Maybe I could be more open, too, more negative, if that’s what being open turns out to be, if there were a way to pop the pimple, clean up the mess, and move on.”

  “I have an idea,” Vivian said. “It’s actually a great idea. It’s your idea, Carlos, and it’s brilliant.”

  “Why do I think I’m not going to like this, babe?”

  Vivian explained that it wasn’t the team-building role play exercise that had enlightened Carlos as much as the conversation afterwards. With the help of the facilitator, everyone had to talk about their experience during the role play, the good, the bad and the ugly. Not the content, the process. And everyone else had to listen to them. Not say anything, just listen. They called this kind of conversation an “exploration.”

  “The cool part was that when someone said I pissed her off, I didn’t have to apologize. And people get pissed off for the stupidest reasons.�
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  “But you had to listen,” Vivian said.

  “Sounds like conflict to me,” David said.

  “But you also got to find out about the stuff you do that people like,” Vivian said in her chirpiest voice.

  The women wanted to try an exploration-conversation, the men didn’t. The women prevailed. They assured Carlos he wasn’t being asked to change, they appealed to his sense of fairness and courage, and they reminded him it was all about giving money away. David had his own pimple-popping metaphor thrown back at him, with their confidence that this would do that.

  Even though they were tired, they grabbed sandwiches and forced themselves to “explore” the meeting they’d just had while they ate, including hurts and annoyance and pride and all the other emotions in between. If one of them forgot the rules and started defending, another was quick with a reminder.

  Carlos said he was beginning to understand what Ruth and others got so upset about, that she needed to be heard and understood, even if not agreed with. And Ruth understood that Carlos was the opposite, not caring about being understood or agreed with, as long as he got his say if not his way. They even rehashed the fight they’d had about their world views. Ruth was finally able to let go of it. David admitted to some misgivings about the things that had been said to him, which everyone took to be progress.

  And they thought the “Exploration” format worked. Ruth liked having a mechanism that not only allowed her to express herself, it mandated it. David could stand dealing with the inevitable clashes, even some involving him, because it was quick and therapeutic. Carlos liked having his say and was willing to listen to others to get it.

  Vivian said, “This feels like an emotional enema, guys. Sort of like going to the dentist, you know what I mean? Something that you know is good for you and you know you’ll feel better once it’s over, glad you did it and all, but still not something you particularly want to do.”

  “Way to mix your metaphors, babe.”