About Face

by Carole Howard

CHAPTER 31

  Changing Patterns

  SHORTLY AFTER their exploration-conversation, Ruth announced to David and the Suarez’s that, for her, the discussion was no longer hypothetical. The momentum shifted, as if everyone had been waiting for someone else to go first. The subtle change from “We would do this and that” to “We will do this and that” signaled more than a change from the conditional to the future tense.

  From that point on, Ruth lived parallel lives, one planning an exciting future for the new business—“Changing Patterns” was the working name—and another going through the motions of a successful product line at Mimosa.

  David still had no interest in working with a capital “W.” It had nothing to do with the interpersonal issues. He was glad they’d worked it out, but he wanted to retire, period. “I want to be part of the group, go to meetings so you can’t talk about me behind my back, I just don’t want to work very hard.” And Carlos, as evaluator of grant requests for charitable giving, would only work part-time.

  It was official: Vivian and Ruth were the full-time honchos of Changing Patterns: Clothing that Fits and Flatters.

  They were careful with money, but generous with capital letters: Vivian was the Vice President in Charge of Design and Production, in the Department of Making Clothes. Ruth was the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, in the Department of Making Money. Carlos was the Vice President of the Department of Giving Money Away. They had no President.

  “The ‘giving money away’ part will help me get over the ‘Vice President’ part. Me, a Vice President. Carramba.”

  “Get over yourself,” Ruth said. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. Or a good person, either, for that matter.”

  Ruth and Vivian would earn the same, Carlos would make one third of that, and an equal amount would go to the charities he proposed and all four decided upon. Whatever David did or didn’t contribute would be free.

  For the Talbots, Ruth’s Changing Patterns salary plus David’s pension would add up to about sixty percent of their previous income. They’d start drawing some investment income to boost it and make up the difference by cutting back on some expenses, especially their contributions to their retirement accounts. They were sure the decrease in money would be more than offset by the boost in zest.

  Carlos would negotiate a four-day-a-week salary at the Prisoner’s Rights Foundation. Adding his Changing Patterns salary to that meant he was getting a raise. Between the two Suarez’s, the family income was now about the same as the Talbots’, and was about 130% of what it had been.

  David and Ruth decided to refinance their house for a start-up loan to Changing Patterns. The Small Business Administration also fast-tracked a loan, probably because the application came from two women, one with a Spanish name.

  The BSW gave them space in their building in exchange for employing some of the residents. “They didn’t realize we would have done that anyway,” Vivian said. “So I didn’t mention it. They’re happy, we’re happy.”

  The VP of Design and Production and the VP of Marketing and Sales spent a weekend assembling fabrics. Natural fabrics only, they decided immediately.

  “It’s true they wrinkle faster, but then they’re wrinkled and you don’t have to worry about whether they’re going to wrinkle,” Vivian said.

  “Kind of like us.”

  With the cottons, linens, tencels, and wools they assembled—solids, prints, tapestries, even some African Kente cloth for old times’ sake—they’d put together a few samples with elastic waists, hidden crotch-patches, pleats, raised waistlines, gores over the abdomen, strategically placed darts, a bit of forgiving spandex. Ruth had appointments with buyers from two major department stores. Two loans, two possible buyers, free rent. Changing Patterns was about to be off and running.

  After choosing the business structure and clothing structure, the four met to discuss the as-yet-unearned money they’d be giving away. They unanimously decided to focus on women, though not just middle-aged women. They’d only give to projects they could visit in a day or less. “No overnight expenses for our puny budget,” Carlos said. “That way, there’s more to give.”

  “And this way we can all visit if we don’t have to worry about hotels and plane fares,” added Ruth.

  Then they turned their attention to the mechanics of soliciting and evaluating grant proposals. Carlos knew a lot about this and managed to explain it without infuriating his friends. He spoke for about fifteen minutes, answered the occasional question, made more eye contact with everyone, didn’t speak much Spanish. Even he recognized how much progress he’d made since the team-building exercise at work.

  “So, are we done? Can we have lunch?” Vivian looked at her watch and stretched her arms above her head, then got up and bent over from the waist. She started to gather mugs and glasses, and the men started to help her, but Ruth stayed where she was.

  “Not exactly. Don’t we need to do our exploration?”

  “Oh, that stuff is so complicated,” David said. Maybe we can skip it this time. We’re all okay about what happened, aren’t we? It went well, didn’t it?”

  Ruth sat still. “Not complicated. Simple. What you liked, what pissed you off. Who wants to go first?”

  RUTH AND JEREMY had never discussed their separate-and-unequal meetings with Mark Smith, but his demeanor towards her was changed. Still no sense of humor, but neither was there any sarcasm. And just a smidgen of something that was either respect or arms-distance. Or maybe it was just that he knew he was stuck with her now.

  She, in return, neither crowed nor made him eat crow, didn’t play any trump cards when they disagreed about something. Equilibrium.

  Shortly after the start of the New Year, Ruth took the elevator up to his office to deliver her news, dressed for the occasion in the silk jeans Vivian had made for her and her spiky, come-get-me heels. She was surprised she wasn’t nervous and wanted to look over her shoulder for the missing second-guessing. As if reading a familiar bedtime story to a child to lull her to trust and let go, she thought through the events of the last few months.

  About Face had been more successful than she’d dared hope. Good sales, great word-of-mouth—the kind of “this is the latest thing” attention that no amount of money can buy. It was as if they’d invented middle age. Or liberated all the middle-aged women who were imprisoned and ready to be sprung into being cool.

  Ruth had been on a couple of talk shows, as had Jeremy. She’d given countless demonstrations, and given products away at well-publicized events to worthy charities. She’d even been on panels with psychologists to discuss the effects of aging on women. Most people at Mimosa were happy for her, though a few were too jealous for enthusiasm, but all were grateful for the profits and publicity she brought to the company.

  The elevator dinged. Ruth heard it as a trumpet fanfare, announcing the soprano entering the stage to the wild applause of the audience. And part of the audience was the women of The Brain Trust who had, in fact, applauded her decision to start the business and leave Mimosa.

  “So unlike you,” they’d said.

  “So bold.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Don’t forget the free samples for us little people.”

  “Well, I guess we’re not as little as we used to be. So we need you to do this.”

  “Congratulations.”

  Feeling every syllable of their encouragement, she told a tired and battle-weary Jeremy she was leaving. His surprise was hardly distinguishable from delight. Whenever he started to break into a smile, he’d widen his mouth to make his expression appear to be one of amazement instead of joy. Or fake a yawn. Ruth gave him credit for at least pretending.

  He moved from the desk to the couch and invited her to sit on the preferred seat facing the window. He made some tea and asked her the kinds of questions a person would ask if they cared about you, like why she was leaving, what she’d be doing and where she’d be going. Since she wasn’t telling anyone about Cha
nging Patterns just yet, she was vague, mentioning that she had a few possibilities but would take some time off to reflect.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said, patting her arm.

  He told her about the time he’d left his first job after college and sensed he was at a huge fork in the road. Now that he looked back on it, he saw how many different ways there were to have a satisfying life, but at the time he’d thought there was only one “right answer.” He’d always tried to impart that lesson to his boys but suspected his opinion of what they really should do came through without his intending it to. Quick smile.

  It was the first time he’d ever spoken of his personal life. She knew she’d made his day and didn’t even mind his pleasure or his transformation.

  About Face’s success would serve Changing Patterns very well, she was sure, creating a huge market for products for middle-aged women. In addition to the trendiness of maturity, her near-celebrity status would help with loans and publicity. Her name was on everyone’s middle-aged lips and now she’d just move it down to their hips. She didn’t feel triumphant, as she’d expected to, nor even vengeful. She just felt whole, like all the pieces of her disparate self were finding each other, shaking hands, and working together.

  She and Jeremy briefly discussed who would succeed her. She liked to think he’d need to account for the way he’d allowed her to “slip through his fingers.” One of the ways he’d try to redeem himself, she imagined, would be to try to attract a superstar from his previous company. She suspected Pat would hope for Ruth’s job as soon as she heard about her resignation, even though she was hugely under-qualified. Thank goodness she wouldn’t have to deal with Pat’s disappointment and incomprehension at being passed over.

  As Ruth left Jeremy’s office, she found herself wishing she’d done this a lot sooner. The interchange was one of her favorite mental images, one she returned to from time to time as if looking at a photo in her hallway.

  Oh well, she thought, and then realized that from the second she’d gotten up that morning and donned her inappropriate outfit until that very moment, it was her first “Oh well.” She hummed her way down in the elevator, through the rest of her day and the next two weeks. On her last day at Mimosa, she wanted to burn her color-coded organizer, but settled for throwing it in the wastebasket.

  CHAPTER 32

  Joy

  IT HAD BEEN TEN MONTHS since she’d left Mimosa and they were working on Changing Patterns’ second fall line. The first one had been small, because they’d had to rush, but it had been slightly more successful than their conservative projections for it. The Spring line was all designed and in the hands of the manufacturers, with every indication that it would do well enough to fund their first charitable contributions. For this second Fall line, they’d added cloth purses to their skirts, pants, and tops.

  “Let’s be the ones to finally invent the perfect purse,” Ruth said, “big on the inside and small on the outside.”

  Even better than their moderate financial success was that, every time Ruth dared peer inside herself on a search-and-destroy mission for regret or anguish about the move from corporate executive to entrepreneur, she was relieved to find none. She’d left just the way she’d always wanted, on a high. In fact, leaving had been relatively easy once she’d done the hard part, deciding to leave.

  As Ruth looked up from the laptop on which she was creating the Marketing Plan for the new line, she thought she saw a bowl of fish and rice in the middle of the table, just like the ones she used to have once a week in Senegal.

  IBRAHIM N’DIAYE CAME to pick Ruth and Vivian up for their regular Thursday lunch at his house in the next town. About six months before, on one of his weekly trips to Djembering to sell bottled water, tomato paste and other staples to the kiosk that passed for a grocery store, he’d invited them for the first time. They never knew if it was courtesy, curiosity, or just to boost his prestige with his friends and neighbors. During that first lunch, he’d invited them for the next week, and, at some point, they’d agreed to swap English lessons for lunch. It meant Ibrahim had to make an extra round trip to Djembering to pick them up and then take them home again, but time was not a precious commodity and English was.

  Like many Senegalese men, he was tall and thin, loose-limbed and athletic at the same time. He wore old blue jeans and a green tee shirt that was less faded than most. He looked completely natural in Western clothes, with no hint of how exotic he looked in his traditional powder blue full-length robe with dark blue embroidery.

  He arrived in his “new” car, also his delivery truck, with a smile that would have taken over his face if he didn’t try to rein it in. “Welcome into my automobile, my American friend ladies,” he said as he opened the door for them. When the two girls got in, they saw that every dashboard button was missing, leaving the allotted spaces looking like empty eyeball sockets. The handles in the back doors had long ago been replaced with pieces of twine, themselves now on their last legs, and the seats were cracked and belching foam. Red dust covered every horizontal surface. None of these defects, though, seemed to detract from Ibrahim’s pride in being the commander of this vehicle. Ruth and Vivian looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.

  During the ten-kilometer trip over back roads that were little more than ruts in the sand, he swerved or slowed down at every hole, rock, and slow-moving herd, eager to extend whatever meager lifespan the car had remaining. The ride was bone-jarring nonetheless, even for 20-something bones. Ruth was finally getting the knack of releasing just enough of her hold on certain muscles so her body was flexible, absorbing some of the shock and making the bumps less violent. It had been a hard lesson to learn, that less control was softer in the long run. The trick was to find the balance point and not relax so much that she fell over.

  The sky, a dusty blue with occasional wispy clouds, seemed bigger and more maternal than the sky at home. The landscape was in its muted dry-season palette. A pervasive brownness blanketed the faded colors of the sparse grasses and the scrawny goats and long-horned cattle. The exception to the brownness was the Senegalese women’s clothing. Their exuberant splashes of color would have been brilliant anywhere, but against the subdued backdrop of the dry-season landscape, they were a riotous display. Their dresses and matching headscarves—blue, pink, fuchsia, yellow, green, and every other imaginable color—seemed to shout of a joy in color, indeed, in life. Ruth loved watching the women they passed on the road. They walked as gracefully and confidently as if they were on a models’ runway, even with the loads they balanced on their heads.

  At Ibrahim and Fatou’s house, they walked past the pigeon coop on the left, under the laundry on the line, then picked their way between the chickens, roosters, and sheep. Fatou greeted them. Thin, with glasses too big for her face, she wore a red-orange cloth wrapped around the bottom half of her body, with a ruffled blouse of the same cloth. Like the cherry on the sundae, some of that cloth was also wrapped around her head.

  Everyone greeted each other in the traditional way, beginning with “Nanga def?” Today’s lunch crowd was smaller than usual, only Ibrahim and Fatou, their maid Aminata, and their three children—the two daughters, Ayisha and Maguette, and the son Abdou.

  Aminata carried a wide shallow bowl, white with gaily painted flowers around the outside, covered by an inverted one just like it, like a giant white clam shell. In the middle of the yard, where two tall trees created an oasis of shade and gentle breezes, a large green and white woven mat had been laid on the ground. Aminata had a blue cloth under her arm, which Fatou removed and spread on top of the mat. Aminata set the bowl down.

  Ruth, Vivian, and Ibrahim walked to the edge of the mat, took off their shoes, then joined Fatou and Aminata around the bowl. The children squeezed in wherever they could, on the mat or on a lap.

  Fatou gave spoons to Ruth and Ibrahim, the only ones who wanted them, then uncovered the bowl of thiebou dien— fish and rice. To the Senegalese in this relatively prosper
ous village, it was just an ordinary lunch, something they had four or five times a week, but to Ruth and Vivian, it was a treat: a mound of rice cooked in a savory tomato-based sauce, topped by chunks of herb-stuffed fish. And there were vegetables on the mound, too: carrots, cabbage, even eggplant. The air in the circle was filled with smells of the food, the hair pomade used by the African women, the animals, and the children’s sweetness. Julietta, a neighbor and friend, arrived just as they started eating. She offered and received an abbreviated greeting, took a spoon and sat down in the space everyone made for her in the circle.

  Conversation became spirited, with elaborate teasing about whether it was better to be the first wife of the household, as Fatou was for Ibrahim, or a second wife, as Aminata was for her husband Babacar. Fatou and Aminata broke off pieces of the fish and vegetables with their right hand and distributed them around the edge of the bowl in front of each person. Those who ate with their hands took some rice, fish, and vegetables with their right hand, squeezed the liquid out, then stuck out their tongue as they brought their hand up to their mouth. They put the egg-shaped lump on their outstretched tongue, looking as if they were licking their hand. Fish bones and other rejected matter dropped unceremoniously from mouth to ground.

  Three-year old Maguette got up from Aminata’s lap, went outside the circle of eaters, removed her shoe, then threw it at the bowl, pleased with her feat. Her smile faded, though, at Julietta’s reaction, a trumpet-blast of Wolof. Was the scolding for spoiling the food or the shoe? Maguette cried briefly, then looked around for another lap. Julietta went back to her lunch.

  A little later, Abdou, the chubby two-year old, slapped his older sister Ayisha. At four years old, she was barely bigger than him, and returned the blow only half-heartedly before tearfully seeking shelter in her father’s lap. Ibrahim comforted her absent-mindedly while talking to Julietta. No one reprimanded Abdou, nor cared who started the fight. The eating and talking continued, with everyone taking care of the kids as if they were their own, whether providing a lap, a handful of food, or a scolding. Anything except a breast, which Abdou knew exactly where to find. No one seemed particularly concerned about the fish-bones or the sand Ruth was horrified to see the kids occasionally scooping up and eating.