About Face

by Carole Howard

  Many years later, when Ruth heard the expression “It takes a village to raise a child,” she thought of lunches with Ibrahim, Fatou and the kids and the way everyone took care of all of them.

  Abdou came over to Ruth tentatively, and, after much consideration, sat in her lap for the first time. He was the last hold-out of the kids, who had all been terrified of the white girls at first but eventually came around. He pulled on her earring and giggled. When he saw her smile, he tried the other earring. Another smile. He investigated the rest of her face, the tip of her nose, her lips, touching and pinching and stretching. Finally, he got bored and just sat in her lap peacefully. Ruth’s Wolof wasn’t quite as good as Vivian’s, but she followed enough of the musical-sounding conversation around the lunch bowl to laugh at the right times and even contribute a thought now and then. She hugged Abdou and relaxed.

  UNFURLING THE CRAMPED LEG she’d folded under her at the start of her extended daydream, she surveyed the scene in the Design and Sample Room of Changing Patterns’ offices. Six women were sitting in a friendly circle around the oversized distressed-oak table in the middle of the high-ceilinged room. What she’d daydreamed into a bowl of fish and rice was a colorful jumble of fabrics, threads, ribbons, laces, buttons, and other assorted notions, mingled with colored papers, markers and tape. At various times, one or another of them would reach into the pile to get one of the items. She’d hold it up to her work and decide to use it. Or decide not to, and throw it back on the pile. Ordered chaos. Or was it chaotic order?

  Along one wall, jutting into the central space like Rockettes’ legs, sewing machines and ironing boards alternated. A woman was in each space between a sewing machine and an ironing board, turning from one to the other as she worked. The air was filled with conversations, Carole King singing “Tapestry,” and the steady hum of needles penetrating fabric to create seams.

  Ruth often preferred working here in the room they called the Student Union to her own office in one of the surrounding cubicles. Even though there was no carpeting or photographs of her family, there was a wall-size collage of the staff’s photographs and there were child-painted murals of their products.

  She realized it wasn’t just the pile of notions in the center of the table that reminded her of the fish and rice. It was the fellowship. It was the community, the wholeness.

  Vivian was cutting pieces of fabric she pulled from the middle of the table and gluing or stitching them, adding flourishes with ribbons and even markers, to design new garments, which the others were producing as samples for the new line to be sent to their manufacturing plant. The women at the sewing machines and irons were blocking the clothes together, while those at the table were adding the signature Changing Patterns embellishments, the flowers and birds that looked like embroidery and sometimes were. Vivian and Ruth knew it was an unorthodox approach to clothing design, but it worked for this unusual village of entrepreneurs.

  They were all working against a tight deadline, which they had to make because any delays in getting the samples to the factory cost money their tight budget could not afford. Everywhere was activity: cutting, stitching, embroidering, folding, wrapping, labeling.

  “Jeannie, hand me that clump of greenish embroidery thread, would ya?” Martha asked. She was a heavy-set 40-ish woman with hair that had once been salt and pepper but whose salt, in an unfortunate henna accident, had been replaced by a garish orange so she now looked like an orange and brown tabby cat. A tabby cat whose orange roots were growing out white.

  “Okay, but … green? On that pink denim? Are you sure that’s what you want?” Jeannie asked.

  “Hey, I’m having my own private little brainstorming session over here—”

  “Is that sort of like playing with yourself?”

  “Not so exciting.” She frowned. “I’m just trying a little of this and a little of that. And then I’ll see what works,” Martha said.

  “Okay, whatever.” Jeannie threw the thread to the other end of the table. “But I thought Vivian was the designer.”

  “That’s okay,” Vivian said. “I design it the way I like it, and then if you can make it better, that’s fine by me. As long as you make it better by….”

  She looked up at the wall calendar above the row of sewing machines. “Hey, would someone please turn the page of the calendar so we’re looking at this month?”

  One of the sewers obliged. “That’s better. As I was saying, you just need to do what you need to do by next Tuesday.”

  “I hear ya,” Martha said.

  A baby cried. Joan looked at her watch, then went over to the port-a-crib in the corner, saying “Milk and cookies time, right on schedule.” She was a large woman, in her thirties, with an athlete’s gait and a soothing voice. She picked up her five-month-old and brought her over to the table. She unbuttoned her polka dot blouse, put Celeste in nursing position, and continued working.

  “Be careful you don’t get breast milk on the clothes,” Vivian said.

  “Get off my back, boss—or, rather, my front. It just happened that once, anyway. Besides, you didn’t mind that time we ran out of milk for the coffee and I became the resident cow.”

  “I still can’t believe you did that. And I thought I was the nutty one.”

  “Hah. Move over, old lady. I’m gunning for your reputation.”

  Joy skipped into the room. She stopped just inside the door and looked around, then spotted her mother at one of the sewing machines. She skipped over to her.

  “Guess what, mommy.”

  “What, Joy?” Ruth and Vivian said at the same time as Harriet, Joy’s mother.

  “I got 100 on the math test. I told you I would.”

  Harriet gave Joy a big hug. “That’s great, sweetie. You’re a genius.”

  “Hey, me too,” Ruth said.

  Joy skipped around the table and presented her cheek for Ruth’s kiss. Then she walked over to Vivian and presented her cheek.

  “You’re gettin’ pretty kissy, missy,” Vivian said as she complied.

  Joan said, “Just in time for a little baby-sitting, if you don’t mind.” She pulled Celeste away from her breast and handed her to Joy’s eagerly outstretched arms.

  “Wait a second,” Ruth said. “What about her homework?”

  “And her snack?” Jeannie asked. Turning to Joy and smiling flirtatiously, she said, “I brought those cookies you like so much. Don’t you want one? Or two?”

  “Yes, I do I do I do. I’ll eat them while I play with Celeste. And then I’ll do my homework after.” She looked over at Harriet for approval.

  “Hell-LOW, everyone,” Vivian said in a sing-song voice. “We have a deadline, remember?”

  Ruth lifted her head, reached under the braid her hair had gotten barely long enough to form, and reflexively massaged her neck. It was hot and sweaty. Is this a hot flash? she wondered. Don’t know. It’s Indian summer and it’s hot in here so maybe it’s not. Or maybe it is.

  She absorbed the colors of the jumbled fabric, the motion and noises of the sewing, the smells of food and even people, simultaneously, also realizing how much she enjoyed what she was doing. Not for the possibility of success, nor even for the grandiose ideas about helping women feel better. She just enjoyed it. More than enjoyed it; she couldn’t wait to get to work every day.

  Here it is, she thought. The present moment I’ve always wanted to be in. I used to think I wanted closure, but this is better. Closure is really a little taste of death.

  Colleen poked her head in the room. “Ruth, you have a phone call? And guess what? It’s Ann, the buyer from Bloomingdale’s. Can you take it?”

  “Oh thank goodness she finally called back. I’ll come back to my office to take it. Thanks.”

  She thought about how to sweet-talk the buyer as she went through the dark curved hallway to her office, enjoying the click of her high heels on the concrete floor. It turned out that no sweet-talk was necessary, and Ann put her on the calendar—a little sooner t
han Ruth would have wished, as it turned out.

  Ruth called David at home and left a message on the machine. “Hi, hon, I know you’re taking advantage of the weather to say hello to the golf course, but I wanted you to find this message waiting when you get back. Guess what! I’m on Ann’s calendar for day after tomorrow. It was easy. Also, I spoke to Josh this morning and I haven’t had a second to call until now. He’s coming to dinner tonight. We’re not doing anything, are we? I’ll stop on the way home and get some fish. Would you make your wonderful risotto? The one with the wild mushrooms? And a salad? He’s bringing dessert. And his new girlfriend. Maybe I’ll see if Vivian and Carlos want to come, too. Okay? I love you. Oh, by the way, Joy got 100 on her math test. Isn’t that great?”

  As she hung up, she looked at the three-photo frame on her desk, a congratulations present from David. On the left was “Baby Ruth,” the very picture of her twenty-two-year-old self she’d brought to the village when she went back at thirty-six. In the middle was “Married Ruth Holding Baby Ruth,” the photo David had taken during their visit. And on the right was a photo taken last year, of her fifty-three-year old self—“Grown-Up Ruth”—holding the photo called “Married Ruth Holding Baby Ruth.” Going around the frame was Rumi’s advice to “Exist as you are or be as you look.” A story within a story within a story.

  She loved the way the triptych depicted the thread running from then to now. More than a thread, really. She was the same person. That was her and this was her. Maybe the outside had aged but the inside had grown.

  She thought about how much she’d have to do to prepare for the meeting at Bloomingdale’s, wondering how she’d manage to get it all done in time. She thought about Joy’s math test, her pleasure magnified by Joy’s own glee. The thought of Josh and his new girlfriend sent her mind galloping into the future, with warmth and its maternal companion, worry. And she also realized how much she craved David’s risotto and wild mushrooms dish, redolent of the woods and the earth, at the same time she knew she’d been allowing herself caloric liberties lately because of the generous fit of her new Changing Patterns pants.

  The emotional mix felt like a casserole, each ingredient heightening the others’ impact. Like mixing spike heels with her hippy pants, or being an entrepreneur who does good for the world, like starting a business when it’s time to retire.

  She started back down the corridor to the nexus of light and activity in the Design and Sample Room. It felt like being in the subway, going around a curve between stations, and seeing the back car when you’re in the front. Or maybe it was seeing the front when you’re in the back. Something about time collapsing. “Well, well, well,” she thought.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a novel is a long process, and so many people helped me along the way, either with feedback on drafts, technical support, and/or encouragement. I thank them all: Laura, Polly, Fran, Lou, Juli, Glenn, Jim, Richard, Marilyn, Peggy, Tony, Anne, Joby, Elizabeth, Anita, Gretchen, Gini. Much gratitude and appreciation goes to my always-supportive, honest, and generous Writers’ Group.

  A special category of thanks to my center of gravity, my family: Geoffrey and Lisa—and now Jason, Nina, and Ezra too—who did it all.

  About the Author

  Carole lives with her husband in Warwick, New York. She wrote About Face as a direct result of her experiences as a traveler and management consultant.

  Other cultures fascinate her: She has lived in several countries in West Africa, including Senegal, for anywhere from two months to two years. As a management consultant, she came up-close-and-personal to the issues—some pretty and some not—of the corporate world, which is also another culture of a sort.

  All characters and events in the book, however, are fictional.