Food Fight

by Anne Penketh

  “Need any help?”

  Susan shook her head.

  She went upstairs to the bedroom, where three piles of clothes sat neatly folded on the floor. ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Maybe’ were ready for the suitcase, charity store or the loft.

  She opened the wardrobe.

  What could she do with all this stuff? It would have to wait until tomorrow. But she was running out of time. She walked up one more flight of stairs to Mimi’s old room, under the gable, where she now slept in the single bed. It didn’t help—she found herself reaching out for Serge’s warmth automatically in the night, only to find him gone, peering into the darkness in shock.

  She stretched out on the bed, making a mental note to pull down the giant poster of Siouxsie and the Banshees above her head. She’d have to get rid of the empty fishbowl on the chest of drawers. There were wonky nails in the door, and something else caught her notice: was that Blu-Tack or discarded chewing gum on the wall?

  She curled up and closed her eyes as she began to fret about the move to Washington. When the phone alarm sounded next morning, she sat up with a start. The Victorian lattice window cast a shadow over the bed. She’d forgotten to close the curtains.

  She was fully clothed, with the imprint of a dangling earring on her left cheek, a knot in her stomach, and an uneasy feeling that she hadn’t a clue where her passport was.

  Ready or not, her new life was about to begin.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The glass doors at DeKripps Foods Inc. slid open. The clock said 8.30 a.m. Dressed smartly in a navy blue trouser suit, she felt dwarfed by the soaring marble lobby. “Susan Perkins, DeKripps marketing,” she said to the security guard, and signed in before she picked the first in a bank of lifts to the sixth floor.

  Barney, a towering, perma-tanned figure in steely grey, was leaning over the receptionist at her desk. The bearded face of the founder of DeKripps looked down on them from the wall like an avuncular Van Gogh. Two small sofas made a corner, where TV news was on mute with subtitles. A coffee table, dominated by a vase of exotic flowers, displayed the latest trade magazines in a perfect arc. Susan hoped Barney wouldn’t catch sight of her wiping the nervous moisture from her hand before she greeted him.

  “Hi, Susie. Welcome to DC.”

  He shook her hand with an iron grip and walked her along a beige carpet to his office.

  “You know the drill. Ellen will show you around, and we’ll expect you at our video conference with LA in a couple of hours.”

  “Great, fine. And thanks, Barney, for arranging this. It’s much appreciated.”

  “You’re very welcome. I’m sorry for your loss.” She noticed the dazzling shine on his shoes as he stopped outside his door. His trouser creases were knife sharp.

  The receptionist led Susan to her new office. The blinds were down, so she switched on the light which revealed a bare and functional space. The furniture was designer, minimalist: a black ergonomic chair behind a pale desk, on which a computer and a phone were perched, and two black leather chairs for guests. An empty bookcase stood in a corner, with a single ornament: A gold bar of DeKripps chocolate. On her desk she noticed a picture frame with a stock-photo of a couple and two kids, huddled and smiling giddily in black-and-white. She pressed a button to raise the blinds, and was peering at the street below when she became aware of someone in the doorway.

  “How are you settling in?”

  It was Ellen, whom she’d met and liked during conferences and drinks in London. “Did you sleep okay?”

  “I did until Martin rang at four in the morning. Apparently he didn’t realise I’d left the country already.”

  “Oh dear. You don’t look jet-lagged, if that’s any consolation.”

  “Thanks, Ellen. And the office is fine, by the way.” She noticed a garish painting on the wall beside her door. It was a scene of swaying cornfields, presumably in the Midwest, the DeKripps heartland. It would have to do.

  “It’s not a corner, I’m afraid, but you have a window.” A corner office was to a DeKripps executive what castles were to medieval kings.

  “Cool. And the view’s much bigger than Covent Garden.” Susan gestured towards the National Mall. She could just see the point of the Washington Monument if she craned her neck.

  “I’ve arranged baby-sitting tonight, so let me know when you’re done, and we can have dinner together.”

  *

  After work the two women strolled from the DeKripps offices to Jaleo for tapas.

  “So how are you coping, really?” Ellen asked as they ordered drinks. “I think it’s extremely brave of you to move so far away.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I knew I had to reinvent myself after what happened. In fact it was your letter that spurred me on, in a way.”

  “I wanted to say how sorry I was. I didn’t know Serge very well, obviously, but you could tell he was a really special guy. He had that je ne sais quoi, you know, but what impressed me in particular was how much he respected you.” Susan put down the menu and swallowed hard.

  Did she want to burden Ellen with her troubles? She liked and trusted her, even saw her as a younger, more determined version of herself. But she hesitated. The violence of her grief had surprised her. Sometimes she’d felt waterboarded, submerged to the point of drowning, then spluttering and gasping for air, only to be forced down again.

  “It’s tough.” She pretended to scrutinise the menu, glancing sideways at Ellen who was searching for her phone.

  “In case the twins are rioting.” She placed her mobile on the table. “How long were you married?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “Eleven,” Ellen said, shaking her head. “And how’s your daughter?”

  “Mimi? Taking it hard, probably harder than she admits to me. But it’s difficult to tell with her. She seems to blame me for what happened, as though sending him out for a newspaper was, I don’t know, selfish. She hasn’t said anything, but it’s there.”

  “Poor you,” Ellen said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I feel guilty enough as it is.” Susan sensed she wanted to ask her something.

  “Was she a problem child?”

  “No, not really,” Susan said, defensively. “Mimi was always going to be a handful for anyone. She was born screaming and hasn’t stopped since. It wasn’t easy bringing up a baby on my own, on a tight budget, rushing round the country before I joined DeKripps.”

  She couldn’t help envying Ellen and her supportive husband who could afford all the domestic help they needed. They’d met at Yale, the corporate ladder seeming to stretch directly from their freshman dormitory window.

  “Maybe there’s something more to it,” Ellen said, breaking into Susan’s reverie. “It strikes me she’s always been pretty aggressive. Have you considered anger management?”

  She said nothing. Mimi had been a full-on teenager turned rebellious adult, that was all. Susan was the one with a psychology degree – she knew her daughter didn’t need therapy, and neither did she for that matter.

  The waiter was standing beside them, pen in hand. Susan chose patatas bravas, squid in ink and beans with sausage. “Anyway, enough about my worries,” she said. “Tell me about you? How are you coping with the twins?”

  Ellen was finding motherhood rather exhausting, as she was breast-feeding both of her baby boys and had a long commute from Chevy Chase.

  “I bet your hormones are still berserk.”

  “How did you guess?” Ellen said. “I sure had baby brain after the birth. But I figure it’s under control now. Of course it’s not something I’d even mention at work.” Then she asked, “How do you feel about working with Barney?”

  “Nervous. I’ve got so used to Frank that a two-toed sloth would seem dynamic. But it was a little dangerous, in its way. Possibly too comfortable. Mimi used to call Frank my partner in crime.”

  “I’m starting to like this girl,” Ellen said. She took out her powder case and pursed her bee-sting l
ips in the mirror, freshening up with a dash of scarlet.

  “As you’re probably aware, Barney doesn’t take any prisoners, by the way.” Then she frowned as though she’d said too much, and added: “I’m sure you don’t need to worry.”

  Susan’s new home was a DeKripps apartment a short walk from work. It reminded her of her office, with all the charisma of an airport lounge, furnished entirely in beige, reproduction Modiglianis on the wall.

  Standing in the gleaming white-tiled shower, she missed her daily soak in the bath in London, and Marmite on toast. At this time of year, the sun would have been streaming through her French windows, a posy of fresh flowers from the garden on her kitchen table. She’d brought family photographs with her but already regretted leaving her favourite glass ornaments packed away in the attic.

  Everything about Penn Quarter was grey. Its anonymous blocks of uniform height cast a dark shadow over the streets and towered over characterless bars, expensive restaurants and cut-price basement stores. It turned out to be the dead heart of Washington, its streets deserted after office hours. And that meant after 6 p.m.

  In the mornings, she’d amuse herself by opening the bedroom curtains with a theatrical swish of the remote control, then close, then open. The bleakness of Washington was at her feet. People were already dressed and heading to their desks and screens. They were streaming out of the Metro heads down, thumbing their phones, carrying coffee. This was a city that took work seriously.

  Everyone seemed to be dragging a suitcase, even if it only contained a laptop. On the few occasions she had a social engagement with a new acquaintance who inevitably turned out to be a lawyer, lobbyist or Congressional aide, they would always suggest a bar or restaurant in trendy Adams Morgan or Eastern Market, rather than downtown where she lived.

  Her main hobby was killing time. If she wasn’t trying to find an English accent on PBS to remind her of home, she’d be on the phone to her mother or Lily. Sometimes she’d drag her self-pity to the E Street Cinema, where she could sniffle in the darkness surrounded by the sweet smell of popcorn and images of Judi Dench or Hugh Grant.

  She missed her colleagues in London, and yearned for that British kind of teasing that was frowned upon, possibly outlawed, in politically correct DC. At the office, she got used to the little transatlantic miscommunications. Once, she asked a colleague where she’d got her suntan. “Saint Tropez,” came the reply.

  “France?” she said, intrigued.

  “No, L Street.”

  She confessed to Frank on one of their regular calls that she was finding it hard to adjust to the monumental perfection of Washington after the anarchic sprawl of London. He wasn’t surprised. He was originally from Chicago and had never liked DC, which he described as a ‘phoney’ town with equally artificial inhabitants.

  “What about friends?” he asked. “Making any?”

  She admitted that Ellen was practically the only person she saw outside work. “But I plan to get out more,” she said. “What are you working on?”

  He told her a colleague had just dropped a report on his desk about children’s eating habits, how at different times of day they would crave either salted or sweet food.

  “That’s an angle,” she said. “Let me think about it. You should get one of your pet doctors on the case too.”

  “You know perfectly well that every single one is of the highest integrity and independence.”

  As usual, he’d risen to the bait. She could never resist teasing him. She’d long suspected the doctors on the DeKripps payroll, who sat on government food advisory boards and wrote for medical journals, were anything but independent.

  Little by little, her anxiety about working for Barney subsided. Before Washington, she’d only met him on a couple of occasions when he had breezed into the London office. She’d always sensed an awkwardness between him and Frank, and it had been fascinating to watch the interaction between them; Frank seemed to shrink physically beside Barney who radiated animal masculinity.

  Susan knew she had no reason to be insecure. She’d given Crunchaloosa cereals their slogan: ‘DeKripps, caring for you and your family’. The words had everything DeKripps wanted to say about nurturing through the generations. Needless to say, her accolades provoked a hurtful remark from Mimi: “What on earth do you know about caring for a family?”

  She was praised for the Buried Treasure cartoon she’d developed in London. It featured a rabbit, a mole and a badger digging for buried treasure – a chocolate bar containing nuggets of glittering golden honeycomb.

  “Kids will love this ad,” said Barney, who decided to give it a TV spot in the US, a rare transatlantic transfer for a corporation that had to be so careful about British commercials and children.

  As Frank had predicted, Barney was rarely in the office. Michelle Obama had launched an anti-obesity drive and the food companies were feeling the heat.

  Barney was quietly informing Congressional staffers, and sometimes their bosses, about DeKripps’ ‘bold’ decision to – slightly - cut the sugar content in its flavoured milk. He came to rely on Susan to chair video conferences with the American staff and the rest of the DeKripps empire.

  “Got to keep them on message, Susie,” he would say, before heading out to a meeting on the Hill. “People need to realise we weren’t waiting to be told what to do. We got there before them, as any responsible company should.”

  At the end of her first month in DC, Barney invited her to join a select group in the DeKripps box at baseball.

  It would mean missing her first Pilates class, something she’d forced herself to join, but such professional invitations were loaded with obligation.

  “I should warn you that I’ve never been to a baseball match before,” she told him. “I hope I won’t let you down.”

  “You just did, Susie. It’s not a match. It’s a game. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You might even enjoy it.”

  She doubted it. All she knew was that it was the end of the season and the Washington Nationals had been on a winning streak despite languishing at the bottom of their division. They followed a sea of red into the stadium in the balmy September heat. Everyone seemed to be wearing bright red with white numbers on their backs.

  “See that number 11 shirt? Zimmerman?” said Barney. “That’s Ryan Zimmerman, the third baseman. The face of the franchise.”

  Barney had covered his shock of grey hair with a red baseball cap with a curly W on the front, and wore a pair of aviator sunglasses. Susan wondered whether she should have changed out of her suit into something less formal. Just as she was beginning to feel out of place in her heels, they reached the box overlooking home base and found a small number of chairs had been set out.

  “Congressman Wilde, thank you for coming,” Barney said, holding out his hand to a corpulent man with bad breath and dark greasy hair.

  “How do you do, Congressman,” said Susie as she greeted the Representative from Iowa.

  “Congressman, this is Susie Perkins from DeKripps London. She’s strategizing with us, but only she knows what that means.”

  “We’re expanding the brand,” said Susan. “Top secret, of course.”

  “You from England? I just love that accent,” said the Congressman. He grabbed and pumped her hand while his eyebrows leapt with enthusiasm. She glanced at Barney for help, but he’d already moved on to another guest.

  She smiled. “Yes, I’ve been working with Frank in London.”

  She could almost touch the fetid air from his mouth, as though dredged from the Anacostia river, and struggled not to turn away.

  Why did she mention Frank? Nobody would know him here. She added, “I do cereals. And ice cream.”

  “Great,” the Congressman said, leaning forward. “I’ve got a pack of Buried Treasure in the office.”

  She smiled again, reaching for a strand of hair and twiddled it under her nose to avoid the stale blasts.

  “So you’re from London?”

  “N
o. Not really. I’ve moved around a bit. Southern England really. University in Brighton, if you know it?”

  “Naw.” A bucket of chicken wings appeared, and he helped himself to two. Susan declined, thinking she didn’t want her hands to go where his greasy fingers had been. Then abruptly, he turned his back on her, and began calling to a new arrival.

  The box was filling up. There was room for about a dozen people, and Susan was introduced to a couple of young Congressional staffers and a woman from the federal regulator.

  She’d done her share of corporate hospitality with Frank, and had always enjoyed schmoozing clients, but tonight she was unsure of herself. It was nothing like the banter over champagne and strawberries at Wimbledon. She understood the guidelines on lobbying in Washington were strictly defined. Behind them was a bar, and most of the guests were drinking beer. They set their glasses down and placed hands on hearts as a soloist began The Star-Spangled Banner.

  The game was interminable. The batsman – or hitter, she heard someone say – stood there avoiding the ball. Susan was afraid of making a fool of herself, and didn’t ask anyone the rules. For long periods, nothing happened. Sometimes when the batsman missed the ball, the crowd applauded. She suppressed a yawn, taking an occasional swig of light beer. From time to time, one or two of them would join the chant of ‘Let’s Go Nats.’

  The lack of action on field meant plenty of time to chat. Susan found herself discussing sales of salted crisps with one of the House Agriculture Committee staffers while he devoured a hotdog that oozed bright yellow mustard.

  She tried to ignore his eyes darting behind her as he sought more high-powered company. She caught sight of Barney deep in conversation with Congressman Wilde. Barney intercepted her gaze and winked. She noticed that Wilde was on first name terms with most of the people in their box. DC is a revolving door of lawmakers and lobbyists, she recalled Frank saying over his cigar.

  It was time for the Presidents’ Race. Barney had explained on the way that the Teddy Roosevelt mascot had never yet won against the other former presidents. Susan felt stupid yelling “Come on, Teddy!” but all the grown men in their box were doing it. They jumped to their feet when the giant mascots burst onto the outfield. She recognised George Washington with his long white hair drawn back in a ponytail, then came Abe Lincoln. The mascot with a white moustache, who jostled Lincoln on the way onto the field, must be William Taft. But where was Teddy?