by Cathy Alter
I sat down for lunch with Lynn, one of my favorite editors in D.C., and showed off the callus I got from painting along the rough stucco walls of our apartment. It reminded me of the small tough patches I used to get on the fingertips of my left hand from playing my guitar nonstop all through junior high.
“My latest round of self-improvement,” I bragged.
Sharp-eyed and endlessly curious, Lynn had a mop of blond curls that shook when she laughed, which was often. I had followed her rising star all over town, first writing for her when she was a features editor at a now-defunct D.C. magazine, and continuing to rise up the food chain with her as she landed a job at the Washington Post. When I started my magazine experiment, I had begged off assignments from her, but we still met for lunch, where I’d update her on my year of magical tinkering over salad and iced tea.
“So,” she said slyly, “what’s the most important thing you’ve learned?”
“That if you’re ever in a pinch, you can use a crumpled-up piece of aluminum foil as a scouring pad.” I delivered this with a straight face, and I could tell Lynn was debating whether I was serious or not.
“That’s your big take-away?” She sounded a little amused and a little disgusted by my answer. “Give me another lesson.”
“That I’ll never find an eye cream that makes me look ten years younger.”
This truth caught her by surprise. She leaned back in the booth and laughed like I had just delivered the funniest punch line of all time.
“Let me tell you,” she said, still laughing, “I’ve got a few years on you, and you don’t really start to look old until you get to be fifty. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” She took a quick bite of salad and continued, “I’m sure if I were to see you at fifty, I’d probably look at you and say, ‘Wow, you look old.’”
Being this matter-of-fact served Lynn well as an editor. It occurred to me that these magazines had often functioned, for better or worse, as a really frank friend.
“Don’t you think,” she asked, pushing deeper, “that these magazines are designed so that women feel bad about themselves? Like they’ll never have the right skirt, the perfect lipstick, or the chicest haircut?”
I squinted at her and grinned. “Have you been talking to Karl or something?”
Of course I knew that Lynn was looking for the big picture, the deeper meaning of my year-long investment. But didn’t every woman know, whether in a private moment of self-doubt or in a public viewing of her carefully made-up face, that these magazines’ whole livelihood was based on inadequacy? Wasn’t that the first thing you learned in Feminism 101? Even Oprah, who focused on honing inner beauty, still had articles about taking ten years off your face by plucking your eyebrows.
The fact of the matter was, I did need to be better. And that’s why I had found these magazines so surprisingly liberating.
“I realize that you can’t solve life’s mysteries with the right pair of shoes or the perfect shade of lipstick,” I acknowledged. “But at least I tried.”
“What do you mean?” Lynn took a bite of salad and motioned with her fork for me to continue.
“I mean that a year ago, I truly hated my life—my poor taste in men, unhealthy diet, whacked-out priorities,” I explained, ticking off my past regrets on my fingers. “But all of my miseries were self-inflicted. That was my choice. I knew that if I wanted to fix my life, to change the equation, I had to start somewhere.”
A wall of women’s magazines was as good a place as any.
Lynn took a sip of her iced tea and leaned back in the booth. “So,” she wondered. “Are you perfect now?”
Was I? I didn’t know the answer. But maybe that was the point.
“I’m a work in progress,” I told her.
“Maybe you’re an example of progress,” she said, editing me.
On the walk home from lunch, I thought about all the other questions hurled at me over the year. “Are women’s magazines a necessary evil?” “Do you hate them?” “Are you a better person for reading Cosmo?”
I always responded with the same answer, “Yes. And no.”
Because while it wasn’t exactly true to say women’s magazines changed my life, it wasn’t exactly false, either. The truth was I opened myself up for change when I opened up my first magazine. The truth was, I believed magazines would help me get a better life. The truth was, my optimism was justified. But the other truth was, these women’s magazines were just the vehicles (ambulances during some months) I took on the road to self-discovery. I was the one who was willing to put on the miles.
EPILOGUE
Renewal
i began my walk down the stairs. As my silver sandals alighted upon each step, I was able to read lines from Homer’s Odyssey, a single line of which appeared on each tread of the staircase in gilded lettering.
But come now, stay with me,
eager though you are
for your journey
My parents were waiting for me at the bottom, watching my descent and smiling like potheads. I saw my mother, who had dressed up her standard black Armani suit with three strands of opera-length pearls, and thought how relieved she must have felt to be standing in such a beautiful, air-conditioned space, thankful that she wouldn’t have to apologize to her friends in attendance for her daughter’s typically kooky ideas ( like a Fat Elvis wedding in Vegas). I watched my father do a last-minute check on his suit, the first suit he’d bought since my brother’s wedding, which was seven years ago. Just a few moments earlier, we had been forced to station people on each floor of the inn to wrangle my father, who had been giving tours of the place, back downstairs and into position.
I sandwiched myself in between them. “Ready to go?” I asked, linking their arms with mine.
“I love you, kid,” said my father.
“You look gorgeous,” said my mother.
The Beatles’ “Because” floated high above the room as we crossed the portal. I could hear everyone’s feet shift as we, a Moses in collective, parted the standing-room-only crowd into a neat aisle.
“Slow down,” I whispered to my mother, who was straining to the finish line. I wanted to take my time, to take inventory, to see as many loving faces as I could as I ended one journey and began another. The first person I spotted was Dave, who was hard to miss since he was waving me down like he had saved a seat for me at the movies. I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of July, when I had slid my letter of resignation under my manager’s door and never looked back.
It was a move prompted not by any magazine article but out of an “emergency” meeting where my boss’s boss demanded to know why I “refused to work with Bruno,” and informed me that if we couldn’t get along, I’d be put on probation. “Believe me,” he warned, “you do not want to find yourself back in this office.” He was absolutely right. I quit the following day, leaving the contents of my cubicle in a time-capsule limbo, like I had gone off to college. Eventually, my manager was the one who packed up ten boxes of my crap and arranged for their delivery, a fitting fuck-you for his wimpy behavior and silent defense of my nemesis.
As I continued down the aisle, I spotted Dr. Oskar, his white-blond hair standing out in the sea of Asians who surrounded him. He was elbow-to-elbow with Karl’s Auntie Gay, and I remembered something I had told him the week before. “This will be like the last two years of therapy come to life,” I had only half joked. “Too bad I can’t make everyone wear name tags.” I noticed Dr. Oskar paying close attention to my mother and hoped he wouldn’t try and analyze her at the reception.
Jeanne and Richard were right up in front. Without ever having met, they had miraculously chosen to stand together, my two most dear and beloved friends. I paused for just a moment in front of them. “Can you believe it?” I said, feeling like I was just about to burst into song. Jeanne had already started to cry. She used an antique linen hankie to dab her eyes. Richard, who had served as my de facto wedding planner and had accompanied me to the n
ail salon every Friday for two months until I found the perfect shade of nude for my fingernails, put his hand on Jeanne’s shoulder and patted it gently. “Don’t get me started,” he told her, which caused everyone around them to laugh.
All weddings, I suppose, are a trip down memory lane. But this one felt even more trippy, like some sort of Cathy Alter, This Is Your Life television show. If I had just walked down Odysseus’s staircase, I was now frolicking among my Greek chorus, who had been with me throughout my journey, remarking on my progress, encouraging me onward, and now banding together to sing my praises.
Before I could kiss her, my mother was off to join my brother David, his wife Abby, and their two little girls, Sophie and Josie, who were running around the chuppah, tossing a flurry of silk rose petals. Joy and Val, both dressed in red, stood across from my family, smiling as Sophie tentatively approached them and dropped a few petals next to their feet. Joy bent down and put her hand on Sophie’s blond head and gently steered her back over to my family.
My father and I watched Sophie drop a few more petals before he turned to take his place next to my mother. “Not so fast,” I told my father, kissing him on both cheeks like I was suddenly in Europe.
Karl stood in front of me, leaning on a cane, his left leg completely obscured by a hip-to-ankle brace that was Velcroed over the leg of his Paul Smith suit. In August, he had crashed his motorcycle when his front tire hit a patch of sand in the road. He sailed over the handlebars, his knee smashing into the metal pole of a bus stop, the surgery to follow…all of my magazine knowledge had come rushing back at me. For the past month, I had been a nurse, maid, short-order cook, and even a sex therapist. When we were sitting in the emergency room the night of the accident, I had overheard a woman who was holding up her bandaged index finger in an “I’m number one!” pose turn to her husband and say, “I’m barely holding on by a thread.” I had repeated that sentiment more than once in the weeks after the accident. But making sacrifices, being a caregiver and being open to receiving care, was a big part of what got me to this place, under the chuppah, next to Karl.
“Family and friends,” began Zelly, reading from his green leather journal. “We are gathered here today to witness and celebrate the joining of Cathy and Karl in marriage.”
Make no mistake. I did not set out with the intention of turning my life over to magazines in order to nab a man (although that part was certainly nice). When I thought about the past year, it really wasn’t about this moment, this wedding. It was about everything that had allowed for this moment. If I had learned anything over the year, it was that the only constant thing in life is change. To truly grow is to suffer these transitions—getting out of a damaging relationship or a rotten job, enduring the illness of a loved one, etc. Because without knowing pain and vulnerability, how do we express gratitude and appreciation? Looking back, I realized that I subscribed to these magazines because I was also subscribing to change.
I hovered over the room like an angel in a Chagall painting and saw that I was about to set off on another adventure, an obvious wedding-day truth that was echoed much better and more profoundly in the Walt Whitman poem I had asked Zelly to read. “Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?” Zelly’s voice cracked as he slowly delivered those last lines, which caused waterworks all around. Even Karl choked up.
“Cathy and Karl,” said Zelly, refocusing our happy tears. “Please face each other and take each other’s hands.”
As Karl recited his vows, he gave my hands a few tight squeezes. “I do,” he said, his face arranged in pure schmaltz. I thought about what was next for me. The stuff all brides think of—a starter house, our first family Thanksgiving, the sweet delight of a baby.
Then, it was my turn.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful most of all to Bonita Brindley, who began this book, and to Karl, who provided the spectacularly happy ending.
I am forever indebted to Billy Fox, who contemplated women’s magazines way more seriously than any man ever should. Billy is a supremely talented writer and composer, and if he’s not already famous by the time this book goes to press, he ought to be. Please look him up and hire him to do anything his heart desires.
Many thanks and the naming of any first borns shall go to Dan Mandel and Greer Hendricks, who believed I could do it long before I did and who always treated me to fancy meals.
Equal thanks goes to my writing compadres, who provided endless amounts of support, inspiration, and willingness to read whatever was put in front of them: Dana Scarton, Melissa Vanefsky, Maria Streshinsky, Sarah Schmelling, Denise Kersten Wills, Sean O’Neill, Matt Summers, Karl Adams, Josh Levine, Gail Lisa Sullivan, Cari Ugent, Tony Schwartz, Page Evans, and Carrington Tarr.
Speaking of writing, I’d like to thank my aunt, Hava Dunn, for encouraging me to write from a very young age and my cousin Stephanie Dunn for continuing to egg me on.
I am endlessly grateful to Stefan Lund and Christopher Lively for seeing me through tough times, and to Terry Gerace for supplying the glorious finish line.
Lastly and always, to my parents, Susan and Elliott, my brother, David, his wife, Abby, and their disgustingly beautiful daughters, Sophie and Josie, all for showing me what a happy life really looks like.
