by Leigh Stein
“Hey, that’s my foot!” a woman yelled in the front row.
“Then move your fucking foot,” one of the creepy ghosts yelled back. A cyclone of gasps at the table. At the next table, two twentysomethings clutched their Kate Spade bags to their chests like armor. Something violent was about to happen. Somewhere, someone was crying. Maybe they had guns. Maybe this was the end of my life. A senseless mass murder of all the influencers they could find together in the same room. At least Maren and I would die together.
A masked woman walked directly toward me, one naked boob sticking defiantly out of her blouse, an actual baby attached to the nipple. I was cornered. I couldn’t run. I would have had to run right through them. There were at least thirty women, maybe forty. Some of the masks were starting to slip off and the protestors were frantically trying to keep them stuck on, even tilting their faces up at the ceiling so it almost looked like they were praying when they unrolled the pink and green beach towels, the beach towels from my own office, the beach towels that said “Believe Victims” and once their flags had unfurled, they began chanting the words.
You Must Change Your Life
Maren
According to the internet, I was right.
Does your friend only talk about her relationship at a very surface level, without going into detail about what it’s like when the two are alone together?
Is she attached to her phone when she’s away from him, just in case she might miss a message and risk his anger?
Does she seem apologetic for her partner’s behavior?
Does she make excuses on his behalf?
Devin was the bird in the wall, flapping her wings desperately as I tried to identify the source of her entrapment. How had I missed the signs for so long? Had she wanted me to notice? Were all her excuses for his behavior, her denial, cries for my help?
She was staring out the window of the cab, lost in her own movie, sniffling intermittently, while I googled what to do. I was taking her home. At least with me, she was safe.
Everything had happened so fast that I only had time to react, like Tom Cruise but taller, basically invincible, my wrist braces my shield against the women standing between me and the fireplace where Devin stood trembling, repeating the names of every important person she knew into a microphone, hoping someone else could fix what went so wrong. My feet crunched over granola crumbs and slipped on goop from fallen face masks. The newly nude-faced protestors reached into their backpacks for scarves and handkerchiefs, to hide their refreshed complexions.
“Hey hey! Ho ho! Believe victims or you’ve got to go! Hey hey! Ho ho!”
All the conference attendees had their phones out, documenting that they were, like, actually there. Even the women rushing toward the exits ran backward in order to take some video for their Instagram story. One of the event photographers was standing on the buffet table, straddling a platter of mini croissants, so he could get an aerial view of the chaos.
They were protesting Devin as if she were some major corporation that had profited from the transatlantic slave trade. They were protesting against a system of violence and oppression. But Devin wasn’t systemic. She and I were just two women who had started a company together—from scratch. We had leaned in. This was America. Everyone was supposed to be on our side.
“Devin, we have to go now,” I told her, taking the mic from her and setting it on the chair. Two security guards from the law school were escorting Arianna out. So sorry, she mouthed. Yikes! This was our problem, not hers.
“I looked for you!” Devin cried. “I looked for you and you weren’t there.” I had never seen her so small, like a child separated from her mother at a carnival.
“I was here the whole time,” I said.
“What do they want from me? I’ll read the statement if you think I should read the statement.”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward a fire exit at the back of the banquet room.
“No crying,” I said. “Not until we’re in the cab.”
Does your friend seem on edge around her partner?
Is she giving up activities that once seemed important to her?
Is she physically isolated from her friends?
Is she lying to you?
“Do you have any booze?” I asked, searching her kitchen cabinets, but finding only tapioca flour, teff flour, chia seeds, Medjool dates, mung beans, and three dozen individual servings of unsweetened organic applesauce.
“Check the wine fridge,” Devin said.
Of course. The wine fridge.
I selected a discreetly labeled bottle of pinot noir that, if I had to guess, cost more than eleven dollars. At Evan’s apartment the night before, he had offered me a drink and I had refused on principle. The principle of not taking anything from him that wasn’t a sacrifice. I’m surprised. I thought you drank, he said. Not anymore, I told him. I could almost see the new me when I said it. Then I stood at his marble kitchen island like a sentry, dictating what he should write in his statement. After I left, I was sure he’d immediately destroyed the pictures I traded in exchange, lighting them on fire with a match on his wraparound terrace, telling himself he was a victim of blackmail, not a perpetrator of sexual violence.
If he laid one finger on Devin, I would kill him. Not literally, because I knew enough about mass incarceration to not want to go there, but I would ruin his life somehow, using the internet, until he rued the day he met me.
“It’s nine in the morning,” Devin said, when I handed her a glass.
“It’s ten fifteen.”
Devin’s apartment had the spacious dimensions of a yoga studio, with bamboo floors and windowsill succulents, an altar to Lakshmi and Mary-Kate Olsen, and more props than furniture. I sat on a meditation cushion, hunched over bent knees in my tight dress.
“How did they even get the towels from my office?” She was lying on the couch, looking as pale and fragile as a peeled banana.
“You know as much as I do,” I said, raising the bottle. “Cheers. To women supporting other women.”
Devin swirled the pinot in her glass and sniffed. I took a swig directly from the bottle and scrolled through the FoundressSummit17 hashtag on Twitter.
@FoundressSummit are you providing refunds for those of us who didn’t sign up to attend a protest this morning?
@FoundressSummit how was that prof development???
@FoundressSummit I flew in from Charlotte just to have the opportunity to meet @ForRealAriannaTran and I’m soooooo disappointed. Can I get an e-intro?
Everyone’s talking about Devin Avery’s misogyny but is anyone talking about how @FoundressSummit doesn’t allow nursing infants? Journos, DM me for my story.
Due to a scheduling conflict, @VerifiablyEvanWiley will not be able to participate in today’s Pitch Pageant. All other programming is ON, as planned.
“Where’s my phone?”
“In your bag,” I said.
“My bag is in the green room.”
“Shit.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking off her blazer and turning it into a tent to cover her entire face and chest.
“I’ll send an intern.”
“It’s better this way. This way I don’t have to know.”
It was mind-blowing to me that she could just opt out from the live feed of reactions to the shitshow we’d both lived through. There was a nine-second video of Devin’s facial expressions—puzzled, pissed, pained, panicked—as she watched the protestors, with twelve hundred retweets already. Nothing I ever did in the nonprofit space ever went so viral. In the attention economy, thoughtful solutions had so little value. What you did wrong was more engaging than what you did right. While she lay corpselike on the couch, her phone a limb lost on the battlefield, Devin was reaching the pinnacle of internet fame. Her face had become a meme.
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Tell your friend you’re concerned about her. Say, what’s up with you lately? I never see you anymore. Say, I love you.
Say, I’ll always be here for you.
Listen.
Make sure she knows it’s not her fault.
I put my phone screen down on the coffee table and sat next to Devin’s legs. Now I couldn’t look at her body without thinking of him, where he had touched her, how he might have violated her.
“Help me understand,” I finally said.
“Understand what.”
“What it’s like being Evan’s girlfriend.”
“Are you joking?”
“I really want to know,” I said. I thought of all those nights I spent at the office, sending emails, staring at spreadsheets until my eyes crossed, adding emojis to the interns’ idiotic posts on Slack so they felt appreciated, while the two of them were together, that whole time, leading a life that didn’t include me. I felt like the hired help, the virtual assistant in another time zone.
“Whatever I say, you’re going to twist it around to make him the bad guy.”
“Is that why you never talk about him?”
She pulled down the jacket to reveal her face. The color was coming back to her cheeks. “We’re very private people. We just like being at home together, like you and John. I don’t have to post every part of my life on social.”
“This is different. This is me. I’m not a digital platform. If you met someone you were totally crazy about, I’d want you to tell me.”
“So you could stalk them online.”
“So I could stalk them online,” I repeated, and this made Devin laugh. I drank from the bottle.
“I think I should go somewhere,” she said, rubbing her eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was still laughing or about to start crying. “To find out what’s wrong with me. Like rehab.”
“Rehab for what?”
“Like a detox.”
“You’re already the queen of detox,” I said. “You need whatever the opposite of detox is. You need retox.”
I held the wineglass to her mouth.
“This is awkward, but I have to ask, so drink up. Has Evan ever been physically violent with you?”
“He’s not like that. You know him.”
“Is that what he told you to say?”
“It’s not Evan, it’s me. There’s something wrong with me. I think I might have burnout.”
No you don’t, I thought. That’s what I have.
How was I supposed to succeed in my role as the concerned friend in the “so you think your friend might be in an abusive relationship” script when Devin kept deflecting? Devin didn’t have body dysmorphia; she had celiac disease. She wasn’t lazy; she was mindful. She wasn’t bulimic; she was cleansing her colon. She wasn’t a victim—just burned out. She worked so hard. She just needed a break.
I put my hands on her ankles and held her to the couch.
“You don’t work hard enough to have burnout,” I said.
She blinked at me.
“Look at our lives. You leave work at six on the dot to take a thirty-five-dollar aerobics class. You live here. You have a wine fridge. You subscribe to a fresh juice delivery service. You ‘unplug’ on weekends and put your phone in a special handwoven basket. Look at me. I’m wearing a dress that makes me look like a sausage because it was forty percent off. Look at my—” I held up my wrists. “My hands are numb right now.”
“What about my eczema!”
“You know I put in more hours than you at the office, but you won’t admit it because you think your beauty and grooming routines should count as work.”
She stood up so fast she kicked me and her jacket flew off. Her arms were pale, unblemished, delicately defined in the Tracy Anderson mode. The scent of her body was sweat and period blood, hardly masked by her useless natural deodorant.
“I just think if we’re being radically honest with one another—”
“Fuck you, Maren.”
“Tell me what’s really going on with Evan and then I can help you.”
“I don’t need your help. I’m not the sick one. You’re the one who thinks she deserves a trophy for having no life. Good job, Maren, here’s a sticker for answering all your emails instead of sleeping. Congratulations on all the weekends you’ve spent at the office alone. It’s pathetic. You think everyone should feel sorry for you just because you don’t know how to take care of yourself.”
She was wrong. I wanted so much more than a trophy or sympathy—I wanted damages. I wanted financial compensation for working the hardest and sacrificing the most to the cause: my own health and well-being. I wanted Devin to die and leave me her apartment in her will. No, that would take too long. I wanted her to Venmo me $10,000 right now. You deserve this. You’ve been a good girl. You’ve helped so many people. With more money, maybe I could be a beautiful, skinny bitch, too. What a luxury, to be able to devote so much time and attention to your body’s inputs and outputs, to be able to say your biggest flaw is your perfectionism. I took a long swig from the bottle, looking her right in the eye, daring her to name my problem out loud.
“I get it,” she said, refilling her glass from the refrigerator water dispenser. “I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You think I’m just a walking selfie. You’re wondering why I was interviewing Arianna this morning, and not you. You’re like, Why do we need her again?”
“That’s not true. I do need you.”
“Your feminism”—she hiccupped—“is pretending you don’t think less of other women, but you’re full of shit. You think less of me.”
Something had happened to her. When I first met Devin, she was ambitious and effervescent. Her desk at work was covered in unicorn plush toys and bouquets of pink flowers and books about being boss. She went after every project with the confidence that she would figure it all out as she went along. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been dating Evan, but he had efficiently sucked out all her life force, her self-esteem. He’d damaged us.
This was the moment when I should have completed the game of telephone and told her to love herself the way other people loved her. The way I loved her. She couldn’t see it.
“Hey, Devin,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you so upset.”
I followed her to the bathroom, but she slammed the door in my face. I listened to the sounds of her puke hitting the toilet water. She didn’t even turn on the faucet. She wanted me to hear.
Khadijah
Are you sure I’m allowed to be in here?” Adam asked, gesturing at a three-tier cake made of boxes of organic cotton tampons that a company sent over as a thank-you for writing branded content that was so good they were going to use our words as an endorsement in their next ad campaign: “Absorbent AF.”
I knew that no one would be at the office. Devin and Maren were both at a conference. Chloé had called in sick. Diana was MIA. Katelyn left a Post-it on my desk to say she was going for a coffee run, but it was 10:30 and she still wasn’t back.
A couple of the girls from marketing recognized Adam from photos I’d posted of us on Richual.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Jesus?” one said.
“Wow, thank you,” he said, and winked at me.
He’d come into the city for my twenty-week scan. My white OB liked him more than me and she wasn’t polite enough to hide it. They were having a conversation about Linda Ronstadt’s influence on the longevity of Warren Zevon’s career, while I waited for her to look at my fetus and tell me everything that might possibly go wrong so I could prepare myself.
“The baby is in the breech position now, but there’s still plenty of time for the baby to turn. It’s something we’ll continue to monitor.”
“And if the baby stays like that,
I’ll have to have a C-section, right?” I asked. “I don’t want a C-section.”
“Like I said, we’ll continue to wait and see. Nothing to worry about yet,” she said.
Adam squeezed my hand. His grip was warm and firm, an anchor.
“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Giving Birth Vaginally but Were Afraid to Ask,” I thought, self-soothing the only way I knew how, by translating my anxiety into content. “Are the Organic Skin Care Products You’re Putting on Your Face Safe for the Baby in Your Womb?” “So You’re Pregnant and You Just Ate Two Bites of Bleu Cheese: One Woman’s Story.” “Here Are the Symptoms of Preeclampsia, the Life-Threatening Disorder Kim Kardashian West Knows All Too Well.”
My legs were so restless they felt haunted. Even bracketed by pillows, I woke up throughout the night, thinking about how I wasn’t getting enough sleep. Maybe I was just lonely. As much as Adam assured me he was there for me, here for this, I needed him to show me. I yawned constantly, trying to unpop my ears. Pregnancy was not something I could compartmentalize, like a hobby or a grudge.
Wherever I browsed online, I was seeing ads for Stretch Marks Survival Kit, Prenatal Cradle belly band, Organic Nipple Butter. There was no end to what I could buy to change my body or keep my body from changing or heal my body from a change.
My mother said I was spending too much time in internet forums, letting strangers tell me what was normal and what wasn’t, instead of asking someone who’d known me my whole life.
“You haven’t been pregnant in more than twenty-five years,” I told her on FaceTime.
“You think we did it different back then?”
“It’s not that. It’s how much information I’m expected to know now, just because I have access to it. Do you think I should hire a birth coach?”
