About Face (7 page)

David's concession—not the one she'd been hoping for—was that he'd retire before her and stop pressuring her to join him.

The clock ticked, a few cars crawled by, and a neighborhood dog barked.

“You're saying you're going to do it whether I do or not? As if it didn't affect me?”

David let go of her hand, moved his chair away from the table and crossed his legs. He thought for a minute, then said, “Time to be honest. Okay?”

She nodded.

“I've never understood why you stayed at Mimosa this long. At the beginning, you kept saying you were only doing the whole corporate gig so we could afford to send Josh to any school he wanted.”

“But I got into it.”

“Don't get me wrong, I don't care that you stayed even after Josh's tuition was saved up, I…”

“I guess it was Dean, he was such a great boss. The freedom, the creativity. It was kind of heady.”

“And now…?”

She pouted, mashing her remaining potato pieces into oblivion, then moving the mush around her plate. Her eyebrows reached for each other, then raised in surprise. Her mouth moved to one side of her face, then returned to center. She bent her nose with the back of her hand.

David asked, “Who just won that argument? And who was arguing with whom? About what, exactly?”

“Can we really afford to retire?”

They discussed their finances, thrust-and-parry. Ruth said they were inching toward the magic figure established by their financial planner. David insisted that was just a tool and they could overrule it. They could live on less and sell their wildly-appreciated home. He started to clear the table and said he was just plain tired of working and thought she wasn't enjoying it much either.

“Not true. I only tell you about the crummy parts because I need to vent. But that's not all there is to it.” She was glad she hadn't told him about Jeremy and the charity benefits.

“Isn't it okay to just have some freedom and some fun?”

“Fun? What would I do? I've always worked.”

“You don't need to have it all planned out before you make this decision. We can just… ”

Outside, an insistent car horn startled her. They both looked out the window but saw nothing. The horn stopped.

“I
do
want to talk about this, Ruthie. But I want to talk about what it's really about. You know it's not about money … or playing golf with the ladies. What is it?”

“I guess you're sort of right. I don't want to play golf and I do worry about money….”

“And?”

“And I hate change.”

“And?”

“Well, there's something else, too. Something happened at work yesterday.”

“A good something or a bad something?”

“Not so good. But maybe something good will come out of it. I don't know.”

“I knew there was something bothering you last night. What's going on?”

“You have to promise not to use it as a reason I should retire.”

“Okay. I won't. Really.”

Ruth told David about Jeremy canceling the benefit program. He, more than anyone, knew the extent of the blow and was appropriately horrified. After just the right amount of proxied self-righteous anger, David said, “I'm trapped. I can't say what I want to say because I promised I wouldn't.”

“Wait, I haven't told you the part about ‘Maybe good will come out of it.'”

“Ah, right.” He put his elbows on the table, leaned his chin into his palms, and raised his eyebrows.

She described her recent thoughts about a new product line for older women. It wasn't just about looking back and accounting for herself, she said. It was also a good offense-is-the-best-defense regarding Jeremy. If it were successful.

While it was true that she was never entirely comfortable in her corporate skin, she admitted he'd been right about how she liked being good at what she did. And with this, she could be very good at what she did. She talked about values and the demographics of middle-aged women, their increasing dominance in the population and affluence curve.

The best thing about it, though, was that it was about the idea of authenticity. She spoke louder and faster, losing her sense of David as audience, gesturing grandly to the appliances and cabinets. David followed her with his eyes.

“Authenticity has become very important to me, like there's no more time left for bullshit. You know what I mean by authenticity?” Standing up, she put her hands on the back of the chair, feeling the power of her own enthusiasm make her feel tall.

“Well, I think it's—”

“It's having an ‘outside' that matches your ‘inside.' It's being real. Everyone's dying to be real, and I am too. And this will help me feel more authentic and—I don't want to be grandiose about this—it just might help other women to feel a little more authentic too, like they don't have to pretend to be something they're not. Like they can just walk down the street and be who they are.” She stopped pacing, looked up at David, and added, “And I've got a working name for it.” She scrunched up her mouth, as if part of her wanted to keep from saying the name and going public.

“Yes?”

“I'm thinking of calling it ‘Violins & Wine.' Because those are things that get better with age.”

She lowered her head as she sat down. After a moment, she looked up and said, “What do you think?”

David said it was obvious that she had a different kind of passion for this idea. More than the scarf set or the color bubble-bath or any other product he could remember. He also agreed that it was a good idea and a good name. Between the idea itself and her passion for it, he was willing to concede that she should pursue it. While he pursued retirement.

She started to object, but he cut her off.

“Surely you're not suggesting that I work three extra years so you can pursue your ambition at Mimosa. Right?”

“I guess not. No, certainly not. Not that I'd mind, though. But you're right.”

“Ruthie, you've always said you wanted to be more of a risk-taker. So here's your chance. You do the new idea. Be creative and innovative. Be risky. Meanwhile, I'll take the retirement deal. We'll start out that way and see what happens. I'll have dinner on the table when you get home. But … no ironing.”

She asked if he'd consider waiting until the last minute to tell the school officially, just to help her get used to the idea. He agreed to think about it.

“Now,” he said, “since I worked my fingers to the bone preparing lunch, you think about your stuff and I'll think about mine while you clean up.” Registering Ruth's open-eyed look of surprise, he ran out of the kitchen, scooping up the newspaper on his way.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Brain Trust Weighs In

 

 

ARRIVING EARLY AT RUTH'S house for the hastily-called meeting of The Brain Trust, Blanche accepted a glass of wine without any of the usual polite hesitation. She seated herself on the green leather couch directly in front of the cheese platter, arranged her amber-bead necklace so it hung symmetrically on her plush velvet top, then took a generous sip and sighed loudly.

“I'm so glad you broke the rule. I don't care what anyone says, girl, nuts and chips may be easy for the hostess but they're not food. Cheese is food.” She moved the throw pillow at her right elbow, putting it behind her head, then flopped back onto it.

“This is the nicest part of my day so far. No customers looking for just the right pencil with just the right eraser in just the right color. No vendors insisting that chartreuse notebook paper is going to be really really big next year and I should stock up. No employees who need to change their schedule because their second cousin's girlfriend's daughter is graduating. Just wine and cheese and friends. Heaven.”

“Seems only fair. You come over on short notice, I thank you. Or maybe you should consider it a bribe in case there's a next time,” Ruth said.

In the three years since this group of menopausal women had started their monthly meetings to share information and feelings, this was only the second special session. The first, ten months ago, had helped a member sort through the overload of information about treatment options after her diagnosis of breast cancer, providing emotional support along the way.

While Ruth thought her reason for assembling the group seemed trivial compared to cancer, she'd asked anyway. Talking to David had convinced her she needed to put up or shut up. Now she had a goal and a ticking clock, as motivating a combination as a wind-up key in her back. The Brain Trust would be a unique source of information, so she'd asked them to help her with “an important work problem.” Four of the five could come.

Blanche finished her cracker, brushed the crumbs off her leather pants and eyed the platter. “You certainly were mysterious about it on the phone. And now I see video cameras? As my mamma would say, the plot she do thicken.”

“As soon as everyone's here, I—”

“Don't mind me, I'm fine and oh-so-happy to sit quietly and make a pig of myself.” She took a cracker and over-loaded it with cheese, looked at her cheese-mountain, then at Ruth.

“Too much cheese, right?” Before she received an answer, she put another cracker on top of the cheese. “There, that's better.” She put her hand on her belly and said, “Ruth, I promise to name my pot belly after you.”

As curious as Blanche was, Ruth was eager to hear her input, since she was an uncommon intersection of two-feet-on-the-ground common sense, new age spirituality, and a bit of vanity. Plus she was the only African-American in the group.

Ruth walked around the room, fluffing cushions, lighting lights, and closing curtains. She made sure the two video-cameras covered the couch, the loveseat, the overstuffed armchair, and the wooden rocking chair she'd brought from the den.

Charlie and Sarah arrived within a minute of each other. Blanche got up to join in the hugging. They complained about the busyness of their days keeping them from seeing one another more often, caught up with each other's lives, commented approvingly on haircuts, weight-loss and jewelry, and headed greedily for the table with the cheese.

Ruth-the-marketing-executive saw the group of four, including herself, as an iconic collection of various middle-aged shapes and sizes. Their unifying force was menopause. Some were “only” peri-menopausal, the run-up to the main event, feeling all the symptoms but not yet eligible for chemical relief, others were in the throes itself.

The great divide was between those who believed menopause was a natural wisdom-enhancing part of life, and shouldn't be medicated as if it were a disease, and those who held that wisdom was fine but suffering was not, especially if medicine could help. Whatever their beliefs about menopause, though, they helped each other in the way that women do well.

When Ruth returned from depositing coats, the chatting was in full swing. Blanche was finishing the story of her mamma's not realizing that “Blanche” meant “white” in French, or she'd surely have picked another name. Sarah was telling how she called her first private therapy patient by the wrong name and he was too timid to correct her and the subject of his timidity carried them through the next few sessions. When she sighed and put her hand on her chest, she realized she was still wearing her ID badge from today's pro bono work at the Rehab Center—”Hello, I'm Sarah and I want to help you”—and removed it.

Charlie said, “Jane's going to be a little late and she said not to wait for her. Something about ‘No Child Left Behind.' Or maybe it was ‘Whack No Child's Behind.' Or ‘The Behind of the Child on the Left—”

“Let's start.” Sarah's fog-horn voice often said what everyone was thinking. “But first, Ruth, maybe you want to tell us about those video cameras? Are we live on TV?” She pinched her cheeks, tilted her head, batted her eyelashes, and assumed a false smile. “Or are we just being taped for broadcast later on?”

Ruth plopped herself into one of the armchairs and explained that the cameras were just to provide a record—a better record than a tape recorder—of what everyone said, so she didn't have to take notes. “They're just a mechanical aid for someone who can't retain anything … ”

“Except water,” came the boisterous chorus. Amid laughter at their oft-repeated joke, they said the cameras would be fine.

Ruth announced the subject of the meeting was makeup. Skincare, too.

“No surprises there,” Blanche said.

She wanted to know who used which products, why they used them, and what they wanted the products to do for them. “And after we talk about that, I'll tell you why I'm asking. It's something I'm cooking up at work. And I'll want to hear what you think about that, too.”

While Ruth went outside the brightly-lit seating area to turn on the video cameras, the three who remained looked at each other. Sarah said, “Who wants to start?”

Charlie leaned forward as if she were serving up the ball in a hotly-contested tennis match. As a weaver whose work commanded high prices, she dressed as the high-class artist she was. “I'll start.” As she spoke, she nodded, and her dangling silver earrings shimmered and caught the light, an effect that looked particularly good with the snowy whiteness of her hair.

“I wash and tone my face and then use moisturizer. I use any old product, usually the drugstore kind. I do it in the morning. I know you're supposed to do it at night, too. Before you go to sleep. But I'm usually too tired.”

She looked around from one woman to the next as she spoke. At first, she glanced at the camera occasionally, but by the time she finished what she had to say, she'd forgotten about it completely.

“Makeup's another story. I draw the line at makeup. Cleanliness is good. It's healthful, right? But it seems like makeup is a way of saying you don't like how you look so you want to try to look different. Want to hide yourself. Know what I mean? It's a kind of self-hate. It's very anti-feminist. I just don't know if I could do it.” She raised her eyebrows and brought both palms up. “Hey, I went to Berkeley in the sixties and I can't help myself. It's marked me for life. But if I thought it would really work….”

Even though Charlie's gaze eventually settled on her, Ruth avoided it. She'd learned long ago, when driving Josh and his friends in her van, that keeping quiet allowed others to forget about her and talk as if she weren't there. She was sure if she stayed invisible for awhile tonight, she'd get good material to use in the meeting she'd set up with Jeremy for the following Tuesday. Maybe even a few of his beloved numbers.

“I don't agree,” Blanche said. “It's not about self-hate. Any more than choosing flattering clothing is about self-hate. Actually, choosing clothes that make you look fat is more like self-hate. In my opinion. Makeup is just like that. It's about looking your best.”

Meanwhile, Jane had arrived, amid chants of “Run, Jane run. Sit, Jane, sit. Have cheese, Jane, have cheese.” She settled herself on the rocking chair and took some cracker and cheese snacks while they filled her in on the topic.

Blanche continued, though she first made sure the clasp of her necklace was in the center of the back of her neck.

“I for one like to present myself in a good light. And it's not just because I want other people to think I look good, but also because it helps me
feel
good. So, to answer your question, Ruth, I use cleanser and toner and moisturizer, too. But I also use foundation and blush and mascara. Oh, and lipstick, too, of course.”

“Of course'? What do you mean, ‘lipstick
of course
,'” Sarah boomed. “I don't wear lipstick, or any make-up. Because that's just buying into a false image of female beauty. And the main effect is to make most of us feel terrible about ourselves. Because, really, very few of us measure up to the media image.”

The founder of the group, Sarah was also the oldest and least ambivalent about her opinions. “I've worked with a few anorexic girls and let me tell you what the ideal of female beauty has done for them. They just want to present themselves in a positive light, too, you know.”

“It's not always—” Jane was pointing her index finger at Sarah, looking every inch the schoolteacher.

“Let me finish. I was also going to say that it's also too much trouble to do all that stuff. Especially since it doesn't do any good anyway.”

“What if it did?” Blanche looked over her red glasses with an impish half-smile.

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose, just for the moment, that all the goo did what it says it does—sorry Ruth, I don't mean to imply it doesn't, it's just a way to frame the question for Ms. Sarah the supremely sincere and authentic. Suppose it did make you beautiful and young-looking. Then would you go to all the trouble?”

“Troublemaker.” Sarah put her two hands out, palms up, like a balance scale and alternated lowering one, then the other. “Politics. Vanity. Politics. Vanity. I have to think about that one.” Her serious face transformed itself, with a girlish grin surrounded by wrinkles and listless gray-brown hair.

“A whole new side of Sarah,” Blanche said. “Interesting, very interesting.”

“You know,” Jane said as she rocked back and forth, “I think it's very hard line to draw between self-acceptance and self-help. You know?” If Sarah was the conscience and the sage, the stern mother-figure of the group, Jane was the understanding one, the loving aunt you'd go to when you had to talk to someone about the kids in school who were picking on you. Her round face, short curly hair, and front-tooth-gap gave her an androgynous air, which contributed to the role. So did her voice, soft except when provoked. She was the teacher they all wished they'd had.

“Like when you look at yourself in the morning when you're getting ready for work. Come on, now, is there anyone here who wants to pretend that they look in the mirror and they don't see something they'd like to change?”

Silence.

“Right. See? That's what I mean.”

“I'm pretty happy with the way I look,” Blanche said. “Except for the belly, I guess.”

Sarah said, “You're belly's just fine, Blanche.”

Jane shot back, “I thought we were talking about how we
feel
.”

“You're right. Sorry,” Sarah said.

“Maybe my belly's okay and maybe it's not, but I feel like I wish I could just slice that belly away.”

“It's like what Sarah said, sort of,” Blanche continued, pantomiming a balance scale as Sarah had done. “Vanity. Denial. Vanity. Denial. On the one hand, I feel like it's unrealistic to want to look twenty-five when I'm fifty-five, and I should just accept myself and not do that whole rejection thing. I tell myself I should be more spiritual than that.”

Baritone Sarah jumped at her opening. “That's just what I'm talking—”

“Don't validate my spiritual side until you hear about the other hand, which is that I feel like I should be going to the gym and working out.”

“And while we're on the subject of the other hand, and the sound it makes when it's clapping,” Charlie looked pleased with her little turn of phrase, “I hate the way my face and especially my neck, are turning into corduroy. I wish I could iron them.”

“You think wrinkles are bad?” Jane asked. “I'll tell you what's really bad. Folds. When you get folds like I'm starting to get—” she stretched out the skin on either side of her mouth—”then you'll wish you had wrinkles again.”

“Except maybe for those little ones around your mouth,” Charlie said, “that make your pucker look like an asshole.”