Break in Case of Emergency (14 page)

“Maybe we should start a business just for Judy,” Daisy said to Jen.

“We could work out of the guest quarters of Judy's guest quarters,” Jen replied.

“Judy could pay us in spa coupons and bichon puppies,” Daisy said.

Judy was Jen and Daisy's shorthand name for any and all Friends of Leora Infinitas, or F.O.L.I., which sounded out as Folly but quickly transmogrified into Fawley—in tribute to the comprehensively unfortunate Jude Fawley of one of Jen and Daisy's shared favorite novels,
Jude the Obscure
—and had then whittled itself down to Jude, and finally Judy. In the days and weeks after LIFt's official launch, Jen spent a plurality of her work hours talking on the phone with Judy, going to coffee or lunch with Judy, and, most important, editing Judy's contributions to the LIFe Lines web channel, which had originated as a blog of updates about programs around the world that LIFt supported but which increasingly devoted itself to Judy's own personal thoughts on women's education, entrepreneurship, and empowerment. Despite all these hours Jen logged with Judy, Judy did not occupy space or have mass (not with any constancy, at least), nor could she be said to be a discrete entity. She was instead an abstract and composite character, or rather a liquid set of characteristics—there was typically an artisanal flourish to her charitable interests, a vested interest in offsetting her carbon footprint, and a stated commitment to public schools that coexisted with her two to three children not being enrolled in them—and these characteristics took on the shape and volume of her assigned vessel, which was invariably and conspicuously and extremely thin, bespeaking a fragility, as well as a volatility, that in turn bespoke the vessel's value. Judy could be capricious and prickly; she could be stubborn about basic points of grammar; and her breadth and depth of everyday knowledge rose and fell according to no known scale. She could, Jen imagined, name-check a jeweler's cut or the season and year of a vintage handbag on sight, yet she seemed unsure if, for example, people who were not recipients of public assistance programs could access the city's public transportation system.

“I'm
not
lying,” Jen told Daisy at the time. “My MetroCard fell out of my coat at the coat check, and as I picked it up, Judy kind of chucked me on the arm and said, ‘So glad we still have a safety net in this society.' ”

“That doesn't mean anything,” Daisy said. “She could have meant the carpet was the safety net.”

“I was
there,
man,” Jen said.

This particular iteration of Judy—she would be forever after known as Safety Net Judy—had just filed a LIFe Lines essay to Jen about her volunteer work with a reading initiative for elementary-school girls and how it reminded Judy of the time her fourth-grade teacher had caught Judy cheating during the Great Lakes Read-a-Thon Contest by asking her about a crucial plot point in
Harriet the Spy
and thus teaching young Judy a lifelong lesson in the importance of authenticity. In order to avoid reading Safety Net Judy's essay, Jen tabbed to another Judy's essay that she was also avoiding reading and saw Daisy's muddy reflection on her screen.

“Who wrote this—Hedge Fund Judy?” Daisy asked, reading over Jen's shoulder.

“Hand-Sanitizer Heiress Judy,” Jen said.

“Is the piece really called ‘Learning to Lasso the Lingo of the Fertility Rodeo'?” Daisy asked, peering more closely.

“For now.” After all the confusion over what TTC actually stood for, Leora had requested the commissioning of a suite of LIFe Lines essays about women's experiences with the decision to have children. Hand-Sanitizer Heiress Judy was the first to file her contribution.

“It's jargon-y,” Daisy said.

“For real. I've been spending all this time on infertility websites—you know, just to figure out all the nomenclature in this piece—and it's truly a whole dialect unto itself,” Jen said. “For instance, what do you think BFP stands for?”

Daisy considered. “Baby for Purchase.”

“Nope, Big Fat Positive. That means you've got a positive pregnancy test. Oh, this one comes up a lot, too—OPK. What do you think OPK stands for?”

“Ovary Place Kicker.”

“Close—Ovulation Predictor Kit. You buy a kit, you pee on a stick, and it tells you when to have sex.”

“And there are lots of numbers here, too,” Daisy said.

“Some of those tell you the diameter of a follicle before it ruptures,” Jen said.

“Ruptures to release an egg?”

“Not necessarily—you can test to see when the follicle is going to rupture, but you don't necessarily know whether or not there's an egg in there.”

“So it's like the bullpen gate swings open, but maybe there's no bull in there,” Daisy said.

“You know,” Jen said, “I'm all for printing whatever is on Judy's mind, but I'm wondering if there's a mixed message here. In one section of the site, we're writing about projects LIFt is funding to help women not get pregnant, and in another, we're writing about how we can't get pregnant.”

“Maybe we could fund a grant to cover the shipping costs of mailing all the surplus babies to the Judys,” Daisy said.

“
Is
fertility a rodeo?” Jen asked.

“Maybe a mixed message requires mixed metaphors,” Daisy said.

“With fertilization I think of salmon swimming upstream,” Jen said. “I guess that's clichéd.”

“But in a rodeo you're in, like, a dusty arena, and you're trying to lasso—it
is
a bull, right?” Daisy asked. “Or sometimes it's a pig?”

“A steer, maybe?”

“So is the lasso the sperm and the steer is the egg? Where are the salmon? What's the vagina?”

“It's hard to find a vagina at the rodeo,” Jen said.

“So this Judy was thirty-three when she decided to go to a fertility doctor,” Daisy said. “That's not so old.”

“It's not all about age,” Jen said. “It can be so many different things.”

Daisy picked up her ringing phone. Jen, intending to wander back to Safety Net Judy's essay, instead lingered over the Total Transformation Challenge submission page.

“They're asking us to do a head count of all the people whose lives were transformed by the program, then divide the organization's budget by that number of people served,” Daisy was saying into the phone. “This is not humanities—this is math. Are you an
addition
sign or a
subtraction
sign?”

Jen considered the instructions for the second category and typed a response.

TTC CATEGORY 2: BODY

How can you challenge yourself to love your body, to treat it as a temple? How can you find ways to express your gratitude for all the amazing things your body can do?

Your response here:

I challenge my body to love itself enough to harvest from the Garden of Earthly Delights.

“That's because he thinks of his foundation as a vending machine,” Daisy was saying into the phone. “You put your money in the top slot and structural change comes out of the bottom slot with your Diet Coke.”

Jen's inbox pinged.

Karina—LIFt

Thursday, Oct 22 5:54 PM

To: Jen—LIFt

Subject: Come to Belize with me

Hi Jen

I have a delicious proposition for you. I'm traveling to Belize in December with one of our new board members. Really fabulous guy who—well, I'll tell you all about it in person. I'm going to have a lot of ground to cover while I'm there, and I'm afraid I just won't be able to do it all by myself. And that's where you come in, dear girl!

And look, not to get into this too much, but you should have a break. You deserve one!

Say yes,

K.

Just then Jen identified the physiological components of pleasure, satisfaction, and joyful anticipation whirling into kaleidoscopic coordination with one another before just as quickly spinning away, their limbic messaging scrambled by a sharp retort from Jen's prefrontal lobes affirming that Jen's entire stimulus-response network, in order to maintain a gray and anxious homeostasis, was catastrophically dependent on the reactions and approval of indiscriminately selected third parties.

Jen stared at Karina's “Say yes” long enough that the letters began to twist away from their semiotic attachments, evoking nothing but their own shapes, then switched back to the Total Transformation Challenge submission page. She considered the instructions for the third category and typed a response.

TTC CATEGORY 3: SPIRIT

How can you challenge your spirit to come into full flower and experience maximum connection with the people and values you cherish most?

Your response here:

I challenge my spirit to locate itself and announce itself to me, because I don't know what it looks like, or what it does, or if I have one.

The really fabulous guy, as Karina later explained, turned out to be Travis Paddock, aka “the Healthy Huntsman,” CEO and cofounder of the fitness company BodMod
™
International and face of the BodMod Nutritionals
™
line of shakes, smoothie blends, snack bars, and sports gels, all of which used a proprietary blend of ingredients that Paddock sourced from indigenous communities around the world.

“His area of expertise is known as ‘particularizing,' ” explained Karina, grabbing a BodMod Green Goodness Stack-a-Maca Bang!
™
Bar from a box under her desk and handing it to Jen.

To unwrap a BodMod Green Goodness Stack-a-Maca Bang!
™
Bar was also to unwrap the weathered Anglo-Saxon terrain of Travis Paddock's grinning face, which adorned all of his products and which Karina had inevitably described as “ruggedly handsome” and which, to Jen's eyes, bumped awkwardly against the Malibu-bleached locks that flopped onto his deep-lined forehead from a hairline of uncertain geographic coordinates. But Jen understood that, to BodMod
™
's intended audience, Paddock's decapitated head atop a one-pound canister of BodMod Pro-Team Protein Pow!Der
™
instantly signified rude health and complicatedly clean living, and presented a useful stand-in for the intricately managed physique that was showcased in BodMod
™
's promotional videos, in which Paddock, in tight-fitting T-shirts and cargo pants, might be glimpsed gripping the husk of a pedicab in Quito to create a bas-relief of his triceps or dashing across the Peruvian highland at twilight, hauling a backpack full of maca in order to illustrate its invigorating qualities.

“A Quechua wife would feed her groom maca on the eve of battle, ensuring that her man would return from the front lines triumphant and unscathed, to greet a bride proudly pregnant with his warrior son,” Paddock explained in voice-over as his silhouette jogged into the sunset.

“He's just old-school man's man's
man,
you know?” Karina asked Jen. “The surfer as hunter-gatherer, board over one shoulder and a clean-shot wildebeest over the other.”

“This is really exciting,” Jen said, “but didn't Leora say recently that she wanted to stick with an all-female board?”

“Quite the contrary,” Karina said, biting her lip flirtatiously. “Leora has been saying that she wants more men, plural, on the board, to send the message that women's issues are
everybody's
issues. You know, that word
integration
—she said it was important to her, and Leora doesn't say anything she doesn't mean.”

“Wow, cool-guy casting alert,” Jen said, nodding emphatically.

“For every single nourishment that we choose to put inside our body,” Paddock intoned to the camera in another promotional video, standing alongside a startled-looking Bolivian farmer whose shoulder tensed in Paddock's manful grip, “you have to ask yourself one question:
What are the medicinals?
” Then the camera cut to Paddock at an unidentified farmers' market, in a different country and a different shade of tight-fitting T-shirt, peering up from a close inspection of a batch of
yacón
roots to tell the camera: “BodMod answers that question. Think of it as Superfoods, Simplified.”

“It's all natural, totally pure, untouched by anything but the hand of God,” Karina said. “What this dude is doing, it's like fair trade on steroids. No, what am I saying—it's like fair trade on medicinal cacao and
sacha inchi
!”

“Right, because steroids aren't natural,” Jen said. “I mean, they
are
natural in that they're organic compounds, but anabolic steroids are kind of definitively unnatural…”

“You're exactly right,” Karina said, staring into space.

Paddock's plan in Belize, Karina explained, was to research and develop a line of herbal teas derived from the nation's diverse ecosystem, particularly its trees: the bark of the bay cedar (“to aid digestion”) and the Billy Webb (“to boost immunity”) and the copal (“to restore the body's pH balance”), the pulp of the calabash tree (“to increase the red blood cell count”), the leaves of the
Senna alata
(“to detoxify the liver and kidneys”), and the seed pods of the stinking toe tree (“to relieve fatigue and the symptoms of diabetes”).

“Can you imagine?” Karina asked Jen. “You've got this guy who looks like a Norse god, who does the Nevada Silverman every year and plays water polo with weights on his ankles just to spice things up, and he's going to market a line of
herbal teas
? It's just so wild!”

“Totally,” Jen said. “Well, I am so grateful for this opportunity, and really psyched that you asked me along. I've never been to Belize—I don't even know much about it. My husband will be so jealous.”

“You know, I don't think I've ever asked you before—what does your husband do?” Karina asked, resting her elbow on her desk and her chin on her fist and squinting, as if about to squeeze all of her powers of attention into an orange juice–like concentrate composed solely of binary data on Jen's husband's occupation.

“He teaches fifth grade in a public school in Flatbush,” Jen said.

Karina shimmed her chin back and forth atop her fist in wonderment. “That's God's work right there,” she said. “You've got a keeper. And where's he from, what about his parents?”

“He's from Erie, Pennsylvania; only child,” Jen said. “His mom was a waitress. She died a few years ago. Cancer.”

Karina furrowed her brow and mashed her lips together. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, she was awesome,” Jen said. “And—and what about your husband, Karina?”

“He's in advertising,” Karina said, rolling her eyes and flopping backward against her chair. “Raw deal.”

“Oh! Why is that a raw deal?” Jen asked.

“When people have less money to spend, the first thing they spend less money on is advertising. Been a tough time for him. I feel for the guy.”

Jen tried to imagine a scenario in which she would say “I feel for the guy” in regard to Jim, and then refocused. “Oh, no, Karina, did he—well, it's none of my business, but was he affected by the financial apocalypse?”

Karina tossed her head and laughed. “Oh, man, the
apocalypse,
” she said. “I'll have to remember that. That's a good one. He's fine. He didn't lose his job, if that's what you're trying to ask me, although sometimes I think that would have been the softer blow. But he did have to be part of a lot of tough decisions about cost-cutting, restructuring staff, the usual brutal calculus of keeping the lights on when there's a storm outside lashing your power lines.” Karina sighed. “Whatever. He's obviously not dashing around the foothills of the Andes trying to save the world, one exotic herb at a time.
Anyway.
What else?”

“So, what is our agenda for the trip?” Jen asked. “Other than hanging out with this awesome guy, which is agenda enough, obviously!”

“Ha,
agenda
—that is
such
a Jen question, such a Jen
word,
” Karina said. “I love it. I do. I love you! But to be honest, we're off to a subtropical paradise with a board member who's sourcing foods that can cure everything from procrastination to cancer, and he's helping entire communities of subsistence farmers while he does it. Really, how much of an
agenda
do we need?”

“Sure, sure,” Jen said. “And so, many of these subsistence farmers are—women?”

“Yes, of course,” Karina said. “It's a real by-women-for-women kind of deal. For a project affiliated with LIFt, I think that goes without saying.”

“Travis Paddock's eye-watering macho masculine manliness notwithstanding,” Jen said, and cushion-laughed.

“I don't follow,” Karina said.

“Just so I understand,” Jen said, “we're tagging along on one of his research trips, right? And I'm guessing that we could meet with some local farmers or collectives—women farmers, women's collectives—that could benefit from a LIFt grant? Is that the general idea? And my role—the communications role here would be—documentation? Photos, interviews…”

“Mmm,” Karina said.

“And so, this might sound like a weird question, but is there a way in which this becomes a kind of promotional opportunity for Travis's company—it's called BodMod, right?” Jen asked.

“Promotional opportunity, huh. I mean, if you want to be cynical about it, sure, you can put it that way,” Karina said, twisting her mouth into a constipated smile. “If that's your
agenda.
”

“No, that's not what I meant,” Jen said, resisting the urge to cushion-laugh again. “Like I said, I think you've just been in deeper with this project, and I'm clumsily trying to catch up!”

“Catch up when you land in Belize,” Karina said, swiveling her body toward her computer and laying her fingers on her keyboard while keeping her eyes locked with Jen's, her head poised at a 90-degree angle from the rest of her body. “Be in the moment and just open yourself up to the journey. Who knows what we'll discover there, right?”

“I just—I know you're busy, I just want to make sure that there isn't anything we need to keep in mind in terms of—of any kind of collaboration we're making between LIFt as a charitable entity and BodMod as a for-profit business.”

Karina frowned. “Good to know,” she said, drumming her fingers lightly on her keyboard and turning her head toward her computer screen.

“Maybe we could loop Daisy in?” Jen asked. “She would have all the intel on programs we could consider funding in Belize.”

“We'll certainly keep it in mind,” Karina said to her monitor.

“Well, we can discuss it now if you want?” Jen said. She was still resisting the urge to cushion-laugh, but just then a little puff of conciliatory air escaped.

“Look, Jen,” Karina said to her computer, “if this opportunity just isn't calling your name—if you just can't
hear
it—I understand completely. There're plenty of other people on the LIFt team who might be able to strike that harmony the moment they hear the tune, so to speak.” Karina clicked her mouse to open an email.

“No, no, I'm really excited to go—I can hear the harmony!” said Jen, finally succumbing again to the lure of the cushion-laugh. “I can't wait. Apologies for giving off a different impression.”

“Like I said, just open yourself up to the journey,” Karina said to her email.

“Absolutely,” Jen said, rising to go. “Door open or closed?”

“Closed. Also, can you see if Donna is in her office?”

Jen peered next door. “Nope, not at her desk.”

“Can you just take a spin around the building and round her up for me?” Karina asked, her eyes fixed glassily on her screen and her fingers already typing. “Thanks.”