Spinster (30 page)

But longing to do something is, of course, a far remove from doing. (“Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances,” wrote the poet Robert Hass.) The hard-won knowledge that I couldn't live alone—in New York City, at least—off writing freelance essays and book reviews made my astonishingly low salary and mediocre benefits package gleam like the proverbial golden handcuffs—a cheap, plastic kind, with the gold paint flaking off. I suspected that had I been conversant in things more people want to read about—politics, science, fashion, pop culture—my way forward might have been more direct; on its own, my only specific intellectual interest—dead forgotten female writers—was laughably uncommercial.

One afternoon, during my daily tearing of the yellow padded envelopes, out popped a book that looked like a prewrapped gift: hot-pink polka dots on a white background, a ribbon of script declaring
Entertaining Is Fun!
I flipped it over and saw that it was a reissue of a 1941 how-to manual by someone I'd never heard of before, an interior decorator named Dorothy Draper.

The effect this information had on me was strange and immediate. I'd always considered interior decorators a variety of snake-oil salespeople, preying on the vacant imaginations of status-obsessed socialites. Not that I'd ever met a socialite—or a decorator. Yet out of nowhere, and for no reason I could discern, this silly little guide to throwing parties suddenly seemed a key to something large and important.

I decided to research Draper and write an article about her for the newspaper, and as I did, an escape route began to emerge. Dead forgotten female writers and dead forgotten interior decorators
actually had something in common—both were women trying to forge professional identities under conditions that weren't hospitable to their gender, and in the doing they shaped the way we live today. Perhaps these two so-called beats could add up to a new professional life?

When the editor of the Home & Garden section of
The New York Times
called the day my Draper article appeared to say that he liked it, I figured freelancing for him about this newfound interest was as good a reason as any to quit my job. For the next six months I saved as much money as I could, and in May 2005 I gave my two weeks' notice, dragged my desk from my bedroom into the less-sunny and therefore less-hot kitchen, and invested in an air conditioner. Setting up a full-time freelance life is not unlike launching a small startup company without seed money or funding.

It was a promising start. Along with writing home-related features for
The New York Times
, I continued with my
Globe
memoir-review column, and I pitched an undergraduate course on arts criticism to my old employers at New York University. My boyfriend—he of the infamous night of the corpse—a journalist, helped me see that my affection for dead forgotten female writers was indeed worth writing about, and I applied for a fellowship at an artists' colony. I'd describe how Maeve, Neith, and Edna had influenced my own thinking about the single life. I called it “The Dead Spinster Project.”

In June, my childhood best friend, Willy (short for Willamain), mentioned that a college friend of hers was helping launch a home-decorating magazine at Condé Nast, and she offered to put me in touch. I figured, why not? I'd never read a decorating magazine or considered working for a women's glossy—I'd hoped that,
a century after Neith, I could bypass the pink ghetto—but surely their freelance rate was better than anything I'd made yet, and now that I was alive to the way a house or apartment looked, the idea of exploring interiors intrigued me.

I can't remember what I wore to that first interview, but by the fourth (and what my wallet hoped would be the last), with the editor-in-chief, I'd run out of nice clothes. The morning of, I sprinted to my favorite vintage store and returned clutching a black cotton dress from the 1950s that looked exactly like what I imagined Maeve might wear: fitted bodice, short cap sleeves, wide square neck, full skirt of razor-sharp accordion pleats falling to the knee. At this point the job under discussion was no longer freelance writer but senior editor, and I was pretty sure I didn't want it, but everyone in my life had convinced me that you don't turn down a job until it's offered.

Over the course of the interview process I'd come to discover that for someone who'd never read a decorating magazine, I had very strong opinions. The term “home décor” was awful—co-opting a French noun in no way elevates or disguises the inherent prissiness of seriously contemplating throw pillows and paint colors. Could there be anything less essential? The conspicuous consumption that fueled the industry was flat-out indefensible. To dedicate my waking hours to such an enterprise would be the metaphysical equivalent of tending to a window box of silk petunias instead of running through a field of wildflowers. It denigrated, even mocked, everything I valued.

My own approach to “décor” was to drag home an Edwardian wardrobe listing against a trash can like a dusty squire in need of another drink, or to fall headlong on Craigslist for a green velvet horsehair sofa and stalk it for weeks before talking the owner into a price I could afford, plus free delivery if possible, and then arrange my new treasures however I liked. Somehow it worked. I still take such satisfaction in scavenging that even now I silently
resent my first-ever brand-new furniture purchase—a handsome eggplant linen sofa I found on radical markdown at a high-end store—for not chipping in and pulling its weight.

Now that I was thinking about it, I realized I'd been this way my entire life. As a girl, a favorite pastime was rearranging my bedroom. In sixth grade I saved up my allowance to repaint it “Art Deco” (actually South Beach by way of
Miami Vice
, though I didn't know the difference): hot-pink walls, turquoise trim, and pink plastic flamingoes flanking the window. Throughout my peripatetic twenties I'd faithfully dragged my ever-expanding collection of flea-market antiques from one apartment to the next, no matter how ridiculously cumbersome, as loyal to them as pets. I suppose they were my pets.

These were idle pleasures, though, not central to my sense of self or my ambitions as a writer, and I worried that making a full-time job out of a frivolous hobby would encourage people to take me less seriously. By “people” I meant potential future editors, particularly men. It's no secret that the fashion and design glossies are run almost exclusively by women, and struggle for respect in the publishing world.

And yet…as the interview process wore on, it was already becoming clear to me that I couldn't live forever on freelance writing alone. I'd been earning so little since finishing college that along the way I'd made the executive decision to pretend that my massive student-loan debt simply didn't exist; I'd ignore it until the robocalls grew too unbearable, then plead to pay only the most minimum amount, which I'd dutifully manage for a while, until I didn't have any money again, and I'd retreat back into denial. The calls were starting up. (And, yes, a million years later I am still paying them off.)

Soon enough, I knew, I'd be looking again for editorial work, which pays better than writing. I was glad I'd acquired this vocational skill; it meant I'd always have another way to be self-supporting.
I wondered if Neith would have stayed single if she'd been able to make more money. Surely Maeve's
New Yorker
salary was what enabled her to afford living alone for so long, and even leave her unsatisfying marriage. Every life entails compromises; perhaps one of mine was that, in exchange for the luxury of living alone in New York City, I couldn't write full-time about those things that mattered most to me—a high bar, anyhow—but I could split the difference and be an editor-writer. It's certainly a common arrangement, and not a bad one, as far as compromises go. When I filled out the application, on the line for “salary requirement” I recklessly doubled what I'd been paid at the newspaper.

The weather was uncommonly mild that July, so I was spared a stifling subway ride en route to the interview, but even so my cheap shoes rubbed at my heels, and by the time I hit the midday chaos of Times Square I was already walking with a slight limp. In an effort to elevate myself from more than just another bookish girl without any fashion sense, I'd accessorized the black 1950s dress with Willy's 1970s acid-yellow pumps and a circa 2000s butter-yellow bag—“vintage with a modern twist,” in fashion magazine parlance. As I approached the Condé Nast building, a trio of impossibly tall, impeccably dressed women spun through the revolving glass door and swanned off to lunch. I looked down at my clashing yellows and felt embarrassed for myself.

The editor-in-chief had me wait in the lobby for a full hour before she was ready to see me, but when I walked into her enormous sun-filled office, she looked me over from behind her huge white desk and said, with ironic approval, “Hot.”

When the managing editor called to offer me the job, the salary was one-third more than the one I'd stated on the application.

I accepted the offer and started work the following week.

My transition from Grub Street to luxury journalism was not a smooth one. It's one thing to know, intellectually, that consumer magazines thrive on the insecurities of their readerships, another to actually be manipulating those insecurities, which, it turns out, fanned my own. I'd never been around so many perfectly groomed women at once—I imagined this must be what sororities are like. Manicures, blowouts, high heels, cleavage, white teeth bared, diamond rings sparkling. I felt so out of place, and alienated from myself, that I began to retreat from the journalist boyfriend, who accused me of not being ready for the sort of intimacy he wanted. Before long we, too, broke up.

I was alone again, but this time differently so; cleared of the static of a fraught relationship I was able to hear more clearly my own thoughts, and wouldn't you know it but Maeve, Neith, and Edna were up there chattering away, just waiting for me to join them. Downstairs, my fingers tapped industriously on the keyboard, writing photo captions about divans and the “rage for greige”; upstairs, my secret coven leaned over a card table spiking the teacups with whiskey and carrying on lively debates. Maeve didn't get what all the fuss over sex was about. Sure, she said, she was no prude, but the men seemed to like it a lot better than she did. Neith argued that this was purely a historical-moment problem: practicing free love had made the men really good in bed; however, by Maeve's time, they'd all forgotten about the clitoris. Edna was skeptical: perhaps you prefer women?