Ten Girls to Watch (40 page)

When she finished she looked up at me with a pained and sympathetic expression.

“I’m a sucker.” I wiped my nose on the back of my hand, and she reached for the tissue box and handed it to me. “Thank you,” I said quickly before continuing my rant. “I am a pushover who puts up with rotten guys who don’t love me. Actually, it’s not just guys. I put up with everyone. I let my deadbeat roommate skip out on rent, and that’s actually part of why my building burned down. A bunch of her dumb furniture caught fire in the basement. It’s my fault. If I’d had some backbone, maybe I wouldn’t be homeless right now. I’ve got nothing except for this stupid computer and the stupid stories on it, which I ran back upstairs into my stupid burning apartment building to get. It’s all so stupid.” And with that I threw my face into my pillow and let loose a muffled yet nonetheless resounding sob.

“May I say something?” Helen said, her voice sympathetic but also a touch arch, clearly responding to the melodrama being enacted before her.

“Yes,” I said, lifting my head and wiping my nose and eyes.

“You’re wrong about everything,” she said. “The fire wasn’t your fault. This guy doesn’t know what he’s saying. And you’ve got more backbone than almost anyone I know.”

I tried to smile gratefully.

After a few seconds Helen spoke again, her voice quieter now. “Dawn, he got one thing right. You are sweet. Through and through. Every time I get one of your e-mails, it makes my day. You don’t know it, but it does . . .” She trailed off for a minute.

“Sweetness is not a liability. In fact, I would argue it’s the exact opposite. I wish you could have seen the room tonight through my eyes. I saw you, beautiful and strong
and
sweet, and I saw hundreds of women who opened their hearts to you exactly because you are those things. They wouldn’t have talked to just anyone the way they talked to you. That video? The things they said? They said them because of you, because you made them feel comfortable enough to say them. Everyone I talked to, Dawn, every last one of them was touched by your sweetness. I think it’s a gift. You can hide it and try to kill it off if you want. But I wouldn’t if I were you. I’d risk it and see where it takes you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t say anything. I put my head in my hands and looked down at the bed.

“I’ll tell you something else. What you need right now is a good night’s sleep, probably not a lecture, but try to listen anyway. You were very stupid to run back upstairs and get your computer. You’re going to think I sound like an old woman when I say this, but your safety is the most important thing, so don’t run into any more burning buildings ever again.” She paused, leveling a stern look at me. “That said, the fact that you rescued your stories says a lot to me. Don’t forget how much you care about writing, Dawn.”

I couldn’t look her in the eye. “I think the problem is I care too much,” I said quietly.

Helen obviously knew I wanted to be a writer. Why else had I shown her my short stories during college? But I’d never said it aloud in exactly that way. We had a sort of code. Even her “I believe in you” note had addressed my ambition only obliquely. It was that shame-of-naked-hope thing.

“I remember how much I wanted things when I was young,” Helen said gently. “And I remember how scared I was that nothing would work out the way I wanted it to. But things will start to work out. It gets easier, Dawn.”

I finally met her eye.

“It also gets harder in different ways.”

Yes, things got harder. I knew that. I didn’t know anything about what it felt like to lose a decades-long marriage or the step-by-step frustrations of building a career, not just flailingly attempting to start one. Surely, my twenty-three-year-old woes were hardly worth these tears. Now, if I could just get myself to stop crying . . . But before Helen’s words settled into chastisement, she went on.

“Experience is like evidence. When you’re young and you don’t have much experience yet, you don’t have much basis for confidence. All you really have is hope, and that can get shaken pretty easily. But as years go by, you start to gather this evidence. You made it through this or that and you did okay, maybe not perfectly, but okay, so when you stumble, which you will, you can look back and say ‘Well, I survived that, so I can probably survive this.’ Or there will be things you’re really proud of, evidence of your abilities, and you can look back on those things and say ‘I did it then, I can do it again.’ Right now, you’re just building up those experiences.”

It felt like Helen was walking around the room, picking up my scattered, desperate feelings and handing them back to me in shapely order. But I also felt a little like Humpty Dumpty, not quite sure the assemblage would hold.

“And then, later on, when your life and your career get more complicated, which they will, you’ll have more to look back on for guidance. At least that’s the best I can figure it. I mean, I certainly don’t have all the answers. Clearly, I don’t.”

We sat for a few moments. Everything wasn’t better. But, like Helen had said, I could see how it could be. How it might be. How it would be.

“Thank you, Helen.” I reached and put my hand on hers for a second.

“Well, like I said, you probably need sleep more than you need anything I can say, but when you get to a certain age lecturing is like breathing.”

I smiled.

A few seconds later the hotel room phone rang.

I sat up and gave Helen a questioning look, then reached to answer it.

XADI said hello on the other end of the line. “A few people are downstairs in the hotel bar having a drink, and I’m hoping you’ll join us,” she said, as straightforward as always.

I cleared my throat. “Of course,” I answered. Because that was what I always said to XADI. “I’m with Helen Hensley. Would you mind if she joined us as well?”

“Please bring her,” XADI said.

Helen gave me the same questioning look I’d given the phone a moment earlier.

“My boss, XADI. She wants us to join her for drinks in the bar downstairs.”

Helen looked at me with assessing eyes. “You’re not too tired?”

“I
am
too tired,” I sighed. “But I think we should go anyway. Really. I think you’ll like her.” What I didn’t say was that even if having a drink wasn’t number one on my list of fun ideas right now, I owed XADI.

I brushed my hands quickly through my hair, and Helen said, her voice serious again, “You’re going to be just fine, Dawn. I know you can’t see it yet, but I can.”

I scooted down to the end of the bed and just sat there, my shoulder touching hers, for a moment. Then I got up, put on some fresh green eyeliner, and we went downstairs.

When we arrived at the bar, XADI stood and waved us over. There were two other women at her table: Regina Greene and Gerri Vans.

On another day I might have been short of breath. After everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, though, I just opened my eyes a little wider for a second and followed Helen’s lead. Even at the evening’s event, Gerri had looked to me like she was on TV. But I was about to sit down with her. That was not TV.

“Helen, so great to see you again,” Regina said, affectionately leaning in to kiss Helen’s cheek.

Regina then turned to Gerri and motioned to Helen. “And you two met earlier this evening, right?”

“Absolutely,” Helen said, shaking Gerri’s hand. “I’m such a fan, and it’s such a delight to get to enjoy your company twice in one day.”

“Right back at you!” Gerri said, her dimples dazzling as always. On-screen, her skin looked airbrushed. In life, her skin also looked airbrushed. I tried not to stare. I couldn’t really believe it was her.

Then Regina introduced me. “And this is Dawn,” she said to Gerri. “She and XADI made everything for today’s celebration come together.”

For just a second I imagined watching this scene in a movie. The warm light, the cozy bar, this table of women, and me, somehow with a seat at the table. It was my
G-Talk
dream, from my first phone call with Regina, come true. Except XADI and Helen were here instead of Bill Murray, which to my mind was more than a fair trade, though Bill would certainly have been welcome to pull up a chair too. I felt thrown out of time, like I was looking at a picture I wanted to be in, not one I actually
was
in—it was the odd sensation of feeling envious . . . of myself.

“So nice to meet you,” Gerri said, shaking my hand. Her hand seemed like it should have been big-screen-size, but it was a normal, human-size hand. Now, whatever else happened, I could always say I’d had a drink with Gerri Vans. Forget calling my parents to tell them my apartment building had burned down. I needed to call them to tell them I’d met Gerri.

“Dawn, can you believe you did it?” Regina crooned. “All those women. And oh, they loved it. Women lined up halfway back the ballroom to meet you! Every single one I spoke with said something about how great it was to get your call and how much they enjoyed talking with you.”

“That’s really kind.” I waved my hand. “But XADI was the one who kept everything on track.”

“Seriously,” Gerri said, “hearing all those women go on about you, I was jealous I didn’t get to meet you earlier.”

Gerri Vans had wanted to meet me? Maybe she was a liar, but if she was, she was my favorite liar ever.

I felt myself blushing. These were women who didn’t have to be generous. They could demand anything they wanted. At best, they could choose to mostly ignore me. Yet here they were, being wonderful anyway. I realized, feeling the warmth they created around us, that if I ever became someone, if I ever had it in my power to demand anything at all, I’d still want to be like them, like Helen. Helen was right. Sweet wasn’t so bad.

“How did you find your way to
Charm
in the first place, Dawn?” Gerri asked.

Before I could answer, Regina jumped in. “You should ask her to tell you about lawn care.”

Gerri arched her eyebrow with interest.

Regina went on before I could explain. “I met Dawn at a party last summer, and without any experience she’d been running the advice forum on this lawn care website, totally on her own, just researching the answers for everything. I could tell how bright and resourceful she was, and I thought she’d be perfect for the TGTW anniversary project. I just had to snap her up.”

I felt like warm butter, so flattered and pleased that I could barely keep myself from melting into the table. Regina had been impressed by me? Obviously, she’d given me her card and then given me a job, but I’d figured so much of it was circumstantial. Certainly, there had been luck involved, but the words were like an affirmation: I hadn’t just been in the “right” place with the “right” people.
I
had stood out to her.

“I love stories like that!” Gerri said. “So what are you planning to do next?”

This time Regina didn’t answer for me. I didn’t know what to say. What
was
I planning to do next? Cry because it’d never occurred to me to get renter’s insurance? I decided to focus on the question Gerri thought she was asking, not the more immediate where-will-I-sleep-tomorrow question I was asking myself.

“I’m not sure.” I shrugged, and then what I said next surprised me. “The stories all the Ten Girls to Watch winners have been telling me are amazing. I keep feeling like there is so much more than just the eight or nine pages we could fit in the magazine. I mean, you can’t talk to that many incredible women without turning up some amazing material, so I guess part of me would love to see if there’s more I could do there. I’ve actually been writing some longer profiles of winners along the way . . .”

“I would love to see you work on that kind of project, Dawn,” Helen said. Her eyeliner gleamed in the candlelight. How glad I was she’d entered that contest in 1972.

“I would too.” Gerri nodded. I turned to her, still shocked that Gerri Vans was saying anything to me at all, let alone something like this.

“Really?” I asked. Helen was supportive, I was sure, but certainly Gerri was just a charming conversationalist.

“Yes,” Gerri said. “And I think there’s a market. Regina, think about it. The fun of those old photos and the old magazine copy, and the stories of where those women have gone and what they have to teach young women. It’s
Charm
at its best. Total inspiration. Maybe it’s a coffee table book. You could run the archival profiles from the magazine followed by a profile of every woman, where she is now. You could do all these great sidebars with quotes from the magazine over the years and stats about women in the fifties, sixties, and today. The photos alone are almost enough to seal the deal.”

I glanced, and her wineglass was still mostly full. Was she really pitching Regina on this idea? And were they really going to hire me to work on it?

“Really?” I asked again.

“Yes, really,” Gerri said. “I think this might be just the sort of publication I’m pushing Vans Media toward. Glossy but meaningful. Regina, are photo rights a problem?”

“Not at all. We own everything.” She nodded with excitement.

Gerri took out her BlackBerry. “Hold on,” she said. After a quick moment of thumb-typing she looked back up. “There, I just sent Allen, the head of the book division, an e-mail. We’ll get this rolling!”

I looked at XADI. She gave the slightest nod. It made me feel like she was the director, overseeing this whole play. In fact, I was pretty sure she was.

“This is great.” I barely got the words out before a huge lump rose in my throat. Gerri wasn’t telling me I should write short stories about the TGTW women. She wasn’t telling me I got to be the author of some dream book. At the most she was telling me I might get to weigh in on some sidebars in a coffee table book. But still. I felt my eyes well up.

Helen must have been watching me, because she reached under the table and gave my elbow two squeezes, then graciously turned the conversation to the music at the gala. For the next few minutes, they rhapsodized about the duet and then the rest of the program.

After I recovered, I added a comment to the evolving discussion here and there, but mostly I just listened and tried to take it all in. I felt drunk, like everything was hitting me a half second after it really happened. When we finally stood and said our good-byes, XADI leaned over and quietly said to me, “Take tomorrow off, but meet me in my office at nine o’clock on Friday.”