The Engagements (7 page)

The television droned in the background. Her black Lab, Blazer, lay on the rug at her feet, his head on Frances’s toes. She was working on her Christmas cards, which she had just gotten back from the printer’s. They featured a photograph of the dog wearing a pair of reindeer antlers. One by one, she signed them, even though the printer said no one bothered to do that anymore. They had a typeface that looked like handwriting now, he said. The thought of this depressed her enormously.

She was thinking about Howard Davis and his very surprising proposal. Weighing whether she ought to accept.

A few days earlier, when good old Howard called to say that he and his wife were driving from Manhattan all the way to the Main Line to take her to lunch, Frances knew it must be something important. She hadn’t seen Howard in eighteen years, not since her last day at Ayer. She hated to think about that day, even now. There had been no fanfare, no farewell party. She walked out alone, with a box under each arm, somehow unable to make herself switch off the lamp, as if leaving it on meant she would come back tomorrow and do it all again.

The world had changed by leaps and bounds since then; even the Philadelphia office, which had seemed somehow eternal, was gone. The first building ever constructed to house an advertising agency in America, the building she had walked into and out of five days a week for twenty-seven years, now stood empty.

Ultimately, Ayer had joined all the others in Manhattan. But the agency came to the party too late, and was now a shadow of the powerhouse it had once been. No one cared that they started it all. Advertising was about the here and now, and sometimes the future, but never the past.

When Howard and his wife, Hana, arrived in Wayne that afternoon, Frances saw that they too had aged, though they were her juniors by a decade or more. They told her their eldest son was now a writer of forty, with children of his own, and Frances felt a jolt go through her. It
shouldn’t be a surprise, of course, but it did shock her to remember that getting older was so inevitable. Sometimes it seemed it was only happening to her.

Frances had imagined that they would compliment her on her house, maybe spy the baby deer who had been snacking at the bird feeder all morning. She had moved in soon after she retired. The three-bedroom stone rambler stood on a hill at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, tucked away behind a cluster of residential streets, full of pretty houses, and flowers and trees. It had dark green shutters and white trim on the garage. Towering pines stood in the front yard. She thought it was an impressive place, especially for a woman on her own.

But when she opened the door, the first thing Howard said was, “Is that gas?”

Hana pinched her nose. “It smells something awful in here, Frances!”

Apparently the damn pilot light had gone out. Somehow she hadn’t noticed. It didn’t seem like much to her, but they appeared deeply concerned.

“You could have been killed!” Hana said, running around, opening all the windows.

Poor Howard dropped to his stomach and started fiddling with the stove.

They reminded Frances of her younger cousins in Canada, always telling her she ought to think about selling the house and going to one of those awful retirement homes. Her glaucoma had worsened in recent years, but other than that she felt fine. She had agreed to hire a helper woman, who came in three days a week to do the bills and make sure she hadn’t dropped dead.

“I’ve got it lit,” Howard said, triumphant. He climbed to his feet. “Well now, Frances. How the hell are you?”

She was wildly embarrassed, and took them to a nice restaurant in town, where she hoped the food would make them forget about the gas. She ordered a steak and the first of the two martinis she always had with lunch.

“So what’s this all about, Howard?” she asked as they handed the waiter their menus.

He laughed. “You don’t beat around the bush. I forgot that about you.”

“I’m seventy-three years old. There’s no longer time for beating around the bush.”

“Well, Lou Hagopian’s the chairman at Ayer now,” he started.

“Yes, I know.”

“He’s decided that Ayer ought to commemorate the agency’s fiftieth anniversary with De Beers in a big way.”

“Oh?”

She had a vivid recollection of herself snapping at Gerry Lauck after the twenty-fifth.
Where’s my gold watch?
Frances felt a rush of guilt, even though Gerry had died ages ago.

“They’re planning something very grand,” Howard said. bottle of winealApparentlyn“A full week of celebrations in London, where the company is headquartered. There will be lunches every day, and dinners and parties each night.”

“My. That does sound grand.”

“The whole thing will culminate in a big, fancy dinner and a recognition of your contributions. They’ll want you to give a few remarks. Talk about how you came up with the famous line.”

Frances was stunned. “They want me there?”

“Yes!” Howard said. “All expenses paid. You’ll be the star of the show.”

There were so many things she ought to be thinking: That this was a tremendous honor. That finally she was getting her due. But the only thought she could focus on was the fact that she had nothing to wear. Her heart seized.
Seven lunches and seven dinners with the Oppenheimers?
She assumed they would not be impressed by the brown skirt suit she wore to Mass on Sundays.

“Do you feel up to it?” Howard asked.

“They’ll send someone along to be your companion,” his wife added. “She can help you get dressed and all. Keep an eye on you.”

Now Frances realized why they had come in person. Hagopian had probably sent them to assess whether she was too old, too frail, too likely to let her cocktails go to her head and say something outlandish. She herself wasn’t sure of the answer. She hadn’t gone anywhere for the longest, except to church, and bridge three times a week. She hadn’t been on an airplane since her aunt died twelve ye

“Can I sleep on it?” she asked. “It’s such a generous offer, but there’s a lot to consider.”

“Of course,” Howard said.

Now, here she was, sleeping on it, or not sleeping, as the case may be.

Though it had been nearly twenty years since she left Ayer, Frances still felt connected to the place. She kept up with quite a few of her old colleagues and their wives, mostly on the East Course at Merion. From what she heard, the new Ayer New York bore no resemblance to Ayer Philadelphia.

She followed what they did with De Beers. Ten years ago, she had read
a story in the magazine
Ad Art Techniques
that said De Beers had become a ten-million-dollar-a-year account. And the cartel was making two billion annually.

But that was the late seventies. More recently, there had been murmurings of trouble. A few years ago, Frances clipped an article from the newspaper about a major controversy De Beers had kicked up in Australia when diamonds were discovered there—the Oppenheimers had made the move to buy them up, wanting always to control the whole world’s supply. In the past, they had gotten whatever they wanted with ease, but certain people in the Australian government were pushing back, claiming that De Beers wouldn’t pay fairly and that they were somehow personally responsible for apartheid.

She wondered if all three of them—Ayer, De Beers, and she herself—had simply seen their prime come and go. Perhaps that’s what this week in London was supposed to be for. To remind them of better times.

Frances could say with certainty that she had completely lost touch with what the diamond-buying public was like nowadays, if the ads Ayer was running were any indication.

For the royal wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles that,” she said.">TheyApparentlyn a few years back, she had heard through the grapevine that De Beers paid something like half a million dollars for just a couple minutes’ worth of television advertising. This baffled her, but then again, by the time television came along, it was almost too late for Frances. She was a print writer, through and through.

Even the print ads seemed awful lately. It all got so casual for a while. In
Life
, she had seen a photograph of two adults sipping a milkshake like teenyboppers, with the line:
With this diamond, we promise to always be friends
.

Could anything be less romantic? Well, yes! How about the photo of a man and woman riding a motorcycle in black leather jackets, over the following:
I know she loves rock-n-roll. So I rolled out a magnificent rock
.

They still ended every ad with her line. Sometimes she wished they wouldn’t.

Just a month earlier, she had nearly thrown her
TV Guide
across the living room when she came upon a glossy page asking,
Isn’t Two Months’ Salary a Small Price to Pay for Something That Lasts Forever?

The ad went on,
You have a love that money can’t buy. And you’d like a diamond engagement ring that’s as special as that love. But what’s a realistic price for him to spend? These days, two months’ salary is a good place to start
. (And there, in the bottom right corner of the page,
A Diamond Is Forever
.)

“What on earth?” she said out loud.

A week or two later, she ran into one of the creative directors, Teddy Regan, in the dining room at Merion.

“Ted!” she called out. “What’s the meaning of those two-months’-salary ads?”

He laughed, coming over to her table. “You don’t like them?”

“They’re tacky as hell,” she said.

“Tell me what you really think, Frances.”

“Well, they are. You know it as well as I do. At least I hope you know it.”

“It’s not my account,” he said. “I think the team realized that young men buying diamonds were asking their fathers how much they paid for Mom’s ring and going off of that. The cost perception just wasn’t keeping up with the economy. We needed something that was attainable for every man. Two months’ salary provides a guideline. And also, say the salary is on the small side. Well, the ring will reflect that. So this will encourage them to really stretch, to go as big as they can afford. Maybe even a bit bigger. Because what she’s wearing on that ring finger says a lot about him.”

“I still think it’s unseemly,” she said.

He shrugged. “I agree, but it’s working.”

From there, she began to notice ads along the same lines that seemed like something she might have written in the fifties.

Show her she’s the reason it’s never been lonely at the top
.

A carat or more. When a man’s achievement becomes a woman’s good fortune
.

It almost made her long for the ads Deanne had come up with in the hippie days, with their cartoon lions and flower children.

Howard had said that,” she said.">TheyApparentlyn that they wanted her to tell the story of her contributions. Well, first off, nowadays, everyone did the kind of stuff they had invented for De Beers—placing jewelry in movies, loaning pieces to celebrities, so they could show them off in public.

They wanted to hear how she had come to write the line. Like most of life’s remarkable moments, it hadn’t seemed at all remarkable until later. In 1981, when Granville Toogood passed away, she was surprised to read in his obituary in
The Philadelphia Inquirer
that
he
had written the line. Toogood was a fixture of Philadelphia’s high society, a member at both the Merion golf and cricket clubs, with his own seat at the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1930, he wrote a book called
Huntsman in the Sky
. He had been an executive on the business side at Ayer, with no hand in the affairs
of the copy department, but apparently Toogood had gone through life telling his children and grandchildren that
A Diamond Is Forever
was his.

Warner Shelly, Ayer’s president at the time, had called her at home to say that he was outraged. Warner made a stink and called the paper, demanding a retraction. They never printed one, and this made him even angrier. But Frances was tickled by the whole episode: this line that she had just dashed off late one night was worth stealing, and from the Great Beyond at that.

London. They wanted her to go to London.

If only the chance had come ten years sooner. She would have leapt at it then. Now she was basically an old woman. Her eyesight had gone to pot and some days she was a bit shaky on her feet. Still, it was nice to think that life could offer up the occasional surprise, even at her age.

“I think I’lshe said. “Why not?”

It was three in the morning. The dog didn’t even glance up.

As soon as it reached a respectable hour, she called Howard at home.

“Tell Mr. Hagopian I’ll do it,” she said.

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” he said. “Lou will be so pleased. He’ll probably want to call you himself later in the week to talk over specifics. And someone in PR will most likely call you later today, too.”

“Fine, fine.”

There were sometimes entire weeks when her phone did not ring. But not twenty minutes after she hung up with Howard, it started. The kids in the Ayer public relations department were suddenly interested in who she was and what she thought. They asked questions and requested photos. Frances told them what they wanted to know about her personal background and her accounts, especially De Beers. It was nice to have an excuse to revisit her time at Ayer. Like it or not, her life was inextricably tied to the agency.

They wanted to know what she’d bel go,”

“I’ll get a break when I’m dead,” James said.

“That’s cheery.”

They grew silent as they turned off at the exit, and then took a sharp left onto Pleasant Street without waiting for the light to change from red to green. The car dealerships and strip malls gave way to Victorian houses, covered in white, with tiny white Christmas lights peeping out h

They had to use a map to find the address. They turned up a steep hill with tall trees lining both sides. The snow hadn’t been touched, and the road was icy. James pictured theere and there.