Opening Belle (26 page)

I mutter to Marcus, “Should I run?”

Marcus mimics Greene's penmanship moves, trying to figure out what the guy is writing. Soon it's legible: “Mandatory meeting at 5:30 p.m. Auditorium. 23mm share IPO.”

This means that we'll be the bankers selling 23 million shares of stock to the public. The men on either side of me pull out their HP-13s, the calculator of choice, and multiply the share amount by the cents per share, ranging from $0.50 to $0.95. The sum of this is the commission, or roughly $10–$20 million that will be up for grabs between only two firms. The numbers are heady and the whole floor buzzes.

“Marcus, grab me a set of handouts,” I say as I head for the door. “I have to get my Goldfish snacks.”

“Belle Bottom, you can't just skip it. It'd be one thing if you were out of town. Just dip in there for a minute, sweetheart. A little face time won't hurt the McElroy bank account.”

“I have a partner. My partner can cover it for me.” I nod toward Stone.

Marcus and I both glance at Stone, who is now peering into the limited reflection a dark screen provides. Whatever he sees on his turned-off monitor he seems to like. He smiles at himself as he adjusts some stray hairs around his forehead.

“Really?” Marcus says, nodding toward Stone.

“Argh,” I say. “I'm giving this twenty minutes.”

I call Caregiver and ask her to cover the Goldfish and string cheese purchase, buying myself an additional fifteen minutes while I feel the guilt rise in my chest. Dirk Milazzo, one of the heads of investment banking and a swarthy, balding figure, paces in the front of the room. He's talking too loud, moving too fast. He makes my heart race in a bad, anticipatory way.

“What's up with him?” I ask Marcus. “Is he on speed? He's making me nervous.”

Marcus muses, “Well, there's that, but also the fact that he's got some twentysomething girlfriend who is hotttt.”

“No way,” I retort, “he's one of the happily marrieds. I met his fifty-something wife and she's lovely.”

“I'm sure that's true,” Marcus says. “One is lovely and one is hot.”

Milazzo interrupts our conversation by flipping on his PowerPoint presentation. The ten-foot screen at the front of the room fills with the initials PLC, Private Label Credit, the people who produce credit cards for individual stores and extend high-priced credit to the people least able to afford paying them back. They're taking their company public and I'm going to be late for a playdate.

The meeting goes on for seventy-five agonizing minutes and I watch each one of them slip by. The head of each division of PLC elaborates on their success and potential. They wrap it up and I am the first to rise, ready to charge the door, until I hear Milazzo say, “The road show starts tomorrow in the South.”

“Sit down, Mama,” Michael whispers, “you're in for a long night.”

The South is my territory.

A road show is a marketing trip involving bankers, potential institutional investors, and the top management of the company coming public. These face-to-face meetings are more effective than conference calls. Investors are given time to question, and hopefully trust, the companies they will invest millions in. These shows are put together as soon as the Securities and Exchange Commission gives the thumbs-up to the reams of documentation each company supplies for its IPO. Sometimes there's only several hours' notice before the trips begin. In these instances, to speed thing up, the mode of travel is often private jet. I'm told to meet the Private Label Credit group at Teterboro Airport at 7 a.m. the next morning. We'll be gone for two days.

What this also means is that I have to actually set up the meetings for tomorrow. The clocks tell me it's 6:35 p.m. My playdate has begun. Money managers in Atlanta will be going home and I somehow must make them want to meet with us in the morning and I have to make this happen before they leave. My insides chug like a washing machine as I speed-dial all the southern numbers on my turret, hoping for an answer. My peripheral vision catches the sight of Stone tucking in his shirt, picking up nothing but his iPhone, and heading for the door.

It's after 7:12 p.m. when I've managed to wrangle a few meetings for the morning and I try to leave. The CEO of PLC, a short, rounded man in a double-breasted suit, asks me to join management for dinner as they are all from Cleveland and have nothing going on tonight. I suggest instead we take a ride through Midtown together. We can at least talk in the car and I'll walk home from whatever restaurant they're eating at.

“I have to pack,” I say feebly, not mentioning the other human issues involved in my getting out of town by tomorrow morning.

I call Caregiver and relay my changed plan. In the background I hear squealing children.

“These kids are overtired and going nuts and I need to go home,” she snips at me.

“Isn't Bruce there?”

“Yeah, he's like the wine sommelier to these mommies. He's gotten them all drunk and I'm the only one paying attention to their kids.”

“Hey, you won't believe this,” I start.

“It's hard for you to surprise me.”

“I have a business trip. It starts tomorrow morning.”

“And you're telling me now because you know I have no life?”

“We are both lifeless.” I try to be funny. I'm not funny. “Seriously, I just found out.”

Caregiver launches into a tirade about her not being able to drop everything when I need her to. She does this in a judgmental way and I can't deny her venting. I deserve every word but wish I had a partner to share the punishment with.

When she finishes, I give her more material for her examples of crappy mommy anecdotes. I let her know that I believe it's only a two-day trip but could be three. There's a moment of silence on the other end, a pause to reflect on yet another mind-blowing revelation about me.

Caregiver informs me that I can't rely on her to help any more nights after 6 p.m. I promise Bruce will be there, having no idea what he has scheduled for the week. I just know he will have to drop everything and do this for us.

“I understand,” I tell her, conscious of my pounding heart.

For a moment I suspect she's going to quit. If she did, my life would fall to pieces in just one moment, instead of hanging tentatively together by thread that feels no sturdier than a fishing line. The one thing I have going for me is that my children have wormed their way into her heart and that I pay her very well. These are the only reasons she stays.

•  •  •

I call Bruce's cell and when I get no answer I text. I tell him about the trip and that I need to talk with the management of the company coming public for the next thirty minutes. I get no response and I imagine him topping off the wineglasses of the other working mothers, riddled with boredom and bristling with anger at me. He must appear to be the perfect husband to these strangers in my living room and maybe he is but right now he's on my nerves.

The stretch limo pulls to the curb at 58th and Lexington Avenue, where there's a rounded driveway into Le Cirque and people hanging outside the restaurant crane their necks looking for Reese Witherspoon or Matt Damon or anyone more interesting than some corporate guys from Cleveland and myself. The disappointment on their faces is evident and my disappointment in myself, about to help sell the stock of a company providing easy credit to poor people often unable to pay it back, is something I push far away. How many more companies who do this sort of thing can we take public?

We all shake hands as we agree to meet in the morning. These mostly graying men are trembling, on the brink of being very rich, and I'll be along for the ride, to hold their hand and make them look good. In just a few days they'll be celebrating. They'll never have an inkling of the anxiety I went through during our meetings and our breakneck travel. They'll never know about the play within a play going on here, the quest for the McElroy family to hold it together.

It's almost 8 p.m. when I begin walking up Madison Avenue, phoning home once again and going straight to voice mail. Bruce must be putting them to bed and I've missed it all. I should hail a taxi but instead let my feet slowly drag me home. I hate facing the drama I'm about to face so I walk, mostly for air, the almost-fresh kind you get in Manhattan. I don't really want to see a bitter husband with several drinks in him tonight, so I walk.

Soon I'm standing in front of the chic little dress shop and the mermaid dress I saw with Henry. It's still in the window looking somewhat alive at this hour, not from the early-morning sunlight as before, but from the streetlights.

Even though it's late, two salesladies are inside all dressed up and sitting erect on counter stools. I don't stop to consider why I'm doing what I'm doing before buzzing the door. I guess I just want to be transformed by a dress, to try it on and feel something resembling fun at the end of a very long day, or maybe I just don't want to go home.

“
Oui, madame
.” A young woman, chic with dark, flat-ironed hair and kohled eyes, answers the door. She needs to fill her twiggy body with baguettes, I think as she, with visible annoyance, stands at the door and considers whether I'm worthy to enter. Stores like this don't let just anyone in. I ignore her superior position as she places herself between the sidewalk and the store interior. She looks me up and down.

“I'd like to try that on,” I say, pointing at the window and acting like I buy such dresses at the same rate I buy skim milk.

She pulls her face into a scowl when she sees my giant bag containing every document I need for my trip, my sensible walking shoes, and my corporate getup. It somehow insults her gestalt. I'm not her usual customer.

“Zat dress? Ooh-la-la.” She laughs, gazing toward the window. “Eet won't fit. None. And ees so many dollars.”

“Oh, okay,” I say. “But I'd still like to try, and I have a job,” I add pathetically.

I'm arguing with her, trying to convince her to let me potentially part with thousands of dollars, and I'm doing it from the sidewalk. This is absurd.

“
Non, non.
Maybe, how you say, maybe in the high school?”

She is cracking herself up. And for lack of something clever to say, I rip, “At least I
went
to high school.”

She laughs again, not having a clue that I've just insulted her. She swings the door wide.

When she manages to wrestle the mermaid off the mannequin she walks me upstairs to a giant dressing room and lays it across a sofa. She is annoyed by all her efforts and stands in the doorway defying me to just try to get into the thing.

“Privacy?” I request.

I can already tell that she was right, that my high school body had a slim chance at wearing this, but my current body? I was delusional to even attempt it. Before leaving me alone to wrestle with the big fish dress she looks carefully at my giant bag, wondering if it's at all possible that I may be plotting to steal the thing. It takes her a minute to satisfy herself that I am low-risk. She sighs and waves, as if creating wind to blow my patheticness away. She clacks on down the stairs in high and red-soled shoes to converse some more with her friend.

Carefully, I step into the dress as if it were a bathtub of hot water. I had thought about an overhead entrance but saw myself drowning in all the tulle spread across the bottom. There are many hooks in the back but by turning the dress backward, I'm able to hook it pretty easily up to my shoulder height. I spin it again, cheered by the fact that I'm managing my body into this garment with no telltale size sewn into it. For this kind of money, this dress is whatever size a woman wants it to be.

Now things get harder. The bodice is very fitted and I can just get my arms through the holes with an extra push. While I admit this isn't the size for me, I can't picture myself admitting defeat to the French.

My arms are held tight now to my sides, as the gown is stiffly sculptured. This isn't a dress to cut a rug in. I stand back for a moment and despite my lack of mobility, I can see the magnificence. This isn't a dress. This is art. This dress is an elixir of the sort I've been too practical to drink, yet now seem to want. I decide that the people who buy dresses like this are either in love or angry and maybe I'm both.

I sidle up to my phone and can't even bring my arms together given the rigidity of the sleeves, but I get it to camera mode, set the timer, prop it on a handbag shelf, and stand back for the flash. The result is a small miracle. Perhaps the lighting is slimming or the fact that nobody can tell the dress can't fully close in the back. I've taken a photo worthy of the cover of
Allure
, and even though it's all an illusion, it's a great souvenir of this bizarre day.

I begin to reverse the process. With one hand swooped behind my back I carefully unhook the lower closures. But I've either gained a pound while standing in the dressing room or have begun to sweat and stick because the dress seems attached to my too-big body. I tug and inhale and hold my breath and anticipate some expensive ripping sound, but none comes. It's clear that I can't turn the dress around again without tearing it. I fuss with things for a full three minutes before feeling panic about to kick in. I know the signs of panic—the accelerated heartbeat, the shortness of breath, the sweat—and I also know how to stop it. I sit down and watch my reflection in three-sided absurdity. I inhale through my nose, hold my breath, and count to eight. I exhale through my mouth and I do this again and again until I feel my heart rate normalize. I may have bought a yearlong yoga studio membership that I've used three times, but it can't be said I came away from “my practice” with nothing.

“Calmly,” I say out loud and tell myself that I simply need another pair of hands, and that those hands are just down the stairs. I can even hear the French voices that go with those hands. I call out to them in a humbled and embarrassed way. No answer. I turn the knob on the dressing room door, but it's locked. The bee-otch has locked me inside to prevent me from stealing? My heart picks up the pace again, forgetting every calm thing I've just told it. I yell.