Pretty in Ink (2 page)

 

Even as a young girl, I had dreams of scaling the ladder of career success. My twin sister, Cara, teased me mercilessly, but I found her tree-climbing, tag-playing notions of fun to be frivolous. My favorite way to spend a Sunday was dressing up in my mother’s silk blouses and pencil skirts and then sitting at the kitchen table—my makeshift desk—with a big stack of paper (blank) and a coffee mug (empty), and shouting out orders to my minions (pretend). My mother would marvel at my corporate setup and call me her little child in chief. Cara would roll her eyes at this display of affection, but I noticed that my mother didn’t coin a pet name for her. While Cara busied herself converting the contents of our recycling bin into her latest costume for a play, I pored over Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel catalogs, admiring all the sleek trappings of what I imagined to be success. I pictured people oohing and aahing when they saw Adult Me: “What a brilliant, powerful woman,” they’d whisper, just as I knew they did about my mother. I couldn’t wait to grow up.

In my senior year at Columbia, I made it my mission to read the memoirs of all the world’s most powerful women—including the CEO of Schmidt & Delancey—and to memorize all their secrets to success. Nearly every woman talked about the importance of attaching yourself to a star in order to rise along with her and get genius guidance along the way. When I first interviewed to be Louisa’s assistant fifteen years ago, back when she was a senior editor at
Modern Woman Today,
I knew I’d found my star. Here was a person who could help me launch the big, ambitious career I’d always dreamed of. So far that instinct has served me well.

But I’m not the only one who’s in awe of Louisa. When she gathers the staff together to unroll a fresh vision or explain a new direction, she inspires like a preacher. She’s not a perfect editor, or boss, but she commands respect and admiration, and everyone believes in her. Or rather, they did until recently. I fear even my own faith in our leader is slipping.

When Louisa returns from the thirtieth floor, she breezes past my office without a word, and I suspect the head honchos might not share my boss’s confidence in the redesign. Louisa’s assistant, Jenny, calls me and, in a voice so calm I can tell our fearless leader must be frantic, says, “Will you kindly come down to Louisa’s office, and please pick up Abby and Mark along the way?” The managing editor, creative director, and I file into our boss’s office on tiptoe. Jenny gently replaces the door in its frame.

Louisa’s workspace is rimmed on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows, which means only thin panes of glass separate us from a raging snowfall outside; we’re surrounded by storm. “It’s not good,” Louisa says, the wind howling and whipping against the glass. I feel desperate to flee.

“The problem is obvious,” says Mark, our creative director, his voice like shards of glass. “This magazine is schizophrenic. Over the course of one year, we’ve altered the fonts, the logos, and the colors three separate times. Our fashion has gone from runway to bargain bin and back. You’ve renamed the health pages ‘Monthly Checkup,’ then ‘Rx for a Healthy You!’ then ‘Doctor’s Appointment. ’ You’ve made us move beauty from the front of the book to the back of the book, then back to the front. The changes are manic!”

Louisa sighs, and I feel a bit sick. It’s true what Mark’s saying: Someone who picked up a copy of
Hers
at the hair salon last June and then bought another issue at the airport over Christmas might not have known she was reading the same magazine.

“OK, let’s all just relax,” says Abby, our always calm and reasonable managing editor.

“We’ll work it out,” I say, my conviction weak despite my words.

“Hey, Jenny,” Louisa calls out to her assistant. “Grab me lunch, will you? One California roll, one spicy tuna, and a seaweed salad”—her usual—“and, um, four Peppermint Patties.” Candy—a definite sign of trouble.

Leaving Louisa’s office, I feel the attention from the trenches hot on my cheeks. Though they’re trying to hide it, it’s obvious that every staff member is staring from her respective cubicle, desperate to glean a glimpse of the goings-on behind Louisa’s door. As far as I’m concerned, they’re lucky to be spared the details. Jenny is off fetching Louisa’s food, and on her desk I spot a prescription for Ativan. It’s in Louisa’s name. I discreetly tuck it under a folder, which I notice is labeled, “Any decent public schools in NYC?” I shove both documents into Jenny’s top drawer, then retreat to my office.

 

As the wintry days drag on, heavy and cold with dread, I savor even more than usual the two days a week I work from home. My home office is far from glamorous; unlike my roomy space at
Hers
that looks out onto Central Park, my basement work area is cluttered and windowless. But it’s quiet and calm, a temporary escape from Louisa’s naked looks of need and the worry that she now wears on skin’s surface. Plus, at home I’m treated to occasional visits from a daughter who manages to escape Maria’s watchful eye and clomp-crawl her way past my door.

“Hello, love,” I say, bending down to pull Daisy onto my lap.

“Ma-ma.” I grin with pride at this word that she’s recently learned to say, her first. Daisy’s tiny fingers go right for the gold—a 14-carat hoop hanging from my right ear. I swat her away. Thankfully I’ve honed laser-fast reflexes during my ten months of motherhood, and so far my daughters have failed to inflict serious injury in pursuit of my baubles. My husband, Rob, believes my refusal to stop wearing dangly earrings around our babies’ grabby fingers is masochistic and insane. In truth, it’s vanity; I haven’t managed to kick the last ten pounds of baby weight, and damn it all if I’ll be denied my shiny jewelry, too.

Maria swoops in and reaches for Daisy. “You’re not allowed in there, chica,” she says, pinning me with accusatory eyes. She’s right; I preach “Do not disturb” during office hours, but half the time I’m alone at the computer I pine for the particular company of my three squirming babies; sometimes I go so far as to snatch one up. (Inconveniently, as soon as Maria is out the door for the day and I am inundated with nothing but baby time, I long for sweet solitude.)

My phone rings, three p.m. on the dot, my husband as reliable as a clock. “Baby,” he says. “How’s the editing?”

“Hey, apple of my eye. Peachy as pie. How’s the designing?”

“Fruitful. Very fruitful.” I still love this silly routine that we’ve developed over nearly a decade as partners. “I’ll pick up a rotisserie chicken on the way home. How’s it going really?”

“Oh, I dunno. I Skyped with Louisa earlier to review page proofs, and I’m worried she’s losing her knack, like she can’t tell what’s good and what’s not, what matters and what doesn’t. Or maybe I’m just going a little crazy myself.”

“I’m telling you, it’s too much time spent holed up with all those crazy women.” I roll my eyes, knowing what’s next. “You need some distance. I signed up for subscriptions to a few Vermont papers so we can check out the listings.”

“Oh, goody,” I say, not bothering to mask my sarcasm.

“Just to look, Leah. Just to dream. Picture it, you and me cozied up under a blanket with a fire going in a big old farmhouse, the girls running around some giant swatch of land, all of us planting vegetables and raising chickens—we’d have fresh eggs!”

“Newsflash, Rob: We
have
fresh eggs here, from a lovely little place called Stop & Shop. No shitting chickens, either.”

“Just think about it, OK? Imagine all that extra time you’d have with the girls.”

I feel a pang. Rob can be good at this, and sometimes I even fall for his fantasy of what my freelance writing career out in the country would look like—batting around great ideas with enthusiastic editors, interviewing brilliant experts about fascinating topics, and pouring my heart into groundbreaking features for big, important publications. In reality I know freelancing is 90 percent hustling and churning out rehashes of the same articles over and over and 10 percent fighting against the spiral down into derangement due to lack of human interaction. Rob is lucky he can do his web design job from anywhere.

“If we moved to Vermont, we wouldn’t have Maria,” I say. “I’d keel over and collapse within a week.”

“Baby, you can bring Maria in your luggage. Just poke out some air holes.”

“You are terrible,” I say, picturing our white family packing away our Colombian nanny in a suitcase and tossing it in the back of our station wagon. God, somebody’s probably done such a thing. “I have work to do. Bye, sweetheart.”

Through my office door, I hear Maria singing,
“Hasta mañana, nos vamos a la cama,”
a tune the girls love regardless of whether it’s actually bedtime. Maria is a gift. When she gets finicky Rose to go down for a nap or tickles Lulu’s belly and makes her explode into hiccup-y laughs far more excited than I can elicit, I feel not at all wistful in the ways I’ve heard some working moms talk about their children’s caregivers. I’d clone Maria if we could afford to shell out double her salary.

 

It’s around the time the frozen ground begins to thaw (when you may as well face it that whatever shoes you wear will end up matted with mud) when Louisa’s and my private language starts deteriorating. It used to be, we could maintain an entire conversation with glances and gestures. Louisa would conclude a meeting and offer hearty assurance to some VIP and then shoot me a split-second peek that meant, “No way in hell!” or “Thank the Lord that’s over,” and I’d nod politely and understand just the right way to dismiss the visitor. But lately Louisa’s looks have become garbled. Now she fixes on her Competent Editor mask and forgets to remove it when we’re speaking privately.

The day it proves to be all over is one of those unseasonably warm days in April. Ed the mail guy enters Louisa’s office bearing a bouquet of lilacs; I wonder who’s sent them and why: her husband as a gesture of support? a public relations rep eager as always to woo? the corporate suite as some kind of final offering?

“Thanks, those are my favorite.” Louisa’s voice is wooden, like she’s reciting lines, like she doesn’t remember that of course both Ed and I would know what her favorite flowers are. She stares perplexedly at the bouquet, looking as if she’s aged about a decade.

“We’ll have Jenny put them in water,” I say, going to grab a vase.

I’m still sitting in Louisa’s office, awaiting instructions from our formerly fearless leader who’s now putzing around her space like she’s lost, when Jenny patches through a call from the teacher of Louisa’s five-year-old son. “She claims it’s urgent,” says Jenny, who knows closed-door meetings are usually noninterruptible. Louisa puts the phone on speaker.

“Hi, Ms. Harding,” we hear over the line. The teacher sounds nervous. “We had a double recess today. You know, because of the nice weather. So we stayed at the playground through what would have been reading. I know, I know, reading is important. But the kids were excited, and—” I start to zone out, wondering if the $40,000 sticker price for the private school where Louisa sends her kids includes this kind of mundane daily update from the teachers. My ears perk up when I hear the words “sprained ankle.”

“Is Jasper OK?” Louisa gasps, her voice shrill.

“Yes, he’s fine. He fell from the monkey bars, but he’s all right. The nurse set him up with an ice pack and a cherry Popsicle, but we do need you or your husband to come fetch him immediately and take him to a doctor.”

“I’ll be right over,” Louisa says, then hangs up.

“Shit,” she shrieks. “Shit, shit, shit.” She shrinks in her seat and her eyes go misty and brim over with tears. The fact that I’ve never heard my boss curse, never mind seen her slump or cry, makes me want to break down, too. I manage to maintain my composure, and offer Louisa a tissue. She draws me in for a hug, which shocks me into silence. With her mouth inches from my ear, she whispers, “An hour ago they fired me.”

At first I say nothing. Still pressed up against her body, I can feel the narrow fragility of Louisa’s frame—my shoulders are a good six inches broader than hers. She’s like a frail kid. This realization stirs up my anger. My boss is like a child, delicate and innocent.
How could they do this to her?
“But, but . . .” I stutter idiotically.

“I know.” Louisa plucks the tissue from my hand and blows her nose, a horrible honk. “They’re morons.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Louisa inhales deeply and looks up at me. “I’m really sorry.” She smoothes out her skirt, sighs, and then emerges from her office into the maze of cubicles.

“Louisa, what’s wrong?” I hear Mark ask. “Are you OK?”

“Jasper broke his foot,” she responds, hurrying out of the office. Jenny has to chase after her with her purse.

 

Louisa doesn’t return that afternoon. Our managing editor, Abby, calls a staff meeting. We shuttle into the conference room, and everyone seems restless. I overhear Zoe and Jane chattering about
Hers
’ poor newsstand numbers and flagging subscriptions; Mark and Debbie are murmuring guesses at Louisa’s latest crazy scheme to save the magazine; Drew is telling the intern that some people are concerned
Hers
isn’t making the transition fast enough to tablet technology. I stay on the sidelines and give my stomach a silent pep talk to stop its lurching.