What Doesn't Kill You (3 page)

Then I was completely through. I called for a pot of coffee and started throwing clothes, lilac suit and all, in my bag because I had to go home. And there was not one doubt in my stressed-out, hungover mind that none of this foolishness would have happened if I hadn't lost my job the week before the wedding.

C
orrection.

I did not
lose
my job. Why do people say that? You
lose
your wallet when you've got too much on your mind and fifteen errands to run and you leave it by the coffee machine at the Wawa after adding six sugars to your twenty-four-ounce dark roast to keep you going. Five stops later the cashier has rung up a week's worth of groceries. You're in a panic because you've dug to the bottom of your purse, only found lint, and you can hear the rumble in the line behind you. You rush out, knowing you're on top of the “idiot of the day” list and that it's time to go home and notify the credit-card companies that it wasn't you trying to buy a yacht with your VISA card. That's
lost.
It's careless and you had a hand in it. When Fido digs under the back fence and takes a hike people say you lost your dog, but I say if he can't find his way home he lost himself. And as for losing my mind—I am not going to let anybody make me crazy, but this job situation came pretty damn close.

No, I didn't lose my job. I was never careless with it. I walked into Markson & Daughter twenty-five years ago—before there was a logo, a corporate headquarters, a factory or a staff. I
was
the staff. I mean, at the beginning it wasn't even like a job. It was some crazy experiment that became bigger than I could imagine. I'm not sure Olivia could imagine it now either.

It was 1980, and I was nearing the end of my twelve years of mandatory servitude. Thirteen, really—kindergarten counts. I was not thrilled with the idea of continuing to subject myself to teachers, boring classes and grades. But one day, after a borderline report card, Mom said that unless I won the lottery—big time—I was going to have to work for the next forty years. Her point was nobody can afford to pay you what eight hours of your life is worth, but as long as you've got to spend your time to get a check, you might as well get the most for it. And college would definitely increase the value of my hours. It was cold for her to lay it out like that, but that's my mom, bless her heart, and it got my attention.

When my guidance counselor asked what I was interested in, I said making money. Since there was no degree in that per se, he suggested business administration. Sounded good to me, like I could wear nice outfits, sit at my desk and supervise my staff. Hey, I was eighteen. What did I know, other than I didn't want to wear work boots and climb telephone poles like Daddy or clean bedpans and patients' behinds like Mom? Nothing wrong with that. Just not for me. So I went to Manhattan Community College, first off, because they accepted me, and because my parents could help me swing the tuition. The school's whole mission was to teach you how to work. I mean, back then they didn't even have a real campus. Just floors in a bunch of office buildings in Midtown where real people were
working all around you, and you could imagine yourself doing the paycheck polka along with them. And I liked the idea of getting my associate's degree in two years so I'd have something in a frame to keep me motivated for the next two.

First semester my parents let me get the hang of college life, but one Friday during winter break, Daddy was counting out the contents of his pay envelope. I slid over, waiting for him to peel off my usual handout, and he said, “You know, you are too old to be getting an allowance. Nobody's gonna take care of you forever, including me.” I was hurt, but I got the hint.

I made my way to the placement office at school and searched the board for a part-time job. Nothing heavy—enough to keep me in pocket change and a few used textbooks to show my folks I was down for the cause. Waitressing was out. I'd have told somebody off because a tip did not mean I would put up with ignorance. So were jobs that required prior experience. I didn't have any. I happened to be there when new postings went up and one caught my eye. “Assistant to fragrance entrepreneur. Typing, filing, phones, etc. Flexible hours. West Side location.” Right part of town for me to scoot in after class. The hourly wasn't bad either. I swiped the card.

It took until the next morning for me to screw up the nerve to call, so I was disappointed to hear an answering machine with wind chimes in the background and a cheery voice saying, “You have reached Markson & Daughter, purveyor of creams and lotions crafted from nature's finest botanicals.” I got the beep before I figured out if I liked the sound of purveying botanicals, but as soon as I said my name and why I was calling a winded voice broke in.

“Don't hang up. Can you come right now?”

I wasn't prepared for the impromptu interview, so I told her
I didn't have my résumé with me—like I actually had a résumé.

“Doesn't matter. You'll tell me what you can do.”

Couldn't argue with that, and she sounded desperate, which improved my chances. I didn't look bad for a student that day, so I said I could be there by one. She told me the address and that her name was Olivia, and as I trudged along West Fifty-fifth Street trying to keep the gritty wind out of my eyes, I wondered what my desk would look like. And how soon I'd get paid. And how much further I had to walk. I didn't even know there was an Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan. Finally I got to the squatty red building. It looked so dilapidated I almost left, but I was too cold not to go inside, so I buzzed and she buzzed back before I changed my mind.

The job was on the third floor, up six long flights. Maybe that's why Olivia was winded on the phone. By midway I was dragging. Then there was all this weird art on the landings, like the photo of a woman's hand covered in bees. She was holding a rose. That still makes my skin crawl. I was about to turn around when I heard this “Yoo hoo,” like she was Heidi and these were the damn Alps, so I kept climbing and concocting excuses why this wasn't going to work out.

Judging by her voice, I expected Olivia to be petite, like a pixie. And the chimes made me think she'd be some kind of left over hippie. I was half right. She was a hippie from the bottoms of her red hightops to the tips of her fat pigtails, her lame attempt to control a mess of curly black hair. In between there was the denim shirt covered in hand-painted flowers and what looked like a lace tablecloth wrapped over her jeans like a sarong. And I was worried how I looked? Olivia was definitely out there but petite she was not. I looked up and this six-foot flower child was galloping down to meet me, fringes waving behind her.

“I'm Olivia and you just saved my ass! I didn't get one call until you. Destiny, huh?” I didn't bother telling her destiny had a lot to do with the listing being in my pocketbook.

Her loft was like Paradise Island meets Manhattan Island—plants and flowers hanging from the ceiling, on shelves rigged across the windows where sunshine spilled over them and onto overflowing terra-cotta planters on the floor. It made me forget winter was outside. And it smelled alive, like cut grass or Christmas trees—better than Mom's air freshener. I guess I looked stunned because Olivia explained she grew a lot of the herbs she used. “You make your own corn flakes too?” I shouldn't have said it, but I did. She laughed. “If I had time.” She brewed raspberry tea with Tupelo honey and told me she did make the blue earthenware mug. I laughed and took a sip—it wasn't like Lipton's, but it was warm and sweet and I was freezing. It hit the spot.

I could tell by the piles of toys that had taken over the pea-green corduroy sofa that this wasn't just a business. Markson, her daughter and whoever else went with the package lived there too. It wasn't like anybody's home I'd ever been to. Then it occurred to me I'd never been to a white person's home before, which explained why I was feeling a little jumpy. And this didn't look like the ones on TV, but it was kind of cool. I'd only known Olivia a few minutes, but it suited her.

She shoved books and magazines to one side of the wood-plank table, and we sat on mismatched chairs while she made up some kind of interview. When she got to the part about what I wanted to do after graduation, I had learned enough not to say “make money,” so I said, “I'm undecided,” which was definitely the truth. Olivia nodded her head like she could relate and after a few more questions, she led me to the kitchen—her laboratory.

It was kind of industrial—no teapot collections, cookie-cutter displays or flowered dish towels. But it was as neat as the other room was chaotic. A stainless-steel vat and a scale sat at one end of a metal worktable, with wide-mouthed apothecary jars lined up nearby. Olivia reached into a carton on the floor and handed me a jar filled with shiny white cream. “Try some.”

Definitely different from the ninety-nine-cent, no-name brand I used. The cream was smooth and thick and it smelled good enough to eat. She told me that when she and her husband lived in a village outside of London, there had been a field of lavender growing near their cottage. Cottage? She said it turned her on to the amazing scents in nature and she lost the nose for the toxic chemical perfumes in so many products. Olivia was the only person I ever met who could say stuff like that and make it sound normal. It also explained the sort of English accent she talked with, but there was something else in her voice I couldn't quite place. Anyway, I was wondering how she felt about Jovan Musk, since I thought that might be natural, when she told me how she started making creams while she was pregnant. They had moved back to the States and she detested the stuff in the pink bottles. I had to agree with her. Baby lotion always made me kind of gag too, but it wouldn't have occurred to me in a hundred years to make my own. Nobody I knew just
made
things like that—it was like making water. I said her cream was great. She told me to keep the jar, which I thought was really nice. People don't just give you stuff.

Then she passed me a stack of labels and a mug full of pens. She printed something for me to copy and explained she'd been so busy making cream to fill her first order that she forgot about labels. “Don't know what your handwriting is like, but it's got to be better than mine.”

Now, I was never the greatest student, but people used to borrow my notes to copy when they were absent because they were always so neat. Handwritten labels sounded old-fashioned, but if that's what she wanted…So I sized them up, figured out where the words should go. Then in my best script I wrote, “Markson & Daughter, Almond Ginger Body Crème, 8 ounces.”

“
Brilliant.
” Olivia practically hugged me, but I'm sure I looked at her like
I don't know you that well.
“Definitely destiny. Keep writing. I'll go fill jars. The order is due tomorrow.”

So I wrote and thought how this job was a piece of cake so far. Olivia worked in the kitchen and told me how she had made diapers, crib sheets and baby food for her daughter Hillary too, so I knew for sure she was a little off. That, and she didn't eat meat, fish or anything with eyes. I told her I loved my burgers and fries and she didn't hold it against me—said she'd make me a veggie burger one day. A few weeks later she did, with some soy cheese. It was nasty.

I didn't say much about myself. What was there to tell? I lived with my parents in a semi-attached house in Brooklyn. I didn't make anything interesting or dream anything big. Not much to find exciting, especially for somebody like Olivia. Besides, I could hear my mom. “Don't tell everybody your business, 'cause then it's theirs.” And she
was
my boss. Or at least she ran the place. Dad always said people can supervise you on the job, but don't let anybody boss you.

Anyway, around five minutes to three Olivia jumps up and says she has to get Hillary from school. I get my stuff together too and she says, “You don't have to leave now, do you?” like she'd lose it if I did. I assumed she'd want me to go. Daddy wouldn't have let the mayor stay in our house with nobody home. She said she'd be right back, and I didn't budge from
the chair. Now that I know Olivia, I'm sure the thought that I might take something never occurred to her.

Hillary, who looked about nine, wore a blue pleated skirt and cable-knit sweater—pretty much the opposite of her mother's getup. But they both had dark curly hair and talked faster than the speed of sound. It was Hillary who told me her father lived in London and that she missed him a lot. That's when Olivia went to get oatmeal cookies, but not before I saw a look that said she missed him too. Later, she told me she and Eliot Markson were divorced, but she kept his name—because it was Hillary's, and because it sounded better than Schaeffer on fine botanicals.

By the time we labeled the last jar it was after nine o'clock. Olivia took me down on the freight elevator and showed me how to operate it, which improved the job 100 percent. Then she hailed a taxi, gave me cab fare home to Canarsie, since it was so late, and said she'd see me tomorrow.

I could tell the driver was pissed—probably never been to my neighborhood. He rattled over the Brooklyn Bridge, and the blur of city lights made me giddy, or maybe I was just excited after day one with Olivia. I looked forward to day two way more than I did to Intro to Economics.

When I told my father about my job experience, he chuckled. “Sounds like a Looney Tuney to me. Let's see if the check clears.” It did. And a few months later, when a local weekly named Markson & Daughter's Almond Ginger Crème as one of its skin-care must-haves, it mentioned the special touch added by the handwritten labels. I started Olivia's book of press clippings with that article. I still have a copy too. And when the time came to switch to printed labels, we had the type specially designed to look like I wrote it.

Working for Olivia was never exactly a regular job, especially in the early days. She needed me to reassure her for the whole week before she took samples to the “Open See” at Bendel's, which was pretty funny since I couldn't have sold ice to a bunch of strangers, even in August. When she came back with an order, I was so psyched. She taught me about eucalyptus, rosemary, lemongrass, and that nasturtium flowers add color and spice to salad. I taught her principles of accounting. She never exactly got it. I kept her organized and on schedule, purchased the practical things like a typewriter, staplers and eventually our first computer—which neither of us knew how to use. When I made a suggestion, she listened, like I had some sense. I was starting to believe I did. Olivia had better instincts about marketing and sales than my professors. And I was pretty good at accounts receivable—people should pay what they owe. How else was I supposed to get a check? We made a good team.