Pretty in Ink (16 page)

11

J
ust for kicks, I decide to time the morning’s mail drop-off: twenty-three minutes to sort and distribute the load into everyone’s individual boxes. Damn, it used to take me sixteen. The names keep changing on the slots, and it’s been like musical chairs out on the floor—this one going to that cubicle, that one moving into that office, another one booted out for good. I’ve been at this for a while now, but all this lunatic switching around and trying to figure out whose mail goes where, it’s keeping me on my toes.

Used to be, it meant good news when the mail labels changed. One of the girls moving up to a better job somewhere else, someone new coming in, eager to take over the spot. But now it’s like I work at a funeral home, only removing labels for tragedy and misfortune. I don’t always know the story—what with all the new folks around I’m not as entrenched in the gossip—but I can feel it. It’s in the atmosphere; it’s frosty, makes me shiver.

I take a quick break to page through the
Post
and grab a cup of coffee. One of the new girls walks by and gives me a look like,
What’s with the slacking?
As if I don’t see the lot of them messing around on Facebook half the day. No one used to mind if I rested my legs now and then. The girls would strut by in their tall shoes, and ask me, “How ’bout them Mets?” like they knew anything about the team besides that I’m a fan. Just being nice. Even Louisa would stop to chat. I’d ask after her two kids, and she’d do the same about my Becky and Joey, wondering how they were doing in school. Small talk, but friendly. Real nice. The boss’s assistant, Jenny, would bring me little knickknacks for Becky, sparkly nail polishes and rainbow socks. Sweet girl. Too bad.

Leah passes by and offers up a little smile, but doesn’t stop to talk. Everyone’s on edge these days. Probably would do them all a world of good to just wrestle it out in a good old-fashioned catfight. Some scratching, hair pulling, the whole works. But I’ve learned these girls are experts at the nicey-nice kind of fighting, the subtle digs and jabs that are hard to spot. Sneaky sabotage. Much nastier.

Laura appears before me and clears her throat. She’s never asked me my name and, as far as I know, probably thinks I don’t have one. “We’re still getting mail here for Louisa”—she whispers the name, like it belongs to the devil—“and Mimi doesn’t like it. I’ll need you to change the envelope labels so they’re addressed to Mimi.” She barks it like an order.

“Oh, like print ’em out with my label maker?” I say, joking, as if I’ve got one.

Laura looks relieved. She was probably nervous I couldn’t write or something. “Yeah, that’s fine, whatever,” she says. “Just make sure they’re properly changed.”

That’s
your
job, I want to say. But I know how things work around here, so I keep my lips buttoned. Laura walks off. No “thank you,” of course. So now I’ve got this new job responsibility, dictated by some twenty-three-year-old assistant who’s been on the job all of a couple of months.

I hunker down to write out the new labels with Mimi Walsh’s name, then I page through the mail and stick them over the letters addressed to Louisa Harding. As if a sticker can erase a legacy. It makes me wonder about the new boss. To feel so threatened by someone else’s name on your mail, that’s quite a case of the inse-cures.

Hers
was a real get for me. It meant no more shuttling clothing racks all day to and from those snooty girls at
Teen Fashionista,
who would probably mellow out a little if they ate the occasional meal. And no more delivering mail to those sissy boys up at
Metro,
or lugging all kinds of heavy furniture onto the sets of
Home Sweet Home. Hers
is mostly small packages and shopping bags, like every day’s somebody’s birthday. All the girls get the papers, too, which means I can scan the headlines on my rounds before I drop them off. And their free table’s the best. Plenty of Made for TV crap and self-help hardcovers that sell on eBay lickety-split. I finally swung the
Hers
floor last year after Manny retired and Christopher left to get surgery on his bum knee.

“Cheer up, honey,” I say, delivering a large package to Jane at her desk. She seems the most worried of the bunch. She’s also the prettiest—thick dark hair, glasses that make her look like one of those sexy librarians. Maybe most guys wouldn’t find her to be the best looking. She’s not what you’d call a classic beauty, but she’s got a way about her.

“I’m OK, Ed. I just had a rough night and I’m hungover as can be.” She scrunches up her pointy little nose—her sign that she’s working hard, I’ve learned—then flips her hair in a way that leaves it all in a crazy mess. For some reason I find it attractive as hell. I try not to stare.

“Two days till the weekend, right, honey?”

“Amen to that,” Jane says, then signs for the package. “Please tell me this is my Xanax.”

They sometimes open up to me, the girls. “Aw, you don’t need that junk.”

“Oh, yes, I do. You’ve been around, you know what’s up.” She tears open the cardboard and fishes out a pill bottle, holds it up like a trophy. “Thank God. Want one?”

“Maybe next time.” I head down to the mailroom to pick up the midday stack, which includes a cake box from one of those swanky uptown bakeries. It’s addressed to Zoe, the Web manager. One thing I’ll never understand, why all these companies are always sending the girls dessert.

“Ooh, lookie loo, cupcakes,” Zoe says, cracking the lid when I deliver the box. “And they’ve got jelly bean nipples so they look like boobs! Apparently August is National Breastfeeding Month, says the American Maternal Health Association. Who knew?” Well, that makes a lot of sense, a pound of butter and sugar to promote the health of moms and babies. “Yum-o! Want one, Ed?”

I hope I’m not turning red; no way would I walk around this place eating a breast cupcake. “Nah, I gotta watch the old ticker. Doctor’s orders. Hey, who gets Regina’s mail when she’s outta town, Victoria or Leah?” It’s extra confusing now that there are two executive editors.

“Depends on who you’re trying to impress. Maybe split it up halfsies, just to be safe?”

“Gotcha.”

“Unless of course it’s anything good. Then you can hand it right over to me, and I’ll put it aside it until Regina’s next visit.” Zoe winks.

I weave the aisles with my mail cart, trailed by the
click-click-clicking
of high heels. It’s such a familiar sound that I’ve come to think of it as the soundtrack of the floor, the
Hers
theme song or anthem. I watch the girls teetering around on those tall shoes, and I honestly feel bad for them. I did even before all this nonsense started. They’re all so pretty with their nice, shiny hair and fancy outfits, but I’m always hearing them moan about how fat they look or how so-and-so fellow hasn’t called them back. It breaks my heart, how sad they can be.

I swing by Drew’s desk, since she takes the creative director’s mail. I hand her both a bunch for Lynn and a bunch that’s kept coming in for Mark. I brace myself. The first time I gave her Mark’s pile after he got fired, she smiled at me in the most miserable way and then fingered each letter like it was from a dead relative. This time she sorts through his stack like it’s no big deal.
Phew.

Leah’s now sitting where Liz used to be, and Liz is long gone, so I hand both their bundles to Leah. “Thanks, Ed,” she says, flipping through the stack. “Ooh, what’s this?” She holds up a package with the return address “The Putney Academy. Putney, Vermont,” then tears it open. “How’s it going with you, Ed? How are your kids?”

“Not bad. Joey’s cleaning up on his T-ball league this summer, and Becky starts kindergarten in the fall. They grow up fast.”

“Sometimes not fast enough, that’s what I think. All the dirty dishes, all the poopy diapers, all the laundry.” Leah laughs as she glances through the contents of her package. “My husband must’ve sent out for this. It’s information about a school, a possibility for our daughters down the line. Look at this. They have all the students feed the animals and work the farm. They help harvest the vegetables that go in their lunches. So cute.”

“Pretty cool,” I say, though I wonder why in the world you’d pay to send your kids off to do hard labor, when they could be comfortable in a classroom, learning their math and history. “Your daughters are still real small, right?”

“Nearly eighteen months,” she says, setting aside the materials. “Let me ask you something, Ed.” Leah focuses on me, a serious look in her eyes. “How come you live in New York City? Why settle here?”

“Uh, I s’pose cuz I’ve lived here all my life. My wife and I have decent jobs.”

“Yeah, but there are jobs everywhere, right? I mean, with all the other places you could choose to live in the world, why stay in New York?”

I’m not sure the reason for the sudden third degree. This whole place has seriously gone bonkers. “Our families are here, y’know? We’re close. And they help out.”

“Family, right.” The way she says it, I can’t tell if she thinks it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“I’ll be honest,” I say. “Sometimes I think about shipping off with my wife and kids out to the middle of nowhere, where groceries and rent are cheap and there’s space to breathe and we don’t have to be shoved up against a dozen other families, two feet away on top and below and on either side, everyone all up in our business.” As soon as I say this aloud, I realize it’s the truth.

“So do you think you’ll do it?” she asks. “Pull the trigger and skip town?”

“Nah, probably not. I can’t really picture leaving this place.”

My phone rings: the wife, her usual smoke-break check-in. “Excuse me,” I say to Leah. I slip off into the supply closet for some privacy. “Hi, hon.”

“Hey, Eddy. How’s the grand land of glamour and bullshit?”

“Same old. How goes it with you?”

“Rotten. Someone splashed clam sauce all across my shirt this morning, and I don’t have a change. Why don’t you shuttle me over something nice from the fashion closet?”

“It’s a plan.” It makes me laugh, the thought of my wife waiting tables in one of those ridiculous gowns they’ve got lining the racks here. “The August issues came in today. Want me to bring one home for you?”

“Nah, I’m through with that junk,” she says. “All the pretty models and all those goddamned
tips,
reading that magazine just makes me feel like crap about myself. And you know I’m not crap.”

“Not even close.” I see my wife’s point. I’ve flipped through
Hers
once or twice. Every story’s about how to fix this or that, how to be prettier or skinnier or happier.

“Any sandwich spottings at lunch today?” she asks.

“Negative.” My wife loves the office gossip. She thinks it’s hilarious that the girls here all order the same salads every day, dressing on the side. Jane actually went for two slices of pizza today—hangover food, probably—but I don’t like to mention Jane to my wife.

“Imagine if one of those girls ordered a double cheeseburger with a big old pile of French fries. I’d kill to see all the reactions when she walked through the office.”

“You’re making me hungry,” I say.

“Probably get fired on the spot.”

“Funny thing is, anytime the recipe lady brings down food from the test kitchen—French fries, cookies, you name it—they all pounce. You should see ’em. Like wild animals.”

“Well, duh, calories in free food don’t count. Everyone knows that.”

“So that’s how it works?”

“And what’s Her Highness, Ms. Mimi, wearing?” My wife is always trying to get me to describe everyone’s outfits—the materials, the colors, the brands—but I’m no good at it. The best I can do is “a purple dress” or “high heel boots.”

“How about I find out for you?”

“Seriously?”

“Sure,” I say. I figure, what the hell? I’m not scared of Mimi like everyone else is. She can’t fire me.

I say good-bye to my wife, then I whiz past Laura’s desk—I ignore her “Excuse me!”—and march right into Mimi’s office, package in hand (the label says her name, I checked). “You can sign here,” I announce, handing her a pen before she has the chance to say her assistant can sign for it.

I hesitate, then speak up: “Hey, I’m curious. What brand are those nice shoes you’re wearing today?”

Mimi looks at me like she’s seen a ghost. It’s pretty funny, I’ve gotta admit. Then she shrugs and grabs her notepad. She writes out the word in ink as red as Mars and hands me the slip of paper.

Fendi,
I tell my wife that night, sensing the power in the word.
Fendi.

12

W
ith five minutes left before I need to skedaddle out the door, I’m racing around my home office grabbing folders while also trying to keep an eye on Rose, who’s eked her way in and is now teetering across the carpet to my pile of
Hers
back issues. She picks up the most recent one, the first-bound version of August that just came into the office, a week before the final version will ship out to newsstands and subscribers. I don’t have the energy to discipline, so I watch absentmindedly as my toddler rips the cover in two and then tosses the torn magazine halfway across the room. Good arm—my baseball-obsessed husband would swoon. The issue lands sprawled open to Mimi’s first editor’s letter. Rose peers at the page; it features a photo that appears to be a friendlier (and thinner) twin of Mimi, perching in an almost-too-short skirt against her desk. Rose begins wailing.

“Thatta girl, good judge of character,” I say, although it’s more likely she’s reacting to her sisters crying in the next room. I hoist up my daughter and glance at the page. Mimi’s hair blowout for the photo shoot was rumored to cost four hundred dollars, and when Lynn showed her the shots, she insisted on more Photoshop-cropping of her waist and arms. I can barely make my way through her note: It’s all sunshine and happiness for the summer, her loopy “Cheers, Mimi” sign-off stamped at the bottom in red ink. A sidebar features staff quotes about all our fun warm-weather plans. Laura had to pry them out of us, because really, who’s had time this summer to frolic about on the beach or picnic in the park while on Mimi’s grueling watch? A blurb on the bottom tells readers they can buy Mimi’s skirt from the Gap for 20 percent off by mentioning they spotted it in their favorite magazine—clever. I kick aside the issue and grab my briefcase.

Maria appears to fetch Rose. I wonder for the hundredth time whether I should give the girls’ nanny some warning about the job search that’s likely on her horizon. Surely she knows something’s been off; for the past three months, as often as I’ve greeted Rob at the door at six, he’s had to come and coax me out of my office and soothe me through my tears. Even the girls have been crankier. And on the evenings before my work-from-home days, Maria has taken to laying out clothes for me along with the babies’ next-day outfits, a not-so-subtle message that it would be a good idea for me to change out of my ratty pajamas while I work.

I glance at my watch: 7:58 a.m., August 2. My weeks of relative safety finishing up the October issue are speeding by—two out of three now gone. Just one week until I’m likely out, I think. I resolve to break the news to Maria tomorrow. Then I’ll pass along her information to Suzie in H.R., who can give out her phone number to whomever they hire next. Although at the rate the firing and hiring is going, it seems like women with children are discouraged from joining the staff of
Hers
. Mothers can’t stay until the wee hours of the night to ship pages. Mothers have to go home and cook for their family, clean their house, assist with homework, and do all the other things
Hers
offers tips for and supposedly reveres. I’ve heard Mimi rib (or threaten?) Victoria that she’ll need at least a year’s notice before she gets herself knocked up.

“Maria, you’re a saint,” I say. I kiss the tops of all three of my daughters’ heads, then race out the door, manage to catch my train, and—a miracle!—slide into my cubicle by 9:30.

“Tweet, tweet,” announces Jonathan, floating through the office and flapping his arms. “Tweet, tweet.”

“What in the hell?” I say under my breath.

“Isn’t he adorable?” says Victoria, who apparently has the hearing of a bat and is now casting a shadow over my cubicle. After so many years in an office, I’m still alarmed at the lack of privacy of my new space. It’s like setting up shop in the middle of a cocktail party, people constantly cozying up to chat, the only polite escape a plea for the ladies’ room.

“T-minus two minutes until our Twitter seminar,” Jonathan says. “Everybody flit on over to the conference room.”

I bring my notebook, mostly to doodle. The term “social media” makes me want to hole up in the stacks at the library and bury myself in an ancient, dusty book. I do keep a photo blog of my girls, mostly because I’m not organized enough to actually make prints and also because I was always accidentally leaving someone off of group e-mails. Some mommy blogger friends have urged me to sign up for Twitter, but my brief forays onto the site have revealed a wasteland of self-promotion and inanity. I imagine it would take a dedicated digger a lot of effort to unearth occasional flashes of wit. I’d rather not take on the challenge.

Mimi calls us to attention. “Ladies and ladies”—this joke has become her standard fare and, never funny to begin with, it’s given me a pang ever since Mark got the pink slip—“the man who has transformed Twitter into his personal playground, the get-yourself-gorgeous guru who’s the toast of the Twitterati, the media maven who’s wracked up, I kid you not, one hundred thousand followers, I present to you, Mr. Join Jonathan!” The back door of the conference room swings open and in runs Jonathan, a cape fanning out behind him. He’s fluttering pieces of paper into the air like he’s a walking fortune cookie. One lands on my lap, and I unfold it: “@JoinJonathan: Big night out? A dab of glitter 2 ur eyelid crease makes peepers pop, & preps u 4 the rockin after-party!” I dab at the bags under my eyes, suddenly self-conscious.

“Ladies,” says Jonathan, jogging a lap around the conference room. “I am here to help you expand your social media know-how and unleash your personal flair in order to grow the
Hers
brand . . . to infinity and beyond! Prepare to get the lowdown on savvy strategies to engage your audience, brilliant techniques to deliver incredible value, and creative ways to maximize user content. Ready to get going?”

I hear mumbling from Zoe, who’s sitting next to me. “What’s that?” I whisper.

“I said, just because he has a gazillion sleazy workout buddies from David Barton and thousands of randoms from Grindr and Scruff following him on Twitter doesn’t make him some kind of social media maven. I bet he pays for followers.” I nod, though I have no idea what she’s talking about. “I should be running this thing. Join Jonathan? Hells to the no.” I shrug, though Zoe is right; this silliness does seem like it’s solidly Web manager territory.

Jonathan hooks up his laptop to the overhead projector, and the screen reads “Ready to get going?” in Comic Sans font. God help us.

“Oh, and the hashtag for this meeting is #Hersjoinsjonathan,” he says. Zoe rolls her eyes, but I’m just confused. I see Laura whip out her phone, and moments later Jonathan pulls HootSuite.com onto the screen and points out her tweet: “@LovelyLaura1989: Lovin Her’s new Twitter plan! #Hersjoinsjonathan.” Huh, what plan? And how humiliating that someone on our editorial staff can’t properly use an apostrophe, and that it’s being broadcast to the World Wide Web. On the plus side, it seems phones are fair game at this meeting, so I take out mine and discretely load up a game of Words with Friends.

The next hour reminds me of my brief stint as a premed student, a period put to an end by my first Organic Chemistry lecture that may as well have been delivered in Mandarin. Gibberish words like “bitly,” “analytics,” and “tout” flash across the screen as Jonathan fills us in on dozens of ways to get as many people as possible to acknowledge our brand’s existence. I don’t see the point of this manic race to collect followers, but I sense it’s not a good idea to raise my hand and ask.

“From now on, twice a day Laura will be e-mailing the staff with suggested tweets about articles we’re trying to promote online, plus goings-on about the office,” says Jonathan. “And I’ll be encouraging you to tweet
Hers
beauty tips and giveaways.”

“As in, the stuff we already tweet on the official
Hers
handle?” Zoe asks.

“Yes, but a hipper, funner version of that.” Zoe smirks; even she knows “funner” isn’t a word.

Lynn raises her hand. “Here’s the thing. I use Twitter to share news about my favorite artists and their gallery openings—like, which ones will have free wine and cheese, wink wink. And to chat about which sexy male singers I’d like to serenade me. You know, the usual stuff. So how exactly does
Hers
fit into that?” Jonathan looks perplexed.

Abby jumps in: “I think what Lynn’s getting at is, How we can separate the personal from the professional on our Twitter accounts?”

“Aha, excellent question,” says Jonathan. “That brings me to my next slide: Be human.” The slide actually says this, next to a photo of two women who look as if they’ve spent a collective six hours getting ready; they’re fake-laughing and huddled over their phones. It does not surprise me in the slightest that this is Jonathan’s idea of “being human.”

“I definitely don’t suggest just posting whatever we send you like you’re some sort of droid,” Jonathan says, and then launches into a performance of a very impressive robot dance. I wonder how long he’s practiced. “The point is to bring your own unique personality and flair to the tweet so that users will really connect with you and get a glimpse of what it’s like to be in the glamorous world of
Hers.
If I just tweeted, ‘Sephora now has neon lipstick,’ would anyone pay attention?”

“No way!” says Laura. That girl has a tendency to answer rhetorical questions.

“Instead, I get folks’ attention with something like ‘Neon lipstick is the new Brazilian wax: Risqué, but
so
now—& the boys’ll
luuurve
it! Hit up Sephora to try.’ I rock my Jonathan-ness, and followers respond. I infuse the professional with my personality. See?” Lynn is nodding, but Abby’s brow is furrowed. I wonder what Jonathan would think of my husband’s and my no-Internet Brenner Unplugged nights.

“OK, activity time!” Jonathan accompanies his clap with a little leap. “Everyone take a worksheet and pass. I’ve blocked out 140 characters—the length of one tweet. I’d like you all to define yourself using this space. Bonus if you can do it in 125, so followers can retweet your answer.”

Is he serious?
How vapid must you be if you can be summed up in 140 characters? Victoria winks at me, so I face the paper. “
Hers
editor, mom of triplets, wife of Rob, lover of wine.” Oh, God, I’m not even halfway through the allotted characters and I’m already drawing a blank. I read over my list and add in “Soon-to-be-ex” at the start, but I manage to cross it off before Zoe peeks over my shoulder.

“I have wine lover, too,” she says. “Only I say ‘pinot-phile,’ natch. Adorbs, right? That fairy faker may be at the front of the room leading this thingy, but I will most certainly have the best self-definition.”

I try again. “Words and wine lover, bookworm, morning person and nap enthusiast, head over heels for Daisy+Rose+Lulu+Rob, yearning for pre-baby weight.” There we go, that sounds a bit more like me, but also like some twisted online dating profile: a housewife on the hunt for an affair.

Jonathan asks for volunteers to read their self-definitions aloud. Zoe’s hand shoots up. “Livin the
Hers
life, luv celeb gos-sip &beauty tips, pinot-phile, trying to balance home&work&play. (Moonlight as TMI
Hers
sex blogger! LOL)”

“Love!” exclaims Jonathan. Zoe raises her eyebrows at me, as in,
That’s how it’s done.
“See, folks, how she promotes
Hers,
but also breathes her own personality into her description? Who
wouldn’t
follow her on Twitter? This is a perfect example of being human.”

I excuse myself for the bathroom, where I splash water on my face and have one of those ever-more-frequent out-of-body moments, wondering who the pale, haggard person is that’s staring back at me in the mirror.

When I return to the meeting, Jonathan is directing our attention to the screen. “Look, an hour ago I tweeted my followers asking if they thought bright red lips were sexy or slutty, and I’ve already gotten thirty-two retweets, twelve favorites, and thirteen new followers. This is called engagement, people!”
This is called inane,
I think. I wonder how Rob would react if I started a Twitter account with a handle like @momofthree and simply decided to crowdsource the entire raising of our children: “Triplets R 18months, my boobs R worn out. To keep breastfeeding or to switch 2 the bottle? (Or 2 turn 2 the other bottle?!) Please RT!”

“We want all your great ideas for growing
Hers
’ Twitter followers,” says Jonathan. “Kindly submit your memos to me by end of day. And stay tuned for upcoming meetings on
Hers
’ Facebook and Pinterest accounts and our Foursquare and Instagram presence, plus plans for expansion onto other social networking and Web platforms.” It’s a relief to think I’ll probably be out of here by these follow-ups.

 

The next morning, I call my former coworker Liz for my daily venting call. “Look, why don’t you ditch your office and come meet me for an afternoon date?” she says.

“In
Brooklyn?
” Pre-parenthood, back when we lived in Williamsburg, Rob and I spent many a boozy Sunday brunching and playing poker with Liz and Jake at their brownstone in Cobble Hill. That feels like a century ago.

“You say that like it’s San Francisco. Yeah, in Brooklyn. Why not? Your girls have Maria. Keep your phone on to field the crazy boss lady’s demands and come out here to yuppie babyville. You can call it story research.”

I meet Liz at one of those coffee shops that open at ten a.m. and don’t seem to offer the option of plain black. Off a menu of drinks bearing the names of women writers, I request an Eavan Boland Earl Grey tea. Liz is sprawled across a divan in the corner, sipping a Lydia Davis latte and cooing at her baby, Matilda. We exchange a double kiss. “Sorry if I’m sweaty,” she says. “Tilly and I just came from mommy-and-me yoga-lates.”