“The less reputable side?”
“Could be.”
What they both knew was that Felding-Roth, like other big pharmaceutical firms, erected a wall between the prescription drug portion of its business, which was considered prestigious, and its O-T-C activities which frequently were not. On each side of the wall all activities were separate. Each side had its own administration, research staff, and sales force; there was no liaison between the two.
This policy of separation was why Felding-Roth kept alive the name Bray & Commonwealth—originally a small, independent drug house. It had been acquired by Felding-Roth many years earlier and was now concerned solely with non-prescription products. In the public mind Bray & Commonwealth had no connection with Felding-Roth, and the parent company preferred it that way.
“Bray & Commonwealth will be an educational experience,” Sam told Celia. “You’ll learn to care about cough remedies, hemorrhoid ointments and shampoos. Also, O-T-C is part of the whole drug scene—a big part, and it makes a bundle of money. So you have to know about it, how it works, and why.”
He continued, “Something else is that you may have to suspend your critical judgments for a while.”
She said curiously, “Would you explain that?”
“You’ll find out.”
Celia decided not to press the point.
“There’s one more thing I should tell you,” Sam said. “The Bray & Commonwealth division has been stagnating and our O-T-C line needs new initiative, new ideas.” He smiled. “Maybe the ideas of a strong, imaginative, occasionally abrasive woman—Yes, what is it?”
The last remark was to his secretary, an attractive young black woman who had come in and was standing at the open doorway.
When she failed to answer immediately Sam said, “Maggie, I told you I didn’t want to be—”
“Wait!” Celia said. She had seen what Sam did not—that tears were streaming down the secretary’s face. “Maggie, what’s wrong?”
The girl spoke with an effort, words emerging between sobs. “It’s the President … President Kennedy has been shot … in Dallas … It’s all over … on the radio.”
Hurriedly, with a look combining horror and unbelief, Sam Hawthorne snapped on a radio beside his desk.
Forever after, like most others of her generation, Celia would remember precisely where she was and what she was doing at that terrible moment. It was a shattering, numbing introduction to the apocalyptic days which followed, a time of ended hopes and deep dejection. Whether Camelot had been real or illusory, there was a sense of something lost for always; of a new beginning which suddenly went nowhere; of the impermanence of everything; of the unimportance of lesser concerns including—for Celia—her own ambitions, and talk and thought of her new job. The hiatus ended, of course, and life moved on. It moved on, for Celia, to the head offices of Bray & Commonwealth Inc., wholly owned subsidiary of Felding-Roth Pharmaceuticals, located in a four-story plain brick building a mile and a half from the parent company headquarters. There, some two weeks later, in her new modest but comfortable office, she met with Teddy Upshaw, the division sales manager, to review over-the-counter products.
Through the preceding week Celia had immersed herself in papers—financial statements, sales data, research reports, personnel files—all relating to her new appointment. As she read on, she realized what Sam Hawthorne had told her was true. The division had been stagnating under uninspired leadership. It did need new initiative and ideas.
At the beginning of her talk with Upshaw, Celia said, “Teddy, a plain, blunt question. Do you resent my sitting here and your having to report to me? Does it matter that our roles have been reversed?”
The whippetlike sales chief appeared surprised. “Matter? My God, Celia, I couldn’t be happier! You’re what this division needed. When I heard you were moving over, I felt like cheering. Ask my wife! The night after I got the news, we drank your health.” Teddy’s energetic, bouncing head punctuated his remarks. “As to resenting you, no my dear, I’m just a salesman—a damn good one, but that’s all I’ll ever be. But you’ve the brains to give me something good, a whole lot better than what we have, to sell.”
Celia was moved by the reaction. “Thank you, Teddy,” she said. “I like you too. We can be good for each other.”
“Damn right!”
“You’ve been on both sides of this business,” she pointed out. “Prescription drugs and O-T-C, Tell me what you see as differences between them.”
“It’s pretty basic. O-T-C is mostly hype.” Teddy glanced at papers spread around the office. “I guess you’ve discovered that from studying costs.”
“Just the same, I’d like to hear your version.”
He looked at her inquiringly. “Confidentially? No holds barred?”
She nodded. “That’s the way I want it.”
“All right then, look at it this way. As we both know, a prescription drug costs millions to research and takes five, six years before it’s ready for selling. With an O-T-C item, you need six months or less to formulate the stuff, and the cost is peanuts. After that the big money goes for packaging, advertising, sales.”
“Teddy,” Celia said, “you have a knack of getting to the core of things.”
He shrugged. “I never kid myself. What we’re selling around here ain’t from Louis Pasteur.”
“Yet overall, the industry’s O-T-C drug sales are shooting up and up.”
“Like a goddam rocket! Because it’s what the great American public wants, Celia. People who’ve got something wrong with ’em—mostly something minor which time would take care of if they had the sense to leave it alone—those people want to treat themselves. They like playing doctor, and that’s where we come in. So if that rocket is going up anyway, why shouldn’t all of us—Felding-Roth, you, me—go up there with it, hitching to the tail?” He paused, considering, then went on. “Only trouble right now is, we ain’t got firm hold of that tail—we’re not getting the share we could have of the market.”
“I agree about market share,” Celia said, “and I believe we can change that. As to O-T-C drugs themselves, surely they have a little more value than you say.”
Teddy raised his hands as if the answer didn’t matter. “A little maybe, but not much. There are a few good things—like aspirin. As to others, the main thing is they make people feel good, even if it’s only in their minds.”
She persisted, “Don’t some of the common cold remedies, for instance, do more than ease the mind?”
“Nah!” Teddy shook his head emphatically. “Ask any good doctor. Ask Andrew. If you or I get a cold, being on the inside track so to speak, what’s the best thing we should do? I’ll tell you! Go home, put our feet up and rest, drink lots of liquids, take some aspirin. That’s all there is to do—until science finds a cure for the common cold, which is still a long hard march from here, the way I hear it.”
Despite the seriousness, Celia laughed. “You never take any cold medicine?”
“Never. Luckily, though, there’s lots who do. Armies of hopefuls who pay out half a billion dollars every year trying to cure their uncurable colds. And you and me, Celia—we’ll be out there selling ’em what they want, and the nice thing is, none of it’ll do ’em harm.” A note of caution crept into Teddy’s voice. “Of course, you understand I wouldn’t talk like this to anyone outside. I’m doing it now because you asked me, we’re private, and we trust each other.”
“I appreciate the frankness, Teddy,” Celia said. “But feeling the way you do, doesn’t it sometimes bother you, doing this kind of work?”
“The answer’s no for two reasons.” He ticked them off on fingers. “Number one, I’m not in the judgment business. I take the world the way it is, not the way some dreamers think it ought to be. Number two, somebody’s gonna sell the stuff, so it might as well be Teddy Upshaw.” He regarded Celia searchingly. “It bothers you, though, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged. “Occasionally
, it does.”
“Did the brass tell you how long you’d stay in Bray & Commonwealth?”
“Nothing was said. I suppose it could be indefinitely.”
“No,” Teddy assured her. “They won’t leave you here. You’ll have this job for a year, probably, then move on. So stick it out, baby! In the end it’s worth it.”
“Thank you, Teddy,” Celia said. “I’ll take your advice, though I hope to do a great deal more than stick it out.”
Despite being a working wife and mother, Celia was determined never to neglect her family, and especially to remain close to Lisa, now five, and Bruce who was three. Each weeknight, on her return home and before dinner, she spent two hours with the children—a schedule Celia adhered to no matter how important were the office papers she brought home in a briefcase for later study.
During the evening of the day on which she had her talk with Teddy Upshaw, Celia continued what she had begun a few days earlier—reading to Lisa, and to Bruce when he would sit still long enough to listen, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Bruce was quieter than usual tonight—he was tired and had the beginnings of a head cold with a runny nose—and Lisa, as always, was listening raptly as the story described Alice waiting by a tiny door to a beautiful garden, a door which Alice was too large to enter, and hoping she would find …
… a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle … (“which certainly was not here before,” said Alice), and tied round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in large letters.
Celia put the book down while she wiped Bruce’s nose with a tissue, then read on.
It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not.” … She had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
However, this bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavor of cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off.
“What a curious feeling!” said Alice. “I must be shutting up like a telescope.”
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high …
Lisa interjected, “She shouldn’t have drunk it, Mommy, should she?”
“Not in real life,” Celia said, “but this is a story.”
Lisa insisted firmly, “I still don’t think she should have drunk it.” Her daughter, Celia had observed before, was already a person of strong opinions.
“You’re dead right, honey,” Andrew’s voice behind them said cheerfully; he had come in quietly and unnoticed. “Never drink anything you’re not sure about unless your doctor prescribes it.”
They all laughed, the children embraced Andrew enthusiastically, and he kissed Celia.
“Right now,” Andrew said, “I prescribe an end-of-day martini.” He asked Celia, “Join me?”
“Sure will.”
“Daddy,” Lisa said, “Brucie has a cold. Can you make it go away?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a cold doctor.” He picked her up and hugged her. “Feel me! I’m a warm doctor.”
Lisa giggled. “Oh, Daddy!”
“It’s uncanny,” Celia said. “This is almost a replay of a conversation I had today.”
Andrew put Lisa down and began to mix martinis. “What conversation?”
“I’ll tell you over dinner.”
Celia put Alice on a shelf until the next evening and prepared to take the children to bed. An aroma of curried lamb floated in from the kitchen while, in the adjoining dining room, Winnie August was setting Andrew and Celia’s places for dinner. What did I ever do, Celia thought, to have such a wonderful, satisfying, happy life?
“Teddy’s absolutely right about its being useless to treat colds with anything except liquids, rest and aspirin,” Andrew said after Celia told him of the discussion in her office that morning.
The two of them had finished dinner and taken their coffee to the living room. He went on, “I tell my patients, if they have a cold and treat it properly it will last seven days. If they don’t, it will last a week.”
Celia laughed and Andrew poked at a log fire he had lighted earlier, restoring it to flame.
“But Teddy’s in error,” Andrew said, “about so-called cold remedies not doing any harm. A lot of them are harmful, some dangerous.”
“Oh, really!” she objected. “Surely ‘dangerous’ is exaggerating.”
He said emphatically, “It isn’t. In trying to cure a cold you may make other, more serious things that are wrong with you a whole lot worse.” Andrew crossed to a bookshelf and pulled down several volumes, their pages flagged with slips of paper. “I’ve been doing some reading about this lately.” He turned pages of the books.
“In most cold remedies,” Andrew said, “there’s a mishmash of ingredients. One’s a chemical called phenylephrine; it’s in what are advertised as decongestants to relieve a stuffy nose. Mostly, phenylephrine doesn’t work—there isn’t enough used to be effective—but it does raise blood pressure, which is harmful for anyone, and dangerous for those who have high blood pressure already.”
He referred to a page of notes. “Plain, simple aspirin, just about all medical researchers agree, is the best thing for a cold. But there are aspirin substitutes, heavily advertised and bought, which contain a chemical, phenacetin. It can cause kidney damage, maybe irreversible damage, if taken too often and too long. Then there are antihistamines in cold tablets—there shouldn’t be; they increase mucus in the lungs. There are nose drops and nasal sprays more harmful than good—” Andrew stopped. “Do you want me to go on?”
“No,” Celia said, and sighed. “I get the picture.”
“What it comes down to,” Andrew said, “is that if you have saturation advertising you can make people believe anything and buy anything.”
“But cold aids do help a cold,” she protested. “You hear people say so.”
“They only think they help. It’s all a delusion. Maybe the cold was getting better. Maybe it was psychological.”
As Andrew put the books away, Celia remembered something another doctor, a veteran general practitioner, had told her when she was a detail woman. “When patients come to me complaining of a cold, I give ’em placebos—harmless little sugar pills. A few days later they’ll come back and say, ‘Those pills worked wonders; the cold has gone.’” The old G.P. had looked at Celia and chuckled. “It would have gone anyway.”
The memory, and Andrew’s comments, had the flavor of truth and now, in contrast to her earlier mood, Celia was depressed. Her new responsibilities were opening her eyes to things she wished she didn’t have to know. What was happening, she wondered, to her sense of values? She realized what Sam had meant when telling her, “You may have to suspend your critical judgments for a while.” Would it really be necessary? And could she? Should she? Still pondering the questions, she opened the briefcase she had brought home and spread papers around her.
Also in the briefcase was something Celia had forgotten until then—a sample package of Bray & Commonwealth’s “Healthotherm,” an O-T-C product introduced some twenty years earlier and still sold widely as a chest rub for children with colds; it had a strong, spicy smell described in advertising as “comforting.” Celia had brought it home, knowing Bruce had a cold, and intending to use it. Now she asked Andrew, “Should I?”
He took the package from her, read the table of ingredients, and laughed. “Darling, why not? If you want to use that ancient greasy goo, it won’t do Brucie the slightest harm. Won’t do him any good, either, but it’ll make you feel better. You’ll be a mother doing something.”
&nbs
p; Andrew opened the package and inspected the tube inside. Still amused, he said, “Maybe that’s what Healthotherm is all about. It isn’t for the kids at all; it’s for their mothers.”
Celia was about to laugh herself, then stopped and looked at Andrew strangely. Two thoughts had jumped into her mind. The first: yes, she would have to suspend critical judgments for a while; no doubt about it. As to the second thought, Andrew had just tossed out a good—No, much better than that!—a splendid, excellent idea.
2
“No,” Celia told the advertising agency executives across the table. “No, I don’t like any of it.”
The effect was instant, like the sudden dousing of a fire. If there had been a temperature indicator in the agency conference room, Celia thought, it would have swung from “warm” to “frigid.” She sensed the quartet of advertising men making a hasty, improvised assessment of how they should react.
It was a Tuesday in mid-January. Celia and four others from Bray & Commonwealth were in New York, having driven in from New Jersey that morning for this meeting at Quadrille-Brown Advertising. Sam Hawthorne, who had been in New York the night before, had joined them.
Outside, it was a mean, blustery day. The Quadrille-Brown agency was located in Burlington House on Avenue of the Americas where snarled traffic and scurrying pedestrians were combating a treacherous mixture of snow and freezing rain.
The reason for this meeting, in a forty-fourth-floor conference room, was to review the Bray & Commonwealth advertising program—a normal happening after a major change in management. For the past hour the program had been presented with showmanship and ceremony—so much of both that Celia felt as if she were on a reviewing stand while a regiment paraded by.
Not an impressive regiment, though, she had decided. Which prompted her comment, just received with shock.
At the long mahogany table at which they were seated, the agency’s middle-aged creative man, Al Fiocca, appeared pained; he stroked his Vandyke beard and shifted his feet, perhaps as a substitute for speech, leaving the next move to the youngish account supervisor, Kenneth Orr. It was Orr, smooth of speech and natty in a blue pinstripe suit, who had been the agency group’s leader. The third agency man, Dexter Wilson, was the account executive and had handled most of the detailed presentation. Wilson, a few years older than Orr and prematurely gray, had the earnestness of a Baptist preacher and now looked worried, probably because a client’s displeasure could cost him his job. Advertising executives, Celia knew, earned large rewards but lived precarious lives.
Strong Medicine Page 12