Girl Before a Mirror

by Liza Palmer

  “If you would, I’d wait for Hannah to approach you with this. If that’s okay,” he says.

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  “I think she’s embarrassed we’re having problems,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “I won’t mention it,” I say.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  “I wasn’t at pilates. I quit my job,” I say. Blurt, really.

  “I was wondering,” he says.

  “Thanks for letting me lie to you,” I say.

  “No problem,” he says.

  Nathan and I say our good-byes, and I walk back to my apartment. I realize I’ve been happily numb for the last three weeks and after one random meet-up with Nathan, I feel . . . embarrassed. Annoyed. How is my plan to achieve oblivion going to work if people from my life keep reminding me that there’s a world beyond my apartment?

  I unlock my door, throw my keys down on the side table, and am happy to be back home. Safe. In the dim haze of late morning. Time-Outs and Thunder Roads. Phoenix and romance novels. Marpling and Machiavelli. Being the heroine and finding my hero. That’s the thing. You hear these stories about people reacting bravely and decisively in the face of certain death or wondrous miracles. When something miraculous happened to me, I told it I wasn’t ready.

  I sip my coffee, tucking my foot underneath me on the couch as I’ve done every day for the last three weeks.

  I had no plan when I quit that night. Talk about messy. And look what’s happened. All the work I’ve done, everything I’ve changed, everything I’ve worked for equals me having no job, no hero, and no friends. Apparently when I let myself Just Be, things turn to shit.

  I pull out my phone and take a picture of the wreckage surrounding me: takeout containers, empty water bottles, little aluminum candy wrappers, dirty laundry in the background, and a box containing everything that was in my office. My tube-socked foot is in the foreground.

  Messy.

  I text the picture to Lincoln. I tap out several clever things to say and then erase them all. The picture really is worth a thousand words.

  Within minutes he texts back. The picture is of a drawer; it looks like the bottom drawer of his desk. He’s taken the photo with the drawer open to reveal everything from five tape dispensers to several candy bars to a bottle of aspirin and several unsent thank-you cards. It’s an absolute disaster. His hand is holding on to the drawer pull. He’s wearing a black sweater with a stark-white oxford cloth shirt peeking out underneath. I smile, staring at the picture for a few more (okay, several) minutes. I finally set the phone down.

  I flip the remote control around in my hand over and over, my coffee resting on my knee. The warmth of it feels good. I can feel my breathing begin to quicken as I see what my life has become. And not just in the three weeks since I left Holloway/Greene.

  I set my latte on the coffee table, tuck the remote control into the sofa cushions, and stand. I scan the takeout containers and the dirty clothes on the ground. I look at the box of my belongings from Holloway/Greene still over by the door. Unopened. The mail piled up. The Princess Leia costume is on the floor right where I left it that night. And I stand there. Trapped in it all, the walls closing in around me. The walls that were so comforting now . . . I can’t breathe. I bend over and put my hands on my knees as I try to catch my breath. What have I done? I whip off Ferdie’s jersey and throw it into the corner. What have I done?

  Is this how it ends? I step off the conveyor belt that my life had become and just . . . cease to exist? Without a plan and the trajectory and the hierarchy and the promotions and the gold stars for a job well done and the road more traveled—without all of that, I devolve into this?

  Oh my God. I begin to pace.

  It’s not even my plan. You want to be good? You want to be happy? Do this. Live this way. Be this person. Follow these rules. Read these books. Think these things are important. Love this way.

  I didn’t have to think about how I felt or who I was or what I was missing because I was too busy checking off boxes on someone else’s to-do list. It comforted me, and as I grew up, it came to define me. If I’m part of their plan, then I don’t have to be left out in the cold again. If I’m part of their plan, I’m tethered to something bigger than myself.

  Now I know why I chose to live that way. Someone else’s idea of happiness was a lot easier to attain than a happiness I could not envision and didn’t think I deserved. Truth is, I wasn’t striving toward happiness. What did I want more than anything? To be someone the world had to acknowledge was important.

  What would actually make me feel good or happy or meaningful to me versus something I’d been told was worthy of my legacy? Again, if I’m part of their plan, then I never have to be left out in the cold ever again. If I’m part of their plan, then I’m tethered to something bigger than just myself.

  It goes back to what Helen was saying—what do I think would happen if I made an entire playlist of just the songs I was too ashamed to admit I liked? This feeling bubbles up inside me just thinking about making such a playlist. Shame. Its black sticky tendrils tug and pull as I imagine the freedom of doing it. That’s what it is at the root of this: my own flawed humanity. I’m not cool enough, steely enough, or perfect enough. I poo in other people’s bathrooms, for crissakes.

  I feel like I should dramatically slide down a wall at this point in my complete breakdown. The heroine in a romance novel would definitely slide down a wall sobbing right now. I scan my apartment and there are no slide-downable walls in the bunch.

  “I can’t even do that right!” I scream. I slump into one of my dining room chairs. Okay. Okay. Come on.

  My idea of success was to make partner at Holloway/Greene. It’s firmly established and everyone’s opinions of it are based on decades upon decades of highly regarded work. Making partner would mean that I embodied those things. People would have to respect me. Like leaving out that unreadable tome on your coffee table. Whatever you may think of me, I’m a partner at Holloway/Greene and am working my way through this Nobel Prize–winning masterpiece—so, you have to kiiiind of think I’m at least a little clever. Why did I think I needed to act like I was intelligent? I am intelligent.

  I am intelligent.

  I flatten my hand on my dining room table. Feel something real.

  I’ve got to burn it down. Burn their plan down. Burn down the safe trajectory and someone else’s idea of happiness. Throw what they think is important onto the raging fire. I have to stop trying to make myself fit into someone else’s idea of what it means to be exceptional. The problem isn’t that it wouldn’t work. The tragedy comes when it does.

  I stack the newspapers that are piling up on the dining room table. Stack them. Pick them up and toss them in the garbage. The full garbage. I take it out to the chute. I grab another kitchen bag and fill it with takeout containers and carry that out to the chute. I do a load of laundry. And another. I open the mail, pay the bills, and put the kettle on. I change the sheets and clean the bathroom. I open the curtains.

  As night falls, I take a shower, put on actual clothes (including a bra), and walk down to the corner market for dinner fixings. As I meander through the aisles, I grow frustrated thinking about what the new plan is. My plan. What is it that I want? Right at this very moment? It’s cheese. I ask the man behind the cheese counter for Midnight Moon and grab some crackers to go with it. I put a few bubble waters in my basket, along with the makings for my famous salad (knowing full well that I’ll fill up on the cheese and call it a night).

  I get a look of concern from a husband and wife and realize that I’ve been muttering “Burn it down” to myself as I’ve meandered around the market. Great. That’s . . . that’s fantastic.

  I head back to my apartment, get back into my pajamas, and settle into my now clean surroundings with the cheese and crackers, the salad fixings nestled safely in the refrigerator, where they’ll stay until they rot and I throw them away with a muttered “why do I bother?”
I click on the TV, switching channels and stopping at this one show and that one for a while. Cheese. Bubble water. Mutter “Burn it down.” More cheese. Change channels. Scroll through no e-mails. Daydream about Lincoln and replay our last interchange on Wooster Street over and over again.

  Sasha texts me that Lumineux is not happy at Holloway/Greene. Audrey screwed up a big meeting this morning. They wanted all different versions of the campaign for the international market and all Audrey did was pass off the same ones we used in the United States. And then Audrey tried to pin it on the team. That was when Preeti stepped in, telling everyone that wasn’t what happened and pointedly asking Audrey if she needed time to collect herself.

  It was the first negative experience Lumineux had with Holloway/Greene and one that made a Lumineux executive ask why I wasn’t on the conference call. Sasha said he hadn’t been told I quit. Apparently he was not happy. He finally said, “Please govern yourself more professionally in the future, Ms. Holloway. Ms. Wyatt was our point person on this account. Please let us not mourn her absence moving forward.” Of course, I’m conflicted. Cheese. Change channels. Switch the laundry. Troll the Internet for news on Lumineux. The phenomenon still rolls on. I pat myself on the back. Curse that Lincoln doesn’t have any social media that I can stalk him on. More cheese. I change the channel again.

  Sixteen Candles.

  I stop.

  I set the remote control down, put my plate of cheese and crackers on the coffee table, and lean forward. I’ve watched this movie hundreds of times. But this time? I’m watching one thing.

  Anthony Michael Hall.

  The yellow oxford cloth shirt. THAT? Is what the pictures are for. Drinking the martini in Jake Ryan’s kitchen. I’m smiling. Laughing. “My clean, close shave?” “He really was the best,” I say in a reverent whisper. The iconic shot of Jake Ryan in front of the red Porsche. And as the movie comes to an end, I mouth the lines right along with them. “Happy birthday, Samantha. Make a wish.” I swoon. The song. That plaid shirt. “It already came true.” Sighhhh.

  The credits. Anthony Michael Hall is literally called just The Geek. I think about Chuck’s words. Could he have been right? I mean, it doesn’t get much better than The Geek in Sixteen Candles—maybe Brian Johnson in The Break fast Club, but no matter what anyone says, Anthony Michael Hall is not better in Dead Zone. This? This is his sweet spot. This is what he’s good at. I click off the TV, still humming “If You Were Here” as I clean up my all-cheese dinner.

  I’m great at advertising women’s products. This is the truth. I rinse my plate and put it into the dish drainer. My hand stays curled around the plate. Wait. The water from the plate dribbles down my arm. I don’t move.

  I’m great at advertising women’s products.

  Why is that a bad thing? Why did I take it as an insult? I pull my hand back from the wet plate and absently dry my arm off with the dish towel. I turn around and lean back against the kitchen counter. I scan everything in my kitchen.

  Women are the most powerful, influential consumers. From bath gel and toothpaste to real estate and automobiles, the power of the buy lies with women. They are the decision makers. As in charge as my own father thought he was, it was my mother who gave him the nod about which car we could buy. It was my mother who bought everything in the house—from the furniture to the milk in the refrigerator. Even the homes we lived in, my mother had the final say. And yet advertising insists on disrespecting, misunderstanding, and downright ignoring women.

  I am great at advertising women’s products.

  I am also great at advertising to and for women.

  Why is advertising products directed at women, for women, less important? Whose rules are those? Once again, why is that romance novel any less important than that slim volume of cryptic poetry you insist is groundbreaking?

  It’s not.

  I walk over to my desk and find a legal pad and a pen. I sit back down on the couch and open up my laptop. Chuck wanted me to handle women’s products for Holloway/Greene. What if I started my own agency specializing in just that: products for women, by women. I spend the rest of the night researching and writing notes and coming up with ideas and growing more excited and terrified as I sketch out a dream I never even knew existed inside me. A dream that’s been waiting for me to be strong enough to believe in it. A dream that relied on me trusting myself. Acknowledging myself.

  I look up at the clock. Three thirty A.M. My entire coffee table is littered with papers and sketches and complicated equations and information on 401(k)s and bank accounts and how much does that tiny office space cost a month?

  I close my laptop. I flip the sheet on the legal pad and brush my hand over the clean paper. I take my pen and write in a black sharpie:

  XIX

  “Nineteen. After the Nineteenth Amendment,” I say. Out loud. A deep breath. No tears. No doubts. This is the most right thing I’ve ever done in my life. This is what makes living a life of “fine” laughable. I’ll open an agency specializing solely in women’s products. And I’ll be honored to do so.

  Now.

  I’m going to need Sasha. And I’m going to need Preeti.

  23

  Sasha sneaks into the restaurant in oversized sunglasses and a giant floppy hat the next day for lunch. She sees me and slinks over, sliding into the booth with a conspiratorial nod.

  “’Ello there,” she says, her voice breathy and is that . . .

  “Are you speaking with a British accent?” I ask.

  “Now you’re just being daft,” Sasha says, sweeping off her sunglasses.

  “You know you actually stick out more with all that stuff,” I say.

  “Oh, I know. It’s awesome, though, right?” Sasha asks, taking her hat off and primping her perfect black ringlets.

  “You’re ridiculous,” I say, happy to see her.

  “You look good. Out of those clothes,” she says, setting her floppy hat on the table.

  “I know. I should do a ritual burning,” I say.

  “Not of Ferdie’s jersey, though,” Sasha says.

  “No, of course not,” I say.

  The waitress comes over and we order our drinks, promising her we’ll look at the menu and be ready to order by the time she gets back.

  “I wish I could have recorded what happened at that meeting the other day. It was so perfect,” Sasha says.

  “What went wrong?” I ask.

  “It was exactly like you said it would go down. She doesn’t know the campaign like we do, so she doesn’t get the ins and outs or the nuances well enough to tailor it for the U.K. or Germany or South America, and on and on. She just looked up where the product was going to be advertised—like geographically—and aside from translating it into that language, she just used the U.S. ads. I mean, take Lumineux out of the picture, she has no idea how advertising works. At all. And unlike me, she refuses to learn.”

  “Oof.” However badly I want to be irreplaceable, I don’t want Lumineux or Preeti to have to shoulder the cost and pay for Audrey’s learning curve.

  “Audrey was just shell-shocked. I don’t think she had any idea what went wrong. Kind of felt sorry for her, truth be told. Then she called me Clara and . . . oh, look at that, sympathy all gone,” Sasha says. The waitress comes back and is very disapproving that we haven’t had time to look at the menu yet. Sasha and I make a point to scour the menu for what we want and are ready when she returns with our drink refills.

  “So, I have an idea,” I say, once the waitress leaves us alone.

  “Oh?”

  “What if we started our own agency?”

  “What?”

  “And all we did was women’s products. That’s our hook. Our thing,” I say.

  “Just—”

  “Women’s products.”

  “Anna, I—”

  “With the bonuses that Charlton gave us for that Employee of the Year thing, plus 401(k)s and savings, it could work. Fifty-fifty. We’d be partners. The buzz we have
on Lumineux could get us some meetings and then in four or five yea—”

  “Anna, I—”

  “If Lumineux is unhappy, we can meet with Preeti. I’m sure she would come over to us—at the very least get us a meeting. And that account alone could bankroll us while we bring in new clients. And I’m thinking? Why not New York? Ferdie is doing so well now and I think moving to New York would actually be a good thing. It’d prove that I trust him. That I’m—”

  “Anna—”

  “And we could meet with Helen. I sent her an e-mail yesterday—about quitting Holloway/Greene and my idea about the agency. I want to call it Nineteen. For the Nineteenth Amendment? Where women got the right to vote? And the logo would just be roman numerals. Just an XIX. It looks really cool. And you could design the logo and be in charge of the art dep—”

  “Anna—”

  “Don’t say no. Please? Can you just thi—”

  “Anna! I’m in. I was in twenty minutes ago,” Sasha says.

  “Really?” I say, standing up awkwardly in the booth trying to hug her, but really only grasping her arms and kind of touching her hair in the process.

  “Are you kidding? It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Sasha says. “And I love the idea about just repping women’s products. That’s genius. Oh, and Preeti? Has already asked if you’re starting your own agency. So . . . we’re so in.”

  “She has?”

  “Yep. After the fiasco with Audrey she came to my office. Asked about you and, of course, I told her everything. She especially liked that you did the entire thing dressed as Princess Leia.”

  “It’s actually odd—or maybe it’s just my survival skills kicking in—that I keep forgetting that fact,” I say.

  “Hard to, really,” Sasha says, miming huge cinnamon buns on the sides of her head. “I’ll give my two weeks, but in the interim why don’t we set up a meeting with Preeti. She’s still in town. You know what? Why don’t we see if she’s free for drinks later?” Sasha asks, pulling out her phone. She e-mails Preeti just as the waitress brings us our food. I dig into my lunch. Sasha has pulled a pen from her purse, pushed her meal to one side, flipped over her place mat, and is now doodling several versions of a logo design. As I eat, Sasha is lost in her design. After a few minutes I try to make idle conversation.