by Lynda Curnyn
“All I’m saying, Grace, is that having a baby is a big deal. It requires sacrifice—”
“I’m willing to sacrifice,” I said, realizing this was true. It seemed these past few years all I’d done was sacrifice. Sacrificed my time for men like Michael or Ethan or Drew, who gave me little or nothing in return. Sacrificed for my job, and it was clear now, as long as Claudia remained at the helm in Marketing, there would be no payoff for those sacrifices.
For once in my life, I wanted to work at something that might actually get me something. And I knew now, with a certainty I had not felt before, what that something was.
10
“Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.”
—Greta Garbo
I came home from Bloomingdale’s laden with brown bags, from little to big, wondering what kind of madness had led to this sudden shopping frenzy when I had only gone to keep Angie company. But after she had finally found a bathing suit that didn’t accentuate her butt, flatten her chest or wipe out her bank account, she went home, and I went…bananas. After finding a pair of trousers and two skirts on Level Two, I felt compelled to head to the shoe department, where I discovered a pair of stilettos that made me pine for a place to wear them, and a pair of knee-high boots that screamed chic go-go girl. Ironic, too, considering the new Saturday night I was envisioning would likely find me barefoot and breast-feeding.
Still, when I went home to my empty apartment, I took satisfaction in putting away my purchases. Even contemplated doing an all-out closet weeding to make more room for my new wardrobe additions, until I realized I was just avoiding those downloads I’d dragged home.
As I closed the door on the overloaded closet in my bedroom and stepped into the living room, I realized there was another thing I was avoiding besides those downloads.
Like reality.
Had I really thought through all the changes a baby would require?
One glance around my stylish yet smallish living room and the first question bubbled up.
Where was I going to keep a baby?
I’d have to move, I decided, my eyes caressing the shiny hardwood floors, the way the city lights glittered through the wide window. I had always liked this apartment….
I shook off the thought. I had been living here six years. Maybe that’s why my life had become so…stagnant. Maybe a change would do me good.
The phone rang then and I considered letting the machine pick up. It was my modus operandus these days. But something in me—probably some embarrassing loneliness I had felt lurking ever since I had come home—had me grabbing the receiver out of the cradle.
“Hello?”
“Is this Grace? Grace…Noonan?” came a familiar voice. The sound of it pierced me at first, as it always had every time I called that number in Brooklyn I had found under K. Morova in the phone book. The voice of someone I did not know, but recognized all the same. Well, thought I recognized. Because I had hung up on it often enough after sending my certified letter to Kristina Morova, believing it to be the voice of the woman who had given birth to me.
Now I knew otherwise. I steeled myself accordingly. “This is she.”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss—Grace,” she continued, as if testing the name. My own name sounded foreign to me coming from this stranger.
“My name is Katerina Morova. I sent you the letter back about…about my sister?”
I know who you are, I wanted to yell at her. But I kept my cool. What I really wanted to know was what she wanted. “Yes?”
“Well, I gave you my number and I know you are probably busy, but we so wanted to talk to you, Sasha and I….”
Is that right? I thought angrily. I sent my letter over seven months ago, only to hear back a few weeks ago. I guess some of us don’t know what it is to wait, I thought, then began to feel like a sulky child. I mean, really, this woman had done nothing wrong to me. No one had. Not really. I would try to be civil. But brief. Mercifully brief. “What can I do for you?” I asked, cringing at the stiffness in my voice.
“We wondered—that is, I wondered—if maybe you wanted to come to our house in Brooklyn for…for dinner?”
A cold wave washed over me. Followed by heat. As the silence stretched over the line, I became achingly aware that I could not brush this woman off the phone the way I brushed off the men in my life.
Which was probably why I found myself reluctantly agreeing to go to Brooklyn on the following Sunday afternoon. Still, I felt the same relief I heard in Katerina Morova’s voice when we finally said goodbye.
“Gracie, that’s fantastic,” Angie said, when I told her my plans. I had called her from the office the next day, probably in an effort to further procrastinate on starting any work. Besides, I did feel an obligation to tell someone about Katerina’s call yesterday. And I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be Shelley. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see my therapist anymore since our last conversation.
“I guess,” I hedged, not sure how I felt about the whole thing. The truth was, I felt more like I was doing this for Katerina and Sasha, than I was for myself. For my part, I felt somewhat immune to the whole situation. A bystander unwittingly sucked in because I hadn’t been able to devise a face-saving way out.
“WHERE IS THAT GIRL?” I heard Claudia bellow from the foyer.
“I have to go,” I said. “Claud-zilla is on the loose.”
“Okay,” Angie replied. “Call me if you need me,” she practically pleaded before I clicked off the line.
“What’s up?” I said, once I reached the doorway and found Claudia, hovering over Lori’s vacant desk as if to invoke her presence.
“Last time I checked, the work day began at 9:00 a.m. It’s near eleven already and it seems our assistant is MIA.”
Oops. I had forgotten to tell Claudia that Lori had mentioned yesterday that she’d be in late today. Late, as in ten o’clock, though. “Umm, she had to go to the passport office this morning.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If that girl thinks she’s running off on vacation in the middle of one of the biggest campaigns this company has ever seen—”
“She put in the request at least two weeks ago. You signed off on it, as I recall.”
“I what?”
At just that moment, Lori popped into the foyer, carrying a shopping bag from Diesel and sporting a look of pure guilt on her face.
“Well, well, well,” Claudia said, turning to glare at her. “Look who decided to drop by.” I saw her gaze hone in on the Diesel bag. “I hope our little marketing plans aren’t keeping you from your shopping?”
Though she should’ve known better by now, Lori started to babble. “I was on my way back from the passport office when I saw the cutest shirt in the window of Diesel and—”
“Enough!” Claudia demanded. “We have bigger things to worry about at the moment than you,” she said contemptuously. “Irina is coming!”
“Yeah, so?” I said. Claudia had informed me a few days ago that the supermodel was planning a visit. She even had Lori working on a catered breakfast that might suit our little icon’s dietary needs. “We’ve already set up the reception for next week.”
Claudia shook her mane of black hair furiously—and somewhat unbecomingly. She was starting to look like some kind of crazed harpie. “No, no, no, NO!” she yelled. “Today! Irina Barbalovich is coming today!”
“Today?” Lori and I said in unison.
Claudia then explained, in a sort of strained calm, that Mimi had called that morning. It seemed there had been a change of plans. Irina had opted to go to Paris next week, and therefore, Mimi hoped we could “squeeze in our little reception” this afternoon. Right smack-dab in the middle of lunch.
“Get on the phone and order up something,” Claudia barked at Lori. “Anything. Well, not anything,” she said, probably remembering Irina’s organic vegan lifestyle. “Something she’ll eat, for chrissakes. And we need it by one o’clock!”
Lori’s ey
es widened and she nodded abruptly, darting behind her desk once Claudia had stalked to her office.
Though I was having a hard time working myself up into the same kind of lather, I followed Claudia, standing in her doorway and watching as she anxiously pawed through the small closet in her office, clearly looking for something to change into. Apparently an Armani power suit wasn’t good enough for Irina.
“Does Dianne know?” I asked.
“Of course!” she said, fishing out another black suit, which looked similar to the one she was wearing, except that it had a skirt.
“Is she coming?” I asked, wondering really if the rest of the entourage was coming, too. Like Michael and his new bride-to-be…
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head as she gave the suit a once-over. “She’ll never make it in time. Besides, she’s taking her mother to a specialist of some sort.”
“Her mother?” I asked, wondering what the company’s namesake needed a specialist for.
“Yes. Apparently the woman’s losing her mind.” She laughed bitterly. “That probably explains this whole stupid younger-is-better campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dianne were still taking advice from Mrs. Dubrow, despite the fact that the woman has Alzheimer’s.”
“Alzheimer’s?” I said, shocked. I had no idea Roxanne Dubrow was ill. It explained a lot. Like why Dianne hadn’t been spending much time in the New York office lately.
Claudia paused, hanging the suit on the back of her door as she turned to glare at me. “That’s confidential, you know. Though in truth, I’m surprised the whole world hasn’t figured it out yet, with the way this company is going to hell in a handbasket.” She shrugged out of her jacket, reaching for a hanger.
I stood there for a moment, still dumbfounded at the idea. God, what Dianne must be going through. And Michael…
“Is Michael coming?” I asked.
“Please. He’s off in Italy at the moment, visiting one of the plants there. Probably with Courtney. I swear, for the new VP of Product Development, she sure does get around. Especially in light of the fact that she should be working her ass off getting this new product ready for the spring launch.”
This news didn’t dismay me as it should have, probably because it only added to my assessment of Michael as careless and self-absorbed. Why should he bother about his ailing mother when there were other family members to do so?
“What are you going to stand there all day?” Claudia said, startling me out of my thoughts. “Get ready! We have—” she looked at her watch, her face paling “—less than two hours!”
Maybe because everyone else cared so much, I resolved to remain indifferent, shutting my office door against the flurry of activity in the halls as Claudia sent everyone in her path on some Irina-inspired task. If anyone asked I would say I was immersed in forecasting for the spring collection devoted to Roxanne Dubrow’s older clients. After all, we couldn’t forget about them. They were still, as Dianne Dubrow liked to say, our bread and butter—though in her case, it was more like caviar and crackers.
Dianne… Suddenly I thought of everything she was likely dealing with, now that her mother was ill. I didn’t know much about Alzheimer’s, only that it tended to take a toll on the whole family. Fortunately, Dianne had a solid family to lean on. Her husband, Stuart. Her two daughters, Gabriella and Audrey, who must be in their early twenties right now. At least she had them to comfort her.
Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself dialing up my own mother.
“Hello, sweetheart. How’s everything?” she said cheerfully.
“Good, good,” I replied, suddenly remembering my impending visit to Brooklyn and wondering if I should tell her about it. Hell, there was a lot I should probably tell her, thinking of all those downloads from donor sites, which I had barely begun to peruse. Instead, I asked, “So how’s your trip planning coming along?”
“Wonderful,” she replied. “In fact, your father is in the attic right now, pulling down the luggage so we can start packing.”
I smiled. My parents weren’t leaving for a month, yet they were readying themselves for their big adventure as if they were boarding the plane in mere days. At least I might get to talk to my mother for a few minutes alone while my dad was occupied. But suddenly the weight of telling her all that was going on in my life seemed daunting.
“Listen, I’m glad you called,” she said, saving me from spilling anything just yet. “Your father and I were wondering if you had made your plane reservations for Thanksgiving yet.”
I had actually been avoiding making plans for the expected yearly trek. Now the thought of that rigorous day of travel seemed even more burdensome. “No, I haven’t,” I began.
“Good. Because we were hoping you might come in on Wednesday so you could join us at the soup kitchen in the morning.”
Oh, dear. I had forgotten about that, too. My parents, good liberal souls that they were, had volunteered to feed the vast, impoverished masses of New Mexico. When they first told me about their new cause, I had volunteered to pitch in when I came home for the holidays. But at the moment, I wasn’t feeling all that charitable.
“And then the university where your father lectures is holding a potluck dinner. You’ll get to meet all our new friends,” she continued.
My stomach plummeted. Not that I had anything against the academic types my parents had always surrounded themselves with. But I had always felt like such an outsider, as a child growing up and rebelling against anything adult, and even more so after I became an adult myself and entered the corporate world, which was far, far removed from the lofty intellectual heights my parents and their ilk perpetually inhabited. Somehow, this year I didn’t want to deal with it.
“You know, I was thinking,” I began carefully. “Since you and Dad are leaving for Paris soon after Thanksgiving and I have so much to do at work with this new campaign, I thought maybe I should just stay in New York this year….” I hated to lie, but I needed to keep myself distant.
“Oh, Grace, what will you do? You can’t be alone for both holidays.”
“I won’t be alone for both,” I said quickly. “I’m going to Angie’s for Christmas.”
“But what will you do for Thanksgiving?”
What would I do? I wondered, remembering that Angie would be in L.A. Even so, solitude seemed better than being surrounded by strangers.
I saw Claudia stalk by my doorway. “Umm, actually Claudia and I were thinking of spending it together,” I said, leaping on the first excuse I could come up with, though the thought of sharing anything with Claudia in light of the new level of malignant indifference she had shown to me was not appealing. Still, I persevered in what I saw as a little white lie. “I think she made us a reservation at the Four Seasons.”
My mother paused. “Okay, if that’s what you want to do….” She sounded a bit hurt, and I started to feel guilty.
“Come on, Mom, Thanksgiving’s not such a big holiday anyway. They don’t even celebrate it in Paris,” I continued, hoping to bring the conversation back to her upcoming trip.
My mother leaped right on the happy wagon, though she tried to pull me on board, too, by turning my choice into some sort of triumph. “I guess it would be a good opportunity for you to…to bond a little more with your boss.”
Though it was more likely that I would club Claudia if left alone in a room with her, I said, “That’s right. And you know how important that is to a successful career.”
And with that, I freed myself from all familial obligations, at least for the short term. Long enough to sort out all the decisions I needed to make regarding my life. Decisions I felt I needed to make alone if I hoped to see things clearly.
But after I hung up the phone the weight of everything that stood between me and any sort of future happiness made me feel very, very old.
11
“Sex appeal is 50% what you’ve got and 50% what people think you’ve got.”
—Sophia Loren
If I thought Irina Barbalovich was beautiful in cover shots, photo spreads and billboards, I realized that was nothing compared to Irina Barbalovich in the flesh. Irina glowed. There was no other way to describe it.
Ever more so from where she stood center stage in the conference room as if she were wearing a ball gown rather than a trendy running suit and expensive-looking sneakers.
What was it about her? I wondered, as I stepped into what looked like the receiving line, awaiting an introduction once Claudia and everyone else within five feet of Irina got done with their groveling.
It was her skin, I realized once I got close. Soft, supple, with a subtle radiance. The kind of skin that all the moisturizing technology in the world couldn’t bring back once a woman was past a certain age.
“This is Grace Noonan,” Claudia was saying, as I stepped before Irina and experienced that glow full on.
Her eyes were a startling blue, as if Technicolor, and they stood out magnificently against her dewy skin. Her features were otherwise rather undistinctive, but in the best way. Straight nose, high, symmetrical cheekbones and a mouth that, though as pink as a baby’s and nicely shaped, wasn’t half as full and lush as it looked when fully lined and glossed and pouting at me from a magazine.
Still, there was no denying she was beautiful. But that was all I was willing to give her.
Well, not all. She was Roxanne Dubrow’s next great hope, and since I still felt some need to be a dutiful employee, it was my job to kiss up to her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Irina. The spread you had in Vogue last month was magnificent.”
No response. Unless you counted the gentle nod of that shiny head and the somewhat distracted look in her eyes. When she finally did open her pert little mouth to speak, it was to Mimi, who stood obediently behind her, smiling graciously and, at this point in the introductions, somewhat woodenly.
“See if they have Yum Yum Fruit Splash,” Irina said over her shoulder, in a soft, accented voice. “Raspberry, please.”