The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

  “Get whatever you like,” one of the two recruiters said, a man ten years older than Cory and wearing a stylish suit and narrow Beatle boots. His female colleague, with hair and skin that looked highly touchable, wore a red leather skirt and jacket that fit her tightly, futuristically.

  “You know, it’ll be fun to see where you go,” the woman said to Cory as he ate, and as the two of them simply watched him eat, rather than actually eating much of anything themselves. Ordering was not the same as eating.

  “Even if you already know you don’t want to go with us,” added the man. “Even if you’re fielding offers, Cory, but are leaning in another direction.”

  “I’m not doing that,” Cory said, but because there was food in his mouth, it came out like “Uhnahdoonthah.”

  “The world is totally open now,” the man went on. “It’s changing before our eyes. When you look at the profile of our firm—of all the firms, really—it’s a great time to be you. I envy you, actually, Cory. I’m excited for you and all your options.”

  But what did they mean by you? Did they mean because he was a millennial? Or was he being lumped into the minority category again, because of his last name? Back during freshman year someone had slipped a flyer under his door inviting him to a meeting of one of the campus Latino organizations. “We’ll be serving chalupas,” it had read.

  In the candlelight of their corner table at the restaurant, the man and woman from Armitage & Rist wooed Cory Pinto like two lovers proposing a three-way. So Cory ate salty smoked salmon on crisp little rounds of black bread, and a rack of meat like something on The Flintstones, followed by a ramekin of crème brûlée with a hard scorched crust on top that, when you cracked it with the tip of your spoon, felt as satisfying as if you were breaking ground to build your dream home. The recruiters were so complimentary throughout dinner, even as they left out a lot of specifics. The firm had offices in New York, London, Frankfurt, and Manila, they said, but Cory stressed that he definitely needed to be in New York. “We hear you,” said the woman.

  Back in his dorm room after the meal, lightly burping little bursts of aerated fish and mustard, Cory had Skyped with Greer at Ryland. “Well, guess what, they sold me on it,” he said.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yep. They threw a lot of red meat at me and that did it. You would’ve hated what I ate. You would’ve actually been grossed out by the whole evening. But I have to admit I was into it. I mean, it was so ridiculous, having strangers from a ‘firm’—even that word is so weird—fawn over me like I was somebody. Having capitalism itself seek me out and think I might actually have something to offer it! It’s just for a year—two, tops—but I’m telling you, Greer, if you’re down with it, I really might do it.”

  “You say it like you’re talking about some dangerous activity.”

  “Everything has risk.”

  “What do you think the risk is here?”

  “Oh, just that I will become a consulting asshole, while you become someone good.”

  “I don’t know why you say that,” Greer said. “I don’t even have a job yet.”

  “You will.”

  “I do actually have an idea for someplace interesting to apply,” she said with surprising coyness.

  “Tell me.”

  “No. Not yet. It probably won’t become anything, and I have to find out first. But anyway,” she said, directly into the camera, “even if you become an asshole, and even if I become this sanctimonious person, we’ll be doing it in front of each other, for each other. Finally. And doesn’t that count for something?”

  He didn’t answer right away. She looked at him hard, and he could swear she seemed to know everything about everything he had ever done, all that was good and all that was shameful. For a second he almost wished the Skype connection would blink out briefly, the way it sometimes did in the middle of an important moment. But it stayed strong, and Greer just smiled at him and placed a single finger on the screen, most likely in the exact place where his mouth was.

  PART TWO

  Twin Rocket Ships

  FOUR

  She had come down by bus, staying awake and sitting up straight the whole time so she didn’t inadvertently fall asleep and crease her clothes and face, winding up looking the way she imagined her parents had looked back on the school bus before she was born. She needed to look uncreased and responsible now, like someone who should be hired to work at this modest feminist magazine that had survived long past its peak. Someone who should be hired to work for Faith Frank.

  Greer had told very few people about the interview, but even fewer knew that she didn’t really love Bloomer. Though it had started out in life as a tough little readable magazine, after almost forty years it was somewhat soft, and had a hard time competing with blogs such as Fem Fatale, which had shifted away from personal essays and was embracing a radical critique of racism, sexism, capitalism, and homophobia. Recently Fem Fatale had run a cartoon of Amelia Bloomer wearing the bloomers associated with her name, which had words on them that read, “Bloomer magazine,” and in a dialogue bubble she was saying, “Time to give another pep talk to straight white middle-class women.” Fem Fatale’s staff was young, and from their offices in a former candy factory in Seattle they wrote about and organized around issues like queer rights, trans rights, and reproductive justice. Bloomer tried, too, but while the editorial staff was pretty diverse, and diversity was among the topics frequently covered, there was a formal, slightly uneasy quality to the magazine. It hadn’t made a graceful leap forward. Even its website was slightly grainy and sleepy.

  Bloomer’s offices were now located in a small commercial building in the far West Thirties. As Greer walked down the narrow hall she could hear the whinny of the dental drill behind the door of a Dr. L. Ragni, DDS. Across the hall she buzzed at the door of Bloomer, but no one answered, so she stood waiting. She coughed, as if that might help, and watched as someone approached Dr. L. Ragni’s door and was buzzed in at once. It was a bright spring workday in New York City, and for whatever reason, no one was answering the door at Bloomer.

  Greer turned the knob, but the door was locked. Then she banged, but still no one appeared. She was confused, but more than that the lack of response made her realize how much she really wanted a job there, and that if she didn’t get one she would be very disappointed. Faith Frank had seemed to offer something unusual in the gray light of a ladies’ room three and a half years earlier, so now Greer stood for too long knocking on a door in this hall of dental offices and actuaries and startups. She knew there were people behind the Bloomer door; she could hear them moving around and talking. It was like when you heard mice behind your wall but couldn’t find a way to get to them.

  That past Wednesday, Greer had nervously called the number on Faith Frank’s business card, which had spent all of college in a slot in her wallet. During the occasional wallet purges that took place during times of great boredom, the card had always made the cut. Whenever she’d seen it, she’d remembered the night it had been given to her, and she would feel a specific excited and highly alert feeling.

  In recent weeks, Greer had been sending various applications to nonprofits, but had received only one interview at an organization that disseminated a lifesaving nutritional supplement in developing countries in Africa. That interview, which took place over Skype, didn’t go well. She had no background for this kind of work, and the pediatrician interviewing her kept being called away, leaving her to sit awkwardly in front of the empty screen for minutes at a time, staring at a poster on his wall of a dying child in her mother’s arms.

  Finally, after all the conversations in the dorm about starting out in the world and choosing a particular field, Greer thought to apply for a job at Faith Frank’s magazine. It would be meaningful work where she could use her writing skills. During the day she would essentially be paid to be a feminist, and at night she could wo
rk on her own writing. Zee agreed that it was worth trying. “It would be a good fit for you. Me, I’m so bad at anything having to do with the written word,” Zee added. “Which is a shame, because it would be great to work for Faith Frank.”

  Greer had explained to the person who answered the phone at Bloomer where and when she’d met Faith. Somehow the next day she had gotten a call back, and the assistant had said, “Faith remembers you.” These words were so startling. Greer didn’t know how it was possible that Faith Frank remembered her after three and a half years, but she actually did.

  Now that no one was answering the door at Bloomer, it all seemed like an elaborate, sad prank. Finally, after far too long a time, the door was wrenched open by a young woman who looked at Greer and rudely said, “Yes?”

  “I have a job interview with Faith Frank.”

  “Well, that’s a shame.”

  “Sorry?”

  The woman just turned and walked into the warren of offices, past the unoccupied reception desk. In the distance a couple of women clustered in a hallway. Greer looked for Faith, but she didn’t see her. There was something so very wrong here. The unfriendly person at the door, the knot of employees, the atmosphere of loss and worry and shock. Then the cluster of women split in half, so it was like curtains parting, and between the halves Greer got a straight-shot view of a small office at the end of the short hallway, its door open. Inside two women were embracing. One of them was patting the other one on the back. The woman doing the comforting, it was now revealed, was Faith Frank. She was the one they all looked toward in this upsetting moment.

  “Did someone die?” Greer asked a middle-aged woman who stood nearby.

  The woman regarded her evenly. “Yes. Amelia Bloomer,” she said. When Greer kept looking at her, uncomprehending, the woman explained, “We’re folding. Cormer Publishing is pulling the plug once and for all. Happy deathday to us.”

  “Sorry,” was all Greer could say. Her first thought, much to her shame later on, wasn’t about what this meant for the mission of the magazine, or its staff, but what it meant for her.

  Faith, who had been at Bloomer the longest, was in her middle sixties now, and the love that people felt for her, Greer knew, had to do with their feelings about the past more than anything else. Fem Fatale would be a far better place to work than Bloomer, though there was no money at the blog.

  Now she had no job working for Faith Frank, and never would. But as she experienced the news through her own self-absorption, she became aware that the office was growing quiet. Something was about to happen. Faith stood straighter and looked around, preparing to speak. “Listen, my friends,” she began. Not, “Listen, people!” like an officious and exhausted teacher, and not, either, the latest iteration of the way people spoke to groups, “Listen up, guys,” especially since these were mostly women here. “Oh, I’m heartbroken today,” said Faith. “I know we all are. But we’re heartbroken together. We’ve done a lot. We marched together. We celebrated together. We fought for the ERA, and reproductive rights, and against violence. And right here, in our offices, we wrote about it all. And we sat in one another’s living rooms and talked about everything under the sun, and we ate sprouts together. Lots and lots of sprouts. I believe we’re the ones who put sprouts on the map.” There was sentimental laughter. “Look, some of what we did succeeded, and some of it failed spectacularly—ERA, I’m talking to you—but what I know and you know is that all of it mattered. And it still matters. We’re part of history, the history of women’s struggle for equality, though of course I don’t have to tell you that. We’ve been doing this forever, and we’ll keep on doing it.” She looked up. “Oh, please don’t cry, because then we’ll all cry, and we’ll end up dissolving in a puddle of tears like women in the eighteenth century.” Some people laughed through their tears, which fractionally changed the mood. Then Faith said, “You know what, I take that back. Let’s all cry! We’ll get it out of our systems once and for all, and then we’ll go right back out there.”

  Faith was as she had been when she spoke at Ryland: kind, intelligent, allowing for other people’s emotions. The truth was that she wasn’t a rare or particularly original thinker. But she was someone who used her appeal and her talents to inspire and sometimes comfort other women. Greer wouldn’t get a job at Bloomer, for Bloomer would no longer exist in any form, and she wouldn’t even get a chance to sit for an interview with Faith Frank, which would have been exciting, regardless of the outcome.

  “This is over, and now we have to scatter,” Faith told everyone. Then she gestured around her. “But this,” she said, “isn’t over, and we all know it never will be. We’re not going away. I’ll see you all out there.”

  The women applauded, and some cried, and several of them began to speak in overlapping voices and take group photos. Someone opened a bottle of champagne, and then music played: fittingly, Opus’s old hit “The Strong Ones.” Greer took that moment to leave, and as she walked out she heard the lyrics that opened the song:

  Don’t ever think I’ll be easily beat

  Just because I’m wearing Louboutins on my dainty feet

  We are the strong ones

  We are the lithe ones

  We are the subtle ones

  We are the wise ones . . .

  Greer felt congested with disappointment, and something more substantial and different. She headed back into the hallway, where, behind other doors, the sounds of everyday life were released: the squeal of a dental drill, the throb of dubstep, the chirp and murmur of people getting business done. The world spun even as a modest but once important feminist magazine did its death rattle and then died.

  Cory was in a coffee shop on the corner of West 30th Street, waiting for her as they’d arranged. She hadn’t been able to tell him what time her interview would be over, so he’d said, “Don’t worry, I’ll just plan to be there.” He was in the back booth now in an orange Princeton hoodie, an econ text open in front of him. These days a soul patch and a thin mustache served as a framing device for his mouth. Wordless, Greer slid into the booth beside him and he opened his arms to her, so she went into them. “It didn’t go well?” he asked.

  “They’re closing.”

  “Oh no. Bad luck. Come here, you,” he said, and she turned her face up to his so he could kiss her mouth, her cheeks, her nose. He wanted her to get what she wanted. He hadn’t even met Faith Frank, though he’d listened to Greer talk on and on about her after the lecture freshman year, and she’d given him a real-time course in feminism as she herself was getting it. It was much the way Greer had learned about microfinance from Cory, or at least its outlines. Here he was now, waiting for her, sympathizing with her.

  “You’ll find something,” he said. “And they’ll be lucky to hire you.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Whoever.”

  “It’s not just the job, exactly,” she said after a moment. “It’s also her and what she stands for. And how she acted when I met her. Faith Frank.”

  “Yes, I know. My competition.”

  He reached out and played with the edges of her hair, rubbing them between his fingers. He did this sometimes, she noticed, when he wasn’t sure how to comfort her. She remembered the way Darren Tinzler had played with her shirt collar, not to comfort her but for his own pleasure and interest. It made Cory nervous to see her unhappy, and she knew he wanted to swoop in and do something. Of course, it was true that he also liked to touch her. She leaned even closer, and Cory palmed her entire head with his big hand. He was touching her head, her face; then his hand was on her neck, the thumb stroking the scooped hollow above her collarbone, and she kissed the side of his face. They were both slightly stale, having traveled from their colleges that day by bus and train. She would’ve liked to be in a bathtub with him, and she realized that they had never once taken a bath together. They would do that when they lived together,
when all of this had been figured out and resolved. She pictured his long legs displacing the water in their tub.

  “I realized today—it got kind of sharply defined for me—that I wanted to know her,” Greer said. “And I guess I wanted her to know me too. I know that’s hubristic. A word Professor Malick loves.” She paused. “Maybe I’ll write Faith Frank a note, kind of a condolence letter. You think that’s okay?”

  “I think you know what’s okay.”

  “Zee once told me I should be Faith Frank’s pen pal, but of course that was ridiculous. At least now I have something to say to her.”

  That night, Greer sent Faith an email:

  Dear Ms. Frank,

  I came in for a job interview with you this afternoon, and I was there when you said goodbye to everyone. Listening to you talk, I felt like I knew you. I think everyone must feel that way. Thank you for all you’ve done over the decades for women. We are so lucky to have you.

  Sincerely,

  Greer Kadetsky

  Greer began sending her résumé out more. The plan had been that after commencement, which would take place in a couple of weeks, she and Cory would spend a month up in Macopee living at home before going down to the city to try to find an apartment in Brooklyn. But Greer still had no job waiting for her. She became worried about what would happen, even a little frightened at the uncertainty. Then one day Cory received his own disappointing news. Armitage & Rist had changed their offer, and now wanted him to come work in their Manila office. They enhanced the deal with even more money, but the news was shocking, and he had been afraid to tell her.