by Meg Wolitzer
I really wanted to talk to you, in confidence. Any chance we can meet? Kind of important. Thanks—
Kim Russo
Greer wanted to ask Ben what he thought this was about, but then her instinct was that she shouldn’t. She didn’t say anything to anyone. The two women met before work the next day in a coffee shop in downtown Brooklyn. At ShraderCapital Kim had dressed in the conservative uniform of the corporate woman, but since she had been at her new job, her clothes were relaxed. But Kim herself was tense; she shook her head at the giant laminated menu as it landed on the table and ordered only black coffee, which she drank in a hard draft.
“Look,” Kim said. “We don’t know each other well. But you always seemed like you really cared about what you did. It made me wish I worked on twenty-six instead of twenty-seven.”
“It’s a good place,” Greer said mildly, waiting.
“But ShraderCapital was a natural path for me after Wharton. They were very flattering when they hired me.” Kim looked down and swirled her cup. “I saw your speech. Someone sent it to me. You were good.”
“Thank you.”
“I need to say something.”
“Okay.”
Kim centered the coffee cup between her hands and made sure that Greer was paying attention. “The mentor program in Ecuador is bullshit,” Kim said.
Greer waited a second out of politeness, then she said, “I appreciate your opinion. I know there’s legitimate criticism of doing things like this overseas. I know it can seem like privileged meddling. But it isn’t bullshit. It gives these women a chance.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant it’s bullshit, as in it doesn’t exist.”
Greer just looked at her. “Okay, that’s just not true,” she finally said. The coffee shop hummed and rang with its weekday morning noises. Menus were slapped down, and the glass door kept swinging open. All around them, other, more ordinary conversations over coffee were taking place. There were men with wet, slicked-back shower hair and jackets and ties; women fragrant and blown-out and optimistic and all business; moms with strollers blocking the fire exit.
“It is true,” Kim said.
“I highly doubt it.”
Kim said, “We can go around and around, but I have to get to work, and I really think you want to know what I have to say. They sent you out onstage in LA with that girl. They sent you there, and they knew it wasn’t true. In my world, that’s unacceptable.”
Greer couldn’t take in what Kim was saying, because it didn’t make any sense and she didn’t know what to do with it. It was as if a dog had brought her a present from the wild: a dead bird, bloodied and grotesque and still warm, which was then deposited at her feet.
“How do you know this?” Greer finally asked.
“I was in on the meetings upstairs, months ago, when they were planning everything.”
“But it’s ridiculous,” said Greer, hearing her own voice fade a little, as if going out of frequency.
“Maybe, but it’s true. It really bothered me a lot the way they handled it at the time, but when I left ShraderCapital I stopped thinking about it. Then yesterday I saw the video of you in LA. They let you go out there, Greer, and they trotted that girl out too. They didn’t care that it wasn’t true.”
“Exactly what isn’t true?” Greer managed to say. “The whole thing?”
“The rescue was real. The security group apparently went in and saved those girls.”
“Well, good. That’s a relief.”
“But the mentor part never happened. They just pretended it did.”
“But why would they do that?”
“There was a fuckup,” Kim said. “Their contact in Ecuador.”
“Alejandra Sosa.”
“No, not her. The next one. I thought you knew.”
“Next one? She’s the only one we hired. Faith had her looked into. Scrupulously.”
Kim shook her head. “She was good. I agree that she would have done the job. But there was a change. The COO’s wife knew a woman in the region who she liked; she wanted her to take over the day-to-day operations. So she asked her husband, and he asked Shrader, and Shrader said sure, whatever. So Alejandra Sosa was sidelined, and I’m guessing now that no one told Faith. Anyway, the new person was a disaster. She never found mentors. The building that we’d rented just sat empty. Squatters have been living in it. The COO’s wife was mortified when we found out, and everyone just wanted the whole thing to go away, because it stinks. No one wanted to talk about it.”
“Can’t this person be sued?”
“It’s much too late for that. But that’s really not the issue. I don’t think you understand. As you know, we had all these brochures printed up, soliciting donations to keep the mentor program ongoing. The donations were coming in, and maybe they still are. And once ShraderCapital found out the truth, they didn’t shut the fund down and make a public statement and give everyone back their money. They decided that that would be terrible PR. So they just allowed it to keep going, which is, as you can imagine, illegal. And of course Loci’s name is all over the brochure.”
Greer closed her eyes; it was all she could think to do. She thought of Faith, and Emmett, and a bank account filling with money, and a news story, and all of them on trial for fraud. The mind could go wild on just a moment’s notice. Greer felt pressure in her chest, and a medical term swam up to her: unstable angina. I’m only twenty-six, Greer thought, though right now that age didn’t even sound particularly young.
“But let me ask you something,” said Greer. “Lupe Izurieta, who came to LA with me and appeared onstage. What about her? She agreed to read that statement in Spanish about her mentor, who taught her all those skills. Computers. Knitting.”
“Right, she agreed,” said Kim. “Someone wrote it for her.”
“I wrote it,” said Greer, shocked. “Faith asked me to.”
She thought of how frightened Lupe had been, and she had assumed it was because of having to speak about her trauma publicly. But maybe it was because she’d had to stand up there reading a lie that she’d been told to read. Greer looked at Kim to find some hint of craziness, an image of a disgruntled former employee who wanted to punish the company where she used to work. But Kim was just looking back at her with an unbroken gaze, waiting for her to respond, and then Greer remembered something else. She thought of Lupe on the airplane with the puddle of white wool and the knitting needles sticking out of her bag, untouched. She’d thought, on the plane, that Lupe would want to knit during the flight so she would be less afraid.
Maybe the knitting had remained untouched because she didn’t actually know how to knit. Maybe her mentor wasn’t a knitter at all, because she wasn’t real.
* * *
• • •
When Greer went into Faith’s office half an hour later and flatly asked if they could speak in private, Faith’s face took on the particular expression that Greer had seen at different times over the years: empathy and attentiveness. Faith said, “I’m heading out for an appointment at the hair salon. Why don’t you meet me there at twelve.”
“Okay.”
“But don’t spread it around. The thing I hate most about going there, above and beyond the obscene amount of money, is the amount of time I have to give over to it. If I added up all the time I’ve spent in such places, I could probably have traveled the world. Done something much more significant than sitting in a chair being passive and wearing a plastic cape like a superhero of nothing. Anyway, we’ll have time to talk. I’m taping a segment for Screengrab later, so I have to look decent.”
Greer found Faith behind the privacy screen reserved for VIPs in the very back of the Jeremy Ingersoll Salon on Madison Avenue, a long deep room that was filled with flowers; the flowers crowded the place and gave it a strong perfume that fought with the formaldehyde in the Brazilian Blowout f
ormula to create a tropical breeze that somehow, at least for Greer, also invoked death and decomposition. Greer waited nervously while the stylist finished with the foils. They glimmered and dotted Faith’s scalp like gum wrappers. The stylist set the timer and left the two women alone.
“So,” said Faith, smiling but serious. “We apparently have exactly thirty minutes together. Talk to me, Greer.” It was unnerving how different Faith looked in her cape and with her shining head, the scalp hooked up not with electrodes but with a conduit to youth and beauty. Faith seemed to notice the way Greer was taking in her appearance, and she added, “Oh, I know, I look strange. But if you saw how I really look when I go too long between appointments, you’d think it was stranger. Or maybe you’ve already seen it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, I have to come here so often that it’s kind of like a crack addiction, and Jeremy Ingersoll is my dealer. If I didn’t do all this, then I would be very gray, and I’m just not wild about how that looks on me. And I have to feel okay looking in the mirror.”
“Of course.”
“It isn’t cheap, vanity. And it gets more expensive all the time. When I started going gray, I worried that if I let it go, I would look like a sorceress. And that was not what I wanted. I wanted to look like myself, that’s all. You’ll know what I’m talking about someday. Not for a long time, but you’ll know.”
She looked directly at Greer in the mirror, and Greer thought about how she had so often craved moments of personal conversation with Faith over the years. Here was another one, and Greer was about to kill it by telling her what Kim Russo had said. She wished, suddenly, that instead of repeating that information, she could say something new from her own life, her own love life. She wished she could blurt out something vulnerable and real.
“So what’s going on with you?” Faith asked easily.
Greer looked at her hands, then back at Faith in the mirror. “Here it is. Apparently there’s no mentor program in Ecuador,” she said. She paused, letting Faith take this in. “There was never a mentor program,” Greer went on, “but we said there was, and we took people’s money, and we’re still taking it. And I went onstage in LA and gushed about mentors and wrote a thing for Lupe to read, but none of it was true. I’ve been told this by a source, Kim Russo from upstairs, and I believe it.”
Faith gaped at her. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“What about the rescue?” Faith asked, agitated.
“That was real.”
“Thank God for that. But really, no mentor program?”
Greer shook her head. She explained what had happened, and why it appeared to be true. Faith didn’t say anything at first, but just sat there with her mouth grimly tight, and finally she said, “Shit.”
“I know.”
“I can’t believe ShraderCapital. I mean, I can,” Faith said. “They often cut corners. But this one is its own pay grade.” Greer felt a chemical swoon of relief. Her anxiety shifted, became something almost a little exciting. Faith hadn’t known. Greer hadn’t thought there was any way she had known, but still. And more than that, Faith was angry, and Greer was angry along with her. The two of them stewed together, betrayed by the people upstairs. “I’ve been called gullible, you know,” said Faith. “It’s a reasonable criticism. To think I could be in business with these people, and that it would never be a problem.”
They sat in the shared gloom of their intimacy. But then Faith reached out to brace herself against the counter and swiveled her chair so that she was facing Greer directly, no longer looking at her in the mirror. And then she said, “But I guess I don’t understand what you thought you were going to accomplish, rushing in here and telling me this news.”
Greer blinked, suddenly flooded and undefended, confused. Her face, naturally, heated up. “Well,” she said stiffly, “I thought I was just telling you the truth.”
“Fine. So here we are surrounded by the truth.”
“You sound like you’re angry with me,” Greer said. “Don’t be angry with me, Faith. It isn’t my fault.” Faith didn’t say anything, but just kept looking at her. “I assume we’ll want to do something now,” Greer said after a moment.
“There’s no next move here, Greer.”
“Yes there is. There could be.”
“Such as?”
“We could break with ShraderCapital,” she tried, though she hadn’t thought ahead and was just riffing now. And as she riffed, she was still distracted by the idea that Faith was angry with her. That made no sense. She needed to calm Faith down now, because they had both been wronged, and Faith needed to understand that. Suddenly Greer imagined herself and Faith with two hobo sticks, two bindles, leaving Loci and heading out onto a dark road.
“Break with them. Yes, but that’s shortsighted,” Faith said. “Where else am I going to get money to spread the word about the plight of women everywhere? Do you want to give me millions of dollars, Greer?”
“No—”
“And it’s not like we could join up with anyone else.” Faith’s voice was picking up speed now. “I’ve been doing this kind of thing since the year of the flood. I have my ways, and I have my limitations, as everyone will tell you. There are other, newer foundations that have a far more progressive agenda. And I admire them. They are connecting with what’s happening right this minute. If you go to most campuses now, you’d better be thoughtful about gender pronouns. I’ve tried to incorporate as much as I can to stay on top of what’s happening out there. And to stay relevant too. But most places just don’t have the money we do, so they scrounge around. They’re always fighting for equality, doing it the way they’re doing it, and I’m doing it the way I’m doing it.” She took a breath. “You take what you can get. Doing good and taking money don’t go together well. I have known this for all of my adult life. The wheels always need grease.”
This was a kind of speech, Greer realized, and once she understood that, it made sense, and she felt that she didn’t have to say much except to ask the occasional question, to rebut the occasional point. “But you just accept it?” Greer asked finally.
“No, I do not ‘just accept it.’ I try to keep an eye on what I can, while being fully aware that I can’t keep my eye on everything. The fraudulence of the mentor program in Ecuador disgusts me. And it makes me very angry. But mostly, you know what? Mostly it depresses me. And it reminds me of what you have to do if you’re trying to get something done in the world and your cause is women. Because look, if four years ago I’d said no, Emmett, I refuse to touch your money, you know where I’d be right now? Sitting at home learning ikebana.”
“I’m sorry, what’s ikebana?”
“The Japanese art of flower arranging. That is where I’d be. I would not get to introduce thousands of people to the plight of the Yazidi women of Iraq. I would not be bringing in women who were denied abortions after being raped by their fathers. God, listen to me: I don’t even know why I always put in that detail—the fathers. It should be enough just to say women who were denied abortions. That’s the point. It’s their bodies, their lives, despite what the senator from Indiana will tell you.
“I know the things people say about our foundation. That our tickets cost too much, and that we mostly get wealthy white people to come hear our lectures. ‘Rich white ladies,’ they say, which is insulting. You know we’re always trying to bring in more diverse audiences and bring down costs. But I’ve had to adjust my expectations about what we do, and I’ve also had to perform the song and dance that they’ve been demanding upstairs. The celebrity speakers. The fancy food, which my son makes fun of. And the feminist psychic, Ms. Andromeda, with her ridiculous predictions.
“But in order to get a women’s foundation to really take off, Greer—because even the phrase ‘women’s foundation’ makes most people tune out—sometimes you have to throw in a psychic.”<
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“So what’s the alternative to leaving?” Greer asked. “We just go back to work and act like this didn’t happen?”
Greer thought of Faith in the Ryland Chapel, up at the pulpit, with her dark, curling head of hair and her tall sexy gray boots, and the encouragement that she gave to everyone in that room. And then the special encouragement that she gave afterward to Greer. Faith had helped her and taken an interest in her, and had put her to work, and for a long time the work had felt like it mattered. Once, a year earlier, Beverly Cox, the shoe factory worker who had spoken up about the wage inequality and harassment she and her fellow female employees had endured, had come hurrying up to Greer on a street in midtown in winter and said, “Wait, I know you. You helped me write my first speech.” She turned to the other people she was with, all of them visiting from upstate and bundled in thick winter coats, and said, “You remember I told you about her?” Her friends nodded. “I never thought I could speak in front of people,” Beverly said to Greer. “I never thought anyone would want to listen. But you did,” and she’d hugged her, and her friends had taken photos with their phones. “For posterity,” Beverly said, and she gave Greer a handout about a union event she was speaking at up in Oneonta the following week.
Faith had brought Greer toward all of this. Her connection to these women had done something for both her and them. She thought of Lupe, but not with sentimentality, only with pain, and she knew that if they were to see each other on the street, Lupe would not be happy to see her. Perhaps Lupe would say something in Spanish, something that was well beyond Greer’s comprehension.
But they would never see each other on the street. There was no street. Lupe was back in Ecuador. What was she doing? What would happen to her? Maybe she was still adrift, lost. Where was she living? What was she actually doing with her days? She would never be part of a women’s textile co-op; that much Greer knew.
Now Faith appeared like some foil-headed Martian, talking calmly about staying on at the foundation under the aegis of ShraderCapital, which had had no problem pretending it was overseeing a nonexistent charity on another continent. “Maybe it’s not moral to keep working for ShraderCapital,” Greer said, actually lifting her chin slightly higher.