The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

  “I would like to be a clown when I grow up,” said the girl.

  “I would too,” said the boy dreamily, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. “I’ll be called . . . Clowny the Clown.”

  How was it, really, that Greer had never known that children liked her mother’s act? That they looked up to the library clown, and that she meant something to them? Greer felt only remorse now; it choked and overtook her.

  “Mom, you were great,” she said when they got back into the car on the street outside. “I had no idea what your act was like.”

  “Well, now you do,” her mother said cautiously, putting the key in the ignition and starting the car. “No harm, no foul.”

  “No, but really, it was excellent,” Greer said. Plaintively, in the gray afternoon, she asked, “Why didn’t I know that?”

  “What, that I could juggle? Or use a squirt bottle?”

  “No, not that.” And then, feeling brutally sorry for herself, she asked, “How come you never did your act for me when I was little?”

  Her mother turned off the engine. Her nose and wig and outfit were stuffed in a bag on the backseat; only the collar remained, half in view under the top of her coat. “I didn’t think you’d like it,” she finally said. “You were quiet but so serious.” She stopped.

  “Go on,” Greer said.

  “Dad and I always felt we should stand back and let you do what you did. And that was even more true when you got together with Cory.” His name was shocking spoken here without warning. “I used to think of you as twin rocket ships,” Laurel said. “Remember that?”

  Greer did. She didn’t want to talk about Cory with her mother. So she said, “Why didn’t you and Dad ever find something you really wanted to do? Something you could throw yourselves into?”

  Laurel got quiet, her mouth a little wavy. “Some people never do. I don’t really know why.” She looked away. “We never had an easy time. We both had a way of retreating. Though we did do some things. And we did have you. That’s not nothing.” Then her expression changed, and she asked, “What happened down in New York, darling?”

  In the passenger seat beside her mother Greer choked out the story about the fake mentor program in Ecuador, and about Loci, and Faith. “I had to leave. I couldn’t stay. I don’t know; was I being too pure? When I told her I was leaving, she just turned on me, Mom, I couldn’t believe it. It was humiliating. I was so destroyed.”

  “No you weren’t. And you’re not. But that must have been very upsetting; I can see that.”

  “She was upset too. We both were.” Greer shook her head. “What am I supposed to do now?” Greer asked. “Mom, I’ve quit my job.”

  Her mother looked at her. “Do you have to know what to do immediately?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Don’t you have some money saved up?” Laurel asked, and Greer nodded. “Then take a little time. Go slowly.”

  “But I hate that,” Greer said.

  “What? Going slowly? Why, what’s the rush?”

  “I don’t know,” said Greer. “It’s not the way I’m built.”

  “What, you’re afraid that if you go slow you’re going to become like Dad and me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know you didn’t. But you’ll never be us; that’s not going to happen. And you don’t always have to feel the compulsion to keep striving toward something for the sake of striving. No one will think less of you. There are no grades anymore, Greer. Sometimes I think you forget that. There are never going to be grades for the rest of your life, so you just have to do what you want to do. Forget about how it looks. Think about what it is.”

  Greer nodded again. “And take a little time doing what now? I don’t have anything.”

  “That’s just it,” said Laurel. “Who knows? You don’t have to know yet. Can’t you just wait and see?”

  They were silent for a while, and then Greer blurted out, “But it isn’t just what happened down in New York. It’s also Zee. I betrayed her.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know why I did what I did. And I don’t know how to undo it.” At that point she began to sob.

  Laurel fiddled with the sticking lock on the glove compartment, got it open, and pulled out a flattened packet of tissues. “Take one,” she said. Greer blew her nose endlessly, until it was probably as red as a clown’s. “You will work on this,” said Laurel. “You work so hard on everything.”

  They drove home from the library in a state of quiet recovery, and as they pulled up in front of the house and Laurel leaned down over the backseat to get her bag, Greer saw Cory through the car window. He was letting himself out of the front door of his house. She had known she would see him while she was here; it was just a matter of when.

  The sight of him always shocked her and broke her down a little each time she visited: that he was right there, but not connected to her anymore. That they were growing older separately, now in their mid-twenties, this period of peak hope, which wouldn’t last that long. He had been changing physically, gradually; the longer the time passed between visits, the more obvious it became. He was still handsome but entirely grown, and he looked to her now like a young suburban dad. Skinny as always, neatly and plainly dressed in a down vest and jeans. It was startling how Cory had fully inhabited the life he led here and didn’t look anymore like someone pretending.

  Her mother got out of the car, waved to him, and then went inside. Greer went over to him and they hugged in that only upper-body way they’d done since the breakup. His hair was slightly longer than she remembered. That’s new, she wanted to say, but maybe it wasn’t new; maybe his hair had been long for some time.

  “You want to go somewhere?” she thought to ask, and he looked hesitant but then said okay, just for a little while, he had to be somewhere; and so they walked to Pie Land. Kristin Vells no longer worked there, or at least wasn’t working there now. Over pizza and plastic cups of soda Cory asked her, “So what’s the deal with your being here? Traveling for work?”

  “No.”

  He looked more closely at her, tilting his head the way he used to do on Skype. “You okay?”

  “Not really. I quit my job.”

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “You want to say more?”

  “No. Thanks, though.” It would have been such a relief to tell him, a relief to feel the information passing from her to him, planted in his brain, where he would think about it too. “Tell me what’s going on with you,” she said.

  “Deflection. You do it so deftly.”

  “I try.”

  “Okay,” Cory said. “Some things are new with me. I’ve been working at Valley Tek, the computer store in Northampton.”

  “Do you like it there?”

  “I do, yeah. And I’m still cleaning houses.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’d be amazed at how filthy people are. I mean, amazed. They shed their skin, and the floor of everyone’s house is basically like the floor of a forest. Flakes. Droppings. I know, that’s a lovely image. But it’s interesting. And Valley Tek is interesting too. Every day is sort of like, what particular weird problem will someone bring in today? And some of us get together after work and play video games.” Then he added, self-consciously, “I’ve actually been writing a game myself. A guy at work was encouraging me to do it so we could develop it together. He’s a programmer.”

  “Really? What is it?”

  He took a second. “It’s called SoulFinder. Sort of a corny name, but I’m not great with names. What it is, is you try to find the person you’ve lost. But I can’t describe it well. It’s not ready for human consumption yet. I don’t know if it ever will be, but I like to think it will.”

  “I hope it will. How’s your mom?” she asked finally, needing to find something to say. “What’s going on with her?”
>
  “She’s okay,” he said. “I mean, she takes her medication when she’s supposed to, which is really good. For a while there she wasn’t compliant, and that was hard. But it’s kind of calm in the house these days, actually.”

  “You think you’re here for the long run?” Greer asked lightly.

  “If this isn’t the long run, I don’t know what is.”

  Greer knew that it was. Your twenties were a time when you still felt young, but the groundwork was being laid in a serious way, crisscrossing beneath the surface. It was being laid even while you slept. What you did, where you lived, who you loved, all of it was like pieces of track being put down in the middle of the night by stealth workers. Until a few days earlier, Greer had had a crowded life that she believed in and was frustrated by. Cory in his twenties was someone who had come to the rescue of his broken mother and stayed.

  “If you ever get down to the city,” she said casually when they stood to go, “you could stay with me in Brooklyn. I have a sleeper sofa.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “That’s nice of you. I might get there.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you when you do,” she said. She wanted to say to him: Once we were twin rocket ships.

  They walked back to their street and stood in the neutral zone between their houses. “How’s Slowy?” Greer suddenly asked.

  “Oh, he’s good. Well, I mean, I don’t really know if he’s good. There’s no way to know. But anyway, he’s basically the same.”

  A few days later, on her last night there, when Greer and her parents found themselves in the kitchen at the same time, getting ready for dinner—they had eaten together each night, her parents seeming to understand that Greer wouldn’t want to eat alone now—her father said, “You saw Cory? Anything new with him?”

  “He works at the computer store in Northampton,” Greer said. “And he’s inventing a computer game or something. But mostly, you know, he still lives here with his mother. He even still cleans a couple of the houses she used to clean. So, I guess that’s what he’s up to. Not that much.”

  “Greer,” said Laurel, “what are we supposed to do, shake our heads and say that he’s accomplished nothing?”

  “No. Of course not.” But she burned at being called out now.

  “It seems to me,” said her mother, “and this is really outside my sphere of knowledge, since I’m not the one who’s been working at a feminist foundation. But here’s this person who gave up his plans when his family fell apart. He moves back in with his mother and takes care of her. Oh, and he cleans his own house, and the ones she used to clean. I don’t know. But I feel like Cory is kind of a big feminist, right?”

  TWELVE

  When Faith Frank emailed Emmett Shrader to invite him to her apartment, he thought about replying with a joke about how it had been forty-one years since he’d last been to her place, and that he thought she’d never ask. But somehow he knew from the terseness, even coldness, of her email that there was something wrong. She had to speak to him, and she wanted to do it out of the office. Even more peculiarly, this was to be arranged without the help of Connie and Deena, the usual gatekeepers. Though people always came to Emmett and never the other way around, he immediately agreed.

  Here he was now, on a Sunday evening, in Faith’s large, butter-colored living room on Riverside Drive—a slightly faded place, he noted. The Hudson River glowed dark under the moon out the large window. There were vases placed around the room, and the occasional forgotten teacup. She didn’t even offer him a drink. This was serious.

  He sat in an easy chair, and she sat across from him and said with formality, “I am furious with you.”

  He looked hard at her. “You want to tell me why?”

  “No, I want you to figure it out.”

  He tried. Various scenarios passed before him in a loop of footage, none seeming accurate.

  “Lupe Izurieta,” Faith finally said. “Ring any bells?”

  “What?”

  “Lupe Izurieta,” she repeated, unhelpfully.

  “What are you talking about?” Emmett sat there in such confusion that he thought this might be what it was like to have a stroke. Loo-pay-a-zoo-ree-ate-er, he thought, turning the syllables over and over, but they made no sense.

  “From Ecuador.”

  Then the syllables re-formed themselves correctly, and he understood what she had said: Lupe Izurieta. Right, oh right. The girl they had brought over to speak in LA. One of the one hundred girls they had paid a lot of money to rescue.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “So the mentor program really doesn’t exist?”

  He paused, thrown, trying to be careful. “It was supposed to have existed,” he tried. “We had every intention. Does that count for anything?”

  “What happened?” she said. “Just tell me.”

  “You won’t believe me, Faith. But when it got discussed upstairs, a lot got said. I’m ashamed to say this, but I wasn’t entirely paying attention at the time.”

  People had always described Emmett Shrader’s attention span as pealike, flealike. Let them say that, he’d always thought; he didn’t care. But still he had to find a way to manage his boredom, and that could be difficult. Sometimes, in meetings with clients or with his board of directors, he found himself falling, as if off a cliff, down onto the shoals of boredom. He did whatever he could to avoid this. That might involve playing a dropping-bricks game on a phone that he discreetly held out of sight in his lap, or else noodling around with the wire widgets that sat on his broad black chunk of a desk for no other reason than that the interior decorator had bought them for him from a young artist in Barcelona “who works in wire,” she’d said excitedly.

  He had barely noticed the widgets until he found himself idle in a meeting, and there they were, waiting to be toyed with. He could’ve kissed the interior decorator for having given him something to do with his hands at that moment. He remembered her as smelling candied, and having an excellent bosom. He loved the way women, clothed, had a bosom, a single entity, but when unclothed, it cleaved into two discrete parts, two breasts, like the way you could separate an orange into halves by hooking your thumbs into it.

  When Emmett tired of the games on the phone and of the sculptural widgets, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He often let his thoughts take him far afield; he imagined sex with his decorator, or what Chef Brian might prepare for dinner that night, hoping it wasn’t halibut in parchment, because these days far too many things came in parchment, and unwrapping that virtuous little package was basically the opposite of being a child on Christmas morning.

  Now he tried to remember the sequence of meetings about Ecuador that had ended in failure and then deceit. First Faith had come up with the idea of doing a special project that concerned sex trafficking there. Of course he wanted to please her, so he’d immediately turned it over to two associates. A contact in Quito had been secured and hired, and a two-pronged plan had been put in place. First there would be a rescue of one hundred girls who had been forced to work as prostitutes in Guayaquil. A local, fearless security team had been engaged for the job. And next, once the girls were rescued, they would be matched with older women who would serve as mentors and teach them a trade. Women learning from women, an admirable project.

  “It’ll look great,” someone at ShraderCapital said. “We should be doing more things like this.”

  It was all put in place and ready to go. But during a second or third meeting, when all the outstanding details were supposed to be worked out, Emmett was only half-listening. That was the meeting at which Doug Paulson, the COO, said he had something he needed to bring up. “I hate to insert this at the zero hour,” he said, “but when Brit and I took the kids to the Galápagos she met this woman, Trina Delgado, who organizes on behalf of charities in South America. Brit thinks she is the real deal. And when I told her about what we’ve bee
n doing in Ecuador, she suggested it would be great if we could bring Trina in.”

  “What do you mean, bring her in?” asked Monica Vendler, the lone woman at this high level at ShraderCapital.

  “Well, I’m wondering if it’s too late to sideline the person Faith hired. It would mean a lot to my wife to be able to work with Trina.”

  “If you think she’s good,” said Greg Stupack.

  “I don’t know about this,” Monica said.

  “Brit really likes this woman,” Doug repeated. “I thought helping other women was a central part of Loci’s mission.”

  So the first woman had been swapped out for the second one, and everything proceeded. But when the rescue mission was days away, a meeting was suddenly called. Doug Paulson, slightly red-faced now, haltingly explained that Trina Delgado, to whom they had already paid an exorbitant and nonrefundable fee, turned out not to have been good with “follow-through.” The story quickly tumbled out of him. “She acts like she’s doing everything she can, but I think she’s a fucking grifter,” he finally said. “Brit feels horrible, and so do I.” Trina had never hired mentors, but had taken ShraderCapital’s money. Nothing was in place, absolutely nothing.

  “Why am I not surprised?” asked Monica acidly. “So if we don’t have mentors, are we still going ahead with the rescue?”

  “It’s a good outfit,” said Greg. “Highly rated. Plus, we prepaid.”

  “What were they supposed to teach these girls, anyway?” asked Kim Russo, the COO’s pretty, blond, broad-shouldered young assistant.

  “All kinds of things,” said one of the other assistants. “English. Computer skills. Also, a trade. Knitting. Weaving.”