by Karen Quinn
Konrad offered me the monogrammed handkerchief from his jacket pocket. I blew my nose, making a loud honking sound. I continued to blow and wipe, giving his linen hankie a thorough soaking. “Thanks,” I said, putting it back in his hand. It grossed him out, but he kept his face straight, not daring to reveal any sign of weakness.
Konrad handed me a schedule for the rest of the day.
10:00 A.M.—meet with Sharon and Young Mi and announce they’ve been downsized. Send them to Human Resources.
11:00 A.M.—meet with Human Resources to go over your package.
1:00 P.M.—meet with remainder of your team, Drayton, Konrad, to announce transition.
2:00 P.M.—car will take you home. Your things will be shipped tomorrow.
I looked up at Konrad, who avoided my eyes.
“This isn’t personal, you know,” Konrad said. “When you play ball in the majors, you have to make tough calls. Put yourself in my place, Ivy. Think how hard this has been for me. And look, I’m keeping it together.” Konrad leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Frankly, I don’t think it’s professional of you to cry. Men hate that, you know. Now me, I can handle tears. I’m evolved. But if you’re ever in this position again, try to avoid the waterworks.”
I glared at him. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to say what I was thinking at that moment.
“Hey, it’ll probably happen to me soon, too,” he joked in a clumsy attempt toward camaraderie.
I hope so, I thought but didn’t say.
“Well, I’ll see you at one o’ clock.” Konrad pulled at his collar like Rodney Dangerfield. It was the first time I’d seen the guy sweat.
The next few hours were a blur. As their boss, I was expected to fire my two directors, Sharon and Young Mi. I was white. Sharon was African American. Young Mi was Chinese American. If you ignored the fact that we were all girls, this had been an equal-opportunity firing. Making me sack them was cruel and unusual punishment. I wept. They cried. We hugged.
Human Resources was equally delightful. My payout would only be fourteen weeks—“New rules,” the drone explained. “We reengineered the severance policy. You have to be a senior vice president to get a month for every year. You’re only entitled to a week for each twelve months served. Didn’t you get the memo? Also, you need to sign this agreement not to sue us for wrongful termination before you can receive your lump-sum settlement.”
For about five seconds I contemplated suing them. Surely they’d pay more than fourteen weeks’ salary just to make me go away. But litigation drags on forever. And lawyers cost a fortune. Shit. I had so many bills to pay. I signed the damn thing and pocketed the check.
Smarmy Drayton was at the one o’clock hand-over meeting. To suppress my tears, I concentrated on counting his oily pores from across the table. His lips kept curling into a smirk that he’d attempt to hide with his hand and a cough.
Konrad told my people that there would be a reorganization and they would report to Drayton now. He explained his vision for my department, providing them with more direction than he’d given me for the last four years. Drayton nodded knowingly as Konrad spoke, as though he were listening to the Dalai Lama or Tony Robbins.
Drayton thanked Konrad in his kiss-ass way, stopping just short of giving him a blowjob for his courage to make the hard decision to let me go. Then, he welcomed my people to his team and yammered on and on about what good personal friends we were, how I was the consummate professional for whom he had the utmost respect, and what a loss my leaving would be for the company, blah, blah, blah. He led the group in a polite round of applause honoring my contribution to the bank. Finally, he mentioned what great things I’d told him about each of them and how he looked forward to working with such talented players. The guy could not have unloaded more crap if he’d taken a dump in the middle of the conference-room table.
When Konrad asked if I wanted to say anything to my team, I could only eke out a few words, “I’ve enjoyed working with you.” At that point, the swelling in my throat made talking impossible, so I smiled like I thought the restructuring was just a super idea.
Konrad remembered that he’d forgotten to confiscate my office key, security badge, BlackBerry, and corporate Visa card. He asked for them. With my former direct reports on hand to witness the final humiliation, I handed each item over. This was beginning to feel more and more like a court-martial.
Konrad dismissed the group and called Drayton in for a private chat. I hugged each person tightly. Saying goodbye to Bonnie, my faithful assistant, was particularly wrenching. She’d made sure the office ran smoothly when my mother was dying last year. Because of her, I was at Mom’s side for her last days. I wasn’t surprised that the company held on to Bonnie. Loyal assistants working at Myoki were as common as Paris Hilton shopping at Fashion Barn, and management knew it. I hugged her and we promised to stay in touch. The security guard, who was waiting to escort me out, kept looking at his watch.
Walking to the elevator, I ran into Drayton.
“No hard feelings, I hope,” he said with an exaggeratedly sympathetic smile, extending his hand. “Sassy and I so enjoyed our evening out with you, and we want to do it again.”
Oh, yes, Drayton, I’ll be calling you for a dinner date real soon.
“Hey, not at all,” I said, smiling, shaking his moist but well-manicured hand. Eeeuw! He was wearing clear nail polish. “I’m looking forward to some time at home with my kids. You did me a favor, Drayton.” I pressed the elevator button.
“Ah yes . . . splendid . . . splendid. I must say, Ivy, well done. I raaather admire the way you’ve handled this. But do call me if you need anything, anything at all,” he said with fake concern.
What I ached to do at that moment was hurt the man. Knee him in the balls. Punch him in the face. Stick my le grand de Montblanc fountain pen up his nose, piercing his brainstem, rendering him paralyzed, condemning him to life as a vegetable. But the security guard was watching, and resorting to violence would defy the cardinal rule of getting fired—don’t burn your bridges. So I didn’t.
A black Lincoln Town Car that smelled of stale cigarettes and sweat was waiting downstairs. Regrettably, it was the last time Myoki would send me home in classic Manhattan midlevel executive style. We drove up Church and cut over to Greene in SoHo. The streets were filled with chunky-haired people dressed in black who obviously spent their workdays outside the corporate world. What do they do to support themselves? I wondered. The last fourteen years of my life had been spent in the hermetically sealed offices of Myoki Bank. For the first time, it dawned on me that there was this whole other world where people could be outside at 2:00 P.M. on a weekday. Maybe I could become one of these people, I thought. They seem so free.
“Near corner or far,” the driver asked when we approached my building. “Near,” I replied. He asked for my voucher. I wrote in a $500 tip and told him to have a nice day.
Walking through my lobby, I felt the nervous stares of the doorman and concierge. It must be written all over my face that I was fired.
Stepping into the elevator was a relief. Then, remembering that doormen were watching through hidden cameras, I held my head high. I longed for the sympathetic hug I knew Cadmon would offer when I told him the news.
“Cadmon,” I called as I walked in. “Cad . . . ?” I looked around but couldn’t find him. He wasn’t at his computer. Must be at the gym. Sir Elton, our pug, came running to greet me. He chased his tail enthusiastically when he saw me. I walked right past him. From the kitchen, I could hear Rosie, our nanny, and Elva, our maid, jabbering away to each other in Spanish. I couldn’t face them. What would they think? Me, home in the middle of the day. Fired. By tomorrow, every maid and nanny on Park Avenue would know. The next day, their bosses would hear. Ugh, the shame!
Stripping off my jacket, I suddenly felt exhausted. Should I crawl into bed or work out? Bed. Definitely bed. Too bad it hadn’t been made yet. Pee. I needed to pee. Then sleeping or cryi
ng, whichever came first.
The bathroom smelled like orange blossoms when I walked in. Like a delicious bubble bath was already drawn and waiting for me. Then I noticed Cadmon in his robe sitting on the toilet rubbing soap on a naked woman in my bathtub. The naked woman was Sassy, Drayton’s wife. Sweet mother of God, those tits!
I hated her. Incredibly, my first thought was, how does she do it—plastic surgery or workouts? My second thought was to pummel that perfect face with a can of deodorant.
Like deer caught in the headlights, Sassy and Cadmon looked at me.
I stopped in my tracks, stunned.
“You’re fucking Sassy?” I asked Cad quietly, already knowing the answer.
“Let me explain,” Cadmon said, resorting to the reasonable tone he used when he felt he needed to quote-unquote handle me. “Nothing happened. I know this looks bad, but . . .”
“Stop,” I blurted. “You can’t possibly think I’m that stupid. Out. I want you both out of here.” By then, Sassy was hugging herself to cover her nakedness and trying to disappear beneath the bubbles.
Instead of tears, I was angry. That felt right. The two lying shits deserved my rage.
I looked at Sassy. “Out,” I demanded, pointing toward the door. “Get out now.”
“Okay, could you hand me the towel . . . please,” came her mortified reply.
“Oh, you want to dry off? You want to dry off?” I grabbed the blow-dryer that we always left plugged in by the sink, turned it on high, and screamed, “If you don’t get your tight little ass out of my house this instant, you can dry off with this.” I held it over the water. “One . . . two . . .” Sassy bounded out of the tub and sprinted through the apartment like Jackie Joyner-Kersey, hurdling furniture and racing out the door tracking bubbles and water in her wake. Rosie and Elva must have been spying. I distinctly heard gasps and the words “Ay, chihuahua!” followed by urgent Spanish whispering outside the bedroom door.
What was I thinking? The cheating scumbags weren’t worth going to jail for. Is adultery a defense for manslaughter anymore? I wondered. Nah, not in New York. Maybe in Arkansas.
At least the doormen would get a thrill as Sassy rode downstairs. There’s one security tape that wouldn’t get erased.
For the first time in my life, I had an out-of-body experience. Floating to the ceiling, I surveyed the scene below. This cannot be happening. I’ve been fired. My husband is screwing another woman—the wife of the asshole responsible for getting me canned, no less. My entire life is falling apart on the same day. What are the odds? What do I do? Do I let Cadmon explain and forgive him? Do I kick him out? If I kick him out, I won’t have a husband. I’ll be an unemployed single mother, and that would suck. I’ve gotten fat. How can I date anyone looking like this? Dammit, I’ll have to start grooming my crotch again. Why didn’t I get a tummy tuck when we could afford it? Why? Why? How’ll Sassy get home naked? Would a cabdriver pick up a nude woman? Probably. But how would she pay the fare? All these thoughts flashed through my mind in one second, the way people’s lives do when they’re about to die.
I came back to earth. “Cad, I’m going to pick up the kids. Pack some things and leave. I don’t want you here when I get back.”
He looked pitiful standing by the toilet in his Ritz Carlton terrycloth robe with the torn pocket. There would be no hug to comfort me for getting fired tonight. I turned and left, hiding the tears that were streaming down my face. Cadmon had ripped my heart out, but I’d sooner dance the samba bare-ass naked down Madison Avenue than let him know it.
3. Misery Is a Choice
Cadmon packed his clothes and computer and moved into the Perry Street Towers in the Far West Village with his brother, Don, the successful one. Later, he left a voice mail asking me to put his golf clubs in the Porsche, which he’d pick up when he could. Oh, sure, no problem, I thought. Be happy to schlep fifty pounds of iron five blocks to our parking garage. Have you ever tried to cram a set of clubs into a Porsche? Trust me, it’s impossible. Eventually, I ditched the bag and stuffed the sticks in the front seat. Just as I was about to leave, an irresistible urge to dance came over me. So I put on his spikes and did the twist all over the hood of the car, bawling like a baby.
In the weeks that followed, I barely managed to drag myself out of bed to take the girls to and from school. The rest of the time, I hid under the covers, intermittently sobbing, reading self-help books, and listening to old Joni Mitchell tunes. I wasn’t depressed exactly, but there was this unfillable emptiness and feeling of doom that I couldn’t shake.
My only pleasure was lying in bed with Sir Elton and my daughters watching Radical Reinvention, a reality TV show where people who were even worse off than I was were rescued through plastic-surgery makeovers. I wondered if I’d sunk low enough to qualify for that show. One morning, after I’d been weeping on and off for twenty-four hours straight, my seven-year-old called 911 for help. That’s when it hit me that I’d probably sunk as low as I could, so I slapped myself in the face (metaphorically, of course) and snapped out of it. With two little girls to support, I didn’t have the luxury of a nervous breakdown. At least that’s what I told the paramedics when they arrived.
I needed my mother and was furious with her for dying last year. Talk about bad timing. We’d always been unnaturally close, and had phoned each other several times a day. Secretly I’d hoped to go before her because I didn’t think I could live in a world where she didn’t exist. Now I needed her to hold me, kiss my cheek, and promise this would all work out. Praying to Mom for one of those spirit visits the death-and-dying books are always touting, the only response I got was silence. More silence. Still more silence.
The irony of losing everything at thirty-nine wasn’t lost on me. That had been Mom’s age when she discovered that Daddy was cheating on her after he promised it would never happen again. This time it was with an Hispanic dancer from West Side Story. We were living in Brooklyn Heights then, in an elegantly restored townhouse paid for by Dad’s thriving manufacturing business—Schechter’s Fine Schmattas. He was the first ragman to knock off Parisian couture dresses for Middle America. Daddy’s polyester fakes fed our family well and made him a very rich man. Designers were always harassing him, calling him a thief and a liar. But he was a wily one, Dad was. He’d change the patterns just enough to stay one step ahead of the law. Daddy used to say, “I have no conscience and I need the cash.” He said it like a joke, but I’m still not sure it was.
One afternoon, I came home from school to discover that my bags were packed and a taxi was waiting. Without so much as a “Ta-ta” to Daddy, Mom and I hopped in the cab and headed for Manhattan. Mom had finally had enough of Dad’s tomcatting around. She wouldn’t let me look back as we drove off, but instead insisted that I look forward to our better future. I was devastated, not because my family was falling apart, but because I was up for a perfect-attendance award at school, and now I wouldn’t win.
Unfortunately, Mom had never worked and wasn’t qualified to do much. Eventually, she secured a position as social secretary for Olivia de Campo, who was Mayor Lindsay’s first cousin’s father-in-law’s great-niece. The two of us lived in a tiny, windowless servant’s room in the basement of their limestone mansion just off Fifth Avenue. The house was across the street from a public school so fine that even the de Campos sent their daughter, Ondrea. I attended classes with children of means, all of whom treated me like a flea-ridden stray cat once Ondrea told them I was her servant’s kid.
Junior Miss de Campo entertained frequently at the manse, and she made a point of telling me I wasn’t welcome. Senior Mrs. de Campo, however, believed one should treat the garbageman the same as the Queen of England, so she invited me to Ondrea’s Valentine’s Day party. Thrilled by my good fortune, Mom worked tirelessly to make me a fake cowhide skirt for the occasion. I could barely hide my happiness, convinced that this was the break I needed to make friends. When I walked into the party, Ondrea announced to her posse of popular kids
that “Jewgirl” had arrived. “Jewgirl, Jewgirl, Jewgirl,” they chanted, laughing at me. I took refuge in my mother’s arms, but she was powerless to do anything.
To make it all worse, I was a short, chubby kid with blue winged glasses and a big nose we could no longer afford to have fixed. The better future that Mom had promised as we fled Brooklyn never materialized.
With no friends to speak of, I studied like my life depended on it, and earned a full scholarship to Yale for both undergraduate and business school. That opened the door to my fine career at Myoki, which led me to being fired by Konrad Kavaler and ultimately to my current sea of woes. But the years in between were good. I got green contact lenses and grew into my nose, and I turned out taller and prettier than anyone would have thought possible. I married Cadmon, who was as charismatic and dapper as I always imagined Dad had been. With his derivatives-trading career, it wasn’t long before the two of us were raking in buttloads of cash like junior aristocrats. We had no desire to join high society. No, we just wanted the swanky apartment, the private schools, the home in the Hamptons, the help, the vacations, the designer clothes, the friendships with celebs—all the meaningless, pretentious perks that go along with having money. Truth be told, it was everything we’d ever dreamed of and more. We had two daughters and rode the gravy train of happiness like every other well-paid Manhattan professional couple. Given my history, I was just waiting for the day we’d lose everything, so it came as no surprise to me when we did.
Okay, I thought, enough with the despair. It was time to drag my sorry ass out of bed and start over. In my diminished state, I wore jeans and no makeup when I took the girls to class. This caused a minor scandal among the mothers and nannies at our private school, where drop-off and pick-up featured ninety-eight-pound classically elegant moms straight from the pages of the Times “Sunday Styles” section. I kid you not. Some days, the paparazzi camped outside the school snapping pictures of our very own trophy wives striking poses as they commiserated among themselves over servant problems and insatiable husbands. I dyed my hair blond. I’d always wanted to do that, but it would have been a career-breaker at Myoki. I started lifting weights and working out to my Abs of Steel video, determined to get back to the old pretty me.