The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Her father lost his job at the start of the Depression. They had to let Alberta go. Eventually, they moved up north to Hamilton, her mother’s hometown. Frances was fifteen when they arrived. She would stay until she turned twenty, when better times brought the three of them home. Back in Pennsylvania, her parents bought Longview Farm, a sprawling place in Media, where they now raised goats and horses.

  As a teenager, it had been difficult to leave her friends behind and to try to fit in with her Pigott cousins, who were accustomed to all manner of luxury. But over time, Frances came to enjoy life in Canada.

  There, she and her father grew closer than ever, the two outsiders. Frances was an only child, and if her father, like most men, had wanted a boy, he never let on. He treated her like neither male nor female, just as his one and only, his darling. Anything Frances wanted to do, he thought was swell. And if she didn’t like something and wanted to give it a skip, that was fine by him too. Her father had saved her from the cotillions and socials and dance lessons that were the fate of all her female cousins.

  As a girl, Frances had liked to write short stories. He read every one of them, giving her his critiques.

  “You’re not an editor,” her mother once scolded him. “You’re her father. You should just say the stories are grand.”

  But Frances thrilled to his criticisms. They made his praise all the sweeter. And they made her feel like she was a real writer.

  At sixteen, while still in high school, she got a job at a community paper in Ontario, writing a shopping column. She went out and sold the advertising and wrote the ads, too, and made forty-five dollars a week in the middle of the Depression. That had lit a fire in her—she loved writing and selling. Most of all, she loved drawing her own paycheck. Her father was proud.

  Frances thought that her time in Canada had prepared her well for working at Ayer. The company president, Harry Batten, was a self-made man who liked hiring wealthy Ivy League types, with a strong tendency toward Yale. They had plenty of clients like that, too. Men with names like du Pont and Rockefeller. Frances was the only person in the copy department without a college degree, but she carried herself with as much confidence as anyone else, and no one seemed to notice the difference.

  Batten was fond of boasting that Ayer had an employee from every one of the forty-eight states.

  A Nordic Protestant from every state! Frances thought. Well done you! The agency didn’t look fondly on Catholics, and Jews were out of the question. But then, every agency was like that. She kept her Catholicism to herself. She only called in sick once a year, on Ash Wednesday.

  Four years at the agency had gone by in a flash, her grandmother wondering each Christmas with greater urgency than the last when Frances planned to settle down and have a family of her own. Her parents had been older than usual when they married in 1911, after meeting by chance on holiday in the Thousand Islands. Her mother was twenty-eight, her father thirty. Another four years passed before Frances was born. Her mother could still remember all the questions and concerns her older relatives had thrown at her—she had married too late, they said. She was waiting too long for children. These complaints had hurt her deeply. So for a long time, she refused to bother Frances about such things. When the window for nudging opened, it was quite short, as Frances soon turned thirty-two, apparently the age at which everyone gave up hope. Just like that, she went from perhaps only a pitiable late bloomer to a full-blown maiden lady. It was a delight to have the pressure off, really.

  She worked for the most powerful advertising agency in the world. She found her job far more exciting than any man she had met in the longest. Even this—staying up until all hours, jittery with the fear of not getting it right—even this thrilled her.

  The irony of her situation wasn’t lost on her: she was a bachelor girl whose greatest talent so far was for convincing couples to get engaged.

  When Frances joined Ayer in ’43, 103 employees were at war—10 percent of the agency. The only clients they took on during that time were the Boeing Airplane Company and the U.S. Army. Advertisements for luxury goods were seen as vulgar. From June 1942 until September 1943, De Beers advertising was confined to spreading the word of the company’s contribution of industrial diamonds to the war effort. After that, jewelry advertising resumed, but they had to be sensitive about it. In 1945, Frances created a new campaign, unlike anything that had ever been seen in American magazines before. The ads celebrated the weddings of real American GIs who were returning home to civilian life, and the girls they had left behind. They featured illustrations of actual ceremonies and stories about the couples. At the same time, important information was given about diamonds.

  During the war, Ayer made increasing use of women. Out of necessity, they were hiring girls on, and not just in clerical jobs and the steno pool, but in executive and semi-executive roles. There was Dolores in business production, and Sally in the media department. Two women in accounts, and Dorothy in public relations, of course.

  In the copy department, there were now a total of thirteen men and three women. The women were meant to provide the feminine point of view when it came to creating campaigns for products that females would buy, or at least influence the purchase of.

  For De Beers, Frances’s own desires were no help. Instead, she studied her coworkers and her friends and her roommates. What did they want most? Well, that was easy—they wanted marriage. What did they fear? They feared being alone. The war had only heightened both sensations. She played off of that. She tried to say that the diamond itself could prevent a tragic outcome: The engagement diamond on her finger is bright as a tear—but not with sadness. Like her eyes it holds a promise—of cool dawns together, of life grown rich and full and tranquil. Its lovely assurance shines through all the hours of waiting, to kindle with joy and precious meaning at the beginning of their new life to be.

  Much of the time, the ads appealed to men, since they would be the ones buying the rings. They did a lot of rather fancy advertising about gentlemen—about good taste and accomplishment, and how both ideas could be conveyed through the ring you gave your beloved, even if you didn’t actually have either one.

  A friend had recalled one night during the war that her beau wrote to say he was worried about what might happen to her if he didn’t come home. Mortality was on his mind, and, Frances reasoned, the minds of others like him. And so she wrote, Few men can found a city, name a new star, shatter an atom. Few build for themselves a monument so tall that future generations may point to it from far off, saying, “Look, that was our father. There is his name. That was his lifework.” Diamonds are the most imperishable record a man may leave of his personal life.

  It was all very dark and heavy-handed. Gerry Lauck thought it was brilliant.

  Frances closed her eyes for a moment. She should sleep some, or else she’d look a fright at the morning meeting. But what to do about the signature line? She arranged a handful of magazines in the shape of a fan on the floor, all open to her ads.

  In Vogue: Your diamonds glow with loveliness at every wearing. Theirs is a timeless charm transcending every change in fashion.

  In Collier’s: Wear your diamonds as the night wears its stars, ever and always … for their beauty is as timeless.

  In Life: In the engagement diamond on her finger, the memories will shine forever.

  She had clearly long been surfeited by this idea of permanence. She closed her eyes and said, “Dear God, send me a line.”

  Frances scribbled something on a scrap of paper, taking it to bed with her and placing it on the nightstand. She lay down fully dressed, without getting under the covers, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Three hours later, she woke to the alarm and looked first thing at the words she had written: A Diamond Is Forever.

  She thought it would do just fine.

  As her feet hit the cold hardwood, she heard Ann in the hallway making for the bathroom. In her roommate’s case, the engagement couldn’
t come soon enough.

  Frances quickly ate her breakfast and showered. She put on a long-sleeved brown dress, not bothering to check her reflection in the mirror. It was usually something of a disappointment to her anyway: her flat, wide cheeks, her goofy grin. She had been out on dates with men who called her pretty, but she knew the facts. She towered over half the boys at the office. She was all wrong for a woman in this day and age, when the gentler sex was supposed to be demure, quiet, and pocket-sized.

  She rode the train downtown, clutching the slip of paper from the previous night. When she reached Washington Square, she hurried toward the Ayer building. She was dangerously close to being late.

  In 1934, when the rest of the world was flat broke, N. W. Ayer and Son had enough cash to build their thirteen-story headquarters, directly across from the old statehouse. It was a magnificent structure, made of Indiana limestone, in the Art Moderne style.

  She had been so proud the first time her father visited for lunch and whistled under his breath, “Wow, Mary Frances. That’s really something.” He only used her first name when he wanted to emphasize his point.

  Now she opened the building’s big brass door, so heavy that in the slightest breeze you could barely get it to budge an inch. The lobby walls were lined with marble. Classic, yet not at all fussy or ostentatious. Much like Ayer itself.

  The middle-aged greeter sat behind an oak desk just inside the doors.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” she said.

  “Good morning.”

  Frances waited for the elevator, willing it to come.

  Finally, the doors opened, and there stood the blond elevator operator in her crisp uniform and white gloves.

  “Tenth floor?” she asked, as she did every morning.

  Frances nodded.

  There was a strange sense of pride that came from a small moment like this—someone you didn’t know anything at all about knew something particular about you. It still gave her a thrill that she could tell any taxi driver in Philadelphia to take her to the Ayer building and they would know exactly where to go.

  She got off the elevator and stopped at the typing pool in the middle of the floor. The wooden box that the stenographer, Alice Fairweather, and her four underlings worked in gave the impression that they were barnyard animals who needed to be penned. Frances always felt a bit silly talking to them over the low wall.

  “Morning, Miss Gerety,” Alice said. “What have you got for us today?”

  Frances handed over the honeymoon copy. “I’ll need it before the meeting.”

  “Certainly.”

  It would be returned to her in perfect shape before it moved along to the art department downstairs. The copy chief, Mr. George Cecil, was an absolute stickler for proper English. A ten-year veteran of the department had once let an ad go out with a typo. Cecil fired him the next day.

  Frances was at her desk by 9:05.

  The morning meeting would start at ten. Mr. Cecil would look at new lines and hand out more assignments. He was old-fashioned, buttoned up, but the execs loved him. He was considered the greatest copywriter alive, having created the lines Down from Canada Came Tales of a Wonderful Beverage for Canada Dry and They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano but When I Started to Play!—for Steinway, and about a hundred others.

  Nora Allen two offices down was yapping into her phone at top volume. The cubicles had doors and high brown walls, but no ceilings. You couldn’t see anyone if you shut your door, but you could certainly hear them.

  Frances tried to read over a memo on her desk. She was tired. Someday she’d have to start keeping normal hours, but she had always come awake at bedtime. She should have worked the night shift of a newspaper.

  Some coffee would have hit the spot, but Harry Batten had forbidden them from drinking it in the building after an art director spilled a cup on an original finished photo that was ready to go to publication. The ban was particularly painful given that Hills Bros. was one of their biggest clients; there were cans and cans of coffee around, just waiting to be brewed. Mr. Cecil had even coined the term coffee break back in the twenties as part of the company’s advertising. Ironic, as there would never be a coffee break in the Ayer building as long as Batten lived.

  Frances heard two voices in the hall, one of them the undeniable sound of Mr. Cecil in a foul mood.

  “Who is that?” he said, irritated.

  “Nora Allen, I believe,” his secretary replied.

  “What in God’s name is she doing?”

  “I think she’s talking to New York, sir.”

  He scoffed. “Why doesn’t she use the telephone?”

  Frances chuckled to herself. But in the meeting, she found that Mr. Cecil’s grumpiness had now made its way to her. When she presented her line, he rose from his chair and began pacing the floor, a sure sign that he was about to rip her idea up and down.

  “Why did we go to school to learn grammar if you people are going to just disregard it?” he said. “You need an adjective here. If you said A diamond is expensive, or A diamond is hard, or A diamond can cut stone, that might work. But this?”

  Frances was about to reply when he continued, “What do you think, Chuck?”

  Her eyes met Chuck McCoy’s. He was a solid writer, good at his job, but certainly not the most forceful of men.

  Chuck cleared his throat. “Every love affair begins with ‘I’ll love you forever.’ That’s the intention of a marriage, that it will last forever, right? I think I like it.”

  Frances gave him a grateful nod, just as he turned to Mr. Cecil and spat out the words, “But it isn’t correct grammar, sir, you’re right.”

  She shook her head. Stupid sycophant.

  Frances spoke up in defense of herself. “As far as I’m concerned, the word ‘is’ means it exists. It’s a synonym for ‘exists.’ But change it if you like. I’m certainly not wedded to the idea.”

  “No pun intended,” Chuck said.

  Frances rolled her eyes. “If we talk about it, I’m sure we can find something similar that will do the trick.”

  She considered adding, I only gave it about three minutes’ thought in the dead of night, but stopped herself.

  “Yes, let’s talk about it,” Mr. Cecil said.

  They tossed ideas around for the next three hours. The ashtray in the center of the table filled to the brim. Frances could feel her stomach rumbling. At this point, she’d accept anything Mr. Cecil wanted if it meant she could pop out to the Automat for a cheese sandwich.

  Finally, Gerry Lauck poked his head in and said, “I’ve got to get to the airport now, George. What’s the word on the De Beers line?”

  Mr. Cecil said, “Frances has come up with A Diamond Is Forever,” in a tone that almost made it sound like he was tattling on her.

  Gerry looked up at the ceiling, thinking it over.

  “Let’s try it,” he said. “We’ll show it to the client and see what they think.”

  “But it’s not proper English,” Mr. Cecil said.

  Gerry shrugged. “Don’t worry, George. It’s not that important. It’s just a way to sign the advertising for now.”

  Part One

  1972

  On the table in the front hall there rested a pile of fifty envelopes, stamped, sealed, and addressed to a P.O. box in New Jersey. Evelyn swept them up into her hand.

  “Darling, I’m off!” she called to Gerald in his study at the back of the house.

  “Safe travels!” her husband returned.

  “Mailing your entry forms!”

  “You’re a saint!”

  As she pulled the door closed, he shouted something she couldn’t make out.

  Evelyn sighed and went back in.

  “What was that?” she said.

  Nothing. She hadn’t yet grown accustomed to having him around at nine o’clock on a Tuesday. She walked toward his study—past the parlor, and the living room, and the formal dining room, where she had already set the table for three with a l
inen tablecloth and her mother’s good china. There was a large crystal vase in the center, which she would fill with tall flowers later this morning. She couldn’t say why she was going to such lengths for her son. After what he had done, she ought to just feed him a tuna fish sandwich on a paper plate and make him eat it out on the driveway. She had always considered her inability to make a scene one of her worst qualities.

  In the study, Gerald sat at the desk, his typewriter in front of him, a box of envelopes leaning against his coffee cup.

  “More?” she asked with a frown.

  “This is for a different contest. A weeklong bicycle tour in Tuscany sponsored by Prince Spaghetti!” His eyes lit up. He looked like a portrait of himself as a child that had once hung in his mother’s sitting room.

  Her husband, at sixty-six, did not get a thrill from beautiful women or fast cars, but from sweepstakes and contests of all varieties. Evelyn had always felt sorry for the eager young secretaries assigned to him at the insurance company, who probably thought they would be helping with important deals but instead spent hours on end filling out self-addressed, stamped envelopes.

  Since his retirement, the hobby had turned into something of an obsession. He usually didn’t win, but on the rare occasion when he did, it made him go twice as hard the next time. Gerald argued that the odds were in his favor, since most people entered a contest only every now and then (or never, she thought), when something they really wanted was at stake. But Gerald entered them all. In the twenty-odd years he’d been doing it, he had won just a few things, none of them very exciting: a pair of Red Sox tickets, a kayak, a hideous brown icebox that now resided in the garage, motor oil, a painting of dogs riding on a sailboat, and a lifetime supply of Kaboom breakfast cereal, which neither of them ate.

  “You May Already Be a Winner …” How many times had she seen those words splashed across a page? Most sweepstakes dropped out of sight a few years back, when the Federal Trade Commission issued a report revealing what she had long suspected to be true: the biggest prizes seldom got awarded. These days, the few games that remained were mostly run by grocery stores and service stations as a promotional device.