The Bag Lady Papers

by Alexandra Penney

  “You busy?” a friend would call out.

  “C’mon up for a drink,” I’d say, throwing down the keys, wrapped in an old sock, to their outstretched hands so they could join me at my recently acquired, much-cherished refectory table. I always kept a bottle of good Chianti and chilled Pinot Grigio on hand, and usually had some superb, freshly made smoky mozzarella from Freddy’s Dairy on Sullivan Street in the fridge. If my day had taken me by Mr. Dappolito’s bakery a couple of blocks away, I would have a semolina loaf right out of his bakery oven. Bread, wine, and cheese have always been a perfect meal to me. They never tasted better than in my small West Broadway place.

  By 1987, my son had left for college and the streets of SoHo were even more packed with tourists. When I walked out the door of my home, I felt as though I were in a jam-packed rush-hour subway train. The throng was at its noisiest on weekends when I was trying to paint and think. The neighborhood had become a shoppers’ paradise, but to me it was hell. It was time to move.

  With the proceeds from the books, I bought my first piece of real estate, a one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village near my old college-days haunt, Washington Square. Prices in SoHo had escalated so much that I couldn’t afford a loft on a quieter street, but this would be a solid investment in a good location. Owning my own apartment gave me a new feeling of well-being and security. I reasoned that my son would soon be off on his own and I could work in a small alcove off the bedroom, as I had begun doing very small-scale paintings and collages. Someday, if I saved more money, I would rent a good-size studio.

  I loved being in a quiet, safe building with a doorman and a super who doubled as a much-needed handyman. I even had enough money to get my old friend, designer Larry Totah, to help decorate, and together we painted the walls a pale sienna, which reminded me of Italy. A silky apricot rug adorned my bedroom, and a new down-cushioned sofa slip-covered in natural linen was a focal point in the minimalist living room. We installed all new appliances in the small but efficient galley kitchen, but left the classic black-and-white tile floor.

  Inexplicably, even owning my own apartment, the bag lady anxieties lurked. I had finally called my parents and visited them in Connecticut, but our relationship remained chilly and removed. My son was away at school, and I wished I could find the right man and often wondered if I were doing something to sabotage myself in the relationship department. I questioned whether I really had the goods as an artist. I didn’t know where my life was going. I also wanted to get rid of the fiendish, unreal fears of being a bag lady, so I decided that I needed a shrink to help me look honestly at my self. I asked around and found a well-regarded therapist whom I began seeing once a week.

  About a year later, I found myself lying on the kitchen floor in my apartment, my entire body rigid with pain and fear and dread and defeat. I tried with all my will to think my way out of this paralysis, but my brain could only tap out codes of unbearable anxiety. The telephone was lying next to my ear and I finally picked it up.

  “Is there any chance I can see you this afternoon or tomorrow morning, or even tomorrow afternoon?” I entreated Dr. R, the therapist I’d been seeing. “I really need to meet with you as soon as possible.” My hands were trembling so violently that the phone fell from my grip. Surely the doctor would detect the panic in my voice. There was a pause and I heard the faintest sound of shuffling of pages.

  “I’m very sorry,” Dr. R said. “Unfortunately, I have no time until your regular appointment on Friday. If you need me you can always phone. If I’m not here, the service will take your message.”

  Just as Dr. R hung up, my call waiting clicked and a voice said, “AP—AP? Are you there? It’s Lynn.”

  “I’m here. Hi, how are you?” I heard myself saying. I worked on writing projects for Lynn. It was imperative that I pull myself together enough to discuss the piece she was calling about.

  “You don’t sound good,” Lynn said, not missing a beat. “Is there anything the matter?”

  “I’m not really so good.” The words just spilled out. “I was just speaking to my shrink. Something’s come up and I needed to see him and he blew me off for four days—”

  “Who are you seeing?” she interrupted. I told her the doctor’s name.

  “For god’s sake, he’s not for you, he’s doesn’t know how to deal with creative people. Forget him. You’ve got to call Dr. J. He’s worked with some great writers and artists and you will love him. Here’s his number. Do you have a piece of paper?”

  “I don’t think I should call another doctor while I’m seeing Dr. R…” I said dubiously, still lying on the floor.

  “That’s nonsense!” Lynn assured me. “Here’s his number. His office is on Lexington Avenue. Call him as soon as we hang up. You must promise me you will do this. Dr. R won’t be able to help you. I happen to know about him. He’s one of those Freudian types who makes you lie down and babble on and on and he never says a word. He is not right for you. Please do this, please see Dr. J.”

  “Okay,” I said at last, so I could end the conversation. But she insisted that I find a piece of paper to take down the number before I hung up.

  I don’t know how long I was on the tile floor. An hour? Two? More? Who cared about time? I didn’t care about anything. I was grateful that my brain had shifted into neutral; I just stayed there doing nothing but counting the tiles that I could see from my crammed-in position between the two rows of cabinets. I counted and recounted the tiles dozens—no hundreds—of times. Then I memorized Dr. J’s number and address. I repeated those numbers like a mantra.

  I don’t know what made me lift the receiver and dial Dr. J’s office. A strong pleasant voice answered, “This is Dr. J.”

  At six thirty that evening I was sitting in a chair opposite Dr. J, a tall, silver-haired, distinguished-looking man, past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. At the time he was seventy-five. The first thing I noticed were his eyes, which were the intense blue color of the sky on an early summer morning. He wore an impeccable gray suit, starched white shirt, small gold cufflinks, and polished black shoes. There was an ineffable, comforting quality to him: I knew at first glance that this was a man who had seen it all.

  “You can sit here next to me, or use that if you want,” he said with a warm smile, when I pointed to the ubiquitous leather-covered couch that graced all the offices of the shrinks I’d read about or seen in movies.

  Dr. J’s warmth and immediately empathetic manner made it easy to talk. I heard myself telling him that I’d finally met a man named F whom I thought I was in love with. He had abruptly broken things off when we began talking about living together and he wouldn’t return my phone calls. My reaction was so extreme that I couldn’t function. Dr. J asked me to tell him briefly about my background and the difficult relationship with my parents and the bag lady fears I’d alluded to. About an hour and a half later, I heard the diagnosis—“a broken sense of self” and “a broken heart”—and the words “I’d like to see you again tomorrow. Can you come at seven fifteen in the morning?”

  I could have wept with gratitude, but I was cried out from the hour and a half that I had spent recounting my life story and how I had found myself shaped like an overly fried doughnut on my black-and-white kitchen floor.

  He walked me to his walnut-paneled office door, took my hand in his two warm ones, and said, “I’ll be the last doctor on the case.” I believed him absolutely.

  Over the three years that I saw Dr. J I was to find out that even though I was a highly functioning person professionally, my heart, my soul, and my self were all broken long before I ever met the charming, brilliant, handsome, witty, undependable F. Not surprisingly, most of it had to do with my childhood.

  CHAPTER 17

  Real Estate Woes

  MF + 2 MONTHS

  Two months and counting since I was MF’d. It’s February and I have returned to Florida, still trying to sell the cottage. My publisher has put me on a strict deadline,
and I am grateful for the chance to write my book here and to wake up to clear blue skies and splashing sunshine. Everyday living is much cheaper in this part of the country. And there are no New York distractions.

  The Realtor arranged for an open house a few days ago. Five people dropped by; two were neighbors who live on the street, curious to know what the place looked like from the inside. An open house for brokers was scheduled for a week later; two agents showed up. Three years ago when I bought the place there was a feeding frenzy of buyers and brokers because so little was on the market. Now there are four FOR SALE signs on my short three-block street. The rest of the area, middle-to lower-middle-class, is littered with signs advertising foreclosures, “bank owned,” and “short sale,” a euphemism for another form of “foreclosure.”

  This neighborhood, safe as a bank vault less than a year ago, has witnessed several high-noon robberies at gunpoint. Crimes have multiplied like amoebas. Two single women, a block away from where I sit right now, returned home for lunch and caught sight of two burglars, handguns stuffed behind their belts, in their kitchen packing the loot into garbage bags. The house had been ransacked but they were very lucky; the robbers high-tailed it as soon as the owners stepped in the door.

  I had signed up for electronic surveillance when I purchased the house, but of course after being MF’d I’ve stopped the service. And no one’s buying. So I’m back here to try to drum up some sales interest and to meet my deadline. I’m now typing in a friend’s kitchen because I feel insecure and jumpy in broad daylight inside a once-sweet-and-safe house.

  This economic meltdown seemed to be as unexpected as an ice storm on the equator, and the freeze in Florida is especially severe. The entrepreneurial Central and South Americans who settled in this midsection of the state started a variety of small businesses: landscaping, bakeries, restaurants, plumbing, painting, carpentry, house-cleaning services. As homeowners sink into bankruptcy, these trades are hit hard. People let their lawns and weeds grow, they cook at home, they clean their own houses. They’re hunkering down, fearful of their own futures, trying not to spend money and frantic about mortgages, car payments, and credit card debt. President Obama has just signed a bill to help homeowners but from what I’m reading and hearing it’s just a start. Much more is needed. There’s no mortgage on my little cottage in Florida so I can’t rely on the government to help out.

  Of course my highly mortgaged Long Island place is on the market, too. No takers there either. When the bag lady fears attack at four a.m., I panic that neither of the houses will ever sell.

  And then there’s my studio. I looked for almost a year for a safe, pleasant space to do my photography, which had taken the place of painting. Working full-time in my apartment became impossible when I began to use the oversize machines and computers I needed for prints that measured six or seven feet. I had become increasingly anxious and depressed about my work, which was at a standstill because searching for the right space at the right price had become such an obsession with me. A friend suggested a consultant who specialized in work and career issues. I told her that I’d located a small and wonderful space that was far more than I wanted to spend.

  She was smart and pragmatic. “Even though the price is high and it’s not as large as you would like, take the space because you feel good in it and you will do good work there,” she said. “Focus on creating and selling your flower prints for three days a week. Use the rest of your time to explore the work you love, the plastic dolls. And always keep in mind that being an artist includes having to sell work.”

  I hate having to hustle to sell work. So does almost every other artist and writer who walks the planet. We just want to work flat out. No interruptions. No having to deal with money, no trying to find someone to buy pictures, no calling galleries that don’t call you…

  Ah, but I’m whining. Who on the planet would not want to be free to do as he or she pleases? I should delete all those belly-aching words—right now. Yet I don’t think I will. I can’t pretend I don’t have moments like these. I took the career consultant’s advice and met with an accountant who agreed I would have to sell a lot of work to make the studio a legitimate enterprise, but he thought it was a risk worth taking. I ended up in a fine SoHo building, with great light, half the amount of space I would have liked, and two and a half times the rent I had in mind. But it made me happy—and happiness is a uniquely precious commodity.

  I signed the documents knowing I would have to borrow from the home equity account to pay what I owed each month for the studio’s upkeep. It was one of the two or three biggest personal and financial gambles that I have ever made. But for the first two years of the lease it paid off: I sold enough photographs to cover the rent and the costs of very expensive paper and archival inks as well as the pricey insurance required by the landlord.

  Now an expensive year is left on the lease; I’ve had no luck negotiating my top-tier rent. The managing agent is a chilly piece of work. Rents are falling substantially everywhere around me in SoHo. Still, I’m obligated to pay the rent under the lease and the threat of a lawsuit for defaulting is something I do not need. I’ve never defaulted on anything. I’m not going to start now.

  I will keep this studio! I will work harder than I ever have before—which was pretty hard indeed—and see what happens. I have the feeling something good will come of it: tough, challenging work and laserlike focus have always paid off for me. In the past, unexpected opportunities have materialized at just the right moment. It’s said that “lucky” people put themselves in good fortune’s path, and I think that’s true. If I keep working and thinking positively, my luck will turn.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Pink Ribbon

  In the summer of 1989, I was writing another book and continuing my consulting work. But as a freelancer I was thinking of the uncertainty of the future and spoke often to Dr. J about my bag lady fears and how deep-rooted those anxieties were.

  I had just returned from a long July Fourth weekend in Florida. Two friends and I had stayed at the guesthouse of my old Boss of Bosses from Condé Nast and his captivating and scholarly wife.

  The days in Florida were sunny and hot with magnificent white billowing clouds against a brilliant, endless blue sky, and every morning we walked on the miles-long white-sand beach, pairing off so we could catch up on each other’s news. The boss and I talked about my books, the television talk-show series I was working on about women’s issues, and, of course, magazines, including one that he was having particular problems with, Self. In the evening we all watched a Jean Renoir movie and headed off early to be lullabied to sleep by the ocean waves just a few feet away.

  On Sunday morning, about seven, I opened the door of the guesthouse and on the front step were copies of the New York newspapers for the three of us who were staying there. Tucked into my New York Times was an issue of Self magazine. The highest-priced delivery boy on the planet had placed it there. I knew he wanted to know what I thought of his troubled publication.

  I skimmed the paper, read Self cover to cover, and automatically began jotting down some notions that might improve the cover and some story ideas—shades of decades ago when I’d placed a memo about what was wrong with Vogue in his old office in-box.

  I gave my notes to the Boss of Bosses when we came home for lunch after our morning walk. I had no ulterior motives. I very much liked the idea of a magazine for smart women, which was how Self had originated. From what he’d said at the beach and from what I’d seen in the magazine itself, I could understand how it had lost its bearings and I simply thought I had some ideas that might be useful. Nothing more was said about my notes until Monday when, back in New York, I received a call from a mutual acquaintance saying that the Boss of Bosses thought I might be interested in being the editor of Self magazine.

  I responded, as graciously as possible, that I couldn’t possibly take on such a job with all my other serious commitments and, in addition, I didn’t want to go back
to the magazine world again.

  “Don’t be foolish,” the friend chided me. “This is a major job. An important job. Do not give me an answer now. Sleep on it and call me in the morning.”

  I agreed to give the offer serious consideration but I really wasn’t interested, even though I remained nervous about the future. Having a steady job with what I was sure would be a high salary and fabulous perks was delicious to contemplate, but I had been there, done that, and quit to work as a fishmonger. It wasn’t my kind of life. I was doing well with books, I owned my apartment, I had a shot at a television series, and in a couple of years I might be able to find a studio of my own and begin serious painting once again.

  I called the go-between early the next morning and said it was the most tempting offer that I could imagine but I had to turn it down.

  “What would it take for you to say yes? Everyone has a number. I’m sure you have one, too. Why don’t you call me back and let me know,” he said.

  That afternoon I gave him a crazy beyond-the-beyond number that I was sure would be laughed off as a big joke, and within forty-eight hours I was signing a contract to be the editor of Self magazine. Several months later I ran into someone who had been privy to what had happened behind the scenes.

  “That was a brilliant negotiating technique,” she said. “You had them right where you wanted them.”

  I laughed. “What are you talking about, ‘technique’? I really didn’t want the job.”

  “That’s the best bargaining position of all,” she said. Interesting, isn’t it, how distance and unavailability can make something or someone so desirable. And interesting how life can take such unexpected turns. Here I was, going back to Condé Nast years after quitting Glamour to become an artist. I liked my life, but the artist’s or freelancer’s existence is almost always a two-sided one: I had day-to-day freedom but I was consistently in a precarious financial position, always pitching ideas for the next writing job, thinking up the next book idea, and hoping against hope my work would interest a dealer in New York.