Second Acts

by Teri Emory

  “Are you kidding?” Joey said after Rebecca had left. “She looks bizarre. What’s with the black nail polish? And the tattoo? What the hell is that thing on her wrist?”

  “Joey,” I said calmly, “she worked for a newspaper. She’s not used to corporate salaries. We can get her for thousands under budget.”

  That did it. Joey acquiesced and I hired Rebecca, though I had to promise Joey that I’d keep her and her tattoo away from clients’ eyes.

  I spend my days at Tri-Tech supervising Rebecca and four other staff members. Our job is to write whatever Joey needs to keep the company going—new business proposals, speeches, reports, handouts that are distributed at the conferences we choreograph. Never at a loss for a cliché, Joey describes the company’s mission as helping our clients “improve the bottom line.”

  “At the end of the day,” he says, “all a drug company wants is to push a pill, move a molecule, make a buck.”

  In the self-created biography he forces me to include in everything we send out, Joey bills himself as someone with “an impressive background in the healthcare marketplace.” In fact, for ten years before he started Tri-Tech, Joey was the Pittsburgh-to-Binghamton regional sales manager for a company that manufactured prosthetic limbs. The company went public and soon was bought by a large corporation. Joey made a small fortune from his stock options, which is how he got the money to open Tri-Tech.

  Savant Pharmaceuticals is the source of most of Tri-Tech’s business. Richard “Doc” Shortland, PhD, Savant’s Senior VP of Marketing, and the product managers who report to him throw about twenty million dollars of business to Tri-Tech every year. Thanks to them, I get to re-invent Joey’s singular marketing idea over and over so that Joey can deliver rousing talks to Savant’s sales reps. These talks are based on the sales training course Joey developed in his garage. I’ve recycled the damn thing at least thirty times.

  Sometimes Tri-Tech is also asked to recruit doctors from well-known medical schools to speak at the big conferences. I’m the one who actually recruits them. On principle, Joey avoids conversing with anyone in possession of an advanced degree or academic title, unless, like Dr. Shortland, the person is a potential source of business.

  Doc and Joey can barely tolerate each other. They play a mine-is-bigger-than-yours game—a childish, testosterone-driven competition—which Doc invariably wins. “I’m going to the corporate headquarters in Geneva again next week,” he’ll say to Joey. “If your little company continues to do right by us, maybe I’ll take you along on one of these trips. Ever been to the Alps, Joey?”

  I frequently accompany Joey to the conferences so I can make last-minute changes to his PowerPoint presentations. My academic background can become wasted ammunition in Joey’s ego war with Doc Shortland. Whenever we’re with Doc, Joey likes to refer to me as “Professor Roth” and to intimate that my doctorate is “in process.” Doc pretends not to hear him. Joey manages to appear impressed with my achievements (even the ones he invents), though in private he says that he can’t believe I spent “good money” getting a B.A. in French and a master’s degree in twentieth-century American literature. He has been even touchier than usual on the topic of higher education ever since his alma mater, Southeast Pennsylvania College of Pharmacy, was forced to close. A 60 Minutes investigation last year exposed the correspondence school as a diploma mill, and Joey unceremoniously removed his framed diploma (“Honors Graduate, 1978”) from his office wall.

  Funded by Savant’s extravagant budget, Doc Shortland’s regional meetings—typically three or four days long—are held at luxurious resorts. The business part takes up about an hour a day. The rest of the time everyone is pretty much on vacation. The doctors sometimes seem a little sheepish accepting Savant’s bounty; even as they sip their single-malt Scotch and line up for early tee-times, they vow to remain impartial in their assessment of Savant’s products. The Savant sales reps behave as if the meetings were their last days on Earth. They storm the hotel spa for massages before breakfast; they scramble onto helicopters for afternoon sightseeing tours; they demand Courvoisier Napoleon to complement the flavor of their after-dinner Cohiba cigars.

  When the meetings are held in Las Vegas, Joey usually brings Lorraine along. She plays video poker and shops in the overpriced hotel boutiques, and then Joey entertains everyone at the cocktail receptions with an accounting of how much of his money she has squandered. When I hear drug companies piously justify the expense of new drugs, I will forever recall a scene I witnessed at a recent conference: Joey and Lorraine, arm in arm with Savant sales reps, embarking on a faux gondola ride along a faux canal at the Las Vegas Venetian hotel. The Selbers, who have never ventured abroad, raved about the new hotel because, as Joey observes, “It’s exactly like Italy, but you don’t have to put up with all those annoying foreigners who don’t speak English.”

  I survive at Tri-Tech because I have no choice; I need the paycheck. My annual bonus pays for most of Ellie’s expenses at Columbia. And happily, I can function at this job using only a tiny fraction of my mind. I sustain the hope—dwindling!—that I will one day use the rest of my brain cells on the kind of work I put aside when I married Martin and left my job in literary publishing. Maybe even finish the short stories from decades ago that dwell, half-written, in dusty boxes under my bed.

  I can barely remember what it feels like to spend my days doing something I care about. So many years of mind-numbing work, dysfunctional corporate environments, idiotic bosses. But I’m stuck where I am, at least for a while longer. Joey has promised that after I’ve completed three years at Tri-Tech, he’ll make me a partner. I’ll get a huge bonus up front and shares of company profits over time. My three-year anniversary is coming up in December. I certainly wouldn’t leave before then, and I’m sure I’ll have to put in some time—five years? Ten?—before the profit-sharing is actually mine. I’m hitched, for the time being, to Joey Selber’s lightless star.

  Except for minimal child support payments from Martin, I’ve had to raise Ellie entirely on the money I earn. Summer camps and dance lessons, contact lenses and orthodontia, the inordinate tabs that teenagers can run up for clothing and entertainment—all of it was on me. Martin’s parents left Ellie a small inheritance to be used for college, so Martin never considered contributing further. The inheritance barely covered one semester’s tuition. I could have taken Martin back to court to get him to pay more of his share over the years, but the thought of what it would mean to deal with him again—threatening letters, angry phone calls, expensive lawyers—was more than I wanted to take on. Now I just continue as I always have: I provide everything Ellie needs, pay the rest of my bills (sooner or later), and worry, worry, worry about how I will live when I get too old to work. The problem is, my eyes glaze over at the first hint of talk about finances, mine or anyone else’s. I don’t know what I was doing while everyone else my age was learning how to manage money, but when I hear terms like “IPO” and “limited partnership,” I feel as if I’m trying to catch up in algebra class, having missed the lesson on solving quadratic equations. Jim Gillian, Beth’s husband, is, of course, a genius at this stuff, and Beth has tactfully suggested several times that I let Jim or someone from his firm help me set out a financial plan for myself. I trust Jim completely, but I would be embarrassed for anyone I know to wade through my pitiful finances right now.

  I’ve had a few small windfalls, and I suppose I should have regarded them as opportunities to change my dreary financial picture. Instead, when a great aunt on my father’s side left me a gift of three thousand dollars in her will, I took Ellie to France for her twelfth birthday. With the severance bonus I received from the downsized company where I worked before I started at Tri-Tech, Kevin and I took a Scandinavian cruise. Ever since my first trip to Europe, a college graduation present from my grandmother, I have used days-in-Italy (or Spain, or Greece) as a basic unit of money measurement. When I get my hands on any mon
ey not earmarked for basic living, I don’t think about buying real estate or shares of stock. I think, instead, What’s the weather in London? How long can I stay? Can I manage, finally, a trip to Asia? South America? I have promised Beth that I will call Jim for financial advice as soon I get my hands on my bonus—and before I call a travel agent.

  Kevin isn’t much better prepared for retirement than I am. He’s still recovering from the downfall of the architectural firm he owned and lost long before I knew him. His partner in the business lied to him, misled clients, and swindled their company out of two million dollars. After Kevin tried in vain to recover the money and woo clients back, he had no choice except to declare bankruptcy and look for work. He’s now a consultant for a company that builds retirement communities.

  Kevin’s son Brendan told me most of what I know about this. Kevin doesn’t like to talk about his past. He listens to my stories about old friends and lovers, my family, my work, but he reveals little about himself before we met. He insists that he has already told me everything that matters. He says, “I’m here now, aren’t I? What else do you want from me?”

  I’m mystified that he even has to ask. The answer is all around him. It’s the stuff of late-night TV monologues. It’s the theme of the movies he’s quick to dismiss as chick flicks. It keeps Oprah on the air and pop-psych claptrap on bestseller lists. It sells better than sex on magazine covers. It’s the answer to Dr. Freud’s famous question, and it’s my answer to you, Kevin.

  I want you to talk to me.

  After four years of living together, darling, would it be asking too much for you to tell me a little something about yourself?

  I wish you’d stop treating me like an intruder. I want you to love me so much that you can’t help but tell me everything. I want intimacy, not the detachment that is like background noise when we are together, distant and unnerving, too faint to identify, too persistent to ignore. It keeps us apart in a way I can’t really describe and which you won’t acknowledge.

  “Leave it alone, Sarah,” you say. So I do.

  And things between us are fine, really. I’m fifty-two years old and I live with a kind man who is good to me and is fond of my daughter. I don’t want to march off into old age alone. Kevin and I have a peaceful life. It should be enough.

  __________

  It was almost eleven o’clock when the phone rang. Kevin, predictably late.

  “You must be in shock,” he said.

  “It was quite a weekend. Did Violet fill you in?”

  “She said things went as well as could be expected. How’s Ellie? Did she go back to school?”

  “She’ll be with Helen and Sidney for the week. I asked her if she wanted me to stay, but she said she’d be okay. Did you hear who gave the eulogy at the funeral?”

  “You can be proud of yourself,” he said. “Not many people could do that.”

  “How are things going for you? Did you see Brendan?”

  “Work’s okay. The building’s on schedule. Brendan did manage to squeeze in a fast dinner with me. He got a promotion at work. Still no sign of a girlfriend, at least not one he wants to talk about with his old dad. He seemed a little tense. Betsy was here for a few days last week. You know how Brendan gets when she’s around.”

  I’ve met Kevin’s ex-wife Betsy just once, when Brendan finished his master’s degree at MIT and we were all in Boston for his graduation. Nothing that Betsy said or did all weekend seemed to please Brendan, who was impatient and rude with her the whole time. Later, I asked Kevin to help me understand why Brendan had behaved like a petulant teenager with his mother. Kevin was annoyed with me for having asked, as if I were prying, and he never gave me an answer.

  “Still coming home on the thirtieth?” I asked.

  “As of now. I’ll let you know if things change. You going to work tomorrow?”

  “Of course. Joey will be back from the conference I missed on Friday, waiting to punish me for not being there to rewrite his speech the last dozen times. It was a men’s health conference—you know, urologists, Viagra jokes, a laugh a minute. Before I left for Florida, I assured him: Joey, you’ll be fine. I’m leaving you a list of all the euphemisms I can think of for ‘impotence.’ He was irritated that I asked for the day off, and the irony is that I feel somewhat gypped because of how I wound up having to spend my time. Maybe you can write me a note: Dear Joey, Please give my girlfriend Sarah an extra personal day off from work. She took last Friday off to go to a birthday party in Florida, but she wound up giving the eulogy at her ex-husband’s funeral, so it shouldn’t really count.”

  “You’re starting to babble. Sorry you had such a rough weekend. But you need to go to sleep. And so do I.”

  “Kev, do you suppose that I’m now entitled to be called the Widow Roth?”

  “That’s enough, kiddo. Get some rest.”

  I climbed into bed, trying to remember how long it had been since Kevin and I had stopped adding, “I love you” when we said goodnight.

  Miriam:

  Learning Curve

  “We both know what memories can bring;

  They bring diamonds and rust”

  —Joan Baez

  The New York Times

  Spring Education Supplement

  Reading, Writing, Action!

  Jenny Wong is concerned about the current state of the cinema. She expresses dismay at the pervasive stereotypes of women and minorities on screen. She is disappointed that her generation of filmgoers is willing to forgo good story-telling in favor of dazzling special effects. She laments the limited financial resources available to independent filmmakers.

  It’s certainly not unusual for an aspiring film director to hold such opinions. What is remarkable, though, is that Jenny Wong is in the eighth grade. She is one of twenty-five students in the “Film on Fridays” program at McCollum Middle School on Manhattan’s East Side. She and her classmates share a deep appreciation for—and strong opinions about—movies and movie-making. They’ve developed their ideas in this unique course, which Miriam Kaplan, a reading specialist, and self-described “film freak,” debuted at the school last September.

  “I wanted to design a program that would help to develop reading, writing, and critical thinking skills,” Ms. Kaplan says. “I don’t expect that many of these kids will wind up in the film business, but the skills they develop here will serve them well wherever they go.”

  Ms. Kaplan, who reminds people that she has been teaching at the school “long enough to remember when it was still called Junior High School 67,” spent a year getting the program under way. There was no place in the budget for it, nor was there much time in an already crowded school day.

  Undaunted, Ms. Kaplan donated a TV and VCR to the school and begged local video stores for contributions of tapes for a film library. She spent evenings and weekends on the phone, garnering support from colleagues, parents, and school administrators, looking for ways to shift schedules so no other subjects would be neglected.

  “Film on Fridays, if you’ll excuse the expression, is no Mickey Mouse class,” she says. “We meet just one afternoon a week on school time, so I expect students to do a great deal of work at home.” The curriculum includes writing film reviews as well as papers on acting and directing techniques, even the history and business of movie-making.

  Students in Ms. Kaplan’s class eagerly anticipate new experiences as they develop into mature filmgoers and critics.

  “I’ll be thirteen next month, so I’m hoping my mom lets me go to PG-13 movies from now on,” says Jenny Wong. “I think I’ll be like totally in college before I can see any R-rated stuff, though.”

  The Times article included a photo of me lecturing to students. Behind me is a giant poster for West Side Story, which I first saw when I was Jenny’s age. I tell the kids that Lincoln Center now stands on the streets where the movie was filmed. I don’t tell
them that Kenny Scott, the heartthrob of my eighth grade class, gave me my first French kiss during the chorus of “Officer Krupke.”

  The article makes me sound like a natural born teacher. Like Miss Jean Brodie, still in her prime, “putting old heads on young shoulders.” When my mother read the Times piece, she reminded me that in college I had resisted my parents’ advice to become a teacher. Mom and Dad thought that college was unnecessary for girls anyway, except as a venue for snaring an educated husband. However, a married woman (of course, they were certain I’d get married) who became a teacher would work only during the same hours when her children (of course, there would be children) were in school. I tormented my parents by changing my major a few times a semester during my first two years at Buffalo. The more obscure the field of study, the more difficult for my parents to understand, the better. I was especially pleased with myself during my sophomore year, when I imagined my mother trying to explain to her Mah Jong group that I was majoring in Ethical Social Systems, which I soon changed to Slavic Literature, and then Medieval Art History.

  The summer following that year, I had a job as a counselor at an underprivileged children’s camp in the Catskills. In the mornings, the counselors—college students like me—did schoolwork with the campers. Sitting in the camp cafeteria and helping the kids sound out words in their simple books, I instinctively understood how to teach them to read without making them feel ashamed. In the fall, I changed my college major, for good, to reading education.

  I used to worry about my image—the spinster schoolteacher—but I’m long past that. It seems silly now, but I sometimes felt as if people my age who were aggressively making their mark on the world viewed my career choice as uninspired. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”—a saying I loathe. I remember wishing for an impressive job title, or at least a business card to offer when a man handed me his and asked for mine. I don’t give a damn anymore about what other people think. One of the few benefits of getting older. Besides, the truth is that I am happier at work than most people I know, including the corporate ladder-climbers who were so quick to judge me years ago.