by Heidi Pitlor
The time on the bus was a gift, a valley between two agonizing moments. There were no discernible neo-Nazis among us, just a handful of businessmen and a group of people evidently headed to see The Book of Mormon. I began to read a few emails, but lost the connection, so I just gazed out the window at the Taconic State Parkway. Memories came at me: my seventh birthday, when my parents threw me a Roald Dahl–themed party in our yard. I had dressed as Matilda, my mother as Aunt Spiker, and Ed as a giant peach made from a garbage bag painted orange. The time we drove up to Montreal and Quebec City with my cousins and camped out near Mont Tremblant. On the ride back, my cousin grew carsick and my mother had to pull over, but while we waited on the shoulder of Route 87, we saw a baby moose. The many evenings at Tanglewood, when my mother and Ed sat over picnic dinners with friends and listened to Seiji Ozawa conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I would unlace my shoes and join the other children as we crawled over the low thickset tree branches and chased each other around the endless grass that looked out at Monument Mountain, the Taconics, and Lake Mahkeenac. And years later, that sweltering end-of-summer day when I got dropped off at Dartmouth, at Little Hall, and I met my roommate, a rather shy girl from Oregon. She said she, too, wanted to be a writer someday, but a month later she would move back to the West Coast after hearing the terrible news that her parents were killed in a car accident. My next roommate was an extroverted economics major from Winchester, Massachusetts, a girl who had some faint connection to the Bush family. Over time, it became clear that I was not a good fit with most of the other students at Dartmouth. I would never learn to ski or play lacrosse or join in conversations about European travel or whether Saabs or BMWs were better cars, but I would be assigned a kindly faculty adviser, a man who bought me diner coffee and encouraged my writing and listened to my ideas about poetry and my appreciation of the humor of Shakespeare, and later my gripes about fellow students. “People like you and me are outsiders at Dartmouth,” he once said. “But you learn who to trust after a while. You learn who’s taking things seriously and who’s only here because of luck, family money or whatever. People like you and me need to stick together.”
A few days after I had graduated, a friend and dorm-mate whom I had told about Professor McCoy’s dark turn called to see how I was doing. “What a tool. But I mean, seriously, so many of them are tools,” she said with a laugh. “I had this gross old boss at an ice cream shop who used to quote unquote adjust my T-shirt all the time. Oh, and before that, these pricks at my high school wrote Loose Pussy with shaving cream on my dad’s Volvo because I wouldn’t blow one of them after prom. I mean, hello, this is the opposite of loose, right? Dumbasses.”
“Jesus. That’s horrible,” I said.
She went on: “I’m just saying, who doesn’t have at least one story like that? It’s just part of life.”
If I had to name what I was most grateful for today, it was that Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and 4chan had yet to be born when I was at Dartmouth. My social discomfort there would only have been amplified by so many party photos and group selfies. I might have even leaned more heavily on Professor McCoy for solace.
Gloria’s hair was down and uncombed, and she had an angry cold sore at the side of her mouth. For all I knew, she, too, had signed a nondisclosure agreement and had already gotten some kind of reprimand. She took my coat and Lana appeared behind her. “Hi, Allie. We’re all in the dining room.”
“Hi, okay.” I nervously followed her down the hallway.
There had to be a dozen people crowded around that oak table: Shirley; Colin; Gin; Reggie, of the transition glasses; an attractive woman in a taupe turtleneck; a guy with a shaved head who could not have been older than thirty. When they saw me, every one of them set down a phone or ceased talking to each other. I turned to Colin for a sign of moral support, but he only made his mouth into a flat line.
Shirley, in a black blazer and kidney-colored blouse, cleared her throat and said, “We ready? Here’s what we know. @deplorablefucker67 is a man named John Lance. John lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and is part of a white male supremacy group—he runs a local chapter. His Aunt Liz used to be a columnist for the Tampa Bay Times. She lives in Sebastian, Florida.”
If only it were possible to summon a portal to another time and place.
The young bald man said, “Interestingly, Liz and 82 percent of her friends on Facebook are Democrats.”
Colin said, “So why would they—?”
The man just kept on. “Allison could have been hacked. We’ll check right now,” the man said. “Does she even have a protected server? Give me a second and I’ll grab her data.”
A montage of things that I wanted no one to see flashed through my mind: the naked photo of me that my old boyfriend once took; a picture of me lighting a joint in front of the Grateful Dead house; the snapshot of my coworkers propping me up as I was too drunk to stand outside Clover Dooley’s Pub in Manhattan.
“Hold on,” Shirley said. “Let’s get back to Sebastian, Florida. Specifically, the Whispering Winds condos. Allison?”
How I wished it were just Lana and me sitting across from each other. I kept my eyes on a goblet of water with a dark lipstick smudge near its rim. “Yeah,” I made myself begin. “Well, I accidentally told my mother about the book.”
Lana nodded, her jaw set.
Gin reached for the goblet.
“Was that . . .” Reggie paused. “Is she Liz Gillis?” He looked down at his phone.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know who that is. My mother told her friend, a woman named Patty Copeland.”
“How many people did you and she tell?” he asked.
“Just my mother,” I said, my words slipping down my throat. “I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am. I swore her to secrecy—I told her there was so much to lose, and she thinks Lana is amazing, by the way, and that it’s amazing how I got to work with her. Still, I feel thoroughly terrible. I wish I could rewind time and fix everything.”
Colin, bless him, spoke up, “Like you said, it was an accident. It’s your mother, not a reporter at the Times, right?”
“Of course not,” I said, and then, “I still feel like an idiot.”
Shirley nodded. “We appreciate that.”
Lana did not look appreciative. She looked both flabbergasted and annoyed. Maybe my desperate supplication was irritating to her.
The woman in the turtleneck said, “The damage: Allison’s name is out there, as are a ton of photos of Gloria with Norton. People know there’s a hands-on nanny and a very, very hands-on ghostwriter. I’ve been on the phone all morning—it sounds like Remy’s team is already spinning this as hypocrisy.” Remy Calhoun—former owner of a bottled water empire and current owner of a middling NBA team—had recently announced his candidacy in the upcoming primary. “If anyone knows that poverty is a women’s issue, it’s Lana. And here she is profiting from the work of a poor single mother. Two, when you count Gloria.”
Poor? Were we officially poor? Was I? I looked over at Colin again, but he kept his eyes on the woman who was talking. I had never thought of myself and Cass as poor. “Broke,” sure. “Broke” had a whiff of accident to it. “Poor” was what someone else called you behind your back. “Poor” was pitiful, an overly simplistic, old-fashioned word that conjured Dickensian filth and debauchery. I preferred the term “income inequality” to “poverty,” and had in fact been careful to avoid the words “poor” or “rich” in Lana’s book.
“They’re going to call this whole thing ‘establishment bullshit,’ ” the woman said, and used air quotes to add, “ ‘Those big-money Democrats riding the backs of poor people one more time.’ ”
Reggie said, his eyes on his phone, “Here are some Republican soundbites: ‘The tone deafness toward the plight of the working person.’ ‘This is class appropriation. Breban literally stole her writer’s life.’ ‘Honest Abe never lied.’ Oh, and this: ‘How is exploiting two poor women consider
ed feminism?’ ”
Gloria deserved none of this. It was infuriating. And I resented this portrayal of me as utterly powerless. I myself had made the conscious decision to write the pages that I had written. Lana had pressured me, but I had agreed of my own volition.
“Lana needs some distance,” Reggie said. “She needs to separate herself from this bees’ nest.”
A woman said, “Amen.”
Chewing his thumbnail, he went on. “What if Lana didn’t know about the parts of the book that Allison wrote about herself?”
The parts? At least 80 percent of the book had to have been taken from my life.
Lana watched him. I waited for her to speak.
But he went on: “Allison inserted her own life into this book without Lana even being aware of it. And yes, she saw an earlier draft, but later on, she was too busy to vet the final final version. She only learned about Allison adding in her own stuff after the book went to press. I’m just spit-balling. Trying to think of a way to get in front of this—if it’s not too late, of course.”
“Keep going,” Shirley said.
For some reason, his words had not made any meaning to me yet. I could not fathom exactly what he was proposing.
“Allison thought she had more to say about motherhood than Lana did, that she herself was a better mother or something, I guess, since she doesn’t have a nanny—I don’t know, we’ll fine-tune the motive. Allison puts out a statement owning up to everything, all the lies, all the sections that were really about her own life. And maybe Gloria says something too—or no, that’d be too much. It’d be seen as defensive.”
A few heads slowly nodded, taking it in.
Everything slid into focus for me.
“And the book?” Gin asked with hesitation.
“Can we pulp it?” the bald man said. Shirley nodded in agreement.
Gin breathed a sigh that I thought would not end. “I’ll check. Probably—I’m just not sure how soon.”
“Jesus,” I said, but no one responded.
They began to work on a statement for me to deliver at a press conference. I’d keep it brief, but try to seem genuine and contrite, a little embarrassed, but most important, I would emphatically assume blame for each and every falsehood in the book. I would then “passionately advocate” for Lana. Shirley and maybe one or two others would stand behind me when I spoke as a symbol of Lana’s support for all “poor, exploited women.”
It was decided that Lana herself should lay low for a least a few days. Maybe go hide out at a spa, someone suggested. “Self-care is important right now, Lana.”
Lana’s eyes skimmed past me and dropped.
The gears started moving again in my head: I would no longer be able to ghostwrite. No one would trust me. I wondered if I would be able to complete my revision of Uncivilized; how lucky that at least for the moment, I was not broke.
“We’ll try to get some media together for a conference tomorrow,” Shirley said. “I’ll send out a blast to everyone once we know the plan.”
Gin said, “I hate to be the bad guy, but what about Allie’s NDA? We pulp all those books? Countenance is taking a huge loss here. Technically, we’re not the ones at fault.”
Shirley raised her brows. “Up to you guys.”
I had not thought it possible to feel worse than I just had.
“Let’s try to be fair,” Colin said. “Allie made a mistake. She didn’t do anything malicious, right?”
“I’m just anticipating what corporate will say. I’ll do what I can,” Gin said. She shot Colin a look. “We’ll talk later?”
People began to chat with each other as they stood and gathered their things. I set one hand on my stomach and the other on my heart, and waited for someone to ask me if I was even able to pay back Countenance. And was I on board with the press conference? Did that sound okay to me? I had never spoken publicly, not at Dartmouth, not at any meetings in San Francisco or at the equity firm.
Colin was talking with Gin now, Lana to the woman next to her.
“Excuse me,” I said at last.
Shirley looked over at me. “We’ll text you the details of the conference tomorrow once we’ve got them.”
A little sick, I got myself together and approached Lana. “You have a minute?” I asked. She turned to look at me. “I just need a minute.”
“What is it?”
I lead her into the hallway. “You were the one. You were the one who told me, you know, to ask.” My own words were stuck to each other and I could not pry them apart. “To ask for more, for what I am worth.”
“Okay?”
“You don’t think I’m worth more than this?” It was and was not a question.
She pursed her lips.
“How do you expect me to write such a big check to Countenance? You think all the money’s just been sitting in my bank account this whole time? If I go on TV tomorrow, I’m done. I won’t be asked to write for anyone ever again. That is, if I’m not too late already.” I straightened my spine and tried very hard to appear strong and solid, nothing that I felt. How awful it would be to cry right now.
“Gin just needs to talk to her people. I doubt you’ll have to pay them back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Maybe something to counteract what is happening right now, especially after I did all I did for you.”
“You willingly agreed to do it,” she said.
I kept my eyes on the floor. “I’m no good at public speaking. I’m not sure you even want me to do the press conference,” I said.
“Go ahead—just ask me for this straight out.”
What did she think I wanted? A second later, though, I understood. How had I missed the leverage that I did in fact have? I suppose that I had trained myself to be a ghost in uncomfortable work situations. An accommodating subordinate, a person who did what she was told.
Lana looked at me, waiting.
“Okay. If I’m going to talk to those reporters, maybe you can ask Gin or even Countenance to let me off the hook. We both know that they’ll listen to you more than anyone else in that room. Definitely more than me.” I grew unsteady, and instinctively opened my mouth to back-pedal, but Lana spoke first.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“I’ll put in a good word for you with Gin, and—” Lana looked at me, gauging something in my face. The silence became too much.
“Thank you,” I said.
“And I need to talk to Shirley, but maybe there’s some work for the campaign, some writing that you could do. Speechwriting? I can’t predict what she’ll say. I can’t promise anything,” she said. “This could be a terrible idea. We have no clue how this press conference will be received. I have to be honest—we could both come out of it in worse shape. I don’t know how the DNC and the super PACs will react, or how any of it will impact this campaign at the end of the day. I’m just taking it five minutes at a time right now.”
I nodded. “I’ve never been on TV—I’ve never wanted to be on TV. You’re really sure you want me doing this?”
“Who else is there?” she said. “It’s not so hard. Pretend you’re, I don’t know, another person, a warrior or a superhero or something. Just fake it. It sounds kind of silly, but it’s what I do. If you pretend you are up to the task, you’ll start to believe it.”
That night, I called my mother and told her everything that happened. “No,” she said. “No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“It can’t have been that bad.”
“That’s your response? You don’t believe me?” I said. Words flew once again, culminating in my calling her “naïve” and “a lifelong social climber.” She fired back with “And you are an ungrateful brat and an anxious wreck.”
A hard silence followed. This time, I forced myself not to press End and to see us through to a better place. The alternative would
have been too much, given the level of angst elsewhere in my life. “Mom,” I said. “It was that bad at Lana’s. I’m not exaggerating.”
“Okay,” she said.
“It has been the longest day. I need my mother right now on my side.”
I heard her inhale and exhale. “Of course.”
“I shouldn’t have said those harsh things to you.”
“Let’s forget what I said, too. I’m sorry for this awful trouble I’ve caused,” she said, and then joked, “I had no idea of the destructive powers that I had.”
“Congratulations.”
“I miss you and Cass terribly. You know what, I’m going to come up there. Let’s plan it.”
We found our calendars and tried to settle on a date, all the while talking over each other and laughing with lingering nerves and relief.
The next morning as I waited in the lobby of Countenance Books, I took in the posh silver wallpaper, the walls lined with their recent bestsellers; novels, cookbooks, children’s books. I thumbed through a sumptuously designed copy of Mrs. Dalloway, complete with gold leaf lettering and deckle edges. The receptionist, a youngish woman wearing a silk graphic blouse, peered over at me from behind her hulking half-circle desk. I was glad to note the glint of a tiny nose ring.
Lana and Colin came for me, both somber, and led me down a quiet hallway and into a small conference room. Colin left us alone. “Let’s sit,” she said, and we chose chairs across a long empty table from each other. “I emailed Gin last night and told her you’d been punished enough. I even said I’d help repay your fee if corporate wouldn’t budge. But they’ll back down. They’ll be embarrassed—they won’t want my money and the press that will come from taking yours, believe me. Do you want to see the email?”