Pretty in Ink

by Lindsey Palmer

An instant message from Laura pings up on my screen: “Mimi’s having technical difficulties. Do u need 2 ask her anything else?”

  Unbelievable. “Nope, message loud and clear,” I type back.

  I do the math: The October issue ships in the first week of August, which means I have at least—or more likely, exactly—three more weeks of employment.

  The fact that my workload has suddenly doubled does not stop me from dimming my office lights and collapsing on the couch for a catnap. In Louisa’s day, I would have felt guilty even extending a midday coffee break from five minutes to ten. But now, for whatever reason, I’m not the least bit ashamed to call a time-out on my workday. I suppose it’s a response to my helplessness. Still, I hardly recognize this version of myself. I wonder, How the hell did I get here? How has it come to this? My mind meanders back in time several months, back to when I felt confident about and certain of my exact role and purpose at work, back to when the name Mimi Walsh meant nothing to me.

  Louisa and I were like yin and yang and, if you added the managing editor, Abby, I suppose you could say she was the yung, or something. Louisa was our strong, fearless leader, a bit removed, but always decisive, and I ran the day-to-day operations, managing the team and lending emotional support and gently nudging Louisa away from her more outrageous, out-of-touch ideas. Although I don’t exactly blame myself for Louisa’s demise, I suppose the beginning of the end was when I started telecommuting part-time. I was always available by phone or e-mail or Skype, but I wasn’t always around physically, and that made a difference. Our delicate balance began to teeter.

  Remotely, I couldn’t manage to stop Louisa from running a lifestyle story about decorating a vacation home, full of two-hundred-dollar throw pillows and design ideas for gazebos and fountains; Abby did protest in her meek way, but Louisa wouldn’t listen. The experience was like when you trip and everything slurs to slow motion, but you still can’t prevent the inevitable fall—I saw it all coming: the deluge of angry reader mail, the flagging sales, the Corporate freak-out upstairs.

  And the staff got edgy, too. Without being on-site day in and day out to moderate disputes and smooth out tensions, I’d return to the office and discover festering grudges and built-up resentments. Louisa would retreat, impatient with her restless underlings and, left sequestered in her closed-door office, she’d cook up even more esoteric ideas: how to get your child into a top private school, what to look for in a personal trainer, and (God forbid) an editorial about how it was time our president followed through on his promise to reform the tax code to bridge the economic gap between rich and poor. She dismissed my concerns that our readers’ median income was $64,000 and that half of them hailed from red states. Mark, though I love the guy, only made things worse; he egged Louisa on, fawning over her “ingenious” ideas and designing layouts more fitting for an Ayn Rand pamphlet than a middle-America parenting magazine.

  We did try. On one of my days in the office, Abby and I teamed up to deliver a convincing presentation to Louisa about how Hers was on a fast course to disaster. Louisa heard us out, and then the three of us powered through a full day of brainstorming for a redesign with friendlier layouts, more welcoming language, and stories that would acknowledge our readers’ realities—their finances and home lives and political views. Louisa delivered a brilliant speech to the staff about the changes, and then everyone pulled together and worked long hours to make over the next issue. I felt so proud of our team.

  But it wasn’t enough—that redesign, or the next one. Part of the problem was that Corporate had lost its faith in us, and kept slashing our budgets when what we needed was the opposite: an extra influx of cash, our own stimulus plan. It got so Louisa banned Abby from her office because she always came bearing bad financial news.

  I tried to help Louisa get into the heads of our readers—I sent her on a road trip to a slew of megamalls across the Midwest to meet them—but her heart wasn’t in it. For all her effort, she said she couldn’t connect with the chubby women with bad hair and ill-fitting clothes, women who described their ambitions as just getting through the workweek and who said their dream vacations were Disney World or a cruise to Cancún, women who shook her hand heartily and declared her outfit “real neat.” Louisa returned to the office cranky and despondent. Listlessly, she parroted back the concerns and interests of the women who had lined up by the food courts to get their copies of Hers autographed, but she couldn’t abandon her highbrow sensibilities or ignore her natural instincts.

  As a result, we couldn’t deliver for her. By the time we rounded up the staff in the conference room to discuss a third redesign in a year, it was clear they were exhausted—and that some had lost their confidence in Louisa, too. Our once invincible leader had become vulnerable and anxious. And I, as second-in-command, had failed to prevent her meltdown. When the call came from the thirtieth floor, Louisa and I were both ready for it.

  I lie supine on the couch, peering up at my basement’s ceiling tiles, possibly for the first time ever. I notice they’re overlaid with a pattern of tiny, concentric circles. As I stare, the circles seem to animate into trippy swirls. I start drifting off into that hazy median between wakefulness and sleep. At some point my eyes float shut.

  From somewhere I hear a phone ringing. The Human Resources number flashes up on the phone screen. So this is it, I think, inhaling what feels like a hot air balloon’s worth of breath.

  “Hello?” I say, but it’s a distorted version of my voice, like the one that plays back from a recording and makes me wince.

  “Come to the thirtieth floor.” A deep, booming voice, like a deity’s.

  I ascend as if by magic. The carpeting in the corporate suite feels plush between my toes, and I wonder why I’m barefoot. Someone who resembles Suzanne, the H.R. woman, is standing at the end of a very long hall, beckoning to me. I feel as if I’ll never make it to her, wading through the thick carpeting that’s like mud.

  I’m seated across from this simulacrum of Suzanne in an office where I swear I’ve been before. “Where’s Mimi?” I ask, that same strange voice filtering through my mouth.

  “An appointment.”

  “Oh.” I get the sense my boss is hundreds of miles away.

  “Well,” says the Suzanne-ish woman, shuffling her papers and avoiding my gaze. My heart is thumping. I feel bad for her. It wasn’t her decision to call me up here, and it’s not her fault that the speech she’s about to deliver is carefully constructed with euphemisms and corporate-speak. I suddenly suspect someone has a gun to her back. I search frantically for an exit. Wasn’t there a door around here? How did I get in?

  When sort-of Suzanne looks up at me with a smile, I can tell she feels bad for me, too. How totally wretched, this mutual pity party. I squirm in my seat. “Your position has been eliminated,” she says, and then—poof!—I’m eliminated from her office and off far, far away, settling in on a blanket by the Seine, spreading Brie on a baguette, and basking in the mild light of late afternoon. It’s all jolie and gentile and merveilleuse, until suddenly my snack disappears and I’m clutching at a packet labeled “Moving on and moving up”; the Seine dries up, the pretty women with parasols vanish, and I’m back in an office with Suzanne’s clone, clasping her clammy hand with my own.

  “Get yourself a lawyer,” the Suzanne impersonator whispers, a tickle in my ear. I should ask her, “Who?” and “Why?” and “How?” but I’m utterly exhausted, desperate for a bed.

  “Good-bye, Leah,” I hear, or maybe just imagine.

  I jolt awake, disoriented. Strands of my hair are matted with sweat to my cheek, and my left arm is imprinted with the nubby diamond pattern of my couch. Oh, right, I’m in my home office. I have no sense of how long I was out. The phone is ringing.

  “Hello,” I say into the receiver, my voice hoarse with sleep.

  “Phew, you’re still there.” My mother’s voice is like espresso; I clear my throat and snap to full attention. “I’m never sure when I’ll call an
d your replacement will answer and pretend like she’s never heard of you.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mom. You know you’re calling me at home.”

  “Well, still,” she says. I only let her get away with such talk because she’s been through this kind of staff turnover herself, and in her case, she was the displaced editor in chief. My mother—the famous and brilliant Betsy Brenner—was one of the first women to head up a Schmidt & Delancey publication, back in the era when women’s magazines were usually run by men.

  “So, what’s up?” I ask, now fully awake.

  “I wanted to see if you’re coming in for a visit this Sunday. Or do you have to work?” Of course my mother believes work is the only reason I might choose to not spend my weekend with her. I think she honestly sometimes forgets I’m a mother of three.

  “I’m not sure, Mom. Why don’t you come out to our place and we can inflate the pool in the backyard for the girls?”

  “Oh, I’m not up for all that suburban revelry.” I roll my eyes. She and my father have resided in the same Upper West Side floor-through since my sister and I were infants. She believes it’s a tragedy I shipped out to New Jersey, and when I recently told her that Rob and I were mulling over a move farther from Manhattan, she simulated a stroke. “I thought we could work on the program for your sister’s little play,” she says.

  What my mother calls Cara’s “little play” is an off-Broadway revival of Chekhov’s Three Sisters; the production’s previews inspired the Village Voice to declare it the most hotly anticipated show of the year. “You’re writing the programs?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Sure I am. It should come as no surprise that they don’t know the first thing about producing a publication—”

  “You mean a program, not a publication. It’s more like a pamphlet, right?”

  My mother ignores me. “When I mentioned my decades of experience as one of the most preeminent editors in the history of the publishing industry, the producers practically fell at my feet and begged me to do it.”

  “So did you already set the deadlines for first drafts, revises, fact-checking? How’s the copy flow coming?” My mother doesn’t acknowledge my sarcasm. Maybe she’s actually gone bonkers and believes she is back at the helm of a real publication, running the show.

  “You may be interested to hear,” she says, her voice turning sneaky, “that they’re letting me include a crossword on the back page. We could theme it, like The Sounds of Sondheim, or Comedies, Tragedies, and Tonys.” I’d prefer not to admit that this intrigues me; my mom knows how much I adore a word puzzle.

  “I don’t know, Mom. We’ve got a lot going on here. Rob wants us to spend the weekend looking at more house listings.”

  “Oh, don’t be absurd. You belong in Vermont as much as a dairy cow belongs in Times Square.” I bite my tongue. Asking my mother to explain this absurd comparison, or disputing it with something logical, would only lead us down a black hole of frustration. In fact, the thought of living 200 miles away from my mother has never sounded so appealing. I’m half-prepared to call Rob right now and, out of spite, suggest we gather our things and relocate north tonight.

  “Oh, Leah, don’t pout. How’s this: I’ll give you creative control over the editorial mix, and you can have final say-so on the wording of the actors’ bios.” This is her hard sell; we both know how difficult it is for my mother to cede control. “What do you say? It’ll be fun to collaborate!” She sounds so eager and excited. This always gets me, my mom’s devotion to the craft.

  I’m remembering how I grew up worshipping my mother. I mimicked her bottomless ambition and dreamed of following in her footsteps. She ingrained in me like a religion the idea that editing a magazine was the best job in the world; you got to use creativity and business smarts, you were charged with the lofty mission of sharing vital information and inspiration with the masses, and every single month you created something real and tangible, a valuable object that millions of people across the country would race to get their hands on and pay actual money for. My mother made it sound like the most exhilarating and prestigious work in the world, and of course I did everything I could to make it just like she had.

  And yet, after my mother fell from her pedestal a decade ago—she’d refused to figure out the Internet and was alienating her younger staffers with constant invocations of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem—it was as if she’d lost her entire self. Ever since then she’s been puttering around her apartment, irritable and bored, having never developed any outside interests or hobbies, scoffing at my father’s suggestions that she join a women’s league or a book club. Like mother, like daughter, people used to say to us, and I’d beam with pride; now this maxim sends a shiver down my spine.

  “Mom, I have to get back to my job.”

  “Of course you do, dear. I’ll figure out the programs myself. You know I love you.”

  My chest wells up with emotion—is it pity? regret? affection?—and I stutter, “OK, I’ll ask Maria if she’s free on Sunday. If she can watch the girls, I’ll meet you in the city and we can do Cara’s programs.” With my mother, I always end up caving.

  The next morning, I arrive at my cubicle to find Lynn staked out, juggling a slew of layouts. “We’re finalizing all the art for October, and I need your input,” she says.

  It occurs to me that now that Victoria has moved on to the more important month of November, for all matters October I’m not the executive divided by two, or a “co-”; I’m the actual executive editor. At least for a few weeks, I can maintain the illusion of wielding real power at work.

  “Here’s the ‘Lingerie for your body type’ story,” Lynn says, spreading the sheets across my desk. “There’s the ‘How to talk to your kids about sex’ one, and that’s the essay by the woman who lost both her legs when a limo ran over her.”

  I point to a bunch of printouts of fruit. “What’s all this?”

  “I’m thinking for the lingerie story, let’s construct life-sized pieces of fruit and then have them model the bras and panties, as if they were mannequins. That way, you match your body type to the fruit—you know: pear shaped; apple shaped; and banana shaped for long and lean—and then you pick your corresponding getup. Ta-da! See, I drew a mock-up.”

  A skimpy thong is stretched over a pear’s bulge, lending the fruit a pair of fleshy love handles. “Interesting idea,” I say. “Although I think when women realize they’re, say, apple shaped, they don’t want to think they look like an actual apple. Better to have a model with just the slightest curve of a tummy and call her apple shaped, so the readers will be reassured that it’s not so bad to be round in the middle.” I cannot believe I have to explain this to our creative director; this is Women’s Magazines 101.

  “Huh. But mmm, these pictures look so delicious. Don’t you just want to eat them up?” When I don’t respond, Lynn turns to the next board. “OK, so for the parenting story, how about let’s recruit actual couples to have sex and we’ll stage it so their kids walk in on them. A photographer will pop out to capture the looks on their faces. What do you think?”

  I am working on a response along the lines of “Are you flipping kidding me?!” but somehow conveyed in a respectful manner, when Laura bounds over to my desk. “Copy flow meeting!” she announces, miraculously saving me from commenting on Lynn’s plan to traumatize children and parents across America.

  Lynn and I join Victoria and Abby in Mimi’s office. “Exciting news,” our boss announces. It’s hard to believe that any aspect of copy flow could inspire excitement, but Mimi is clearly basking in whatever imagined brilliance she’s about to share. “To save time, I’ve devised a new routing system. We’ll send separate printouts of a story to all the different editors involved, everyone can make their notes, and then the main editor will scoop up all the files and integrate all the comments, easy-peasy.”

  Mimi is clearly delighted with herself, but her plan is preposterous. I picture all the editors scribbling conflicting comments
on their personal printouts of a story, and the ensuing clash of egos as everyone debates whose insight is smartest, whose opinion counts most. Mimi’s proposal will complicate what is well known as one of the simplest, most streamlined routing processes in the industry. This change can only be about the boss asserting her authority.

  It’s this pettiness, or perhaps my renewed (if deluded) idea that my opinion actually counts around here, that spurs me to speak up. Without masking my impatience, I blurt out, “We tried something similar with Louisa and it only confused things. This kind of so-called time-saver doesn’t actually save time, and it isn’t necessary for our small staff.”

  Abby puffs out her cheeks, her code for “Put a cork in it.” I’m no idiot; I realize any reference to B.M. (Before Mimi) is blasphemy, as is any overt failure to fall in line with the current agenda. But it so happens I know what I’m talking about. And I have a hunch that, after dumping the whole October issue on me during our little Skype powwow yesterday, Mimi may cut me some slack.

  “This will be different, you’ll see,” she says, in a strange tone that makes me question whom exactly she’s trying to convince. She offers no follow-up explanation of how it will be different.

  “Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,” says Victoria.

  “Great,” Mimi says. “We’ll implement the new system immediately.” She clicks her red pen, and I’m left wondering if she actually has faith in the plan or if she’s just pleased with her power.

  “Knock, knock.” Zoe appears on the office’s threshold. Mimi has told the staff she’s always accessible to them, but I can’t imagine she actually meant it, and certainly not during a meeting. I can tell that whatever Zoe’s planning to ask, she’ll pay the price for it.

  “Yes?” asks Mimi.

  “I have a question about vacay?” Zoe has that awful habit of ending her statements in the higher inflection of a question, making her sound unsure of everything she says. I’ve pointed out this tic to many a junior staffer in the hopes of helping them sound more professional, but that kind of suggestion might come off as insulting to our Web manager. Plus, Zoe gets away with talking like a text message, with so many acronyms and abbreviations it makes my head hurt, so what do I know? “My besties and I are going to the Jersey Shore the week leading up to Labor Day? Just wanted to give you the 411, so you’d know when I’ll be away?”