Save Me the Plums

by Ruth Reichl

  But I hadn’t fooled myself; I’d taken the easy way out, and I knew it. Now, as the chef and his son walked away from me, I felt nothing but relief that my reviewing days were behind me.

  “YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LIKE the managing editor I’ve hired,” I warned Laurie before her first day at the office. “I took Donna’s advice and picked someone who’s a serious bean counter. He seems like a total pain in the ass, but Human Resources has assured me he’s the best ME in the building.”

  What they’d actually said was that the editor of Allure was distraught to be losing Larry Karol. Since I’d pretty much hated him on sight, I had a hard time understanding why she was so upset; I thought I was doing her a favor.

  He was a tall, thin stork of a man who stalked into my office, disapproval etched into every line of his body. His head was small, the hair so closely cropped that you couldn’t help noticing his compact, neat ears. His face bore so few distinguishing characteristics I thought that if you tried to describe him you’d end up noting his impeccable posture and that he was very, very clean. When I introduced Laurie, he studied her long hair and colorful clothing, making no attempt to hide his dismay.

  “Not very corporate.” Did he actually say the words? But it was easy to tell what he was thinking. He shook her hand and then turned on his heel. “I’m going to walk around and get the lay of the land,” he called over his shoulder as he strode off. Laurie and I looked at each other, mouths twitching; he couldn’t wait to escape.

  An hour later he was back. “This place”—his voice was strangled—“is insane! It’s not a magazine; it’s like some girls’ seminary from the last century. Their procedures are absolutely archaic; I can’t imagine how such inefficiency has been permitted.”

  Larry had discovered, in less than an hour, something that had completely eluded me: The magazine had no support staff.

  “You didn’t notice that there were no copy editors?” Larry was incredulous. So was I. My copy editor at The New York Times, Don Caswell, had become my best friend and constant savior; was there no one at Gourmet who made sure the copy flowed smoothly and the grammar was correct?

  “And,” he continued, “the complete lack of fact-checkers escaped your attention?” I gulped; fact-checkers are the ultimate defense against errors. Didn’t anybody question Gourmet’s writers on their sources? Was there nobody who made sure that what the magazine printed was actually true?

  And Larry wasn’t finished. “Are you telling me that you didn’t know that Gourmet has no photo editor?”

  “That’s not possible!” I cried. “This is Condé Nast. There must be somebody on staff who figures out which photographers to use.”

  He shook his head. “There isn’t. I guess the art director just calls her friends.” His scathing look telegraphed, in a single second, how outraged he was, how hopeless I was, and his deep regret at having accepted the job. “I’m going to have to reorganize everything, from the bottom up.” He gave me another searing look. “Do you have the faintest idea what you’re doing?”

  I shook my head miserably; there was no point in denying it.

  “Did you notice,” Laurie said when he’d stalked off again, “that beneath all that bluster he seemed rather pleased? He doesn’t want us to know it, but he likes the idea of shaking everything up. It gives him a chance to create his own systems.”

  “I had no idea they were so short-staffed.” The head of HR sounded genuinely chagrined when I called to say we’d need to hire a few people. “But why are you there?” Jill Bright did not try to hide her surprise. “You’re not due to start for another month.”

  Back in January, when I accepted the job, I’d insisted on having some time off after leaving the paper. That, of course, was before I’d rashly promised the staff that I’d come to Gourmet every day. “Are things so bad,” Jill asked, “that you felt you had to start early?”

  That wasn’t it, although there had been a certain pleasure in watching Larry question everyone on the most minute details of the magazine’s workflow. Most of the time I had no idea what he was talking about, so I followed him around as he met with production people, paper experts, color correctors, and lab technicians. It was a crash course in the technical side of magazine-making.

  At least twice a week Larry stormed into my office shaking his head over some new and even more outrageous situation he’d uncovered. Mostly I just listened. But when he came in holding out a budget report, his hands shaking with emotion, I sat up and took notice.

  “Have you seen the production budget?” he raged. “It’s tiny. Vogue spends more on a single photo shoot than Gourmet spends on an entire issue. I’m guessing the former editor tried to save money so she’d stay below the radar.” He gave me a rare smile. “That worked out well for her, didn’t it?”

  Larry, I knew, was more than capable of reorganizing the magazine without any help from me.

  I was also taking enormous pleasure in watching Laurie conduct her own reconnaissance, slowly getting acquainted with the staff. She was, in her quiet way, as irate as Larry. “What a waste of resources! There’s so much talent here and it’s been squandered. The former editorial team made all the decisions at the top. None of the other editors ever got to share their ideas. Do you know what one senior editor told me?”

  She was so angry she had to stop to compose herself. “She said she had never made a single assignment of her own. The executive editor simply doled out the manuscripts, and when they were done editing she’d come in with a ruler, pull up a chair, and go over it.”

  “Oh, my God, it’s like something out of Dickens.”

  “Exactly! And given the level of expertise in this staff…They’re all so smart, they know so much about food, and they have so many interesting ideas!” She told me that Jane Lear was a walking food encyclopedia who could answer questions about arcane ingredients and techniques without having to look anything up.

  “I know,” I said. “A couple of weeks ago I asked her an innocent question about sesame seeds and she gave me an entire treatise on benne and how the seeds arrived from Africa with the slave trade. She even went into the science of the seeds.”

  “She is,” said Laurie, “a national treasure. Do you know how lucky we are to have that kind of resource? Then there’s Jocelyn Zuckerman, one of the younger editors, who’s extraordinarily well read. She gave me a list of the writers she’d like to work with: Junot Díaz, Ann Beattie, Jane Smiley, David Foster Wallace…And that’s just for starters. She has a whole list of young literary writers I’ve never even heard of.”

  Laurie had learned that the lone male editor, James Rodewald, was passionate about wine and itching to make Gourmet’s wine coverage more appealing to younger oenophiles. “And I can’t wait,” she said, “for you to see the way Romulo imitates your walk. He had the entire kitchen laughing until they were crying.”

  Laurie didn’t need me any more than Larry did, so it was certainly not a sense of duty that brought me in the door every day. As I struggled to explain why I’d started early, I tried to put my feelings into words. The energy in that office was so potent, it was as if we’d pulled the cork on a bottle of champagne and released a vibrant explosion. At the Los Angeles Times, Laurie and I had done all the heavy lifting; here we didn’t have to do a thing. When we asked, “What do you think we ought to do?” the staff invented an entirely new magazine. They were bursting with ideas—for writers, for columns, for special issues—and it was exhilarating. Magazine-making is a collaborative process, and watching Gourmet grow and change was so enthralling that I didn’t want to miss a single day.

  When I’d contemplated the job I’d worried about the burden of being a boss, afraid the staff would fear and resent me. But now I saw that there was another side to that coin: Nothing feels as good as building a team and empowering people, watching them grow and thrive.

  A Condé Nast honc
ho once carped that I was “too accessible.” I considered that a great compliment. When I’d arrived a quiet haze of depression had been hanging over the office and it had now been replaced by animation, noise, constant conversation. People talked in the halls, gathered in the kitchen, so filled with ideas that the whole place felt as if it was humming.

  Larry watched it all with an air of benign amusement. “It might be a good thing,” he conceded one day, “that you and Laurie are so new to this. You don’t know what’s not possible, so you just keep saying yes. It’s a bit anarchic, but it certainly makes life interesting.”

  It would have killed me to admit it, but without Larry we’d have been lost. Nobody was thrilled with his new procedures—we were all marching to his tune—but each day the place ran a little more smoothly. We might resent his endless tinkering, but Larry made us all feel safe.

  We were an odd trio, Laurie, Larry, and I, but we had perfect equilibrium, and before long we each began to understand our role in the institution we were creating. I was the cheerleader, the instigator, creating chaos, insisting we make changes right up to the last minute when someone came up with a better idea. The staid magazine, which had always operated at a stately pace, was now speeding along in a constant state of flux. Laurie was the nurturer, mopping up behind me, always calm, always available, always ready to talk. And Larry was the disciplinarian who kept us all in line.

  But there was more to Larry than met the eye. He had an uncanny ability to see beneath the surface and an unerring instinct for talent. Over time he hired the most remarkable people.

  “You sure about this?” I said when he introduced our new copy editor, a skinny Brit with bad teeth and a shaved head, dressed almost entirely in leather and enveloped in a cloud of invisible smoke. “He looks like the drummer in a punk band.”

  “That’s exactly what he used to be,” Larry replied. “Two bands, actually: One was called the Art Attacks. The other was the Monochrome Set.”

  “And you want him for a copy editor? Don’t you think he’s weird?”

  Larry gave me his coolest stare. “And how, exactly,” he said, “would that make him different from you?”

  Despite his appearance, John Haney turned out to be curious, meticulous, detail-oriented, and extremely literary; he was, in short, the perfect copy editor and a vital part of the new Gourmet we were creating.

  The huge chasm between the old and the new did not become entirely clear for a few more months. But in the fall, when we moved into our new offices, Zanne suggested I invite Jane Montant, who had edited the magazine in its halcyon years, to come to tea. “It would be a gracious gesture,” she said. “Mrs. Montant would appreciate it. You should invite Ronny Jaques too; he was our photographer for many years. He lives in Europe, but he’s in town for a few days, and you really ought to meet him.”

  Mrs. Montant swept into my office like a great yacht, towing the petite photographer in her wake. Even at eighty-three she was an elegant creature, with silver hair and a determined gait. She stopped stock-still in the center and stared critically around, making an obvious effort to hide her distaste for the brightly colored modern furniture.

  White-haired and rosy-cheeked, Ronny was quite a contrast. Eyes twinkling, he gazed curiously at each object with the air of a friendly leprechaun, looking so young it was almost impossible to accept that he was nearly ninety. Ronny had worked for many magazines during a long and distinguished career, photographing everyone who mattered—royalty, stars, politicians. You instantly knew that this man was comfortable in his own skin.

  “We had so much fun!” he cried as I poured them each a glass of wine. Tea, it seemed, held no interest for them.

  “We did!” Mrs. M. turned to him. “Remember that day in Florence when the traffic was so terrible?”

  “Of course.” The sparkling eyes took on a wicked gleam. “The traffic just stopped.”

  “So”—she turned to me—“we got out of our rented car, left it in the middle of the street, and went to eat.”

  “You mean you just abandoned the car so it was blocking the street?” I was unable to keep the horrified fascination from my voice.

  “Oh, yes.” Her reply was regal, implying this was the only sensible way to deal with such irritating inconvenience. “The meal was wonderful. After a leisurely lunch we strolled back and picked up the car.” She smiled benevolently. “The traffic was clear by then.”

  I tried to imagine any situation in which I might do such a thing. I could not. “In those days”—Mrs. M. seemed to be reading my mind—“we knew how to live.” She gave me a condescending smile. Then, gaze shifting, she looked beyond me and her face changed as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Mr. MacAusland,” she said. “I was thinking about our founder; he was both editor and publisher, and he had a first-class temper, which he never bothered to control. One day, when our offices were still in the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel, he had such a ferocious argument with an editor that the guests on the floor below came upstairs to find out what all the noise was about.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Oh.” She waved a hand. “His secretary handled it beautifully. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she said. ‘They’re just rehearsing for the Christmas play.’ ”

  I laughed, but it explained a lot. They had believed the whole world was their stage, and they strutted around as if they owned it. The Gourmet they’d created had reflected that particularly American sense of entitlement.

  But we were very different people, living in a very different time. And the magazine we were trying to make was for our moment, not theirs. “We’re having fun too,” I said to Mrs. Montant, understanding for the first time how much I’d come to love this job.

  LUNCH WITH RALPH LAUREN. BREAKFAST with Lexus. Cocktails with Chanel. Now that I’d left the Times and my job here was official, my publisher, Gina, seemed to have an endless parade of advertiser events requiring my attendance. I had no interest in any of this, but when I tried to refuse, she grew ice-cold.

  She prepared me carefully for each meeting, and soon I understood that the magazine we were selling depended entirely on the needs of the client. Gourmet might be a lifestyle publication, a humble homemaker’s bible, a travel magazine, or an epicurean pioneer. We might be upscale or strictly down-to-earth. On some days we emphasized the quality of our recipes; on others we acted as if they did not exist.

  Gina herself was a chameleon, carefully dressing the part. Her clothes, her jewelry, and her watches changed with the impression she cared to convey. She never left a single detail to chance, and as I watched her operate I could not believe how wrong my first impression had been. There are many words to describe Gina Sanders; “ordinary” is not among them.

  Bright, agile, and fast on her feet, she was the most competitive person I’d ever encountered. She never gave up, turned every lemon into lemonade, and obviously relished a fight. Conflict makes me so uncomfortable that I’ll do almost anything to avoid it, but Gina got under my skin. There was something about her that made me fight back every time she put up her fists.

  Our biggest battles were over the travel editor. I wanted someone younger, with a more modern outlook; Gina was extremely satisfied with the travel editor we had. Why wouldn’t she be? Pat was a pleasant older woman, but she was neither a writer nor an editor and devoted most of her time to representing the magazine at travel conventions. When she wasn’t traveling, a constant stream of people from national tourism boards paraded through her office. These people oversaw impressive advertising budgets, which meant that Pat was far more important to Gina than she was to me. “I don’t see why we should be paying her,” said Larry. “If Gina is so fond of her, she can put her on the advertising payroll.”

  “Why would I do that?” Gina asked frostily when I broached the subject. She watched every penny like
a hawk and was extremely content with the current arrangement. But Pat ostensibly worked for me, and each time I said I would replace her, Gina reminded me how important travel advertising was to Gourmet’s bottom line.

  Whenever I screwed up the courage to ignore Gina’s wishes, I thought of her most memorable remark. Driving home from an ad call, she’d turned to me with the look of a cat who’d swallowed a canary, saying, “I think we just took that business away from Bon App, which is extremely satisfying. Just winning isn’t enough; I don’t feel good unless the other person loses.”

  The message came through loud and clear.

  My methods were a little less blatant, but when I saw an opportunity, I took it. The first time we went to lunch with a client, Gina’s limo was late. “We’re due in fifteen minutes and my driver’s stuck in traffic,” she said, gazing anxiously up the street. “I hate not being on time.”

  “We could take the subway,” I suggested.

  It was a completely innocent remark. To me, the subway is more than a quick way to get from one place to another. It is New York in miniature, an intimate glimpse of the city. You rub shoulders with everyone who lives here, find out what they’re reading, see what they’re wearing, eavesdrop on their conversations. I love the music of many languages, the wide-eyed amazement of the tourists, the impatience of the seasoned rider each time the train comes to one of its mysterious between-station stops. Riding in a taxi gives you privacy, but why would you want to be insulated from all this?

  Gina, clearly, did not see the subway in the same light, and her horrified reaction gave me an idea. I tugged at her arm, pulling her down the sidewalk. “Come on,” I urged, “it’s just a couple of stops.” Casting a final, despairing glance up the street, Gina reluctantly followed me down the subway stairs.