Grand Avenue

by Joy Fielding

  She’s doing it on purpose, Susan realized, trying not to show any signs of impatience or discomfort. She knows how much I hate being late for anything, and she knows all these questions are going to make me really late getting to work. She hates that I have a job, just like she hated when I went to school. Wasn’t she always sick the night before a big exam? Wasn’t she always the most demanding when I had a big paper due? Had anything changed in the two years since Susan had finally earned her diploma and went to work at Jeremy Latimer’s latest project—a glossy women’s magazine named after his wife?

  When it was Susan’s turn, she delivered her speech as concisely and quickly as possible, and none of the students had any questions to ask, least of all Ariel, who’d been talking to the girl beside her or staring out the window the entire time. Susan politely excused herself before Danny Perrelli had a chance to expound on the joys and sorrows of running a successful dry-cleaning business.

  An accident on 1-75 held up traffic a good twenty minutes, so by the time Susan arrived at the stately brown-brick building on McFarland Street that served as home base to the ever-expanding Latimer publishing empire, it was after eleven o’clock and Susan had missed the morning meeting in its entirety. “Peter was looking for you,” a coworker announced from the next cubicle. “He seemed upset you weren’t at the meeting.”

  “Great.” Susan glanced toward the wall of glassed-in offices at the far end of the square-shaped room, hoping for a glimpse of Peter Bassett, a handsome string bean of a man in his late forties who’d joined the staff less than a month ago and who was her immediate supervisor. But he wasn’t in his office. Nor could she see him parading up and down the ersatz halls between the cubicles, strutting his skinny stuff and generally making like a cock of the walk, wearing his arrogance like an expensive cologne. What was it about him she found so damned attractive? Susan wasn’t even sure she even liked the man.

  The editorial division of Victoria, where Susan worked, was comprised of thirty small cubicles, arranged in six rows of five, that were divided one from the other by attractive Japanese-style screens. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined three of the office’s four walls and normally guaranteed plenty of light, but the October sky had turned threatening, and a gray pall was slowly leaking into the room, casting long shadows across the field of computer screens. Susan rifled through her messages, noted that they included one from each of the three writers whose articles she was working on, one from Carole in the art department, another from Leah, the magazine’s chief fact-checker, one from Barbara, and two from her mother. That was unusual. Her mother never called her at work.

  She was reaching for the phone to call her mother when it rang.

  “Susan,” the male voice said in a voice that announced it had no time for pleasantries. “It’s Peter Bassett. I was wondering if I could see you in my office in, say, ten minutes?”

  “Of course.” Susan replaced the receiver, wondering if she was about to be fired. The magazine was struggling, and one associate editor had already lost her job since Peter Bassett had been brought on board to help turn things around. Rumors had been circulating for weeks that more heads were going to fly in the coming months. Jeremy Latimer might have been instrumental in getting her hired, but that didn’t make her invulnerable. She might have worked her tail off to advance through the ranks to her current position, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get her ass fired.

  Susan loved her job. Despite the daily frustrations and occasional late nights, she felt blessed to be working at something that brought her so much pleasure. Not everyone was so fortunate. Hadn’t she told Ariel’s class as much this morning?

  Susan rested her head in the palm of her hand, stared at her blank computer screen. Missing this morning’s meeting couldn’t have helped her cause. She was still staring at the blank screen five minutes later when the phone rang again.

  “The slut is pregnant,” Barbara announced by way of hello. “Can you believe it? They’re married less than six months and she’s pregnant already.”

  “Are you all right?” Susan asked.

  “I don’t know what I am. I need to vent. Are you free for lunch?”

  Susan rubbed her forehead, looked toward Peter Bassett’s office, although her view was blocked by the tall beige partition. “I’m not. I’m sorry. Look, why don’t you come for dinner tonight? We can talk then. Bring Tracey. I’m sure Ariel would love to see her.” Why had she said that? Ariel was never happy to see anyone.

  After Barbara hung up, Susan placed a quick call to her mother. She knew something was wrong the minute she heard her mother’s shaky hello. “What’s the matter?”

  “Dr. King’s office called,” came her mother’s tentative reply, as if she were speaking a foreign language she hadn’t quite mastered. “Apparently something suspicious showed up on my mammogram. They want me to come in for a biopsy.”

  Susan tried to speak, but no sound emerged.

  “It’s probably nothing,” her mother continued, saying all the things Susan would have said had she been able to find her voice. “It’s very small, and they said these things are usually benign, so I should try not to worry.”

  “When do they want you to come in?” Susan pushed the reluctant words out of her mouth.

  “Tomorrow morning at ten.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Susan’s calendar indicated another staff meeting for tomorrow at ten, but Peter Bassett would just have to understand. Or he wouldn’t, Susan thought.

  “Thank you, dear.” The relief in her mother’s voice was palpable. “I really appreciate that.”

  “I’ll pick you up at nine-thirty. Does that give us enough time to get there?”

  Her mother agreed it was more than enough time, and Susan said she’d see her in the morning. She hung up the phone and closed her eyes. Please let my mother be all right, she said in silent prayer. “My job doesn’t matter,” she whispered into the cowl neck of her lime green sweater. Take my job, she continued without words. Just let my mother be okay. She felt a trickle of tears sting her cheeks.

  It took Susan a few minutes to regain her composure, and another minute until she felt sure enough of her feet to stand up. Exactly fifteen minutes after Peter Bassett’s phone call, Susan stood outside the glass wall of his office.

  He was on the phone, but he motioned her inside with a wave of his free hand. “Close the door,” he whispered, hand over the receiver. “Have a seat. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Susan closed the door, pulled out the blue, straight-backed chair across from his desk, lowered herself slowly into it, tried not to eavesdrop on his conversation.

  “On the contrary,” he was saying. “This is the school’s responsibility. If I take this on, if I tell Kelly she can’t go out on the weekend if she continues to skip classes, then I’m only giving myself more problems at home, and I’m doing nothing to solve the problem at school. It’s up to you to impose a consequence. Consequences mean nothing if they’re arbitrarily imposed from outside. You know that as well as I do.” He rolled his eyes impatiently, turned a brass-framed photograph of three attractive adolescents toward Susan.

  Susan examined the picture: two smiling teenage boys on either side of a scowling teenage girl. So what else is new? she thought, liking Peter Bassett more already because he was obviously going through the same kind of problems she was, even if he was about to fire her.

  “What am I suggesting?” Peter Bassett asked. “I’m suggesting you do your job. Next time my daughter skips a class, give her a detention. If she skips the detention, then suspend her. That’s the way things work in the real world.”

  Susan closed her eyes. She’d skipped the morning meeting. She was about to be suspended. Permanently.

  “Sorry about that,” Peter Bassett apologized, hanging up the phone. He pointed at the photograph. “Kelly’s fifteen and a major pain in the butt. Her brothers are also pains in the butt, but at least they’re not skipping school. So, how are you?”


  “Fine, thank you.”

  “We missed you at the meeting this morning.”

  “Yes, I’m very sorry about that. I was giving a talk to my daughter’s class about my job. It’s career day, or whatever they call it. Anyway, Sarah knew about it. She’d given it the go-ahead,” Susan said, referring to the woman Peter Bassett had replaced.

  “Hope you got in a few plugs for the magazine.” Peter Bassett’s piercing gray eyes had an engaging twinkle that Susan found almost unbearably appealing.

  “Every chance I got,” Susan said.

  “Good. We need all the help we can get.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said when she could think of nothing else to say.

  “Oh, God, please don’t call me sir. Peter will do just fine.” He rose from his chair, walked around to her side of the desk, perched on the edge, long, skinny legs dangling toward the floor. “What do you think is wrong with the magazine?” he asked, catching Susan completely off guard.

  “What do I think is wrong?”

  “I’m interested in your opinion.”

  “Why?” Susan couldn’t help but ask.

  “Because I asked everyone else at this morning’s meeting, and I didn’t get any satisfactory answers. And I was especially looking forward to hearing what you had, to say because I think you’re smart, and the articles you work on are consistently the best articles we print.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said, straightening up in her seat, realizing she wasn’t going to be fired after all.

  “So, what’s Victoria’s problem? Why do you think sales are down?”

  Susan took a deep breath. Could she really tell him what she thought was wrong with the magazine? “I think our focus is wrong,” she heard herself say. “It’s like we’re trying to be Cosmopolitan, but why should women want to read us when they can buy the real thing? Also,” she continued, growing bolder as his smile widened, “there are already too many women’s magazines out there going after the same market, and we’re at a disadvantage to begin with because we’re operating out of Cincinnati and not New York or Los Angeles.”

  “And the solution?”

  Was he playing with her? Susan wondered, distracted by the intensity of his gaze. “I think we should stop trying to compete with the big guys on their turf and start carving out our own niche,” she began, gradually warming to her subject. “This is a local magazine. We should concentrate on what interests the women of Cincinnati. Forget about profiling visiting B-list celebrities and start creating some celebrities of our own. Stop doing fashion spreads with skinny New York models wearing clothes no one in this city would be caught dead in, and start doing stories about real women with real problems, and let those stories be more than one thousand words in length. Why are we so afraid of a little depth?

  “I think we should start publishing fiction,” she continued, not pausing long enough to let him interrupt. “If we’re going to copy anyone, let it be The New Yorker. We could publish one original short story a month, maybe even run a short-story contest.

  “It’s almost the nineties. Today’s women are interested in more than just fashion and horoscopes. We want to know about issues and politics and how the decisions being made in Washington today are going to impact on our lives in Cincinnati tomorrow. We have to stop appealing to the lowest common denominator and start setting our sights higher. We have to stop following the leader and start leading our own parade. Toot our own horn. Let the others copy us.” Susan stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m a complete lunatic.”

  Peter Bassett laughed out loud. “On the contrary, I admire your passion. I’m not sure I agree with everything you said, some of it’s not very practical, but I’d like to give it some thought. Perhaps we could toss over some of these ideas with the others at tomorrow’s meeting.”

  “That would be great.… Oh, no. No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “My mother has to go to the hospital for a biopsy tomorrow morning. I said I’d take her.” Susan braced herself for an onslaught of recriminations: We’re running a business here, Susan. How are we going to implement some of these big ideas if you continue to place your personal life ahead of your job? The reason sales are down, the only reason sales are down and this magazine is in trouble, is because of people like you, people who talk a good game, but are too damn busy visiting their daughters’ schools and taking their mothers to the doctor to attend important meetings. This is the real world, Susan. Which is it going to be? Your family or your career?

  “Of course,” Peter Bassett said instead.

  What? “What?”

  He shrugged. “No big deal. We can discuss your ideas another time. The magazine isn’t about to change its focus overnight, and the important thing right now is your mother. She needs your support.”

  “Thank you,” Susan whispered. She wondered if she looked as shocked as she felt.

  “Don’t mention it.” Peter pushed himself away from his desk, his athletic body swaying into the space between them. He approached her chair, lay a soft hand on Susan’s shoulder, his fingers warm through her thin sweater. “It’ll be all right. Think positively.”

  “I will,” Susan said, and held her breath.

  “Please give your mother my regards.” Peter Bassett removed his hand from her shoulder, gave her a sad but reassuring smile, then returned to his seat behind his desk.

  Susan stood up, swiveled toward the door, stopped, turned back, about to thank him again. For being so understanding, so patient, so wise. When was the last time anyone had listened to her with such active interest? But Peter Bassett was already busy typing something into his computer. Susan’s eyes floated to the picture on his desk of his three children, noticing for the first time another photograph, this one of an attractive woman slightly younger than herself, short, dark hair framing an engaging smile. Mrs. Bassett, no doubt, Susan surmised, thinking she looked very much like her two sons and not at all like her difficult daughter.

  You’re a lucky woman, Mrs. Bassett, Susan told the picture with her eyes. I hope you appreciate what you have. Then she opened the door and left the office.

  Twelve

  Tracey, look at this, sweetie. This outfit would look great on you. What do you think?”

  Tracey closed the book she was reading, crossed the floor of the doctor’s spacious waiting room, and sat down beside her mother, glancing at the latest issue of Victoria in Barbara’s hand. “I don’t think it would suit me,” she said of the striped-blue-and-white jersey and skinny navy pants the young blonde was modeling for the camera.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, look at her, Mom.” Tracey nodded toward the young model cavorting on the page. “She has no thighs. In case you hadn’t noticed, I do.”

  “That’s just baby fat,” Barbara assured her, although she wasn’t entirely convinced. In the last year, Tracey’s body had undergone radical change. With the advent of her period, Tracey had morphed from a skinny adolescent into what might kindly be described as a young woman of substance. Not that Tracey was fat, or even overweight. Just that she’d filled out in all the wrong spots, wide where she should be narrow, flat where she should be full, something she’d undoubtedly inherited from Ron’s side of the family, Barbara decided bitterly. “You’ll lose that soon enough. All you have to do is cut out the junk food. Start eating right. Come with me to the gym one afternoon. You know what we could do?” she continued almost in the same breath, although Tracey had already returned her attention to her book. “I could make an appointment with a nutritionist, and we could go together. Because I think I could stand to lose a few pounds myself, and I think that would be a great idea. What do you think?”

  Tracey looked at her mother with blank eyes. “Sure.”

  “Good. Because I think that’s a great idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” Barbara looked guiltily into her lap. She’d been thinking of little else for weeks now, wondering
just how she could approach the subject without hurting her daughter’s feelings. And she’d done it. Accomplished her objective without ruffling Tracey’s feathers. She stared at her daughter’s profile. She’s such a pretty girl, Barbara thought. It would be a shame to have her miss out on things just because she’d gotten a little careless, because she didn’t pay enough attention to her appearance. And appearances were important, no matter what people tried to tell you these days. If you looked like you didn’t give a damn about yourself, well, then, nobody else would give a damn either.

  Barbara reached over, stroked her daughter’s cheek. Tracey smiled without looking up from her book. What was she reading anyway? “What are you reading?”

  Tracey flipped the book over, showed her mother the cover.

  Barbara took the book from Tracey’s hand, turned to the opening chapter, read the first few lines. “Sounds pretty good,” she said, about to hand the book back when she saw the signature scrawled along the inside of the cover. Pam Azinger looped across the top of the page in bold red ink. Like blood, Barbara thought, dropping the book back into Tracey’s lap. My blood.

  “She thought I’d like it,” Tracey muttered, laying the book down on the chair beside her. “But it’s pretty silly. I won’t read it.” Her voice drifted to a halt.

  “Nonsense. If you like it …”

  Tracey shook her head. “No. I don’t. It’s not very good.”

  Barbara took a deep breath. “How is Pam making out with the new baby?” She cleared her throat, practically scraped the words out of her mouth.

  “Not so great. He cries all the time.”

  “That’s too bad.” Barbara smiled. Thank you, God, she thought. “What’s his name again? I keep forgetting.”

  “Brandon. Brandon Tyrone.”

  Stupid name. No wonder she could never remember it.