Piece of Work

by Laura Zigman

  Monika rolled her eyes with relief. “Your husband has totally taken over the preschool parent-involvement situation, organizing everything to within an inch of its life. Instead of wasting our time in meetings once a week trying to figure out who’s going to do what and when—meetings which inevitably devolve into discussions about recipes and laundry—we just wait for Peter to e-mail us with our job and our deadline.”

  When the door finally opened and the children started spilling out into the foyer and into the arms of their waiting mothers, Julia made her way to the front of the line and looked past the teachers and into the block room where the kids were dressed in their down jackets and their backpacks, looking like little astronauts about to blast off. And there, in the middle of it all, was Leo. His back was to her and all she could see was that he was talking excitedly to Adam—who was wearing his cape again—and pointing at something in the corner of the room. As she moved closer to the doorway and stood on her tiptoes, she saw that what he was pointing at was the huge gingerbread mansion that Peter had made—on display on a table and all lit up from the inside by a string of little white Christmas lights. From where she was standing, it looked amazing, and she had no doubt that it was even more amazing up close. Leo couldn’t have looked prouder.

  “My daddy made this!” she could hear him say over the dismissal din to Batman and to the teachers and to anyone else who would listen—including Julia herself, who had, by now, slid past the teachers and was only inches away from him. When Leo saw her he screamed and pointed, first at her legs and then at her.

  “Hey! That’s my mommy! That’s my mommy!”

  Kneeling down and hugging her Scoob, she was almost embarrassed by how happy he was to see her. But she wasn’t embarrassed about how happy she was to see him. She felt impossibly lucky and incredibly grateful: her world had shifted and turned, but she was still in it, still a part of it, still holding on for dear life.

  Epilogue

  By Monday afternoon, Lindsay Green’s half-completed manuscript sold to a publisher for a high-six-figure sum, and then it sold in a dozen or so other countries for more than a book like that—a child-of-a-celebrity memoir, destined for instant remainderhood—usually sold for. Which was bupkes.

  But the big news was the film sale of Mary Dearest for a cool $2 million, which Variety reported on the following week, deeming it “one property worth its price tag since the star attached to the star vehicle is none other than Mary Dearest herself.”

  As Julia expected, Patricia got her name in the trades a lot, but to her credit she credited “Julia Einstein, publicist and spokesperson for Mary Ford, for bringing the two parties—mother and daughter—to the table.”

  When the time came for contracts and monies and pay-or-play options to be discussed, Julia stepped aside and handed over the reins of the project to the phalanx of managers and agents and lawyers that Mary Ford had underemployed for years, but who were now fielding offers for product endorsements, movie roles, print interviews, and talk show appearances. It was one of the most dramatic reversals of fortune Julia had ever seen and she couldn’t believe that the whole project was now almost entirely out of her hands.

  But what she really couldn’t believe was that during the four gruelingly stressful weeks she’d been back at work she’d lost ten pounds. Which, as any woman who had ever had a baby and never quite lost “the weight” knew, was the true measure of any successful professional comeback.

  After raining down on Lindsay Green, Mary Ford, and Patricia, the success of the sale of Mary Dearest trickled down next to John Glom Public Relations.

  Has-beens from far and wide flocked to their New York and Los Angeles offices with managers and agents in tow, in search of answers for how to revive their own dormant careers, and for the next week it was all Jack and Julia and Jonathan and Vicky could do to keep up on their end with scheduling new-client meetings, attending new-client meetings, serving bottled water, drawing up new-client contracts, and collecting the retainer checks. Everyone wanted to sign on with the “Extreme Career Makeover Dream Team” (as she and Jack were dubbed in the trades, which annoyed her no end since in her opinion he’d had nothing to do with Mary Ford’s resuscitation—unless placing the pillow over Mary’s face for Julia to later remove could be considered “helping”); everyone wanted another shot, a second (or third) chance at a successful comeback. And who could blame them.

  Legend was the next beneficiary. Sales of the failing perfume had almost instantly increased dramatically, forcing Mary to reconsider her earlier decision to abandon the promotional tour. With the PETA problem back under control and Heaven Scent reforming their research and testing practices as well as starting production on a new and improved version of the perfume to hit stores in time for the Christmas rush, all of the appearances that had been canceled were rescheduled, with Julia and Jonathan working overtime to reconstruct the campaign that had originally been in place before it went so off track. Back on the itinerary were the five-star hotels and the first-class airline tickets; back were the fans and customers lined up in stores, sometimes out to the handbag and shoe departments; back were the television crews and the newspaper reporters with their cameras and their tape recorders, waiting to get a glimpse of the legend behind Legend; waiting to get a word with Mary Ford, former star of stage and screen and “It” girl once again.

  This time, though, when the new schedule was complete and it was time to hit the road, Julia stepped aside and turned the reins over to Vicky. Despite the fact that Julia had finally mastered the art and science of traveling with Mary, it was time for someone younger, hungrier, and without a husband and a Scooby-Doo waiting at home to take over and reap the benefits of all her hard-earned wisdom from the set of Identity Assumption notes outlining “What to Do and What Not to Do When Traveling with Mary Ford” that she prepared.

  Jack, unfortunately, was next in line, waiting for his own unearned, undeserved manna from heaven to drop out of the sky and into his manipulative, opportunistic hands.

  Up to his eyeballs now in rabid has-beens who had come back begging—Tony Danza, Morgan Fairchild, Joan Lunden, Joan Collins, Carol Burnett, Phil Donahue, Alec Baldwin, Richard Chamberlain, and David Cassidy, to name only a few—and without an assistant (except for the few times he would get up the courage to ask Julia if he could borrow Jonathan and she would let him), he felt overwhelmed by the task at hand and underwhelmed by a sense of purpose. He knew he’d have to start ramping up the agency as soon as possible to handle all the new business; he knew that he’d have to hire staff and get them trained and up to speed on the special art of has-been handling, and that he’d need to spend at least six months killing himself with long hours and late nights in order to keep up with the demand for their services. And for what? To connive and lie and manipulate his way to another meaningless promotion and insufficient raise at a loser firm?

  So when he got Lindsay Green’s call from the West Coast, he couldn’t have been happier.

  Deluged with attention after the sale of her book—interview requests from magazines, articles to write, fashion magazine photo spreads to do, not to mention the fact that she still had to finish writing the book so that she herself could start adapting it for the screenplay, as had been negotiated—she begged him to be her own personal media advisor and career manager.

  Given the salary she was offering (double what he was making, which she could easily afford, given the book and film advances that would soon be coming in), the accommodations she was making available (the guest cottage on her property in Beverly Hills, which was empty since her last advisor slash manager slash boyfriend moved out), the first-class prepaid ticket she was prepared to FedEx to him (which was one-way and open-ended), and the fact that they were so obviously compatible in and out of bed—two inveterate narcissists who shared a passion for getting attention and getting their own way—it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  Jack was nimble.

  Jack was a dick.r />
  Jack got over his divorce real quick.

  And finally it was Julia’s turn.

  Not more than a week had passed from the time of the Mary Dearest book and film sale before her own phone started ringing, too, and after several interesting offers from various public relations firms and talent agencies, the one call she’d been secretly waiting and hoping for all along finally came in—from her former boss, Marjorie, at Creative Talent Management.

  Listening to her offer—Vice President of Media Relations—the promotion and title change she’d never stuck around long enough to receive four years ago, the promotion she always wondered whether she ever would have gotten even if she’d stayed—she couldn’t help feeling like she was hearing from a long-lost boyfriend who wanted her back. Half of her wished she could, simply on principle, resist the tug of the past trying to reclaim her, but the other half of her—the half full of latent venality and repressed lust for financial security and career advancement—had no desire to resist.

  But because she had come to feel that working with has-beens was infinitely more interesting, challenging, and rewarding than working with non-has-beens—they were the Special Olympics of the public relations world, a parallel universe of outsiders she herself had come to feel a kinship with—and because she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Jonathan in such a corporate setting—an enormous office filled with assistants who would eat him for breakfast his first week there and make fun of his love beads—and mainly because a big job like that filled with stress and dress codes and back-to-back meetings and a presumed level of animalistic ambition that would suck the life out of her and rob her of what she wanted most—time and energy left over for Peter and Leo—she turned down CTM’s extremely generous offer.

  But not before negotiating a competitive contract with John Glom himself over the phone to manage the New York office. Though he didn’t match the salary CTM had offered, he’d come close enough, which gave Julia some leverage to negotiate a few other things she wanted: a four-day workweek twice a month so she could have two Fridays off to be with Leo, a raise and promotion for Jonathan, and one perquisite she was deeply ashamed of herself for insisting on—a car and driver just like Patricia had.

  Just as Peter had done and just as she’d advised Mary to do, Julia was determined not only to make the best of the situation but to succeed in any way she could, so on the train ride home that night she decided that her first executive decision would be to prove that a new management style and sensibility was now firmly in place in the land of the has-beens: calling in the Container Store to outfit a supply closet with built-in shelves and drawers and keeping it constantly filled to capacity with a vast array of high-quality office supplies and organizing equipment.

  Jack left just before Thanksgiving, and shortly after that, in early December, Mary called Julia to tell her that she was leaving, too. It seemed that the interest in her for film roles had remained steady since the initial onslaught, and now that the promotional tour for Legend was pretty much finished, Hollywood was where she needed to be for her career. It was also where she wanted to be now for Lindsay, who was, apparently, struggling to finish the book and start on the screenplay.

  Though Mary didn’t intend on moving out there lock, stock, and barrel, her plan was to stay with Lindsay (“despite the fact that that insufferable Jack Be Nimble who I hate is living in her guesthouse”) until she found her own house to rent and shuttle back and forth to Manhattan whenever she had time. And without having to say as much, Julia knew that the other reason Mary was so willing to make herself available to “help” Lindsay with the manuscript was so that she could try to soften some of the anecdotes and rewrite history just a little to take some of the sting out of the book.

  “So since I knew you wouldn’t come along to help me get settled,” Mary said, “I called Just Nick to see if he knew of a driver out there who wasn’t a complete idiot.”

  Thinking about how Mary must have pulled off the business card that he’d stapled to the stuffed Mickey’s ear with a mixture of annoyance and amusement and how thrilled he must have been to hear from her, Julia smiled.

  “And let me guess. Just Nick recommended Just Nick.”

  Mary laughed—a deep, throaty, smart-alecky laugh that Julia realized she’d never heard before—and sighed. “Now don’t go getting any ideas, Einstein. He has a son who lives in Newport Beach who he wants to spend some time with over the winter.”

  “Or so he says,” Julia said.

  “Or so he says,” Mary said, laughing again. “He told me he’s going to take me to Disneyland and show me some more Hidden Mickeys. I said to him, ‘Listen, Just Nick. Don’t overdo it with the Hidden Mickeys.’ But I don’t think he heard me since by then he was already packing.”

  In the cold, snowy weeks before the break between Christmas and New Year’s, Julia rode to and from the office in the comfort of Radu’s black sedan and tried to adjust to all the changes that had occurred since September and all the changes that were going to occur over the coming months.

  Though Peter still hadn’t found a job, he had picked up some consulting work that would start in January, and Leo would be increasing his days at the preschool from three to four. Nothing, it seemed, was staying the same—the updated family schedule now reflected in the new time board that Peter made for the kitchen; the fact that she couldn’t pin Patricia down for a celebratory lunch date because she was too busy dating Lindsay Green’s film agent, whom she had met on a recent trip of his to New York; Leo, whose interest in trains was just starting to give way to an obsession with dinosaurs and superheroes; and even her mother, who had, at Peter’s suggestion which came in the form of a prepaid Hanukkah gift certificate, signed up for a cooking class—albeit at the local Jewish Community Center—everyone and everything was up for grabs.

  Months before, when it had all started—when she had first been forced to go out and get a job and Peter had first been forced to stay home—he’d promised her one night that things would eventually go back to the way they were, the way they’d planned them, the way they’d wanted them. And though she could never have imagined it or admitted it then, the world hadn’t come to an end when she’d gone back to work. Of course she missed Leo and he missed her and of course Peter hoped he would someday get his career back on track. But they’d survived, even flourished. Not knowing what would happen over the next few months or years, she returned to the office after the holidays with a whole new set of pictures for her desk and her computer, feeling like she was heading into the wilderness toward a destination still unknown.

  It was a jungle out there, she knew. But she’d been there before. And she figured she’d find her way.

  About the Author

  LAURA ZIGMAN grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course. She spent ten years working in New York City as a book publicist, then moved to Washington, D.C. After working briefly for The Smithsonian Associates and Share Our Strength, she finished her first novel. Animal Husbandry was published in 1998 and became a national bestseller, and in 2001 the film based on the book, Someone Like You, starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman, was released by Fox 2000. Her second novel, Dating Big Bird, came out in 2000, and her third novel, Her, followed in 2002. She currently lives outside Boston with her husband and young son.