Regeneration

by Allan, Barbara

  And as if this glass-ceiling indignity weren’t enough, now she would be replaced by a cheaper, younger—and, she had to admit, prettier—this-year’s-model named Heather.

  Joyce sighed and shook her head. Jesus! Were the Heathers of the world really old enough already to hold executive positions? What next—Brittany?

  Oh, the company didn’t think she knew about her replacement, but Joyce did. She had run into Heather in the hallway yesterday as the young woman came out of the Human Resources office.

  “You’re Joyce Lackey!” the woman had said breathlessly. She wore a pale gray suit and white blouse—very dull, to Joyce’s way of thinking, though her slender, suspiciously busty figure was well served by it—the little bitch looked like Ally McBeal with breasts.

  “Yes, I’ve been Joyce Lackey for some time.”

  “This really is an honor. You’re a legend in our business.”

  “I like to think of myself more as a reality. And you are...?”

  “Sorry!” The young woman smiled, her skin so fresh and young it barely creased. She extended a well-manicured hand. “Heather Blake.”

  They shook hands; Heather’s grip was cool and firm.

  Heather was shaking her head admiringly, short platinum tresses shimmering. “I’ve heard so much about you, read about you, since I was...do you know that your ad campaigns were discussed in my advanced advertising class at Northwestern?”

  “Well, I have spoken there a few times....”

  “I must tell you, personally, I’m very surprised that you’re retiring. I would think someone of your skills and accomplishments would just”—Heather’s voice turned cute, and she swung a Mary Tyler Moore fist in the air—“hang in there and keep pitchin’! But nobody deserves a rest more. I mean, who better to lay back on her laurels than Joyce Lackey?”

  “What position are you applying for, Heather?”

  “Oh, I’m not applying. I’ve been hired. Didn’t you know? I have the unenviable challenge of taking over for you.”

  “Really.”

  “But I don’t how I’m ever going to manage to fill your shoes.”

  That was true enough, since Joyce wore a size eight, and Heather’s tiny feet looked bound at birth, which was yet another reason for Joyce to hate her.

  “I hope you won’t mind the occasional phone call, Joyce...may I call you Joyce? You know, just to help me understand the lay of the land.”

  From the look of her, she already was the lay of the land; probably had something to do with getting the job.

  “Well, I’ll make sure to leave my phone number for you,” Joyce said to her and walked on, casting her replacement back a smile so believable, Joyce practically bought it herself. But, then, that was her speciality, wasn’t it? Selling things to imbeciles?

  But the woman had watched Joyce go with such a funny expression on her flawless young face. Could that possibly have been guilt? Joyce could only laugh—Heather wouldn’t make it very far in advertising if she felt sorry for the other guy.

  Joyce slammed the suitcase shut. Then again, she thought, money may not have been the be-all-and-end-all of her forced retirement. After all, she had never really seen eye to eye with the company’s new partner, Tyler Hurst, a thirty-something male whose Armani suits looked sewn directly onto his body. Hurst bought into the partnership after Henry died. Joyce had had the option, but not that kind of capital.

  And she had tried to get along with Tyler, she really had. But from their very first meeting they had rubbed each other the wrong way—a clash of styles, a clash of generations....

  The client had been an R.V. manufacturer who, in the positive economic climate of the late ’90s, was ready to give Winnebago a run for the market share, and Joyce had worked up the preliminary concept for Tyler’s approval, before turning it over to the creative team. But when she presented it to Tyler in his office that rainy overcast morning, he shook his head.

  “The target should be Generation-X,” he’d said flatly.

  The wind rattled the windows on the sixty-third floor, trying to get in; beyond, Lake Michigan was choppy and murky.

  “Generation-X?” she’d blurted. “They don’t have any money!”

  “Many of them are starting to. And that’s our market.”

  “But that’s crazy—retirees have always dominated the R.V. market.”

  “Many markets suffer generational shift, and this is one of them.” He sighed, tossing the art she’d brought in across his desk carelessly, as if discarding it. “And, considering your reputation as an innovator, Joyce—I would expect bolder, less traditional thinking.”

  Hurst’s thinking was so bizarrely wrong it made Joyce’s head whirl. “Some markets are traditional in nature, Tyler—you sell tractors to farmers, you sell airplanes to pilots, and you sell fucking R.V.s to fucking retirees!”

  “I don’t think we need that kind of language here, Joyce.” He checked the knot of his tie, as if her profanity might have loosened it. “That may have been...chic, or...hip...in your day, but we’ll show more respect for each other, here. From now on. Understood?”

  Her day?

  “I apologize,” Joyce said numbly. “But my point is, retirees are the natural market for this product.”

  Hurst looked at her with cool, gray eyes that matched the dismal sky. “Yes. Retirees who lived through the Depression and understood the necessity to save in order to retire. But they’re dying off, replaced by a generation of spoiled brats who’ve had everything handed to them on a silver platter and who won’t have any money to face their well-deserved bleak futures.”

  Joyce smiled in astonishment, put one hand on her hip. “Of course they’ll have money. Lots of money...just like they have now.”

  Hurst laughed soundlessly. “No. They’ve spent it, mortgaged it, leased it, plastic-carded it, and haven’t saved.”

  She had no rejoinder for this—because, in her case at least, all of that was true.

  “The Baby Boomers are soon to lose their position as a vital demographic,” Hurst said, then added with a smirk, his voice taking on a more personal tone, “They won’t be able to afford a pot to piss in, let alone an expensive R.V. to vacation in.”

  So he could say “piss,” but she couldn’t say “fucking.” Interesting ground rules.

  “Then they’ll buy the damn thing to live in!” she snapped, fed up with his smug attitude. “Boomers are still the only market that counts, because there are seventy-six million of them!” Of us! she thought. “They set the trends. And if they have no money, and have to live in an R.V., then that will become the trend.”

  “You’re reaching, Joyce.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “They’ll be Easy Riders, only with R.V.s instead of motorcycles, cruisin’ down the highway. And it’ll be cool, because whatever the Boomers do defines cool.”

  He looked at her with barely veiled contempt, arched an eyebrow, and said, “You really think going down the tubes will be ‘cool’? Well, you’re right on one account, Joyce—it will be a trend—only that will be one trend we’ll have a great deal of difficulty finding a way to make any money out of.”

  After that, the two barely spoke to each other, and within the year Hurst gave her an ultimatum of taking early retirement or being “let go,” a decorous way of saying “fired.”

  “We need fresh blood,” he had said, which made a lot of sense to her, coming from him: He was a vampire, after all, sucking the joy and creativity out of her work. So it was just as well she left.

  She had considered, briefly, an age discrimination suit. And that might have won her a handsome settlement, but would have ended her career, forever branding her a troublemaker—and old.

  Joyce moved her Vuitton suitcase off the desk and set it on the floor. She looked around the office, feeling a sense of loss unlike any since her parents died. It brought tears to her eyes and made her stomach churn.

  “Hi!” In the doorway stood Julie, her secretary; she was twenty-something,
with curly brown hair and big round glasses, apparently borrowed from Velma of Scooby-Doo.

  Today Julie was wearing a baggy blue sweatshirt and jeans, this being “casual Friday,” an idea Joyce had opposed, believing sloppy attire promoted sloppy work. That was why she, Joyce, always wore a suit, like this navy and gold St. John knit she would be wearing when she left this job.

  “Just wanted to say ‘good-bye’ and ‘good luck’ before you went,” the woman said chirpily.

  Joyce, from behind the desk, said, “Thanks.”

  She had always just tolerated the peppy Julie, who seemed to have drifted into the ad game from a road company of Up With People.

  “You still have some things in the lunchroom,” she reminded Joyce. “That Milano expresso maker, I believe, is yours....”

  “You girls can have it.”

  “Oh really?” Julie said, then smirked. “Martha was eyeing it today....She said if you didn’t take it home, she would.” Martha was Tyler’s secretary, the company gossip and her boss’s spy—universally disliked, and yet she had a job.

  “All right, all right,” Joyce said dismissively. “I’ll take it home.”

  Julie smiled. “Good.” And then she was gone.

  Joyce picked up her suitcase and took one final look out the window; dusk was moving in from the lake, creeping over the city, smothering it with a misty blanket—or was that just her eyes? She walked across the room on the thick mauve carpet for the last time, and out the door, not bothering to turn off the light, a petty decision to cost the company a few cents. Boy, that would sure hurt them.

  With that, she left her world behind.

  Suitcase in hand, Willy Loman-like, she trudged down the corridor, and then down another, to the lunchroom, which was dark and silent.

  She flicked on the light.

  “Surprise!”

  Joyce almost dropped her suitcase; she leaned against the doorjamb, one hand to her chest.

  “Jesus Christ,” she gasped, wide-eyed, at the little group that stood around the kitchen table, on whose top a cake and several presents rested. “You really scared me!”

  Julie laughed. “Sorry...it’s traditionally done this way. I mean, it is a surprise party!”

  Brian, manager of the mail room, wagged a scolding finger at Julie, and said, “Want to give the ‘old girl’ a heart attack before she can even start enjoying her retirement?” His receding hairline seemed at odds with a round boyish face.

  The others in the small group were Mary Irene, from accounting, a tall, thin woman in her mid-forties, whose hatchet-faced efficiency reminded Joyce of The Beverly Hillbillies’ Miss Hathaway, and Linda, the receptionist, an overweight thirty-something with cow-eyes, who didn’t remind Joyce of anybody.

  Missing from the little celebration, and obviously distancing themselves, were the copy writers and art directors she’d bought so many lunches for, and her fellow account executives, all of whom she thought were her friends, none of whom seemed to be able to attend one lousy little going-away party....

  “You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble for me,” Joyce said lamely, and truly wished they hadn’t; she hated surprises, and had hardened into hating sentimentality—and now she had to be pleasant and upbeat, when all she wanted to do was go home and crawl under the sheets and bawl.

  “It was no trouble,” Linda told her with a smile so sweet Mary Poppins would have considered slapping her. “We couldn’t let you get away without having a little party of our own, now could we?”

  “Damn straight,” Brian added. “Now get over here and open your presents.”

  Suddenly she felt strangely moved. Brian was just such a sweet kid, untouched by office politics, it got to her.

  Joyce put her suitcase down and walked over to the table. “Which should I open first?” she asked; even such a simple decision was more than she could handle right now.

  “Take your pick,” Julie said, bubbling with vicarious pleasure, brown eyes behind the round glasses shining like bright copper pennies.

  Joyce picked up a small floral bag with lavender tissue paper sticking out of it.

  “That one’s from me,” Mary Irene said, her hands clasped primly in front of herself.

  Joyce stuck her hand in the sack and withdrew the contents: a Funjet Vacation to Cancun.

  “Oh, Mary Irene,” Joyce said, sincerely affected. Now she felt bad about every unkind thought she ever had about the accountant....Like thinking she’d never had sex—with a man, anyway.

  “You can use the tickets anytime you want,” Mary Irene explained. “And I’ll expect you to send me a postcard when you get there.”

  “I will.” She clasped the tickets to her bosom. “I promise.”

  “Now this one,” Julie said, pushing a familiar pink and gold striped box with hearts toward Joyce. “It’s from Linda and me.”

  Joyce lifted the lid of the Victoria’s Secret box and pushed the tissue paper aside and pulled out a sheer black negligee; it had a black feather boa around a plunging neckline that went down to the navel.

  “My,” Joyce said with a forced smile. “Isn’t this nice.” But it was more a question than statement.

  “You can take it on your trip to Cancun,” Linda said brightly. “You never know who you might meet!”

  “Uh-huh,” Joyce said holding the negligee out, noticing the XL size label. She wasn’t fat, was she? She knew she could stand to drop a few....

  “I hope it fits,” Julie lamented, then added, “But it should....Linda tried it on.”

  I am fat, Joyce thought.

  “You should have seen her prancing around,” Julie laughed.

  Linda giggled. “Yeah, after a while we felt we had to buy it.”

  “Okay, guys, that’s way more information than I need,” Joyce said, kidding on the square, trying to banish the image her coworkers had just summoned, and tucked the nightgown back into the box.

  “This is from me,” Brian said, and handed her a business-size envelope.

  She thought it was only a card, but inside found season tickets to the Chicago Bulls; she wasn’t sure what his salary was, but the gift must have been a big sacrifice, down the food chain as he was, with a wife, four kids and a house in Elmhurst.

  Joyce touched his arm. “Oh, Brian,” she said, choked up, “this is so sweet of you....I’ve never had season tickets.” The company bought any number of tickets, to all kinds of events, but they were strictly to be given to clients.

  “I always buy presents I’d like to have,” he explained, grinning shyly. “So, if you ever can’t make a game, I guess you know who to call!”

  She looked at the others. “Thank you all so much for the gifts,” she said, and wondered if she would have been so thoughtful and generous if it had been any of them who were leaving.

  Possibly.

  Maybe.

  Probably not.

  Over pink champagne and slices of the two-layer cake lettered in darker pink Happy Retirement, Joyce on white frosting, they talked about getting together for lunch in the future, but she knew that would never happen.

  It would only be awkward and painful. Friends made at work were like friends made in childhood: They happened to be whoever lived on your block, or in your apartment building. It wasn’t that company friendships weren’t real...it was just that without the context of the workplace, future conversations became stuck in the past, as painful and ungainly as standing around trying to chat at a high school class reunion.

  And the last thing Joyce wanted to hear from her former coworkers was how well her replacement was doing, or for that matter, how terrible, which would make Joyce wish she was still on the job—not that the latter wouldn’t at least give her some smug satisfaction. Truth be told, however, she secretly hoped the whole company would go down in flames...taking everybody with it. Including these nice, sweet people who’d taken time to say good-bye to her.

  After the party, her arms laden with her suitcase, coffeemaker and gifts—like c
onsolation prizes from a game show—Joyce took the elevator down to the parking garage, which occupied the center of the Hancock building, and made her way through its cavernous, cement tomb to her reserved parking space, where a silver BMW awaited her...

  ...a company car they would let her keep until the end of the week.

  She threw everything unceremoniously in the backseat and slid into the front. When she turned the key in the ignition, the radio also came on, tuned to her favorite oldies station, and the Grass Roots doing “Live for Today” blared like a car alarm.

  Twitching a grimace, she twisted it off with a click. As she wheeled the BMW down the narrow spiral exit ramp to the street, Joyce wondered how much a car like this cost these days—then she wondered what any car would cost, since she’d never had to shop for one, and never had an auto-manufacturer account, either.

  From this she had the sudden realization that, in some respects, she was like a sheltered, spoiled child, being cast out into the world by parents who had finally got fed up.

  The autumn evening was darkening, as was her mood, the traffic heavy, as she headed north on Lake Shore Drive. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad driving a smaller car, she thought. She wouldn’t have to worry so much about car theft, and she could practically invent her own parking spaces on the street, which was a plus in Chicago. Also, the insurance would be a lot lower—she assumed.

  She’d never had to buy car insurance, either—that had been a perk attached to the company car.

  Still, by the time she arrived at her rented lake-view condo up the Gold Coast, she was feeling a little better. She threw her keys on the ornate wrought-iron-and-glass entry table, kicked her Stuart Weitzman heels off and padded in nyloned feet back to the art-deco black-and-white kitchen, where she poured herself a glass of Chateau Latour from a crystal decanter and downed it in a few gulps.

  Her mind beginning to numb from the wine, which was precisely the desired effect, she wandered the spacious apartment that had been her home for the past ten years, like a thief casing the joint.

  After a while, she entered the master bedroom, which had recently been redecorated with the expensive King Louis XV furniture she had convinced herself would be a good investment, buying into her own campaign. Fool for a client, she thought. There she sat at a small writing desk, opened a drawer and pulled out her financial statements.