The Society of Shame, page 13
Danica laughed. “See what a good haircut can do?”
* * *
—
In the taxi, Kathleen managed to wait all of four seconds to open the menu. The light was dim, but she could make out the words, embossed on cream paper in the familiar script:
The Society of Shame
Phase Two
Menu of Responses
Choose one or more
1. Repair: Take action to directly remedy the hurt or damage you have caused. Publicize generously.
2. Redeem: Perform an action or actions that will earn you forgiveness in the eyes of the public.
3. Reform: Address your shortcomings, improve your character, and make clear that you have become a better person.
4. Reinvent: Make a fresh start: take on a new career, hobby, relationship, and/or lifestyle.
5. Reconnect: Find a sense of contentment and meaning by pouring your energy into the activities or the people most important to you.
6. Reframe: Change the conversation such that your action is cast in a more positive light and/or the public is cast in a more negative one. Variation (advanced): Change the topic of conversation completely.
7. Restart: Begin anew as someone else and/or somewhere else. (NB: May require extensive legal and surgical fees.)
8. Revamp: Pivot to a new look, image, attitude, and/or public persona.
9. Reap: Take possession of the rewards that may be available to you as a result of your incident: fame, money, opportunity, influence, philanthropy, etc.
10. Revenge: Self-explanatory.
Kathleen read the menu over several times. Now she understood what everyone had been talking about—and why Danica had directed her to number nine: Reap. It was what she and the others had been so excited about the night before: the idea of Kathleen stepping forward and accepting the mantle of menstruation queen.
Kathleen tucked the menu into her bag and took out her phone. At this point, her index finger tapped the Twitter icon of its own volition, completely separate from anything her brain might want to do. Although it generally also wanted to go on Twitter. She told herself that what she was hoping to see was that the whole thing had blown over—there was some new cause or scandal that had everyone’s attention. If there was, maybe she could let the whole thing go. Maybe Aggie and her friends would let the whole thing go, too.
And yet, as she began scrolling through her feed, she found, to her own surprise and semiconsternation, that a significant part of herself was, in fact, hoping the world was still talking about her menses. The top trending item now, it seemed, was a viral video of a squirrel riding a pig. (In the Atlantic: “The Surprisingly Long History of Our Fascination with Interspecies Friendships.”) Second was the series finale of a home improvement reality show called He Shed, She Shed that Kathleen had never heard of, and third was a recently released UN report on climate change, predicting widespread famine within two decades.
But #YesWeBleed was still alive and well. (Along with #Wheres Kathleen, #MenBleedToo, and, regrettably, #AllBloodMatters. Meanwhile, the family values/megachurch crowd was pushing #YesWeBreed, though not terribly successfully.)
So the iron was still hot if she, like Aggie, wanted to strike it. She just had to decide, soon, whether or not she did.
* * *
—
Bill’s campaign headquarters occupied a large corner storefront in downtown Greenchester that was previously, for decades, a hardware store. Now its plate glass windows were plastered with Bill Held for Senate signs, and inside, where there used to be tall shelves of tools and fixtures and solvents and seeds, were desks, tables, and computers, though the smells of paint and metal and fertilizer still lingered in the air. Campaign lawn signs leaned against the walls between whiteboards and bulletin boards and easels. Life-size cardboard cutouts of Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy stood just inside the door.
Over the previous six months, Bill had spent untold hours here, sometimes sleeping overnight on a sofa he’d wedged into the room that was previously the hardware store’s business office. A room that, it now occurred to Kathleen, would make the perfect place for clandestine trysts. An image of him there, tangled up with someone else, speared cruelly through her brain.
Kathleen had spent time here occasionally as well, sometimes sitting next to a volunteer or two—she liked the retiree women, who exuded a more peaceful, purposeful energy than the manic young volunteers and interns—helping with data entry. But she never failed to feel like an outsider. She didn’t know the volunteers’ and interns’ inside jokes or share their constantly talked about battle fatigue. And for all the times she’d walked into the place, Obama and JFK at the door, looking so very lifelike, still made her flinch—sometimes with an audible gasp—and feel like an idiot as a result.
Today was no exception. (Fucking JFK. How fitting that a philanderer welcomed people to Bill Held HQ.) The volunteers scattered about the room, some young, some septuagenarian, swiveled their heads almost simultaneously to look at Kathleen as she entered, their faces dropping into slack-jawed, mildly fearful surprise. One young man, beer in hand, stopped mid-swig, lowered his bottle to the desk where he sat, and jerked his hands to his lap. It was past seven o’clock and, as such, not surprising that people had started drinking. But why this floppy-haired, baby-faced man in a Columbia sweatshirt seemed to think Kathleen would disapprove of his alcohol consumption, she had no idea. Did they all think of her as some kind of browbeating harridan? (No drinking! No having fun! No screwing campaign staffers!)
From the direction of the stockroom in the back of the store—which Desmond referred to, insufferably, as his “war room”—Kathleen heard voices and laughter. Desmond was saying something about “spinning shit into gold,” and a man was making, inexplicably, a barking noise. There was a woman’s laughter, too, husky and knowing.
The floppy-haired volunteer sprang from his desk and went back to the stockroom. Seconds later Bill emerged. When he saw Kathleen, his expression, the satisfied afterglow of a good laugh, morphed into what looked like mild shock. “Wow,” he said. “You look great, Kath. Your hair, and your makeup…”
“Thanks.” Hearing him compliment her didn’t feel quite as satisfying as she had expected it to. Maybe it had to do with how he looked. Not rumpled and exhausted, like he had when Kathleen had seen him a few days earlier, but normal—clean-shaven and seemingly well rested, in a T-shirt and jeans, a beer in his hand. As if nothing in his life had changed at all.
“Where’s Aggie?” Kathleen asked.
“She’s in the office with her friend Melissa. They’re working on some school project. Something about women’s health or something? They were very secretive and giggly about it.”
“Oh no.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is—” Kathleen became suddenly aware of the volunteers in the room, who had returned to their tasks but in a stiff, overly intentional way, like bad movie extras, clearly eavesdropping. “Can we talk outside?”
“Yeah, sure. We can go out back. You want a beer?”
“No. I don’t want a beer.”
She followed Bill outside, to the small parking lot behind the store. The dumpster they stood beside stank of moldy cardboard. The smell triggered a memory she couldn’t quite place of some other time she and Bill had been together—a happier time. Had they made out in the vicinity of a dumpster at some point in their courtship? It was entirely possible; there was a time, before she and Bill were married, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. The way they were standing now—stiff and still, side by side instead of face-to-face, with a good six feet between them—it was hard to believe. It was even harder to believe that two weeks ago they’d slept together in the same bed.
She hated that there was still a piece of her that missed him.
“You really do look good, Kath,” Bill said.
“Thank you.” Now it was slightly more satisfying.
“But you looked good before, too. You know that, right?”
Kathleen squinted at him. “What is this? You’re trying to reassure me that the reason you were cheating on me isn’t because I was unattractive? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No,” he said testily. “I’m just telling you— Look, forget it. I don’t want to fight. What’s the issue with Aggie?”
“Aggie and her friends,” said Kathleen, “chiefly Melissa, are trying to start a Yes We Bleed Club at their school.”
“Shit,” he said. “That’s not good.”
“No. If Aggie gets involved, you know it’s going to get out. And we always said…” They’d always said that when it came to Bill’s politicking and campaigning, they would, as much as possible, keep Aggie out of the public eye. (Which meant that Kathleen could steer clear herself. It worked out well.) No using their child as a prop to make Bill look good and thereby risk her being targeted by internet trolls, kidnappers (Bill thought Kathleen’s fear of this was a bit extreme, given that he was only a state assemblyman), and mean girls—which had now happened. Case in point.
“We should talk to her,” Bill said. “Together.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.”
“Okay,” said Kathleen. And for a single, excruciating instant she felt almost as if they were still a pair. If there was one thing that had remained rock-solid in their marriage, it was the way they parented Aggie together. Other women Kathleen knew were always complaining about the arguments they got into with their spouses over differences in parenting styles or discipline, but Kathleen couldn’t relate. She even used to feel a little smug about it.
As she followed Bill inside, she had to grit her teeth to hold back the sob welling in the back of her throat.
He rapped on the door of his office. “Hey, Ags. Mom’s here.”
He pushed the door open, releasing an overpowering wave of baby powder and floral-scented air. Aggie and Melissa sat on the floor, which was littered with opened boxes and packages of panty liners, tampons, and maxi pads.
“Welcome to Greenchester Yes We Bleed headquarters!” said Melissa. She wore a wide-necked This is What a Feminist Looks Like T-shirt that slipped from one shoulder, revealing a red bra strap. “Like my earrings?” She tapped at the white tubular objects dangling from her ears, which, Kathleen realized, with horror, were in fact applicatorless tampons tied by their strings to earring hooks. “We’re going to give them out at school to raise menstrual awareness.”
Aggie looked up at Kathleen, pink faced, blinking. “I thought you weren’t coming until later,” she said.
“No.” Kathleen folded her arms across her chest. “I’m here now.”
Aggie kept her gaze locked on Kathleen’s a few seconds more, seeming to weigh her next move, then resumed stuffing handfuls of sanitary pads into ziplock bags. “We’re putting together period kits to distribute to refugees,” she said.
“Yeah, we just have to find some refugees,” said Melissa. “And we’re also going to—”
“No,” said Bill. “No, no, no, no, no. No earrings, no refugees. Melissa, can you give us a minute with Aggie? There are Cokes and seltzers in the fridge out there. Help yourself.”
“Is there kombucha?”
“What? No. There’s no kombucha.”
Melissa let out a disdainful breath, got laboriously to her feet, and left.
“Aggie,” said Bill, “this needs to stop. If you want to cheer Melissa and your other friends on from the sidelines, that’s fine. But you cannot—cannot—get directly involved with this, do you understand?”
Aggie’s eyes darted from Bill’s to Kathleen’s and back again. “I don’t understand why you guys are being like this!” she said. “You always said to stand up for the things you believe in. And I believe in this.”
“And that’s great, Aggie,” Kathleen said. “We’re proud of you, really, but—”
“It’s not right that periods have to be some big, embarrassing, scary thing.”
Scary. Now Kathleen understood. How could she have been so dense not to have seen it before? This wasn’t just about Aggie’s convictions when it came to refugee women’s menstrual needs or about standing up to the popular kids who had bullied her. It was more than that. It was personal.
Kathleen had talked with Aggie about menstruation, of course, starting when she was nine or ten. But had she ever really connected with her about it on an emotional level? She’d prided herself on handling it better than her own mother, who had merely left a book called Growing and Changing! on the foot of Kathleen’s bed the day of her eleventh birthday with a note that said, Let me know if you have any questions. But maybe she’d still fallen short with Aggie.
“Is that what this is about?” she asked Aggie quietly. “Are you scared about getting your period?”
Bill cleared his throat. “I can leave you two alone if you—”
“No, it’s not about that!” said Aggie. “I just hate that you feel so embarrassed and sad about the thing that happened with your period, Mom. And I hate that some people don’t have all the period supplies they need. It’s not right.”
“Look, Ags,” said Bill. He crouched down, bringing himself closer to eye level with her, and took her hand. “Your mom and I both really admire your conviction. You’re an amazing kid, you know that. But if you do this and people find out, it could be really, really bad for my campaign.”
Kathleen’s jaw nearly dropped off the bottom of her face. “Your campaign?”
Bill twisted back toward her. “Yes, it would be bad for my campaign. It would look like our daughter is taking sides. Against me.” He stood up, laughing with gentle disbelief. “I mean, Kath, come on—”
“But I’m not taking sides,” Aggie said. A dent of hurt appeared between her eyebrows. “I would never do that.”
“We know you’re not,” Kathleen said as calmly as she could manage in the midst of her mounting urge to strangle her husband. “Why don’t you go find Melissa, okay? Dad and I just need a minute.”
Aggie obeyed, and when she was gone, Kathleen slapped Bill’s desk so hard her palm stung. “How dare you make this about your campaign. I was worried about the exposure Aggie might get, or the hell she’d catch from the little shits at her school. Not about how it would affect you.”
“Well, it’s about both obviously. Of course I care how it would affect her. But how’s it going to look if my own daughter becomes one of these Yes We Bleed nuts? These women hate me, Kath. And now there’s the whole Yes We Age contingent, and they’re pissed off about the fact that I was with a younger woman.”
“Good,” said Kathleen. She couldn’t believe she’d missed that hashtag.
“You can’t tell me that you actually don’t care if I win or lose this thing, Kath.”
“You won’t lose,” she said. “This is New York! When’s the last time New York elected a Republican senator?”
“1992. Al D’Amato.” This was spoken by Desmond, who had at some point sidled up and now leaned in the doorway, having apparently pushed the partially ajar door farther open. “But that doesn’t mean Krÿer can’t win,” he continued, as if he’d been part of their conversation all along. “The old rules don’t apply anymore. For the moment, female voters still hate Krÿer slightly more than they hate your husband. But if we want to hang on to that lead, we’ve got to change the conversation. More Bill and his policies. Less you and your uterus. Right, Billy boy?”
Bill seemed to shrink a few centimeters. “Right.”
At which point somebody else sauntered up and draped an arm over Desmond’s shoulder: an attractive blonde in her thirties, pencil skirt, blouse untucked, shoeless in her nylons. Kathleen had met her a handful of times before—Shelly or Shelby, some sort of publicist from the state Democratic Party. She always laughed too hard at Bill’s jokes, tittering like an idiot.
“Oh, hi, Katrine!” she said. “I didn’t recognize you at first! Your hair is so…” She wobbled toward Kathleen, clearly quite drunk, and began fluffing Kathleen’s hair. “It’s so pretty! Billy, isn’t it pretty?”
“Very pretty,” Bill said.
“I always thought you were mush prettier than Tish,” the woman said. “And Caroline.”
Desmond lunged into the room. “Okay!” he said, spearing his arm through the crook of the woman’s elbow and yanking her away.
“Bye-bye, Billy and Katrine!” the woman called over her shoulder as she left.
Finally alone, Kathleen gave Bill a long, hard look. “Bye-bye, Billy,” she said.
On her way out of the campaign office, after flinching at the cardboard cutouts near the door, Kathleen thrust a hand against JFK’s stupid, handsome face and shoved, sending him toppling backward onto the floor.
* * *
—
In the car on the way to Melissa’s house, Melissa, from the back seat, described in detail the other menstrual product accessories she was thinking of making, with help from her mother and the other members of the club: bracelets, necklaces, purses, and pencil cases made of tampons and pads. Tampon and pad cases made of tampons and pads. She was going to set up an Etsy store called Cycle Chic and use a percentage of the profits to put together more period packages for refugee women, once they found some.
“And obviously,” Melissa added, “we’ll sell the menstrual cup hats everyone’s wearing.”
Kathleen had seen pictures and patterns starting to circulate online: knitted and crocheted hats shaped like menstrual cups, the bottom few rows white and the rest dark red, peaking to an elongated nipple of a top. To Kathleen’s eye, they made the women who wore them look more like breast-headed elves than menstrual rights warriors.
