The Society of Shame, page 4
The only person Kathleen talked to at length was her boss, Cody, who summoned her into his office via instant message. He had started just six months earlier, and Kathleen was still getting used to him. Pointy chinned and ginger haired, with ears placed slightly too high on his head, Cody was fifteen years younger than her, judging by the college graduation year on his LinkedIn profile. Having a gynecologist in her early thirties was one thing, but having a boss young enough to think of Pearl Jam as an oldies band was borderline humiliating.
Cody had been recruited from an online self-publishing platform as part of the leadership’s recent drive to “implement new and innovative approaches to publishing, aligned with the way people consume content today.” Mostly this seemed to mean hiring nineteen-year-old interns to keep up the company’s social media feeds. Cody was one of a handful of more senior-level people (if you could be senior level at thirty-two) who’d been brought on board, but thus far he didn’t seem to be doing anything differently besides referring to their weekly status meetings as “huddles.”
“How are you doing?” he asked Kathleen meaningfully. He had a desk that could be adjusted to standing or sitting positions. Right now, it was somewhere in between, and he was bent over with his elbows on it, elfin chin in his hands.
“Fine, great,” she said. She was really not in the mood for Cody. Or anyone, really. But especially Cody.
His eyes widened momentarily—a tic that Kathleen and her coworkers had dubbed his “anti-blink”—which had the effect of making it seem like he thought what you were saying was unbelievable in some way. “Well, you’ve always been really steady keeled,” he said. “That’s what we love about you.”
“Even-keeled. Right.”
He grinned. “Back to editing. Excellent.” He pressed a button and the desk whirred upward. “So, I’ve got great news. There’s this incredible new initiative I want you to be a part of: printuap publishing. It’s something we’re going to be piloting next year, and we want to make sure we get some experienced people”—here he poked a finger in her direction with an extra-large anti-blink—“on board.”
“I’m sorry, what is it?”
“It’s super exciting. We—you, that is—and your team will be chunking up some of our new releases and bestsellers for a new content app.”
She realized now that he’d said “print-to-app.” (“Printuap” had actually sounded more interesting. Possibly French.)
“Users get one free book to start,” Cody was saying, “and every day they get an alert from the app and can choose a five-, ten-, twenty-, or thirty-minute read. The more they read each day, the more reward points they earn, for up to fifty percent off their next book. There are all kinds of add-ons and incentives, and if you upgrade to a premium subscription, you get the book without ads.”
“Ads? Doesn’t that kind of…disrupt the flow of the book?”
Anti-blink. “No! That’s the best part—and that’s where you come in. Product placement.”
Kathleen felt the tug of a pernicious menstrual cramp deep within her pelvis. “Excuse me?”
Cody pushed the button on the side of his desk and it whirred downward again—so far down that now he was in a squatting position. “Here, have a seat.” He rolled a stool-like object covered in what looked like yeti fur toward Kathleen.
“You work the brand names in seamlessly, and nobody even notices,” he explained. “Seriously, I’ve read these things; it’s incredible. They just, like, seep in. What’s something you’ve read recently?”
“Um, I read a book about Eleanor Roosevelt’s years as First Lady not too long ago.” She had been reading up on politician’s wives—the more empowered and interesting-seeming ones, specifically. She’d found it therapeutic, if intimidating. Now it just seemed embarrassing, identifying with Abigail or Eleanor or Michelle when, in reality, she was a poor man’s Hillary.
“Okay.” Cody thought for a minute. “So for something like that, we’d try to pitch some older, more classic brands that have been around since the nineteen-fifties. Coca-Cola, Tiffany, Cadillac—they had Cadillacs then, right?”
“It would be the thirties and forties. But yes.” (How had this person gotten a job in publishing?)
“Great. So you’d find unobtrusive ways to work the brand names into the text once or twice. Eleanor Roosevelt loved expensive jewelry and probably liked things from places like Tiffany’s. Something like that. But better.”
Cody must have seen the seasick look on Kathleen’s face, because he quickly added, “But most of the books we’re piloting for this will be genre fiction and celebrity memoirs. Stuff you probably won’t mind messing with.”
Kathleen did her best to smile, but inside she felt like one giant wince. “And the authors are okay with this?”
“Totally. They get an extra little chunk of change for allowing us to create special print-to-app editions of their books, and they still get royalties when their books sell. It’s a whole new pair of dimes.”
It took Kathleen a second. “Paradigm.”
“Right.” This time he didn’t smile at the correction. “And you’d still work on your regular titles, of course. But I have a feeling you’re going to be insanely good at this.” Anti-blink. “It’s a chance to flex those creative muscles. You used to do a little writing, didn’t you?”
A little writing. That just about summed it up, didn’t it? “Not really,” she said.
“Still,” he said, “I know you’ll rock this.”
“Cool,” said Kathleen.
When she returned to her desk, she clicked the link to a tutorial for the print-to-app platform that Cody had sent. Get ready to be a Wallace rock star! the introduction exhorted. Wallace is the first and only platform exclusively dedicated to the gamification of published content for today’s fast-paced bibliophile.
“Any idea why it’s called Wallace?” she asked her cubicle neighbor, a sweet, young, moonfaced production editor named Simone who always looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“The guys who started it were super into David Foster Wallace,” she said.
“Of course they were,” Kathleen said.
Ready to give Wallace a try? the next screen read. Choose up to three of the brand names in the box on the left to incorporate into the content below. Remember: A great Wallace experience is one where the reader doesn’t even notice the sponsored content. You got this!
Kathleen began reading the “content,” which appeared to be an excerpt from a poorly written chick-lit novel.
I couldn’t believe it! Mr. Perfect was going to be pulling up in his car in fifteen minutes and I was still standing there in my robe, my long auburn hair wet and glistening from the shower, staring desperately at my overstuffed closet. I was totally undecided about what to wear. Mr. Perfect had said dinner, but did that mean burgers and fries or filet mignon? Champagne or beer? Cute top, skinny jeans, and boots? Or cocktail dress and heels? Slouchy tote or beaded clutch?
Kathleen looked at the list of brand names next to the text—Kohl’s, Moët & Chandon, Coors, BCBG, Mazda, Lululemon, BMW, Pepsi, Hulu, Levi’s, and Tamara Mellon—and then back to the text again. She was no marketing genius, but who exactly was the audience here? Would someone who shopped at Kohl’s or drank Coors really be in the market for Moët and Lululemon? What did Hulu have to do with anything? And who was Tamara Mellon?
She sank her head into her hands. Did she have to debase herself in this way, today of all days? She shut her browser and returned to President Fat. But she didn’t manage to concentrate on that for long, either. It had been a full five hours since she’d gone on Twitter.
She decided to reward herself for her willpower by taking a quick look.
To her dismay, #Periodgate was still going strong. She switched over to Instagram, craving the normalcy of her friends’ pictures of everyday life: baked goods, kids, pets, plants. (She didn’t post anything herself. As was the case on Twitter and Facebook, she preferred to see but not be seen.) But the first image that greeted her was a photo of Margo in a straw-colored loose-knit poncho, delicately torn jeans, and carefully tousled hair, standing in her all-native-plant dry garden. She held a tiny brown bottle in two hands, elbows pointed outward like a choirboy with a candle. Her head, as always, listed to one side, and she wore a serene smile.
The caption read:
If, like my wonderful older sister, Kathleen, and many other women in their forties, you are experiencing perimenopausal symptoms like night sweats, irritability, and very heavy or irregular periods, sage seed oils and lotions can work wonders to gentle the effects of your body’s changing hormone and energy flow! In honor of my sister, I’m offering free shipping on all sage seed products for the next 72 hours. Blissings! #Aging #NaturalRemedies #Namaste
Her own sister. Perfect.
Kathleen stuffed her phone back into her bag and returned to President Fat. She’d just gotten to the part where the extra-large bathtub was being installed in the White House, which she found oddly comforting to read—Taft, too, must have known what it felt like to be humiliated—when Simone’s face rose up over the partition between them. “Did you see?” she asked.
“See what?”
“The New York Times just published an op-ed by Lauren Trissler online. About you.”
Oh god, no, thought Kathleen. Please, no. The Times was one of the few news sources she had avoided looking at so far. Once the Gray Lady deigned to cover Kathleen’s sordid personal tragedy in their pages, she decided, that was it. Her dignity would be completely gone, her life over. As for Lauren Trissler, she was the feminist writer of the moment. Her most recent book, Your Body Is a Battlefield, was an international bestseller. Lauren had half a million followers on Twitter and disposed of trolls like they were lint from her pocket.
Though Kathleen considered herself a feminist, and agreed with much of what Lauren Trissler propounded, she also thought she was overrated, and at times insufferable. One thing was sure, though: if Lauren Trissler had written about Kathleen’s period debacle, it was sure to spark a whole new round of controversy and debate, because everything Lauren Trissler wrote did. Which meant that the world would be talking about Kathleen’s uterine emissions for at least another week. Fuck.
Simone’s head descended from view, and she began reading aloud—very loud—from her computer: “ ‘Reaction to the now-famous photo of Kathleen Held is an unfortunate testament to Americans’ ignorance and hypocrisy when it comes to women’s health needs. What does it say about us as a society that we’re more fixated on one woman’s mishap, the kind nearly every menstruating person has experienced at one time or another, than her husband’s act of betrayal? Held inadvertently brought on a reckoning that is long overdue. It’s time for women and all others who menstruate to own and celebrate their bodily functions, refuse to feel ashamed, and reject the misogynistic notion that we are unclean, irrational, or otherwise inferior when we menstruate, or that we are somehow less-than after menopause. Moreover, it’s time to make free menstrual supplies mandatory in all public restrooms and tax-free nationwide. If we can’t manage that, then there’s no way we’ll ever achieve true gender parity.’ ”
Simone’s head appeared above the divider again, eyes solemn and rheumy once more. “Kathleen,” she said, her voice hushed and awestruck. “You’re a hero.”
“Kathleen Held?”
Kathleen turned around to see an intern with the mail cart, offering her a box from Amazon. When the intern had moved on, she opened it to find a large package of adult diapers. She read the note on the packing slip: LOL. KRYER 4 SENATE!! XOXO JUSTICE JONNY
With a trembling hand, Kathleen switched off her lamp, shut down her computer, and left the office, dumping the contents of the box in the kitchenette trash on her way out.
* * *
—
Back in Greenchester, Kathleen sat in her CR-V in the train station parking lot and called Aggie. She hoped to god Margo had kept her promise and kept Aggie and her cousins away from the news.
“Hey, sweetie! How’s the lake?” Kathleen said when Aggie picked up. She tried to convey normality but ended up sounding like a flight attendant on coke.
Bill had always been better than her when it came to discussing serious subjects with Aggie—things like death (in both generalities and specifics, e.g., her grandfather, her turtle) and the depravity of humankind. It was one of the divisions of labor between them that they’d never discussed but had fallen into place automatically, effortlessly. Bill’s age-appropriate explanation of 9/11 on a trip to the city when Aggie was nine was masterful. The Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, Bill’s father’s terminal cancer diagnosis—all gently but never condescendingly presented to Aggie in a way that filled Kathleen with deep affection and appreciation.
Then again, the bastard always did know exactly what to say. Effortlessly eloquent, some stupid, fawning female columnist had called him once. Maybe he’d banged her, too.
“The lake is really nice!” Aggie said. “Really peaceful. We went on a rowboat and went fishing. Well, Salinger and Flannery did. But I wasn’t really comfortable with it. Hooking the worms, and then bothering the fish. So, I just kind of hung out in the boat and used the binoculars.”
“That sounds great. So, listen, Ag, did Aunt Margo or Uncle Nick tell you anything about what’s been going on? At our house, I mean?”
“No. What is it?”
“Well,” Kathleen said. She paused, still not sure how much to say. “There was a fire in the garage.” She heard a sharp intake of breath from Aggie and quickly added, “But everything’s fine! The house is fine! And nobody got hurt!” (And your seat cushion is also a flotation device!!)
“That’s good,” said Aggie. “Nugget’s okay, too? He must have been going crazy.”
Aggie, like Bill, adored Nugget, although his lunatic barking when cars and visitors approached distressed her in what seemed to be a deeply felt way. Then, Aggie felt everything deeply. She cried at commercials and, when she was younger, insisted on giving proper burials, complete with prayers, to dead squirrels and birds she spotted on the road. The far edge of the backyard was sprinkled with tiny rock piles, marking roadkill graves.
God, this was going to be hard.
“Does it look weird with the garage burned down?” Aggie asked.
“It didn’t burn down quite all the way. But they’ll still probably need to knock it down and rebuild it from scratch.”
“It’ll be cool,” Aggie said, after a pause. Kathleen could picture her, tugging on her single, long braid that way she did when she was thinking hard or resolving herself to something. “Getting to see it get built, I mean. We can stay in the house while they’re doing it, right? We won’t have to move out?”
“Of course not!” The words spilled from Kathleen’s mouth before she could stop them. She couldn’t do this over the phone—tell Aggie that her life as she’d known it for the past twelve and a half years was about to change irrevocably. “Things might just be a little…weird for a while. That’s all. Dad and I had a bit of a fight over it. But everything will be fine.”
“Okay…” said Aggie. “Can I talk to Dad?”
“He’s traveling for a couple of days. But you’ll see him when you get back. Everything’s okay, really. I promise.”
Then, in the decidedly more tweenish tone that had begun periodically popping into her voice of late, Aggie said, “Okay…”
“What?”
“You sound weird.”
“I guess I just miss you,” said Kathleen. It was the only thing she could bring herself to say.
* * *
—
“That goddamned narcissistic bastard,” Bobbie said, and pulled Kathleen into a warm, bosomy embrace.
Kathleen had never quite understood her best friend’s breasts. They seemed to converge into one great mound in the middle of her chest. But their (its?) presence made for particular snug and comforting hugs—and Kathleen wasn’t generally a hugger. Tonight, she could have stood there on Bobbie’s doorstep, engulfed in her arms and uni-breast forever.
“You’re better off without him,” Bobbie said when she finally broke the embrace. “I have the guest room all set up for you. But first, rosé.”
They’d been friends since Bobbie’s youngest, Andrew, and Aggie were in preschool and then elementary school together. The two children had been inseparable until second grade, bonded by their shared love of drawing, birds, pretending to be birds, and drawing pictures of themselves pretending to be birds. Kathleen wasn’t working then, and she and Bobbie spent many a morning or afternoon together, taking the kids to playgrounds and children’s museums, library story times and puppet shows (so many god-awful puppet shows…). The children grew apart when Andrew became obsessed with hockey, the Yankees, and Minecraft, and Aggie drifted toward books, insects, and playing the flute. But Bobbie and Kathleen’s friendship endured, despite the fact that they, themselves, had little in common.
Bobbie was a joiner (League of Women Voters, Greenchester Garden Tour, Greenchester Gourd Festival Committee) and a doer. She decorated for every holiday and season and was genuinely happy to be the beneficiary of regifted scented candles. She loved hosting parties and would have traded her creaky 1920s colonial for Kathleen’s house in a heartbeat. “It has such great flow,” Bobbie said with a sigh every time she came over.
