Sheer, page 19
I want to ask Elizabeth if this book includes tips on remaining closeted at the behest of your angel investor, while being the aspirational face of a company. Is there advice in these pages on how to fend off the aggressive groping of male investors whose money you can’t afford to turn down? Elizabeth doesn’t know about the latter challenge. No one does, besides Ellen and the males in question. Sharing these stories with Elizabeth would make them harder for me to compartmentalize.
“I could write that book,” I tell Elizabeth, suppressing a mordant laugh. “Why would I want to read it? Especially right now.”
“I thought it might make you feel part of something bigger than Reveal,” she says. “It might give you a wider perspective.”
We sit in my living room, she on the blue tufted sofa, me on my preferred sun-worn armchair, and sip our Scotch. For the first few minutes we are uncharacteristically quiet. Then Elizabeth breaks the stillness with the simplest of questions.
“Are you okay? You seem more depressed than when I was here last. You look even thinner than usual, too.”
I don’t know how to answer. What is “okay”? I am sheltered, fed, hydrated, washed, and clothed. My body is swaddled in high-thread-count sheets and Egyptian-cotton towels. My skin is pampered with the best products on the market. I am not, in any shape or form, caressed or nurtured or loved. Does that make me okay?
“I’m fine,” I reply.
“That’s not the same thing as okay.”
“Fine is better than okay.”
“I disagree.”
I swallow an aggressive amount of Scotch. It burns despite the whiskey’s eighteen years in a European barrel. Some things are beyond the mellowing effect of age.
“What do you want me to say, Elizabeth?” I ask, heat rising in my voice. “That I’m crying my eyes out every day? I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“I’m scared.” Saying it out loud makes it real. How can I come back from a loss like this?
“I was in a meeting with her yesterday. I absolutely should not be telling you this.”
My throat tightens at the reference to Amanda.
“How did she look?”
Elizabeth’s eyes are impassive.
“Did she look upset?” I clarify.
“She seemed tired, jittery.”
“I won’t ask what you talked about.”
“I wouldn’t tell you if you did.” Elizabeth’s sternness softens. “You will be okay, Max. Or fine, whichever you prefer.”
“I don’t know if I will.” That tremor from days ago returns to my hands. “I’m nothing without this company. It’s my whole life.”
“I know, Max. Maybe it shouldn’t be.”
“Don’t tell me you’re choosing this moment to lecture me about work-life balance.”
“Fair enough.” Elizabeth sips from her glass. “Have you left the apartment at all? It might help.”
“Now you want me to leave the apartment,” I say, my voice growing heated again. “No. I can guarantee you it won’t help.”
“You should go outside, Max, walk in the park. Get some air.”
“I don’t feel safe going outside alone.”
Elizabeth frowns.
“Why? What do you think is going to happen?”
I am too embarrassed to tell Elizabeth about Esther and her mother, that I let a random woman and her pre-K child make me cower and hide. “I’d consider it if you would go with me.”
Elizabeth’s eyes cloud with what looks like regret and she tucks some brown hair behind her ear.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Neither of us says much after that. At some point, I refill our glasses and turn on some music. Top hits from the 1990s flow from my speaker system. I don’t have the energy to find a more suitable playlist, so we sit there and listen to one woman’s loneliness killing her and another woman’s genie getting rubbed the right way. Eventually, we finish our drinks. Elizabeth stands to leave. In the vestibule, she wraps me in a big hug, and I give in, momentarily, to the sensation of being comforted. Then she pulls out of the hug and, hands resting on my shoulders, peers straight into my eyes. She still doesn’t have on a scrap of makeup.
“I’ll always be here, Max, in your life. I will never disappear.”
She walks out the door, into the hallway, and presses the button for the elevator. It arrives and she gets on, without a glance in my direction. I close the door to my apartment and switch off the music. The tremor in my hands is still there. There is nothing I can do to change the future. However, my past belongs to me. I return to my computer and continue to type.
Building Trust
The Chicago trip was brutal. I was only there for thirty-six hours, but it felt like three years. The personal appearance was standard fare. The store hosted a cocktail event in its beauty department, where they set up tables with centerpieces of Reveal products surrounded by pomegranates, cherries, and strawberries. Ripeness was the not-so-subtextual message. A bar served sparkling-wine cocktails with pomegranate syrup, meant to mimic the color of the original Flush. Reveal makeup artists oversaw vanity stations where they dabbed guests with our fragrances, tinted lip balms, and latest shades of Glow, until everyone at the party shone like they’d been anointed.
My job was to mingle with the women. Make an impression. Anything to encourage them to buy, buy, buy. At first, I thought I was on a roll. I chatted to a buxom brunette about perfect highlighter placement. I cooed over another woman’s manicure. A platinum blonde offered me restaurant recommendations for my trip. I did my best to manifest the considerable charm on which Amanda had complimented me.
I was mid-conversation with the platinum blonde when a young brunette approached me. Only an archaeologist could have unearthed her skin beneath her many layers of makeup. Dark brown contoured sections hollowed out her cheeks. I spied more contouring on the sides of her nose, which made it appear far thinner than what nature had gifted her. Her lips were swollen with what looked to be more than just gloss. Injectable filler, I assumed, something that was suddenly all the rage. At times it seemed the entire female population had embraced cosmetic surgery and needles with the casualness of swallowing vitamins and minerals. I had the feeling I often encountered with strangers these days: that I was speaking with a blow-up doll, not a live human being.
“I’m such a huge fan of Reveal,” said the young brunette.
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s always nice to hear.”
“When is Reveal going to release a foundation?” she asked. The platinum blonde took this as her cue to leave.
“That’s an interesting idea,” I said. “But we don’t believe in foundation. You certainly don’t need it.” Flattery would save me.
“I love Reveal’s products, so do my friends. We’d kill for a foundation by you.”
“Women don’t need foundation.” I smiled. “It’s the patriarchy that’s made women feel that way. As I’m sure you know, Reveal is all about releasing women from that old-fashioned expectation.”
“I don’t wear foundation because of the patriarchy,” the young brunette pressed. “I wear it because it makes me feel good.”
“Sure you do,” I said.
“That’s a bit patronizing,” the young brunette said. “You think I’m incapable of making my own decisions, that all my beauty choices are because of the patriarchy?”
“That’s not what I said. I meant—”
“The problem with your older generation is you lecture us on wearing a lot of makeup, something we enjoy, and make us feel like it’s anti-feminist. Meanwhile, you never examine your own choices.”
“My choices?” Instinctively, I brought a hand to my cheek. I was thirty-five, but I knew I looked closer to thirty since I worked out every day and avoided the sun. I didn’t smile enough to have crow’s-feet.
“Yes, you’re tiny. You must be a size zero, right? Is being a size zero feminist?” the young brunette asked.
“I don’t see what my size has to do with anything. We’re here to talk about Reveal products, not my body.” Crow’s-feet be damned, I smiled big and wide, the way you smile when you wish you could scream.
“You’re the face of Reveal. You represent a beauty standard. Maybe you should consider how inclusive that standard is.”
“Well, thanks for the feedback,” I said. “We appreciate your business.” Then I practically dove toward the bar. “Do you have anything harder than that?” I asked the bartender as she reached for a glass of sparkling wine. “Seriously, rubbing alcohol would be fine.”
Somehow, in the nine years since the Barneys lunch, I had gone from being the young woman belittled as too naive to understand an older woman’s beauty needs, to being the old lady at a Chicago Nordstrom, chastised for leading younger women astray. No matter what I did, I was never enough. Maxine Thomas couldn’t be the woman everyone desired.
In my hotel room that night, a half-eaten tray of salad on the desk and a second pour of Scotch on the nightstand by the bed, I called Elizabeth. To vent, yes, but also for reassurance that I was not who that young brunette believed me to be. The call went to voicemail. Elizabeth had just started seeing Arthur. They had met on a dating website. She was probably out with him, so I sent Elizabeth a text.
Nordstrom event was rough. Wish you had been there. These contour-happy 20 year-olds are killing me.
I swallowed a deep glug of Scotch. Then I called Amanda on her cell. Just to check in, I told myself. If she offers some moral support, all the better. Amanda answered on the second ring.
“How was the event?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“Only fine?”
“You know me, every Midwestern woman’s shining ideal.” I sipped again from my glass.
“Are you okay? You sound different.”
“I was calling to check in about updates.”
“Of course. Let’s go over your messages and schedule.”
I heard papers shuffling on Amanda’s desk in New York. I wished I was in New York watching her shuffle those papers.
“You’re still at the office?” I asked. “I should have called on the desk line.”
“I had some stuff I wanted to catch up on,” she said. “Okay, so you had a message earlier fr—”
“Do I look old?” I blurted out.
“What?” Concern filled Amanda’s voice. “Max, that’s crazy. You’re not even forty.”
“I will be forty in five years. So that makes me almost old, then?”
“No. Stop. What happened, Max? Did something happen at the event?”
“I’m done,” I said. “I can’t be the woman people want me to be.”
“You don’t need to be that woman, just be true to yourself.”
I wanted to reach through the phone and shake Amanda by the shoulders. This younger generation and their belief that authenticity would set them free. That they could wear their insecurities to the office like a baggy sweatshirt and scruffy sneakers and suffer no consequences. Some of us can’t get away with that. We wear sharply tailored suits for a reason. What did twenty-something women know about coming of age in a society that demands your toughness and that wants to eradicate your vulnerability as the price of success? What did Amanda know about having an entire company’s fate reliant on your persona? Authenticity is a pipe dream. Women need to be more realistic to survive.
“It doesn’t work like that. I am the founder of Reveal and that comes with huge responsibility. My story, my appearance, it all reflects on Reveal. I can’t behave however I want. I’m a leader.”
I thought back to years ago, when I realized I had to be a Boss, with a capital B, that it was my duty as much as being a visionary.
“You’re a great leader, Max. I mean it,” said Amanda. “You’re the reason I wanted to work at Reveal. I admire you so much.”
“Thanks,” I said. “God, look at me venting to you. This is crazy. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Bother me,” Amanda said. “Anytime you want.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good night.”
* * *
—
That Chicago trip cemented my reliance on Amanda, a reliance that crossed over from the functional to the uncomfortable realm of emotions. Once unflappable, I angled for whatever boosts of morale she could toss me.
In the year that followed, Reveal focused less on product expansion and more on courting new customers. We did a series of special edition colors and packaging for the entire Flush and Glow categories with a slew of fashion designers. The goal was to make Reveal more appealing to a younger generation, the very cohort whose contoured ambassador had chastised me at the Chicago Nordstrom. To that end, we also made a big push into Sephora, starting with the New York flagship and working our way across Sephora locations throughout the United States. Young women no longer shopped at department stores. They demanded accessibility, and according to Reveal’s sales team, Sephora, with its plethora of brands in drugstore-style gondolas, was the retail equivalent of a wide-armed hug.
One morning in 2011, I arrived at the office to find Amanda’s desk empty. It was the first time this had happened in two years. She wasn’t in the kitchen pouring me a cup of coffee. She wasn’t in the bathroom. I texted her from my iPhone. There was no reply. In the kitchen, I brewed a pot of coffee for myself. While it gurgled, I riffled through the papers on Amanda’s desk to search for any clues to her absence. Her appointment book listed all the day’s meetings that we had reviewed the previous evening. Amanda liked to keep a handwritten hard copy of my schedule as a backup for the synced Outlook calendar on our computers, an analog quirk I found charming.
By 10 a.m., there was no word from Amanda, on my phone or otherwise. I was in my third meeting of the day, a deathly gathering to scavenge our monthly operating budget for cost-cutting opportunities. A young woman who normally worked in publicity sat at Amanda’s desk. Elizabeth had loaned her to me as a temporary fix. Someone from accounting was mid-diatribe when I glanced through the glass walls of my office and spied a petite woman with dark hair leaning over the publicity woman from behind, gesturing at something on the desk. The publicity woman stood up with an aggravated shrug and walked away. The dark-haired woman took her seat. She looked over her shoulder in the direction of my office. It was Amanda. Her eyes were swollen and red and her normally even skin was blotchy.
“I need to cut this meeting short,” I said, interrupting the accountant’s monologue. “Could one of you please send Amanda in here?”
There was a scraping of chairs against my office’s concrete floor as everyone stood up, gathered their pens and notepads, and exited through the doors. Once the accounting group had filed out, Amanda entered.
“Close the door behind you,” I instructed her.
She did as I asked, then sat across from my desk. The underside of her nose was raw. Her hair, usually a silky curtain, was tangled. Errant strands stuck out in staticky clumps.
“I’m so sorry I was late this morning and that I didn’t return your texts or calls. It will never happen again.”
Amanda’s eyes were trained on my desk.
“No, it won’t, not if you want to continue working here.” I paused. Amanda looked so mournful. A maternal instinct I had never felt seized my senses. “Are you okay?” I asked in a far gentler tone.
Amanda’s lips began to quiver. Tears filled her dark eyes. She swallowed visibly, an effort, I assumed, to maintain control over her emotions.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not. I won’t let you leave this office until you tell me what’s going on.”
Her face registered surprise at my insistence. She had obviously assumed that a meek apology and a promise of better behavior would suffice and that I would have no interest in whatever messiness was behind her negligence. Her eyes narrowed as she calculated how little she could reasonably tell me to extricate herself from this conversation.
“It’s personal.”
“I assumed as much.”
“Do you really want to hear about it?”
“I need to hear about it. So I can judge for myself if we’re okay to move forward.”
“This is about gauging my productivity? You don’t actually care if I’m okay?”
It was my turn to pause. An unfamiliar pang in my chest told me that I did care and that this wasn’t simply an exercise in establishing my authority.
“I care. Amanda, tell me what’s going on.”
That little offer of softness opened a dam in Amanda. Shiny rivulets trickled down her cheeks.
“It’s so dumb,” she said between sniffles. “So silly.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“My girlfriend broke up with me last night.” She let that hang in the air for a few seconds, then continued. “Sorry, that must sound so lame.”
“No, no, not at all.” I kept my face neutral as I processed this revelation about Amanda. She had a girlfriend. Past tense. Well, she was a Sarah Lawrence graduate.
“We were together for three years. I really thought that was it. Anyway, I’m sorry, I was up all night crying and I overslept this morning. That’s why I was late. It won’t happen again.”
“Right, okay.”
Amanda finally stared up from my desk, straight at me.
“Also, I’m not out, professionally. I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone.”
“Of course, I would never.” Heat surged up the back of my neck, to my ears and my hairline.
“I don’t know why I’m sharing any of this.” Amanda sniffled and rubbed her eyes. “I guess I trust you.”
The heat at my hairline began to sear. Moisture threatened the skin above my upper lip and forehead.
