For Peter Lampack, with admiration, affection, and apologies.
"But I can still see the wrinkles," she said.
Grace studied the woman's face, whose parchment-dry, aged skin, tight over her bone structure, was pulled back taut like a slingshot. A broad smile, Grace speculated, would detach it from the woman's skull, and shoot it over the makeup counter like a Halloween mask. Grace bit her lip to keep herself from grinning at the image.
She knew the woman by reputation: Mrs. Milton-hyphen-Something, a world-class champion shopper. Clerks fawned over her as if she were the Queen of Sheba dispensing largesse to her peons. For a big commission, Grace, too, could also fawn with the best of the salesclerks. She hated the pandering, but was eager to accept the reward. She had never waited on Mrs. Milton-hyphen-Something before, so she saw the moment as an opportunity for potential income. Besides, Grace needed something to take the edge off of what had started out as a very unpromising day.
"Perhaps a bit more of this," Grace said, dabbing at the spidery corners of the woman's eyes with a brush. But even in the flattering spotlight of the makeup counter mirror, carefully wrought to wash out telltale signs of aging, the deep ruts in the woman's skin could not be made to disappear.
A hard and hopeless case, Grace sighed to herself, knowing it would be impossible to satisfy the woman's insistence on appearing, at least in her own mind, completely wrinkle-free. Makeup, she wanted to explain, only created an illusion. It was part of her standard repartee to the women who came to her for lessons in the art of cosmetics or a new look.
For younger women, the idea was easier to impart. She would use a more magnified—and therefore more revealing—mirror, one that enlarged the pores. These younger ones who bellied up to her counter seemed to suffer from widespread insecurity, as if they didn't truly believe in the perennial beauty of youth, and needed the paints and smears to feel their age. Despite this, makeup didn't jibe with the ideal of the contemporary woman, the have-it-all, independent female glorified in the media. Grace saw them everywhere, and admired their cool arrogance, their "I don't need a man to make me whole and happy" attitude. Oh, they were out there, all right, like Mrs. Burns, the store manager. Grace was hopeful that her own observations were inaccurate, and that in reality, those empowered women prancing about could secretly be just as insecure as she was. Fat chance, she thought.
She knew in her heart exactly where she stood, one among many, barely on the sunny side of forty-five, an anonymous grunt in the vast army of female also-rans. She was part of the powerless majority, designated by its more successful sisters as congenital losers who could not respond to their clarion call. But the truth was that most of those in the ranks of these defeated battalions, like Grace, had just been unlucky. They had been battered by inexplicable circumstances or mismanagement, or perhaps incapable of finding the right doors to kick open. Some had been irrevocably stuck in the now outdated mindset, hopelessly old-fashioned and totally unaware of the possibilities of this new era.
Ironically, for purposes of social commentary, advertising reach or political posturing, Grace's group was statistically in demand. Not like those single women in the fifty-to-seventy category, that army of the divorced and widowed, who had walked over the hill to oblivion, cruelly cast-off, doomed by time, aging and diminishing opportunity towards sexual uncertainty and loneliness.
Her group was always cited as that female baby boomer demographic, with subcategories like "working class," "single mother," "marginally educated," "semi-skilled." Grace was all of the above. Lower middle class, she figured, very lower middle—and in speedy descent. Jackie, her daughter, would undoubtedly agree, although for her sake, Grace maintained a razor-thin fa?ade of hopefulness and optimism. The miracle of genetics had ensured that she still had her looks and figure. Small comfort since, so far, they hadn't done her much good.
Considering her status, Grace took some satisfaction in the irony of her occupation. Cosmetics—creating the illusion of youth—was, thankfully, not taboo to the so-called "new woman," let alone the old one who, at the moment, stood before her. Women like Mrs. Milton, well north of sixty with unlimited cash flow, weren't pretending to buy the concept of cosmetic beauty enhancement. They wanted camouflage. They were dependent more on the plastic surgeon's knife than the chemist's dubious voodoo in their attempts to defeat or, at the least, stalemate time's relentless eradication.
"I don't think you know what you're doing," the woman snapped, her head moving on her neck like a puppet in a desperate attempt to find a smoothed reflection. She had put on her reading glasses, and was squinting unhappily into the mirror.
"I am a graduate cosmetician," Grace said defensively, citing her ninety-day course.
"Big deal," the woman huffed.
"And I've worked at this Palm Beach, Saks Fifth Avenue for three years," Grace countered calmly, forcing her most ingratiating smile, hoping to placate the old crone. "I've never had a complaint." She realized she wasn't making a dent in the woman's displeasure. "Sometimes cosmetics are designed to bring out a woman's character, and tell the story of a life well lived."
The woman eyed her suspiciously over her half-glasses.
"What does that mean?" she snapped, her lips twisted as if she were having gas pains.
"I was merely commenting that your face shows extraordinary character. There is great beauty in character. After all, you've earned those wrinkles. Why try to hide them?"
"Are you crazy?" the woman said.
"None of these products are designed to hide the real you."
"Jesus. Are you trying to say that it's attractive to look like a wrinkled old geezer? I don't have to come here for that."
"You're misinterpreting my remark. I only meant…."
"I know what you meant."
Just one more nail in the coffin, Grace sighed, going over in her mind the day's toll thus far. It had begun with her morning battle with Jackie, sixteen years of seething anger and perceived needs, and it was growing worse each day. Money for this. Money for that. It was a breakfast staple. Money! Damned money and the shortage thereof. It was the bane of Grace's existence.
She had named her daughter after Jackie O, as if it would inspire fine aspirations, taste, gentility, and elegance. Now it seemed like a myth gone sour for like her namesake, Jackie was acquisitive, and indiscriminately so. Unfortunately, her taste suffered from split personality. While she thirsted for the high end, she seemed mesmerized by the lowest end in men.
"Can I help it if I like beautiful clothes, Mom? You promised that you would get me the Michael Kors when it got reduced."
The Michael Kors plaint was at the root of their latest skirmish. Jackie had seen the leather jacket one day when she had met Grace at Saks. She would often wander through the designer racks while waiting for Grace to get off work. The jacket was priced far out of their budget, but Grace had promised Jackie that if it were marked down, she would buy it with her additional forty percent off employee discount.
She had even begged the sales clerk in designer clothes to undersell the jacket so it would become a more likely candidate for reduction. It was on the verge, and Grace calculated that she would get it within the week. It would be a great surprise and, perhaps, a peace offering for Jackie.
That morning, in addition to the argument over clothes, it was the never-ending litany of the car. "I need a car Mom, I just need it."
"I thought you needed Michael Kors."
"That, too."
What she needed were condoms. Grace had emphasized that safe sex was a necessity; she constantly reiterated her own litany, which included getting good enough marks to get into Florida State, Jackie's only affordable option for college. Another staple in Grace's lectures to her daughter, which she had delivered that morning with almost hysterical passion, was developing a sense of personal responsibility and realizing one's potential. This meant also, avoiding drugs, booze and bad company. Above all, Grace wanted Jackie to show some respect and appreciation for all her hard work and effort to give their lives, despite the obstacles, a semblance of dignity.
"Dignity" was a word she had been using with increasing redundancy. For Grace, it was her last consolation, that her dignity was intact. It had not been easy to be dignified living on thirty-six thousand dollars a year before deductions.
"I'm going to be seventeen," Jackie had reminded her, as if she were about to enter some mythological land requiring special survival equipment. "I'm not like the other girls in school. I don't want to be a Kmart person for the rest of my life. I am a Saks Fifth Avenue person; not a clerk like you, a customer. I am, in my heart, a Henri Bendel person, a Tiffany person, with a body that craves Valentino, Versace, Ferragamo, St. Laurent, Givenchy. Not Gap, not Wal-Mart or Kmart. Not bargain basement shit. I want expensive things. Is it a crime to love nice things? You should be proud of my champagne tastes. You're the one who taught me that. Remember who I was named after?"
"So, now it's my fault," Grace said, troubled by her daughter's yearnings and precociousness. Lately, she had started to feel inadequate against Jackie's daily harangue. After all, it had been Grace who had taken her on those window-shopping forays on Worth Avenue, and she, who had subscribed to all those fashion magazines that now cluttered the apartment.
"Champagne tastes are okay if you have a champagne bank account. Which we don't."
"And never will," Jackie snorted.
"Never say, never," Grace replied.
"I hate scraping by," Jackie told her, which was yet another perpetual mantra Grace was exposed to on a daily basis.
"We're not exactly without, Jackie," Grace sighed.
"Sure, Mom. I do appreciate your twenty-five dollar weekly allowance," Jackie said sarcastically.
"I'm happy you remembered its source."
"Daddy would give me a bigger allowance if he could."
"Daddy's entire life has been based on wish fulfillment, banking on potential events that never happen."
Five years of divorce, and except in periods of acute financial desperation, Jason rarely surfaced. Grace had occasionally obliged his entreaties for her daughter's sake.
"Daddy is a dreamer. The world has to make a place for people like him."
"Just as long as it's not with us," Grace shot back with barbed sarcasm. Defending Jason, her ex-husband, was an arrow in Jackie's quiver of annoyances. When her mother had dropped the Lombardi name, she had protested vehemently.
"Why would he want to be here with us? We live in a dump! Nothing here but losers. And don't be so high-and-mighty about my allowance. I couldn't get by if I didn't have a job."
"I'm doing the best I can, Jackie." It was always Grace's final line of defense.
"I know. That's what hurts the most, knowing that this is the best you can do."
On weekends Jackie worked as a ticket cashier at the multiplex. Grace had actually increased her allowance so that she could devote more time to schoolwork. Grace was on edge about her daughter getting into college, and so far Jackie had barely managed to eke out a passing grade.
Grace's relationship with her daughter, long on a downhill slide, was now disintegrating rapidly. She knew that her best efforts would never be good enough, not for someone with Jackie's unrealistic expectations. Had Grace planted these ideas in her daughter's mind? Was it really wrong to point out the good things in life, to inspire a higher level of taste than they could afford? Whatever the reason, Grace was losing control over her daughter. Jackie was attractive, too sexually advanced, too manipulative and financially ambitious to accept the present condition of her life. Grace had no illusions about where it would all lead. Jackie was an explosion waiting to happen, and that morning's confrontation merely strengthened that fact.
Adding insult to injury that morning, just as a pouting Jackie left for school, Jason called from parts unknown with his repetitive plea. "Help me out till I get on my feet, Grace."
She had been particularly harsh. "The only way to get on your feet is to nail them to the ground, Jay. You're a fuck-up. Never call me again. Ever."
Grace had angrily thrown her cell phone across the room.
She had had fifteen years of good looks and empty promises from this brainless mannequin who could conjure up more impossible dreams than Don Quixote. Back home in Baltimore, they were once the golden couple. She, the cute and very popular Grace Sorentino, the barber's daughter, with jet-black hair, soft pink skin and blue eyes. He, Jason Lombardi, a walking double for Robert Redford. There was limited mileage in being a knockout with a great body. Someone had once said that Grace had a walk that could raise an erection on a dead man. She had taken that as an insult back then.
She no longer blamed other people for her failures. She had married right out of college, a mistake compounded by a mistake. Throughout her marriage, she had worked in department stores, boutiques, as a bank teller, and as a secretary, but because of Jason's restlessness, she had been unable to make much of an impression. Jason, chasing his own indefinable dreams, had taken Grace and Jackie to points north, west and south—and finally, West Palm Beach. In Florida, she had taken a three-month cosmetician's course, then landed the job in the makeup department at Saks Fifth Avenue, and had been slowly building up a modest report. And so they had remained, left to rot in the tropics, along with the coconuts and seagull droppings. Jason's call had brought back the hated memory of her wasted years.
Also that morning, Grace had learned that her bank account balance, hovering somewhere around a paltry eight hundred dollars, was frozen, lost in computer hell. To make matters worse, she was getting turn-off notices from the phone and power companies.
The "good" news, a highly exaggerated rendition, was that she had just paid the monthly car payment for her three-year-old, bottom-of-the-line Volkswagen, which meant that she had merely one year to go before she owned outright what was destined to be a pile of junk. She had also paid down just enough of her Visa and Mastercard cards to restore her credit, a mixed blessing.
But these were mere details, distractions from the total State of the Union of her life, which was abysmal. Her forty-fourth birthday was just three months away, an event that promised a day of unrelenting self-pity.
Grace hated birthdays. Her fortieth birthday, the day she kicked Jason out, was supposed to mark a new beginning. It did; the beginning of another phase of a downward spiral. On the horizon was yet another harsh reality, the onset of early menopause—she was sure of that—and a future of unrelenting emotional and financial insecurity.
Milton-hyphen-Something, the frowning scarecrow in her pink Armani silk pantsuit, and diamond-studded claw-like fingers, sneered at Grace.
"What I meant was, lead with your best shot. Play to your strengths." It was a thought that made little sense to her, but somehow, under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate.
"You mean emphasizing my wrinkles and thereby illustrating my character, right? How well I lived my life, right?" Mrs. Milton said.
"Exactly," Grace said hopefully. "Present to the world an honest look."
"I don't need you for an honest look. I see it every morning in the mirror. What I need is a dishonest look, which means hiding my wrinkles."
"I've already tried the best we have to offer," Grace said. "They're too…." She was tempted to say, too fucking deep. Instead she added: "…deep-rooted."
"Deep-rooted. Good. I like that. Cosmetics were invented to soften and hide them, to make you look better, not worse. To do it right takes intelligence," the woman sneered sarcastically. "In your case, it seems that the intelligence is missing."
"Perhaps one of my colleagues…."
"Colleagues, you call them. That's a good one. You mean clerks."
Grace failed to find the humor in this confrontation. She was a seventy-plus gnome who had wandered in from Palm Beach's Worth Avenue seemingly determined to validate her superiority by kicking the most accessible and vulnerable unfortunate in her vicinity. In this case it was Grace Sorentino, the failed daughter of the barber Carmine and the silent and fanatically devout Mama Rosa, the Sicilian papal groupie from "Ballimer," Maryland.
"You people just don't know what you're doing," the woman said, frowning at her feral image in the mirror.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," Grace said, her forced smile faltering.
"What is that supposed to mean?" the woman snapped, her face frozen.
"It means," Grace said, sucking in a deep breath, determined to show a patient, pleasant visage, "that you might be noticing things that others would overlook. We normally don't observe each other with reading glasses."
Mrs. Milton-hyphen-Something shook her head in exasperation and looked around the store, now filled with an army of mostly middle-aged bottle blondes.
"Do you always insult your customers?" the woman asked. "I detest salesgirls with an attitude."
"I hadn't meant to be…."
"Hadn't meant. Hadn't meant. People do atrocious things and then retreat into 'hadn't-meants,'" the woman snickered. Beneath her copious layers of cover-up, Grace could detect the hot flush of anger.
Whoa there, Sorentino, Grace cautioned herself, valiantly maintaining her smile, although her facial muscles were beginning to hurt with the effort.
"I'm sorry," Grace whispered. "There's only so much that can be done with makeup."
"Are you calling me an old crone?" the woman snapped.
"Old is a state of mind," Grace responded.
"And what about crone?"
"You're putting words in my mouth," Grace said, feeling her smile collapse.
The woman's eyes blazed with contempt.
"Do you know how much money I spend here?" the woman asked. Her anger had forced nests of wrinkles to emerge all over her face.
"I'm not privy to such information," Grace said.
"You needn't be sarcastic," the woman retorted.
At that point, Mrs. Milton-hyphen-Something stood up from her high stool and removed her glasses.
"I can't let this arrogance pass." She began to move through the crowd.
"I need this job, you old cunt," Grace muttered, wondering if anyone had observed the confrontation. The woman was a miserable, unhappy, frustrated bitch, determined to cause pain. Grace had been as good a target as any.
Wrong place, wrong time, she sighed, preparing herself to be figuratively taken out and shot.
She looked through the plate glass to Worth Avenue, that fantasyland of upper-crust consumerism glistening in the late morning sun. How had she wound up here, just another of the minions to the wealthy?
She had managed to make a marginal living for her and Jackie, mostly at retailing, where she could hustle for commissions and use her personality and good looks to sell.
Unfortunately, this modest selling talent was not effective enough to secure another relationship with a man. She hadn't exactly been a passionate seeker. In this age of the independent woman such yearnings were supposed to be an insult to her gender and, for a time, she had tried to live by that caveat. That attitude did nothing to contribute to her happiness.
Grace had concluded that most people come in pairs. Wasn't that the immutable law of nature, proof positive being the anatomical construct of the human body? It was a subject considered every time she reached for the vibrator she kept hidden in the bottom drawer under her heavy northern clothes. Strictly as a biological necessity, her vibrator catered to her needs. It was a far cry from paradise, but it did the job.
But after five years, with the looming realization that Jackie would be leaving home—hopefully for college—she had opened herself up to the possibility of another permanent round with a member of the opposite sex. The fact was that she hated the idea of preening and detested the various routines of flirtation, the small talk, the dating and mating rituals.
She had made a number of forays into that world, forcing herself to be open to such experiences. She was a passionate woman, and in her years with Jason, especially the early ones, there was plenty of sex.
She considered herself a reasonably capable lay. Not that she had exposed herself to any recent reviews on that subject. Certainly, not lately. Jason hadn't voiced many complaints on her performance in that department, although its frequency had diminished considerably over the fifteen years of their marriage. He had simply lost interest.
She finally realized that the thing she dreaded most was the initial phases of the mating game, the verbal fencing, the various elements of seduction, the anxiety of the first sexual encounter—the embarrassments, the adjustments to the whole range of this new partner's preferences, the observation and inventory of his body parts, and her own submission to such inspection by him.
Such obligatory formalities inhibited promiscuity at her age, throwing mental barriers in the way of flirtation as her imagination cranked out vividly boring and dreadful scenarios and their outcomes.
Grace did manage one casual and lukewarm relation with her then-dentist. The act had been more a validation of her femininity than a passionate experience. Most of the time she hadn't climaxed, and was reticent about instructing him in the technicalities of her body.
They lasted for exactly as long as it took him to put in three new crowns. He did offer a trade-out on future work, but she declined and went to another dentist, a move she had reason to regret. Despite his sexual shortcomings, he was an excellent dentist.
She determined that she was simply unlucky when it came to men. She felt incapable or unable to separate the shells from the peanuts. Did men perceive her as too uppity, too closed-off, too challenging or not challenging enough? Or all of the above, and even more? Why was opportunity passing her by? Why wasn't there the slightest hint of romance in her life? Was the dating world, like a drain covered with rotting leaves, too clogged with young competitors to allow for some free flow for women like her?
Grace conceded that she could tell herself the little white lie that she was liberated and independent enough to do without the comfort of male companionship. But hell, she wanted to get laid by a live instrument, caressed by manly arms, supportive and supporting. She wanted someone strong and loyal and loving. She wanted someone to help her skirt the minefields and share the burden. Her experience with Jason had given her insight and experience into winners and losers. She believed, if given half a chance, she could tell the difference.
She considered herself intelligent, even though she was only educated with one year of college. Everybody said she had instinct and the gift of gab. She made sure to keep up with current events worldwide, and was an avid reader of the Palm Beach Post for local news.
Men showed some interest in her, at least in a first encounter. The problem as she saw it was that she found the men she met mostly uninteresting—most likely a turnoff on her part—which led her to wonder what had happened to the gender in the nearly twenty years that had passed since her courtship and marriage.
It was worrisome. It wouldn't be long before her fifties arrived, then her sixties, and then what? Would she be heading for the blue hair pastures, her glasses held around her neck by a chain, her jowls drooping lower each year, her neck wrinkling like old parchment, her tits heading downward with the weight of gravity, her hips and belly thickening, her morning routine reduced to washing down her estrogen pills with orange juice?
It was dangerous to let her imagination run away with itself. But there were just too many examples of people left at the post in southern Florida. All it took to set her thoughts going was a trip to any mall where the army of the aging marched in endless battalions. It took all her willpower to keep from falling over the edge into depression. For a while she told herself that she was too devoted to raising Jackie to have any time for a new relationship. But that was a cop-out.
Jackie was reaching new levels of independence by leaps and bounds. Grace was losing her and knew it. In a year or two Jackie would consider Grace only as a marginal financing machine, worthy of lip service but little else. The reality of parenthood was getting through to her hard and fast, and the end result would always be the ultimate fact that parents loved and worried about their children far more than children would their parents.
The telephone near the register rang and she knew instantly that it would be Pamela Burns, the store manager, on the other end of the line. Mrs. Milton-hyphen-Something had struck.
"Can you see me for a moment, Grace?"
"Of course," Grace replied, reaching unsuccessfully for an optimistic lilt to her tone. She hung up and proceeded on rubbery legs to Mrs. Burns' office.
"Mrs. Milton-Dennison told me you insulted her," Pamela Burns began directly, playing with the triple string of pearls that hung over her blue cashmere. She was older than Grace, well-groomed, with hawk's eyes set behind high cheekbones and jet-black hair brushed straight back. Her lipstick, eye shadow and earrings glistened brightly as they caught the brilliant sunlight that filled the room from a high, round window behind her desk.
"I should have, but I didn't," Grace said. "She was rude and insufferable."
"Customers are never rude and insufferable, Grace," Pamela Burns lectured, talking slowly, enunciating clearly, illustrating her version of how a successful manager deals with anger and recalcitrant personnel. "Shopping at Saks is either therapy or a dream come true. But however you define it, there is only one object in mind as far as we're concerned. We check our egos and other unnecessary hubris at the employees' entrance. We smile. We ingratiate. We flatter. We agree. Our mission, the sole objective of this enterprise, is to move merchandise."
"I move merchandise, Mrs. Burns," Grace declared in a feeble attempt at showing indignation.
"For which you are appropriately commissioned," Mrs. Burns shot back. "At the highest rate allowed by this company."
"Mrs. Milton-Dennison is one of our most valued customers. It is her addiction. We keep her supplied with the drug she needs."
"Cosmetics."
"Exactly."
Mrs. Burns looked at a paper on her desk and tapped it with long, polished fingernails.
"Do you have any idea what she spent with us last year, Grace?"
"She asked me the same question," Grace murmured.
"And well she should," Mrs. Burns said, studying Grace in her eye's hot glare. "Only last year she brought in just under a million dollars. She's world-class. That old biddy is an industry for us. We pucker on demand."
"Hard to believe… she's such a…." Grace checked herself. But she hoped her expression would convey her honest characterization of the woman, which was miserable shit.
"…marvelous, generous, and beautiful person," Mrs. Burns said, completing the comment with a sly smile of understanding.
"I gave her my best makeover, Mrs. Burns. Unfortunately, there is no product, except perhaps surgery, that could hide her wrinkles."
"If she wants her wrinkles hidden, Grace, then you are charged with finding a way to hide them."
"Believe me, I tried," Grace said. A sob caught in her throat.
"Apparently not hard enough," Mrs. Burns told her between tight-pursed lips. "She wants you fired."
"Fired?"
"Understand the psychological implications of our role here, Grace. Mrs. Milton-Dennison gets off on shopping. This is where she comes to replace the fucking she does not get at home."
"Jesus!"
"I detest this kind of pressure, Grace. It frustrates me, and I hate dealing with frustration. My only goal is to make numbers, and to increase these numbers year after year. Numbers are what determines my bonus. We are not dealing here with the human equation. Numbers are the true meaning of our existence. Mrs. Milton-Dennison represents only numbers. She is a factor here only because she puts a lot of bread in the oven. She is the soul and spirit of the capitalistic machine."
Grace wondered if she should be respectful of Mrs. Burns' remarkable candor and realism. The woman was generally admired for "telling it like it is," which is exactly what she was doing now. To me, a poor impoverished loser.
"I do not like to be forced to grovel before Mammon," Mrs. Burns said, as if reading Grace's mind. She lowered her voice. "We both know what Mrs. Milton-Dennison is," she said, followed by her lips silently forming, "A fucking cunt."
Grace was encouraged by the candidness.
"Then you're not terminating me," Grace said after a brief pause.
"How would you feel if you were being threatened with close to a million-dollar loss, Grace?"
"Like being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea."
"You're assuming I have a choice. Mrs. Milton-Dennison didn't give me a wide range of options."
"So I am fired?"
"I hate to put it that way. It makes me feel like an instrument of cruelty. I do know your situation Grace. We have to know about our employees in these litigious days."
"Am I or am I not?" Grace said, raising her voice.
Mrs. Burns seemed genuinely grieved, although Grace distrusted her. Dissimulation was part of the stock in trade of winners like Mrs. Burns.
"I'm going to give you a bit of advice, Grace," she said as she turned her head in the direction of the window, as if she were speaking to the pedestrians along Worth Avenue. "We are in Palm Beach, Florida, the ideal hunting ground for Mr. Big Bucks. In this wasteland, they are everywhere, like pebbles on the beach."
She sucked in a deep breath and lowered her voice. Her nostrils flared, a tiny smile lifted her lips. "Pay special attention when I say this. Find yourself an older wealthy man, a widower, fresh from the burial ground—someone who, in his vulnerability, can appreciate a good-looking woman like yourself to share in his bed and fortune. Make yourself a mover of merchandise instead of a dispenser. Hone your technique in that department. It is better for your tuchas to be a receiver than the giver. Seek out and find Mr. Big Bucks."
Grace was stunned and incredulous at the cool cynicism of Mrs. Burns' remarks. She couldn't believe her ears. "What are you saying, Mrs. Burns?" Grace asked, finding it difficult to absorb the information presented. It was so calculating and ruthless.
"I'm simply saying, find yourself a wealthy man who has just buried his wife."
"A millionaire?"
"My dear girl, millionaire is such a passé term. It no longer connotes serious money. Learn the modern interpretation of numbers. It will open your eyes. Think in terms of a price range."
"A price range?"
"Aim for one hundred mil give or take. You may not make it, but as the poet said, 'let your reach exceed your grasp.' That's Robert Browning. These men are out there, believe me."
"Is there some kind of guidebook on how to go about accomplishing this feat?" Grace asked, hoping that Mrs. Burns would pick up on the facetiousness and sarcasm of her remark.
"Published every day," Mrs. Burns shot back without batting an eye. "The obituary columns, Grace. Make it your daily Bible reading."
"You are serious."
"Dead."
Grace considered the irony implicit in the word.
"Consider it research," Mrs. Burns added.
"And then?"
"Assess the situation. Be sure there is a lot of money. Survey the mourners. Evaluate their wealth and lifestyle. If possible, check beforehand. See where they come from. Look at their houses. Make a careful evaluation. Keep your eye on the ball, then find a way to make contact."
"But why a recent widower?" Grace asked, feeling foolish. Here she was in the midst of a personal disaster and she was listening to nonsense. Worse, she was asking questions.
"Because men in a long marriage are more accustomed to the ministrations of women, Grace. Like horses, they have been broken, domesticated."
Is she playing with me? Grace thought. Despite her misgivings, Grace found herself bizarrely interested, as if the strange idea might divert her mind from this train wreck.
"Are there any other considerations?" Grace asked, thinking: She wants to pull my chain. I'll pull hers. "Is there an age requirement?"
"I'd put a cap of seventy-five. The sixties would be better. You run into protective relatives when you go higher in age, and they need less of what a woman has to offer. They figure you are only after their money, and nothing more."
Mrs. Burns hadn't invented the idea. It was a generally accepted pop-psychology hypothesis that a widower who was happily married was more likely to seek to replicate such a situation. Now, how had Mrs. Burns come to this knowledge? Television talk shows, newspapers, comments on the radio, bits and pieces of trivia from somewhere out there in the world? Was this insight or bullshit?
"You sound like you've made a thorough study of the subject."
"I have. I found one."
"What?"
"I followed the formula. It is the best advice you will ever get in your life."
"Then why do you have to work?"
Grace felt compelled to keep the interrogation going. She couldn't help but wonder if Mrs. Burns had gone crazy and this interview was simply the babbling of a diseased mind.
"I don't. I need the stimulation and sense of accomplishment. Mr. Burns is very old now."
"How long have you been married?"
"Fifteen years. He was sixty-five at the time. Besides the potential longevity, he was the perfect choice."
"How so?"
"He was Jewish. I'm an Episcopalian."
"Why Jewish?" Grace asked, mesmerized by the conversation. Am I really buying this? she wondered.
"Their mothers worshipped them. Because of this, they are addicted to mothering. And they see shiksas—the not Jewish—like you and me… I think they see us as the forbidden fruit. Also, and I hope this doesn't sound anti-Semitic, but maybe their circumcisions have made them more sensitive to pleasure. Who knows? Many of them have been starved in that department by their first wives, so to them a good shiksas is a mitzvah, a gift from God. Frankly, I don't know why this is true, but I believe it is. It makes them more vulnerable, of course. Grace, I can only give you the benefit of my own experience."
Grace was concerned, not only by Mrs. Burns' advice, but because she found herself actually contemplating the idea. How could she, a nobody from the working classes, an obvious failure, succeed in this? Multimillionaires weren't exactly in her circle. It struck her finally Mrs. Burns was probably teasing her, getting her jollies by putting a sinister spin on her termination.
"Am I really being fired?" Grace asked suddenly, not without optimism.
"Afraid so."
"Then this is a very strange exit interview, Mrs. Burns," Grace said. "I don't appreciate it at all. I feel as if I'm some object of ridicule and I'm pretty pissed off. Is it in lieu of severance?"
"Not in lieu of, Grace. Although the advice I offer is more precious than money." She took a paper from a pile on her desk and slid it across to Grace.
"What is that?"
"It is a release form. Sign it and you will receive two months' severance pay based on your year's best salary. In this case…." She glanced at the paper. "Two thousand two hundred a month. Comes to four thousand four hundred dollars. Generous, I must say."
"Do I lose my employee discount?" Grace asked, thinking of her promise to Jackie.
"When you are no longer an employee, you no longer have an employee discount."
Furious, Grace scribbled her name on the paper, and Mrs. Burns opened a drawer and handed her a check already cut for that amount. Grace studied the check for a moment, as if to illustrate her distrust, then stood up.
"It's an unfair world, Grace," Mrs. Burns said. "Nevertheless, if Mrs. Milton-Dennison should take her business elsewhere, or die, I can make a firm commitment at this moment to give you back your job."
"You are one cold-blooded bitch," Grace said. They exchanged glances, and after a moment of staring each other down, Mrs. Burns nodded.
"I pride myself on that," she said.
Grace started toward the door, but suddenly stopped when Mrs. Burns called her name.
"In the enterprise I suggested to you, Grace, there is one more caveat. It is fundamental."
Grace looked back at the woman, a commanding presence behind her desk. Mrs. Burns lifted her left hand. At first Grace wondered if she was about to give her the traditional gesture of contempt.
"Ring around your finger," Mrs. Burns said cheerily. She directed Grace's attention to her glittering diamond wedding ring. "This is essential. And beware the prenup, the deal before you get it."
"You make it sound like a sales agreement."
"Now you're getting to the heart of the deal. Especially if he's got kids. They'll guilt him into a tough prenup. Fight it."
"Really, Mrs. Burns? It'll never happen to me."
"Never say never."
Speechless, Grace left with a heavy heart.