The office of the ad agency where Harriett had worked featured a central staircase that connected the company’s three floors. It was a gorgeous staircase, designed by a brand-name architect, with clear glass steps that made it look as if one were climbing through air. Though it was far less convenient, women in the office often opted to take the elevator instead. The staircase, which had been featured in countless design magazines, was also known for its spectacular up-the-skirt views. This, it was explained to Harriett when she first pointed it out, was a feature, not a flaw.
She happened to be wearing a skirt the day she returned from vacation. She hadn’t mentioned where she was going, but everyone in the office assumed she’d traveled somewhere exotic. That’s what rich women did when their marriages ended. They set off on spirit quests or death-defying adventures. They climbed Mount Everest. They ate, prayed, and loved. Now Harriett had returned, with the lean limbs and bronzed skin of an Aegean goddess. The huntress stalking a stag, perhaps, or an enchantress surrounded by swine. No one would have guessed that Harriett had acquired the tan while walking naked among the plants in her own backyard.
The skirt was a failed attempt to get back in the swing of things. She hadn’t worn clothes in two weeks, and she hadn’t missed them at all. That morning, she’d stood in her massive walk-in closet, looking around at all her beautiful things. Once Harriett had thought of them as her prizes. Win a new account, get a YSL Le Smoking. Convince a creative team to accept her ideas as theirs, collect a bracelet from Hermès. Shake a handsy client without pissing anyone off, take home a badass Rag & Bone leather jacket. Now she realized none of her belongings spoke to her any longer. She wasn’t sure if they ever really had. The skirt she chose to wear was vintage Tom Ford–era Gucci. For the life of her, she couldn’t recall why she’d bought it.
The skirt was the reason she was the last of her colleagues to walk through the door of the new creative director’s office. She’d been informed of his hiring at the beginning of the month, but he’d arrived while she was on vacation, and she had yet to meet him in person. She entered the room to find him already holding court. Chris Whitman was Scottish, like Max, the agency’s CEO. He and Max had worked together back in London, and now Max had brought his protégé to New York at enormous expense. The agency had been on a winning streak for two years, and after they’d doubled their billings, their holding company, which had previously squeezed every spare cent from them, decided it was best to let Max do as he liked. They and the press attributed the agency’s success to Max’s swashbuckling leadership. He was tall, dark, and rugged. No matter the setting, he wore the same uniform of black T-shirt and jeans. He fit the ad world’s picture of a renegade genius. The fact that the agency’s winning streak hadn’t begun until Harriett was brought on as new business director was deemed a coincidence. When Max decided he needed a “partner in crime,” it never occurred to anyone but Harriett that he might already have one.
Harriett took Chris’s measure from the doorway. He was attractive but short. Max liked to have good-looking people around him, but he was careful not to hire anyone taller or more talented. Chris didn’t share the CEO’s height or bombastic personality, but their egos appeared to be a perfect match. Like his boss, Chris seemed perfectly at home in New York with a group of American sycophants hanging on his every accented syllable.
There were four men in the room, all a few years younger than Harriett. When she appeared in the office, they glanced up with unease. Her presence always altered the energy of the room—like a teacher returning from a bathroom break or someone’s mom showing up at a keg party.
Chris paused in the middle of the tale he was telling and turned to Harriett. “So how long will he be?” he asked.
Movement on the couch caught Harriett’s eye. Andrew Howard, the head account guy, was squirming. “How long will who be?” she asked.
“Max,” the CD replied with a touch of exasperation, as though trying to make sense to a sweet but dim-witted child.
“Why would I know when Max will get here?” Harriett kept her voice cool and pleasant.
The creative director looked around at the men gathered in his office. Suddenly, none of them wanted to meet his eye.
“Who do you think I am?” Harriett asked. She knew. She just wanted to hear him say it. He thought she was an admin. If she’d played along, he might have asked her to bring him a cup of coffee.
Three months earlier, their exchange would have shaken Harriett’s confidence. What about her appearance made him mistake her for support staff? Did she lack gravitas? Did she look unsuited for her job?
The head of client services leaped to his rescue. “Chris, this is Harriett Osborne, head of our new business department. She’s been on vacation for the past few weeks.”
“Oh, of course!” Chris made a beeline for her, hand outstretched, no trace of shame or contrition anywhere on his face. He seemed to have no clue he’d committed a faux pas. “What an honor to finally meet you in person. I hear you were married to Chase Osborne. He does the Little Pigs ads. I’m a huge fan of his. The man is a genius.”
“I’m sure Chase would agree with you,” Harriett replied. “I’d pass on your kind words, but I don’t see him much anymore. He’s too busy fucking the head of his production department.”
The men in the room appeared to stop breathing. They all knew it. They would have filled Chris in the moment she left the room. But none of them expected her to beat them to the punch. Harriett grinned broadly. For years, veneers had disguised the natural gap between her two front teeth. During her vacation, she’d decided to get rid of them. Now they were all staring at the gap, struggling to remember if it had been there all along. It was fun, she thought, to keep them wondering.
“I believe we’re all here to talk new business.” Harriett took a seat in one of the office’s white leather chairs that no woman would have chosen. “And I’m the new business director. We don’t need Max for this, so let’s start. Who’s running the meeting?”
“I am.” Andrew Howard slid forward on the couch. He was a smarmy little asshole, Harriett thought. He couldn’t have cared less about the quality of the work, but he possessed a remarkable homing instinct for steak houses, golf courses, and strip clubs. Max liked him because he kept the clients happy—and happy clients didn’t call Max. “While you were out, we were invited to take part in two pitches. First up is Pura-Tea. It’s a new line of sparkling teas from Coke. They want to bring women over thirty back with the promise of great taste and health benefits. They’re pretty confident in the strategy, and they’re keen to see work. Chris and his teams have a few things to show us.”
“Anyone actually try the product?” Harriett asked.
“Yeah,” said the strategist. “It underdelivers on taste, so we’ve focused on health benefits.”
“Are there any real health benefits?” Harriett asked.
“No sugar, great hydration, and loaded with antioxidants.”
“What the fuck are antioxidants?” Harriett joked. “Anyone know?”
Andrew snorted and shrugged. The others in the room shook their heads.
“So basically we’re selling shitty carbonated water with a few vitamins thrown in.”
“That’s why they need advertising,” Chris chimed in. “Shitty carbonated water won’t sell itself. We’re going to convince these women it’s what they’ve been missing all their lives.”
Harriett spun around to face him. “So brilliant,” she gushed. Men in advertising loved to explain how it all worked. “Max said you were a genius. I can’t wait to see what you’ve got. Is that it?” She pointed to a tall stack of foam boards lying facedown on Chris’s desk. The message was clear. She wasn’t interested in a lecture on advertising.
The smile he gave her wasn’t terribly warm or friendly. She made sure the smile she offered in return was pure light and joy.
“Yeah, so I have four ideas to show you this morning.” Chris grabbed the first board off the stack on his desk and turned it over to reveal an illustrated frame from a video ad. A very young woman in a very small bathing suit lay by a glistening blue pool surrounded by forest, a bottle of Pura-Tea on the rocks beside her.
“Fuck, this isn’t the spot I wanted to start with. Andrew, can you rearrange these like I asked?”
As Andrew leaped from the sofa like a well-trained puppy, Harriett pointed at the image of the bikini-clad girl.
“You said they’re going after women over thirty. How old is the woman in the picture supposed to be?” Harriett inquired. “The illustration makes her look sixteen.”
“It’s meant to be an aspirational image of our female audience,” Chris explained. “Fit, gorgeous, and healthy.”
It was funny, Harriett thought. Twenty-five years in advertising, and the aspirational female had never changed. It was always whoever the art director wanted to screw. And, equally serendipitously, she could only be found in places the creative team wanted to travel.
“Women over thirty don’t aspire to be sixteen,” Harriett said. “We can be fit, gorgeous, and healthy at any age. Plus, once we hit thirty, a lot of us can afford a fuck-ton of overpriced iced tea.”
“Let’s not get hung up on the casting right now,” Chris said, handing the boards to Andrew. “Just imagine our heroines the way you’d like to see them.”
“As badass bitches who keep the world running and never get their due?” Harriett asked.
Chris glared at her. “Sure,” he said. “Why not.”
“Great!” Harriett said. “I love it already.”
Andrew passed a set of rearranged boards back to Chris, who plucked several off the top of the pile and held the first up for his guests to see. Fortunately, the ad he’d chosen to start with didn’t feature a half-clad teenager, but rather a plain wooden door.
“So,” Chris said, looking down at the board. “We open with the camera locked on the door of an apartment. The door’s a bit scuffed and the paint’s peeling in places. It’s clearly the kind of apartment you had in your twenties.” He moved on to the second board. “Then we see a young man strut down the hall with a bottle of wine in one hand. He knocks at the door, and a pretty girl opens up and drags him inside. The next time the door opens, he’s coming out. There’s no wine bottle in his hand, and his clothes and hair are rumpled. He’s obviously spent the night.”
He let the board drop, revealing another illustration of the original door.
“We watch as the door gets dingier and more scuffed, marking the passage of time. As we’re watching, a different guy shows up and knocks at the door. The door opens, and the same girl throws her arms around him and pulls him inside. He, too, leaves after spending the night.”
Chris was smiling as though he couldn’t wait to get to a punch line.
“So we see the same thing happen a couple more times. It’s always a different guy and the same girl. Each time she waves goodbye the next morning, she seems a little less satisfied. The last time, she stays at the door, looking a bit miserable. There’s a bottle of Pura-Tea in her hand. The camera moves in close as she lifts it to her lips. We see her skin sparkle as the purifying antioxidants work their magic. When the camera pulls back again, she’s framed not by a doorway but a wedding arch, and we see she’s wearing a flowing white bridal gown. One hand is holding her new husband’s hand. The other is still clutching the bottle of Pura-Tea. The tagline appears: ‘Pura-Fide.’”
Chris burst into laughter, and the rest of them instantly followed suit.
Harriett leaned forward in her chair to study the last board. It was truly remarkable. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the whole thing had been crafted by an alien species. They live alongside us, she thought. Some work with us. Some fuck us. And some do both. And yet they seem to know absolutely nothing about us.
“What is it?” asked Andrew, sensing trouble.
Harriett sat back and wove her fingers together. “I don’t think I get it,” she said.
“What don’t you get?” Chris asked.
“The whole thing,” Harriett told him. “So this chick sleeps with lots of guys, and it makes her sad. Then she drinks a tea. It purifies her, and suddenly a man wants to marry her.”
“That’s it!” Chris seemed relieved. “You got it!”
“So sleeping around made her dirty?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s meant to be tongue in cheek. We’re just riffing on society’s hang-ups.”
“Ah,” Harriett said. “I see. You’re playing off the common misconception that women who like to fuck are whores, and men won’t marry whores. Perhaps the girl in the ad should be douching with Pura-Tea instead of drinking it? I mean, you’d want ladies to purify their real dirty bits, would you not? How much tea would they need to buy for each guy they’ve fucked?”
The four men in the room stared at her.
“I think you may be taking this a little too personally,” Andrew finally said.
Harriett grinned. “You’re married. How did you make sure Celeste was pure before you slid a ring on that finger?”
Andrew blanched. “Can we not bring Celeste into this?”
“Now who’s taking it personally?” Harriett laughed. Not at her joke, but his chutzpah—acting as if she were besmirching his wife while everyone in the agency knew he was screwing a junior copywriter. “Show the ad to Celeste. See what she makes of it.”
“Celeste has retired from advertising.”
“As I recall, Celeste was retired from advertising,” Harriett corrected him. “Who’s the target audience for this campaign, again? May I see the brief?” She read the target section, though she needn’t have bothered. “They call them the Mindful Moms. Affluent, health-conscious women age thirty-plus. They love yoga, drink herbal teas, and champion social causes . . . Holy shit, that sounds just like Celeste, does it not?”
In fact, it sounded like every woman in Mattauk. From the viewpoint of giant corporations, they were all the same person. They were all Mindful Moms.
“By the way,” Harriett added, “how old’s the girl in this spot? She looks a little young for a Mindful Mom. Where’s she hiding her kids while she’s banging everyone in the neighborhood?”
“Max loves this script,” Chris interjected. “He thinks it’s fucking brilliant.” The way the words came out, it was perfectly clear that he intended them to be the end of the conversation. Harriett had no intention of stopping.
“Max is a fifty-five-year-old Scottish male. I’d much rather hear what Andrew’s wife, Celeste, has to say. Presumably, she’s the one who’ll be buying this shitty carbonated water.”
“I don’t give a fuck who the ads are for,” Chris sneered. “Max thinks this spot could win awards, and that’s why he brought me here. To win awards. You’re here to sell the work I tell you will win those awards.”
Harriett almost admired him for saying out loud what they were all thinking.
“I’m here to sell work that you tell me is good?”
“I think I’m the best arbiter of what’s good and what isn’t. How many Gold Lions have you won?” Chris asked.
Thirteen was the answer. Her ideas, her lines, her scripts had gone on to win thirteen Gold Lions at Cannes. But her name wasn’t on a single one of those trophies. And unless your name was on the trophy, and the trophy was displayed on a window ledge in your office, you were a loser just like everyone else. That was one of many mistakes Harriett had made over the years. She’d let men take credit for her work assuming they would be grateful and her contributions acknowledged. But selective amnesia was endemic in the advertising community. Most of the men she’d helped didn’t even remember. The rest saw her generosity as a sign of weakness.
“I’ve brought in seventeen new accounts since I came to this agency two years ago,” Harriett told him. “I’d like to make Pura-Tea the latest. We can discuss this script later with Max. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”
Harriett knew it was going to get ugly. And she couldn’t wait.
Somewhere in the mission statement of every ad agency in New York was a nod to their respect for the “consumer.” It had always seemed to Harriett that a good way to show real respect might be to give them a label that didn’t call to mind brain-dead omnivores. At all five agencies where Harriett had worked over the course of her career, she’d made it clear that these faceless “consumers” were flesh-and-blood women. Around the world, she would tell whoever would listen, women purchase or directly influence the purchase of 80 percent of all goods—and the women dropping serious change are usually over thirty-five. Whenever a man questioned this, she’d ask him when he last bought toilet paper. What brand was it? How much did it cost? Nine times out of ten, they couldn’t answer.
When Max had hired her as new business director, Harriett’s first step had been to put together a presentation on that very subject. Max hadn’t been in favor of showing it. He worried the agency would develop a reputation for specializing in women’s brands. Eventually, it became apparent that Harriett’s “lady deck,” as Max called it, drew clients in. People whose jobs actually depended on selling things bought what Harriett was offering. She became the bait that the agency dangled in front of them until the papers were signed. Then Harriett handed the new clients over to an organization that employed a grand total of six women over thirty-five. Two were administrative assistants. One was the office manager. One ran the agency’s feminine hygiene account. Another was a midlevel art director. The sixth was the head of the new business department.
Outside the new business department, the agency was one hundred percent devoted to making great advertising. When he’d taken over the flailing organization, Max had made it clear that that was all that mattered. “It’s all about the work,” he would say. Every year, he sat on award-show juries along with other creative rock stars. His fellow judges were almost always men, almost always in their forties and fifties, and almost exclusively white. This cabal of rich white dudes was responsible for deciding what was “good advertising.” No other opinions mattered. Their stamp of approval could lead to prize money, industry-wide adulation, and seven-figure salaries. When a creative team sat down to develop a new campaign, these men were invariably their true target audience. Assignments that weren’t deemed to have award-show potential were quickly shunted off to junior, less favored, often more female creative teams.
Harriett had spent her first years in advertising on one of those teams. That was back in the mid-nineties, a time she now recognized as a golden age in advertising, when television ads were often treated as short films and award-winning work could open the door to a career in screenwriting or directing. That was the dream—one Harriett could never have pursued directly. She’d gone to school with kids whose parents subsidized their careers in film or publishing. Harriett needed a job that would pay the bills.
That’s how she ended up writing tampon copy. Not for television ads, of course. Those were handled by a more senior team. Harriett’s first job was writing Q&A–style advertorials that would run in magazines aimed at teen girls. The ads encouraged readers to write in with their own questions, which would be answered in future issues. Will everyone know? the girls asked. Will I still be a virgin? What should I do if the worst happens?
Harriett had once wondered the same things herself, and for a while she was pleased to offer answers. No one ever needed to know it was that time of the month, she’d tell her readers. The brand’s new line of compact tampons could be easily concealed in a pocket or the palm of a hand. They would leave your virginity intact—and were designed to be so absorbent that the worst wouldn’t happen. She considered it a testament to her talent that she’d managed to write about tampons for months without ever using the words menstruation, period, vagina, or blood. At some point, she realized she’d been answering questions about periods for over a year. She’d invented new euphemisms. She’d devised new forms of camouflage. Still, the questions kept coming. Terrified, ashamed, miserable girls were scribbling their most mortifying questions on pieces of lined notebook paper and mailing them to a faceless corporation. That’s when Harriett realized she wasn’t providing solutions. She was part of the problem.
Then one day, she was handed a new question to answer. Why is this happening to me? asked Jennifer, age 13, Pittsburgh. The despair was so palpable that Harriett promptly burst into tears. You are NOT alone, she wrote back. It’s happening to me, too. It’s happening to every girl you know. It’s happening to the actress on television and the lady across the street. It is happening, has happened, or will happen to most women on earth, and it’s time we all stopped working so hard to hide it.
Harriett couldn’t stop writing to Jennifer, age 13, Pittsburgh. By the end of the week, she had a series of ads that she called the “Half the World” campaign. The executions spoke about menstruation as if dealing with your period was just as mundane as brushing your teeth. They used all the words Harriett had been trained to avoid. When fluid was shown, it was red, not blue. And most important, they encouraged girls to talk to each other and share what they knew.
Harriett took the campaign to her agency’s creative director. She’d set up a time to present to him alone, but when she reached his office, she found the new business director and a senior copywriter lounging on the couch.
The new business director, a closeted gay man named Nelson with a gentle soul and an old-fashioned fondness for three-martini lunches, winked at Harriett and nudged the copywriter. “Let’s leave,” he said. “Harriett’s here to knock his socks off.”
“No. Stay,” the creative director ordered flippantly, much to Harriett’s dismay. “She needs to get used to presenting to more than one person.”
So Harriett presented her “Half the World” campaign to three men, two of whom looked thoroughly disgusted by it.
“Did it ever occur to you that there might be a reason we use blue fluid instead of red?” the creative director asked when she was done. “No guy wants to think about what that shit really is or what hole it comes from,” he informed her.
“But these ads aren’t for guys,” Harriett had responded.
“We’re guys,” he responded. “So are most of the people who sell these tampons. Know your audience, Harriett.”
Her face was still burning an hour later when Nelson knocked on the side of her cube.
“Come work for me,” he said. “I need a right hand.”
“But I want to write,” she told him.
“I loved the honesty of what you wrote. That’s why I’m going to be equally honest with you. Do you know what happens to women creatives here?” he asked her. “Until you’re thirty-five, you’ll spend your time slaving away on shitty assignments and fending off men who want to fuck you.”
“And after thirty-five?” Harriett asked, thinking she might be able to stick it out.
“There are no women over thirty-five in the creative department,” he said. “Come with me. You’ll work on all the best business and see your ideas come to life. I’ll even throw in a good title and a raise.” He cupped a hand around his mouth and glanced theatrically in both directions. “And you won’t need to worry about me trying to fuck you.”
The next six years were the best of Harriett’s career. Together, she and Nelson made a formidable team. He did the schmoozing. Harriett did most of the thinking. Because she brought in the business, she knew every account in the agency. When an idea popped into her head, she would give it to a creative team who could make something out of it. She had a talent for convincing them they’d come up with it first. That was how she met Chase. He was one of two copywriters assigned to a pitch she was leading. The other guy was a prick, so Harriett slipped Chase an idea she’d been working on. She inserted it into a conversation, repeating it twice to make sure he caught hold of it. After that, Chase always talked through his work with her. When they were alone, he called her his good luck charm.
Harriett did well in advertising. At forty-eight, she was still employed, with a mid-six-figure salary. People whispered that she’d be the next president of the agency, though she never encouraged such idle chatter. Chase, though, was a phenomenon, racking up awards and pulling in millions each year. Harriett couldn’t quite pinpoint when he’d stopped thanking her in his acceptance speeches. Most likely around the same time he began an affair.
When Chase left her, Harriett had had every right to be furious, and she was. But she also felt oddly restored. She took three weeks off as an experiment. In twenty-five years, she’d never taken such a long vacation. She spent the time in her garden, ignoring the emails that continued to accumulate in her inbox. For the first time in ages, she shared none of herself. Only when her magic began to return did she realize just how much she’d given away.
It was almost six when Harriett was called into Max’s office. When she arrived, he gave her a hug.
“How are you, my dear?” he asked. “How was vacation? You’re looking tanned and rested.”
Harriett knew his game. Pretend nothing’s happened and shoot the shit for ten minutes until tempers cooled. She’d fallen for it so many times.
Two years earlier, she’d accepted Max’s job offer, hoping to replicate the work relationship she’d once had with Nelson. What Max lacked in talent, he more than made up for in charisma. Max was the kind of man who made other guys feel like they belonged to an exclusive club. Harriett wasn’t invited, of course, but that was fine with her. While Max and the clients fluffed each other’s egos, she could get good work done. When she’d arrived at the agency, it was hemorrhaging accounts. The two of them together had saved it. But Max still believed he was running a one-man show.
“What’s up, Max? I want to get home, and I know you didn’t call me in here to discuss my tan.”
“Chris came to see me earlier. He says you don’t like the Pura-Tea work.”
“It sounds like you’re asking for my honest opinion. Is that what you really want?”
“Of course,” he insisted.
“I saw four executions. Three left no impression. The fourth was one of the most offensively sexist spots I’ve ever seen. And I once pitched a beer brand from Brazil.”
“The Pura-Fide execution?” he asked, as though he couldn’t quite believe it. “I thought it was funny—and you have to admit that the structure is clever. I showed it to my wife. She laughed her ass off at the reveal.”
That was a lie. She knew his wife. The woman hadn’t laughed in years.
“Your daughter is how old? Seventeen?”
His megawatt smile dimmed considerably. “Come on, Harriett.”
“Seriously, Max. I grew up watching stuff that taught me that women who enjoyed sex were whores. That we should try to be who men wanted us to be—not who we really were. It fucked me up. It fucked up a lot of the women I know. Is that what you want for your kid?”
“So this is personal.”
“Of course it’s personal. Everything is personal. Anyone who tells you it isn’t is trying to screw you over.”
“Well, Chris is worried that you and he may not be able to work together. You’re going to need to smooth things over. Let this one go, Harriett.”
How many things had she let go? How much of herself had she already given away?
“Why me?”
“Because you’re wrong.”
“I’m a woman in the target audience. I’m also a woman with twenty-five years of advertising experience who hasn’t lost a single new business pitch in two years. And you’re telling me that I’m wrong about this?”
“Yes,” he said. “You don’t know what younger people find funny.”
It was a low blow, but she’d been expecting it. “If you say so. But I won’t present that ad to a client.”
“The way things are going, you won’t have to.”
Harriett’s laugh seemed to throw him. “You haven’t won a piece of new business without me,” she said. “You need a win now to justify bringing your boy in from London. I’ve heard you’re paying him five times my salary. Won’t look good if he falls flat on his face the first time out. You sure you want to risk it?”
“You know, you’re not as good as you think,” Max said.
No,” Harriett agreed. She’d known he’d get mean. She’d been waiting for it. “I’m better.”
His lip curled into a snarl, and Harriett glimpsed the fear that lay beneath his contempt. “You may not believe this, but there’s a reason I’m CEO of this agency and you’re not.”
Harriett laughed again. She saw how it infuriated him and laughed even harder. “Oh, I believe it. There is a reason, but it has nothing to do with talent.”
“Chris Whitman is worth a dozen of you.”
“You’re afraid of me,” Harriett observed. It was hard to believe it had taken her so long to see it. “That’s why you have to keep me in my place.”
“I’m afraid of you?”
“Yes, you’re afraid of me because I’m better than you are. And if you give one talented woman the power she deserves, another will follow. Then another. And together they’ll show that their way is better. Then your whole fake fucking world will come tumbling down.”
Harriett picked up a One Show pencil and tossed it to him. “You wouldn’t have this if it weren’t for me.”
Max caught the golden pencil and promptly hurled it at the wall, where it left a satisfying gash in the drywall.
Next Harriett tossed a Silver Lion, followed by a Webby. “Or these.”
They hit the wall as well.
“I made all of this happen. Without me, they’d have put you out to pasture a long time ago.”
“Fuck you, cunt,” he snarled.
The door opened and two security guards appeared just as Max was prepared to hurl another Lion. “You better walk me out,” she advised them. “If this asshole does anything to me, I’ll own the whole place.”
That evening, she kicked off her shoes on the train and didn’t bother to slip them back on when they reached the Mattauk stop. As Harriett strolled home from the train station barefoot in the rain, she knew the neighbors were peeping at her through the blinds, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass. She felt totally free for the first time in her life.
Months later, Harriett received an invitation in the mail. Her presence was requested at the unveiling of a new exhibition in Central Park. The image on the front showed the park’s famous Shakespeare statue transformed into Eleanor Roosevelt.
Of the twenty-nine statues in Central Park, only one is a woman.
This year, for International Women’s Day, we will be righting that wrong.
Join Manhattan Financial Advisors in celebrating women’s contributions to the world.
Beneath was a handwritten note from Max.
You were the inspiration. Please come back.
Harriett sent her regrets, along with a bouquet of flowers handpicked from her garden.