Monday morning I’m back at work and Kyra Desai is immediately proven right. Strange things are happening.
At nine thirty I’m closing my office door behind me when I hit Annette Howard, who’s following me into the room, smack in the face. Annette Howard is a category reviewer Self Help/Personal Development/Spiritual Growth. All I’ve ever noticed about her before is her purse, a mid-size fake Kelly bag she carries with her everywhere, even to run across the room to the printer. My office is opposite the room where the twelve category reviewers work and sometimes I watch them. It’s usually even less interesting than my own job. She waves away my apologies and inquiries about her nose. I sit at my desk and she sits down in the uncomfortable armless chair across
“I want your job,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
She smiles as she speaks, a spokesmodel smile with a row of caps. The accent is definitely southern Annette is blond and pretty, maybe twenty-five, and it’s becoming abundantly clear to me that she’s insane. “Well, I’ve been thinking about, you know, my career, and about Intelligentsia, and I think the next logical step is for me to have your job. But they wouldn’t have to fire you,” she rushes to add. “They could have two spotlight reviewers. But they might have to, you know, let you go.”
I don’t say anything and so she continues, “I wanted to let you know ahead of time because of the mental illness Your father was crazy. Everyone knows that So you must be a little touched, too. I know what it’s like. My grandmother had schizophrenia She died in an asylum That’s where I get it from.”
A hot anger is rising up inside me. “What on earth are you getting at?”
“You see There it goes. You’re getting paranoid. You’re inappropriately angry. You’re reading insults into a neutral statement Believe me, I know.”
“I am not mentally ill, Annette.”
“Not yet,” she says cheerfully Her cell phone rings and she reaches into her purse to answer it.
“Hello?” she says into the phone. “Oh my God. I know I know “ Her voice trails off and she turns toward me “Excuse me I have to take this call Privately.” She looks at me and waits
When I was fifteen I would have fought Annette, and I probably would have won (rage trumps muscle, but insanity sometimes trumps rage) Now I’m twenty-nine, I’m good, and so I get up from my desk and walk to my boss’s office. Empty I walk around to his boss’s office Empty The floor is laid out in an oval shape, with offices in the middle and on the edges. A hallway runs around the oval, like a race track The management has tried hard to make the Intelligentsia offices look dusty and literary, with cartoons from The New Yorker and snippets of irony from Harper’s Index and news items from GV stuck on the walls with yellowing cellophane tape Stacks of book reviews and piles of books line the halls though there’s plenty of space in the storage rooms. I walk around the race track looking for someone, anyone I know, silently chanting shanaishwaraya, and come back empty-handed. Most of the senior staff and management has taken off today, the day after Christmas Back in my office Annette is off the phone, sitting in the uncomfortable chair with a little smile on her face.
“It’s okay,” she says, smiling. “You can come back in now ”
“Thanks So, what was it you wanted, Annette?”
“I want your job It’ll be great if they can make a new position, and we can work together, but if not I’ll take your job. I thought with you having mental illness and all, being so unstable, I should warn you ahead of time. I didn’t want you to take it personally. I didn’t want you to freak out.” She makes a crazy-person face—eyes wide, mouth stretched open, tongue lolling out—and then she laughs.
“Thanks, Annette. That’s nice of you.”
“No problem See ya.”
In the afternoon Annette comes to my office again. I’m looking at a website on Vedic astrology and I’m not happy to be interrupted. Annette was infuriating for about five minutes and now she’s a bore She perches herself, spine straight, on the uncomfortable chair and smiles.
“Mary, I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea from our talk this morning ”
“What would that be?”
“See, now, I can tell by the tone of your voice that you did get the wrong idea I can tell by the tone of your voice that you think I don’t like you. And I do like you, Mary. I would never do anything to hurt you That’s why I wanted to tell you ahead of time, about the job and everything So we could still be friends Here, I got you something.” She reaches into her cute black purse and pulls out a paperback book with a blue-and-white cover “I got this for you, Mary. This isn’t one of those free Intelligentsia books. I went out and got this for you in a bookstore. I hate bookstores They’re just so, you know, yuck “
She holds the book out to me and when I don’t take it she drops it on the desk The Eleven Steps to Wholeness: Recovery for Children of Mentally III Parents I don’t say anything, and over the next minute Annette’s face droops from confident young executive to sad little girl
“Mary,” Annette says, “I can tell by the look on your face that you’re not ready for this book I can tell by the look on your face that I was wrong to give you this book. I’m so stupid sometimes Sometimes I’m brain dead. I’m a moron I am so sorry, Mary, I am so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Annette.” I’m hoping to avoid a scene. “It looks good. I’m just a little surprised I’m sure it’s a good book It’s okay.”
“Is it really okay?” Her face brightens back up
“Sure it is It’s just that, you know, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, a lot to read, and I might not be able to get to it for a while I just have so many other books to read right now”
“See, you’re just like me, Mary I don’t like to read too much either. See how much we have in common? Anyway, now you have the book for when you’re ready. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“It’s great,” I tell her. “It’s really great.”
“It’s a workbook. There’s hardly any reading in it It’ll help you, I promise After you do all the work in this workbook you’ll be totally prepared, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically one-hundred-percent prepared for when I take your job ”
The Eleven Steps to Wholeness is a paperback, eight and one half by eleven inches, navy-blue cover with white print and gold trim, perfect bound Blurbs on the back cover from Deepak Chopra and Stephen Covey, originally published 1997, fifth edition 1999 Disclaimer on the copyright page This book is not intended to diagnose or treat any mental disorder, emotional disorder, or emotional distress. For mental and emotional conditions seek the help of a qualified mental health care professional. Not a substitute for medical treatment. Underneath that: The Bestseller That’s Helped Millions’
I remember when the book came out I was working Downtown Books, a bookstore on Miami’s South Beach. I worked for Carl, the owner of Downtown Books, for four years, two years at Seventh Avenue Books in Manhattan and two at Downtown Books in Miami.
“I opened this store,” he told me once, in his messy Seventh Avenue office full of books, bills, scraps of paper, and wads of cash and credit card receipts waiting to be counted, “because for the first time, I needed a job A source of income. My father had done quite well m the stock market He was an investment banker, he was going to go into early retirement There were some questions as to the legality of it all, and then he had his accident—maybe it wasn’t an accident, but we’ll never know—and no one had the heart to come after me and my mother. So we got to keep the money. I was eighteen when he died.
“I finished up at Harvard and then I traveled a little India, Europe, Morocco—which is not all Gide and Bowles would have had you believe, especially for an overweight man with little money for heroin—then, I came back to New York and bought this house I was forty, my mother was seventy She had lost her vision, two hip replacements, she did not age well, and the money was almost gone In those days I spent most of my time shopping for books and reading, so it seemed natural to renovate the space and open a bookshop Of course, I had imagined myself sitting behind this mahogany desk, hand selling fine-binding editions of Plutarch and Proust to men like James Merrill, who still lived in the Village then—still my favorite poet, after all this time. I sold a first edition of his today, by the way, for two thousand dollars. Some collector bought it, some awful college boy from Connecticut with a bookcase full of unread first editions at home, all in designer colors to go with the sofa. Anyway, I thought it would be so grand I thought I’d employ a staff of struggling poets who would worship me for my worldly erudition, they’d all be slender and beautiful and I’d take one of them upstairs whenever I was feeling randy But here, what do we have for today? We have to prepare these deposits for the bank account, which is nearly empty, we have to pay these bills, electricity, unemployment for a girl I caught stealing and didn’t have the heart to turn in to the police, as I should have, we have to make an account of expenses and income for the past month, probably to find that I made just enough to eat and buy a new shirt, and I have to hire someone to do this same job in Miami, which I hope will be you.”
Well. I had worked for Carl for two years, starting as a clerk, then as assistant manager The manager, Carl knew, was stupendously lazy and passed off most of his work to me, but he was gorgeous and, I guess, the closest Carl had ever come to his fantasy of having a staff/harem. After a few years I got restless and Chloe recommended me for the job at Trout Now, two years after I’d left, Carl had called me out of the blue and asked to come to his messy office for a meeting He had bought a half block of real estate in Miami’s Deco District in the early eighties with the last little bit of his inheritance, and although he hadn’t made a dime yet he knew it would pay off big in the future Now one of his tenants was moving out and he thought he might as well open another bookstore.
I was in a sticky situation at the time and leaving New York didn’t seem like a bad idea. I was working at my third publisher I had an apartment, a little studio on Pitt Street near the FDR Drive that at that time seemed to cost a fortune, although it now seems impossible that I rented an apartment in Manhattan for five hundred and fifty dollars a month. I had a boyfriend, Jim, a few years older than me, who made a living writing young adult romance novels under the name Nancy St Clair
And then it all changed. The job at the publisher was degenerating fast into a cycle of boredom/avoidance/boss displeasure/avoidance. My landlord wanted to raise my rent way beyond what I could afford Jim/Nancy—who I liked but didn’t think I loved—wanted me to move in with him
This is where I stood when Carl asked me if I would move to Miami and open his shop for him. I would be working with another woman, Carolyn, who used to work for him in New York and had been lured away by a big chain to Florida, running their flagship store in Miami proper. Now Carl had lured her back and she was just waiting for me, or whomever, to move down there to start up the store.
“Have you ever been to Miami Beach?” Carl asked.
“No.”
He paused “Have you ever left New York at all?”
“I lived in New England for, like, almost a year,” I told him proudly.
“Why don’t you go down for a few days. Check it out Get a cheap ticket, put it on the company credit card. You can stay with Carolyn, I’ve already asked her. You’ll like Carolyn You’ll like Miami. I think you’ll take the job.”
Carolyn picked me up at the airport in a yellow Volkswagen Rabbit convertible I tossed my little red suitcase in the back and climbed into the shotgun seat Carolyn was wearing a black bikini top, a short black skirt, flip-flops, a few tattoos, and a tan Her navel was pierced. I was stiflingly overdressed in my black jeans and clunky ankle boots. I had never been in a convertible before I had never seen a navel piercing before
“I called the airline,” she said. “They said the flight was delayed When’d you get in, like ten minutes ago?”
“Something like that.” I had been waiting for close to two hours. “Thanks for picking me up ”
“No problem,” she said. Carolyn drove fast and drove well, we were already out of the airport and on a freeway suspended above the city. Palm trees were everywhere, so was pink, and blue and white, colors rare in New York. “How was your flight?” she asked.
“Okay. They didn’t have any food. Do you think we could—”
“Great. I wanted to take you to this health-food place for lunch. I wanted to take you to all the local places Avoid all the tourist shit. That way you can tell if you like it here. Are you a vegetarian?”
“Not really ”
“You ever drink wheatgrass juice?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s great,” she told me “It’s got all the, you know, enzymes and everything. This is only place on the beach you can get it It’s kind of backwards that way, but it’s cool Miami, I mean Then I’ll show you where the store is going to be, it’s up the road on Collins Avenue Then I thought we’d go to the beach this afternoon. Are you into the beach?”
“Yeah, but I need to buy a suit somewhere first. If there’s someplace cheap ”
She turned from the freeway and gave me a strange look. “You don’t have a bathing suit? Not even a tank?”
“No.”
She kept up the funny look for a minute and then started to laugh. “Oh, duh Of course you don’t have a suit. What am I thinking? Where the fuck are you going to go swimming in New York—Coney Island?” Coney Island—this sent her into hysterics. We sped past palm trees and the tropical mini-storms that come every few hours in Miami, and past pawn shops and dog races, and past pink and yellow and pale sun-faded blue, down to the southernmost tip of Miami Beach, an island that I was surprised to see hung alongside America at an angle like Manhattan.
Over lunch Carolyn asked me if I had ever left New York before. I told her about my few months at college, and she said “That is so typical You are such a typical New Yorker ”
“Because I dropped out?”
“No, because you’ve never left the city. That is so New York.”
For the first time I saw that it was, and I did not like it I did not want to be so typical at the age of twenty-six I asked Carolyn where she was from “Iowa,” she said. I asked her how she got to New York and then to Miami from Iowa, and she told me what I later would learn was one of her favorite versions of her life story In this story, Carolyn was born to a traveling preacher man and his third wife Holy Roller Pentecostals from Arkansas. Carolyn and the four other children rolled with their parents from town to town until, at age sixteen, Carolyn met Winston, her first husband, at a gas station in Little Rock Her parents damned her to hell and she and Winston moved to California, where he continued to pump gas and Carolyn worked as a bikini model, putting herself through high school and then community college In another story she was born in California to two transplanted Harvard professors, and in another she was the proud possessor of a Ph.D. from NYU. The more time I spent with Carolyn, who knew more about books than anyone I’ve ever met before or since, who could as easily list every book written by Danielle Steele as she could every play by Eugene Ionesco, the more I liked the first version, the story I heard over wheatgrass juice that afternoon; Carolyn as blond, big-boobed autodidact
“So anyway,” she said, finishing her story, “in eighty-one I moved to New York for the modeling. I thought I could do some runway but all I got was a bunch of catalog shit One thing led to another, I got older, and then I was working in a bookstore. I got married again, this time to a painter. You might have heard of him—Basquiat? Anyway, that was another disaster So then I took the job with Carl, then I got this offer from J and H to manage their store down here, now I’m working for Carl again. I love Carl. He’s a cutie. So, are you ready for the beach?”
“Sure,” I said. I’d bought a bikini before lunch and put it on under cutoffs and a T-shirt back at Carolyn’s apartment, a huge one-bedroom for which she said she paid four-fifty a month
“Excellent,” she said. “Lunch is on me.” She paid the bill and then she took the heavy glass ashtray we had been using, emptied the cigarette butts onto her plate, and stuck the ashtray in her purse
“Let’s go,” she said
So I moved to Miami and got an apartment on the same block as my new best friend. Within two years I had lived through my best boyfriend and my worst breakup, and I had come to see that Carolyn was not kooky or eccentric but insane, and it was then that The Eleven Steps to Wholeness, the book Annette just dropped on my desk, came out. A lot of women in their thirties and forties asked for it. Some of the women looked plain and defeated and some looked chipper and spunky, like they were fighting hard against what the first group of women had. Everyone at the store laughed at The Eleven Steps and the women who bought it except
Carolyn, who never made fun of self-help books She said that life was too short and too hard not to take help anywhere you could get it.
I never understood that, until now.