Throughout the spring, Brock continued to make progress in our sessions. He still gave me a hard time now and then (more now than then), but I was beginning to realize that his fits of resistance weren’t always juvenile attempts at mocking me; sometimes they were legitimate challenges to my point of view. In other words, our sessions evolved into often spirited, even stimulating discussions as opposed to the dogfights they were initially.
I was explaining this one Thursday night in June to my friends. I hadn’t seen any of them in over a month—Penny had been too “crazed” with the Feminax account to get together; Gail had been too busy interviewing divorce lawyers (she claimed she really did want to divorce Jim; she just hadn’t told him yet); Isabel had been in East Hampton photographing cats—at the beach, at cocktail parties, at the notoriously restrictive Maidstone Club (they didn’t permit Jews on the premises but apparently cats were another story); and Sarah had been in L.A., both battling and allowing herself to be romanced by the intrepid producers who had purchased the rights to her most recent book.
“It sounds like you’re getting through to ‘America’s Toughest Boss,’” Sarah marveled as we sipped drinks on the terrace of her pied-à-terre, which appeared to have been renovated since the last time I’d been to the apartment. New kitchen cabinets, new mirrored bar, new built-ins for all her bestsellers.
“I hope I’m getting through to him,” I said, then suddenly remembered what I’d been meaning to ask Sarah. “Shifting gears for a minute, Sarah, at your birthday party, I met a man named Greg who works for Finefoods. Why didn’t you tell me you knew someone who knew Brock?”
The question seemed to throw her off balance. “A man named Greg? At my party?”
“Yes. He told me he ran Finefoods’ Far East division until his daughter got sick and his wife left him. Now he’s a consultant to the company.”
“How curious” was how she responded. “Maybe he’s a friend of Edward’s. I certainly don’t know him, or if I ever did, I had no idea where he worked.”
Well, it did seem plausible that this Greg person could be a friend of Edward’s. And since Sarah and Edward rarely saw each other, it was more than likely that they moved in different social circles.
“Getting back to Brandon Brock, you’re saying he’s less ferocious than he was when he made the cover of Fortune?” asked Isabel, who, for the first time in memory, was not wearing black. She had on a faded blue work shirt and blue jeans. I was so startled by her change of costume that I almost didn’t recognize her.
“Still feisty but less ferocious, yes,” I said proudly.
“What about his offensive behavior toward women?” asked Gail, who had lost more weight and looked healthier than I’d ever seen her. “Has he improved in that area?”
“Definitely,” I said. “I’ve been pounding into his head the do’s and don’t’s of how to deal appropriately with women in the workplace. If he only learns one thing from my program, it will be how to speak to his female employees in a manner that will earn their loyalty, not their wrath.”
“That’s quite a change then,” said Penny, a little skeptically. “Or are you just getting used to his hitting on you?”
“He doesn’t hit on me,” I said, more hotly than I’d intended.
“Oh sure, he doesn’t,” she said, winking at the others.
“No, really. He’s pretty much stopped that kind of talk. It turns out, he’s not that bad a guy. He’s sort of funny, actually.”
“Funny?” They all said this at once.
“Well, yes,” I said defensively, feeling their eyes on me. “Of course, there’s still the side of him that growls at people—the Type A side, the side that earned him the Toughest Boss label. But there’s also a side that’s childlike, playful, and it’s that side that has emerged in our sessions. As a matter of fact, he’s had a very interesting transformation thus far. The more sensitive he’s become, the less I’ve seen the belligerence. And the less belligerent he’s become, the more I’ve seen the humor. You know, the other day he told me a joke about a traveling salesman, and I laughed so hard I—”
I clammed up when I realized that my friends were staring at me.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Let’s talk about your transformation,” said Penny.
“Mine?”
“Yes. You hate jokes,” said Gail.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Nobody hates jokes.”
“You never tell them,” said Isabel. “You’re a very serious person, Lynn.”
She should talk. They should all talk. “Okay, so I don’t tell jokes. I’m simply saying that Brandon Brock is not the bane of my existence. He’s got a quick sense of humor and he knows how to enjoy himself—knows how to embrace life, if you will—and, considering that he heads up a very successful company, he’s very bright, very street smart. In short, he’s not a horrible person.”
“Would everybody get a load of this,” Penny said with a smirk. “Lynn’s sticking up for the guy.”
“He’s my client,” I said, the adrenaline pumping for a reason I couldn’t immediately identify. “I stick up for every single one of my clients. I’m their advocate.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “You always talk about the men who undergo the Wyman Method as if they’re still on all fours.”
“I—”
“Penny’s right,” Sarah chimed in. “You like this one, don’t you, Lynn.”
“Like him? Well, I suppose I like him, as opposed to not liking him.”
“And you laughed at his traveling salesman joke?” said Penny. “‘Men are such simpletons,’ you’ve told us over and over. ‘Their idea of communicating is telling a joke. How pathetic.’ Obviously, something—or someone—has changed your thinking, Lynn.”
“My thinking is that you’re twisting what I said,” I countered. “I’m just doing my job with Brandon Brock, just trying to win our bet, remember? You didn’t believe I could feminize him in six months and I’m proving I can.”
That shut them up for the time being. But while they moved on to other topics, I couldn’t help but wonder silently about my true feelings toward Brock. Did I care about him in the same way that I cared about Fritz, the Porsche salesman, and Sam, the owner of the plumbing supply company, and the rest of my clients who, by the end of the program, had learned the language of Womenspeak? Or was it remotely possible that I cared about Brandon Brock in an actual romantic sense; that, as he was becoming more attuned to the sensitivities of a woman, he was also becoming more appealing to me as a man?
In July, Brock went to Europe on business and had to cancel two sessions as a result. I suggested to Naomi that we reschedule him for one double session instead of trying to make up the two.
“I would have asked for a double session anyway,” I explained to her, “because we’re far enough into the program for me to take Mr. Brock on another field trip.”
“Oh!” she said excitedly. “That sounds intriguing.”
“Hopefully, it will be instructive too,” I said, getting a kick out of her enthusiasm. If it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have landed Brock as a client.
“You know, Dr. Wyman, I’ve seen remarkable changes in Mr. Brock since you started working with him,” she said.
“Have you?” I said. “How?”
She giggled shyly. “The other day, he complimented me on my dress. He said it was a lovely color on me.”
“Good. Very good,” I said, extremely pleased.
“But what really surprised me was what he said next,” she went on. “He laughed in a rather self-deprecating way and said, ‘Well, you may be wearing the perfect dress today, Naomi, but I simply couldn’t decide what to put on this morning. Nothing fit. I don’t know how you metabolize desserts, but that crème brûlée I had last night went straight to my thighs.’ I’m telling you, Dr. Wyman, I nearly fainted when he came out with that. It was so, so—”
“Similar to what a woman would say?” I offered.
“Exactly. I responded immediately and we had a nice little chat about food and weight gain—the sort of conversation I never dreamed I’d have with Mr. Brock.”
“Excellent.” So he really was practicing his scripts.
“But he made the most startling comment of all just before he left on his trip to Europe.”
“What was it?” I said eagerly.
“He stopped by my desk, looking a little worried. I assumed whatever was bothering him was a Finefoods matter, having to do, perhaps, with our European operations. In any case, I didn’t expect him to share his feelings with me—Brandon Brock share his feelings with his secretary? Ha!—when all of a sudden, he gazed right into my eyes and said, ‘Naomi, I’m concerned about leaving the country because of my sister’s condition.’ I was flabbergasted. I knew Mr. Brock had a sister but only because she’s on his Christmas gift list every year.”
“Go on,” I urged.
“So I asked, not wanting to pry but thinking he might view me as callous if I didn’t, ‘What is your sister’s condition?’ He leaned in and said softly and with great sensitivity, ‘She has menopause.’”
Has menopause. Still, I was delighted. Brock and I had spent almost an entire session on women’s health issues.
“And I’m not the only one who’s noticed the difference in the way he speaks,” Naomi continued. “All the women in the office are talking about it. It’s as if he’s developed an entirely new vocabulary. He’s actually been using words like ‘hopes’ and ‘hearts’ and—here’s the one that really touches us—‘children.’”
“And it’s only going to get better, Naomi,” I pledged. “He still has another month or so before he finishes the program.”
She sighed. “Imagine what he’ll be like by then.”
I did imagine it. In fact, I spent entirely too much time imagining it.
“How’ve you been?” Brock asked as he sauntered into my office after returning from his two weeks abroad. He looked tanned and fit, not the least bit jet-lagged.
“I’ve been fine, thanks,” I said approvingly. Asking a woman how she’s been, like asking a woman how she feels, shows a real proficiency in Womenspeak. “And your trip went well?”
“Fair,” he said. “I was upset about how one of our distributors spoke to me during a meeting. He was really hostile.”
Yes, I thought, nodding. He’s come a long, long way.
“Well,” I said, getting down to business. “As you know, we’re going to take another field trip today.”
“Not to Bloomingdale’s, I hope,” he said. “According to Kelsey, they’re having a summer sale at Saks. I really think we should go there instead.”
I laughed. “Is that one a joke or are you actually trading shopping tips with Kelsey now?”
“That one was a joke,” he said with a grin. “So where are we going today?”
“Out of the city,” I said cryptically, gathering my purse and my briefcase. “My car’s in the garage. Shall we?”
We said goodbye to Diane, who was adhering a fake beauty mark to her upper lip (she was in her Cindy Crawford phase), and left the office.
“Why don’t I drive?” Brock offered, as we approached my car.
“Nope,” I said, waving him over to the passenger’s side. “This exercise has to do with you not driving, with you not being the one in control, with you allowing yourself to appear vulnerable.”
“Sitting in the passenger’s seat of your car will make me appear vulnerable?”
“Let me ask you this, Mr. Brock: Who drives when you and Kelsey are going someplace in her car?”
“I do.”
“I rest my case. Studies show that men feel passive when they’re being driven around by a woman, because they’re so accustomed to being in charge. Today, you will experience what it’s like not to be in charge. Today, you will sit where the woman usually sits: in the passenger seat.”
“So I’ll sit in the passenger seat.” He shrugged, as if this were no big deal, and lowered his bulky frame into my Nissan.
I pulled the car out of the garage and headed toward the FDR Drive, en route to the ’burbs.
We drove along in awkward silence. Brock was definitely twitchy, squirmy, stuck there in that passenger’s seat without the steering wheel as an anchor. It was rather comical, actually. He was incapable of just sitting there and being driven. He tapped his feet on the floor, played with his tie, fidgeted. At one point, he leaned over and adjusted the thermostat on the air conditioner.
“What did you just do?” I asked as I drove.
“Turned the air up,” he said. “It’s as hot as a bitch in here.”
I gave him a disapproving look.
“Sorry. What I meant to say is, it’s as hot as a just-out-of-the-oven tuna noodle casserole in here.”
I reset the thermostat to where it had been before he’d changed it.
“Hey,” he said, reaching over to turn the thermostat back down and, in the process, brushing his hand against mine as I was reaching over to turn the thermostat back up.
There was a moment of genuine awkwardness then, as we both let our accidental touching, let this clumsy physical contact between us register. I can’t speak for him, of course, but I found the incident both unnerving and exhilarating, one of those things you can’t wait to do again but feel you shouldn’t.
“It really is too hot in this car,” said Brock, whose already ruddy face was even more flushed. “I’m sweating my brains out.”
“Well, I’m not,” I said, regaining control of myself. “Women feel the cold more keenly than men do.”
“Oh, yeah? What happened to women who have menopause and all those hot flashes you’ve been coaching me to talk about?”
“When women are in menopause, many of them do experience hot flashes, but there’s an entire population of women who are not in menopause, Mr. Brock, and many of them work at Finefoods. In fact, another line of Womenspeak dialogue for you to practice at the office, when you walk into a meeting, is: ‘Gee, is it cold in here or is it just me?’ The non-menopausal women in the room will really relate to that.”
“So I should pretend to be cold when I’m hot?”
“It’s not so much pretending as it is simply speaking the language, Mr. Brock. When you say, ‘Parlez-vous français?’ you’re not pretending to be French. You’re just speaking French. Do you understand the concept now?”
He looked at me and laughed. “How in the world did I end up with you in my life, Dr. Lynn Wyman?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve never met anyone like you, you know that? In the beginning I thought you were a nag whose saving grace was her legs, but at this stage?” He shook his head and smiled.
Clearly, these were all rhetorical questions, so I didn’t answer them. Still, I sensed that he was enjoying the program now, maybe even enjoying me, and the knowledge made me wildly happy.
I kept driving until we got to the town of Pelham Manor, about twenty minutes from the city, depending on traffic. I exited off the Hutchinson River Parkway, made a number of turns and finally stopped the car at the Pelham Manor train station.
“What are we doing here?” asked Brock, who was unfamiliar with the town, as I suspected. While his office was in nearby White Plains, he lived in Manhattan. I figured the landscape between home and work would be uncharted territory for him, and I was right.
“We’re lost,” I said, turning off the ignition.
“Lost?” He pooh-poohed that idea. “We’re five minutes off the parkway.”
“Yes, but can you get us from here to Oak Street?”
“Where the hell’s Oak Street?”
“Exactly.” I smiled. This was going to be fun. “Oak Street is a small side street in Pelham Manor. It can’t be far from here, judging by this map.” I held up the AAA map that I’d retrieved from my briefcase and handed it to Brock.
He batted it away, didn’t even glance at it. “Maps. Who uses maps?”
“I’ll tell you who uses them, Mr. Brock. Women.”
“That’s because they have no navigational skills.”
“No, it’s because they aren’t afraid to admit they need help.”
“Help? Have you ever tried to unfold and then refold a map? It’s worse than trying to untangle Saran Wrap.”
“Nonetheless, here’s the map, Mr. Brock. I suggest you find Oak Street on it. Oh, and please keep in mind that we’re on a tight schedule here. We’ve got to get you back into the city in two hours.”
“Damn right. I’ve got a meeting.”
“Then read the map.”
He read the map. “I can’t find Oak Street,” he whined after a few minutes, “but I found Oak Circle. Must be near Oak Street.”
“If you say so. Why don’t you tell me how to get there?”
“No problem.”
I started the car and waited for his instructions.
“Make a right at the light,” he said, running his finger along the map. “Then, at the next light, make another right. Then continue down that street until it forks and take the left fork, then another left.”
I did what I was told. We drove around and around until Brock finally, reluctantly, begrudgingly confessed that he didn’t have a clue where Oak Street was or how we might find it.
“Then I guess you’d better ask someone for directions,” I said, arriving at the point of the exercise.
He looked as if he were about to have an aneurysm.
“You can do this,” I said reassuringly, knowing what a big step he would be taking. Studies show that men have fantasies of being the master of their domain. Making them ask for directions is like telling them they’re not.”
“But I—”
“Just roll down your window, Mr. Brock,” I coached, “so you can call out to passersby.”
Now he looked plain mortified. “I am not asking for directions,” he said, as if drawing a line in the sand.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no reason to. The person I ask will probably give us the wrong directions and we’ll be worse off than we already are.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, having heard that one before.
“Besides,” he said, “if I had more time, I’d find the damn street on my own.”
“But you don’t have more time,” I reminded him. “So ask that woman over there how to get to Oak Street. Go ahead.”
“I bet she won’t know,” he grumbled.
“Ask her, Mr. Brock. You won’t complete the program successfully unless you do.”
He sighed and leaned his head out the window. “Miss?” An elderly woman approached the car. “Do you know how to get to Oak Street?”
She cupped her ear and asked him to repeat the question. He wasn’t thrilled. The indignity of it all.
“DO YOU KNOW HOW TO GET TO OAK STREET?” he said again, louder this time.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said the woman, who then ambled away.
Brock glared at me.
“Ask that woman,” I suggested, motioning to another passerby. “But when you ask her, try not to bark at her, Mr. Brock. In other words, try to make her want to give you the directions. Women respond much more sympathetically when there’s a human-interest slant to a situation—much more so than they do to straight commands or questions. So this time, add a little information to your presentation. Say something like: ‘We were driving up from the city, because it’s such a lovely summer day, and decided to see the sights here in Pelham Manor. Would you tell us how to get to Oak Street, please?’”
“Human interest.” He relaxed a little. He was feeling less threatened, I could tell. He just had to be eased into the exercise; they all did. “Okay. How’s this?” He leaned out the window. “Oh, miss?” The woman approached the car. She was a pretty young redhead in shorts and a sleeveless top that exposed her midriff, among other treasures.
“Yeah?” she said, between chomps on her bubble gum. She was eyeing Brock in a sexy, seductive way while completely ignoring me. I did not experience the bond of sisterhood with her.
“We were driving up from the city today,” he began, sounding very jaunty. “We wanted to be out in the country on such a lovely summer day and smell the air, smell the flowers, smell the essence of the season.” God, he was laying it on a little thick. “Speaking of smells, that’s a wonderful perfume you’re wearing, miss.”
“Thanks,” she said. “My boyfriend bought it for me.”
“And a lucky guy he is.”
I cleared my throat, hoping he’d get the hint to stay on message.
“Anyway, our destination was Oak Street but instead we ended up here.”
“So you’re lost,” said the redhead.
Brock took a deep breath before admitting he was. “I was wondering if you could give us directions.”
“Nope,” she said. “I’ve never heard of Oak Street. Sorry.”
She turned and strutted back up the road.
“I think you were overdoing it,” I said, unable to resist. “Womenspeak does not involve drooling.”
He grinned. “I wasn’t drooling. I was just trying to arouse her…sympathy.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He managed to get the directions to Oak Street out of the third passerby, a man in his fifties.
“Good job,” I told Brock. “This was a difficult exercise today and you came through it very well.”
“Then it’s on to Oak Street we go,” he said cheerfully, pleased to have passed this latest test.
“No, it’s back to the city we go,” I said, starting the car. “It’s getting late.”
“What about Oak Street?”
“There is no Oak Street. That’s why you couldn’t find it on the map.”
“But that man just gave me directions to it, unless I’m totally out of my mind.”
I smiled. “Men would rather die than have other men think they don’t know something. He wasn’t about to let you think he didn’t know where Oak Street was, so he gave you bogus directions.”
“You mean the guy was one-upping me?”
“He was talking Menspeak to you. Same thing.”
Stunned, Brandon Brock sat back against the seat of the car and regarded me. “Are you like this with all men or just with me?”
“Am I like what?”
“So in command.”
I laughed to myself, remembering those months after Kip left when I felt anything but. “I’m not in command,” I said. “I’ve just been doing this kind of work for a long time. I have my area of expertise, that’s all.”
“I’ll grant you that, especially after seeing you in action today. As a matter of fact, I’d love to hear the story of how you came to be interested in the different languages that men and women speak—if you have the time to share the information, of course. I’d really enjoy listening to the genesis of the Wyman Method and the steps you took to market the program, as well as how you’ve helped so many men to become sensitive, caring individuals who are there for the women in their lives. I, for one, still have a lot to learn on that score.”
I stole a quick glance at him as I drove, just to be sure that the man sitting next to me, the man who had just addressed me in impeccable Womenspeak, was the man who had once called me snookums.
“Yes, Mr. Brock,” I replied, my voice quivering ever so slightly. “You do have a lot to learn, but not nearly as much as you think.”