Sheer, p.21
Sheer, page 21
After a banana split for the table, another nod to James Sutter’s questionable sophistication, our trio bid farewell. The restaurant’s doorman hailed us a cab and we sat in the back of the car, the whooshing traffic outside our window an understudy for chitchat. Amanda hadn’t spoken since James Sutter’s big reveal. I regretted her presence at the meal; I was mortified that she had had a front-row seat to my debasement.
In the hotel elevator, Elizabeth pressed the buttons for our respective floors. She slung an arm around my shoulders and gave them an affectionate squeeze. It was all I could do not to rest my head on her arm. Elizabeth exited the elevator first. One floor up, it was my turn. Amanda’s room was closer to the elevator banks, but as we approached it, she made no motion to pause.
“How about a drink?” she asked, her face luminous with pity.
“Why not,” I replied. “Come to my room? We can scope out the minibar.”
We continued to my door. With a swipe of the key card, we were inside my dark chamber. The minibar was well stocked.
“Whiskey?” I asked.
“Sure,” Amanda replied as she sat in the room’s sole dining chair.
I poured our whiskeys into two stemless wineglasses and handed one to Amanda. I sat in the room’s scratchy armchair and leaned back. Amanda crossed one slender leg over the other. Her shins gleamed like polished nails.
“That was some dinner.”
“I’m sorry you had to be there.”
“Why?” she asked, her eyes dark pools.
“To witness that. It was humiliating.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. That guy was an asshole.”
“That asshole is our new boss.”
I stared sorrowfully at my whiskey.
“You are my boss. Period.” Amanda’s gaze was ferocious now.
“Thanks, but that’s not actually true.”
“It is.”
Amanda’s indignation lit something inside me, deeper than the whiskey could reach. Unlike James Sutter and Chip and Ellen, she was on my side. This blazing young woman wanted me to succeed as no one else ever had. She wasn’t embarrassed on my behalf; she was furious. Not even Elizabeth had expressed such anger over my treatment.
This fury only made me more resigned. I was parched of all outrage. I had lost the top position at my company and eventually I’d lose the company, too. How could anyone else do what I did? Who else could be what Reveal needed?
“It’s still yours, you know,” Amanda went on, as though she had a peephole into my thoughts. “Just because someone new will be president, it doesn’t mean the company is his. You will always be Reveal.”
“It’s only a matter of time. Once they sell it, they’ll axe me. They always toss the founder out like trash.”
Amanda drained her wineglass. She set it on the desk behind her and walked the few feet over to my perch. With one of her hands, Amanda patted my knee.
“It will all be okay. You just need to have some self-belief.”
Her hand drifted farther up my leg, kneading my thigh as it moved.
“What are you do—”
“Shh,” Amanda said as she leaned over me. Her face was above me now.
I have replayed this moment so many times in the last three years. I watch it on the screen of my mind now. Amanda smothers the air between us as her lips kiss mine and her hand caresses its intended resting place. I whisper, “No.” “Please don’t.” “We can’t.” I resist her kiss. At first. But the combination of the whiskey and the dinner and the sadness shatters my self-control. I am weak against the heat that surges from Amanda’s hand.
“I can’t,” I murmur in one last attempt to halt the inevitable.
“Yes, you can,” she says. Her hand is inside my underwear. “And you will.”
Against all better judgment, I do.
Day Seven
Evening
I slept with my half-Asian, decade-plus-younger female assistant. At least no one can accuse me of being a cliché.
The optics aren’t great. What about the other dynamics at play? I was depressed. Beaten down by the misogyny of my industry. I had just lost the top position at my company. Amanda pounced on that weakness. She spotted her opening and made her move, with the goal of rendering me dependent on her. She sought to bind herself to my professional status, the better to climb to a higher eventual position without the work of creating something of her own. Once she saw me falter, she threw me to the wolves instead. Yet all the public sees, all the Board will see, is a monstrous white dyke who groomed and violated a fragile minority girl. The real context will always elude them. Don’t they realize how insulting that narrative is to Amanda’s agency in all this? She is too smart to be a victim.
I can’t continue reliving this scene. It will drive me mad, so I click out of my document and turn on the television in search of distraction. After scrolling through the abundant yet lackluster streaming options, I switch over to cable and put my entertainment in the hands of a television network programmer, like in pre-internet days. A biopic of a famous musician has just started. Though I’m not very familiar with her song list, I settle in. It’s addictive to consume the rise and fall of anyone, especially a stranger; you’re free to root for them or wish secretly for their demise, unburdened by the constraints of familiarity.
This musician had some life. Abusive uncle. Drug-addled teens and twenties. Abusive first husband. More drugs. Second husband died after a year of marriage. Rehab. More drugs. And so on. She managed to find time, in all of this, to write and record hit after hit after hit. I watch this movie and wonder, What would the greater public think of my full story, the one I’ve been typing, if I were to actually share it?
Insecurity slaps me in the face.
I think about the Board, about my inability to defend myself to the people deciding my fate. There’s the inevitable arbitration and Sandrine’s directive that we excavate some vulnerability or trauma, to help a hypothetical judge see that I am not a power-hungry predator, that I am, instead, a victim of an unfair society. Perhaps I’ve internalized Sandrine’s strategy because I’ve been doing exactly that. I’ve tapped into the homophobia I faced, the loss of Caroline, the relentless misogyny of doing business, Ellen’s ongoing betrayal, Amanda’s impending betrayal. That’s a ticker-tape parade of victimhood ready for a captive audience. Then I switch on the television and suddenly I wonder if all those obstacles I’ve dredged up amount to anything. Success is a handicap. People want to see the struggle.
I get the appeal of watching someone overcome immense hardship. It sends the inspiring message of If [insert name of famous celebrity] can conquer [insert insurmountable obstacles] and succeed, there’s no reason I can’t do the same with my comparatively lesser challenges. At a certain point, it seems like the number of barriers a person faces and the extent of their struggles are more important than the eventual triumph. To measure the value of a life by the quantity of suffering incurred seems like a sad way to celebrate human existence. In that case, why bother with achievement at all.
Clashing Visions
It’s funny to consider that I closed on this apartment, my current sanctuary, in the first quarter of 2013, less than a year after I returned from that fateful London excursion. Usually a purchase like this marks a promotion or an engagement or the birth of a child, but I bought my dream residence after one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. A psychologist would have a field day analyzing this. I work in a superficial industry, so of course I confuse commerce with success. Or: I required the status of a top-tier apartment to bolster my flagging ego.
The truth is far simpler than either of those hypotheses. I loved this apartment from the moment I saw it. I wanted a residence that felt like a home, with nature outside my window and a doorman who could announce visitors and accept packages. Most of all, I yearned for the relief that comes when you walk out your door into a neighborhood full of living and breathing adults, people who don’t care what cool bar opened on Houston Street or which influencer scandal is ricocheting from phone to phone. You’d be hard-pressed to find a group less interested in what’s trendy than the residents of the Upper West Side.
I did not find my dream apartment via the standard channels, rather through Elizabeth’s fiancé, Arthur, who had a friend who knew the owners of a classic six in a Central Park West address. The owners were planning to put it on the market, but figured they’d canvass their sizable Rolodex first and see if they could nab a taker.
“It’s on the Upper West Side,” Elizabeth warned me, as if I didn’t know the location of Central Park West.
“I’m aware of that,” I replied.
“I know you want to leave the Flatiron, but this is very uptown.”
“That’s the point.”
“Not uptown like the Upper East Side.”
Elizabeth and Arthur lived some blocks away on Columbus. She couldn’t envision a world in which she and I would choose the same zip code.
“Thank god.”
Elizabeth sighed at that.
“I warned you.”
One of the owners, the wife, walked me through the apartment. Her hair had gray roots and her pants were in wide-wale corduroy and I thought, Okay, Elizabeth wasn’t exaggerating. The place, though, was a thing of beauty. Its parquet floors had the patina of hard-earned love. Its public rooms were open and generous. The view of Central Park was nothing short of breathtaking. Within minutes of my tour, I knew this apartment was the only place where I would ever want to live.
Six reference letters, one co-op board interview, 180 pages of highly invasive questions about my finances, one mortgage, and seven months later, I closed on the Upper West Side apartment. The first morning I woke to a sunrise cresting over the Central Park reservoir outside my window and thought, If it all goes to shit, at least I will have this.
* * *
—
My premonition of Armageddon was hardly paranoia. When I returned from London in the summer of 2012, Ellen, anticipating my anger over James Sutter’s revelation, confronted me with the details of the contract she had encouraged me to sign in 1999 after I pitched Glow. The one she had presented as necessary to protect her interests.
“I’m sure by now you’re aware of the share-dilution clause in that contract,” she remarked coolly over the phone to me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“The share-dilution clause.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The clause that keeps the percentage of my shares in Reveal steady no matter how many additional investors we take on, while yours grow weaker and weaker.”
My body went cold. “So what you’re saying is—”
“What I’m saying,” Ellen cut in, “is that your shares are worthless compared to mine. And so is your voting power on our new Board.”
For someone intent on controlling her creative vision, I had a real knack for relinquishing power. I wished I could reach back through time, grab my younger self by the shoulders, knock the naivete and hubris out of her, force her to seek a lawyer, and make her protect her creation. How dumb I had been to think that I could manage Donald and Ellen with ease, that my vision trumped their social and financial heft. Donald had begat Chip Adler had begat Ross Palmer had begat James Sutter and each of those men had drained my interests. Who knew how many more iterations awaited me in the future.
“I don’t say this to threaten you,” Ellen continued as I remained silent. “Only to dissuade you from any misguided notion that you can block this investment from James or the company’s eventual sale. I am doing what’s best for Reveal. I have only ever done what benefits this company.”
I called Elizabeth straight after in a rage. There was nothing to be done about the share dilution, but Elizabeth suggested that I work with a lawyer to negotiate a founder’s agreement that would establish my authority with the new Board. Arthur recommended Sandrine, who put a deal in place, the exact terms of which I trusted to her expertise. Clearly, I knew nothing about contracts.
I never confronted Ellen about her betrayal of our long-standing business partnership nor her lapsed spiritual support. Nothing she could say would heal the wound from this revelation. Even if Ellen was merely a proxy for Donald in these decisions, she had still shown no remorse over the pain she had caused me. I realized that however tough and compartmentalized I had become, in service to her vision of leadership, at least I wasn’t utterly heartless like Ellen.
The deal with James Sutter went through. Before Ellen had a chance to congratulate—which is to say, torment—me in person, tragedy struck her household. Donald died suddenly of a heart attack. I say “tragedy,” but I’m not sure that’s the correct word. The relationship between Ellen and Donald seemed about as warm as a cryogenic tank. Ellen inherited half of Donald’s very sizable net worth. Between that and the extra security from James Sutter’s investment in Reveal, she was thriving financially.
There was a price, though, there always is. Ellen visited the Reveal offices a few weeks after Donald’s funeral. She appeared suddenly older than I remembered. Her hair was all gray of course, a beautiful white silver that she had tinted by a colorist. Her skin was patchy in spots. I had never seen her anything less than optimally moisturized. There were grayish bags beneath her eyes, visible through whatever non-Reveal concealer she had used.
In true form, Ellen expressed her misery by making others miserable. She strode into my office that day, her steps heavier than you’d expect for such a thin woman, and stood before my desk while gesturing aggressively.
“You need to change offices, Maxine,” Ellen said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“This is the office for a CEO. You’re no longer the CEO.”
“I’m still the founder, Ellen.” She looked so terrible, I almost felt sorry for her, despite everything she had done to me. “I’m not changing offices.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ellen snapped.
“There are those two empty offices near publicity.” A few employees had been poached by a rival company. “We could combine them and create something bigger than this.”
“Fine,” said Ellen. “So long as it’s much bigger.”
I almost laughed. It was like talking to a child, a very sad child.
Ellen lingered in front of me.
“Did you need something else?” I asked.
“I know what you think of me. What you’ve thought of me all these years. You’re wrong.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You think I don’t see it?” Ellen asked, her voice a dagger. “You think you’re better than me, than all of us, because you’re single and independent of a man.”
I didn’t speak.
“You think I’m some dumb wife. A fancy puppet for Donald to toy with behind the scenes. That he’s been running the show all along.” Ellen gripped the back of the chair tightly. “You’re wrong. I let him think that. I let him think all these things—investing in Reveal, bringing Chip on, bringing Ross on, the Board—were his ideas. I whispered them to him at night when he’d had a few drinks. My father was a financier. He taught me everything there is to know.”
“Then why was ERA such a failure?”
Ellen laughed sharply. “You think I’d have this life with a candle business? Please. I needed a husband and the wealth he could build. No one was going to offer me an MD job at a bank. So I propped up Donald’s ego, gave him the credit, and I got what I wanted: stature and money. Women of my generation understand that this is how we amass power. You’ve never gotten that. You want to dispose of men. I know how to use them.”
“In the process, you’ll stomp on any woman who gets in your way, including me,” I replied, anger shaking my voice.
“I don’t see you pulling other women up with you,” said Ellen. “You’re no different from me.”
“I empower women.”
“You judge them. You’re an authoritarian.”
“I believe they can be free of patriarchal standards.”
“And your standards are so much better?”
“Of course they are. My standards center female desire.”
“You mean your desire.”
“Same thing.”
“Is it?”
“Anyway the power you describe isn’t real. It’s a mirage.”
Ellen cocked her brow. “I’m chairman of your Board. That’s as real as it gets.”
Ellen was right on one thing: I had misjudged her and underestimated her role in the more egregious betrayals of the past decade. The men had always seemed to be the clear enemy. I had believed that Ellen’s insistence on my stoicism as a leader had stemmed from her own powerlessness, however unacknowledged, in a patriarchal world. That she had turned me into a warrior to win the battles she was unable to fight. Now I realized that we had never been allies. We weren’t enmeshed in the same war. To her, there was no war.
None of this is to exculpate the men—they were a vile and brutal lot—but the picture had been blurrier than I’d been willing to admit. Ellen’s cruelty hurt more than their male transgressions because I hadn’t expected it. She wasn’t a pawn to be pitied. She was a queen married to a now dead king. If anyone was the pawn, it was me.
* * *
—
My new understanding of Ellen was the least of my concerns in the short term. Of the two New York–based Cambridge men that James Sutter had suggested for the job of president and CEO of Reveal, Alan Jeffries was deemed the more impressive. He was in his early sixties, a veteran of mass-market beauty brands, the type you were more likely to find in the cosmetics aisle of your local drugstore versus at a specialty beauty retailer. Reveal had always hovered near the middle of the indie prestige sector; it was more aspirational than a ten-dollar lip gloss but priced to undercut the ultra-expensive competitors in its same category. This positioning allowed us to be a special-occasion purchase for a mass-brand customer and a more casual buy for a luxury client. Alan’s background with huge down-market companies did not inspire my confidence.
