“Give me a little credit. I wash. I put the same clothes on after, but I do wash.”
“I showed a bunch of yourMilkposts to my neighbors across the hall. They both worked for Vox Media for years, and now they are starting their own media company focusing on the middle-aged female.”
“They should call it the Invisible XX,” I reply facetiously.
“Hey, that’s pretty good; I’m going to share it with them! Anyway, they want to start a daily newsletter that’s like theSkimm, but for, uh, a more mature audience.”
“Isn’t that what Katie Couric and Maria Shriver are doing?”
“Yes, but my neighbors aren’t looking for Catholic queen meets America’s sweetheart. They want more journalistic reporting from the everyday, everywoman trenches, but with a real hit of intellect and wit. Think Rachel Maddow meets Melissa McCarthy. I told them not only are you clever and an incredible writer but you also tick all the ‘everywoman’ boxes.”
“I haven’t been clever in forever.” Quinn rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine, no more disparaging remarks for the moment. What boxes are those that I tick?” I’m keen to hear.
Quinn lists: “You know, college educated, have lived on both coasts, own a home, a big reader, in and out of the workforce, kids, wondering what’s next in life.”
“More out of the work force than in”—I make it five whole seconds before mocking myself again, but I don’t further interrupt Quinn as she ignores me and continues with her list—“caring for an aging parent, recently dumped by Mr. Happily Ever After, uh ...”
“Large and not in charge,” I add.
“You can call everything I just recited whatever you want. But Elizabeth and Leslie see it as normal, everyday life. There is nothing that you are struggling with on that list that millions of other women can’t relate to. I hate to tell you, Callie, but you aren’t that special.”
“I used to be.”
“Correction, we all used to think we were special. Then we realized that we are flawed and not immune to the tragedies of life, like every other human in existence. The difference between each one of us is when, in our lives, we come face-to-face with that truth.”
I have Lisa on the West Coast and Quinn on the East Coast coming at me with grown-up reality checks I often don’t want to hear. To evade any further enlightened axioms worthy of a social media post, I move the conversation off me and back onto Elizabeth and Leslie.
“Why don’t your neighbors write the daily newsletter, or however they are seeing this thing, themselves?”
“Oh, they’re lipstick-lesbian chic. Not a carb, nor an embryo, and certainly not a penis has been in their bodies, but they can identify an audience hungry for content a mile away.”
“Then what could they have possibly found relatable about oldMilkcontent?”
“They liked how you wrote about social entanglements with sharpness and straight-up common sense. They want to build their media brand on a platform of joy and realness without turning it into fluff or victim-baiting, like everybody else in this clickbait culture. Elizabeth and Leslie are looking to provide an alternative information source to the trauma and drama in a world that watches it on a twenty-four-hour news cycle. All they want to do is get people to feel good and laugh again while learning some things and taking ownership of their future along the way.”
“So you pitched me to make adultery, empty-nesting, menopause, dementia, and career stagnation hilarious against the rise of disinformation, democratic tenuousness, and the rapid destruction of planet Earth?”
“Basically. Yeah. Pretty much. And you should write down what you just said—that was spot-on,” Quinn advises. “You have to admit, Helen’s porn addiction would make a great post alongside science-backed articles on the increase of dementia in younger and younger women. And this job would get you back to New York. Elizabeth and Leslie want to build their team here. They’re over the remote office where everyone only knows each other through a filter and from the neck up.”
“Does that mean I shouldn’t tell Elizabeth and Leslie that the only thing I have going for me right now is from the neck up?”
Ignoring me, Quinn counters, bouncing up and down on the firm, tufted seat, “Does that mean you’ll take the Zoom with Leslie? She’sthe easier to impress of the two. You make it past her, then she will greenlight you to meet Elizabeth in person in December.”
“I’ll take the interview. And tell Alice to take that dress—it’s the one,” I say with tears pooling in my eyes. “Look behind you at our girl. She’s all brainsandbeauty.”
Chapter Sixteen
Present
5:53 p.m. (916-555-0275)
You keeping up the running?
With no one at home to feed, I have forced myself out a dozen or so times, adhering to my schedule of pounding the sidewalks in the early September evenings when I know my neighbors are tucked into their homes for dinner. I have no idea who else, other than Lisa, Quinn, and the poodle that barks at me from his perch in a bay window a few blocks south, could possibly know I have started jogging my way to weight loss.
5:53 p.m. (Callie)
Not to be rude, but who is this?
