Last Wednesday, after touching what is designated as the McKinley ParkDang You’re Donetree and catching our breath, I followed up with a few innocuous questions. Doing my best not to come across as nosy, I leaned in to a few inquiries about Chap while I stretched so as not to be obvious or make eye contact with Daphne. Turns out, my journalistic instincts are still fairly sharp. But then, as Daphne was settling in for what I felt like was going to be a juicy tell-all while she forward-folded, she got a call from Mercy that one of the residents had chucked a shoe at a new attendee in protest to a change in medication. Though her call was none of my business, I couldn’t help myself, and asked if it was my mom who had found her pitching arm. Daphne assured me that if it were, she would have suggested that the attendee keep the shoes, them being designer and all. While Daphne has many admirable qualities, my favorite is her matching my quick wit when it comes to the heartbreaking work of tending to patients with dementia.
Unfortunately, Daphne had to immediately go and relieve the newbie nurse so he wouldn’t quit, and I was left with no more information about Chap than I showed up with before our run began.But the next day, I saw I was added to the group text chain when a meme circulated of a desperate runner clenching his butt cheeks, hunting for a bush to squat behind. Even in the throes of geriatric clientele panic, Daphne managed to do me a solid.
“Earlier this week, I had a Zoom interview with Quinn’s neighbor Leslie, who is starting a new media company with her wife, Elizabeth. It went fairly well. Leslie the Lespondent asked if I would submit a personal essay and a couple of news articles to her and Elizabeth before I travel back east at Christmas. After a little back-and-forth with myself, I decided to give it a shot. So I’ve been brainstorming a list of ideas to write about, but I’m not sure any of them are good. I mean, let’s be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to work my brain creatively. Anyway, that’s why you’re here; I know you’ll tell me if they’re decent or not.”
“What’s a lespondent?” Lisa asks, only half interested in what I said as she opens my fridge and takes out a six-pack of green juice bottles to set on the kitchen counter in her hunt for a beer. “And why do you drink this stuff?” She picks up a container of said “stuff” and shakes it dubiously.
“It gives me energy.”
“So does coffee.” True enough, but apparently the three to four cups a day I have been regularly drinking may be a culprit of my nocturnal issues. Either caffeine is to blame, or it’s the recent messages I have been getting in the middle of the night from Thomas, insisting I not drop the asking price on the house. I had been using Cathy Culpepper as our marital real estate go-between to let Thomas know I was reducing the price drastically to get rid of the albatross. Thomas told Cathy to tell me to take it off the market for a few months and then relist it at the same price come spring to create the illusion of a brand-new listing. I told Cathy to tell Thomas that no way am I still going to be in Sacramento come April. Then Cathy told both of us she is a Realtor, not a mediator, and the two of us needed to figure out what we wanted to do with thehouse on our own; a 6 percent commission was not worth what we were putting her through.
“Anyway, I haven’t written anything like this sinceMilkand carefree consumption of lactose without bloating. Yet I’m supposed to come up with something profound to say to Gen X women everywhere in the hope of landing my first job in fifteen years? A job that likely pays me less than a barista makes, which, FYI, I probably couldn’t get employed doing either.”
“And farting.”
“Huh?” I question behind Lisa, who has her head in my fridge up to her shoulders, looking for something suitable, by her standards, to drink.
“Lactose. It now makes us gassy as well as bloated,” Lisa adds to my list while setting the almond milk next to the juice as evidence.
“Yes. All of the above,” I agree.
“Back to the lespondents. Who are they?” Lisa turns with a bit more curiosity, having given up on finding a beer. In addition to the emptied snack drawer, I also cleaned my whole house of alcohol to limit temptation. But I’m not going to tell her. If I share that tidbit, she may never come back.
In the past few weeks, we have been working through Lisa’s current HR conundrum of an engineer she fired still showing up at the office every morning at nine for the free lattes and bagels. Between that and my text dissections, I must have skipped over telling her about the lesbian journalists recruiting me. I haven’t mentioned that Quinn convinced the correspondents that I am their undiscovered brunette Megyn Kelly, minus the bad press and worse character.
“Lespondents are the two hypersuccessful lesbian journalists who live across the hall from Quinn. They’re starting a new media company targeted at Gen X women, and Quinn has convinced them that I would be a good first hire given my nonexistent hard-hitting journalism résumé.”
“Why not lesboists?”
“What?”
“Lesbian journalists. You could use that interchangeably with lespondents.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for future emails with Leslie and Elizabeth.”
“I’m just saying,” Lisa indeed says, cracking open a La Croix sparkling water and completely missing the point of why I invited her over here.
“Yeah, well ... .” I draw out, refocusing Lisa on the task at hand, serving as my panel of one to judge my article ideas as worthy of a first sentence. Or not. “I’m going to throw out a couple top-line essay ideas, and I want you to give me your gut reaction. Don’t think too hard about it; I want the first thought that comes into your head.”
“Got it. Yea or nay. I’m ready.” Lisa nods once to signal she’s clear on her instructions.
I blow out a huge breath. I haven’t shared my writing, not even a simple top-line idea, publicly in forever, and suddenly I’m petrified. I used to be the young woman sitting in a seminar at Princeton assuming everyone around the table wanted to hear what I had to say and hang on every word I was workshopping in my writing. Today, that confidence feels foreign, as if it must have been someone I once knew. I feel as vulnerable as the first time I stepped outside my house not so long ago for my inaugural run, unsure if I could do it, terrified of judgment—mine, or anyone else’s—and not wanting an audience. Now here I am again, dipping my toe into a new challenge.
I reveal my first idea: “Rise and Grind: The Monotony of Middle Age.”
Lisa sticks out her tongue and gives me an immediate thumbs-down. She’s embracing her job a little too well, but that’s why I asked her here. I do admire her no-nonsense approach to feedback, even if it stings a little.
“Why?” I whine. I had led with what I thought was my best pitch, hoping to impress Lisa out of the gate.
“Uh, depressing. It basically sounds like middle-aged women are working too hard and having too much bad sex. Which, by the way, you are doing neither.” Okay, fair, I did say I wanted her immediate gut reaction. Next.
“Why Women Over 50 Can’t Find Jobs,” I say, hopeful I sound sure of this topic.
“You haven’t actually looked for one yet, so I have to give that one a bigN-Oalso.”
“But I could do the research, and I guarantee you I would prove my thesis.” I can feel that Princeton girl rear her journalist head a little.
“Again, too depressing. That’s all I have to say on that one.”
