“Thank you,” was all Greer could say, miserably.
There was a silence, and Greer thought Faith was going to turn away, perhaps in disapproval, and talk to someone else. But instead she said, “I like the way you try to figure things out, Greer. You’re genuine and thoughtful, even about parts of yourself you’re not proud of. Want to do some writing for me?”
“Sure,” Greer said. “I’d love it.”
“Good. We’re going to have small events around the city in the months before the first summit. These will be media lunches and dinners. There will be maybe twenty-five guests, max. Very intimate. The speakers I have in mind are women who’ve experienced injustice firsthand and tried to do something. None of them are slick. None of them are used to public speaking. They’re not going to be at our summits, but we want them for these small events, kind of like teasers. It’s important that they really know what to say. And I think, having read your fine writing, and hearing you talk tonight, that you’d be someone who could help them shape their words into something good.”
“That sounds excellent,” said Greer. “Thank you, Faith.”
“You’re welcome. Done.”
And that was it. Greer would write small speeches for Loci. In this way, she would make herself indispensable. The whole evening had been tremendous, even the difficult part when she’d confessed about the Zee letter. Greer knew that the night would stay in her mind for a long time, and she would remember sitting at that long table drinking and chatting more and more easily with other people who wanted to do good in the world. And one of those people had been Faith. Faith, who approved of Greer. The approval was as soft as velvet, and the desire for that approval was, also like velvet, a little vulgar. It didn’t even matter, Greer thought, that nothing had happened tonight that would make Faith think: What a special night this was!
Faith wouldn’t think: I loved talking to that young Greer Kadetsky. I know that Greer had a moral choice to make about the letter her friend gave her to give to me, and I watched her struggle with it. She is finding her way, young Greer, and I was glad to be there to watch, and to assist if I could. Tonight was a lovely night, a bracing night, a memorable night.
No, Faith wouldn’t think the night had been unusual at all. But Greer would.
Just then Bonnie Dempster said, “Faith! What was that witty thing we chanted at the ERA march, remember?”
Faith turned to Bonnie and said, “Did it go, ‘One, two, three, four’?”
And Bonnie said, “Yes, it did! And what came next?” to which Faith said, “Oh, Bonnie, I have no idea whatsoever.” Then, to everyone, “Senior moment.” There was laughter.
The letter from Zee, still at the bottom of Greer’s purse, instantly became less significant. At work again on Monday, Greer forgot about it; she literally did not think about it once, and Faith didn’t mention it. Faith had a lot of demands on her time, a lot of people asking her questions, soliciting her advice, calling her up, emailing her at all hours.
A few days later, when the fact of the letter suddenly struck Greer again, she thought that it was too late now. Too much time had passed. Faith had probably forgotten all about it, and Greer should just let it drop. That was what she told herself.
That night, though, Zee called from her childhood bedroom in Scarsdale, where she was sitting beneath her old posters of the Spice Girls, and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, and endangered baby animals crouching in tundra or field or forest. “So did you get a chance to give the letter to Faith?” she asked.
Greer paused, sickened, madly thinking. “Sorry to say,” Greer said, “there are no jobs there.”
“Oh,” said Zee. “That’s too bad. I know it was a long shot. Did she say anything about what I wrote?”
“No, sorry.”
“No worries!” said Zee, a joke between them. Then, “I appreciate it that you tried. I’ve got to get out of this law firm soon, somehow.”
A confession to Faith, then a nonaction, then a lie. That was the sequence, and then it was done. Greer wondered, afterward, if everyone had a certain degree of awfulness inside them. There were moments when you idly glanced into the toilet or into a tissue after you’d used it, and suddenly remembered that this, this was what you carried around inside you all the time. This was what was always waiting to be let out. When she got off the phone, the letter went into a bottom drawer of her dresser. She wondered exactly what it said, though she would never read it, and she would never tell anyone else what she had done. Only Faith knew.
The following day when Greer arrived at work, she found a folder from Iffat on her desk containing printouts about the women who were coming to give talks at the small media lunches and dinners. Over the next couple of months these women came into the office one after another to be interviewed by Greer. They told her their stories about being harassed, or denied equal pay or the chance to play sports, and trying to do something about it. Once they started talking, and realized how carefully Greer was listening, they talked more openly.
What the stories had in common was a deep and grinding sense of unfairness. Unfair could burn you up. Sometimes the women seemed entirely burned up the minute they started talking, but other times they just seemed defeated, and they cried into their hands as they sat in the conference room with Greer. Their faces became congested, and they were so exposed that she wanted to shield them, knowing they were surrounded by glass, and that some greenish, blurred version of them could be seen by everyone walking past. When they cried she sometimes cried a little too, but she never stopped taking notes or running the little digital recorder. She learned she didn’t need to say much; it was better if she didn’t. Later on, after they left, Greer sat down and wrote the speech as if they were telling it into her ear.
The first speech Greer wrote was for Beverly Cox, who worked in a shoe factory upstate where the men were paid more, and on top of that where the women were degraded and harassed, and they all had to work together inside a hotbox roiling with fumes. The product they made there was high-end shoes for wealthy women, all pointed toe and weaponized heel. Greer sat in her cubicle playing back a tape with headphones on, listening to Beverly haltingly describe standing in a line of women making heels, while across the way a group of men made soles, and were paid more for it. After Beverly discovered the discrepancy and complained to the manager, she was harassed and threatened by male coworkers. They changed the lock on her locker so she couldn’t open it; they slashed her tires; they left threatening and pornographic messages at her workstation. The smells of leather and glue became associated with degradation; they were in her head and on her clothes all the time. The lawyer she called for help put her in touch with the foundation.
“I’d get out of my car in the parking lot each morning and walk into that factory like I was walking a plank,” Beverly had said, and then she burst into tears, and Greer had said, “Take as long as you need.” On the tape, for a very long stretch, all that could be heard were Beverly’s scared, shaky breaths, and once in a while Greer saying, “It’s okay. I think it’s great that you’re speaking about this. I really admire you.” And then Beverly had said, “Thank you,” and blown her nose loudly. Then there was more silence. Greer didn’t try to shorten it. A person needed to take her time when she talked about what had been so hard for her. Greer sat in her cubicle, listening to the breathing, and then, again, the talking.