Faith became aware, fairly early on, of her skill at bringing out certain qualities in other women. They wanted to be in her midst, and they wanted more from themselves. She realized that girls and young women actually loved her in ways that were similar to how Lincoln did. They could seem a little lost, or perhaps in need of inspiration. Perhaps the most important thing she gave them, she realized, was permission.
“Tell me what you want from life, Olive,” she’d said to a shy girl, a high school intern at Bloomer.
Olive Mitchell looked at her gratefully, as if she’d waited sixteen years to be asked that question. “Aerospace engineering,” she said breathlessly.
“Excellent. Well, then, pursue that with your whole self. I suspect it’s tough to break into that field, right?” The girl nodded. “So you’ll need to be entirely tenacious and unimpeachable, which I know you already are. I believe you can do it,” she added.
It had been years since Faith had thought of Olive, but she knew that she had gone on to study aerospace engineering, for she’d written Faith a letter of extreme, nearly poetic thanks, with a photo of her standing in a research lab, smiling with unalloyed happiness. That was so long ago. It was hard to keep track of the young women Faith had met, so many of them shining and shot through with promise.
Young women came and went through Faith Frank’s door wherever she lived and whatever she did. Inevitably some of them were close at hand, and she wasn’t often severely lonely. Sometimes, over the years, she experienced a very particular desire for the company of a man, and when that happened Faith would arrange to meet up with Will Kelly, a Democratic strategist she’d met at a function in the late 1980s. Handsome, hangdog, bushy-mustached, never married, he had a kind of policy-wonk/beachcomber mix to him that she found seductive. Though he lived in Austin, Texas, Will would fly up to be with Faith; they would have dinner and a night of companionable, somewhat aerobic sex and good conversation. Then it might not happen again for months, and this was fine. Being alone was something that Faith had perfected over the years. When you were alone you didn’t have to worry about every little detail on your body, whether your legs were like prickly pears or whether after a cocktail party you were Brie-breathed. Unlike many people she knew, she often preferred her own company.
When Bloomer folded in 2010, it was a blow of all kinds. For months Faith felt down, unneeded, and then suddenly that billionaire ghost from her past, Emmett Shrader, telephoned, or anyway his assistant did, and Faith agreed to come to his office for a lunchtime meeting. When she arrived, a table had been set in his enormous British men’s club of an office with the startling views.
Emmett stood and walked toward her as she entered. She’d seen various photos of him over the years, had watched his hair change from dark to silver. A few times she’d Googled him. From the doorway she saw that he still had no fat on him, but remained lean in the way that a billionaire with a trainer and a butler and a health-conscious cook can do. But when he came closer, Faith became aware of a different feeling. A nostalgia for Emmett’s lost younger self, coupled with a nostalgia for her own lost younger self. Together the two nostalgias combined to create something that was immediately emotional and even very slightly sexual in nature. Standing there, she had the general sensation of want, though she couldn’t immediately determine what it was she wanted.
Did she want him, or did she want younger him, and along with that, younger her? Did she just want to be young again, period? She recalled the night they had spent in bed, and then its unhappy, crashing postlude. His face was still strong, and a word came to mind, a word associated with power, craggy, though God forbid a female public figure should become craggy. They’d mock her on Twitter, say she’d let herself go and she should put a bag over her head. His body was still tight and impressive, encased in the beautiful clothes of the very wealthy male, the tie hanging like an icicle. Sexual attraction was not an island; it was part of an archipelago that included trappings and context. He was in the context of his ridiculously massive office, and of the years he had lived since they’d seen each other last, racking up his victories like a big-game hunter.
“Faith,” he said, and his voice was soft, his eyes almost wet. He took her hand, but then let go and put both arms around her. The hug was surprising, so different from the air kisses or the double air kisses that were ubiquitous on the island of Manhattan. The hug was genuine, and it was a relief. “I am so glad to see you,” Emmett said when they released and pulled back and looked at each other. Then he sat her down on a brown leather couch the size of a buffalo, and he sat across from her. She listened as he spun the tale of a women’s foundation that he wanted his firm to underwrite and that he wanted her to run. “We will hold summits, lectures, huge gatherings around a chosen topic, and invite the public. We won’t solicit outside funding,” he said. “We’ll charge for tickets, but beyond that all the costs will be ours.”
“Slow down,” Faith finally said when he had spoken uninterrupted for several minutes. In the background, men and women dressed in white prepared the lunch table. “First of all, I want to say I’m very flattered.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. “People say that when they’re about to say no to something.”
“Well, before I came in here today, I asked around and tried to get some more context,” Faith said. “You’ve been stellar in so many ways, Emmett, and yet you’ve also been known to take the moral shortcut.”
“Look, Faith, my firm is involved with many projects,” he said. “I haven’t been sainted, that’s true. We try a lot of things, and not everything works. But we’re doing very well, and if you look at our donation history, I think you’ll be reassured. We give a lot to women’s causes.”
They looked at each other in silence for a hair-raising amount of time. She wanted to unnerve him, even as she was sitting there. “You care about women’s lives?” she finally asked.
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Remember John Hinckley?” she said. “The guy who shot Ronald Reagan? He said he did it to impress Jodie Foster.”
“You think I’m offering you this to impress you?”
“Maybe.”
“Even if that were the case, which it’s not, let me assure you that this foundation will involve the maiming of no presidents,” said Emmett. He rubbed his eyes, as if she was exhausting him, and probably she was. Maybe he was wishing he’d never called her in, for she was being such a pain in the ass. But she had to see this through. “Look,” he said, “I only want to do something good.”
“Something that involves women.”
“Well, yes.”
Then, her voice quieter, she added, “Something that involves me.”
Faith was overexcited at the thought of having access to the kind of money and resources that Emmett was offering. She’d never had any of it before, and she’d never thought to want it. She could hardly imagine what it would be like. Back at Bloomer, they’d had to fight with Cormer Publishing to pay writers even a small amount, or to get two-ply toilet paper in the restroom.
She wondered if, in accepting the offer, she would be selling out. Shirley Pepper was long dead from coronary artery disease; she couldn’t ask her. Bonnie Dempster, ever since Bloomer folded, had been making a very unpredictable living working for a small, all-women home-decluttering company called, embarrassingly, Stuffragettes. After the meeting in Emmett’s office—she told him she’d have to think about it—Faith called her to get her opinion, and it was Bonnie who said to Faith, “Well, you do tend to be a little gullible, Faith. It’s great that you’re not cynical, but I would be careful. Also, is this something you’d actually love to do? I mean, is it good enough?”
Faith called Emmett the next morning and said, “You know, I’m not sure we’d really be making a difference. It would be a kind of high-end lecture bureau, and that is not something I’ve had experience with. Or wanted to.” He was quiet. “How would we connect with women?” she asked. “How would we change people’s lives?”