? ? ?
The GCC decides I should represent all of our concerns at the lunch, and as much as I don’t want to be seen as a troublemaker, I’m the only one of us who’ll get to ask any questions. Before I do that, I need to talk to Bruce. If our income is about to take another hit, he’s really got to know why. I mention this to the table.
“You need your husband’s permission?”
“You’re as submissive as we’re supposed to be.”
“Doesn’t her husband have, like, an office job or something?”
“She confuses me. I mean, she’s so strong in some ways and so wussy in others.” That last one was Amanda.
“You guys are like school bullies,” I point out. “If I was insecure, you’d actually bother me.”
“Ladies, give it a rest,” Amy says. “I mean, we don’t think like Belle because none of us is part of a decent marriage. Most of us who were married,” she says reflectively, “sucked at it.”
I sit here stunned to silence, not because of what they want me to do, but because I now understand they see Bruce and me as their finest example of a happy, working marriage.
“Focus on the constructive,” I say while Amanda nods and writes. She’s listing grievances and thoughts about how to change things going forward. She passes her draft around the table, making certain everything is there.
For us there is no real possibility of a career path, there’s just money. I tell myself that I know how to make money now. I have sales skills and an understanding of balance sheets that make me employable. I still believe in the good things that banking can do to help people and help our country. Loans allow growth, business growth means jobs, and jobs mean stability. While I’m not sure about the mortgage market, I do believe in investment and loans and people owning their own shelter. The women talk on and on while I think about my mother, something I don’t do enough. She was obsessed with owning the house where we eventually lived and it took years until we saved enough to make that happen. I get that. That’s not greed. It’s a basic human desire for safety and stability and control over your life. It’s knowing your kids have a home that won’t ever be taken away. Wanting such a thing did not make my mother greedy. It made her a good mom.
In the end our list looks like this:
? Equal pay for equal work.
? Recruitment of quality female MBAs remains a challenge because of our culture. Candidates have reservations about the arduous hours, lack of female partners, no female representation on the board.
? No flexibility for working mothers even though many of our jobs don’t require us to be physically in the office.
? Disallow romantic relationships between employees having direct power over each other.
? Give employees back their civil rights and drop the arbitration clause, letting individual harassers be sued. This will force the firm into a more professional culture.
? Risk management—Women need to be on the risk committee. We aren’t comfortable with current portfolio positions.
And that’s where we stopped. These items were imperative to the survival of our firm and I couldn’t imagine any employee being against them.
I leave Buddakan and any thoughts I had about returning to the office. Instead I head toward home. I stop at a Whole Foods and load up a cart for a family twice our size. Our cupboards are always ridiculously empty and while Bruce never complains or takes care of this problem, our kids’ penchant for consuming chemically concocted food, always in a rush, fills me with guilt.
I push my cart up and down those overflowing aisles like a suburban mother. The more good-looking fruits and vegetables I pile in the cart, the more I feel like I’m caring for my family. I try to not think of how quickly they will wilt, how fast this excited optimism about change will probably fade. I buy a fillet of beef and some fingerling potatoes and string beans so fresh they snap like a mousetrap in my hand. I buy bread hot from the oven and a deep, smokey Merlot.
Caregiver is out when I get home and I stand in my kitchen, which is lightly coated with some greasy substance. We can never quite get to the status of clean in our house. That’s okay, I think as I look around at the crayon marks on the wall and the edge of our cork flooring peeling upward. We’re doing okay and I feel so hopeful. Speaking openly about our culture of risk and secrecy and invisible ceilings and playground behavior will be a really good thing.
I see a message from Henry in my in-box and I ignore it.
Like a four-armed person I marinate, chop, steam, and sauté. I uncork and decant the wine after pouring myself a plastic sippy cup–ful, which I gulp down. I pour boiling water into the sink and bend low to receive as close to a facial as I have time for these days. As I stand bent at the waist, two hands come from behind me and pull me close.