“But what?” Betsy’s face burned a little more, but with pride this time. That Kenneth thought she was smart came as a pleasant surprise. Ever since she arrived in New York, Betsy found herself constantly on the verge of apologizing for going to a state school, in the South no less. Whenever she would meet someone and the talk would start about where they went, usually in that coded, subtle way of naming the location of the college rather than its name (New Haven not Yale, Cambridge not Harvard, Philly not Penn), or dropped references to boarding school and summers spent in Maine or on Nantucket, Betsy would notice her pulse quickening a bit in anticipation of her end of the conversation. She would avoid talking about it, if she could. If someone pressed the issue, she would have to explain, again, why she went to school in Florida to some guy who felt superior to her because he grew up riding the train into town to chain-smoke at Moran’s, or some other date-rapey bar on the Upper East Side. The truth was, when she was in high school, she didn’t realize she had options. Money was tight. The guidance counselor at her high school was brain-dead. She got in, with a little scholarship money. She went. The end. “What is it? But what?”
“But people do. They notice. I think it’s time for you to break out that emergency credit card and use it to buy some heels, a decent coat, and maybe even a bag. It doesn’t have to be Hermès, just something spunky. Because it is. An emergency.”
She took Kenneth’s advice and headed to Bloomingdale’s on 60th and Lexington, but even after the splurge—the slightly stumpy Charles Jourdan heels, green Coach bag, khaki blazer, and button-down shirt (which she scored for a steal in the boys’ department) that she wore with a black stretchy skirt she bought in 1987 for a high school choral performance—she felt conspicuous. When she arrived at the strange little gazebo filled with stacks of catalogues off of the lobby, the three women standing behind it, each wearing a different jauntily tied silk neck scarf and a sleekly tailored navy jacket, looked at her like they had just heard the best joke ever told.
Betsy had thought that Kenneth was being charitable when he sent her in for the interview. Once she passed through the gleaming brass doors into the marble lobby, past the guard in the weird gilded cage and up the important stairs, she was struck by the swirl of officious-looking mean girls filing through the turnstiles in the lobby, and she realized that Kenneth must have detected that glint of uncertainty, even a smidge of self-hatred, in her eyes. He must have known that Betsy was hungry to prove something. He may also have suspected that Betsy had a secret, though he couldn’t possibly have guessed what it was. “How may we assist you?” asked the tallest of the three, who had the curious posture of an ostrich and Princess Di hair.
“I’m here to see Cheryl, in human resources,” Betsy said. “I’m here for an interview.”
She heard a snicker from somewhere in the back, behind a wall paneled with gleaming mahogany.
“Certainly, miss, I’ll take you back to Ms. Morgan,” said the youngest-looking one of the three, who had lank blonde hair to her shoulders. Her scarf was covered with perky seashells. Once they rounded the corner to a long, carpeted hallway, her voice dropped to a hushed tone.
“Oh God, just ignore them,” she said. “They’re impossibly mean. There’s a girl who works here who’s from England and so posh. I mean, they’re saying that she’s a Windsor, like, she’s related to the Queen. And Bea, the big one, tortures her so much that she sucks her thumb in the break room. She’s twenty-two! I’m Jessica, by the way.”
“I’m Bets. . . . Elizabeth. Elizabeth Young,” Betsy said.
“I know who you are. Kenneth told me to look out for you,” she added, glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was within earshot. “Here’s the deal: When you get into the interview they’re going to ask you if you’re married, and what you do on the weekends, and even though it seems like it’s illegal or something you have to answer them. Just make it all sound really fabulous even if it’s a big fucking lie. I live in Connecticut with my parents in my childhood room with a canopy bed, but they’d have to beat that information out of me. I’m a Catalogue girl. Most of the people in that job are just aiming to get into Client Services so they can meet a rich husband. I’ve got bigger plans. You’re interviewing to be an assistant in one of the departments, and then maybe you’ll be promoted to junior cataloguer. I think that’s a better fit?” Jessica said, as her eyes scanned Betsy from head to toe.
“And listen, if you get the job, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a nice bag. It’ll take you a year to pay it off but it’s worth it.”
She knocked on the door to Cheryl’s office and mouthed “Good luck,” and then slid back down the hall. Betsy clutched her new Coach saddlebag reflexively, worried that it was too late to return it.
Jessica disappeared silently down the plush carpeted hallway.