Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

As volubly pointless as these memos and meetings tended to be, preparing the memos occupied the bulk of Jen’s hours in the office, and the meetings themselves represented Jen’s only in-person time with the women she assumed were busy running LIFt. Donna, Karina, and Sunny had a block of offices on the south side of the floor, with Leora’s corner suite tucked safely behind Sunny’s perch. Jen and Daisy were stationed on the east side of the floor, estranged from the rest of the LIFt braintrust by a giant stack of empty filing cabinets, a row of empty offices, and an underpopulated maze of cubicles occupied by a smattering of other indeterminately engaged LIFt contractors, most reliably Petra, a freelance graphic designer whose metonym was the black extension cord that snaked from an electrical socket above the ladies’ room sink down to the linoleum floor and under the handicap stall, where it powered the HUNGH-guk HUNGH-guk of Petra’s breast pump twenty to twenty-five minutes at a time, three to four times a day.

The glare from the reflected light of the glass-and-titanium beehive skin of the building opposite made Jen and Daisy’s computer screens effectively inoperative between nine-thirty and ten-thirty a.m. each day.

If Karina was in the office, her door was closed.

Jen — LIFt

Wednesday, May 20 10:15 AM

To: Karina — LIFt

Subject: Hi!

Hey Karina,

I know you’ve been super-busy, but I was wondering if you might be able to spare even a few minutes in the next few days to discuss what I should be prioritizing going forward. I’m raring to get started, but want to make sure I’m pointed in the right direction first. Let me know when works for you. Thanks, Karina! And we should include Daisy, too — she’s awesome and I know she has tons of smart ideas and research.

Looking forward,

Jen

Jen — LIFt

Thursday, May 21 5:12 PM

To: Karina — LIFt

Subject: FW: Hi!

Hey Karina, sorry to be a pest about this, just wanted to make sure you received my message from yesterday — thanks! — Jen

———Forwarded message———

Daisy was on Facebook playing Socialist Revolution, where she’d just been appointed the mayor of the Politburo Standing Commission on Internal Affairs. Jen had her earbuds in to watch a video of Leora’s recent interview with British socialite and “roving entertainment correspondent” Suzy Coxswain, who had made recurring appearances on Father of Invention as Fiona, Trudy’s ribald Cockney friend.

Suzy Coxswain: LIFt Foundation — it kind of sounds like makeup, haha!

Leora Infinitas: Well, it’s not the LIFt Foundation — it’s just LIFt. Foundation is the F in LIFt.

Suzy Coxswain: Too bad, haha! I could use a bit of a lift, haha. Feeling a bit jowly.

Leora Infinitas: You are beautiful, Suzy, inside and out.

Suzy Coxswain: Oh, bless.

Leora Infinitas: And that’s the message of LIFt. If that sounds cheesy, well, call me cheesy! What’s wrong with being a little cheesy, anyway — what are we so afraid of?

Suzy Coxswain: Well—

Leora Infinitas: You know, Suzy, I think a lot about the word integration. Because women can feel torn in so many different directions. Maybe a woman is grappling with not liking what she sees in the mirror in the morning. And maybe she’s having problems with a friend, or some kind of a conflict at work. And maybe she just saw something on the news about the, you know, the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, and feeling so helpless because she wants to do something, but she doesn’t know what.

Suzy Coxswain: She just doesn’t know! Not even where to start!

Leora Infinitas: Right. All of these things are important. We can’t rank them. What we can do is, number one, integrate them, and number two, start a conversation about them with other women. That’s what LIFt is about. You have children, of course, Suzy?

Suzy Coxswain: Do I! Three boys, still holding out for that girl, haha.

Leora Infinitas: Okay, so motherhood is a fundamental strength that we somehow twist into a fundamental conflict: Am I a woman first or a mother first? Well, my answer is yes. What comes first, home or work or the world outside my window? My answer is yes. How does being a mother influence my ethics? My answer is yes. How do I put my children first and put the children of the developing world first, too? My answer is yes.

Suzy Coxswain: Well, sure, but okay, playing devil’s advocate for a moment — your kids are your kids. They’re yours; they’re different, haha.

Leora Infinitas: I don’t see them as so different. And I don’t see other women as so different from you and me, Suzy. I think if we come together we can be everybody’s mother. I know that sounds so presumptuous!

“Daisy,” Jen said without removing her earbuds.

“Hang on, I’ve been denounced as a Trotskyite,” Daisy said.

“I think you need to see this,” Jen said.

“Am I bothering you ladies?”

Jen turned in her seat to see Karina standing inches away, shrugging emphatically into a lightweight trench coat. “Karina, hi!” Jen exclaimed at a high pitch. She pawed at the buds in her ears, swatting them to the floor. As she reached over to pick them up, the wheels of her chair rolled over the cord, trapping the earbuds on the carpet. Jen paused for a second, doubled over, then hoisted her ass off the seat, pushed up at the bottom of the seat with her left hand until the wheels left the carpet, and grabbed the buds with her right hand. Jen moved to sit up again, but again the cord went taut before she was fully upright, this time because it had wound itself around the stem of the chair. Jen folded the buds in her lap and looked up at Karina from this slightly hunched position.

“How many kulaks do you think are left in that village, Comrade Daisy?” Karina was asking in the tone of a saucy conspirator, leaning jauntily against the stack of empty filing cabinets that loomed behind Jen’s desk.

Daisy looked over her shoulder, nodded at Karina, and turned back to her computer screen.

Karina winked at Jen and mouthed Love her! rolling her eyes and lashing her tongue across her front teeth on Love. Jen wondered if Karina was being sarcastic or sincere, and also if Karina herself knew.

“Sorry for stalking you with all the emails!” Jen said. She hoped her temporary hunchback scanned as warm, inviting body language — a plant leaning toward light.

Karina cocked her head and clucked neutrally. “Hey, can’t knock persistence.”

“So, what I was thinking—” Jen started.

“All I can tell you is that we — the board, the staff, the whole team — we are in major brainstorm-and-research mode right now,” Karina said. “Lightning and thunder, fire and brimstone, category-five brainstorms. And research. And I’ve gotta say”—Karina pulled her bottom lip down from clenched teeth and looked sidelong with bugged-out eyes, as if she were being groped against her will—“Leora does naahht seem too happy with how we’ve been stormin’ her brain so far.”

“Oh, wow, okay, we can fix that,” Jen said, nodding rapidly, bugging out her eyes in mirroring solidarity. Karina looked over Jen’s stooped shoulder, and Jen wondered if Leora and Suzy were still bantering silently on the screen behind her. “Any specifics on what Leora isn’t happy with?” Jen asked, maneuvering her chair slightly with the aim of using her own bent head to block her computer screen from Karina’s view. “Does she want ideas about messaging for our programs, or messaging ideas for the website itself — should I prioritize one over the other?”