Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

Sunny made a wet noise that may have involved her uvula. “Jen, why so pedantic?” she said.

“Soul and spirit seem too close to me,” Leora said.

“You’re right, Leora,” Sunny said quickly.

“Another one could be relationships,” Daisy said.

“The heart, ” Donna corrected her.

“Okay, the heart,” Daisy said. “Another one could be space.”

“Outer space?” Karina asked, smiling warmly at Daisy.

“No, like, home, ” Daisy said, without returning the smile. “At home. Home space.”

“That’s five,” Sunny said.

“The planet,” Karina said. “Our bond of mutual respect with the environment, with Mother Earth.”

“Yes and yes,” Leora said.

“Ooh, one to go!” Sunny said. “So that’s earth, plus mind, body, spirit, heart, space…” She was counting on her fingers.

“It’s funny,” Karina said, pulling her fingers through her hair from the scalp, as if coaxing new brainstorms from her follicles. “I never cared about the environment before I had kids. I mean, why would I? I’ll be dead. ”

“Toe tally,” Sunny said.

“Work could be the last category,” Jen said. “Our keep. How we earn a living — is it fulfilling, is it integrated with the rest of our life, does it meet our creative needs, our spiritual needs, and — and our material needs.” She tried to make eye contact with Leora, who was abruptly transfixed by the gigantic diamond cluster perched on her finger.

“Hm,” Karina said. “I don’t know. I feel like our community would be turning to us to get away from the daily grind.”

“ ‘Material needs’ seems off-message to me,” Sunny said.

“Materialism,” Karina said. “Not a good look.”

“It’s a question,” Donna said, “of vocation versus avocation. Our community thirsts for avocation. ”

Jen was mesmerized by Leora’s being mesmerized by her ring.

“Jen?” Karina asked.

“Oh—” Jen started.

“The mission, ” Donna said. “That’s a category.”

“Isn’t the whole thing the mission, though?” Jen asked. “This would be like a mission within a mission.”

Leora held her bedazzled hand up in the direction of the closest floor lamp and squinted. “The mission,” she said. “I’d say we’ve got one.”

“Woot!” Sunny said, bouncing in her seat.

“Total Transformation Challenge,” Leora reiterated. “TTC. It’s a rallying cry. It’s a movement. It’s a social media— thing. TTC. It’s what will be on every woman’s lips across the world. We have the power to make it part of our lingua franca. A new phenomenon that we will have created and given to the world, out of gratitude. Say it with me: T-T-C.”

“Like Aretha Franklin’s ‘TCB,’ ” said Sunny. “Taking care o’ biz -ness!”

“Like BYOB or NIMBY,” Petra said. “I mean, not in terms of meaning, just in terms of everyone knowing what they mean—”

“Like OPP,” Daisy said.

Leora dipped her chin in confirmation. “Make it so,” she said. “We launch October first.”

“So, I love the Total Transformation Challenge idea. Needless to say!”

Jen was standing in the doorway to Karina’s office. During her tenure at LIFt, she had not yet sat down on Karina’s couch, and rarely placed her entire body past the doorframe.

“So great, right?” Karina replied. “Really gives us that focus we’ve been talking about. And I love how aggressive the launch date is. I think everyone is really pumped about this.”

Daisy had a Post-it on which she kept a running list of Karina’s verbs of enthusiasm.

pumped

psyched

jazzed

amped

stoked

Then Daisy started making up her own, and kept a list of those, too.

stacked

oomphed

spanched

hoinked

plurged

quorched

Daisy stuck the Post-it on one of the Shetland ponies on her cubicle wall, just beneath the pony’s cardigan collar.

“Right, focus, totally,” Jen was saying. “Just checking — what relationship does TTC have with our existing international programs?”

Karina smiled. “Absolutely none!” she said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, of course not, sorry!” Jen said, mirroring Karina’s smile.

“Is that all?” Karina asked.

“Well, actually, there’s one other thing, so sorry to keep you,” Jen said. “So I know that Leora is really attuned to acronyms and catchy abbreviations and stuff, which is great — I love the internal rhyme of TTC, by the way! But anyway, I just wanted to point out that this particular acronym, TTC — well, we have some competition for that slot.”

“Mm-hmm,” Karina said.

Jen nodded encouragingly.

“And?” Karina asked.

“Oh! Sorry. Well, I just know this because I have friends who are new moms or, you know, trying to become new moms — and what am I saying, you’re a mom, so maybe you know this! But anyway — TTC is online shorthand, apologies if I’m stating the obvious, for ‘trying to conceive.’ ”

“Mm-hmm,” Karina said.

“So, I just know from looking at parenting blogs and stuff for inspiration for our site — so from doing that, I learned that women identify as TTC if they’re asking for advice on fertility issues. And TTC is often a category or a keyword on those sites — a subtopic? I’m sure the audience for those sites would possibly sometimes overlap with ours?” Jen swallowed. An inlet of saliva kept rising under her tongue.

“Mm-hmm,” Karina said.

“So you could see how it could be confusing?” Jen’s spine was folding forward. She pressed one hip and shoulder against Karina’s doorframe.

“Confusing,” Karina said, and pressed her lips together.

“Yeah, like if we’re talking to our audience about TTC, they might think we’re saying something else, like, ‘Hey, go make some babies!’ ”

Jen attempted a cushion-laugh, but the saliva made the laughter gurgle and drown, and a dying sound spurted out instead, like Bertha Mason cackling in Mr. Rochester’s attic.

“Mm-hmm,” Karina said.

“So, that’s all,” Jen said, exhaling. She swallowed again.

“It’s interesting,” Karina said.

“Yeah,” Jen said. She could sense her stomach slowly angling a battering ram into place, aimed in the vicinity of her epiglottis.

“It’s interesting,” Karina said, “that you chose to bring this up now, here, with me. Not in front of the group, not in front of Leora, when we were all exploring these ideas together, as a team. That’s an interesting choice. In making that choice, what message are you sending, to me and, more important, to yourself?”

“Sorry?”

“Think about it.”

Jen smiled as winningly as she could. She imagined herself in the maw of a trash compactor. One hand at her side reached up to grip Karina’s doorframe.

“The only message I’m aware that I’m sending,” Jen said brightly, sweat pearling on her philtrum, “is that to many people — many women — TTC stands for ‘trying to conceive,’ which may confuse people if we decide it stands for Total Transformation Challenge.”

Some of the contents of Jen’s stomach splashed upward, spraying the back of her esophagus. She coughed delicately into her free hand.

“The message you’re sending, I would say,” Karina replied, “is that you don’t trust the give-and-take of the group dynamic, and that you’re insecure about sharing your ideas in mixed company.”