Читать книгу What Have I Done For Me Lately? - Isabel Sharpe, Isabel Sharpe - Страница 8

“THE SINS OF WOMEN are many.” Jenny Hartmann raised her voice. “Repeat after me, ‘Jenny, I have sinned.’”

The ninety-nine percent female crowd at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Milwaukee boomed out a delighted response. “Jenny, I have sinned.”

“I have sinned the sin of making myself too available to men. I have kept weekend evenings open in case they want to see me, I have stayed off the phone in case it rings—” she waited a beat “—even if I have call-waiting.”

Laughter from the crowd.

“Yes, Jenny, I have!” shouted a voice.

“Confession. One of our sisters has made a confession here.” She raised her hand in the general direction of the voice. “Forgiveness is yours! Next time go out and have your own fun, girlfriend. Live your life as if it’s your only chance, because ‘men’ is not the answer to the question, ‘Who are we?’ ‘Men’ is not the answer to the question, ‘What do we need?’ and ‘men’ is not the answer to the question, ‘Who can we become?’”

The crowd cheered. Pumped to the max, Jenny strutted stage left in sky-high-heeled pink sandals, clutching the mike she’d yanked from its stand ten seconds after she started speaking.

It was glorious when her lectures went like this, when the crowd was with her, when her adrenaline was at its helpful best instead of its crippling worst.

‘“Jenny, I have sinned.’ Say it.” She waited until they were done, wiping sweat off her forehead with a pink and black sequin-bordered handkerchief that matched her cami lace top. “I have sinned the sin of changing my plans, changing my hair, changing my body, changing my life to suit my man or the man I want or the man I imagine I’ll meet someday. Say it with me, ladies, one more time, ‘I have sinned.’”

The crowd chanted enthusiastically, “I. Have. Sinned.”

“I have sinned the sin of putting up with questionable sexual technique and I have not said what I wanted instead. I have faked orgasms to avoid teaching my man about what my body needs.”

Nervous laughter and a shout, “You go, Jenny.”

“I have sinned that most vile and evil of all sins—basing my self-worth on whether I have a man to call boyfriend or lover or husband. I have sinned by feeling attractive only when a man finds me attractive, feeling witty and charming and sexual and worthwhile as a member of the female race only when a man finds me so.”

Roars from the crowd and applause. Jenny laughed, breathless, striking a strong-legged raised-arm pose, while tears came to her eyes. It was so good to reach out to women like this and have them reach right back. “Well, I’ll tell you, ladies. I will tell you…”

She waited. The crowd went quiet except for occasional shouts of encouragement.

“It’s time to ask yourself…. What…? What…?” She held the microphone up high and gestured to the crowd to continue.

“What have I done for me lately?” The words were a blast that rocked the huge auditorium.

“Oh yeah!” She applauded for them. “I hear you, you know it! What have you done for yourselves lately? When was the last time you arranged to learn about something new that interested you? When was the last time you traveled somewhere you’d always wanted to go even if he didn’t? Or stopped somewhere for dinner on the spur of the moment because you deserved not to cook that night? Bought something you didn’t need but always wanted? Told your man you were going to take a spa day every other weekend just because you felt like it? Add up those golf days and football days and see if you didn’t earn at least that much. More importantly, when was the last time you stood up for yourself when it was easier and more convenient to sacrifice your rights or needs or desires to someone else’s?

“It’s time to assign our self-worth back to ourselves, where it belongs. It’s time to get angry. Not at men. At ourselves. At the way we’ve allowed them to run our relationships and our lives. We have the strength. We have plenty of power. It’s time to use it.”

The end of her sentence was barely audible over the wave of exalted sound.

“Now, ladies, answer me this. Do we love men?”

“Yes,” the crowd boomed.

“Hell, yes. Do we need men?”

“No.”

“Hell, no—do we want men?”

“Yes!”

“Mmm, you bet we do.” She did a brief bump and grind that made hoots fill the theater. “God made those glorious naughty male parts for us and only us, and we are proud and happy to make use of them, aren’t we, girls?”

If she thought the roars had been overwhelming before, they were extraordinary now, revved up with laughter and fresh applause. “We do so for our own pleasure as well as theirs. We do so because we love the men attached to those naughty male parts, yes, but also because we love ourselves first and have decided they are worthy of us.”

“Amen, sister Jenny,” a voice shouted. “You the woman!”

“We are all the woman,” Jenny called back. The atmosphere in the auditorium was warm, hearty estrogen soup for the soul. “We are all the woman.”

While the laughter and clapping died down, she wiped her forehead again and smoothed her tight black skirt, gathering her thoughts for the final section of the lecture. “Women of Wisconsin, let me give you my confession here tonight. Before I wrote this book, I, too, was a sinner.”

Gasps from the crowd, many of whom must have read What Have I Done for Me Lately? so they already knew what she was going to say, but she loved them for playing along so enthusiastically. “I dressed the way my man wanted, spoke the way my man wanted, ate the things he thought I should eat. And when one day I came home and his bare ass was doing the shimmy over another woman’s body, did I realize what a fool I’d been and what a fool he was and toss the baggage out?”

“Yes!” From someone who obviously hadn’t read the book.

“No.” She shook her head forlornly. “No, I didn’t. I collapsed. I crumbled. My world caved. My life was over. This was my fault—my failing and my general repulsiveness as a human being.”

“Nooo! Booo!” The crowd went nuts. Jenny grinned and let them have fun for a while.

“And then one day I lifted my blotchy face from the pillow of misery and I said, ‘Wait a second. Just wait one second here. This is not my fault. My only failing was in choosing a guy who was not, as it turned out, Prince Charming, but a tyrant emperor who slaughtered my self-esteem in the name of love.’ That I let him do that was my gravest sin of all, the Original Sin of womanhood.

“But I did not fail in the end. I succeeded. In getting him out of my life and getting over him and in knowing that never again…” She held up a finger and waited until the auditorium went quiet so she could lower her voice. “Never again will a man dictate anything about me or about my life. I’ll make my choices and my mistakes and live my life for myself. And if I can’t find a man strong enough and deep enough and smart enough to take me as I am, then I’ll live it by myself, too.”

More cheers, interminable cheers, cheers that brought more tears to her eyes and a huskiness to her voice she had to clear before she could speak again.

“‘Men’ is not the answer to the questions, ‘Who are we? What do we need? Who can we become?’ Nor does ‘men’ ever answer the question, ‘What have I done for me lately?’” She backed up a few steps and lifted her face to the white, hot lights. “I wrote my book, then I started to live my book. Because it had been so long since I’d done anything that wasn’t engineered someway, somehow, to please my man, who was never, ever pleased. The more he wasn’t pleased, the harder I tried. Girlfriends, if you find yourself in that cycle, you have got to get yourselves out. Out! Or you’ll get so dizzy and sick chasing the version of you that he wants, you will never have the chance to catch up to your real self. Only by becoming whole vibrant exciting women for ourselves will we finally get the love we’re meant to have, the love we truly deserve.”

She waited a few beats, skipped downstage and gave a big cheerful wave. “Thank you very much, and a special thanks to the Women of Note lecture series for inviting me here. Good night, Milwaukee! I love you!”

She gave a quick bow, and strode off the stage, overwhelmed by the booming cheers and chants of, “Jen-ny, Jen-ny, Jen-ny.”

Four more bows later, blowing kisses, opening her arms wide, then putting her hands to her heart, the crowd finally quieted, and the sound of seats flapping up, rustling programs and normal-voiced conversations replaced the applause. Backstage, Jenny gulped a glass of water proffered by the stage manager, who refilled it so she could gulp it again. “Whoo! Thank you. Man, it was hot out there.”

“You were sensational!” Gwen, the sweet middle-aged president of Women of Note, gave her a long hug. “I haven’t heard the audience that excited for a long time. You really had them.”

“Hey, thanks.” Jenny mopped at her forehead again, and laughed, energy still rushing so strongly through her it had to come out somehow. “The crowd was the best. I had a blast.”

“It showed.” Gwen smiled, looking down at the hot pink sandals on Jenny’s feet. “By the way, I meant to tell you how much I love those shoes.”

“Designer knockoffs. I got them at a discount outlet for thirty-nine ninety-five. No lie. Get yourself a pair.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Jenny looked at her, direct, challenging. “If you like them so much, why not?”

A flush of pink only slightly less loud than the sandals tinged Gwen’s generally pale face. “Oh, but, I don’t wear…shoes like that.”

“Then start.” Jenny grinned. “That’s how it was for me. I just started. Felt like a complete imposter for a few weeks, and ended up growing into them. Trust me, if you love them, then you have a hot-pink-sandal-wearing person caged inside you, too. All you have to do is let her out!”

“Oh, gosh.” Gwen’s blush deepened. “My husband would—”

She clapped her hand over her mouth. Jenny winked. “I heard nothing. Buy the shoes and enjoy them. Next time I’m in Milwaukee I’ll call you and we can go out on the town in them together. Okay?”

Gwen nodded doubtfully once, then more firmly. “Okay. Are you ready to eat? You must be hungry.”

“Famished. I think I sweated off twenty pounds. Let me shower and change and I’ll be right out.”

Dinner was the usual loud and fun affair after one of her lectures. Great food at a place called Eagans—she’d eaten in so many places in so many cities over the past six months she could hardly keep track—with women stopping by her table to tell their stories, confess their “sins” or ask her to sign their copies of What Have I Done for Me Lately?

She still couldn’t get over how this had all happened. One month she’d been a bank teller and Paul’s fiancée. The next, she was single, living with her friend and roommate in college, Jessica, writing the book in an angry rush on nights and weekends while Jessica cheered her on. Some of the anger was directed at Paul, who had treated her so badly and cheated on her, but most of the anger she aimed at herself. How had she not seen this train wreck coming? How had she allowed herself to became so passive that Paul had cheated on her just to ease his boredom? She couldn’t blame him completely. Partly, sure, she had no problem with partly. Or even mostly.

The sick irony of course was that he’d made her into that passive woman. Telling her what to wear, what to eat, what to say. Not outright, she wasn’t that weak. But subtly. “Wow, three of those cookies has twelve grams of fat,” as she was stuffing the fifth one into her mouth. “Sure, we can go to the movies tonight. Of course there’s an oldie on TV I was wanting to see.” “I like that dress. Or there’s that red one you look so much skinnier in.” Criticizing her conversation at parties, answering “no” automatically for both of them when waitstaff offered a predinner cocktail or dessert.

Through it all, she sat, bump on a log, smiling graciously, pathetically eager to please, insisting she was madly in love, letting him make her over into a spiritless, mindless Paul-reflection.

Not until she’d been without him a few weeks did it start to dawn on her how insidious their relationship had been, and how creepy that his control of her had felt so safe. And if this disaster had happened to her, a college-educated, upper middle-class woman from the liberal northeast, there must be others by the tens of thousands.

If her nearly seven-figure book sales were anything to go by, she’d vastly underestimated that number.

When the manuscript was finished, Jessica had shown it to a girlfriend who had a literary agent friend. Nothing would ever change Jenny’s life so radically, she was sure, as the day that agent called saying Xantham Press wanted to buy her book. Jenny had barely even comprehended what she was saying, let alone been able to foresee the changes in store for her life and for herself.

Having her book published, having her words mean so much to so many women…it validated her existence and her worth in a way Paul could never even have begun to understand. More amazingly, she hadn’t really understood how much she’d needed it, either. With that nurturing, freeing validation she had blossomed into the kind of person she’d always dreamed of being, wearing what she wanted, saying what she liked, doing what she pleased. Growing up shy and overlooked in a country club town of beautiful people, she never would have seen herself evolving this far in a hundred years.

Unfortunately, her publisher very understandably wanted a follow-up book, to keep her—and them—riding the wave. But writing a book that had poured out of her in an extended fit of passion and in a need to document her pain was very different from sitting down on purpose and conjuring something up. Her next book was tentatively titled Jenny’s Guide to Getting What You Want.

What Jenny wanted was to be able to write the book. Three chapters lay on her desk, as they’d lain for the better part of the last year, each page practically red from all the revisions and crossouts and edits….

In short, the book wasn’t happening. Her regular online advice column and the occasional pieces she wrote for women’s magazines presented no problem. They were satisfying and fun even if they were only rehashes of What Have I Done for Me Lately? So maybe this would be it for her, a one-shot wonder. Better to have shot once than never to have shot at all was how she’d decided to look at it, though she wasn’t sure her publisher agreed.

After dessert at Eagans—she always ordered dessert now, without Paul to give her The Disapproving Look—she thanked her hostesses warmly and, declining their offer of a ride, walked the few blocks down Water Street to the Wyndham Hotel, enjoying the chilly night breeze off Lake Michigan on her still-heated face.

Up in her room, she went into her antihyper routine, to calm herself down after the rush and excitement of a lecture/performance so she’d have some hope of falling asleep. First, the deep warm bath, then lavish amounts of perfumed powder and lotion so she smelled way too strong, then the bright coral silk teddy she adored, the kind Paul thought made her hips look big, and a long, leisurely emptying of a cup of herbal tea in bed reading the New York Times. Not that news was always restful, but fiction risked bringing on the can’t-put-it-down syndrome, and she’d never had a problem dropping the paper when sleep overwhelmed her.

Halfway through a front section so full of natural and political and man-made disasters she was starting to get depressed, she rolled her eyes and picked up the Sunday Styles section. Nothing could be more soporific than that. A few pages of wedding and engagement announcements and grinning rich people at fund-raisers should put her right off to dreamland.

Tomorrow she’d be on a plane back home to New York, arriving in time for a lunch date with her agent, then she and Jessica were going to the Metropolitan Art Museum to see—

Jenny gasped, sat bolt upright and held the paper closer. Oh. My. God. Oh my god. Omigod.

Ryan Masterson.

Ryan Masterson.

Only he didn’t look like Ryan Masterson. He looked like…she wrinkled her nose and peered at the awkwardly smiling tuxedoed image. Ryan Masterson’s boring twin brother.

Was this what Wild Boy Masterson had turned into? Geez o Pete, was nothing sacred? The sexiest rebel alive reduced to posing at some society event with Frumpy Dame So-and-so and Squeaky Debutante This-’n’-that?

Had hell, in fact, frozen over?

She couldn’t stand it. What a waste.

And yet…okay, he wasn’t twenty-one anymore. Being wild and angry was hot as hell in high school and college, but she supposed it wouldn’t help in the career department.

Imagine the résumé: Exceptionally skilled at sullen smoldering looks and general bad attitude. Expert in alcohol consumption and high-speed motorcycle operation. Some experience with mild street drug use. Unpredictable outbursts available upon request. Vast experience in seduction of women, including one shy straightlaced girl from Southport, Connecticut, who had never forgotten a second of their time together….

Jenny’s rapturous sigh trailed off. But of course he had probably forgotten, most of it anyway. Before that summer when they’d both been home from college—she from Tufts and he from UC Berkeley—he’d undoubtedly thought of her only as the daughter of his widowed mom’s friend from down the street. She’d thought he was way hot, like every other breathing female that saw him, and made herself sick with nerves every time their families got together—his family being a loud, out-of-control one with six kids and an always stunned-looking mother; hers consisting of her and her parents, jovial, but reservedly so, warm, loving…quiet. Jenny and Ryan had overlapped two years at Fairfield High, but they hadn’t acknowledged each other as more than familiar faces passing in the hall, though once in her sophomore year he’d made a point of complimenting her performance in Brigadoon and she’d nearly hyperventilated. That was it.

Why he’d turned to her of all people…Maybe at such a turbulent time he’d needed someone rock-solid predictable and not at all challenging.

Jenny lay back, holding up the picture of his staid, respectable face, bland smile in place for the camera. If his name hadn’t been under the photo, she wouldn’t have believed…

He was extraordinarily good-looking, no question. She’d bet heads still turned. But not like before. Not like when he strode around the village of Southport, Connecticut, looking like a savage bomb that could go off any second.

Not like the night a month or so after the motorcycle accident that killed his best friend, when he came to her house while her parents were away, pale and haunted, soaked by the rainstorm he’d been walking through, dark hair hanging over his forehead, blue eyes glowing behind the clumped strands.

On her doorstep, he’d mumbled something she hadn’t heard. She’d let him in anyway, and he’d stopped next to her, fixed her with an angry pleading look she’d never forget, and to her total rapturous shock, he’d kissed her. Not a sweet peck, not a gentle “may I?” kiss, not the soulless kisses Paul had given her. But a hot, hard rush of a kiss. A kiss she measured all subsequent kisses against.

That night and many nights after, in the park by Southport harbor, in cars, on the country club golf course, on the beach by Long Island Sound, she’d let him use her body to rid himself of his rage and his guilt over his friend Mitch’s death. She’d never told anyone, not about the visits, not about the sex, not about the way he’d cried in her arms after.

She’d just wanted to heal him. And then, sweet, ignorant, impressionable girl that she’d been, she’d fallen in love.

Jenny tossed the paper aside. Right. Love. Who knew anything about love at age nineteen? It was a crush, that’s all, born of his appeal and the thrill of being the one he’d picked out in his time of grief, the last girl anyone would have expected, least of all her. Predictably, the night she’d finally given voice to her feelings, he’d run. Far, fast and into someone else’s arms. No big surprise, though it had hurt like hell anyway.

She picked up the paper again, as if he still had the ability to draw her, after all these years, even as an image on newsprint. What did Ryan Masterson now think of what he’d been?

And what would he think of what shy, sweet Jenny Hartmann had become?