One Card Left to Play
One Card Left to Play
Back in Los Angeles, the news of Toy Fair travels through the office like a piece of juicy gossip. Before the day is out—before Elliot and Ruth and the others have even boarded their plane—everyone at Mattel knows that the Barbie launch was a colossal failure.
The next day, staff members arrive for work, flash their badges and push through the turnstile as if they’re attending a wake. They tuck their personalities away and keep their voices low, respectful. No one cracks a joke or pulls a prank on the guy sitting next to them. They keep their heads down and thank God they’re not on the Barbie team. Despite Ruth and Elliot making the rounds first thing that morning, reassuring everyone that Mattel will weather this storm, there’s a feeling that layoffs are imminent.
Charlotte hasn’t slept in days, wondering what her next move should be, even though Ruth tells her not to worry. “You’re not going anywhere,” she says, standing in Charlotte’s office, leaning against the closed door as if barricading her in, afraid she might bolt. “I’m not giving up on Barbie and neither should you. Elliot’s already getting ideas for new dolls.” Which isn’t true, and they both know it.
Charlotte’s not sure what direction she’ll pursue if she leaves Mattel. The thought of teaching again isn’t very inviting or lucrative, and she fears how the years she’s devoted to Barbie will be perceived in the design world. She’s let so many of her contacts lapse, her former clients have gone elsewhere and she’d be starting over from scratch. This is what’s keeping her up at night, but she doesn’t dare let it show at work. For now, Charlotte is doing what she can to keep up morale.
“Ruth still believes in Barbie,” she tells Stevie. “And Elliot already has ideas for new dolls.” Charlotte perpetuates the lie. “Before you know it, we’re going to be busier than ever, so take advantage of this downtime…”
But Stevie isn’t buying it. Everyone says Barbie is a flop, it’s all over, despite what management is telling them. She feels gutted, like a promise has been broken. So much for put in two years on Barbie and you can write your own ticket .
Since she started at Mattel, she hasn’t had to worry about money. But now, old fears are resurfacing. She hasn’t been good about saving, because for the first time in her life, after paying her bills, she’s had money left over to spend on herself. And unlike her mother, who has to justify every item on her grocery list with the exception of beer and beef jerky, Stevie doesn’t have to answer to anyone. What a powerful, heady feeling it was that first time she walked into a store and bought a pair of shoes without first asking the price. She saved the box and for a week only wore them around the apartment, careful not to scuff the soles, taking comfort in knowing she could return them, which she never did. That was the beginning of treating herself to little things here and there that were previously off-limits. She still has the price tags on a new scarf and a pair of slacks hanging in her closet.
How can she give all that up? And if she loses this job, she’ll lose her apartment. She’ll have to go back to waiting tables and possibly be forced to move back home with her parents. That wouldn’t just be a step backward—it would be a landslide into defeat.
—
For the first time since he started at Mattel, Jack calls in sick. Four days in a row. He gave everything he had to Barbie. He made her. Believed in her. She was going to make little girls happy, and in exchange Barbie was supposed to make him a rich man. Now his patent is worthless, and there’ll be no hefty royalty checks coming his way. But more than that, Barbie gave Jack the recognition he never got at Raytheon. His word blindness aside, Jack’s always known he’s smart, even brilliant, but at Raytheon he was one of thousands of young, brilliant engineers. It was impossible to stand out. Barbie changed everything for him, especially since Elliot initially showed no interest in the project—Jack was the head engineer, the one everyone looked to. But Barbie’s dead now, and no one will care about him anymore.
How can he face his team after this? He’s a failure. Twist, Frankie, Huntly, they’ve got to be disappointed, and Jack hasn’t got the strength to raise them up. He can’t even get out of bed now. He’s gone from being so energized that he’d stay awake for two and three days in a row, to sleeping fourteen, sixteen, even eighteen hours a day.
In his waking hours he stares blankly at the walls and the shadows, terrified by all he sees. He’s surrounded by rage, all of it stemming from his own mind. It’s unescapable. He’s exhausted from trying to ward off the evil thoughts, and it’s not long before his eyelids grow heavy and he has fallen back asleep. His wife can’t get him up; Ginger can’t, either. Finally, they turn to Ruth for help.
“Jack,” she says, “I’m devastated, too.”
And she is. Ruth’s had her own demons to battle since they returned from Toy Fair. No one believes in Barbie anymore, just like no one believed in her. When she first arrived in L.A., everyone told her she’d never land a job at a Hollywood studio, and she did. Everyone, Sarah included, said Don’t marry Elliot, you’ll starve to death. How many times has she heard don’t ? Don’t start a toy company . Don’t move to a bigger building. Don’t hire on more employees. Don’t build the new house. Don’t advertise on TV. Don’t make a doll with breasts. She’s heard don’t and can’t too many times. Thank God she didn’t listen. She kept her own counsel—always has, always will.
Ruth still has one card left to play, and that’s the Barbie TV commercial. There’s too much already invested, too much at stake, to just let Barbie die on the vine. Ruth can’t accept this failure. Especially not while trying to plan her daughter’s wedding for a marriage she believes will be an even bigger disappointment than Barbie.
Ruth throws open the floor-to-ceiling drapes in Jack’s bedroom, setting loose a swarm of dust mites and casting rays of light into his eyes. He groans, squinting as he props the pillows up behind him.
“We still have a company to run,” she says. “We need you back. I need you back. Mattel isn’t Mattel without you.” She sits on the side of his bed and reaches for his hand. It feels like the right thing to do, but it’s also too tender for them, so she breaks the moment and says, “Besides, who’s gonna piss me off if you’re not there?”
His hand goes limp in hers. He can’t even crack a smile.
“And Barbie isn’t finished yet,” she says.
Jack groans in disbelief.
“Oh, c’mon, and there’ll be new toys, new ideas, I promise you. But none of that will happen unless you come back to work.”
“You don’t understand—there’s nothing more inside me.” He can’t imagine ever having another creative idea. Or feeling joyful again. He can’t imagine feeling anything other than pain. His mind has locked him inside a torture chamber. There’s no escape and he’s too chicken to take his own life, so the next best thing is sleep. “I’m tired,” he says. “I need to rest.”
“What you need to do is to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get back to work.”
He shuts his eyes again.
On the fifth day of Jack’s hiatus, they bring in the big guns. Dr.Greene makes a house call. “Jack,” he says, sitting in a chair across from his bed, “are you familiar with the term manic depression ?”
Jack opens one eye, looks at the good doctor, wearing his customary gold corduroy slacks that ride up his calf when he crosses his legs, exposing a pair of white socks. The man can’t dress for shit .
“Jack? Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the term. My uncle had manic depression.”
“Well, then, that makes sense. It does tend to run in families.”
“My uncle was a raving loon,” he says with more exertion than he’s been able to muster in days. “I do not have manic depression.”
And with that, Jack fires his doctor, and just to prove to Dr.Greene—and to himself—that he most definitely does not suffer from manic depression, he finds the energy to get up, get dressed and go back to work.