Let’s Call Her Barbie

Not So Ruthless Anymore

Not So Ruthless Anymore

1971

Helen Reddy is topping the music charts. “I am woman, hear me roar…” plays each time Ruth turns on the radio. I used to roar , she thinks. Hell, I was roaring before Helen Reddy was even born . What’s happened to me?

Ruth’s been back at work for six months now, but she doesn’t feel like herself. She doesn’t look like herself, either. She’s fifty-four and feels ninety-four. She’s gained fifteen pounds, and on her petite frame it might as well have been fifty. She diets but to no avail. Her hair seems to have gone gray overnight. She has no patience to sit in a beauty parlor, and so she leaves it.

Eventually, she and Barbara did find a prosthetic breast at the May Company. But it was heavy, stiff and pressed against her chest, taking her nerve pain to a new level, and eventually she stopped wearing it. Now there’s a sunken cavity in her chest, and nothing she wears really camouflages this, not even when her blouses are a size too big and she buttons them to her chin.

She worries everyone is looking at her, at what’s left of her. She feels their eyes on her even now, as she enters the boardroom for their monthly planning meeting. Almost everyone seems to have a cigarette going. She can’t tell them not to smoke. They think she had pneumonia—surely she’s fine by now. But oh, the smell of their cigarettes is intoxicating. It’s like inhaling a favorite food.

Aside from herself and Charlotte, it’s all men, several of whom Ruth doesn’t get along with. Rosenberg plucks a donut from the plate in the center of the table. He’s missed a button on his shirt and it leaves a pucker across his belly. His sloppiness, his lack of attention to details, even about himself, drives her crazy.

Once Rosenberg starts the meeting, she sits back, listening to his update on new acquisitions. Jack barely looks up. He seems to be as much of an outsider as she is these days. Rosenberg’s been on a buying spree, gobbling up businesses—a pet food company, some sort of audio tape company, and now he’s set his sights on Ringling Bros. and Barnum it’s taken hold of him, and before he can get out in front of himself, he’s kissing her.

—

Ruth is still in her office, looking at Jack’s signature in a state of disbelief. She wanted to regain her ground, let people, especially Rosenberg, know she’s back in power. But she doesn’t feel powerful at all. Just the opposite. She thought Jack would resign. She expected he’d already be packing up his office. Instead, he’s staying, and she’s surprised by how remorseful and guilty she feels. Yes, she’s sick and tired of Jack taking advantage of her and the company, but she knows his contract cuts are brutal.

At that moment she hears something awful seeping through the wall next door in Jack’s office. Is it possible? Is he actually in there crying? Aw, shit. Since they do still have to work together now, maybe she should try and smooth things over a bit, maybe explain again that it was a business decision and not personal? Though, of course, it is personal.

She pushes away from her desk and heads for his office. She’s about to knock on Jack’s door when the sounds coming from inside begin to change. It’s more moaning and groaning and she can’t believe it. That sonofabitch. He’s not in there crying. He’s in there balling his secretary. And on her dime.

Furious, she takes off down the hall only to find a man on all fours, camped out under one of the other secretary’s desks while she’s unknowingly hunched over her typewriter. Ruth knows it’s Rosenberg. She recognizes his Gucci loafers. Good God. First Jack, now Rosenberg. What a couple of cads. How many times has she seen Rosenberg not so stealthily drop his pen or notepad in a meeting just so he could bend down and look up the girls’ skirts?

A flare of anger rises up inside Ruth and she kicks him in the butt—harder than she expected to. He goes flying forward and smacks his head against the desk. Ruth wouldn’t be surprised if he’s seeing stars.

The secretary looks up, gasping with a start.

“Jesus, shit! Whoa—what the—” Rosenberg rubs his head.

“Get up,” Ruth says. “Show’s over.”