Female intelligence, p.18
Female Intelligence, page 18
19
Diane and I really poured it on in the waning days of the summer. We’d have a session, break for lunch, have another session, break for her to pop over to the tanning bed place, have another session, and break for an early dinner, which wasn’t much of a break at all, seeing as she used these forays out to restaurants for on-site language adjustment.
It was at our dinners that I got to know Diane and she got to know me. She may have pierced her body in six hundred places whereas I hadn’t pierced mine anywhere, not even my ears, but we had more in common than we had imagined. Her parents were divorced when she was a teenager, as were mine. She wasn’t popular in school just as I wasn’t, although for different reasons (the kids in my homogeneous suburb ostracized me for being nerdy; the kids in her homogeneous suburb ostracized her for having tri-colored hair). And, like me, she’d been betrayed by a man (her former boyfriend had claimed he managed a rock and roll band when what he really managed was a Colombian drug cartel).
We shared and shared and shared until I was bleary-eyed with sharing. The result was that we developed a mutual respect for each other, not to mention an actual fondness. But was I ready for the moment when all our hard work might pay off? Was I ready to share my feelings with Brandon Brock? Not quite. I still needed more practice—and I got it over Labor Day weekend.
Isabel, who had been spending a lot of time in East Hampton, rented a house there for the month of August, her lease also including the holiday weekend. Generous friend that she was, she invited Penny, Gail, Sarah, and me to spend the four days out there with her.
I was delighted to escape my garden apartment in Mt. Kisco for a wonderful old shingled place in the Hamptons—and, of course, to spend quality time with my pals. There would be no husbands, no boyfriends, no children, and no astrologers. Just the Brain Trust.
The weekend got off to a festive start as Isabel threw a little party for us on Friday night, introducing us to some of her neighbors, many of whom were members of the Hamptons’ arty set. Saturday was a beach day, and Saturday night was a movie night. On Sunday we hung around the house, read, relaxed. Which brings me to Sunday night, our last night, as we were all heading home on Monday.
As I believe I’ve said, none of us was particularly gifted in the kitchen, but we decided that for our final dinner we would try to create a meal together.
Our menu, which was rather ambitious, considering the dearth of culinary talent, consisted of steamed lobsters, roasted potatoes, fresh asparagus, garlic bread, and a salad.
“We can do this,” Penny said, rolling up her sleeves and then assigning us each a task. She put herself in charge of the lobsters and Gail in charge of the potatoes and Isabel in charge of the asparagus and Sarah in charge of the bread and me in charge of the salad. I got off easy, I thought, and therefore, drank numerous glasses of champagne while I washed the lettuce and chopped the tomatoes and crumbled the Gorgonzola. By the time dinner was served, I was smashed.
We placed the food on the picnic table outside, lit some citronella candles, and sat down.
“Toast! Toast!” I said, my champagne glass in the air. “Before anyone eats a morsel of this bounty, I’d like to share my feelings.” I should add that I was asked to repeat all that; my speech was seriously slurred, apparently.
“Uh-oh,” said Penny, winking at the others. “This should be entertaining.”
“Glad you think so, Penny. I’ll start with you,” I said, then raised my glass even higher and my voice even louder. “To Penny Herter, who always gets her man—into bed!” I laughed energetically. No one else did. “I’ve always admired how you go after the guys you want, Penny. I feel envious that you have no compunction about sleeping with them on the first date. What I’m saying is, I love that you’re in touch with your inner slut.”
I expected my friends to respond positively to my expressions of admiration and envy and love for Penny, but they didn’t. Instead, they seemed stunned by my attempt at sharing, and, in my drunken state, I couldn’t figure out why.
“Okay, Isabel. You’re next,” I said, after I took another belt of champagne. “To Isabel Green, who would have us believe that she’s wacky—excuse me, eccentric—but is really the smoothest operator of us all!” Again, I was the only one laughing. “I’m in awe of how you’ve created such a media-friendly image for yourself, Isabel, and I think your photographs are pure genius. But—” I giggled, took another sip—“I have to share with you the fact that your cats make me sick.”
I didn’t mean anything malicious by that remark either. I was only saying that I was allergic to cats, hers included, and that when I was around them, I couldn’t breathe without wheezing.
“Now for my toast to Gail,” I said, oblivious to the lack of enthusiasm for my performance. “To Gail Orrick, who is forever fixated on the adversities of life, most of them her own.” This drew out-and-out boos, which I mistook for oohs. “I love your flair for the dramatic, Gail. Love how everything is a crisis with you, how everything is a soap opera.” I blanked for a second at that point. Where was I, anyway? “So here’s to you!” I said, recovering. I punctuated the sentence with a hiccup.
“I think that’s enough, Lynn,” said Penny, who rose from her seat and tried to swipe my glass.
“Hey!” I said, swaying a little, polishing off the fizzy golden liquid that was left in the glass. “I haven’t toasted Sarah yet!”
“Why don’t you eat something instead,” said Sarah.
“Why don’t you let me share my feelings?” I said petulantly. I raised my empty glass. “To Sarah Pepper, who is the diva of children’s books! I love how you keep writing about that magic toothbrush, Sarah. It’s so fitting because your marriage is magic. Presto—you have a husband. Presto—you don’t. Presto—you do again. Presto—you don’t. Isn’t she something, everybody?”
No sooner had I spoken those words than I tipped over and fell to the ground. (The others described it as sort of a swoon.) Sarah grabbed one arm and Penny grabbed the other, and they propped me up and led me inside the house to the bedroom I was sharing with Gail. “Take these,” said Penny, depositing two Advil into my palm and then waiting until I’d swallowed them with the water she’d brought me.
“But I’m not ready to go to sleep,” I protested as Sarah turned off the light.
“Maybe not, but we’re ready for you to,” she said as the two of them left me all by myself.
Needless to say, I felt horribly guilty the next morning—and hung-over. I didn’t remember precisely what I had blurted out during my toasts, but from the look on my friends’ faces it wasn’t the stuff of Hallmark greeting cards. I spent most of Monday apologizing, and by the time I went home everybody had forgiven me. When I arrived at the office on Tuesday morning, which was not only America’s first day back to work after the holiday weekend but Brandon Brock’s graduation day, I was eager to tell Diane what had happened.
“I don’t understand it,” I wailed. “You spent hours and hours helping me to loosen up, getting me to be able to share my feelings, and it seemed as if all those hours were paying off. But then I drove out to the Hamptons and shot my mouth off, and it almost cost me four friendships.”
“Come on, now. There’s a moral to this story,” said Diane, as she applied her mascara.
“What is it?”
“Never share when you’ve had too much to drink.”
“Right, but all this doesn’t bode well for my talk with Brandon today. I had hoped that being with my friends over the weekend would give me the opportunity for a dress rehearsal, and it didn’t.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about today, Dr. Wyman. You’re ready for Mr. Brock. Your Womenspeak is terrific. And you look beautiful.”
“Do I?” I had changed my outfit four times that morning before settling on the yellow dress. Yellow being “our” color, Brandon’s and mine. In my mind, anyway.
“Yeah, you do.” She patted my shoulder. “You’ll be great. You’ll tell Mr. Brock how you feel and he’ll be so excited to hear it he’ll take you in his arms and ask you to marry him.”
I smiled. “You’re quite a romantic, Diane.”
“I can think of worse things to be, Dr. Wyman.”
Brandon was a few minutes late for his noon appointment, which gave me more time to pace nervously around my office, imagining any and all of his possible reactions to my declaration of love. When he finally did show up, he didn’t merely walk in; he limped in, with the help of a pair of crutches.
“What happened?” I asked as he lowered himself into the chair, his right foot tightly wrapped in an ace bandage.
“I sprained my ankle on the tennis court over the weekend,” he said, wincing in pain as he was trying to find a comfortable position. “I was running for a shot and tripped over a ball. The ankle went one way; the rest of me went the other.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, concerned about his injury but pleased that he had merely reported it as opposed to cursing about it, which he would have done in the old days.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said with one of his killer grins. “I wanted to look my best for our final session, get my appearance just right so your lasting impression of me would be a positive one.”
I laughed hollowly. What was there to laugh about? “Not to worry, Mr. Brock. You look fine.” Better than fine.
“Thanks. So. What happens on this momentous occasion, this day of all days? Is there something special that you do when a client makes it to the finish line of the Wyman Method? Some sort of ceremony that you preside over?”
“No. Nothing like that,” I said, continuing to wear what must have been a ridiculous-looking, pasted-on smile. I almost couldn’t bear to meet his eyes, couldn’t bear to think of his never coming back, couldn’t bear to face that, unless I shared my feelings with him, he would walk out of my office—limp out of my office—and that would be the end of that. “What happens is that I do an exit interview, where I ask you questions and then compare your answers to those you gave me at our very first session. This allows me to assess the changes that have occurred.”
“It sounds like a final exam.”
“I suppose it is, in a way.”
“Do you think I’ll pass?”
“Yes.” Yes, I do take Brandon Brock to be my lawfully wedded—
I stopped myself—I was worse than Diane—and got on with the exit interview. I asked him questions relating to his former tendencies to interrupt, to be abrasive, to be arrogant, to be adolescent, to be defensive, to be stubborn, etcetera. And I probed other areas that had posed problems for him, particularly those where he had put himself at risk for a sexual harassment lawsuit, the chief concern of his board of directors.
He answered all my questions without a single misstep—it was hard to imagine that he had once been dubbed America’s Toughest Boss. The more he talked, the more clear it was that he really had mastered the language of Womenspeak, really had become the kind of man any woman would want to work for (or marry).
Of course, if I hadn’t been so caught up in my romantic feelings for him, I would have allowed myself to feel a tremendous sense of pride and satisfaction for what we had accomplished, for what I had accomplished. Brandon Brock was proof that the Wyman Method was sound. And whether or not I ever landed another client, whether or not I ever found my way back to Good Morning America or the radio show or the bestseller list, nobody could take that away from me.
“I know you’re probably not finished,” said Brandon, interrupting my private pep talk, which didn’t count as an offense, “but there’s something I’d like to tell you, Dr. Wyman.”
“Oh?” I did make eye contact with him then, let myself be ensnared by his remarkable blue eyes. He had something to tell me. Could it be the same something I wanted to tell him? I swallowed hard. “Please, Mr. Brock. Go ahead.”
“Okay, but what I’m going to say is off the record. Not part of your exit interview, in other words. So no demerits if I veer off into Menspeak. Promise?”
I smiled expectantly. “Promise.”
“Now.” He cleared this throat. “When I first came to see you, I was only doing it to keep my board off my back.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And I was very, very skeptical of this program—and of you.”
“I’m aware of that too.”
“And while there are still aspects of the program that I think are way, way out there—no demerits, remember?—I respect what you’re doing. I respect that there’s a need for men to learn how to communicate with women. I respect that you didn’t try to change me; instead, you tried to change my perspective. It’s distinctly possible that I’ll go into a meeting tomorrow and tell an off-color joke, but the difference will be that I’ll have the sensitivity to realize that I may have offended someone and I’ll apologize. It’s also possible that, in a weak moment, I’ll slip and call our buddy Susan ‘honey,’ but I’ll understand what I’ve done and use my infinite charm to make it up to her.” He smiled. “To sum up, Dr. Wyman, I’ve gotten a lot out of the program. I sincerely believe that I’m a better man today than I was when I showed up for my first session.”
I waited. Was that it? Was his speech over? Did he have nothing to add? Was he not going to say that as he had grown over the months, he had grown to love me?
Apparently not. I thanked him for his words of praise for me and the program and said that I was gratified to have worked with him and to have watched his progress. Blah blah blah. My heart was clanging in my chest, my brain urging me to share my feelings. So what if he wasn’t the first one to say “I love you”? I’d be the first one to say it then. I could handle that, couldn’t I? Hadn’t Diane trained me to be able to say it first? Maybe all Brandon needed was a little encouragement from me, because he was a man and, fluent in Womenspeak or not, men don’t like to be rejected. Yes, maybe his speech was meant to be my encouragement to speak openly about my feelings for him. Maybe he was sitting there right that very minute hoping I would say the words he longed to hear.
“Dr. Wyman?” he asked after there had been several seconds of silence. “I know you weren’t finished with your exit interview when I sounded off there. So please. Say whatever you were going to say.”
Okay, Lynn. He’s just given you an opening. This is where you tell him you love him and alter the course of your relationship. Tell him. Now.
“Mr. Brock,” I began, my voice quivering like some pathetic wuss. “What I’d like to say—what I’d like to share—is that I—” I faltered.
“You what?”
Here we go again. No! I would get the words out if I had to reach down my throat and yank them out.
“I think you’re a very special man.” All right, so it wasn’t poetry. It was a start.
“Hey, thanks. I appreciate that.”
“It’s true. You have humor and a wonderful capacity for play, plus you’re a shrewd businessman, obviously.”
He seemed very surprised by my comments, puzzled by them.
“And you’ve probably been told this a million times,” I soldiered on, “but you have incredible eyes. Mystical eyes.”
His puzzlement turned to amusement. Yes, he was wearing a great, big, happy smile, and I took it as my cue to proceed, to let my emotions pour forth at last.
“This is hard for me,” I said, “because I don’t know what your reaction will be, but what I’m trying to say, Mr. Brock—Brandon—is that I have feelings for you, feelings that extend far beyond our work here in the office, feelings that—”
I cut myself off because now he was laughing. Laughing! What the hell was so funny?
“You’re good, Dr. Wyman,” he said, trying to catch his breath between guffaws. “I mean, you’re really, really good.”
“Good at what?” I said, utterly confused. Of all the reactions I had envisioned, laughter was not one of them.
“Putting your clients through the paces, straight through until the bitter end.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha. “Here I thought I was off the hook, about to graduate with an A+, and you ambush me with another pop quiz.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
I didn’t know what to make of this, was absolutely flummoxed by his response. I had gone out on a limb—had shared my fucking feelings—and he thought it was a scream?
“Actually,” he said, calming down, “I should have been better prepared, since you’ve been beating the sexual harassment thing into my head all these months. I should have figured you would test me, as sort of a final exam. Still, the bit about my mystical eyes…” Ha ha ha ha ha ha. “You almost had me there, Dr. Wyman. But then it dawned on me that you were only coming on to me to trip me up—to see if I’d take the bait and come on to you right back. Well, I didn’t, because I’ve learned that I’m not allowed to make overtures to women in a work environment. So I guess I passed your final exam with flying colors. I’m not a naughty boy anymore.”
My God, I thought. I’ve created a monster. I summon up all my courage and tell the guy how I feel about him, and he assumes it’s just that evil genius, Dr. Lynn Wyman, making him undergo yet another wild and crazy experiment.
“Does this wind up your exit interview with me?” he asked, still chortling.
“Yes,” I said, trying to pull myself together, to bring my blood pressure back to normal. “Our time is up for today, which means we’re finished here, Mr. Brock, finished with our work. It’s been a pleasure coaching you through the program. I wish you the very best of luck in your future endeavors.”
I know. I couldn’t have sounded more detached, abrupt, matter-of-fact, like my old self.
I rose from my chair, reached for his hand and shook it perfunctorily. He took a few minutes to get up, because of the ankle and the crutches, and when he was finally standing, he said, “Would it be inappropriate for me to give you a hug, Dr. Wyman? As a thank-you to my teacher?”
