“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,