American Housewife (10 page)

M
y novel is sponsored by Tampax. It’s the story of three generations of women and spans three decades. That’s a lot of menstruation. So every time a character rides the cotton pogo stick—Voilà! Tampax.

My contract allows one year for completion of a first draft and pays bonuses for alternative product placement. So, I’ll give one of my characters anxiety nosebleeds. And you know what’s good for a character’s verbally abusive husband’s hemorrhoid surgery recovery? Something from a blue box that will make his toots smell like a My Little Pony.

My Tampax account manager’s name is Lisa. She claims to be calling from Wisconsin but doesn’t sound like she’s from there. Every Monday she asks me: “How is it going? On behalf of Tampax, I wish to be inquiring.”

Lisa’s job is to make sure I hit my deadlines. Tampax has invested a lot in this book.

I tell her, “It’s going great. Two months in, and I’ve created three apps.”

“Apps?”

“For people who buy my book as an e-book—which will be everybody. The first is called Don’t Look. It’s for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It’s Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters
saints
a guy’s
disciple,
he’ll beg her to
cavalry
his
Baptists
and
shout amen.
”

There is silence on the other end of the line.

“Lisa?”

“I am deciphering. I am also tallying the greater number of books that may be sold because these applications will widen your readership. Your husband will be very proud.”

I say, “My husband’s a ref with the WNBA. He’s on the road, surrounded by oak trees with tits. For me to impress him, I’ll have to sink a ball from half court.”

Lisa says, “Yes, that would be very impressive. But writing a novel is impressive as well. I myself have had the pleasure of reading your first chapter and the description you submitted. If I were to trade my shoes with your shoes, I would write another chapter so that you will be closer to the finish of your novel when your husband returns. You could present it to him like a cake. You have ten months and two days to complete your novel for Tampax.”

To generate buzz for my novel, I’ve created the following Twitter handles for my main characters. They are: @GrannyWithAGun, @MiddleAgeMartyr, and @Unclad Undergrad.

My characters have Twitter wars. They live-tweet court trials and reality TV, with a penchant for
Toddlers & Tiaras.
I’m online all day figuring them out, and Twitter gives me instant feedback if what I write doesn’t work. It’s the ultimate editor: if it’s not retweeted, it’s deleted.

Lisa calls and says, “To add to your follower numbers I am following your characters as the company of Tampax and as my own private account, which to maintain our professional relationship I wish to remain locked to you. Your follower numbers are low. They need to be in the five-figure range to impact book sales.”

I say, “To build numbers takes years.”

Lisa says, “You do not have years. You have a contract, which it appears to me you have not read closely. If you do not turn in a partial manuscript by the half-year mark, there will be consequences. You have eight months and twenty-four days to write a novel for Tampax.”

“I am writing.”

“Tweeting does not count. You need to e-mail chapters as a PDF attachment.”

I say, “I know I’m behind, but I’m working. I’m branding. If Tampax would retweet me, I’ll get more attention and be forced to write another chapter.”

Lisa says, “Force is a den of tigers alone with you in a dark room. Force is feeling the hot breath of those beasts on the back of your neck. And then the drool. And then the teeth. So very many teeth, you will beg for death before you can count.”

“Lisa, are you going to retweet me or not?”

Lisa sighs. I know she is losing patience with me, but what does a woman who wears a headset for a living know about writing? I’m like a credit card debtor to her. She gets paid to get me to write pages.

She says, “Incorporate your sponsor, hashtag the title of your novel, and I will see what I can do.”

The next day, @Tampax plus sixty-four others retweet @GrannyWithAGun for writing:

@MiddleAgeMartyr needs to buy @UncladUndergrad pants.
DON’T GET YOUR STRING PULLED LIKE A DUMMY
. Right @Tampax? #TheStraightShooters Daughter.

To capitalize on @GrannyWithAGun’s popularity—she now has over a hundred thousand Twitter followers that include the NRA, AARP, and Miley Cyrus—I’ve leased a water-gun booth for
The Straight Shooter’s Daughter
to travel the Southeast fairgrounds circuit. @Granny WithAGun is the straight shooter for whom the novel is named. The water-gun booth promotes the novel while I’m working on it and keeps my most beloved character alive with look-alikes.

The water-gun booth is staffed by retired ladies who fit the @GrannyWithAGun profile. Targets are shaped like oncologists and grocery shoppers with eleven items instead of ten in the express checkout lane. Small prizes are plastic water pistols with the title of my novel printed on the side. Large prizes are plastic AK-47s with @GrannyWithAGun’s catchphrase: “Screw Gardening.”

I follow the fair circuit in a VW Beetle with a Subway-party-sandwich-size photo of a tampon on the trunk and Tampax’s trademarked terms “Anti-Slip Grip” and “Purse-Proof” in Day-Glo letters on the driver’s and passenger’s sides.

I video the granny barkers in their off-time screaming their dentures out on roller coasters, losing their dentures in caramel apples, and styling their purple bouffants to resemble cotton candy. My videos go viral, and every time someone views one on my novel’s YouTube channel, that person has to sit through an ad for
The Straight Shooter’s Daughter
that is presented by Tampax.

Lisa asks, “What do you call the prank where the old ladies throw knitted shawls over younger ladies wearing swimming suit tops?”

“Afghan-bombing.”

“Oh yes, afghan-bombing. We have watched this video many times in our call center.”

I ask, “What do you think Tampax would say about leasing a
Straight Shooter’s Daughter
booth for the Midwest circuit? Where are you, Madison? We could get together and see who wins the blue ribbon for the biggest cheese wheel.”

Lisa says, “I predict Tampax will say that expanding your circuit tour will stretch you too thinly. While Tampax is impressed with your efforts, you have been on the road for nine weeks. Your booth can run itself. Your grannies are capable. Besides, your publicity videos are doing the work of an army.”

“Is it the gun control issue?”

“No, Tampax champions female empowerment. They are bothered by the fact that the popularities of your characters of childbearing age have not taken off.”

“Give them time.”

“You do not have that kind of time. You have six months and one day to turn in a novel for Tampax.”

I say, “I’ll get an extension.”

Lisa says, “You will not.”

“Well then, I’ll quit.”

Lisa says, “Never has a Tampax novelist quit. You would know that quitting is next in the line to impossible if you had done more than click the “Agree” box on your contract. From my experience, I am guessing that you read the first paragraph that describes monies due. And then you scrolled to the bottom and clicked the acknowledgment of deadline box. In between these markers were one hundred and thirteen clauses.”

“What kinds of clauses?”

Lisa says, “Why do you not use your company car to follow your husband to where he is currently refereeing in Miami? Tampax will perceive this as a step in the writing direction. You can write in your husband’s hotel room or by the pool. You may order a piña colada—as many as you like. Tampax has no problem with alcoholism.”

I ask, “How do you know where my husband is?”

“The same way I know where you are. You are on a bench in Decatur, Alabama, watching a Tilt-a-Whirl.”

I look around. Everyone is on a smartphone: ride riders, ride operators, moms with strollers, girls in groups. A woman leans against the Tilt-a-Whirl gate and holds her phone up in selfie mode to put on lipstick. I see the frosty pink color in the reflection. I can also see myself. I look small.

I ask, “Lisa, are you not in Wisconsin?”

Lisa says, “Of course I am in the twenty-third state, Wisconsin, nicknamed America’s Dairyland. Here, it is cranberry season and the current temperature is eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit.”

I ask, “Then how do you know about me and my husband?”

Lisa asks, “How long have you used Tampax? Since you were fifteen?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever switched brands?”

“No.”

“But you
have
had extramarital relations.”

So this is what a cold sweat feels like. I was fine and now I’m sick. I’ve never fainted, but now I know I will. I’m clammy and boneless. I drop my head into my hand. My other hand dangles with my phone between my legs. I stare at the caller ID silhouette of my Tampax account manager. The faceless picture doesn’t blink. It won’t go dark until I answer. And it knows my answer.

I whisper, “Yes.”

Lisa’s voice broadcasts from the tiny speaker. “Then there you are having it: the only thing women are more loyal to than love is feminine hygiene. As long as women use Tampax, Tampax is everywhere.”

It takes me sixteen hours to drive home without stopping. I’m running on gas fumes when I pull into my driveway. It’s dusk. I throw open my car door and don’t close it behind me. The car beeps, my purse and luggage are still inside, but I race toward my carport entrance. I don’t stop to chat with my neighbor who’s been collecting our mail and who waves to me from my porch, where she’s watering our plants. I jam the key in my lock. I wrestle the knob. I fall into my kitchen, and the wall phone goes off like a home invasion alarm.

When we bought this mid-century ranch house, my husband insisted we keep the landline. He said it was romantic. The phone is yellow and has a cord that stretches from the kitchen to the far end of the living room. The number is unlisted. My husband told me never to give the number out, so that when the wall phone rang, I’d know it was him, and only him, calling from the road. He said he liked to think of me perched on the kitchen stool, tethered to his voice. In the beginning he called me Birdy. He hasn’t called me that in such a long time.

I pick up the phone and say, “Baby, I’m home now. I’m not going anywhere. Please, please forgive me.”

But it is not my husband. It is Lisa. She says, “Go to the computer.”

“What computer?” My laptop is in the backseat of my car.

Lisa doesn’t answer me, but there is something in my empty house that feels definitely
on.

The curtains are closed and the living room is musty, save for the scent of freshly watered pot soil. While I was gone, my ficus reached the ceiling. It looms over the coffee table, and on that table sits an open Mac Air. The screen saver isn’t activated, so I know the keyboard was recently touched. A Vine video is cued up.

Lisa says, “Press play.”

Miley Cyrus appears onscreen. Her boy cut is as bleached blond as a Wiffle ball. She sticks her tongue between two twenty-four-carat-gold-flecked fingernails, waggles it, and then shouts in her hoarse Nashville twang: “We do what we want to, Gramma!”

She and her dancers have made a fairground grannies parody video in which they pile into a dunk tank and lose their grills. The grills look like goldfish, and Miley looks like a woman in her sopping wet halter top that reads:
S’up.

Lisa says, “Miss Cyrus is lobbying to play @Granny WithAGun’s nudist granddaughter, @UncladUndergrad, in the movie adaption of
The Straight Shooter’s Daughter.
To prepare, she has released a statement via Twitter that once the book is written, she will read the book.”

I say, “You’ve been in my house.”

Lisa says, “If Tampax can land Miss Cyrus as their spokesperson, they will be extremely pleased. Tampax has no problem with twerking. Miss Cyrus, however, has a shelf life for wearing Caucasian-colored plastic hot pants. Therefore, Tampax would appreciate it if you would flesh out the character Miss Cyrus wishes to play. Give @UncladUndergrad more to do in your novel. For example: she studies in the nude and she sleeps in the nude. She sleepwalks. And make her sporty. She can swim, play tennis, ride a bicycle, and go horseback riding. All of which can be done comfortably at any time of the month thanks to Tampax.”

I say, “You can’t special-order my novel.”

Lisa says, “You should consider my special orders of great value to you. I am giving you orders that will be met with sponsorship approval. My orders are also helpful in regards to plot and character development. As your Tampax account manager,
my
order is to be of service to you. I want you to write a novel so that it may be published and make you a success. Your success is my success. And our success is the success of Tampax. I am looking forward to a first draft of your manuscript in one hundred and fifty-three days.”

“A hundred and—that’s nothing.”

“That is six months. That is everything. That is more than enough.”

I hear my car door slam. The engine revs. I stretch the phone cord to the living room window and open the curtains to see the giant tampon on the back of my VW Beetle shine like a Playskool Gloworm as it drives out of sight.

“You’ve repossessed my car?”

“We have.”

“But, my laptop. My phone.”

Lisa says, “You are speaking on a phone and you have a new laptop that is—as of…right…now—free from the Internet.”

I hit the refresh button and the Vine video turns into a gray screen that says I’m unable to connect.

“You can’t do this.”

Lisa says, “You have enabled me to do this. According to the Terms and Conditions of your contract, at this six-month mark, if you have not turned in new pages, the consequences are as follows: no company car, increased monitoring, and a revocation of personal privileges.”