I carried it with me up to the thirteenth floor, lucky number thirteen, with my coffee in one hand and, in my bag, an apple that I’d bought from one of the apple sellers on the street. Lucky, truly, not to be one of them, tattered and desperate in Herald Square, in the midst of the Depression. Lucky to be cast as the plucky starlet of a human-interest puff piece, a spry and spritely gal getting over in spite of everything, making it sound so effortless—making no mention of the drudgery I sometimes felt, grateful though I was to have the chance to be a drudge.
That headline calling me “girl,” even in my early thirties, made me think of my mother back home in Georgetown. I’d be sending her a copy later, because it would fill her with complicated pride: happiness that I wasn’t starving, and disapproval at what she’d perceive as my being showy and immodest.
Quoth the subhead: “Lillian Boxfish, Who Upset Advertising Ideas to Win Executive Recognition Found Personality and Sense of Humor Helped Her to Goal.”
I resolved, as ever, to maintain my good humor as I approached Chester Everett to ask for a raise.
The days the copywriters put in, 8:30 to 6, were long, but mine were usually longer, and I was there that morning before almost anyone else, which had been my plan. Chester, too, was already in; as I unlocked my office I could see him wedged behind his desk, morning light ablaze in the thick, white hair of the small, wide head that topped his former-football-lineman’s frame. My boss’s appearance, while not entirely unhandsome, evoked an icebox crowned by a cauliflower.
Chester was a good egg, by and large. He had no gift for writing copy but knew that about himself. He did, however, have an unerring sense of what would and wouldn’t work: what approaches would attract, inspire, confuse, or offend our prospective shoppers. He was a good manager, too, in an environment resistant to being managed. Our office was a field richly seeded with volatile and mercurial temperaments, and Chester’s firm but gentle hand was adept at selectively pruning them such that they would flourish rather than wither. I liked him because he ran a tight ship; he liked me because I was both creative and even-keeled. Overall we got along well. Then again, overall I rarely demanded much of him.
I set down my things—all but the newspaper—and headed toward Chester’s open door.
To my chagrin, he already had a visitor. Olive Dodd—simpering, unctuous, not-quite-evil Olive—was perched on one of his two visitors’ chairs. Too late now to turn around and wait. I walked in.
“Chester, darling, good morning to you,” I said. “Olive, lovely to see you, too.”
Olive, with her prim posture, her ungainly manner, and her reliance on elaborate fashions inappropriate for the office, strongly resembled a fancy pigeon: a creature bred out of its dignity across many generations. Although pretty enough by the standards of the day, with a voluptuous figure and a pleasant if somewhat shapeless face, she always gave an impression of bigness, as if poorly fitted to any locale. Whenever I encountered her I thought I could detect an agitated quaver, as if she might be on the verge of bursting into laughter or tears or, God help us, song. I hadn’t yet been able to work out whether she was like this all the time or only when I was around.
My dim hope that Olive might let me speak with Chester alone guttered when I saw what was in her hand: the same edition of the World-Telegram that I held in my own. “Oh, Lillian,” she said, “I was just showing Mr. Everett your wonderful news.”
Olive was twenty-eight or twenty-nine if she was a day, but her cloying insistence on “mister”-ing Chester made her seem younger—not youthful, but simply unformed. Her early arrival to show Chester the story gave her the air of a tattletale, though I couldn’t see how what I’d achieved might be punishable.
The store below us had just installed a state-of-the-art air-cooling system, but upstairs we still made do with oscillating fans. The one in Chester’s open window riffled the edges of the newspaper that Olive spread before him.
Chester wiped his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief as he scanned the page. “Congratulations, Lily,” he said. “This is your finest write-up yet. And I’ll bet you helped them decide to quote your air-conditioning ad. Getting that word out to our simmering mass of sweaty customers seeking relief was a well-timed stroke. Particularly given that it didn’t cost us a red cent.”
The reporter had asked if they could run a sample illustrating my greatest innovation to the ad industry and the secret to my success. “Humor,” read the story, “used judiciously, lifts Boxfish’s ads above the pomp and routine of Macy’s competitors.”
Being funny—it was true; that was my innovation. Everyone took it and began doing it themselves, but nobody was funnier than I was, not for a long time, not for years. Mine was a voice that no one had heard speaking in an advertisement before, and I got them to listen. To listen and then, more importantly, to act on what they’d heard.
I’d given the reporter the image that Helen McGoldrick, true friend and crack illustrator, had drawn, an amusing cartoon of a deer sporting eight antlers with a hat perched on each, as well as my verse that had inspired it.
Chester read aloud from the newsprint in that thunderous voice of his, stentorian and clear as a Roman orator’s, just as he’d done days before when I’d brought him a draft to get his go-ahead: