Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen - 6

On Monday morning when I enter my boss’s office, she is hanging upside down from a metal apparatus that looks like a huge praying mantis.

“Do you want me to come back later?” I ask, unsure what I have interrupted.

“No, no. I’m just going to stay inverted while we do our check-in if that’s cool with you. Need to let my chakras breathe a little.”

“No problem,” I say.

“Don’t you ever get that urge to be upside down? It always helps energize my vessel.”

I know Gemma well enough to know that her vessel is her body. And though I generally avoid speaking in her particular patois, I am fluent in it after working at Actualize, the wellness company she founded, for the past two years. When I met her, I was at a notably low point, working in the Theater District as a merch seller at The Phantom of the Opera . Before each show, I would traverse the aisles trying to sell as many mugs, masks, and T-shirts as I could before the lights went down and the synthesizers boomed. On my off days, I worked as a TaskRabbit doing odd jobs, and it was in this role that I was summoned to the home of Gemma Dwyer. She had just launched her company, and she needed help boxing up samples to send to key social media influencers. Gemma instructed me on how to artfully arrange the oud-scented soaps, the LED masks, the face mist infused with magnesium-rich water from a Japanese hot spring. We sealed each box with a twine bow and a lavender sprig, and over the course of the day, we got to talking. I had never met anyone quite like her. She seemed to have a cure for every ailment, a solution for every problem, a mantra for every worry. I was impressed by her confidence and conviction—two things I was lacking. When you are full of questions, you are drawn to people who look like answers.

When Gemma asked me to be her full-time administrative assistant, I was elated. It meant finally being on the path to a sustainable career. Gemma didn’t care that I lacked a college degree and a coherent résumé. Her only prerequisite was that I believe unflinchingly in the mission of her company. And I did believe, at the beginning. After all, I was the one who applied the decal with the phrase WHAT WOULD YOUR BEST SELF DO? on the wall outside this very office. I was the one who ordered the linen tote bags inscribed with the same motto. I was convinced we would help make the world a better, healthier place—and that, through osmosis, I would become a better, healthier person. I didn’t just drink the Actualize Kool-Aid—I chugged it.

Gemma was clear from the beginning: “We don’t sell products; we sell healing .” And I cannot deny that the consumer appetite for healing is insatiable these days. Our nervous systems are rattled; our auras are dim; our energy is erratic—everyone is convinced they’re in peril. And then along comes Gemma to assure them there is hope. Whatever your ailment, real or imagined, there’s a tincture for it, and if not a tincture, then an oil, a supplement, a tea, a bath salt, a crystal that you charge under the full moon and then put in your vagina, an ionic cocoon that helps you sweat out your demons, or a red-light mask that makes you look like a serial killer but feel like a deity. There is a filler you can inject into your face to “look as young as you feel”; and then there is a treatment to dissolve that filler once you realize you have overdone it.

But after two years, I no longer believe in Actualize’s mission. I’m convinced that Gemma’s version of wellness is really just a form of narcissism, a way to divide the body—sorry, the vessel —into infinite components that all beg to be lavished with money and attention. Did you know your earlobes need their own skincare regimen? And your kneecaps, too. You could spend all day exfoliating, lifting, moisturizing, resurfacing, deep conditioning, buffing, harmonizing, depilating, and rejuvenating your myriad bodily surfaces, but at the end of that day, your soul will still ache for what it really wants: freedom from the consumptive cycle of never feeling or looking quite good enough. We’ve conflated health with vanity. It’s not that I don’t believe in healing; I just don’t believe you can buy it for $78 an ounce.

“How was your weekend?” I ask as I try to decide where to sit, given Gemma’s current upside-down orientation. The taut skin of her face has turned fuchsia and her normally waist-length hair now pools onto the cream-colored rug. (Everything in this office is either beige or cream, and all the furniture has rounded edges because Gemma believes sharp corners are hostile to the psyche.) I choose a chair that allows me to face her, or at least face her knees.

“So nourishing,” she says. “I went to a friend’s farm on the North Fork. Did a ton of foraging and forest bathing and sea immersing.” If you met Gemma today, you would assume she has always been a clean-living earth child whose energy field has been humming at full capacity since the day she was birthed. That’s what she wants you to assume. But I know that much of this identity is self-styled, as is her accent, which sounds vaguely English but also Southern Californian, even though she grew up in a voluptuous McMansion in New Jersey. “What about you, mama? What did you get up to?”

“I visited my dad in the Adirondacks.”

“Oh, that’s right!” She makes an upside-down sympathy-face. “How is he?”

That question again. “Not great, but okay.”

She puts her hand on her heart, and then her eyes light up with an idea. “Has he tried lion’s mane? I’ve heard it’s great for cognition. You know, I bet we could do a whole line for memory health. The dementia market is huge, and it’s only going to grow as boomers age.”

The dementia market. I decide not to be offended by her abrupt shift into business mode. She can’t help it. In addition to being a self-proclaimed “healer” and “seeker,” Gemma is the most cunning saleswoman I’ve ever met.

We eventually turn to the reason for the meeting, and as I give updates on our current projects—what is progressing, what has stalled—I realize there is not one item on my to-do list that is remotely interesting to me. My motivation has run dry. After two years, I am still stuck in my administrative role, and though I do have bigger ideas I’ve tried to share recently, Gemma doesn’t see me as a creative . That’s her domain.

“Are we set for the rollout of Twelve by Twelve?” she asks, referring to the new product line we’re launching: a twelve-step skincare routine designed for tweens. Gemma believes you’re never too young to start addressing aesthetic anxieties you don’t yet have.

I check my list, feeling my moral core tremble in objection. “All set. Preview event is this Friday; digital and out-of-home campaigns roll out next Tuesday. Influencers are set to start teasing it this weekend.”

“Perfect.”

We run through a few more items and once our meeting concludes, I finally notice the objects piled on Gemma’s desk: a soap on a rope, an old-timey wooden bucket, a linen rag, and a few other items.

“What’s all this?”

“Oh! Let me show you.” Gemma raises her arms, and the plank of her body flips upright on the inversion machine. She goes completely still for a moment, and I worry she might be unconscious; but she soon regains her equilibrium, unhooks her ankles, and rushes over to the desk. “For Holiday, merch is working on a Back-to-Basics Bundle. Close your eyes.” She waits until I comply. “Okay, picture it’s the 1800s. You’re a pioneer woman, crossing the country in a wagon, sleeping around a fire, bathing in streams—but make it luxury. Now open your eyes.” She picks up the items one by one. “All you need is a gorgeous boar-bristle body brush, a natural sea sponge, a linen hair towel, and a handmade ash bucket. So fucking cute, right?”

I must be making a face because she reacts to my expression with: “Uh-oh. Our resident skeptic isn’t sold?”

“It’s just … I don’t think the pioneer lifestyle was considered to be all that glamorous—or even hygienic. I get the sense there was a lot of hunger, illness, death. They were really up against the elements, those pioneers.”

“Yeah, but aren’t we all? Who says the struggle can’t be chic? Plus, homesteading is huge right now.”

“Go West, young man…” I start to say.

“What?”

“It’s a quote from Horace Greeley. ‘Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.’ It was about westward expansion. You know, manifest destiny?”

“Oh my god … that’s what we’ll call the collection: Manifest Destiny.” A dreamy look comes over her face as she says, “Go West, young woman, go West and glow up with the country.”

I cringe, but Gemma is alight with a sense of her own brilliance. “Actually, can you write that up real quick? Like a mini marketing strategy that I can share with the team. It’s April, so we need to get going if this is going to happen for Holiday.”

Right. We only have six months to persuade people to buy a $130 bucket come November.

“Actually … I can’t.” I am suddenly overcome with a sense of resistance.

“Oh,” says Gemma, confused. I’ve never denied a request from her before. “This afternoon, then.”

“No, Gemma. I can’t do this anymore.” The words leave my mouth hastily, and as they do, I feel a jolt of excitement, a fundamental rightness coursing through my veins. “I quit.”

Gemma looks dumbfounded. “What? Cricket…”

It is so impulsive that I feel as though I am learning of this plan right along with her. It’s as if the decision has made itself, and I’m just being pulled along in its wake. I feel a frenzy within, then a surge of certainty.

“I know it seems sudden, but there’s somewhere else I need to be.” I stand up from the cream-hued chair, walk past the sand-toned couch, and leave my boss dumbstruck, her hand still clenching the boar-bristle body brush.

I escape the Actualize office and immediately call Nina. She doesn’t pick up at first, so I ring her twice more as I pace the sidewalk, my heart pounding.

When I finally get through, she sounds worried. “Cricket? Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Sorry to stress you. Just have a question. Have you listed the house yet?”

“No, that’s next week, once we take the photos.”

“Okay, good. Don’t. I don’t want to sell it.”

“Um, okay…”

“I want to move there. I want to take care of Dad.”

“Cricket.” Nina pauses, and I can sense her taking a deep breath. “That’s a really generous thought, but do you know what that would actually entail?”

Of course I don’t. But I’m tired of being underestimated, underutilized. “I can learn.”

“It’s a lot of work, and it’s only going to get harder as he gets sicker. He’s really slipping,” Nina explains. “It’s a huge burden to bear. And a few days ago, you seemed pretty clear that you weren’t up for it.”

“I know, but things changed.”

“Is it that you’re feeling guilty? He’ll be perfectly happy at Orchard Hills once he settles in.”

“But he doesn’t want to go. He wants to be at home,” I say. “Shouldn’t we take his wishes into account?”

“He’ll acclimate. And more importantly, he’ll be safe.”

“I can keep him safe.” Neither of us speaks for a moment, and then I say plaintively: “I want more time with him.”

“But we have no idea how much longer he’ll be himself. What if you rearrange your whole life, and then he completely forgets who he is? Caregiving is nonstop, and it’s not glamorous. Dad can be a real pain in the ass, you know. A few weeks ago, he decided to do the laundry while I was out, and he poured an entire liter of detergent into the drum of the dryer. The dryer , Cricket.”

“Ooof.” I didn’t know that. Nina and I speak every week, but I realize she has been sparing me the details of her day-to-day, probably in an attempt to protect me.

“Stuff like that is happening more and more often,” she says.

“I get it. I can handle it.” I don’t know how to explain my rationale, other than there is an urgent energy flowing through me. I have a sudden conviction that my father and I have things to do together, and that this is our last chance to do them.

Of course Nina, being Nina, is focused on the practical. She bombards me with a slew of questions, finally landing on: “What about money? Dad doesn’t have a lot of savings, and you know his licensing deal expires at the end of this year, right?”

Our father sold a series of patents in his thirties and secured a lucrative deal for one of them—a nanofiltration membrane that removes bacteria from water—that has provided royalties ever since.

Nina continues: “That’s another reason why this is a good time to sell the house. We need to make sure we can cover his expenses going forward.”

“What about his pension? And social security?”

“They’re modest. They won’t pay for a home or a significant amount of in-home care, should he eventually need that.”

I hadn’t considered any of this, but it all seems surmountable. “I’ll get a job. I can find something remote, or even local. You know me. I’m scrappy. I can always find work.”

“That’s true.”

“I’m not saying this will be our long-term solution, but let me give it a try. If things aren’t working by this time next year, we can sell up and move him into a home. At least we will have given him one more year in the house that he loves.”

Nina is quiet as she considers my idea, then she says, “You’re really ready to leave the city? What about Actualize?”

“I just quit.”

“You just…”

“I know this is sudden,” I explain before she can protest. “But I’m not like you. I don’t make decisions by thinking .”

“Clearly. And we love that about you, but…”

“But what?”

“You know you can’t save Dad, right? There’s no chance of a happy ending here.”

“That’s not what I’m after.”

“What are you after?”

I think: I want a new life. I want to rebuild myself from the ground up. I want to return to the place where things went wrong so that I can make them right.

But before I can answer, Nina proceeds. “I hope you’re not doing this out of some feeling of obligation or heroism.”

“It’s not that complicated, and I’m not that altruistic,” I say, finally finding the simplest and truest explanation. “I just want to be with my dad.”