“Aww, Gilligan.”
9. 1990
/a/
“Come in. Waiting long? Busy day. I get back, am unable even to see my desk, for all the messages. Foamwhistle, leave. Remember Pupik, in Lids, and Goggins, in Jars, have to be brought to see me at the same time. Attend to it. I’ve asked you repeatedly before. A company that cannot coordinate its lids and its jars is a bad company. I do not run a bad company. Go now. Come in. Don’t jump at her, Foamwhistle, you can whisper and giggle together later. This is my time. Come in. For whatever part of your wait was my fault I apologize, although none of it was my fault. You like this? You don’t like this? I caught it. I had it stuffed. Still looks wet, to me. You? I caught it in Canada. Went up to Canada, with Gerber. Did a little fishing. Little fishing with Gerber up in Canada. Got a tan, a natural one, tell your sister that. Not there, up here, closer. Light’s terrible in here today. Why Foamwhistle can’t arrange an office that doesn’t have to depend for its light on a window is beyond me. At least I can see you up here. Are you really gray, or is it just the light? Although I like the rain on the window, I like to look out, when I find myself with a second, which is of course never. Lake looks good in the rain. Rain cleans the lake up. The sound of the rain on the window… You like it? No? Yes? Down to business. Stonecipher got off to Amherst satisfactorily, I assume. How long has it been, three weeks? You can’t spare an hour in three weeks? I know what you’re going to say, but the Canada thing just came up. Gerber just came up with the idea. We can’t plan these things, or it looks as if we’re price-fixing or something. You, on the other hand, you have no free time? This is not simply one indefinitely broad interval of free time? How is your job? How much money do you have? Do you have money? If you do not say anything, I automatically assume you have money. Further thoughts on the issue we discussed at length the last time I saw you? No? No further thoughts? Planless, still? Distinguished graduate of Oberlin? Most highly educated receptionist and telephone operator in Cleveland history? And the firm. I anxiously await the appearance of the firm’s first book. Has the firm published a book yet? Norslan? That’s not a book, that’s advertising. Still, production is production, as I well know. Up to four-ten yet? Still four big dollars an hour? How long? No. Perfectly natural to want some sort of interval without school, without a real job or any responsibilities, I won’t even say marriage because my glasses will break, but how long? The reasonable question. Followed by the reasonable point. Wait. Wait. To love a non-nuclear relative is a good thing. To be connected… excuse me, to be connected is good. But to imitate that relative… in all facets… is not good. To try to be that relative is unnatural. Thus bad. Not fair? Not true? Then, really, why purposely invite comparison, accusation? Is that the appropriate question? Why the hair, which you must know I loathe that way? The ancient dresses? What is the function of those shoes? Yes, function. I know. Wait a moment. The aimlessness after a self-consciously dazzling college career. Gramma Lenore leaves her child, my father, your grandfather, at Shaker School and flies off to England. England. Yes, I know where function comes from, after all. Yes. The irreponsibility. Your refusal, a, to go to school; your refusal, b, to put your expensive degree to renumerative use. Your refusal even to live at home. No, not really, of course there is understanding, but perceive simply that on my end too there is embarrassment and sadness. Except in the daytime… excuse me… except in the daytime there are only Miss Malig and myself, in that huge house. Why that look? I seethe with anger at that look, and will not even condescend to deny anymore. Your mother’s child. The aimlessness. A mindless job, punching numbers and making connections for other people. Still no romantic involvement? No? No, that doesn’t point up an important difference. Aimlessness and irresponsibility simply take on new forms as time goes by. Besides, there is Mr. Vigorous. No, don’t bother to deny involvement, bother to deny extent. I see. No real point in discussing it, is there? So then, Lenore. Right. With regard to the issue I strongly suspect has understandably brought you here, just let me say everything’s largely under control and thoroughly explainable. The thing with Gerber was incidental. The thing with Gerber just came up. Rummage did call Bloomfield. Bloemker. At my instructions. Yes. Not at all. Your not knowing what’s going on was purely accidental. The big picture and so on. I’d assumed Gramma, not to mention very probably Foamwhistle, had been keeping you filled quietly in, all along. What was going on was that some time ago Gramma Lenore summoned me to her greenhouse of a room to discuss a project. A project. A business project. Just wait. She had concepts she wanted to bounce off me. They bounced, and I was intrigued. I brought in one of our men, one of our researchers, one of our chemists, the Obstat kid? Neil Obstat, Jr.? I know you went to Shaker with him. The little lizard still has your picture in his wallet, apparently. In any event, he was intrigued, too. Gramma Lenore’s friend, the Yingst woman? Had had a husband who had done research. Pineal research. The pineal gland? No? A little round gland at the base of the brain? P-i-n-e-a- 1? Remember Descartes thought it was where mind met body, way back when, the point of mediation, where the body’s hydraulics were adjusted and operated according to the…? Right. Certain you must have done it in class. Yingst had theories, certain theories, in which Gramma Lenore was not uninterested, for predictably self-oriented reasons. A mutually beneficial transaction was proposed.”
/b/
From Advertising Age, 28 August 1990, “Ear to the Ground” Column, pp. 31–32:
INFANT-FOOD MARKET HEATS UP THANKS TO UNPRECEDENTED PROMOTIONAL AGGRESSIVENESS, ENTREPRENEURIAL CAJONES.
Cleveland, Ohio, is the unlikely site for what insiders say is the next real industry battle in the production of infant food, with giants Gerber’s Quality Brands and Stonecipheco Baby Food Products lining up toe to toe for a market-share struggle that could very well leave third-place Beech-Nut Infant Division out in the cold.
As Gerber’s ties up loose ends and prepares to mount an unprecedented pan-media advertising and consumer-good-will operation, featuring the highly prized and high-priced services of ex-Soviet hot commodity Kopek Spasova, Stonecipheco, say A.A. sources and analysts, is preparing to announce and capitalize quickly on the market implications of a research advance unprecedented in food service history, a cattle-endocrine derivative that, when added to an infant’s (Stonecipheco!!!) food on a regular basis, can significantly speed up the development of powers of speech and comprehension. “Kids are talking months, maybe years before they normally would have, in limited tests,” whispered an inside Stonecipheco source. “We’re talking not only eventual market domination, but a potentially really significant insight into the relation between nutrition and mental development, between what the body needs and the mind can do.”