demurely, pasting a smile on my face, and trying to look like I was having a fantastic time.
The sun reflected off the glittering surface of the pool like tiny gemstones. It felt good on my face and shoulders. I leaned back and closed my eyes, relaxing a little.
Before long, I heard two loud splashes and some high-pitched giggles. I opened my eyes. It was the same group of chatty summer associates I’d seen on the bus. Two of the guys had cannonballed into the deep end of the pool. A third was making a beeline for the open bar—Steinberg, I presumed. The rest of the group were picking out deck chairs and moving them out of the shade, arranging them in a sprawling semicircle a few yards from me.
I put my sunglasses on so I could watch more carefully. I was curious, and more than a little nostalgic. There had been ninety-five of us in my class when we’d first started out, and over a third of us were women. Now, eight years later in Corporate, it was just me, Murph, Hunter, Tyler, and a handful of other guys left standing.
I was still friends with a lot of the women lawyers who’d left Parsons Valentine over the years. I knew they all rooted for me. Every Christmas, I received an enthusiastic chorus of messages: Keep up the good fight! Looking forward to toasting the firm’s first female Corporate partner!!!! Go Ingrid!!
These messages typically came scrawled on the back of a holiday photo card featuring some impossibly cute two-year-old in a reindeer costume, or one of my former colleagues and her husband, both wearing elf hats and hugging an affable-looking Labrador retriever between them.
As I watched this latest crop of summer associates, shrieking and splashing each other in the pool, I thought about how much I missed that easy camaraderie—the freedom you felt when you were nowhere near up for partner, that blissful safety in numbers. It was so much harder to blend in when there was only one of you.
The one called Steinberg was back with a large tropical drink served in a hollowed-out pineapple. “Hey,” he yelled to one of the girls. “Why aren’t you in the pool yet?”
This particular girl—the prettiest girl in the group—was a tall, willowy blonde with high cheekbones, fair skin, and a faint spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hair was swept back into an unfussy chignon and secured with a tiny tortoiseshell pin. She was wearing a chic black cover-up; the white spaghetti straps of a swimsuit top were visibly knotted together behind her neck.
I knew her name—Cameron Alexander—because Murph and Hunter had pointed her out in the Summer Associate Directory, also known among the male attorneys at the firm as The Menu. Cameron had been to Exeter and was a double-Harvard—both college and law school—and, according to her firm bio, did some modeling in her spare time. Runway, not catalog. Rumor had it she was also dating a client, the manager of an exclusive hedge fund the firm represented.
“Come on, Cameron,” said the one called Steinberg. “You said you’d be going in.”
“I don’t see anyone stopping you from swimming, Jason,” Cameron said with a toss of her head. “Why does it always have to be follow-the-leader with you?”
This seemed to shut Steinberg up for a moment. The other men in the group sniggered.
Good for you, Cameron, I thought.
“Hey, Ingrid, mind if I join you?”
I looked up. It was Tim Hollister, a youngish Corporate partner in our Emerging Markets group. A glint was coming off of his Clark Kent glasses where the sunlight hit them just so.
“Of course not,” I said, sitting up and pushing my sunglasses up onto the crown of my head. “Pull up a chair.”
I liked Tim. He’d been in the associate class three years above me and Murph, and seemed a little surprised to have woken up one day to discover himself occupying a huge corner office. Even after he’d made partner, Tim still managed to seem like one of us. He was the type of young
The sun reflected off the glittering surface of the pool like tiny gemstones. It felt good on my face and shoulders. I leaned back and closed my eyes, relaxing a little.
Before long, I heard two loud splashes and some high-pitched giggles. I opened my eyes. It was the same group of chatty summer associates I’d seen on the bus. Two of the guys had cannonballed into the deep end of the pool. A third was making a beeline for the open bar—Steinberg, I presumed. The rest of the group were picking out deck chairs and moving them out of the shade, arranging them in a sprawling semicircle a few yards from me.
I put my sunglasses on so I could watch more carefully. I was curious, and more than a little nostalgic. There had been ninety-five of us in my class when we’d first started out, and over a third of us were women. Now, eight years later in Corporate, it was just me, Murph, Hunter, Tyler, and a handful of other guys left standing.
I was still friends with a lot of the women lawyers who’d left Parsons Valentine over the years. I knew they all rooted for me. Every Christmas, I received an enthusiastic chorus of messages: Keep up the good fight! Looking forward to toasting the firm’s first female Corporate partner!!!! Go Ingrid!!
These messages typically came scrawled on the back of a holiday photo card featuring some impossibly cute two-year-old in a reindeer costume, or one of my former colleagues and her husband, both wearing elf hats and hugging an affable-looking Labrador retriever between them.
As I watched this latest crop of summer associates, shrieking and splashing each other in the pool, I thought about how much I missed that easy camaraderie—the freedom you felt when you were nowhere near up for partner, that blissful safety in numbers. It was so much harder to blend in when there was only one of you.
The one called Steinberg was back with a large tropical drink served in a hollowed-out pineapple. “Hey,” he yelled to one of the girls. “Why aren’t you in the pool yet?”
This particular girl—the prettiest girl in the group—was a tall, willowy blonde with high cheekbones, fair skin, and a faint spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hair was swept back into an unfussy chignon and secured with a tiny tortoiseshell pin. She was wearing a chic black cover-up; the white spaghetti straps of a swimsuit top were visibly knotted together behind her neck.
I knew her name—Cameron Alexander—because Murph and Hunter had pointed her out in the Summer Associate Directory, also known among the male attorneys at the firm as The Menu. Cameron had been to Exeter and was a double-Harvard—both college and law school—and, according to her firm bio, did some modeling in her spare time. Runway, not catalog. Rumor had it she was also dating a client, the manager of an exclusive hedge fund the firm represented.
“Come on, Cameron,” said the one called Steinberg. “You said you’d be going in.”
“I don’t see anyone stopping you from swimming, Jason,” Cameron said with a toss of her head. “Why does it always have to be follow-the-leader with you?”
This seemed to shut Steinberg up for a moment. The other men in the group sniggered.
Good for you, Cameron, I thought.
“Hey, Ingrid, mind if I join you?”
I looked up. It was Tim Hollister, a youngish Corporate partner in our Emerging Markets group. A glint was coming off of his Clark Kent glasses where the sunlight hit them just so.
“Of course not,” I said, sitting up and pushing my sunglasses up onto the crown of my head. “Pull up a chair.”
I liked Tim. He’d been in the associate class three years above me and Murph, and seemed a little surprised to have woken up one day to discover himself occupying a huge corner office. Even after he’d made partner, Tim still managed to seem like one of us. He was the type of young
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