Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  It was more of a loft or atelier than a regular apartment, and Karen had loved it for its inconveniences as much as for its spectacular space. Who needed an eat-in kitchen? She never cooked. She had hundreds, maybe thousands, of books in the apartment but not a single cookbook. Instead, she had a loose-leaf binder with a take-out menu from every restaurant in New York City that delivered. They were arranged by country – Thai, Chinese, Mexican, etc. The apartment’s tiny kitchen was just fine. A phone was the only kitchen appliance she needed.

  She adored the place the first moment she’d seen it and still did. Sort of like her feelings for Jeffrey. Karen might be accused of making snap judgments, but no one could say she wasn’t loyal. Now that they could afford something much more expensive, she regularly fought with Jeffrey, insisting on staying here. It was her haven.

  She stepped out of the elevator into the tiny private foyer they shared only with old Mrs Katz in the north-facing apartment. Karen put her key in the lock of 7S and opened the door. Before her was a thirty-foot expanse of parquet floor and a row of seven windows, each one tall enough to be a door. In fact, two of them in the center were French doors that, when opened, let out to a tiny Juliet balcony that looked down onto the tops of the ginko trees seven floors below. The doors were shuttered on the outside. She’d had them painted Charleston green – eight parts black and one part green, simultaneously chic and practical in dirty New York City. Window boxes of trailing white geraniums and ivy gave the place a park-like touch. On bright days sunlight poured through the windows and across the floor in a wonderful chiaroscuro.

  The room was also graced with a soaring ceiling and served as both a living room and library. The north wall behind her was lined, floor to ceiling, with glass-fronted bookcases that were filled almost to overflowing. Two paintings – an early one of Jeffrey’s and one by their friend Perry Silverman – hung on the white walls. Karen adored the Silverman for its wonderful depth of color. Other than that, the furnishings were spare indeed. There was a Donghia sofa that Karen’s colleague Angelo had done for her back in the days when they were both young, struggling designers, before there were things like AIDS and infertility to worry about. The sofa was upholstered in a simple white linen but had a sinuous curve across its back that was almost female.

  Along the right-hand wall there was a twelve-foot-long refectory table that she and Jeffrey had bought in France. Its top was made from three ancient, wide cherry boards that had been polished for two hundred years by French nuns who knew all that beeswax and elbow grease could accomplish. The lines of the table were simple yet elegant in the way that only the French achieved. The table was surrounded by a dozen white upholstered Parsons chairs. It was a bitch to keep the linen white on a New York dining room chair, but after every dinner party Karen did an inspection with club soda and Ivory Liquid in hand. And the trouble was worth it, because the crispness of the white cloth against the patina of the tabletop was magical.

  The only other piece in the room was an incredibly ornate demilune console table situated against the left wall. Karen had fought for days with Jeffrey until he finally allowed her to buy it at the Christie’s East auction. He had called it ‘campy’ and ‘nellie’ and ‘overdone.’ Everything but what he actually meant, which was ‘too Jewish.’ Jeffrey and his parents had what Karen thought of as Ralph Lauren Syndrome: the unbearable longing to be understated gentiles. In her opinion, it was a problem all too common among wealthy New York Jews.

  It was the first time in their then-new marriage that they had had a big disagreement and it was the first time Jeffrey had fixed it by coming up with a Real Deal. From then on, whenever they made major compromises they always called them Real Deals. It was a serious kind of game they played throughout their marriage, a kind of formalized tit-for-tat. She could have this if he could have that. Jeffrey had given up his painting to manage her business but she had to give him free financial reign. She had agreed to build the Westport house if he allowed her to keep their apartment. The demilune table was the first one of their compromises and in return for buying it she had to let him hang his friend Perry’s painting, even though she didn’t like it.

  She’d gone to the auction without him, but once she got the crazy gilded thing into the apartment and put an enormous vase filled with white cala lilies and blue delphinium spikes in place, he had admitted that it was the outré touch needed. And Karen smiled every time she looked at the grinning carved dolphins that supported the base of the zany piece. After a while she also found herself smiling at Perry’s painting. She’d come to love it. In fact, though it made her feel guilty, she now liked it more than Jeffrey’s painting, which she had tired of in time.

  Off the apartment’s living room there were two hallways: one led to the tiny windowless kitchen that had caused her mother-in-law such grief. The other led to an enfilade of doors, where the three bedrooms and a tiny maid’s room were located. Karen used the maid’s room as her at-home studio and simply kept the door closed on the chaos of fabrics, sketches, and trims that always littered the place. But both their bedroom and one of the guest rooms, which they used as a sitting room, were always immaculate. Her husband was very neat. Sometimes she thought she had married her mother. But didn’t everybody?

  ‘Jeffrey?’ she called and he shouted out from down the hall. She took off her raincoat, her mushroom-colored cashmere jacket and shawl, and threw them on one of the dining room chairs. Then she threw herself onto the plump down-filled cushions of the sofa, kicking off her suede wedgies before she put her feet up.

  ‘You’re home early,’ Jeffrey said from the doorway. ‘I just got in from work.’ He paused and looked at her. ‘Dinner go poorly? Lisa already called and said she wanted to talk to you. Didn’t you talk over dinner?’ He crossed the room and picked up her coat. Wordlessly he walked to the closet hidden behind the bookshelves and hung the jacket up. She felt the reproach. Never marry a man more fastidious than you are, she would advise a daughter, if she ever had one. Karen sighed.

  ‘I couldn’t take it anymore,’ she said. ‘Belle drives me crazy.’

  ‘Belle drives everybody crazy. It goes without saying.’

  She nodded. ‘How was work?’ she asked him. Jeffrey had spent the morning taping his portion of Elle Halle’s television program – they were both doing the interview – and the rest of the day away from his office, meeting with the NormCo people. The NormCo situation was one she’d rather not think about.

  ‘Fine. Progress on all fronts.’

  ‘Did you say nice things about me to the television guys?’

  ‘Well, I told them you were lousy in bed but a great cook.’

  ‘Two lies!’ she cried and tried to take a swipe at him. She wondered what he had said to the TV cameras but knew she wouldn’t get it out of him. He was a tease.

  ‘How did the work on the Elliot fitting go?’

  ‘That was lousy too.’ But not as lousy as going to the doctor, she thought. She didn’t mention Goldman now. ‘Elise wasn’t happy. Nothing is coming together for the collection. And Tangela was impossible.’

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t fire her.’

  ‘Well, for one thing, she’s Defina’s daughter. For another, when she’s good, she’s great. And she’s no worse than any other fitting model. Anyway, we’d been at it for six hours.’

  ‘No, you’d been at it for six hours. She was just standing there.’

  Karen sighed again. She supposed it was better to have a husband who hated the admittedly difficult and temperamental models than one who fucked them. But it was always tiresome to listen to his complaints, and she was already bone weary. Plus, they had the rest of the evening ahead of them and this was the only real opportunity she would get to talk to him until next week, what with the presentation to NormCo, the final preparations for the Elliot wedding, and the three charity events they were scheduled to attend in the evenings. The two of them had become a very social couple lately.

  ‘What
did Ernesta leave you for dinner?’

  ‘What does she always leave? Chicken. Steamed vegetables. Salad. Diet fucking Jell-O with razor-thin sliced strawberries in it. Total calorie count of sixty-three and a half.’

  ‘You want to order out?’

  ‘Nah. Too much trouble. I’ll just eat it and bitch,’ he smiled at her. ‘You want to eat again? I know how those meals of Belle’s can be.’ He really had the most devastating smile. No matter what bratty behavior he was up to, he could almost always charm her out of her rancor with that adorable grin.

  Marrying your idol is a great coup for a woman, but it leaves you always at a disadvantage. Karen had adored Jeffrey from the first moment she saw him. He was everything she was not. He came from money. He had real class. He was very attractive. He was well-educated: a graduate of the Yale fine arts program, no less. They had met when he was slumming in Brooklyn, studying and teaching design at Pratt. He had glanced at the little garmento wannabe that she was and looked right through her. But Karen had been riveted and she still was, by his astonishing good looks and his wit and his style. She’d always feel that he was the catch and that she’d done the catching.

  ‘So, I’ve put together the numbers for NormCo,’ Jeffrey told her. ‘With a little jiggling and a little juggling, we look pretty good. Of course, I overvalued the inventory by about two hundred percent, but I’ll let their accountants try and work that out. They can’t actually accuse us of dishonesty. All they can do is feel we’re unrealistically optimistic’ He got up and moved out toward the kitchen.

  ‘So, what kind of money will you ask for?’

  ‘The trick is not to ask. The trick is getting them to make the first offer. I just hope they’re talking Serious Money. I’d like us to be comfortable.’

  Karen smiled. She thought of the joke about the old Jewish man who gets knocked down in a car accident. People rush to help him, cover him with a blanket, and call for an ambulance. ‘Are you comfortable?’ a man asks. ‘Well, I make a living,’ the victim says. Wealthy Jews, she had learned, had a code about their net worth: to Karen, she and Jeffrey were already rich. To Jeffrey, it would take another few million at least before they were ‘comfortable.’

  Now, working together, they quickly set the table. Even when they ate alone, Jeffrey insisted on real china and damask napkins. They always used the real silver, despite Ernesta’s mild grumbling over the polishing she had to constantly do. Alone, Karen would eat out of the pan standing over the sink or lying in bed. But Jeffrey was a grown-up who ate at the dining table. Karen took a deep breath. She hated to bring this up over a meal, but now was the only chance Karen would get to talk with him.

  ‘I saw Dr Goldman today,’ she said, biting her lip.

  Jeffrey’s smile disappeared. ‘What’s it going to be now?’ he asked, and the bitterness in his voice made her wince. ‘Hot wine enemas? Coca-Cola douches? Oh, Karen.’

  She tried to smile. ‘Well, the good news is, we don’t have to try anything. The bad news is, that’s because nothing will work.’

  The little vertical wrinkle he got between his eyebrows, the only noticeable age sign on his tanned and handsome face, appeared. He ran his hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. His eyes, such a beautiful, clear light blue, clouded over. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. He reached across the glossy tabletop and took her hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated. Then he looked down at his plate and they both sat there for several moments in silence.

  While they’d been going through this process, they’d long ago made a Real Deal on it: if either Karen couldn’t conceive, or if Jeffrey’s sperm was weak, they wouldn’t try in vitro or donor insemination. Both of them agreed that it was immoral, not to mention painful and humiliating, to spend that kind of money and effort to make their own genetic product when the world was filled with unwanted babies. Now, looking at Jeffrey’s bowed head, knowing it was her fault that they couldn’t have a child, she wondered if he regretted the deal.

  ‘Are you still hungry?’ she finally asked him.

  ‘Only for you,’ he said. And, taking her hand, he walked her away from the table, across the gleaming, empty floor, and down the hall to their bedroom. The light in there was dim and the bed – a simple Shaker pencil-post – was made up in her favorite Frette sheets. Jeffrey drew her to it. He stopped and wrapped his arms around her. Then he nuzzled her neck and began whispering, his voice husky.

  ‘Oh, baby, it will be all right. Look at the up side: no more thermometers, no more calendars, no turkey basters, no more wasted sperm samples.’ He kissed her on the nape of her neck and she felt a shiver run down her back. ‘All my sperm for you, now,’ he told her. His arms were so long, and they felt so good wrapped around her. He was a big man, and one of the things she had loved about him was how he managed to make her feel small. She leaned her body into his. ‘I love you, you know,’ he told her.

  ‘Prove your love,’ Karen said, and they fell onto the bed, hungry for one another.

  Afterward, as she lay in his arms, the beautiful sheets rucked up and wrinkled around her, she turned to look at his profile. It was perfect, and if she cast it in gold it would pass for the head of an emperor on a Roman coin. Karen ran her hand along Jeffrey’s sternum and down the thin, soft line of hair that ran from his chest over his stomach to his groin. It was so sweet. He was so sweet.

  ‘I was thinking of looking for my mother,’ she murmured.

  He turned over, ready to go to sleep. ‘Didn’t you have enough of her tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I mean my real mother.’

  He was silent for a few minutes. Karen almost thought he had fallen asleep. ‘What for?’ he said. And she heard him sigh.

  ‘I don’t know. I just feel like I want to.’

  He turned over again, this time on his back so he could see her. ‘Why open a new can of worms?’ he asked. ‘Don’t we have enough to deal with at the moment?’ He put his left arm out so she could lie against his side. She felt comforted by his warmth.

  ‘Jeffrey, you honestly don’t mind? About the baby, I mean.’

  He hugged her closer. ‘Karen, I think I gave up a long time ago. We’re so lucky already. Why should we have everything? It would only tempt the gods.’

  ‘Don’t be superstitious,’ she told him, though she was herself. ‘Anyway, we can have everything. I’m going to call Sid tomorrow and get him working on an adoption. I was talking to Joyce and she said they have a very good contact in Texas.’

  Jeffrey rolled onto his side, away from her, and cradled his head in the crook of his elbow. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

  ‘A private adoption, Jeffrey. It’s more expensive but a lot easier than going through the state. We might be too old for that already. And apparently there are a lot of babies available in Texas.’

  ‘You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not a problem with your ovaries. It’s a problem with your head. You’re obsessed. It runs in your family.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your mother is an obsessive, your sister is an obsessive, and your nieces are obsessives. You are obsessed with this baby thing.’

  Karen didn’t think it was the time to mention that if obsession ran in her family she hadn’t inherited it genetically. ‘What’s so obsessive? Don’t you want a baby?’

  ‘Karen, I don’t want some stranger’s baby, especially one from Texas. I’m a New York Jew. What would I do with a little cowboy?’

  ‘Love it,’ she said.

  Jeffrey pulled away from her and sat up. ‘Wait a minute.’ His voice sounded flat, ‘I always felt we could live without a baby. You were the one all gung-ho. I did my part. Now it appears that we can’t have one of our own. Okay. Okay. I accept that. But I don’t want to raise somebody else’s.’

  Karen felt her stomach tighten and the flesh went clammy on her back and thighs. She sat up, too, and looked across the bed at her husband. He looked back at her.

  ‘Come on Karen! Not “the look�
��; I don’t want “the look.” You can’t expect me to go for this. We never discussed it. It was not plan B. Adoption was not plan B. You never know what you are getting in a deal like that.’

  ‘I never knew you were so opposed to adoption.’

  ‘You never asked. You wanted your own baby. That’s what we discussed. I wasn’t wild about the idea but I don’t think men usually are. It’s a natural thing. But this isn’t natural. And look what happens. Look at the Woody Allen thing. And Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. When celebrities adopt, there’s always trouble. And then there’s all the heartbreak when a birth mother reneges. Not to mention the genetic roulette that you’re playing. Wasn’t Son of Sam adopted? And that serial killer in Long Island? Like I said, you never know what you’re getting in a deal like this.’

  ‘But Jeffrey, I’m adopted.’

  ‘Yeah, but not by me. I knew you were adopted, but I also knew who you were and how you had turned out. That’s different than nurturing some illiterate, promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum’s offspring. Who knows how they’d turn out?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this.’ Was that why he’d been so cool to the idea of her searching out her birth mother? Karen put her hand out, touching his shoulder. Did he think she was the offspring of some promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum? And was she? She realized she didn’t have the courage to ask him. ‘Please, Jeffrey,’ was all she said.