Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘Fear of success?’

  ‘Feels more like fear of failure. Actually, I feel like my heart is breaking. Any suggestions?’ She felt her nose begin to run. She sniffed.

  Carl bent toward her with concern. ‘Read nonfiction,’ he advised.

  She blinked. ‘What?’ She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Uh. Anita Brookner. The new one.’

  ‘No. Stop immediately. Try Money and Class in America. Lewis Lapham. Arnold would approve. Very good. Or Naomi Wolf’s new one.’

  ‘Carl, what are you talking about? I’m falling into a suicidal depression and you’re doing Men on Books?’

  ‘Look, baby, I hate to pull rank, but I’ve had my heart broken more often and by more guys than you ever will. Take my advice: now is not the time to be reading The Bell Jar.’

  She began to laugh. She always laughed with Carl. Since the time they were teenagers – both of them too big, too fat, too plain, and too smart to fit in Rockville Center – they had always been able to laugh at whatever their problems were.

  Carl nodded. ‘Maybe some food will help your broken heart,’ he said. He disappeared into the kitchen and came out bearing a tray. ‘Make woojums eat nice hommy. Woojums feel all better,’ he said in baby talk and set the tray on a stand beside the window, using it as a sideboard. ‘So how much are they offering?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’ Karen asked, but she knew what he was talking about and couldn’t help but smile. That was Carl: from baby talk to Wall Street in the blink of an eye. ‘We don’t know yet. But Jeffrey thinks upward of twenty million.’ Karen almost giggled with the ridiculousness, the unreality of the number.

  Carl turned and then froze, the platter of biryani in his hands. ‘Upward of twenty million dollars? And you’re heartbroken? Honey, you do have a problem.’ He put the platter down on the table, brought out a few other dishes, and sat down in the chair opposite her. He reached out for a serving spoon and ladled a portion onto her plate. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to keep up your strength to carry all that money to the bank.’

  ‘But I don’t think I want to sell,’ Karen told him. ‘I mean, we’re having a little trouble servicing our debt, but that’s just cash flow. And I really can’t think of what I’d do with the money, except maybe put more in our pension fund. I already have two houses. It’s not like I’m hungry or I don’t have a place to live, or we need shoes for the baby.’

  Carl’s eyes lit up. ‘What baby?’

  ‘Forget it. I was just speaking generally. No baby. Definitely no baby. The latest hot flash, you should excuse the expression: I can’t conceive, I can’t carry it, and Jeffrey won’t talk about adoption.’ She took a breath and told Carl all about Dr Goldman. ‘Anyway, no baby. So why sell the business?’

  ‘Excuse me for mentioning this, but I don’t see the intimate connection between the two. Except that you’re in disagreement with Jeffrey on both.’

  She sighed. As always, Carl got it. ‘Exactly. He wants to sell, I don’t. I want a baby, he doesn’t. And if those weren’t bad enough pressures, Belle is driving me crazy, both of my nieces are acting up, and I keep noticing inappropriate men as possible sex partners.’

  ‘Well, in that last category you’re not alone,’ Carl assured her.

  ‘Maybe I’m just overworked,’ she said. ‘God, Carl, it’s hard to believe that I’ve actually gotten even busier than I used to be. I’ve got a design team working on the bridge line, but it’s killing me. Plus I’m doing the Paris show and I’ve just finished the dresses for Elise Elliot’s wedding. It seems like the harder I work the more behind I get.’

  ‘These all sound like classy problems to me. A lot of pressure, but classy problems. All except the baby, and Jeffrey.’ He paused then and brightened. ‘Did you meet Elise Elliot yet?’ he asked. ‘What is she really like?’

  Karen rolled her eyes. ‘She’s like a very rich, very beautiful client. How do I know what she’s like? You want to know her inseam? I can tell you that.’

  ‘Your life is so glamorous,’ Carl said. ‘Karen Kahn: tape measure to the stars. Are you going to the wedding?’ Karen nodded. ‘Do you think Caroline or her Aunt Lee will be there?’

  Karen took a deep breath. If Carl went off on a Kennedy tangent she’d run screaming down Montague Street. ‘I think I’m going crazy,’ Karen said. ‘I don’t even know why I do most of the things I’m doing.’ She took another deep breath. ‘You know what I’ve thought of?’ she asked. He shrugged. She told him about the urge to find her real mother, the way it simply wouldn’t go away. She talked, Carl ate. It was comforting. It was the only thing that hadn’t changed since she was sixteen years old.

  ‘You know the saddest thing?’ she asked finally. He shook his head. ‘I’m really sad about the baby thing and I keep getting sadder. I mean, I don’t figure my Oakley Award will keep me company in the nursing home. I’d love a kid. I think about all the things I’ll never get to do, like buying a first pair of shoes, or the first party dress. And you know, I’m really sad that I’ll never get to wear a bed jacket.’

  ‘A what?’ Carl asked, his mouth full.

  ‘A bed jacket. You know, those quilted satin things that women in old movies wore in the hosptial after they gave birth. I don’t even know if anyone makes them anymore. And what the hell do you wear under them, anyway? You think all those women were naked from the waist down? Anyway, I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but I guess I always wanted to wear one. It just seems an important part of the female experience.’

  ‘Yeah, like leg waxing.’

  Karen smiled, but her smile was watery. ‘It’s hard to give up that bed jacket.’

  Carl nodded.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked, as she always did.

  Carl finished chewing and daintily wiped his mouth. ‘Honey, I think what I always have thought: you’re overworked. You don’t have time to know what you feel about anything. Meanwhile, I think you’re going through a rough patch in your marriage, but hey, who doesn’t? I love you, and I’ll support you in whatever you decide, but Karen, sweety, with this last thing, what do you expect to find?’

  ‘My real mother,’ she told Carl.

  ‘And how will that help? How will that change anything? Don’t get me wrong – I think you should go for it. Finding one’s roots – except, of course, those in our hair – is very popular nowadays. People seem to want to do it. Although for me, knowing mine is more than a little dispiriting.’ Carl had grown up over the Rockville Center butcher shop that his father ran. Pfaff’s Pork Store. The kids, inevitably, had called him Porky Pig. He was still living over the store, and still kind of porky, but he no longer saw his family and he was now a strict vegetarian. Some things had changed.

  Carl looked at Karen and raised his eyebrows. ‘What if you find out your real mother is working behind the counter in Pfaff’s Pork Store? Or a rummy living on welfare in an SRO hotel in Queens? Look at all the blood relations that the Kennedys have. It hasn’t made any of them happy. Think of all that tragedy. I mean, who buys into this crap that blood is thicker than water? And what’s so great about being thick anyway? Mud is thick. My mother is thick as a plank, but that doesn’t help me.’ He lowered his eyebrows and his voice and reached out and took Karen’s hand. ‘Honey, you don’t think that you’re going to find a pot of love at the end of the rainbow, do you?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘I honestly don’t think so. I was just thinking about it, that’s all.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, who knows?’ She looked at his pink round face, a face that showed true concern.

  Carl rolled his eyes. ‘So, on a happier note, how’s your sex life?’

  Karen snorted. ‘What sex life? We never see each other, and when we do, we’re exhausted. I don’t know. Maybe it was all those special practices we had to get into when I was trying to conceive. You know, standing on my head, waiting for the little sperm to find my ovum. It wasn’t very spontan
eous or attractive. Maybe it turned Jeffrey off me completely.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s angry. I always held out on Thomas when I was mad at him. Famous passive-aggressive strategy.’

  ‘What would Jeffrey be angry about?’

  ‘Oh, Karen, gimme a break. He could be mad because you don’t cook. He could be mad because you haven’t given him a son. He could be mad because his father didn’t love him. He could be mad because you’re the boss and he’s not.’

  ‘But he is the boss. He makes all the financial decisions. He always has.’

  ‘Come off it; it’s a bone. The company is Karen Kahn, not Jeffrey Kahn, and you are it.’

  ‘Kahn is his name too. Come on, Carl. He adjusted to all this a long time ago.’

  ‘Sez you.’ Carl paused. ‘Look, what do I know? Once I didn’t speak to Thomas for a whole weekend because he bought Miracle Whip instead of Hellmann’s Mayo. I thought if he really loved me he’d remember that I hated Miracle Whip.’ Carl turned his head toward the window. The streetlight shadowed his eyes. ‘I’d give anything to get a do-over on that weekend.’

  Karen nodded. Poor Thomas. Poor Carl. What would it be like to have to go back to living alone? Karen wondered and shivered at the thought. She felt so much sympathy for Carl. He’d lost so much of his life, so much of his history, when he’d lost Thomas.

  What would I do without Jeffrey? she thought, and though it was warm, she shivered again. There had really never been any other man for her. Her life had been school, Jeffrey, then work, and Jeffrey. She’d grown up with him. She acted independently, she traveled alone, she had her own friends and her own life, but knowing that she always went home to Jeffrey made all the difference. Going home to emptiness was unimaginable. Poor Carl. Karen felt a stab of guilt. After all, Carl was right. She and Jeffrey were healthy, they were still married, and their worst-case scenario was that they would get a lot of millions of dollars. Carl was the one who had lost big time, yet she was the one doing the complaining. ‘I’m sorry, Carl,’ she murmured.

  He turned back to her. ‘Oh, hey. No sweat.’ He shrugged, looked back at her. ‘So, you’re not getting any lately. Well, sex is nice, but just remember that it doesn’t beat the real thing.’

  Karen had to laugh. Carl winked at her. Then his face got serious. ‘You know, neither of us is getting any younger. I hate to mention it, but we’re middle-aged. And since Thomas died I feel middle-aged. Old even. It seems like it isn’t the years that age me, it’s all the disappointments. When you’re young you can carry them or shake them off. But they start to accumulate – all the losses, all the hassles, all the disappointments. And the cumulative weight starts to crush out hope. I can’t tell you how many memorial services I’ve attended. I’m bummed out. It’s hard to live without hope that tomorrow will be better. I think middle age begins when you start to fear that tomorrow might be worse.’

  Karen nodded. ‘Has that happened for you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m on the cusp,’ he smiled, but his smile looked tired.

  ‘Maybe you need a vacation, Carl.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. With Thomas gone, who is gonna watch the store? Can you spell “steal,” boys and girls? I’ll come back and find we did two weeks of Visa charges and not a single cash transaction. Anyway, you were the one who needed advice.’ He smiled at her. ‘Listen, honey, I know you love Jeffrey and the two of you will work this stuff out,’ he sighed. ‘I’m doing heads in Brooklyn while you’re giving head to the best-looking man in Manhattan. How could my life go so wrong?’

  ‘Is that what you’d like? To be in Manhattan?’

  ‘I should have been there from the beginning. But Thomas and I were afraid. And it’s too late now.’

  ‘Maybe not. No one cuts hair like you do. You’ve got the talent.’

  Carl shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I certainly don’t have the money to start up a business on Madison Avenue. And I’m not willing to travel with my scissors in a bag and do heads in people’s apartments.’

  ‘How much would it cost to set yourself up? You know, with this deal, we could easily afford to back you.’

  Carl smiled at her. ‘Karen, sometimes it’s hard to be your friend. You’ve always been so talented and so competent and so brave. I knew it back in Rockville Center. You were going to break out. I didn’t have the drive or the talent. I was scared and I played it safe. I wouldn’t borrow money to get a business going in Manhattan. So I’m stuck teasing blue hair. I was like Jeffrey. I was afraid I might fail, so I hitched my wagon to your star.’

  Karen stiffened. ‘Jeffrey wasn’t afraid. He gave up his career to help me. I couldn’t have made it without his help. And without the money from his parents. They lifted the burden off my shoulders. If Jeffrey resents me, it’s because he gave up his career as an artist for me.’

  Carl leaned back in his chair. ‘Umm-hmm,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you’re impossible! You always take my side.’

  ‘I’ll be on your side forever more. That’s what friends are for,’ Carl hummed. ‘So sue me. But Karen, you are wildly mistaken if you think that you didn’t do this on your own. The problem with you is that you never think in black and white. Everything with you is always shades of gray. Honey, I tell you, nothing could be more black and white than this: you’re the one with the talent. It might make you feel lonely to know it, but you would’ve done this somehow, anyhow. Nobody gave you anything, and you deserve everything you’ve gotten. Don’t sell your business if you don’t want to. It’s yours. You did it. And anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. Or trying to manipulate you.’ Carl pushed himself up heavily and collected her plate along with his own. ‘Let’s talk about something more important,’ he suggested. ‘Like how about dessert?’

  ‘Nothing for me,’ she sighed.

  Carl carried out the tray and waltzed back in with a teapot, a pair of cups and saucers, and a plate heaped with Kron chocolate-covered strawberries. ‘You sure about that no dessert rule?’ he asked, tempting her. ‘Fruits don’t count,’ he added, smiling. ‘Take it from one who knows.’

  Karen smiled, shook her head, and with a sigh of surrender, reached for the luscious-looking plate.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Marriage à la Mode

  New York society meets Seventh Avenue at weddings. After weeks of design discussions and fittings, the wedding party for Elise Elliot’s marriage to Larry Cochran was about to take place at Saint Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. It was one of the two or three society churches in New York, rivaled only by Saint James on Madison Avenue, a slightly more chic address. But for sheer beauty, Karen knew it was hard to beat Saint Thomas’s incredible stone frieze that rose thirty feet behind the altar, carved in faux-medieval bas-relief.

  The church made Karen the slightest bit uncomfortable, but these goyim knew it all when it came to class. She wondered if any of the other Seventh Avenue designers, now a part of the larger social world, also felt uncomfortable staring at a crucifix. Of course, in his home, Calvin Klein had a collection of crosses and Donna Karan had done a whole line of jewelry using them. Ever since Madonna, religion had become a designer accessory.

  She doubted that any of them would have been invited a generation ago. Designers used to be seen as nothing but tradesmen. Now they were hip. It was funny though how many Jews had made it by purveying fashion and style to the old-money WASPs. In some ways, fashion was like Hollywood. In both fields Jews had become major movers and shakers, the trendsetters. But in Hollywood and on Seventh Avenue no one did it by being too visibly Jewish. In fact, most of them seemed to be drawn to a WASP ideal. Jewish men married blonde shiksas with names like Kelly and Buff. So many in the fashion industry had changed or disguised their names. Ralph Lauren had, of course, been Ralph Lifshitz. Arnold Scaasi had reversed the spelling of his last name so he was no longer an Isaacs. The great Norrell had been Norman Levinson. The late Anne Klein had started life as Hannah Golofsky. What if she hadn’t married Ben Klein?


  Of course, Karen knew how important a name was in this business. Clothes, perfume, an entire line of goods was sold based on name recognition and the images that name conjured up. Karen had not kept her name, but then there was a certain alliteration to ‘Karen Kahn.’ Would Karen Lipsky’s gowns be walking down the aisle here at Saint Thomas’s? Would women be turning up for her trunk shows?

  The organ began to play. Karen had to admit that it was also hard to beat the Episcopalian music. This was no ‘Hava Nagila.’ Saint Thomas’s was the American equivalent to Saint Martin’s-in-the-Field, a London church where the choir and the ecclesiastical songs of praise were as important as the stonework. But today, Karen thought, the beauty of both would take a back seat to the beauty of the congregation gathered to see this unlikely but terribly romantic union take place.

  Karen had come into the church several times while she worked on the wedding outfit designs. After all, a costume ought to be appropriate in its setting. Elise Elliot had actually made the suggestion, and she had been right.

  Elise was one of the last great movie stars; she was from a time when studios not only ruled but orchestrated actors’ lives. Those days long gone, she had the personal wealth and professional savvy to create and oversee this event for herself, trying to achieve the almost impossible: to maximize the publicity while retained her dignity and some of the privacy of the moment. Though Elise had been demanding, even obsessive, about the dresses, Karen admired her. She was a woman with great presence who had been dressed by the very best couturiers for three decades or more. Few women really understood clothes and what worked for them and what didn’t. Elise knew, and demanded what was needed.

  But Karen also recognized that under the cool, knowing, and beautiful exterior, Elise was a woman terrified of looking foolish. She was mortally afraid that her age would show and that in pictures published all around the world she would be observed, judged, and laughed at. Karen took on the job to make sure that didn’t happen.