Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Never good at math, it took her a minute to do the arithmetic. Twelve years! She’d be forty-three in a few months. A twelve-year contract would mean she’d be fifty-five by the time it ran out. Fifty-five! She felt the lobster turn uncomfortably about in her contracting stomach. She wished again that she hadn’t gulped down that Chardonnay.

  A little wave, more like a ripple, of nausea ran through her. Well, hadn’t she been afraid of what just one bad collection could do to her business? Wouldn’t this save her, make her financially secure forever? But what would it be like, having other people do work with her name on it? Or not being allowed to use her name on her own work? And God, the burden of supervising and controlling it all! If she was already overworked, what would this do to her? Bill looked over at her. ‘Karen, I’m sure you know about the fiascoes in this business. I don’t want you warring with me the way Chanel did with the Wertheimers.’

  Karen smiled in spite of herself. Did Bill know how she worshiped Chanel? Did he have a Centrillo who investigated that stuff? Or was this synchronicity? In 1924 Chanel had been her own worst enemy. She’d signed away all her rights to her perfume for only ten percent of the partnership. For fifty years, despite constant suits and legal maneuvers, the Wertheimers had kept ninety percent. After Chanel died, they got it all. The Wertheimers were still one of the most powerful groups in fashion.

  ‘So, you’re giving me more than ten percent?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Yes, but I’m asking a lot. I want you to think it over and tell me that, in all good conscience, you’re willing and able to deliver. That you’re stable, that you’re energized, that you’re ready to give more and do more than you have before. I don’t want to buy a neurotic or a bum out. That’s my condition.’

  Karen’s smile disappeared. How could she work harder than she already was? God, she already felt tired! Somehow, she’d begun exploring this deal thinking that selling the business might give her more free time. Still, the little voices kept singing: ‘Fifty million dollars!’ She shook her head. ‘I’m going to have to think about all this,’ she said.

  ‘I expect so. Listen, you don’t even have to tell the rest of your team about it, yet. No point in getting them excited if you’re going to back off. I’ll hold this completely between us until I hear from you. And if you say no, I’ll just never make the offer.’

  Karen smiled her gratitude. That was thoughtful of him. It gave her an out and just might save her marriage. He was a smart, shrewd man. ‘One more thing, Bill. If I do this deal I need your guarantee that you won’t lay off any of my staff. I’m going to distribute some shares of the company among them, but I don’t want that to wind up being severance pay.’

  ‘Hey, we’re going to have to hire help, not fire it,’ Bill said. ‘But I’m not sure I like this stock distribution. I want you to get the lion’s share.’

  ‘Some of them have been with me since the beginning. If I do this deal, that’s the way it’s got to be,’ Karen said.

  Bill thought it over. ‘Okay,’ he shrugged. ‘But I doubt they’ll appreciate it.’

  Karen looked at him with gratitude. Was she losing it, or was he really an understanding person? Whatever he was, he certainly wasn’t what she had expected. What would she do? Would she tell the gang about the offer or would she wait until she had first decided for herself? Bill had given her the choice. She looked across the table at his ruddy, atttractive face. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and she meant it sincerely.

  ‘Consider it my gift to you,’ he smiled.

  Bill had insisted that she take his limo back after he had exited at Fiftieth and Park. But she had an appointment to meet Mr Centrillo at the Soup Burger on Lexington and Eightieth Street and she certainly didn’t want the driver to report that back to Bill Wolper. It seeemed he knew enough about her without any extra help. So she had the driver bring her to the New York Society Library on Seventy-Ninth Street and, once she was sure he was gone, she walked over to Lex and the Soup Burger. With every step the little chorus kept time, singing the fifty-million-dollar song. She didn’t know exactly how she felt – after all, she had no experience with this. Of course, she and Jeffrey would only get a portion of the money. With lawyer’s fees, bonuses, and stock she would distribute, along with the shares already owned by her family and Jeffrey’s, it would be a lot less. And there would be taxes to be paid. Still, it would be a lot of money. More than she knew what to do with. It wasn’t like she wanted another house or a bigger car. Aside from a baby there wasn’t anything she could think of that she really wanted. She longed to ask someone’s advice but she could predict what each of her friends and family would tell her: Belle would tell her she’d be crazy not to take it, with an implication that they were crazy to offer it; Defina would tell her to follow her instincts; Mercedes would get excited but be shifty-eyed, pretending not to push for the sale while she busily calculated her potential share; Casey would get even more nervous; and Carl would tell her she was worth more. It wasn’t them that she worried about, though. It was Jeffrey.

  At the Soup Burger she smiled with relief to see Mr Centrillo’s broad face. He was wearing a summer-weight hat, a cross between a Fedora and a Panama. He patted the empty place next to him. The restaurant was tiny – just a griddle, a counter, and a dozen stools running around the walls. She sat down gratefully. She felt dizzy, as if she had already spun around and around on the swivel seat of the red-leatherette-and-chrome stool.

  ‘So, Mrs Cohen what’s new?’

  Well, I’ve just been offered a large fortune, she thought. But to get it I have to give up my freedom. And maybe sleep with the boss. Somehow, she didn’t think it was the kind of thing to say to Mr Centrillo. He seemed even more anchored to the earth than he had in his little Brooklyn office. She tried to focus. ‘Uhm, actually I’m a little anxious. Trouble with work. But I’m very concerned about you. What have you got to report?’ She was on complete overload. What would she do right now if he told her he had met her real mother?

  And then she realized that that was the person she wanted to tell her news to: her real mother. Not Belle, not even Carl, and certainly not Jeffrey. She wanted to brag about how she was worth fifty million dollars to the woman who had discarded her.

  But Centrillo only shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry. My report is only that I’ve got nothing to report. Without any more data, it’s going to take a while. I haven’t run through every alternative yet, but so far nothing but brick walls. I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

  Well, what had she expected? Karen asked herself. She had always been a fanciful child. She was being fanciful now. There was no mother at the end of the rainbow. She’d been as silly and as hopeful and as vulnerable as the little bird in the Are You My Mother? book that she used to read to Stephie. Why didn’t she just walk out onto Lexington Avenue and ask lampposts and pigeons if they had conceived her?

  ‘Do you have anything else that you could give me?’ Centrillo asked. And then she remembered the pictures. Karen nodded mutely and searched through her bag for the two photos she had found at last, left in the pocket of the jacket she’d worn to Elise Elliot’s wedding. ‘Here,’ she said, and passed them across to him. ‘I don’t know where they were taken, or when, but that is me.’

  ‘Cute,’ he said. ‘Very cute.’ He sounded as if he really meant it. He turned them over but there was no identifying mark or scar. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘have you had a chance to bring this up to your father?’ Mutely, she shook her head. ‘Well, consider it. Even a few facts would help. Location and date would be a good start. A name would be even better.’ Centrillo looked at her kindly. ‘I know it’s hard, but I think it’s your only chance.’

  Karen sighed. She could hardly imagine bringing it up to Arnold. How could she be so brave in some things and so afraid to ask a simple question? Maybe that was the inheritance of every adopted child – an insecurity so deep that they couldn’t bear to question the parents who had taken them in. But maybe she would have to. Would he
tell her? And could she ask him to keep it from Belle? How much would it bother him?

  ‘Mrs Cohen, I don’t think I can do any more until you get some more info.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she promised.

  She gave Centrillo her private office line; only she answered it. She’d have to remember not to announce herself with her name. The two of them left the tiny restaurant. The man walked off down Lexington Avenue to the IRT subway and Karen stood there and watched him go. Her chest felt tight. The voices had stopped singing in her head and she realized she’d never been so tired in her whole life. She couldn’t tell Jeffrey about any of this, and she still had the unfinished, mediocre Paris collection waiting for her back at the office. She felt as if she might fly apart, right there on the corner.

  If Bill Wolper knew how she really felt, he wouldn’t have offered her a dime.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  What’s My Line?

  Karen went home early, slept late, took the next morning off, and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She avoided the Costume Institute, and instead spent an hour in the Annenberg Galleries, soaking up the colors of Manet, Fantin-Latour, and some of her other favorite painters.

  It was funny, but she didn’t really care for the most popular painters of that period: Monet was brilliant, but somehow too easy, and Renoir actually upset her – all that flesh that looked as soft as a rotten peach! Karen averted her eyes, and drank up only what pleased her: a still life of pansies in a clay pot and a portrait of a woman in a dark dress. On her way out, she passed a strange little painting. It was mostly in grays and black, a study of a boat. It looked like a Courbet. She stared at it. It reminded her of something – something she had seen in a movie or a dream. But she couldn’t capture the memory, though it remained at the edge of her consciousness.

  She left the museum by eleven and walked across Fifth Avenue in the drizzle. She headed east on Eightieth Street, past townhouses, Park Avenue, and the Junior League, the club where many of her wealthy women clients still congregated. Looking down, Karen noticed the sidewalk cement had taken perfect imprints of the ginko leaves that must have fallen some earlier autumn when the concrete had been poured. Three perfect little fans were left as impressions in the gray sidewalk, though the leaves themselves were long gone. They were New York fossils, and more graceful and delicate than any anti-diluvian crustacean that Karen had seen in a museum. They were perfect and beautiful, the ghost of leaves that had been. She wondered if any of the women from the League ever noticed them.

  And what, she thought, will I leave behind? A big fortune that my nieces and their children could spend? Some sketches that Pratt might put in their archives? A mention in the fashion history books? Karen realized that she couldn’t remember the last time she felt good. She felt tired, drained, and something else. Sad, maybe. She was old enough and, she supposed, wise enough to understand that pleasure in life, real joy, usually came at unexpected times: for a moment as the sunlight glanced off the Hudson when she strolled by the Seventy-Ninth Street boat basin; or, now and then, when Jeffrey had looked at her, or when she had caught an unexpected sight of him in a crowd, or stretched across the sofa asleep.

  Joy couldn’t be cornered but only courted – quiet moments, usually alone, were when she seemed to experience it. One wet afternoon after a rain when she saw real ginko leaves, brightest yellow, on the dull sidewalk, making perfect oriental patterns. And once when the evening light, slanting into the apartment windows, had made perfect gold shafts across the whole room. They’d reflected off the waxed floor onto the French tulips that drooped in a vase on the table. It had sent a deep thrill down her spine; it was a feeling she lived for. But how long had it been gone?

  The offer from NormCo, which could make her richer than she had ever imagined, certainly wasn’t bringing her any joy. Instead, since her meeting twenty-four hours before, she felt more conflicted and confused than ever. She’d been glad that Jeffrey had worked late and come in after she’d gone to bed. He’d slept in the guest room and left before she got up.

  She hadn’t told him anything about her meeting with Bill Wolper. She wanted to be sure of how she felt first. What would the money buy her? She didn’t want another house and she hated driving so it wasn’t a car she wanted. Money, in large amounts, was good to buy freedom with, but she was selling her freedom. Twelve years of it. It wasn’t as if the NormCo offer would make her life any easier. If anything, it already had made her life more complex. Could she accept the offer and have time for a child? Even if Jeffrey relented and allowed adoption. And if she was working even harder, how could she make time for a child?

  She was uncomfortable living with a secret, and, if and when she let the secret break, she would have to cope also with the expectations, fears, and hopes of everybody else: Casey, who was against the deal; Mrs Cruz and most of the other production staff, who were afraid of it; Mercedes, who was so hungry for her share of the profits that she could hardly contain herself; and Jeffrey, who couldn’t contain himself. Karen felt the pressure from every direction and at this point it seemed as if the deal might as well be just another distraction that was stopping her from being able to put the Paris collection together.

  Only Defina, good old Defina, stayed unflappable and neutral about the deal. So, when Karen finally got to the office, she had had to tell her about her lunch with Bill and the offer. Defina listened to it all in silence.

  ‘Fifty million, huh? Well, the guy knows how to bait a hook,’ Defina admitted.

  ‘But what should I do?’ Karen asked. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You’ll know what to do,’ Defina told her. ‘Just don’t make a move until you know what you want.’

  Just what Karen had predicted she’d say.

  Karen worked hard all that day to make up for her absence. Now it was late – past ten o’clock. Defina was still there, buzzing around the office, singing some lame old Michael Jackson song. Karen by now had more than fifty new sketches arrayed before her, taped to the wall.

  ‘Would you stop with that song?’ she called out, irritated. Defina had the worst singing voice Karen had ever heard.

  ‘Is it my voice? Or is it Memorex?’

  ‘It’s that stupid song.’ Karen stood up and stretched, then rubbed her eyes. God, she was tired! She walked to the window and looked out at the ribbon of lights that the cars and trucks made as they roared up Seventh Avenue. The Jackson song was bad enough. Thank God the triple-paned windows stopped traffic noise! Karen needed some silence.

  Defina, for once, didn’t seem to notice her mood. She wanted to talk, and since Dee had listened to Karen’s whole rant about the Wolper offer, Karen couldn’t quite manage to tell the woman to shut up.

  ‘So, you think using Stephie as a fit model is working out?’

  ‘Why? Is she giving you trouble?’

  ‘No. She’s a good girl.’ Dee shook her head. ‘I should have known better than to ask you. You don’t notice anything you don’t want to notice. I s’pose you haven’t noticed how much weight your niece has lost.’

  ‘Stephie?’

  ‘Well, I sure don’t mean Tiff.’

  Karen thought about it. Stephanie’s face did seem more drawn lately, but had she lost a lot of weight? She didn’t have a lot to lose and she seemed in good spirits, if a little overwhelmed. ‘I think she’s fine,’ Karen said, and turned back to her work.

  ‘Who are you thinking of for Paris?’

  Without further explaining, Karen knew what Defina meant. They had always talked in shorthand, knew what one another was thinking. But something a lot more important than who would model in Paris was troubling Karen. She was scared. It wasn’t who would be modeling, but what they would be modeling. And who would come to see her collection, and what would they say?

  ‘I don’t know. How about Tangela?’ Karen went back to the sketches on the wall and pulled two down, crushing them and discarding them.

  ‘You don’t mean it?
’

  ‘Sure I do. Maybe it would make her feel better about herself.’

  ‘Well, don’t do it for me. It probably wouldn’t help. Anyway she ain’t ready for Europe.’

  It was getting late to book girls for Paris. All of the best ones, the most expensive ones, were booked well in advance. But Karen didn’t have a supermodel budget anyway. They would have to get younger girls, ones who would be thrilled just to walk down a Paris catwalk. Of course, using them was risky. They got stage fright, couldn’t put the clothes across. Luckily, Karen had a secret weapon – Defina. She could teach anyone how to take a runway, with the possible exception of Tangela, who wouldn’t learn anything from her mother. Karen turned to Dee. ‘Well, why don’t you round up the usual gang of suspects?’ she asked. Karen turned her back on the wall, rubbing her eyes again. The collection wasn’t working. She felt another lurch of fear. It just wasn’t coming toether.

  ‘How about Melody Craig?’ Defina asked idly.

  ‘Yeah. Okay. But she’s so white bread. Let’s keep it mostly young, American ethnics. How about Maria Lopez?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t bring Maria. She’s a Hispaniel.’

  ‘Stop it, Defina! No ethnic slurs.’

  ‘Hey, she’s a Latino bitch. It ain’t her race, it’s her attitude I object to. And I swear she’s into drugs. All South Americans are.’

  ‘Yeah, and all blacks got rhythm. Except maybe you. C’mon, Dee! Enough with the stereotypes.’

  ‘Girlfriend, some stereotypes are true. And I do got rhythm. I just can’t sing.’ In spite, Defina began humming the Michael Jackson song again.

  Karen thought for a moment. Well, if she couldn’t get the clothes right, at least maybe she could get the models right. They could do a lot for a show. ‘I’m bringing Maria. And Tangela. And Armie. And Lucinda. I want a real American look, and they all know how to wear my clothes.’

  ‘Armie is too expensive now, and anyway she’s probably booked. Don’t look at me like that! You the one who made her popular. And Lucinda can’t do runway. She’s just a fit model. She can’t walk.’