Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘Jesus, Jeffrey! You know what I meant.’

  ‘Yeah, but do you know what I meant?’

  Jeffrey had become more and more difficult. He jumped at everyone. Karen raised her brows at him and he calmed down but she knew what he was waiting for. The rest of the meeting was just routine – the usual reorders and sales volumes, problems with returns, and worse problems with receivables. Karen sighed. Because they had no track record with the big-volume manufacturers, they were having trouble getting delivery and the quality they wanted. Of all other designers, Karen envied Jil Sander most because Jil had grown slowly and had her own meticulous factory.

  Karen shook her head. When business was so good, how could it also be so bad? She figured she could excuse herself. Jeffrey would have to sort it out. She simply had too much to do to waste time with this stuff. She’d be working through the weekend, and she had to take off time for Tiff’s bat mitzvah. It left only six days until Paris. Not enough. Even cutting out all routine meetings, when she thought about the lineup for the next few weeks, she wasn’t sure if she could make it.

  The fashion world had two main seasons: Spring and Fall. The Spring line was shown in autumn and the Fall line was shown in early spring. Plus, there were two condensed lines for summer and winter. And there were also the less important holiday and resort lines each year. But the seasons were deceptive. There were actually two shows for each season: couture and ready-to-wear. And, if you were doing your collection internationally, you presented it first in Milano, then in Paris, and lastly, in New York. Not only that, but during those incredibly hectic Fashion Weeks you also tried to get a peek at other designers’ collections, and showed the line again privately to buyers from all over the world. It was totally draining, and it was all about to start again. Karen would never forget coming through her first Fashion Week, exhausted and wrung out, only to be called by an important editor the next Monday. ‘So, what’s coming up for your next collection?’ the journalist had asked. And she wasn’t joking.

  Since then, the things that had changed were only that Karen had gotten older and had more work to do. Year by year, it seemed, she loaded more tasks on her shoulders. The business had expanded from a small couture line twice a year to a big couture line five times a year, as well as a bridge line that did ten times the volume in sales. Karen had only done New York up to now, and showing the couture and bridge line here had been enough of a challenge.

  In the fall of ‘93, American designers for the first time had gotten together and created Seventh on Sixth, a group of shows held not in individual showrooms, discos, hotel ballrooms, and the like, but in fashion tents in Bryant Park, a block-long square on Sixth Avenue behind New York City’s main library. Between the two hi-tech white tents that had been erected and the spaces that had been used in the library itself, Seventh Avenue had done a fairly good job of consolidating itself.

  Karen had been one of the designers to lead the movement, and KInc had gotten better coverage and more respect from the European press and more business from the buyers because of it. Now, though, thinking of the trial that Paris would be, only to be followed by the usual New York Fashion Week, Karen felt close to collapse. She just might not be able to do it. And there was no one who could do it for her.

  Casey was droning on, when Jeffrey’s secretary interrupted them and whispered something to Jeffrey. She handed him an envelope and Jeffrey began to tear the manila flap open even before she was finished whispering. He pulled out the substantial stack of papers, threw the envelope onto the table, and began riffling through the stapled pile. Karen saw that the envelope bore the NormCo logo.

  Jeffrey’s face lit up as he read the papers. Casey had stopped his report and Jeffrey stood up. ‘Ladies and gentleman, I have something to announce. This is it, folks. I’ve got the news we’ve all been waiting for. We have the NormCo offer here and it’s for fifty million dollars! Fifty million. Can you read my lips?’

  The whole room exploded into sound. Mercedes began to clap. One of the guys whooped like a sports fan after a touchdown. Casey began to ask questions, while Jeffrey, ignoring him, started to read part of the offer aloud. ‘And Bill Wolper himself plans to meet us in Paris to finalize the deal!’ Jeffrey declared.

  Jeffrey’s secretary returned with several bottles of champagne. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but Jeffrey popped one open while the secretary distributed plastic glasses. He must have planned ahead. Staff had already gathered in the hallway, trying to poke their heads in to hear what all the noise was about. Someone thrust a plastic glass into Karen’s hand. It was goblet-shaped, but no one had put the plastic base on it, so Karen couldn’t lay it down. ‘To Karen,’ somebody shouted, and everybody raised their glasses. ‘To Karen,’ they all echoed, and Karen tried to smile though her stomach was knotted. Across the table, in the doorway, stood Defina. Karen’s eyes met Dee’s. Dee lifted her glass but she didn’t smile either; she merely raised her brows and nodded her head.

  Karen watched all the staff celebrate. Oh, what the hell! It wasn’t every day a working girl got an offer worth millions. Jeffrey was right: she worried too much. She might as well relax and enjoy this, and if she had mixed feelings about giving up control of her company, she’d just have to learn to wince all the way to the bank.

  Jeffrey had invited the core group out for a celebratory lunch. Mercedes, usually cool and pale, was actually flushed. Her eyes flickered a deeper green than ever. Karen wondered if it was the upcoming infusion of cash that had caused the color change.

  They sat in the Pool Room of the Four Seasons. It was a wonderful space, one of the few truly elegant dining rooms in the city. At lunchtime the Grill Room was far more prestigious, but Karen had always preferred it here, with the ceiling almost as high as the room was wide. The center reflecting pool was as beautiful and understated as the rest of the room. The huge windows were uncurtained and draped with fine chains that rippled with the least breeze. The tables were widely separated by that greatest of all luxuries in New York: space. Karen had always felt that this was a sanctuary: nothing bad could happen to you at the Four Seasons.

  Now the captain took their lunch orders. God! It immediately became a production. All of the women, with the exception of Karen and Defina, were fashion hounds who ate the way a thin New York woman ate: that is to say, next to nothing at all. Karen had always hated little fashion lunches with editors and buyers for that reason. There was a strange kind of reverse macho that went on. If men asserted their superiority by being able to outdrink one another, fashionable New York career women did it by undereating. Invariably, they looked at the intriguing menu and then ordered only a bottled water and an appetizer-sized portion of the tomato and basil salad as their main course. Then they’d tell the waiter to hold the oil. If you broke down and took a piece of the fabulous bread, they’d look at you, silent and shocked, as if you’d loudly farted. Karen’s strategy was simple: she just ordered a Caesar salad and then went back to the office and ate later.

  Mercedes told them all she was on a new diet. She explained it: ‘No starch. Not any. No pasta, no bread, no potatoes. Starch is the absolute killer.’ She was preaching like an evangelist, not that any of the men were interested. But all the skinny young girls from Casey’s staff and the women from the showroom wanted the details.

  ‘But can you have rice?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Never!’ Mercedes almost shouted. ‘Rice is a sin. It’s positively evil.’

  ‘Doesn’t she sound like an evangelist?’ Karen asked Defina.

  ‘Un-uh, honey, that’s worse than an evangelist. That’s the Anti-Rice.’

  Karen snorted into her glass of mineral water. Finally, the lunch ordering was over, just in time for the drinking to begin. Karen had never seen the group as riotous, and for once even Jeffrey got into the act. They toasted and drank and laughed until way past three o’clock. Karen just went with the flow. After all, she told herself, once she got the money and her baby, al
l of these problems would be owned by Bill Wolper.

  It was two nights later that Karen ran into trouble. Louise called, collect, as she always did at nine o’clock. Karen was ready for her. Louise had put her two kids to bed and was waiting for Leon to return from the night shift. Louise had signed the papers and returned them to Kramer’s office. She’d accepted Karen’s offer to pay the medical bills. She said her ankles were swollen, but that had happened in her first two pregnancies. Karen was sympathetic. They were having a hot spell in Arkansas and, despite Kramer’s warnings, Karen wanted to send Louise an air conditioner. But when she offered, Louise turned her down. ‘It ain’t Christmas,’ she said flatly. Then she paused. ‘What do you-all do for Christmas?’ she asked. ‘Do you put up a tree?’

  Without thinking, Karen answered her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’re Jewish.’

  There was a pause. ‘What?’ Louise asked. Her voice had changed completely. It was hard to believe so much shock and dismay could be packed into a single word. Karen felt her stomach lurch.

  ‘We’re Jewish,’ she repeated.

  There was silence at the other end of the phone. Then Louise spoke, but her voice sounded different. ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ she said. It sounded like an accusation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Karen said. ‘I didn’t think it was important.’

  Was that a gasp she heard at the other end of the phone? Karen bit her lip. ‘Please, Louise …’ she began.

  ‘We’re God-fearing people,’ Louise said. Her voice, despite the softening of the Arkansas accent, sounded hard now. ‘You might not believe that, because of my situation and all. But just because I have to give my baby up doesn’t mean I don’t love it and Jesus.’ She stopped. ‘I love my baby, and I love Jesus, and there’s no way I’m goin’ to let my baby be raised by Jews.’ She hung up the phone.

  Karen held on to the receiver. For a few minutes it was dead, but then it began to bleep in an unbearable tattoo. Karen had to move then, even if it was only to fold up the portable phone. But despite her movement, she felt paralyzed. Somehow, she knew it would do no good to call Louise back. She had just lost her baby, and she was about to sell her other one. Karen sat there, stunned.

  The only thing she wanted was her mother. And her mother couldn’t be found. She sat, paralyzed, for a long, long time.

  Alone in the dark, Karen decided that, no matter what trouble it caused, she would ask Arnold or Belle or both of them for her birthright.

  PART THREE

  Slaves to Fashion

  I have shut my little sister in from life and light (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair)

  Margaret Widdemer

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  An Affair to Remember

  Lisa Saperstein looked into the full-length mirror as intently as if she were reading an eye chart. She was in the gray silk Thierry Mugler that she had overpaid for. But now that she looked most critically at herself, wasn’t the gray bad for her coloring? Arrayed on the bed was the linen three-piece outfit that Karen had given her. Lisa didn’t want to hurt Karen’s feelings, but she knew she’d look like a wrinkled mess in ten minutes if she wore that. Her other choice was a melon-colored silk broadcloth dress, a Bill Blass, that she had picked up cheap at Loehman’s. She’d been through all this a dozen times and had decided on the Mugler, but now, at the last minute, she wasn’t sure. She struggled out of the Mugler and put the Blass on. Certainly, it looked the best, but it was also the most predictable. And it showed a lot of leg. Too much? She wasn’t as young as she used to be. Her eyes rose from her hemline to her head. Oh, great! Now her hair was going flat. She knew she should have used more mousse. Well, she had a hat that matched the Blass. She pulled at her hair. She felt as if she was going crazy. Did she want to be a big-shouldered, avant-garde Thierry Mugler type, or a soft but not overly feminine Karen Kahn type, or a conservative but feline Bill Blass type? Why hadn’t she made this decision before?

  Lisa had always defined herself by what she put on. But she was never quite sure that she put on the right thing, until she saw other women’s reactions. She had been mortified when neither Sooky nor Buff had noticed her outfit at Karen’s brunch, just as she had been gratified at the Saint Regis to see that two smartly dressed, obviously wealthy women, lunching together, had turned to check her out. It had been an accolade, most valuable because it was grudgingly given.

  She thought for a moment of her lunch with Jeffrey. And the phone calls since then. It had felt good to be confided in and very good to go to public places with such a good-looking, interesting man. Because they had met several times now. But it definitely had not felt good to know that Karen had kept so much from her. She hadn’t seen her sister since the Westport brunch, unless you counted seeing her on television. Why had her sister become so inaccessible and secretive? And when had she gotten the idea of looking for her other mother? Lisa, when she thought of that, felt sad. Didn’t Karen want to be part of their family? Once they had been so close. Why hadn’t Karen confided in her about the sale to NormCo and about Dr Goldman? Lisa knew her sister must be taking that news hard, so why had she still not come to Lisa to be comforted and consoled? Why had she still not called?

  Lisa thought about her own two girls. Sometimes she felt as if they were more trouble than they were worth. But what would her life be without them? She shrugged. Well, she wouldn’t be going to this bat mitzvah today! And she knew other women envied her, having a daughter as beautiful as Stephanie. Surely, Karen must envy her. That gave her a moment of pleasure because she felt that so often she was the one being jealous. But if she could, would she trade her daughters for the excitement and importance of Karen’s career? Lisa stopped looking in the mirror. She didn’t know. But she did know that if Karen sold out, she, Lisa, could do a lot with the money. Why, they could move to Lawrence! She could completely rethink her wardrobe. She could get a really good fur coat. And trade the old diesel Mercedes in for a new convertible. Property values had fallen, and since the kids were going to be out of school soon, perhaps they could even afford to live in Manhattan. As soon as the bat mitzvah was over, she would have to talk to her sister and help Jeffrey convince Karen that selling the company was a good thing. What did Leonard know! That worthless stock wasn’t worthless after all!

  And then it occurred to her. If she had a million dollars, she would leave Leonard. What, after all, did she need him for?

  She looked back at herself in the mirror. God, why was she thinking of divorce this morning of all mornings? Was it because Jeffrey had clearly found her attractive? Maybe some other man would. Who knows? Maybe today somebody would see her and think that she was much too young to be the mother of a bat mitzvah girl. Still, as Lisa struggled into her control-top pantyhose, she knew it wasn’t the men she was dressing for.

  Today she would be in front of a hundred and fifty pairs of eyes, more than half of which would be female. Of those, she really only cared about a dozen, the most successful, the most social of the group. She wanted them to accept her. It never occurred to Lisa that the girl in the prettiest dress was not the most popular.

  Lisa had carefully culled the guest list, leavening the Five Towns’ heavy hitters with the glitter that would attract them. Her sister, of course, was a drawing card. People always wanted to meet her, especially since the latest TV exposure. But Lisa had also dropped the word that June Silverman would be there. Since her divorce, June was always appearing in Manhattan gossip columns. And Lisa had also invited June’s ex, the artist Perry. So people knew a semi-famous SoHo artist was coming, too. Lisa didn’t really know them, but both had accepted. She hoped they were still cordial to one another. Well, she would seat them at separate tables. One of Lisa’s girlfriends from college was now an actress on the soaps, and though Lisa hadn’t seen her in years, she had called her specially and nearly begged her to come.

  Of course, no one admitted to watching daytime TV, but since they all knew both her sister and the actress w
ere coming to the party, at least half a dozen people had called Lisa to casually mention that as they were flipping through the channels they’d seen Karen on an ‘Elle Halle’ or Susan on ‘The Gathering Storm.’ Lisa made sure the word got out that they were coming, knowing this would assure the best guests would RSVP affirmatively. And, in the end, they had.

  She had worked hard on everything from the seating arrangements to the flowers to the band to the choreography of the candle-lighting ceremony. She’d actually written Tiff’s speech for her on little three-by-five cards. She’d hired a great video guy and an even better still photographer. She’d forced Leonard to get a new tuxedo. For once, just for once, everything was going to be perfect.

  At last, dressed and with the hat perched on her head, Lisa was ready. The family left together, Leonard driving, Stephanie sitting beside him, and Lisa and Tiff in the back seat of the old Mercedes. If Karen had made the deal already, I won’t have to ride in a heap like this one, Lisa thought resentfully. She sat up very straight so she wouldn’t wrinkle the Blass that she, in the end, had decided to wear, but Tiffany slumped and her taffeta would soon look as crumpled as gift wrap on the eighth night of Chanukah. ‘Sit up,’ Lisa told the child, but kept her voice low so that Leonard wouldn’t hear. They had already argued this morning. Tiff ignored her mother, staring out of the window as if Lisa and the rest of the family didn’t exist. Her daughter had taken on the greenish tint of her dress, or was it just a reflection? For the first time, Lisa felt a tiny tremor of fear begin in her stomach and butterfly up to her chest. She had prepared for everything. But what if Tiffany hadn’t prepared as well?