It didn’t last long.
Excruciating was the right word. Jeffrey’s prediction had been correct. Karen sat in the orange velveteen upholstered seat of the tabernacle and tried not to squirm in discomfort, though everyone else already was. This was tsouris, the Yiddish word for trouble. Tiff was standing at the podium, the big scroll of the Torah spread out before her like an architectural plan. She might have had more success building it than reading it.
Tiff had started reciting in Hebrew calmly enough. Karen hadn’t a clue what Tiff was saying and neither did most of the attendees, but Tiff seemed, at first, to be doing fine. Then the rabbi, a clean-shaven man who looked a lot like Mr Rogers, had stopped her and made a small correction. Tiff had mumbled it and he had corrected her again. She’d repeated it properly and then continued for a moment, but he had again interrupted and corrected her.
Karen remembered hearing once that the Torah must be read perfectly. But surely there was a limit. Tiff had stopped then and for the first time the entire congregation had been silent. Not even the young children squirmed. The silence stretched out. When Tiff began again, not surprisingly, she had fumbled immediately and the rabbi had jumped to correct her once more. Tiff rolled her eyes. Karen had crossed her fingers and wondered if that was sacrilegious in a temple. At the next correction, Tiff shot the rabbi a murderous look and repeated the word. Then she stopped.
‘Chama,’ the rabbi had prompted.
‘Chama,’ Tiff had repeated, and stopped. Stopped cold. Then, for the last five excruciating minutes, he had read each word to her and she had echoed it like an automaton. The beautifully coiffed and magnificently overdressed congregation had moved from an embarrassed silence to rustling discontent. The rabbi prompted a word, Tiff repeated it, then stopped. Karen looked up at her sister, who sat beside the now-empty tabernacle, up there on the dais, her face frozen in a glassy smile. Beside her, Leonard was clearly boiling. It was then that Karen heard the first giggle. She thought it was Stephie’s but she couldn’t be sure. It was high-pitched and was immediately echoed by two or three and then a dozen more. Karen looked up at Tiff. Her face was flushing as dark as the red in the ugly taffeta plaid. Shushing began, and elbowing, and the giggles at last stopped. Oh God, Karen thought, what would they have to celebrate after this fiasco was over?
‘Belle, if you say one word to Tiffany I’ll strangle you.’ Arnold and Belle were sitting across from Karen and Jeffrey in the limo on the way from the temple to the reception.
‘She’s being threatened by her husband,’ Belle announced, as if they hadn’t all heard him. Now they all looked as bad as Arnold. The ceremony had stretched out for over two hours. Jeffrey was consulting his watch every thirty seconds now.
‘You’ll make the plane,’ Karen hissed.
‘What plane?’ Belle asked. Usually she paid no attention to anybody else. Just my luck that now she listens to me, Karen thought. She’d have to tell Belle about Jeffrey’s early departure before she told Lisa. Karen sighed. How had she ever managed to have a career or a marriage when handling her nuclear family was a full-time job?
‘Jeffrey has to leave tonight for Paris. He’s flying out of JFK.’
‘He’s leaving after the reception?’ Belle asked. ‘Do they have planes that late?’
‘No. That’s why he’s leaving before the reception. He’ll just congratulate them and go. It’s very important. He has to get there by tomorrow.’
‘What’s more important than his niece’s bat mitzvah?’
Luckily, before Jeffrey could explain to Belle that the list was long and distinguished, Arnold interrupted again. ‘Leave it, Belle,’ he warned. It was unusual for him to interfere with her mother, but Karen quickly saw that its rarity apparently didn’t give it any weight with Belle.
‘How can you be leaving?’ she asked Jeffrey directly. ‘Before the cake?’
‘I don’t eat dessert anyway,’ Jeffrey said.
‘No, I mean …’
‘Belle.’ Arnold’s warning tone was almost a roar. Karen couldn’t remember ever hearing Arnold raise his voice before. She looked over at her father. His face had taken on some color but it was probably an angry flush.
Belle was silent for a few moments as the limo drove through Inwood on its way to the reception in Lawrence. Hadn’t they passed this once already? Was the driver lost? The streets here were confusing. One more thing to be anxious about, Karen thought. Then Belle spoke again.
‘She told them that the dress would look ridiculous. She was right.’ She crossed her arms over her flat chest and brushed her shoulders with each hand, making a gesture that looked like a sparrow checking for dandruff. They looked at her mother, distant and self-satisfied. Didn’t she have any compassion for her daughter and granddaughter? This must be the most humiliating day in their lives. Karen felt sick. They drove in silence for the rest of the ride.
They did get lost. The driver had to stop twice for directions. At the restaurant, the uniformed valets jumped to open the doors, but it didn’t take four of them to do it, so the other three lined up while the Tom Wolfe driver also stood at attention. Karen looked around. ‘Are we the first to arrive?’ she wondered out loud. The place looked deserted. ‘Didn’t Lisa have two buses to bring people over?’
Belle shrugged. ‘Nobody wants my opinion,’ she said pointedly. ‘Where’s the powder room?’ All four of them walked in to the enormous foyer of the restaurant. It was clearly one of those places where catering for affairs like this was the only spécialité de la maison. Two discreet chrome placards pointed in opposite directions. ‘Levine wedding’ said the one pointing to the right, and ‘Saperstein bat mitzvah’ said the other. They walked off in the direction indicated and, when they saw the ladies’ room, Karen and her mother left the men in the hallway.
They were alone in there as well. ‘Where is everybody?’ Belle asked.
‘Maybe it took them a while to get boarded,’ Karen said, but she felt uneasy. What had it been like in those buses? The limo driver had gotten them lost and it had taken almost half an hour to get over here. Could the buses take that long? Surely they knew the way. Karen looked into the enormous mirror that was rimmed with light bulbs. She hadn’t seen a fixture like that since the seventies. It was a kind of Hollywood disco style that had been out in Manhattan for a couple of decades. It cast a grim light on her and her mother.
Belle immediately began to unpack her purse on the vanity shelf, ready to make repairs. Karen looked at her own pale face. Her misery showed. She looked as if she’d recently lost a baby. Her face was colorless, her skin pasty. She’d eaten off all her lipstick in her nervousness at the ceremony and her hair had completely wilted. Nothing less than reconstructive surgery could save this face, she thought, as she reached for her makeup bag.
From the corner of her eyes, Karen looked over at Belle, who was applying mascara, her mouth half open in the expression Karen had learned to imitate when she put on her own mascara. For a crazy moment, Karen thought of asking about her adoption right then and there. There was so much she’d like to tell Belle, so much she’d like to share, if only Belle was open to it. But only Belle’s mouth was open.
‘Do you think Daddy looks okay?’ Karen asked now.
‘What do you mean? His suit? I told him …’
‘No, no. I mean his health. Is he all right?’
‘Oh, you know your father,’ Belle said, and shrugged. ‘Working all hours and eating dreck. What can I tell you?’
When they rejoined the men, after Belle’s lengthy toilette, Jeffrey and Arnold were talking business. Not surprisingly, Jeffrey must have mentioned the goddamn NormCo deal. It was the only thing on his mind. Arnold, also in character, was launched into a complete labor review of NormCo’s union policy. Didn’t Jeffrey know better?
Karen felt the pressure mounting. The contract was moving toward her like a legal juggernaut and she would be crushed under it. Now she could identify with Indiana Jones, fleeing the rolling rocks.
Yeah, here she was: Karen Kahn and the Temple of Doom. Actually, they had already left the temple. It was the Reception of Doom that she was at. Could it be worse than the temple?
And then she had a thought. The contract might be rolling her way but she still didn’t have to sign it. What did she care about how much time Bill Wolper and his legal minions put into it? She didn’t have to sign until she was certain that she would get what she wanted: a baby. Who was it who said, ‘It isn’t over till it’s over’? Well, whoever it was, they were right. She took a deep breath. She wasn’t trapped. She had options. Now all she had to do was break up the fight between her husband and her father before it got violent.
‘They’ve busted unions in all of their mills in the South,’ Arnold was saying. ‘They threaten to take production offshore, they bust the union, and then they take it offshore anyway. The domestic plants have been left with crumbs. Crumbs!’
‘Arnold, you can’t argue with their bottom line. They’ve been profitable for thirty-seven quarters. They must be doing something right.’
‘Only if you consider creating unemployment here and sweatshops in the Third World a moral victory.’
‘We’re not talking morality, Arnold.’ Jeffrey’s voice had assumed the edge that Karen knew led to an outburst. ‘We’re not talking morality,’ Jeffrey repeated, ‘we’re talking business.’
‘Aren’t they related? Does morality stop where a P and L begins?’
Karen had heard this kind of argument between the two of them more than a dozen times, but it had never taken on such a personal tone. Well, of course, she’d never thought of selling out before. She took her father’s arm with one hand and her husband’s with the other. ‘This isn’t a time to talk business,’ she said. ‘Let me buy you two handsome guys a drink.’ Propelling them by their elbows, she led them up the staircase to the reception. The place was still deserted, except for a single bartender who was standing with his back toward them, staring out the window. He turned as they approached the bar. ‘How about some champagne?’ she asked.
‘What kind are your pouring?’ Jeffrey inquired.
The bartender picked up a bottle of some no-name California brand. Jeffrey shook his head. ‘Domestic champagne? Leonard strikes again,’ he said aloud. ‘Scotch rocks for me.’
‘Make that two,’ Arnold added.
‘Arnold? You know what the doctor said,’ Belle warned.
What did the doctor say, Karen wondered. She’d just asked Belle about him and Belle hadn’t mentioned a word about a doctor. Had Arnold been consulting a doctor? Why hadn’t Belle told her that in the ladies’ room?
‘The doctor said I shouldn’t be aggravated, Belle. Are you cooperating?’ Arnold asked. Belle shrugged. She and Karen opted for white wine. The four of them stood there in the empty room, their glasses poised. What could they possibly drink to? Certainly not Tiffany’s performance. They stood silent for a moment. Jeffrey looked at his watch.
‘L ‘chiam,’ Arnold finally murmured, and all four of them gratefully gulped down some of their drink.
Forty-five minutes later the buses still hadn’t arrived. After a brief argument, Jeffrey had left with the limo.
Now, at last, the two buses pulled up, followed by a line of other guests in cars. The caravan disgorged its wrinkled, irritated passengers. Lisa, at the head of the furious procession, marched up the stairs holding Tiff by Tiff’s meaty upper arm. She might as well be pulled by her ear, Karen thought. Lisa was almost visibly fuming and Tiff had, contrarily, become virtually comatose. ‘The fucking assholes got lost,’ Lisa said by way of a greeting. ‘You hire the dickheads to get you from point A to point B and they can’t even manage it! It wasn’t like it was brain surgery. Or even dermatology,’ she said contemptuously, and looked darkly over at Leonard, who, with Stephanie, was helping guests off the other bus.
‘She told you not to have buses,’ Belle reminded Lisa. To give her credit, Lisa didn’t strike her mother.
Karen looked out the huge windows at the cranky crowd down below. Women were surveying their wrinkled gowns and angrily flapping them out, while men were running their index fingers around their wet collars. A line was already forming outside the ladies’ room. ‘The air conditioning was shot in one of the buses. I’ll sue the bastards, I swear to God!’ Karen looked over at Tiff. The child’s eyes had the glazed look of an accident victim.
‘Let’s start the fucking party,’ Lisa growled.
It took what seemed like hours for the ladies’ room to empty out. Stephanie carefully checked under each stall to be certain she was the only one in the room. Then she entered the last one and was sure to lock the door behind her. She lifted the toilet seat. She had already eaten eleven cocktail franks and almost twenty shrimp. And that was just at the buffet, before the sit-down dinner. She had to get rid of it now, before any of those calories were absorbed. If I do this now, she promised herself, then I won’t eat anything at dinner and I won’t have to do it again. But the ceremony had made her so nervous and the party was going so badly that she couldn’t control her eating. Well, at least she could control this. She stuck her middle finger as far down her throat as she could and began to gag. It took a another moment but then the heaving started. She vomited once, and then, to be sure, she inserted her finger and heaved again. She was dizzy now and had to steady herself by holding on to the walls of the stall, staring down into the toilet below her. All of that disgusting food made her ready to retch again. How had it tempted her before? She was a pig to want to stuff herself full of that garbage! She reached for some toilet paper, carefully wiped her mouth, and dumped the paper into the commode. Then, with another scrap, she wiped the sweat from her upper lip and forehead. She flushed the toilet, turned around, and pulled open the stall door.
Her grandmother, hands on hips, stood there. ‘And what do you think you’re doing?’ Belle asked.
The party proceeded by fits and starts but it never congealed into anything remotely resembling a celebration. Sylvia and the Kahn girls seemed amused by it, and Karen avoided them. She was shocked when, out of the crowd, Perry Silverman came to sit beside her. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. Jeffrey had told her that June was invited, but Perry too? Lisa had lost her mind. ‘I didn’t see you at the synagogue.’
‘I was invited,’ he said. ‘But no booze there. So I figured I’d just do the reception. Free drinks. And I came to see you.’
She wondered if he’d seen June yet. Karen didn’t know what to say. ‘Lisa invited you? I didn’t know you knew each other.’
‘We don’t. Except for the time we met at your brunch.’ He took her hand. ‘Come on. Let’s dance,’ he said.
He didn’t seem to be drunk yet and so Karen acquiesced. He was so much smaller than Jeffrey that it felt odd when he held her around the waist and began to move her across the almost empty dance floor. To their right, two little girls were attempting to cha-cha to Cole Porter. Karen couldn’t help smiling but didn’t point them out. She knew one was about the age Lottie would be. Perry didn’t seem to notice. He moved surprisingly well. He led with authority but without any undue force. Karen wondered if he remembered anything about the night he called her from the phone booth at her corner. He said nothing, simply directing her movements. After a few moments, she realized she danced better with him than she did with Jeffrey.
‘My wife is here,’ Perry murmured to her. For a moment she thought he was warning her, as if they were doing something improper and might be caught. But then he glided them into a turn and she saw June, sitting across the room. June looked good, but a little heavier than her usual anorexic ninety pounds. ‘How did she get here?’
‘By bus,’ Karen said, and snorted a laugh. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Mind? If I knew she was coming I’d have maked a wake. But then, I guess I don’t have to. This is a pretty good approximation of a wake, isn’t it?’ Karen didn’t answer him but simply let him continue to smoothly move her through ‘Begin the Beguine.’
But what was going on? Lisa had invited Karen’s friends? How could she have invited both June and Perry? The bitterness between them was well known. And, oddest of all, why had June come? She must be interested in Perry. She didn’t know Lisa at all, and Karen had never warmed up to Jeffrey’s ex-fiancée. The whole thing was ridiculous. Karen watched the crowd. Although the first course had only just been served, she could see people had already begun leaving. God, Lisa must be dying. And Tiff looked as if she were already dead.
Just then, Belle dragged Stephanie across the dance floor toward Karen. Perry kept on dancing, his back to the two of them, but that didn’t stop Belle.
‘Do you know what she was doing?’ she demanded of the two of them. ‘She was puking. She was puking in the bathroom.’ Perry stopped. He turned around. The four of them were in the center of the floor. ‘Puking up good food. I told her it was a sin. Children are starving, and she’s puking up good food.’
‘I think I may do the same,’ Perry said. ‘Perhaps we could discuss this at another venue.’ He nodded to Belle formally. ‘So nice to see you again,’ he mumbled and, taking Karen’s hand, he led her away. ‘Beware of consanguinity,’ he warned her.
Karen shook her head. ‘We’re related by craziness, not by blood,’ she reminded him.
‘Well, that’s a relief.’ They were back at her table. ‘Hey. Where’s Jeffrey?’ Perry asked. ‘Not that I wouldn’t be delighted to take his place.’ He sat down in Jeffrey’s vacant seat.
Fashionably Late Page 35
