Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘One more thing,’ Defina said. ‘Our hairdresser just canceled for Paris.’

  Enough! That was it! Karen’s fear turned to anger. ‘Great, the little prick! He’s just mad ‘cause I complained about my last haircut. Now what do we do?’ She stopped for a moment. Where was her sense of priorities? Her father was just out of Critical Care at Columbia Presbyterian and she was worried about hairdressers? What was wrong with this picture? What was wrong with her life? She put her hands on her breastbone. Her heart was thumping in her chest. ‘Fuck!’ she said. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’

  Defina looked at her. ‘Is this what they call “an episode”?’

  ‘Tell Casey to handle Munchin. Then call Carl. Tell him about my father. Maybe he’ll leave his shop, just this once, if he feels sorry for me. Ask him if he can come to Paris for the week. With or without my being there I’ll feel safe if you go and Carl does the heads.’ She looked at Defina. ‘And you were overloaded before,’ she said guiltily. ‘I’m asking an awful lot of you, Dee,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to trust you to get it together for me. Can you do it?’

  ‘Does the pope shit in the woods?’ Defina asked.

  Defina and Carl were waiting for Karen when she stepped out of the hospital’s revolving door. Carl gave Karen a big hug. ‘So, is Arnold going to be all right?’

  ‘So it would appear. That is if the doctors aren’t lying and if nothing else happens in the next thirty minutes.’ Karen ran her fingers against her scalp. She’d gone home, napped, showered, and changed but hadn’t bothered to blow-dry her hair. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ she said. ‘Is there any other crisis that could develop in my life in the next twenty-four hours? Because if there is, I’m sure it will.’

  ‘I know what you need,’ Defina said. ‘You need Madame Renault.’

  ‘Yeah, great. Some mumbo-jumbo from a woman who’s either deluded or a con artist. Come on, Dee. Don’t start with me. You’re an educated woman. You don’t really believe in crystals, do you?’

  ‘Crystals? They’re bullshit. New age is all bullshit. I’m talking about the real thing.’

  ‘Well, even if she does have some kind of gift, how’s she going to help? Is she a cardiologist? What I need is to get back to the office.’

  Defina raised her eyebrows and flared her nostrils. ‘Why do you think you’re above help?’ she asked Karen. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to know how the Paris show is going to go? And how your daddy is going to be?’ Karen rolled her eyes but Carl nudged her.

  ‘Oh, come on, Karen,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ She climbed into the car, sank back into the seat between her two friends, and gave up. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I always go to a mystic after my niece is bat mitzvahed and my father has a heart attack.’

  ‘It was only “an episode,”’ Defina said. Then she gave a West One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street address and the driver, moving down Broadway, nodded. ‘At least it isn’t out of the way,’ Karen joked.

  ‘Girlfriend, there are people who come all the way from Europe to see Madame Renault.’

  The address turned out to be a fairly well-kept brown-stone on a nondescript block, perhaps a little better than most of the Harlem streets. The three of them got out of the car and told the driver to wait. He didn’t look comfortable, but he didn’t say no. There was a tall stoop that led to a wooden double door, but Defina led them to a more discreet iron grating at the side of the stoop and rang a buzzer there. Through the crackly intercom, a voice asked who was there.

  ‘Shouldn’t she already know?’ Carl asked, rolling his eyes.

  Defina gave him a dirty look. It’s Defina Pompey,’ she said aloud. It’s an emergency.’ The buzzer squawked and they pulled open the grille, walking into the dark area under the stoop. Down two steps was an open door. They entered a vestibule with a green marble tile floor. The walls were painted a deep aubergine color. Well, at one time all of these homes had belonged to the prosperous middle class. This one had obviously been restored, or been carefully taken care of all along. Defina led them into a sort of waiting room, which was glazed a rich squash yellow. The floor was carpeted in a sea grass matting. There was no furniture at all except for three straight-backed chairs.

  ‘See,’ Defina said. ‘She knew there would be three of us.’

  Carl rolled his eyes again. It looks like the three bears’ house,’ was all he said.

  There was something weird about the room. Not just the lack of furniture, but the room itself, Karen thought. It was the color, the emptiness, and the way the light filtered in through the half-closed blinds. She didn’t believe in auras or vibrations, but the room seemed powerful, as if it were held in readiness. She sat down in one of the chairs. Defina took another, but Carl stood leaning against a wall. ‘Can I come in too?’ Carl asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Defina hissed. ‘This is very personal.’

  ‘Well, I am her best friend.’

  Defina looked at him. ‘Honey, you’re confused. You’re only her oldest friend,’ she said dryly. Then the door opened and Madame Renault stepped into the room.

  Karen didn’t know what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this: a tall, thin, elegant woman dressed in what must be an old Chanel suit. Madame Renault was black, her skin a deep red-tinged brown, and the jacket and skirt she wore was almost the exact shade of her skin. Her hair was the same color, but a shade darker, and pulled back in a dated but attractive chignon. The woman nodded to Defina and looked at Karen. ‘Come in,’ she said, her voice deep. There was a hint of an accent, but Karen couldn’t tell exactly what kind. She also couldn’t tell Madame Renault’s age. The face was unlined except for around the eyes, but her hands, Karen noticed, were old – very old. Karen looked over at Defina who had stood up to greet her mentor. Defina gave Karen a little nudge. ‘Go on,’ she said. So Karen did.

  The inner room was painted grass green and had a rack with herbs or wildflowers drying. The only other things in it were a table and two hard benches. A Keith Haring ‘Radiant Child’ poster was hanging alone on the wall. Madame sat on one bench, so Karen took the other. The narrow table was between them. Karen was surprised at how nervous she was. How had this happened? How had she come to be alone in this room with this stranger? She didn’t like it, and almost got up to go. But then Madame Renault spoke. Her voice, while not unpleasant, had an urgency that couldn’t be ignored. ‘You are on a quest,’ Madame Renault said. Her face, so smooth, except around the brown-black eyes, showed nothing, but the eyes stared at Karen and for a moment Karen felt they looked into her own, deeper than anyone ever had. ‘You are searching, but you don’t understand that you have already found what you’re searching for.’

  Well, Karen thought, it’s the same old mumbo-jumbo. She could be Glenda the Good Witch and I could be Dorothy. Make it general enough and use the old formulas and you couldn’t go wrong. You’ll meet a tall dark stranger, and you will go on a long voyage, you are on a quest. Karen almost smiled. Next she’ll tell me that the secret to life is chicken soup.

  ‘You already know your real mother,’ Madame Renault said.

  ‘What?’ Karen whispered. Why had the woman said that? What had Defina told her? Madame Renault’s face was blank as before, but her eyes as intense. She seemed to wait until Karen calmed herself enough to listen. ‘Your father is ill, but he isn’t dying. But there will be a dying. A mother dying. And then there is someone else waiting for you. A child. A dark child.’

  Karen had broken out into a sweat and she looked across the table at Madame Renault, but now, at last, the woman’s hooded eyes were downcast.

  ‘Do I get the child?’ Karen asked in a whisper.

  ‘Oh, yes, but it will take a long trip.’ Madame Renault paused and then looked at Karen again. This time her eyes were filled with sympathy and pain. ‘Ah,’ she sighed. ‘You will have to give up something you love,’ she said.

  She must mean the business, Karen thought. I have to give up the business to get the chil
d. ‘So I have to sell my company?’ Karen asked.

  Madame Renault shook her head, but Karen wasn’t sure if it meant no or if she was already onto something else. Then the woman reached out with one of her gnarled hands and held Karen around the wrist.

  ‘You are like a spider. You have been weaving and weaving for a long, long time. Be careful. Your silk can run out. You may wind up empty. And the web that you weave may not be sound.’

  Karen remembered a poem that Belle had taught her. ‘Oh what a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’ Karen had been lying lately, and for the first time in her life. Now, she cast her eyes down. Madame Renault let go of Karen’s hand.

  ‘Don’t worry, little spider. You will struggle out from the web of lies, but each thread you break will bleed. There is joy ahead of you, but first there will be much pain. I’m so sorry,’ the woman sighed. ‘It’s the only way,’ she said, and rose. Without another word, she moved to the door and Karen was left alone at the table. Madame Renault opened the door and told Defina, ‘You can take your friend home now.’ By the time Karen turned around, Defina was at her side and Madame Renault was gone.

  In the limo, going back to midtown, the episode seemed more and more like a dream: the gem-colored backdrops, the surreal rooms, the dramatic woman and her oracular statement seemed almost comic. But they weren’t, Karen told herself. Even if it didn’t make sense, something in Karen knew she had met the real thing.

  ‘You were white as a sheet!’ Carl said. ‘What did she say to you?’

  Karen shook her head.

  ‘None of your business,’ Defina told him. ‘I told you it’s personal.’

  ‘Well, why couldn’t she tell my future?’

  ‘Your future is in Paris. That’s as far ahead as you need to think. Anyway, she don’t just take anybody.’

  ‘How much does she charge?’

  Even though she was sitting down, Defina seemed to pull herself up to her full height. ‘She don’t charge nothin’,’ Defina told him. ‘She says it’s a gift and you can’t charge money for a gift.’

  Karen wished they’d stop talking so she could remember exactly what Madame Renault had said. Karen remembered the woman’s face when she told her that a child was waiting. Somehow, Karen didn’t doubt her. She looked over at Defina. ‘Did you tell her anything about me?’ she asked. Defina crossed her arms and turned her head to stare out the window. Her look of disgust was the only answer she gave Karen.

  ‘What did she say?’ Carl asked again. Karen wondered for a moment if she should tell about the prediction. Somehow, it felt too personal. But why not? He was her oldest friend.

  ‘She said there was a baby waiting for me,’ Karen told him.

  Back home, even when her regular phone rang, Karen jumped. For some reason now, the ads had started to work. So, if it wasn’t some crazy girl calling from a pay phone about a baby, it would be the hospital calling her to say that they had been wrong about Arnold’s condition and that he was really dead. But when Karen lifted the phone on her bedside table, it was only Lisa’s voice that greeted her.

  ‘Daddy’s feeling much better,’ Lisa told her. ‘The doctors say he can probably come home the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Great!’ Karen said. Thank God he was all right. Then, though she hadn’t thought of it since she left the hospital, her conversation with him came back to her. God, she had to call Centrillo and tell him about Chicago and the Board of Guardians! What was the name of the woman who Arnold had mentioned? Karen ran her hands through her hair. So much had already happened in the last forty-eight hours that she felt as if she was losing it. What was the woman’s name?

  Lisa’s voice interrupted her thought. ‘We’re not going back to the hospital,’ Lisa said. ‘Leonard is exhausted. And it’s too long a drive. I don’t know why you insisted on bringing him into Manhattan anyway. It wasn’t that serious.’

  ‘We didn’t know that then,’ Karen reminded her. God, what was the name of the social worker? She should have written it down. It was a thirties actress. Was it Norma Shearer? She couldn’t remember, but she knew it began with an ‘S’.

  ‘Of course, the bat mitzvah was completely ruined,’ Lisa said. ‘Tiff has been crying since Saturday.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Karen told her sister, though she knew as well as Lisa that Arnold’s episode was merely the coup de grâce in a series of mess-ups. She didn’t need to mention it. The bat mitzvah had been dismal even before Arnold’s half-gainer into the cake. Thank God Lisa hadn’t asked her where Jeffrey had been. Karen felt awful for Lisa.

  ‘Listen, why don’t you come into Manhattan tomorrow and watch the run-through for Paris? I’ll take you out to eat and we can both visit Daddy.’ It wasn’t much, but it was all Karen had to offer right now.

  ‘Sure,’ Lisa said. ‘I’ll bring Belle.’

  Karen’s stomach dropped. Then, ‘Talmidge!’ Karen cried.

  ‘What?’ Lisa asked.

  Embarrassed, Karen pretended to ignore Lisa’s question, but pulled out a pencil and scribbled the name next to Centrillo’s on her phone pad before she forgot it again. She was silent and so was Lisa. She cleared her throat. Lisa took the silence as a moment to change the subject.

  ‘Listen,’ she said to Karen. ‘Jeffrey told me about the NormCo offer and I don’t know if you’re still unsure about it, but if you want my opinion, it sounds too good to pass up.’

  Where in the world did that come from? It was the first time that Karen could ever remember Lisa talking business. And now, out of the blue like this? What was up? When had Jeffrey had time to tell Lisa about the offer? They didn’t speak at the bat mitzvah. And why had he? ‘When did he talk to you about it?’ Karen asked, and tried to keep her voice neutral.

  ‘Oh, at the reception.’

  Karen stopped fiddling with the pad and pencil and laid the pencil down. She felt a little chill run up the back of her neck and into her hair. Jeffrey had left the reception before Lisa had even arrived. Why would Lisa lie?

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s not a final offer yet, so we’ll have to see,’ she added vaguely.

  ‘But you are thinking of taking it?’ Lisa asked. She paused for a moment. ‘You know, Karen, if you had less stress, you might be able to conceive.’

  Karen was swept with anger so quickly and so fiercely that she nearly bit her tongue. ‘Lisa, I have to go. I’ll see you at the run-through tomorrow,’ was all she said, and she hung up the phone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Rags to Bitches

  Karen had another incredibly busy day in front of her, but after a quick morning visit to the hospital she got in to the office and at nine o’clock exactly she took the time out to call Mr Centrillo and give him the new information. ‘Will that help?’ she asked. ‘Is it enough?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Cohen. It may not be enough, but at least it’s a start. I promise you, we’ll do our best with it. I may have to try a few different avenues.’

  ‘Listen, I’ll be going away on vacation for a little while.’ Karen didn’t want him calling her private line while she was in Paris.

  ‘Really? Where are you going?’

  ‘Lake George.’ Where the hell had that come from, she wondered? She’d never been to Lake George in her life. She was going crazy. Should she tell Centrillo that she felt her mental health depended on him? Somehow, she felt he already believed that, so she simply said, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You have a nice day,’ he said. ‘Try to take it easy.’

  Karen almost snorted. The day ahead of her seemed fifty hours long.

  By lunchtime all of the KInc staff were gathered in the showroom, which had been converted to a makeshift auditorium. Someone, probably Casey, had even brought in a lectern. Karen couldn’t imagine standing behind it. It was too authoritative. Belle would like a lectern. In fact, now that Karen thought of it, Belle seemed to go through life with an imaginary lectern before her, giving all her pronouncements the
added weight of a judgment from behind a podium.

  Karen’s hands were clammy, but she couldn’t put this off any longer. She had agreed to go ahead with the sale, rumors were running like rabbits through the staff, and she was going to have to inform all of the employees what was going on. She had decided to bestow stock on everybody who had been with her for more than a year. She had, against the advice of Robert-the-lawyer and in the face of Jeffrey’s disapproval, taken twenty percent of the company, a little less than half of her shares, and distributed it. That left her thirty percent, but with Jeffrey’s thirty percent that was a safe majority – controlling interest for the short time until the actual transfer of stock to NormCo. Jeffrey and Robert-the-lawyer had had to accept her decision. She wouldn’t do the deal any other way. If her conscience bothered her, if she worried, as Arnold’s daughter, about some of NormCo’s methods, she soothed herself by knowing she was making her workers well-off and that now, with Arnold’s illness, he and Belle would need the money. Diluting her share was no big deal, really. How much money did she need? There would be enough for everyone. It meant that most of her staff would be receiving their choice of cash or NormCo stock at the buyout. So, she told herself, it was good news for everybody, especially senior staff, who would be making what Jeffrey kept resentfully calling ‘a bundle.’

  But Karen knew that most people resisted change and were afraid of it. So she wanted to make sure that she broke this news in the kindest, gentlest possible way. Jeffrey had planned to do it, but Paris had gotten in the way. She would speak instead, then Robert-the-lawyer would outline the buyout procedure, while Lenny, their accountant, would distribute folders to each of the employees that outlined their personal financial package. Karen wanted to make sure that everyone was as comfortable as they could be with the change, and assure them all that their jobs were secure. When Robert-the-lawyer stood up and asked for order, Karen managed to get to the front of the group without stumbling. But she couldn’t get herself behind the lectern. Instead, she pulled over one of the showroom tables and perched on the edge of it.