Always and Forever

by Cynthia Freeman

  Dinner on this occasion was without the usual bickering between Julius and Bella. Phil understood. His father was feeling smug because he’d given his wife a coat fit for royalty. She was smug because she would be the envy of other wives in the neighborhood. In Greenwich mink was as common as mouton lamb in Brooklyn, but sable said your husband was very rich.

  Phil waited until Bella took Kathy upstairs to show off the sable coat, then told his father that he was to be a grandfather once again. Immediately the atmosphere was super-charged.

  “A boy this time, Phil!” Julius made it sound like a command. “If it’s a boy, I’m giving you a house up here.” His eyes narrowed. “But now when you’re going to be a parent, how do you plan on supporting your family?”

  “I’ve got a couple of hot leads,” Phil lied. “And Kathy can work for another three or four months.” Damn, why hadn’t she been more careful? What was the rush in starting a family?

  “Phil, stop shitting around. Trying to land a job on Broadway is playing Russian roulette. It’s time to be a mensch. You come into the business with me.”

  “Dad, I’m not cut out for business,” he interrupted.

  “Stop throwing the crap,” Julius shot back. “You need a paycheck every week. You come in with me. You learn from the ground up. But fast,” he said quickly before Phil could utter a complaint. “In five years—if you play your cards right—I’ll bring you in as a partner.” He smiled in triumph. “What more can you want?”

  “I’ll come in part-time,” Phil hedged. A partnership meant a big salary. Money was going so fast. And he was fed up with living in a lousy three-room apartment, eating in cheap restaurants because that was all his theater friends could afford. “I’ll come in part-time,” he repeated, “and make rounds in the afternoon. If I land a part, I take it.”

  “You come in at eight A.M. and work till noon,” his father agreed. The old bastard looked so pleased with himself, Phil thought. “If you don’t have a theater job by March, you come in full-time. You said you were giving yourself a year to make it in the theater. March will be a year. When I’m gone, Julius Kohn Furs goes to you,” he added with a flourish. “Provided you’re working in the business. Let the girls carry on all they want—I didn’t break my back so their husbands can run the business into the ground.”

  “Dad, you’ll still be haggling with the suppliers when you’re ninety-five,” Phil joshed. And still chasing women.

  “You start tomorrow,” his father decreed. “You’ve got a wife and child to support.” He pushed back his chair. “Let’s go have a drink. I don’t become a prospective grandfather every day in the week. And this time, Phil, it had better be a boy.”

  Kathy was delighted that Phil was working for his father, even on a part-time basis. He complained about the need to be on the southbound IRT by 7:40. “Damn, its like being in the army again!” He complained that his father was trying to run his life for him. Yet despite his gripes Kathy sensed he was finding a certain challenge in the job. He was moving from one phase of the business to another with lightning speed, often remaining for a full day rather than his scheduled four hours. Kathy sensed he had abandoned making rounds. He had stopped poring over the current edition of Show Business.

  Meeting Marge for lunch on a blustery March day soon after she had quit her job, Kathy reported that Phil had officially gone to work for his father full-time.

  “He won’t admit it,” Kathy said, her eyes tender, “but I think he enjoys showing his father he can do well. There’s a crazy—but good—competition there.”

  “Let him not do as well as his father with the Julius Kohn Fur models,” Marge said drily.

  “What do you mean?” Kathy was instantly defensive.

  “Julius Kohn has a reputation for being the biggest wolf on Seventh Avenue. He has the fastest turnover in models in the business. Jobs aren’t that tough to find these days—they don’t all have to lie down for him.”

  “Phil doesn’t fool around.” Kathy stared at her in reproach.

  “Kathy, I didn’t mean that.” Marge was contrite. “I was just gossiping about the old bastard. You know there’re no secrets on Seventh Avenue.”

  “How’re you doing on the new job?” She knew Marge was excited about being promoted to assistant designer.

  “I love it!” Marge was radiant. “If I could just make Mom understand that if I move into my own apartment, it doesn’t mean I’m shacking up with a guy or selling it on the street. I hate that long schlep from Borough Park every day.”

  “Marge, she can’t stop you from moving into your own place,” Kathy reasoned. “If you can find anything these days. You practically have to read the obits to locate a vacant apartment.”

  “I haven’t changed my mind about San Francisco,” Marge said softly. “When I have enough cash stashed away to handle the situation, plus I feel I’ve learned enough to land a job as a full-time designer, I’m blowing this town.”

  For her this was a happy time, Kathy thought sentimentally, though Phil still griped about his father’s failure to come through with financial help beyond his salary.

  “Damn, why can’t he give us a house now instead of waiting until the baby’s born?” Phil was convinced his father would give them a house in Greenwich whether the baby was a boy or a girl, though Julius good-humoredly repeated his condition that his latest grandchild be a grandson.

  “We’re better off here in Manhattan,” Kathy soothed. “You’d hate coming in from Greenwich every day.” She resented the way her father-in-law played this game with them. They didn’t need a house in Greenwich. They could manage on Phil’s salary if they stuck to a budget.

  “I’ll bet the old buzzard already has the house picked out,” Phil surmised. “In Round Hill, close to the family house.” Wouldn’t they have anything to say about the kind of house, Kathy wondered?

  It would be exciting to have a house of their own, Kathy conceded inwardly. She’d talked about it with Mom. A lot of returning GIs were buying houses, with government help. But did it have to be in Greenwich? Mom said having a house with a yard for the baby would be like owning a piece of Eden. Yet she was uneasy at the thought of living within a few minutes of her in-laws.

  With Kathy enormous late in her eighth month, Phil came home to announce they were to go up to Greenwich in the morning to spend the weekend.

  “Phil, do we have to?” The June heat wave left her exhausted. And she was nervous at being so far from the hospital this late in her pregnancy.

  “We have to,” he said jubilantly. “Mother tipped me off. Dad is buying a house in Greenwich about a quarter-mile down from theirs. He’s telling us we can live there rent free once he closes on the house. If the baby is a boy, the house is ours.”

  “Phil, that’s awful!” Kathy flinched in anger.

  “It’s awful to give us a house?”

  “The way he does it! If the baby’s a girl, we’re supposed to drown her?”

  “Kathy, have you any idea what a house in Greenwich is worth?” he flared. “He’s not talking about a $7,000 Levittown house. And Dad may grumble, but he’ll give us the house—boy or girl—just like he did with Brenda and Gail.”

  “We’re all pawns on your father’s chessboard. My father doesn’t try to run our lives. Why should he?”

  “Your father isn’t giving us a house in Greenwich,” Phil shot back. “So the old man makes a lot of noise,” he reminded with a conciliatory smile. “We’ll go out to Greenwich for the weekend. It’ll do you good to get out of the city. And we’ll pretend we know nothing about the house.”

  Two hours later Kathy felt her first labor pain. For a moment she sat transfixed, silent, saying nothing to Phil, who sprawled on the sofa listening to a radio newscast. Maybe she was wrong, she told herself, but her heart was pounding in anticipation. A few minutes later she felt the same knot tightening in her stomach. No mistake about this one.

  “Phil—”

  “Yeah?”

 
“I think I’m in labor.”

  “You’re not due for two weeks.” But he switched off the radio and leapt to his feet.

  “The baby says differently. Let’s time the contractions.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact. Her baby was about to make his way into the world.

  They sat together now on the sofa, hand in hand. Phil’s eyes fastened to his watch.

  “They’re coming fast,” he said nervously after forty minutes. “I’m calling the doctor.”

  “Phil, it’ll be a long time yet,” she said calmly, but before she could say another word, she was seized by yet another contraction. “Maybe you’d better call—”

  The obstetrician ordered Kathy to head for the hospital. While Phil went down to bring the car to the front of the house, she phoned home.

  “Darling, you’re going to be fine,” her mother said briskly. Kathy sensed her excitement and anxiety. “We’re coming right over to the hospital.”

  “Mom, come tomorrow morning. You know a first baby takes a long time.”

  “Daddy and I are coming into the city right now,” Edie insisted. She laughed shakily. “I can’t believe I’m going to be a grandmother!”

  “Mom,” Kathy said slowly, “are you hoping for a boy or a girl?”

  “I’m wishing for a grandchild.” Her voice was tender in anticipation. “What difference does it make, boy or girl? Let the baby be healthy, that’s all I ask of God.”

  Fifteen hours later—after a difficult labor—Kathy gave birth to a six-pound, three-ounce son. At last allowed to see her, Phil kissed her with an awed tenderness.

  “Did you see him?” Kathy asked, exhausted yet exhilarated. He was fine, the doctor said.

  “He’s terrific,” Phil told her. “Looks just like you.”

  “Is Mom here?” she asked.

  “Your mother, your father, and Aunt Sophie were here all night.” He chuckled. “They didn’t go back to Borough Park to open up the store yet. For them this is like a national holiday.”

  Kathy was relieved that the heat wave had broken in time for the baby’s bris and the reception that followed. Even with the small apartment crowded this way everyone was comfortable. In addition to family, the guests included Marge, Rhoda, Brian, a pair of Phil’s actor friends and a dozen long-time family friends. Gail and Brenda and their husbands were not here. They’d left last night on a cruise.

  Mom and Sophie had prepared a feast. Everyone was making frequent trips to the buffet. Right now—with Jesse in her arms—Mom was holding court across the room. She and Dad and Aunt Sophie were so proud of him!

  This was the first time that Phil’s parents and hers were meeting since the wedding, Kathy thought. They’d done little more than exchange greetings. She gathered her father-in-law was annoyed that the baby would be called Jesse—after her paternal grandfather—rather than Peter, the middle name given in honor of his own father. Still, it was clear that Julius Kohn was jubilant at having a grandson.

  “Kathy, I’m going to steal him,” Rhoda bubbled, crossing to her side with one of Aunt Sophie’s miniature knishes in her hand. “He is so precious.” She dropped her voice. “That actor friend of Phil’s—Derek Williams—just asked me out for dinner on his night off from the theater.” Derek had a two-line part in a new Broadway hit.

  “You said ‘yes’?”

  “Am I crazy? Of course I said ‘yes.’”

  Bella had crossed the room to coo over Jesse again, but Kathy intercepted her furtive glances at her diamond-studded wristwatch. Julius was drawing Phil off into a corner. Kathy saw him hand a manila envelope to his son. She suspected the envelope contained the deed to the house in Greenwich that he had promised them.

  She ought to be madly happy, Kathy reproached herself. A house in Greenwich was an impressive chunk of security for Phil and herself and the baby. Why did she feel she was caught in a terrible trap?

  Chapter 8

  KATHY HAD BEEN WRONG about the manila envelope that exchanged hands at the baby’s bris. It had been a thousand-dollar savings bond for Jesse Peter Kohn. Now Phil waited impatiently for his father to fulfill his promise. What would they do about furniture if he gave them a house, Kathy asked herself. Phil’s salary was too small for them to have put aside any savings. They lived from check to check, and she had such a fear of buying on time.

  When the baby was one month old, Julius summoned Phil into his office in midafternoon.

  “I want you to come up to the house on Saturday morning. Bring Jesse and Kathy with you,” he said with a sly grin. “I’ve got a surprise. I’m flying to the house in Maine after an early lunch.” Julius was proud of having made a deal with a charter service to fly him and his sons-in-law to the Maine house and back every summer weekend. “But you stay for the week end.”

  “Okay,” Phil agreed, his stomach churning in excitement. Here it came, he thought exultantly. The house in Greenwich. “What time shall we be there?”

  “Be there by eleven. That’ll give us plenty of time to talk and have lunch before I have to leave.”

  “Dad, what about shifting me over to the store for a while?” he asked casually. He’d been building up to this for a week. He didn’t want to wait five years for a partnership. He wanted to sell the old man on bringing him in within a year. “I think we’re missing the boat on our retail sales.”

  “What do you mean?” Julius demanded with a hint of belligerence. “Where are we missing the boat?”

  Dad had his back up, Phil warned himself. Take it easy. He resented having his business skill questioned.

  “I mean, Dad—” He leaned forward, exuding filial charm. “I mean, we could expand our sales, build up our image if we bring in a famous dress designer. I—”

  “We’re known as the furrier of the Hollywood stars,” Julius bristled. “I spend a shitload of money to keep up that image.”

  “We should be catering to society women as well,” Phil pursued. “There are a hell of a lot more of them than there are Hollywood stars, and they’re not impressed by Hollywood names. Listen to Mother and the girls when they start talking clothes.” Phil felt a surge of excitement at this fresh approach for Julius Kohn Furs. It was time the fur industry recognized the value of name designers. “Whose names do they mention? Jacques Fath, Balenciaga, and that new designer—the one who caused all the excitement with his ‘New Look.’” Phil snapped his fingers in recall. “Christian Dior.”

  “Who do you think buys our furs at the Madison Avenue store?” Julius demanded. “Rich women. Who else can afford them?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to see a Julius Kohn fur on the back of every important society woman in America?” Phil replied. “They’re the real fashion leaders, not Hollywood stars. And they spend much moolah on clothes. What they buy, the rich wives across America will buy. We need to bring high fashion into the fur industry. Give furs more pizzazz.” He was conscious of an enthusiasm for the business he had never expected to feel.

  “We’ll talk about it when I get back from Maine,” Julius hedged. “All of a sudden movie stars don’t count? With half the people in America sitting in a movie theater on Saturday nights watching Joan Crawford and Ava Gardner and Loretta Young, you think I have to worry about society broads?” he derided. Yet Phil knew he’d planted a seed in his father’s thinking. He could sense the wheels turning in the old man’s head.

  “The world’s changing, Dad. A lot of people came out of the war with more money than they ever dreamed of having. They see themselves moving up in the world, and that means socially. Read the tabloid gossip columns,” he challenged. “They’re full of society names. Parties in Palm Beach and Bar Harbor and Southampton.”

  “Don’t mention Southampton to me,” his father grunted in irritation. “All your mother’s been talking about the past three weeks is about getting rid of the house in Maine and buying something in Southampton.”

  “Because it’s the smart place to go in the summer,” Phil pounced. “It might even be a good business
move for you to have a place out there.”

  “Our neighbors on both sides have summer houses in Southampton, so your mother has to have one, too,” Julius grumbled, then squinted in thought. “I’ll talk to the publicity woman. Maybe you’re right. She might be able to get some mileage out of ‘the Julius Kohn place at Southampton.’”

  “Dad, put me in the store for a while,” said Phil trying a second time. “Let me get a feel for the retail trade.” And a feel of that gorgeous blond model he saw when he went into the store last week to check on inventory. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. “Not as a salesman,” he stipulated. “As a consultant.” He’d struggled for ten days to come up with a title that pleased him. “Look, rich women are no different from others. They love flattery. I’ll have them try on several coats or jackets, then decide one makes them look like Vivien Leigh or Joan Fontaine. ‘Ah, but this one is for you,’” he improvised. “‘I won’t allow you to consider any other.’ And then I’ll beckon to the saleswoman to take over.”

  “You’d make a sensational gigolo,” Julius chuckled.

  “I’ll host our fashion show,” Phil offered. He saw his father’s eyebrows shoot upward like a pair of frightened swallows. “When you decide we’ll have an annual fashion show.”

  “You don’t decide to have a fashion show and do it the next month,” Julius pointed out.

  “I know,” Phil agreed. “You start six months ahead. I’m looking toward 1948.” He saw his father’s smug reaction. So Phil plans on staying with the business, the old man was thinking.

  Phil was looking toward a partnership. A partner drew a bundle in salary plus a chunk of the profits. “Make it a charitable event, Dad,” he continued. “Bring in the top debutantes of the season to model. Give a percentage of the sales of the day to a designated charity. It’ll be easy enough to push up the sales prices so we don’t feel the contribution.”

  “That’ll bring in newspaper and magazine coverage.” Julius was contemplative.

  “Even television. A big spread in Women’s Wear Daily, a story in the Times,” he expanded enticingly.