Always and Forever (28 page)

“Are East Berliners still defecting to the West?” Bella inquired.

“Each day there are more—most of them under forty-five and with talents West Berlin welcomes. Many of the defectors are students just graduated from the university in East Berlin.”

“Who can blame them?” Kathy said earnestly. “They want to be free.” She wanted to be free, but she didn’t have that option.

“It’s not as simple as it was before that incident in April, when a Soviet jet fighter shot at an Air France passenger plane in the Berlin Air Corridor. Most of the streets leading from East Berlin to West Berlin have since been sealed off. East Berlin seized property and businesses, even bank accounts, owned by West Berliners—a problem that doesn’t affect me.” His voice deepened in amusement.

“David, where would you like to go this afternoon?” Bella asked when they dallied over coffee. “Montmartre, the Champs-Elysées, the Louvre?”

“The Louvre.” David’s face all at once exuded anguish. “I was last there eighteen years ago, on a holiday with my father and mother and two sisters.”

“We’ll spend the afternoon there,” Bella said gently. “Then we’re meeting Julius and Phil for dinner at Maxim’s.”

“That’s Uncle Julius.” David tried to escape painful recall. “Nothing but the best. Wouldn’t he have loved living in Paris in La Belle Epoque?” Suddenly he frowned. “Aunt Bella, I didn’t bring a dinner jacket with me,” he said apologetically.

“No need for that,” Bella reassured him. “These days it’s only on Friday nights that men
must
were dinner jackets and women evening dress. And this time of year most Parisians are away—there’ll be more tourists than anyone else there this evening.”

The three spent a pleasant afternoon roaming about the Louvre, its forty-nine acres of grounds a verdant masterpiece on the right bank of the Seine. It was as though life were standing still for these few hours, Kathy thought, so that she could be with David. They walked along the 900-foot Grand Gallery, lingering long before the
Mona Lisa,
saying little, enjoying the presence of one another.

Then a casual remark by an American tourist
—“I wonder how many paintings were stolen during the war and smuggled out of the country?”
—booted Kathy out of her euphoria. Phil had smuggled paintings out of the country. No doubt paintings that the Nazis had stolen from some museum and left behind in their rush to escape when the Allies arrived. And he had taken thirty thousand dollars from his father for them. But then, she thought cynically, did Julius deserve any better?

Before joining Julius and Phil at Maxim’s, they returned to Kathy’s suite so that David could spend a little time with Jesse.

“Jesse, how you’ve grown,” he said with the proper amount of admiration. “You were such a little boy the last time I saw you.” During that awful polio scare, Kathy remembered, and tears of gratitude filled her eyes. Thank God for David’s presence during those awful days.

Usually shy with strangers, Jesse warmed up instantly to David. He told David about his afternoon at the Tuileries gardens and his passion for flying kites. Kathy was touched by David’s tenderness with Jesse. It was that tenderness as well as his professional skills that had made him so valuable in Hamburg, she thought.

Now she and Bella excused themselves to change for dinner, leaving David and Jesse to entertain each other. In her exquisite Louis XV bedroom—with the voices of David and Jesse providing a serene background—Kathy changed into her new Dior rosebud-printed chiffon with a strapless, draped bodice, then slipped over it a tiny matching tie-on jacket. She inspected her reflection in the mirror, and was pleased by what she saw. The dress was summery and festive, though not evening length.

At the appointed time she, Bella, and David joined Julius and Phil in the “back room” at Maxim’s, where Julius had used his designer’s office to secure them a table. Maxim’s was as opulent as she remembered, Kathy thought, her eyes sweeping about the room. Lush red velvet everywhere, the same calla-lily lighting fixtures, the same baroque mirrors, the famous murals she recalled from her first visit.

She accepted Phil’s ostentatious embrace while Julius extended a demonstrative welcome to David.

“It’s great to see you, Uncle Julius,” David said with a sincere show of pleasure. “It’s three years since I was in the States.”

It irritated her that David showed such affection, such deference to Julius. What had his “Uncle Julius” ever done for him? He’d lived with the family in those short periods of time when he wasn’t away at school or camp. Julius had cheated him on the diamonds his father had managed to smuggle to him out of Nazi Germany. Julius had boasted about that to Bella, she remembered with contempt, though to this day Bella didn’t know the diamonds he’d bought “at a fraction of their value” had been David’s inheritance from his family.
And David felt so grateful.

“I’ll bet you didn’t eat back here the last time you were in Paris with Phil,” Julius challenged Kathy.

“We sat in the smaller front room,” Kathy recalled. She’d been enthralled at dining at the famous Maxim’s.

“That’s for tourists and ordinary people,” Julius said expansively. This is where the celebrities come, and the super-rich, the very fashionable, and nobility.”

“I think we could have gotten in without pull tonight,” Phil laughed. “Kathy would have pulled it off for us.” She lifted an eyebrow in bewilderment. “You’re young, beautiful, and you’re wearing a $1,000 Dior. You’re an ornament to the room. That makes you and your party eligible.”

“I hate to think what I paid for Bella’s dress,” Julius grumbled, but he was in too high spirits tonight to continue on this track. Oddly, Kathy thought, Phil liked her to buy expensive clothes—to him it was an indication of his success to see her in designer dresses.

“I understand the table over there—Number 16,” Phil said with an air of authority, “is reserved for big celebrities like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Princess Margaret—or maybe Marlene Dietrich or Noel Coward.”

“And where did you learn all this?” Bella derided.

“Don’t forget, I’ve been coming over every year for the business,” Phil reminded his mother. Kathy wondered now who had been his companion on those trips when she had remained behind. Roz? That was the kind of information Roz Masters would provide.

“Isn’t that Ari Onassis over there?” Julius pantomimed a whisper, but the result was more a hiss, eliciting a frown of reproach from Bella. “This is summer. Not many important people are in town.”

“It’s Onassis,” David confirmed in a low voice.

Now Julius made a major production of choosing a bottle of champagne to be served with dinner, deciding on the most expensive on the wine list. He meant to impress the sommelier, Kathy thought. At private parties Bella had to make sure he didn’t see to it that the cheapest of champagnes were brought out. At the charity fashion show only the best was served, of course, because he understood there would be those among the guests who would know.

“So, David,” Julius said with a jovial glint in his eyes, “when are you going to settle down and get married?”

“I’m—I’m very tied up in my research,” David stammered.

“Work’s not enough,” Julius chided, his eyes moving about the table. “A man needs a wife and children.”
Did David know about Julius’s philandering? Did he remember how little time Julius had for his children?
“A man’s real wealth is his family. That’s his immortality.”
He was a sanctimonious hypocrite!

“It’s lonely, yes.” David’s gaze focused on the tablecloth. “I’ve been spending an occasional evening with my lab assistant. She—she’s good company.”

Kathy felt suddenly cold. She didn’t want to think about David spending evenings with his lab assistant. She didn’t want to think of him as married.

“Well, that’s good news,” Bella said affectionately. “See more of her. You need somebody to spoil you, David.”

How awful of her to feel this way, Kathy reproached herself. Bella was right. David should have a wife to look after him. He should have children. Look how wonderful he was with Jesse. Yet she was conscious of an agonizing sense of loss.

“You’re almost thirty-four,” Phil clucked. “Get married before you’re an old fart and the girls are looking around for somebody younger.”

“David can have his pick of women,” Bella declared. “Look at him. He’s handsome, intelligent, charming. He’s not letting himself go like you, Phil. Talk to him and Julius, David. Tell them to watch their weight. Even you, Phil,” his mother said resolutely. “I see the pounds creeping up on you. Four years ago you didn’t have that little paunch. You—”

“Okay, Bella, we’ll start playing golf again,” Julius interrupted. “One martini before dinner, no more. Satisfied?” He exchanged an indulgent smile with Phil. “You get married, David, and we’ll come to Berlin for the wedding. Even Bella, who swore she’d never set foot on German territory.”

The remainder of the evening was a nightmare for Kathy. She was shocked and shamed by her reaction to David’s admission that he was seeing someone. If David was seeing a girl, he meant to marry her. He wouldn’t have said as much if he had not already made up his mind. He was slow and cautious, and that girl was patiently waiting.
Why hadn’t she waited?

Now she chastised herself for feeling this awful sense of loss. How could she be so selfish as to wish that David remain unmarried, without a family? No man was more deserving of a happy marriage than David. No man would be a better father.

There could be nothing for David and her beyond a warm and cherished friendship. They must forever live their separate lives.

O
N THEIR RETURN TO
the Southampton house Kathy found herself battling restlessness. She was sleeping poorly, blaming her awakening at absurdly early hours on the sunlight that streamed into the bedroom despite the closed drapes. Inwardly she understood her insomnia and restlessness. She couldn’t erase from her mind the knowledge that David—lonely and yearning for a family—might be marrying.

At times she was consumed by fresh rage that Phil had used her to smuggle two paintings out of Europe,
exposing her to a possible prison sentence.
And she was ever conscious of his infidelities. Bella had willed herself to accept Julius’s women. She suspected many wives closed their eyes. She felt betrayed, cheapened by Phil’s affairs.

Gail and Brenda and their husbands were in full-time residence the last two weeks of August. Kathy loathed their constant, self-centered chatter. Milton and Eli were concerned only about the activities on Wall Street and their golf scores. Gail and Brenda—as always—were involved in clothes and the latest acquisition of furniture. The four of them were ever resentful of the not-so-latent anti-Semitism that was part of the Southampton social structure. Kathy, too, found this distasteful but refused to allow it to affect her love for the Southampton sunrises and sunsets and for the magnificent stretch of beach.

It was a relief to Kathy that most nights “the girls” and their husbands were off to dinner parties or on the restaurant circuit. By the approach of Labor Day she was plotting an escape from the family scene. Alice was going on a two-week vacation on their return to the city. She’d take Jesse and fly out to San Francisco for a visit with Marge, and to see the shop, she decided. They’d be back in time for Jesse to start kindergarten.

On the Friday morning before the big Labor Day weekend—when Southampton became an endless party—Kathy sat on the deck with Bella at breakfast. Brenda and Gail and their husbands had just left for Bar Harbor. Alice had taken Jesse to play on the beach with a little girl who had been a classmate at his posh nursery school. Kathy enjoyed the air of serenity that enveloped Bella and herself. The quiet before the weekend explosion.

“I’m rather glad that the girls decided to go to Bar Harbor,” Bella confessed to Kathy. “More and more they resent Phil’s success in the business. They bicker so with Julius because of that.”

“Brenda can’t understand why Julius won’t use Eli as the company accountant,” Kathy said, faintly sympathetic.

“Oh, Julius made that clear before they were married. He said he didn’t want Eli knowing every cent he made. But he has sent Eli important clients.” Unexpectedly she chuckled. “When Gail was first married to Milton, Julius always bought his shirts from him. Wholesale, of course. But then I insisted he go to a custom shirtmaker when he kept putting on the pounds. I gave up long ago trying to make him stop eating like a pig.”

“Phil keeps saying he’s going to join a gym and work out regularly, but somehow I doubt it.” Phil’s favorite workout, she thought in distaste, was in the bed of some woman other than his wife.

“I did an awful job of raising my children.” It was Bella’s frequent lament. “People are dying every day in Korea, but Gail and Brenda sulk over some imagined slight. They spend hours every day talking about lowering or raising their hemlines or whether Dior’s new Profile line is truly flattering, while that man McCarthy is ruining American lives for no reason except his paranoia.”

“I’m thinking about going out to San Francisco while Alice is on vacation,” Kathy said. “Just for about ten days. We’ll be back in time for Jesse to start kindergarten.” She’d miss the first class of her new course at F.I.T., she realized guiltily, but she’d make it up.

“It’ll do you good,” Bella approved. “But try to be back in time for this year’s fashion show and my Children’s Charity Dance.” Kathy served on most of Bella’s committees, which now included Manhattan charities as well as those in Greenwich, only begging off when one interfered with her classes. “You’ve become a real business asset. Even Julius admits that.”

“Yes.” Kathy’s smile was sardonic. “Roz does manage to grab column space for Phil and me.” Which meant publicity for Julius Kohn Furs.

“You’re a Beautiful Couple,” Bella said softly. “And you’ve got a real sense of style. The columnists like that.” She hesitated. “Are you serious about finding a job on Seventh Avenue? I mean, all the classes you’re taking—”

“I’m very serious. In another year, when Jesse goes into the first grade, I’m going to be out there job-hunting. This is one time I’ll fight Phil.”