Always and Forever (38 page)

“Not in San Francisco,” Kathy stipulated. “Maybe we could sell a top department store in Los Angeles. Let’s try that, hunh?” She gazed from Noel to Marge. “But in San Francisco, if they want a sweater or skirt that’s a ‘Design by Marge,’ they have to come to the 4-S Shop. Let’s build on that.”

A month later—grateful that her wardrobe included a few designer outfits from her life with Phil—Kathy flew down to Los Angeles to show samples of Marge’s small new collection to buyers of choice department stores. Her objective was to sign up one store to handle the line exclusively.

Kathy was elated when the second buyer pounced on the line with enthusiasm. She returned to San Francisco with an impressive order. Marge and Noel viewed her with awe.

“Kathy, how did you wangle such a large order?” Noel was entranced.

“Can we fill it?” Marge betrayed some misgivings.

“We have to.” Kathy understood Marge’s concern. This wasn’t New York. They didn’t have the Seventh Avenue “outside shops” at their command. There might be problems in receiving material in the quantities they’d need. “We’ll deliver on schedule,” she vowed. The challenge was exhilarating.

The three of them worked longer hours than ever in their lives, all dedicated to making a success of the shop. By spring of the new year Noel was already pushing Kathy and Marge to thoughts of opening a second shop. They were meeting their bank loans and putting money aside for future development.

With the Los Angeles department store asking for more merchandise, Kathy brushed aside Marge’s alarm about their filling orders and opened up accounts in fashionable department stores in San Diego and Acapulco. She searched the metropolitan San Francisco area for contractors to handle their burgeoning business. She was intoxicated by the potential of both “Designs by Marge” and 4-S Shops Incorporated.

“What about a shop in Berkeley?” Kathy pursued at an after-hours conference on her return from Acapulco. “A small store on Shattuck Avenue. No,” she corrected herself. “Later a shop on Shattuck Avenue. The next one should be Telegraph Avenue—catering to all those college co-eds.”

They scheduled an August opening for the shop on Telegraph Avenue. Noel, ever charming and appealing to women despite his own sexual preferences, was to be in charge. They knew almost immediately that this shop, too, would be a success.

Kathy’s family flew out from New York for a week’s vacation, timing this to coincide with the opening of the Telegraph Avenue shop. Their pride in her brought tears to Kathy’s eyes. Thank God for the telephone, she thought—at least they were able to talk once a week. Still, as much as she had learned to love San Francisco, she yearned to be back in New York, close to her family and friends.

“Kathy, I was so glad to hear that Rhoda has a teaching job at last,” her mother said, and Kathy nodded in agreement. “She and Frank have gone through such a bad time.”

“Frank’s sold a few articles in the last year,” Kathy told her. “And he keeps hoping his animal rights group will be able to afford to set up a paid staff soon.”

Lee was enlisted to show Kathy’s family the sights of San Francisco during the hours when Jesse was in school. She showed them the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, with its myriad restaurants, its Wax Museum and Maritime Museum, Coit Tower, and the Mission Dolores, the oldest structure in San Francisco. They rode on cable cars. Through dime-in-the-slot telescopes on Telegraph Hill they saw Alcatraz, the island barely a mile away that was home to famous San Quentin, where several thousand of the Federal government’s toughest prisoners were incarcerated.

Kathy’s mother and father and Aunt Sophie made a point of being at the apartment when Lee went to bring Jesse home from school. This was the high point of their visit—to spend time with him. In the evening Kathy took them and Jesse to dinner at Bardelli’s, at Julius’s Castle, high on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, with windows providing a breathtaking view of the waterfront, the Bay and the bridges.

As on the last occasion, Kathy felt desolate when her family left. The prospect of these separations continuing through long years was painful. But thank God, she thought, for Marge and Noel and Lee.

Marge had a casual social life with men that never developed into a serious relationship, but Kathy understood she was too wrapped up in the shop to be upset. Noel and Chris escorted Marge and her to the symphony, the ballet, and the theater at intervals. If Marge was seeing someone, then Noel and Chris and she were a festive trio.

Noel gave a party to welcome 1956. In many ways, Kathy thought, when the guests had left and only she and Marge and Noel and Chris remained, 1955 had been a great year. The shops were succeeding beyond their expectations. They’d had to hire additional help for both sites and were opening on Shattuck Avenue right after the new year. Kathy envisioned a West Coast chain from San Diego to Seattle in the not too distant future.

Chris went out to the kitchen to make coffee. Marge and Noel discussed Chris’s imminent gallery show. Kathy was caught up in introspection. Tonight—in truth, the first hours of 1956—she felt a surge of homesickness.

Earlier she had phoned home to wish the family a happy new year. Then she had called Rhoda and Frank in Croton for the first greeting of 1956. There was so much she missed about New York, she thought wistfully. Winter snows, the new small theaters labeled Off-Broadway, the double-decker Fifth Avenue buses. Beaches where the water—unlike in San Francisco—was warm enough for swimming. And in New York they would have a much easier time with manufacturing, she remembered. A larger choice of materials. There was only one Seventh Avenue.

Always on New Year’s she thought about David. Was he all right? Was he
happy?
Had he married that girl he talked about? Probably he was married and a father by now, she thought, remembering him with Jesse.

“Coffee, everybody,” Chris called out exuberantly, walking into the room with a tray of mugs. He was so thrilled about his first gallery showing, Kathy thought with affection. At twenty-two, that was an achievement, even though it was being underwritten by Noel. “We’ve just ushered in what my crystal ball tells me will be a marvelous year for all of us,” he entoned with mock seriousness.

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Marge said softly.

Their success, Kathy thought, was almost awesome, because it was happening so quickly. They worked hard and long, but so did many others. At recurrent intervals she marveled at their progress. At moments she was almost frightened by the way their sales were spiraling, as though disaster might lie just around a bend in the road.

January was a month of heavy designing on Marge’s part. Kathy was ever enthralled to be part of this. Her ideas were always incorporated in Marge’s sketches. She couldn’t sketch or sew, but Marge said she had a wonderful eye for small details that made a garment special.

Guilty at having to leave Jesse behind—though she knew he was spoiled outrageously by Lee, Marge and Noel in her absence—Kathy flew on a brief selling trip to Los Angeles and San Diego, and shortly after that to Acapulco. As before, she returned with impressive orders. But manufacturing problems escalated sharply.

After a week of fighting to organize a schedule that would meet their deadlines, Kathy ordered Marge and Noel to her apartment for an evening conference. With Jesse asleep they settled down over coffee to try to cope with their situation.

“There has to be a way to cope with orders,” Kathy said with candid frustration. “As it is, I ought to try to set up department stores in Seattle and Denver.”

“You know what I think?” Noel began with that low-keyed tone that usually indicated a discussion of major magnitude.

“What do you think?” Marge joshed.

“I think we ought to take off the blinders and admit we need to move our base of operation to New York. We need the facilities we can find only on Seventh Avenue. That is, if we’re to keep building the company—and kids, it’s ready to explode into a national organization. I can handle the West Coast operations. We’ll all make trips back and forth three or four times a year. And you two will take care of the manufacturing out of New York.”

“Noel, I can’t go to New York—” Kathy’s throat tightened. They all understood they couldn’t work out of New York without her constant presence.
“You know my situation.
” All at once she was trembling.

“Kathy, you can’t go on killing yourself looking for contractors. Going crazy arranging for delivery of materials. And once we start missing deadlines, we’ll be in serious trouble.”

“After all this time—it’s almost three years—Phil and Julius must have given up trying to track you down,” Marge said.

“Phil might, but Julius is carrying on a vendetta. You don’t know him the way I do.” Kathy was agonized by the situation. The business couldn’t stand still; it had to expand or slowly fall by the wayside. But how could she go back to New York? Gamble on Phil taking her into court over Jesse’s custody? Or worse—and she felt cold at just thinking of such a possibility—physically carrying off Jesse at some vulnerable moment. “It would be too dangerous for me to show up in New York again.”

“Look, it’s a question of planning,” Noel told her seriously. “New York is a huge city. You’ll know how to avoid Phil. You’ll always be one up on him because he won’t suspect you’re around.”

“You’ve changed your appearance, changed your name. You won’t move in Phil’s circles. Like Noel said, you know Phil’s haunts—you can avoid them. We can set up offices well away from Julius Kohn Furs. You’ll rent a house up in Westchester—the Kohns are in Greenwich and Southampton. What about a house up in Croton?” Marge pushed. “Near Rhoda’s apartment. Lee will go along to New York with us—she’d love to. She has a younger married sister in Queens,” Marge reminded.

“I’m scared.” Kathy was fighting within herself now. She was passionately ambitious, aware of the logic of what they said. Could she handle this, being super-careful? She’d never set foot in Brooklyn—the family would come to her, she plotted. She’d keep a low profile both in the business and in Westchester.
Would it work?
She forever felt guilty at depriving Jesse of family. He was almost nine now, old enough to be aware of how alone they were. If she rented a house in Croton, Jesse could see Mom and Dad and Aunt Sophie regularly. That would make up for his not having the presence of a father. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “I’ll have to give it a lot more thought.”

During the spring school vacation, Kathy flew to New York with Jesse to scout for office space and a house in Westchester. She had appointments with real estate brokers in Manhattan and Croton. She was amazed to discover that American Airlines’ new DC-7S flew from San Francisco to New York in seven hours and fifteen minutes eastbound—forty minutes longer westbound. When she and Jesse had flown out in 1953, the trip had taken three hours longer!

Still—despite Marge and Noel’s conviction that she could lose herself in Manhattan—she felt a sickening trepidation as the plane approached Idlewild. The agony that brought on her flight to San Francisco was fresh again.

On the rare chance that her parents’ movements were being followed, she’d exhorted them not to meet her flight. They’d made reservations for her at a small Upper West Side hotel, and would be waiting there for Jesse and her. She wanted to scream at Jesse for being so vocal in his delight at their arrival when what she felt was sheer terror.
Had she made an awful mistake in bringing him back to New York?

They collected their luggage. A skycap carried the valises outside and found a taxi for them. Now joy at the prospect of seeing her family washed away her initial alarm at being back in New York. She watched the passing scenery with that special feeling of coming home after a long absence. Excitement kindled in her as the taxi drove over the Queensborough Bridge into Manhattan and headed west.

At the hotel she and Jesse were enveloped in the family’s welcome. Her parents and Aunt Sophie knew this was not merely a visit but the first step in a return from exile. She hadn’t told Jesse yet that they were moving back to New York. He thought this was just a visit plus business. She would make this work, Kathy vowed.

They left the hotel and went over to Tip Toe Inn for an early dinner. Her mother would stay with them in their suite while they were in town. Tomorrow she would inspect the office space the broker had lined up for her to see, and Mom would take Jesse to the Museum of Natural History. In the evening Dad and Aunt Sophie would come into Manhattan to have dinner with them.

The following day she would take the train up to Croton, be met at the station by the broker and shown several houses that were available as rentals. She would have a brief visit with Rhoda and Frank and tiny Sara before taking the train back into the city.

Kathy settled for office space on Madison Avenue in the low thirties. While the address was only a few blocks from Julius Kohn Furs, Kathy knew it was foreign territory to both Phil and his father. 4-S Shops Inc. would take possession on July 1st.

She rented a charming little house on East Mount Airy Road in Croton, set back behind a 400-foot dogwood-lined driveway that provided a maximum of privacy. On a whirlwind trip through the furniture department of B. Altman she ordered basic furniture to be delivered on their arrival in Croton.

Despite her original decision not to tell Jesse until the end of school that they were moving back to New York, she broke the news to him while they were aboard their return flight to San Francisco.

He sat in disturbing silence for a few moments.

“You mean I won’t see Harry anymore?” Harry had been his “best friend” for the past year.

“Of course, you’ll see him again,” she soothed. “We’ll go back on visits.” He’s upset, she thought. It wasn’t good to uproot him this way. “Jesse, you’ll love the house up in Croton,” she said gaily. “We’ll have a whole house to ourselves, with a huge deck, and almost two acres of land. Lee’ll live with us, and Marge will have an apartment in town.” Still, he seemed to be troubled. “With that house and all that land, maybe we could get a puppy.” All at once Jesse’s face was aglow. “How would you like that? He would be your puppy. You’ll have to take care of him,” she cautioned, relieved by his pleasurable reaction.
This would see him through the move.