Fashionably Late (37 page)

Some will be legit and some won’t. Your job is to get them to like ya, to make the human contact, ya know what I mean? But people in your position have ta be careful. You want to adopt the baby, not the mother.

So when you’ve hooked her, then you refer her ta our office and Sally sends her all the forms. Itthe forms come back, and if we get a positive medical report, then I nail em with the preadoption agreement.

Ya understand me so far?”

That was a question, so Karen nodded and looked over at Jeffrey, who was sitting absolutely still. Was he paralyzed with disgust or just getting ready to bolt out of here? Kramer didn’t seem to notice one way or the other. Perhaps all his clients sat there, mute, like they’d been pole-axed.

“What ya really gotta understand is, it ain’t over til it’s over.

Some of these girls will tell ya anything ta get a few bucks and a ticket out of Enid, Oklahoma. So just hang tough until we get em vetted. And even then, they’ll turn around and decide ta keep their baby after you’ve nursed them through the last trimester and picked up all the bills. Each state has got a different rule: in Texas, once she signs the papers, that’s it. Her rights are terminated immediately.

The baby is yours. In California, on the other hand, they got a year ta change their mind.

Totally flaky. So don’t go thinking about California.” He paused for a moment and shook his head. “The stories I could tell ya,” he said.

“We handle all of the legal aspects, both here in New York and in the state where you find the baby. We need a retainer now. The fees’ll be based on how much work is required in a particular state, and also on how many false starts ya get.” His phone rang and, without excusing himself, he turned to pick it up. “Yeah?” he said. “Oh, big surprise.

Like I didn’t tell them she would go south. Okay, put him through.”

Kramer was silent for a few moments, listening. Karen was afraid to look at Jeffrey. Kramer began to talk again, nodding his head. “Yeah, I’m sure your wife’s upset, but ya never should have sent the girl the money. We weren’t even sure she was pregnant.” He paused for a moment.

“Hey, let me tell ya something: a month of phone conversations does not make a relationship. For all you know she’s been pulling this scam on a dozen other couples.” Karen closed her eyes. Her head was beginning to ache with a vicious pain right at her temples. Kramer continued.

“Yeah.

Okay. Well, next time refer her to our office before ya get that far, no matter what your wife says.”

Kramer put down the phone and turned back to them without an apology.

“My associate, Sally, will fill you in on the home visit. Ya gotta pay for a state-certified social worker to come in and check ya out.

Sally’s got the forms. We can’t do anything until ya got your home visit. So, ya got any questions?”

Karen, in a state she might call shell-shocked if she had the wits to call it anything, just shook her head. This was the best guy in the business? She shook her head again. The pain in her head was exquisite.

When Jeffrey stood up she managed to stand up beside him. Then it occurred to her.

“One thing,” she asked. “Can the birth mother find the baby after the adoption?” For a crazy moment, she thought that maybe she should discuss her own adoption with Kramer. Maybe he would be better than Centrillo at this. Then she came out of her temporary insanity.

Anyway, Jeffrey didn’t even know about her search. She reminded herself she had to ask Belle or Arnold some tough questions.

Meanwhile, here, she had to know about this. “Can the birth mother find the baby after the adoption?” she repeated.

“Not if ya do it right,” Kramer explained. “Ya never give em your last name Especially in your case. The records get sealed. Otherwise, before ya know it they’d be looking for discounts on your clothes.

With celebrities, this stuff can be very tricky. If you knew the whole inside story on the Michelle Pfeiffer adoption, it would curl your hair. And the trouble I hear Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman had! But, of course, they didn’t use our office.” Karen almost snorted with contempt. Name dropping! Was this guy just a liar, or did he know his business? “So that’s why you need a new phone number,” Kramer said.

“And ya never give them your address.

Why open yourself up ta blackmail? Some of my clients have had a romantic idea about sharin’ the baby. Ya know, visits from the birth mother and all that. But either it starts them takin’ legal actions to get the baby back, or they’re pumping you for cash at every birthday.

Forget about it!”

The irony of her life was not lost on Karen: she was paying one man to uncover an adoption and now would pay another to make sure this one could not be uncovered. I think all of this is making me mentally ill, she told herself. How can you be in two places at once when you’re really nowhere at all?

Kramer stood up, too, and turned to the small, birdlike woman who had silently arrived in the doorway. “Sally. This is Karen and Jerry Kahn.”

“Jeffrey,” Jeffrey corrected. It was the first word her husband had spoken to the lawyer. Karen winced.

“Yeah. Whatever,” Kramer said. “So set them up with a file and a home visit referral.” He turned his back. “Oh, and they need to give you the retainer.”

Karen wrote the check numbly. It was for four thousand dollars.

Karen sat with Carl at the middle of the refectory table that was now covered with dozens of crumpled sheets of paper.

“How about this?” Carl asked. “Happy, healthy, home-loving couple want to kiss and cuddle your baby. My husband and I want to hearfrom you and we want to help. Call collect. 2/2 BABYNOW.”

Karen made a face. “Sappy. I’m going to puke,” she said.

“They’re supposed to be sappy. They like sappy. This is the rainbows and unicorns crowd. The kind of girls that collect Precious Moments statuettes. Trust me, I know.”

Karen sighed. The whole process was so bizarre, such a weird blend of Madison Avenue methods, telecommunications networks, and Victorian sentiment that she wasn’t sure she could go through with it. Jeffrey had washed his hands of this part completely, which was just as well.

She could imagine his reaction to this ad.

“How about this?” she proposed. “Educated and warm, Jeffrey and I want to make a loving homefor your child. We 11 expose our baby to all that is best in life.” She looked at Carl.

“Forget it! It reeks of elitism. Expose our baby?” Are you exhibitionists? Plus, don’t call it our baby.” It’s still her baby.”

“Well, you got a point there,” Karen agreed. She threw the paper onto the floor, stood up, and stretched. “Maybe I should just go with Sally’s version,” she told Carl. Sally had been calm and helpful.

She’d taken the check, given them a receipt, and provided Karen with a list of social workers and out-ofstate newspapers, as well as notes on which ones accepted ads only from people whose home study had been completed.

Carl sat, doodling, while Karen began to pick up all the crumpled sheets. Maybe she could concentrate if there still wasn’t so much to do for the Paris show. If it didn’t go well, she wasn’t sure the NormCo deal, even if she told Wolper she wanted it, would ever get signed. She sighed. Jeffrey was still in the dark, and she still hadn’t called Wolper and given him the go ahead. She had to do it, but somehow she held back. She wondered why.

“I’ve got it,” Carl said, interrupting her thoughts. “Help us make our dream come true. Loving couple withfine home andfine values desperately seek a baby to share it all with. Can you help us?”

“Not bad,” Karen admitted. “Maybe we drop the desperate.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Carl grumbled, but they had their ad.

Karen and Carl had gone through the list Sally provided and picked all the newspapers in college towns. Then she and Carl and Defina spent three days calling classifieds in Mississippi and Tennessee and Georgia and Arkansas.

After fourteen hundred and twenty dollars worth of ads were placed, there was nothing to do but wait by the cellular. Karen got a new schlep bag with a special pocket for the phone and she wouldn’t leave home without it. No one had the number except Janet, Defina, and Carl, but they weren’t to use it except for the most dire emergency.

They didn’t call, but neither did any one else. Carl and Defina tested it regularly from pay phones, since they figured that might be where girls would call from. But the phone was working. It was the ads that weren’t. Karen called Sally, who suggested they try Ohio. “It seems to be happening right now,” Sally told her, mildly. They placed four ads.

Five days later, at a quarter to two in the morning, the phone rang.

Karen, asleep in bed beside Jeffrey, awoke to the birdlike chirping of the cellular and it took her almost three rings before she could locate the phone in the dark beside her night table. She grabbed it at last and moved into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She had to get on a plane in five hours and fly to Chicago for a trunk show. But she was happy to interrupt her sleep for this.

“Hello,” she gasped, the sleep making her voice sound deep and heavy.

“Hello. I have a collect call from Carol. Will you accept charges?”

Karen did, and tried to pull herself together enough to hook the girl.

“Hi, Carol.”

A blurry voice at the other end of the phone mumbled “Hey.”

“My name is Karen. Where are you calling from?”

“Across from the Pick-n-Pay. It’s late isn’t it? Is it late where you are?”

“It’s late, but I’m glad you called.” Karen felt herself begin to sweat. Was the call from Ohio? Were the new ads working? Was she talking to the mother of her baby? What the hell did you say now? Her mouth had never been so dry. Luckily, she didn’t have to say anything.

Carol was t”Lking.

“Look, I got caught and I already got me one baby. You interested?”

It sounded to Karen as if the girl was drunk. What about fetal alcohol syndrome? How far along was she? “When’s the baby due?” Karen asked.

She tried to sound casual.

“I got three months to go. It’s too late to do anything about it, isn’t it?”

What was she talking about? Karen wondered. An abortion at six months?

Oh, Jesus, I’m not equipped for this, she thought, and took a deep breath. “Have you got a pencil, Carol?” she asked as kindly as she could.

“No, but I got me a pen.”

“Good. Good. A pen will do. Listen, I want you to write down this name.

Harvey Kramer. I’m going to give you his phone number. He’s our lawyer and he can help us sort all this out for you. I’ll spell it for you. Are you ready?” Karen asked.

But the line was dead.

For designers, trunk shows are a little bit like book signings for authors. A lot of trouble, a bit of embarrassment, and only the possibility of increased sales. It was sort of riskyţlike throwing a party and having nobody come.

That’s what Karen was thinking as she got on the American flight to Chicago, ready for the Bernheart’s visit. Bernheart’s was the best fashion merchandiser in Chicago. Karen hadn’t slept after the call from Carol. Now she was tired and depressed. She took her usual seatţ1D, bulkhead by the windowţand waited for Defina to sit beside her. It was a luxury to fly first class, but one she felt she both deserved and appreciated. Karen had only recently begun to receive V.I.P treatment from the American Airlines Special Services staff. The People magazine article and the Barbara Walters and Elle Halle shows hadn’t hurt. It was nice to wait in the private lounge and be served herbal tea in china cups until a staff member came to usher you to your gate. No plastic airport waiting room row seats, no staring vacantly at the IBM salesman sitting across from you, and no pushing toward the gate with the masses.

Nowadays, Karen was ushered on before seating began and was greeted at the jetway door by name. Only after she had given her schlep bag to the flight attendant to stow overhead and taken her seat did she see the other passengers begin to be herded through the plane. Ah, she thought, success does have its privileges. She wasn’t the type to enjoy being chauffeured around, but airports and flying were such an ordeal that she appreciated every bit of cushioning the airline could provide. Especially after last night. And she’d need to retain all her energy for the ordeal ahead.

Karen tried to perk up. After all, it was only one call. At least the ad had started to work. Eventually the call would come. Now, she had to concentrate on business.

Karen was always interested in what women wore when they traveled. It was hard to look good, be comfortable, and arrive unwrinkled. Mobile clothes, ones that packed well, that didn’t cut or bind in an airplane seat, were difficult to design. Part of the secret was, as always, the fabric. Only a wonderfulţand that usually meant an expensiveţone would do the trick. Jersey was best, but there were some neat tricks that Beene did with mohair.

Now Karen watched the women who filed on. Older women wore polyester pull-on pants or jogging suits. Practical but hideous. Businesswomen were still wearing constructed suits. The synthetics didn’t wrinkle but they looked cheap. The costly ones would fight their seams and the wearer’s contours for the whole trip. Of all the passengers boarding, only one woman, in a long knit skirt and a simple silk overblouse, looked good.

Karen had never believed that there was a conspiracy of top designers whose styles held women hostage, but in the old daysţthe fifties and the sixtiesţthere was a general guide that designers had provided.

Now, with fashion democratized, anyone could wear anythingţand they often did. In a way, Karen thought this had made dressing more difficult for women.

Without any boundaries at all, the choices seemed too confusing. At least these women looked confused.

Defina came on, looking good as always, pushing Tangela, Stephanie, and two other models ahead of her. Tangela plopped down in a seat across the aisle. “What do you think you’re doing?” Defina asked her daughter. She handed her a ticket. “You’re in the back,” she said.

“Behind the curtain, along with the others.” Tangela stuck her lower lip out and Karen couldn’t help but notice how much like Defina it made her look.