Fashionably Late (41 page)

Plus there was something about Bill that made her feel protected, cared for. He treated her with the kind of care that a bird might show its egg. Always considered a strong woman by Jeffrey and all the people she worked with, it was both novel and immensely comforting to be mothered this way.

“So, what do you say?” Bill asked.

Karen nodded her head. “Make us the offer,” she told him.

That night, Jeffrey was already asleep when Karen got home. She was exhausted and getting into her nightgown when the baby phone rang.

Karen decided not to mention her lawyer on the first call, despite Kramer’s advice, so she took a deep breath and answered the phone. The womanţLouiseţ was married, had two children already, and explained she had been separated from her husband when she got pregnant with the third. Now she and Leon were back together, but Leon didn’t want to raise another man’s child. Tired as she was, Karen decided Louise sounded serious and sober, if not very bright. Karen couldn’t help but wonder what kind of genetic stock she might be buying into, but she took Louise’s number and promised to call her the next day.

Sheila Dervitz must have been close to three hundred pounds. She was dressed in a sky blue sack-like suit and carried a large, cheap, navy blue leather briefcase. A hot pink and mustard scarf was draped around her neck. If fashion was a political barometerţand Karen believed it wasţthen Sheila Dervitz was still a part of the Rainbow Coalition.

Karen tried not to wince when she looked at the woman, who was the social worker doing the home visit. It had been a bitch to steal away for the morningţthere was so much to doţand then Sheila Dervitz had been late in showing up. She didn’t apologize either. She just said she’d had a busy day yesterday. Karen wondered if Miss Dervitz had started off her yesterday at 5 A.M. and flown to Chicago and back.

“Let me get this straight,” Defina had asked. “You pay her to tell the state that you’re okay?” Karen had nodded. “Seems like a conflict of interests to me,” Defina said, and Karen had to agree. “But why don’t you just pay her twice as much and tell her to skip the visit?” Dee asked.

Now, Karen wished she could. She was exhausted, but faced the big blonde woman who sat on the sofa opposite her yet kept turning her head, this way and that, as if she saw rats in corners. Karen tried to appear relaxed. “I see you have a lot of books,” Miss Dervitz commented. Karen turned and looked at the shelves behind her.

“Yes, we do,” she agreed. Somehow, the way Miss Dervitz said it made it sound as if books were a bad thing.

“Are any of them inappropriate for children?”

“I’m sure a lot of them are,” Karen said. Why hadn’t she thought about the books?

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

“Not at all.” Karen tried to say it as if she meant it. She looked around the living room. While she’d been in Chicago, Ernest had outdone herself. There wasn’t a mote of dust on anything. The windows, the mirror, and the glass in the bookshelves all gleamed. The floor had been freshly waxed and buffed. For the last two days Ernest had insisted they all walk around in socks. Last night, after she got in from the airport, Karen herself had arranged the mauve spray roses in a vase on the demilune table, and this morning she and Ernest, giggling, had made up the bed in the spare room with teddy bear sheets.

Karen and Jeffrey had already gone through a painful first interview with Miss Dervitz in her office and now there was only this home visit before they were legally approved by the State of New York as potential adoptive parents.

Had Belle and Arnold actually gone through this? Karen would have liked to have seen that home visit report! Would Belle have been intimidated the way Karen was? Karen doubted it. But the phone call from Louise meant Karen had a real baby on the line, if Miss Dervitz would let her keep it. Karen took a deep breath as the woman who would decide her future lumbered along the rows of books. Was she looking for pornography? Did the books of nudes from her life drawing classes at Pratt count? Oh, God, this was making her crazy!

“The cabinets lock,” Karen told the woman. Then she felt as if that sounded as if they had something to hide. Miss Dervitz didn’t say anything. She just spun around on her tippy toes, looking a lot like the hippo ballerinas in Fantasia. Why did Karen feel as if that meant she disapproved?

Karen felt powerless and Jeffrey certainly wasn’t helping. So far he had not tried to make this interview pleasant. When Miss Dervitz had asked him if he felt he was capable of being a nurturing parent, he had shrugged. “Who knows for sure?” he asked. When she asked him if he had deep religious beliefs, he had told her he had deep anti-religious beliefs. Then he excused himself and went in to the office. Great!

Karen tried to be diplomatic, to explain and soften his answers and pick up the slack, but she felt that Miss Dervitz was busy comparing all that Karen had to her own life. The social worker asked a lot of questions about how frequently they went out, the kind of parties they attended, and gossipy questions about what restaurants they frequented and how much it cost to eat in them. Karen had tried to answer all Miss Dervitz’s questions and charm her with glitz, but then was taken aback when the woman asked sternly the amount of time they really had to spend with a child. Karen had assured Miss Dervitz that she was not looking at this as a hobby. “I’m planning to cut back on my business commitments,” she said. “Raising a baby would really be my first priority.”

“You have a child selected?” Miss Dervitz asked. She made it sound like Karen had gone out shopping for socks.

“Well, there are a few mothers we have been talking with,” Karen lied.

She thought again of Louise. Would that amount to anything? Miss Dervitz grimly took some notes.

She wondered now if she should offer Miss Dervitz a visit to XK Inc. Would it complicate things and make them worse? Should she offer Miss Dervitz some clothes at wholesale price? Would that seem like a bribe?

Would a bribe work? And did she have anything that would possibly fit Miss Dervitz?

Now the social worker stopped and held up a book. It was Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. “What’s this?” she asked and did another pirouette.

“A novel.” Didn’t Miss Dervitz know that? Did the woman think Karen was a devil worshiper? “It’s about the Islamic as opposed to the Christian view of the world.”

“But you are Jews?” Miss Dervitz asked, spinning around again.

Karen nodded. Was she going crazy? Or was Miss Dervitz certifiable?

Hadn’t she heard about Salmon Rushdie? And if Karen told her about him would she sound condescending?

Miss Dervitz put the book away. Karen was about to say something when the phone rang. She moved to it and lifted the receiver, keeping an eye on the social worker. “Hello?” Who would be calling me here now?

she wondered.

“Karen?” Lisa’s voice was shriller than usual. “Are you sick?”

“No.”

“So what are you doing home now?”

“Lisa, can I call you back?”

“You never call me back. Listen, I only need a minute of your time.

The caterers just called me and they can’t get black chintz for the table clothes. But I think taffeta is too wintery. What do you think?”

Karen didn’t have a clue. What the hell was her sister talking about?

Meanwhile, Miss Dervitz was disappearing down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Karen lowered her voice. “Lisa! I’m sorry I haven’t called you back but I really can’t talk to you now. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Karen! Are you having an affair?”

Where the hell did that come from? No time to ask now. That was all she needed: talking about adultery while the social worker made a home visit. “I’ 11 call you back,” she told her sister and hung up the phone.

She found Miss Dervitz looking for dust balls under the bed in the spare room. Together they moved into the master bedroom. Karen couldn’t believe it when Miss Dervitz began opening dresser drawers.

Even if Karen was a devil-worshiping child pornographer, wouldn’t she have the sense to get rid of all the evidence in preparation for the social worker’s call? What in the

world was the point of this?

Karen held her tongue. Then Miss Dervitz went to her closet.

‘*Well, you certainly don’t have much to wear, being a designer and all,” she said brightly. She looked at the array of neutral-colored clothes hanging neatly on the rack. “Maybe you should think of spicing this up with some cheery colors,” Miss Dervitz suggested. Karen told herself she was coming one step closer to making a home for Louise’s baby. She tried to smile and nodded her head.

“What a good idea,” she said.

That evening, and the next and the next, Karen spoke with Louise. Each call lasted over an hour. Karen felt Louise was developing trust in her.

She brought up Harvey’s name on the third night that they talked and Louise seemed comfortable with it. The next day, Monday, Harvey’s office FedExed a package of legal, medical, and background forms to Louise. She filled them in and returned them within two days. Karen began to let herself get excited. This was her reward for moving forward with the Real Deal, for getting straight with Jeffrey.

Everything would be all right. Before Louise called again, Karen showed all the information to Jeffrey and prepped him to speak with the woman. Jeffrey was nice to her, and when he handed the phone back to Karen, Louise had sighed. “He sounds so sweet,” she said, and Karen could hear the wonder and the longing in Louise’s voice. She wondered what Leon was like, and what price Louise had paid for her lapse.

Karen and Jeffrey paid for a sonogram for Louise and it looked like the baby was a girl. Karen began to think about how she would break the news to Belle and the rest of the family. So far this had been a secret along with the bad news from Dr. Goldman. But now, perhaps, it was time to share. Now that she didn’t have only bad news to tell them. Falling asleep, after another marathon call with Louise, Karen had time to ask herself one question: Did she keep her bad news from her family to spare them pain or to spare herself?

Casey, some of his staff, Jeffrey, and Mercedes sat with Karen around the conference room table. They were going over weekly sales figures as well as the final tally of orders that the trunk show had garnered.

The farm wife dress definitely had all the earmarks of being a runnerţwhat they called a style that would be reordered over and over, as if it ran out of the store. In fact, it had all the earmarks of becoming a Fordţa design that would be copied by all the lower-priced knock-off artists in the business. It looked as if all the new designs that Karen had snuck in had done very well. It was, of course, no guarantee that the press or the Parisians would like them, but it gave all of them what Casey, in his best marketese, called a “positive indicator.”

“We wrote orders till our hands hurt!” Casey told the group now, proud.

“I’m telling you, these are the best sales figures ever!”

Jeffrey looked at him. “Those aren’t sales figures,” he said. “Those are orders. You know how many things can happen between getting that order and delivery five months from now? We have to get the orders booked and hope the goddamned factory will extend credit and make them.

Then we got to hope they make them right. Then, if they sell in the store, if they don’t get returned, we have to hope Chicago pays us before the interest eats up our profit or the factory shuts us down.

You didn’t make a sale. You only took an order. A sale is when a check comes in after an invoice has been sent.”

“Jesus, Jeffrey! You know what I meant.”

“Yeah, but do you know what / meant?”

Jeffrey had become more and more difficult. He jumped at everyone.

Karen raised her brows at him and he calmed down but she knew what he was waiting for. The rest of the meeting was just routineţthe usual reorders and sales volumes, problems with returns, and worse problems with receivables. Karen sighed. Because they had no track record with the big-volume manufacturers, they were having trouble getting delivery and the quality they wanted. Of all other designers, Karen envied Jil Sander most because Jil had grown slowly and had her own meticulous factory.

Karen shook her head. When business was so good, how could it also be so bad? She figured she could excuse herself. Jeffrey would have to sort it out. She simply had too much to do to waste time with this stuff.

She’d be working through the weekend, and she had to take off time for Tiff’s bat mitzvah. It left only six days until Paris. Not enough.

Even cutting out all routine meetings, when she thought about the lineup for the next few weeks, she wasn’t sure if she could make it.

The fashion world had two main seasons: Spring and Fall. The Spring line was shown in autumn and the Fall line was shown in early spring.

Plus, there were two condensed lines for Summer and Winter. And there were also the less important holiday and resort lines each year. But the seasons were deceptive. There were actually two shows foreach season: couture and ready-to-wear. And, if you were doing your collection internationally, you presented it first in Milano, then in Paris, and lastly, in New York. Not only that, but during those incredibly hectic Fashion Weeks you also tried to get a peek at other designers’ collections, and showed the line again privately to buyers from all over the world. It was totally draining, and it was all about to start again.

Karen would never forget coming through her first Fashion Week, exhausted and rung out, only to be called by an important editor the next Monday. “So, what’s coming up for your next collection?” the journalist had asked. And she wasn’t joking.

Since then, the things that had changed were only that Karen had gotten older and had more work to do. Year by year, it seemed, she loaded more tasks on her shoulders. The business had expanded from a small couture line twice a year to a big couture line five times a year, as well as a bridge line that did ten times the volume in sales. Karen had only done New York up to now, and showing the couture and bridge line here had been enough of a challenge.