Fashionably Late (56 page)

“I’m going back to work next week. The doctor said I could start parttime.”

“Great Dad, but don’t try to do too much. Relax.”

“Relax? Around here? If I want to relax I have to get back to the office. I miss my work. I miss Inez.” He looked at Karen. “And she misses me.”

Karen only nodded.

“You know, when it comes right down to it, all that most people have are their friends and their work. And that’s if they’re lucky.”

Arnold looked at his daughter. “Are you happy in your work?” he asked.

Karen nodded. “Are you going to sell the company?” Arnold asked.

“I’m going to check it out first,” Karen told him, and explained about the Bangkok trip and the Mananas.

Arnold got up from the chair he had sprawled in. “I know all about the Mananas,” he said. He rubbed his unshaven jaw. “What was it?” He looked up, as if the answer might be written on Belle’s living room light fixture. “Wait a minute,” Arnold said. He went into his study and Karen could hear him rooting around. He came out after a time holding a small card. “Dagsvarr,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Lars Dagsvarr. He’s written to me. He’s in the Mananas. I’ll have him call you.”

Karen nodded. She gave her father the name of the hotel she would be staying at.

“Can you stay and eat supper?” Arnold asked. Karen shook her head.

“Who could blame you?” Arnold said.

Lisa was struggling into the black control-top pantyhose she was going to wear with the black Charles Jordan pumps she’d bought in Paris. She pulled at the waistband but it continued to remain only above navel level, creating a little pucker of fat all around her midsection. Had she gained weight? It must have been all those rich French meals.

She rushed over to the mirror. Yes, she had gained weight. Oh God!

She should have watched herself more carefully. But with all the excitement and pressure, and now with the extra tension in the house since Stephanie had been grounded, she knew she’d been eating too much.

Usually it wasn’t a problem: whenever she gained a few pounds she went on the Stillman diet and doubled up her aerobic sessions until she dropped down to normal. But right now was a critical time. She looked at herself, clad only in the pantyhose, pumps, and a black lace brassiere, and imagined what Jeffrey would think if he saw her this way. Because, she thought, he did want to see her this way. He certainly kept showering attention on her. He’d taken her out to lunch twice in Paris, both times without Karen, and now he had called again and asked her to lunch in the city. Karen had already agreed to sell.

So what else could be the reason? Lisa looked at her reflection very carefully. Although she knew she dressed to impress other women, it added a certain excitement to also try and please a man. Jeffrey, she was sure, was very critical and would not be easy. Leonard, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed anything about how she looked or what she wore in years, except to ask the price.

However she looked though, and despite the couple of pounds, she knew she looked better than Karen. After all, Karen was built like a horse.

Lisa had never understood Jeffrey’s attraction to her sister. But then, Karen got everything, whether she deserved it or not. That was the way it had always been. Lisa was the pretty one, but she hadn’t gotten the handsome, rich, indulgent husband. Lisa kept her body taut, but she didn’t have a sexy man like Jeffrey in her life. She had balding, paunchy Leonard. Of course, she wasn’t thinking of letting anything happen between herself and Jeffrey. It wasn’t like she was contemplating an affair or anything, she told herself. It was just nice that she was getting this attention. Very nice.

Usually when they got together they talked about how hard he had worked to get this deal. Lisa was understanding and appreciative. He implied that Karen didn’t understand all it had taken to get this offer. Lisa sympathized, and in return told Jeffrey about what a poor manager of his practice Leonard was. How it was flagging. They agreed that Karen was impractical and had never understood money. Lisa left each time promising to push Karen to sign the contract.

Lisa thought Jeffrey had sacrificed enough. She implied that she had given up a lot for Leonard. The dress shop had been her means of selfexpression. Jeffrey was sympathetic. Then they talked about what Lisa would do and what Jeffrey would do with the NormCo money when it came through. That was always the nicest part of their lunches.

Jeffrey planned to paint fulltime. Lisa hoped to move to New York.

Jeffrey talked about buying a loft. He told her he’d help her look for apartments. Maybe they could continue meeting and having their lunches.

Lisa looked away from her image in the mirror. She could hear Stephanie making one of her frequent forays to the bathroom. Then Lisa heard her stomp back to her room and slam the door. If it was a big drag for Stephanie to be grounded before and after her afternoon classes each day, it was just as big a problem for Lisa to be stuck with her. She had Karen to thank for the Stephanie problem. The girl was crazed about quitting school, about modeling. Well, over my dead body, Lisa thought.

I don’t need to be made to look old before my time by having a daughter who was out of school and workingţa beautiful young daughter at that.

But what the hell was she going to tell Stephanie now when she, Lisa, left the house, all dressed for her meeting with Jeffrey? Somehow neither she nor Jeffrey had mentioned their lunches to Karen. At first it had seemed naturalţafter all, they had met to discuss the sale of the business and what was best for Karen. But somehow, since then, the subjects had become more personal and yet they still hadn’t mentioned the meetings to Karen. Lisa didn’t need a pouting Stephanie to snitch to Leonard or Karen.

Not that she and her brother-in-law were doing anything wrong. Not at all. It just seemed as if Jeffrey had no one to talk to. Like Lisa, he was pushed away by Karen, who always had so much else going on and so many other things to do. For a moment, Lisa was filled with indignation on Jeffrey’s behalf. Karen ought to take better care of him, pay more attention to him. It would serve her right if Jeffrey did have an affair. Men needed to feel important. They needed to feel as if they were the center of their wife’s life. Lisa felt that she understood Jeffreyţshe understood his loneliness. And after all, if she kept their meetings a secret from Karen, was it any worse than all the secrets that Karen had kept from her? Sisters weren’t supposed to have secrets, but either Karen didn’t trust her or didn’t feel she was important enough to confide in. Maybe Karen preferred Defina or Carl.

Since Paris, something had changed for Lisa. The fuss that had been made over Stephanie had at first made Lisa feel important. But then there had been a bitter aftertaste. Since the drug incident, since their return from Paris, Lisa had begun to realize that the fuss wasn’t over her. It was over her daughter. Stephanie was old enough for men to be interested in herţnot high school boys like Jordan, but attractive men of Lisa’s age. All the fuss and all the offers that had begun to come in bothered Lisa. They made her feelţwell, even to herself, she didn’t like to think of the word. Let’s just say “uncomfortable.” As if she were past the opportunity for excitement in her own life. And she wasn’t even forty yet! That was why the sale of VIKInc and Jeffrey’s attention seemed so important right now. It was as if the clock was being turned back, and Lisa was being given a second chance.

That was not why she had grounded Stephanie, though. It wasn’t out of spite. She’d done it for Stephanie’s own good, and now Lisa didn’t care what kind of tantrums the girl had. She could learn to pout in her room the way Tiff did. She’d be grounded until she stopped talking about dropping out of school! She could not go back to work at Karen’s and she was going to spend the rest of the semester without an internship, stuck in her room.

The problem now, however, was that Lisa would have to give Stephanie some idea of where she, Lisa, was going. She kicked off the pumps and wrapped herself in her pink terry robe. She walked out of the bedroom and down the hall, stopping outside Stephanie’s room. She took a deep breath before she knocked on the door.

The door was flung open and Stephanie, haggard with crying, was in her face. “What!” Stephanie asked.

“I’m going out. I have a luncheon.”

“I give a shit!”

Lisa took another deep breath. Stephanie would get over this. “Just because I’m going out does not mean that you may. I expect you to wait until class time, go to your afternoon classes, and be here when I come back.”

“I may be here today, but you’re not going to keep me here long. Look, I’m over sixteen and I am not going back to that stupid high school. I hate that place, and I hate this house. And I hate this town.”

Lisa couldn’t tell her daughter that she hated the house and the town too. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “Of course you’re going back to high school. You’ll finish high school and you’ll finish college too.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t finish college. And I am not going back to those children. I’m calling Christian from Elite and I’m going to get work and get my own place.”

For a moment, Lisa felt sick to her stomach, frightened. Stephanie didn’t seem like a child, like her daughter. She seemed like a stranger and, despite the ridiculous head shakings and other teenage mannerisms, she seemed adult in her determination. But it was all ridiculous, Lisa told herself. Stephanie was five months from being seventeen years old.

Lisa was simply going to wait out the rest of these tantrums and then watch Steph settle back into school with all her friends. Once she got used to it again, she’d come to her senses. “We’ll talk about this tonight with your father,” was all that Lisa said. “For now I want to make myself perfectly clear: you are to report to class, return, and stay in your room until I get back.”

“Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you let me do what I want?”

“Because I’m your mother. A mother’s job is keeping her daughter from doing what she wants.”

Stephanie didn’t smile at the joke, instead, her eyes narrowed.

“You’re just jealous, so you want to ruin everything for me. Just because your life is boring and horrible, you want my life to be as bad. You’re jealous.”

Lisa went white. “Shut up,” she said. “You’re not too old to be spanked.”

“Fuck you,” Stephanie spit, and slammed the door. Lisa had already taken a step backward, so the door didn’t hit her, although it was an inch from her nose. Lisa spun away and walked back to her own room.

She slammed her own door. But she knew it was an empty gesture, since Stephanie had already turned up the volume of the U2 album that was on her stereo.

Tiff sat in her Language Arts class. She was supposed to be writing the outline for her essay but instead she merely stared at the empty sheet of paper in front of her. She could hear Jennifer Custiss and Becky Grossman whis pering.

“Look at her butt. She’s so fat.”

“It’s disgusting. Did you ever see her sister?”

“No.”

“Oh, she is so awesome. She doesn’t look anything like her.”

“If she were my sister, I’d kill myself.”

“Why doesn’t she just go on a diet? I’m on one.”

“Me, too. I can’t stand it. I got so fat this summer.”

Tiff checked Becky out from the corner of her eye. Becky weighed less than ninety pounds. Tiff was twice that.

She stared down at the blank paper in front of her. Someday she would be very thin. Someday she would be a size two. She’d be thinner than her sister, who wore a six or an eight, and when Tiff was thin, she’d wear nicer clothes than Stephanie. She had them already.

Tiff stopped listening to the two stupid idiots in Gap clothes. Tiff would look perfect. She drifted into her favorite thought: she imagined which of her blouses she would wear with each of her skirts.

It took her a long time to go through all the possible combinations.

Lisa went to the closet and pulled out the Max Mara blouse and skirt she had decided to wear. Her hands were shaking. Well, Stephanie would get over it. She would have to. Imagine! Imagine, thinking about dropping out of high school, acting like some little goyish tramp. Had she gone crazy? This was all Karen’s fault. She had put ideas in the girl’s head. She had come between the two of them.

Everything Karen did, Stephanie thought was perfect. Stephanie would never call Karen’s life horrible. What would Stephanie think if she knew that Lisa was going to meet Karen’s husband right now? Maybe her aunt wasn’t as perfect as Stephanie thought.

Lisa slipped into the calf-length skirt and cap-sleeved blouse. She had bought a fabulous viscose sweater to go with it. She walked over to the closet and began to search through the chaos for the cardigan.

It was missing. She stopped for a minute to think back. She had worn it once in Paris, right after she bought it, but since then she hadn’t had a chance to. Had she sent it to the cleaners? She couldn’t remember. Lisa was always afraid that the cleaners had not returned all of her clothes, but since she was always hiding new purchases in other places and forgetting what she had, she usually unearthed “missing” garments in the back of the hall closet weeks later. Now she looked through the guest room walk-in and then the coat closet. All the drycleaning was covered with polyethylene film and it was hard to see what was inside it. She tore a nail trying to unwind the wire from a group of hangers so she could get to the clothes in the center.

Eventual]y, she just gave up. But she couldn’t wear this without the cardigan. Could Stephanie have it? She didn’t have the courage to knock on that door again, so she walked past it into Tiffany’s room.

Perhaps, by accident, it had been hung in here.

Unlike Stephanie, Tiff kept her room immaculate. Lisa rarely came in here. There was no reason to. She didn’t have to nag Tiff about cleaning up. Since the awful bat mitzvah, the girl had been quieter than ever. No trouble at all. Now Lisa strode across the carpet and over to the bifold louver doors that Tiff kept neatly closed. She pulled them open and then she gasped.