Fashionably Late (8 page)

Coca-Cola douches? Oh, Karen.”

She tried to smile. “Well, the good news is, we don’t have to try anything. The bad news is, that’s because nothing will work.”

The little vertical wrinkle he got between his eyebrows, the only noticeable age sign on his tanned and handsome face, appeared. He ran his hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. His eyes, such a beautiful, clear light blue, clouded over. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

He reached across the glossy tabletop and took her hand. “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. Then he looked down at his plate and they both sat there for several moments in silence.

While they’d been going through this process, they’d long ago made a Real Deal on it: if either Karen couldn’t conceive, or if Jeffrey’s sperm was weak, they wouldn’t try in vitro or donor insemination. Both of them agreed that it was immoral, not to mention painful and humiliating, to spend that kind of money and effort to make their own genetic product when the world was filled with unwanted babies. Now, looking at Jeffrey’s bowed head, knowing it was her fault that they couldn’t have a child, she wondered if he regretted the deal.

“Are you still hungry?” she finally asked him.

“Only for you,” he said. And, taking her hand, he walked her away from the table, across the gleaming, empty floor, and down the hall to their bedroom. The light in there was dim and the bedţa simple Shaker pencil-postţ was made up in her favorite Frette sheets. Jeffrey drew her to it. He stopped and wrapped his arms around her. Then he nuzzled her neck and began whispering, his voice husky.

“Oh, baby, it will be all right. Look at the up side: no more thermometers, no more calendars, no turkey basters, no more wasted sperm samples.” He kissed her on the nape of her neck and she felt a shiver run down her back. “All my sperm for you, now,” he told her.

His arms were so long, and they felt so good wrapped around her. He was a big man, and one of the things she had loved about him was how he managed to make her feel small. She leaned her body into his. “I love you, you know,” he told her.

“Prove your love,” Karen said, and they fell onto the bed, hungry for one another.

Afterward, as she lay in his arms, the beautiful sheets rucked up and wrinkled around her, she turned to look at his profile. It was perfect, and if she cast it in gold it would pass for the head of an emperor on a Roman coin. Karen ran her hand along Jeffrey’s sternum and down the thin, soft line of hair that ran from his chest over his stomach to his groin. It was so sweet. He was so sweet.

“I was thinking of looking for my mother,” she murmured.

He turned over, ready to go to sleep. “Didn’t you have enough of her tonight?” he asked.

“No, I mean my real mother.”

He was silent for a few minutes. Karen almost thought he had fallen asleep. “What for?” he said. And she heard him sigh.

“I don’t know. I just feel like I want to.”

He turned over again, this time on his back so he could see her. “Why open a new can of worms?” he asked. “Don’t we have enough to deal with at the moment?” He put his left arm out so she could lie against his side. She felt comforted by his warmth.

“Jeffrey, you honestly don’t mind? About the baby, I mean.”

He hugged her closer. “Karen, I think I gave up a long time ago.

We’re so lucky already. Why should we have everything? It would only tempt the gods.”

“Don’t be superstitious,” she told him, though she was herself.

“Anyway, we can have everything. I’m going to call Sid tomorrow and get him working on an adoption. I was talking to Joyce and she said they have a very good contact in Texas.”

Jeffrey rolled onto his side, away from her, and cradled his head in the crook of his elbow. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“A private adoption, Jeffrey. It’s more expensive but a lot easier than going through the state. We might be too old for that already.

And apparently there are a lot of babies available in Texas.”

“You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not a problem with your ovaries.

It’s a problem with your head. You’re obsessed. It runs in your family.”

“What?” “Your mother is an obsessive, your sister is an obsessive, and your nieces are obsessives. You are obsessed with this baby thing.”

Karen didn’t think it was the time to mention that if obsession ran in her family she hadn’t inherited it genetically. “What’s so obsessive?

Don’t you want a baby?”

“Karen, I don’t want some stranger’s baby, especially one from Texas.

I’m a New York Jew. What would I do with a little cowboy?”

“Love it,” she said.

Jeffrey pulled away from her and sat up. “Wait a minute.” His voice sounded flat. “I always felt we could live without a baby. You were the one all gung-ho. I did my part. Now it appears that we can’t have one of our own. Okay. Okay. I accept that. But I don’t want to raise somebody else’s.”

Karen felt her stomach tighten and the flesh went clammy on her back and thighs. She sat up, too, and looked across the bed at her husband.

He looked back at her.

“Come on Karen! Not the look’, I don’t want the look.” You can’t expect me to go for this. We never discussed it. It was not plan B.

Adoption was not plan B. You never know what you are getting in a deal like that.”

“I never knew you were so opposed to adoption.”

“You never asked. You wanted your own baby. That’s what we discussed.

I wasn’t wild about the idea but I don’t think men usually are. It’s a natural thing. But this isn’t natural. And look what happens. Look at the Woody Allen thing. And Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. When celebrities adopt, there’s always trouble. And then there’s all the heartbreak when a birth mother reneges. Not to mention the genetic roulette that you’re playing. Wasn’t Son of Sam adopted? And that serial killer in Long Island? Like I said, you never know what you’re getting in a deal like this.”

“But Jeffrey, I’m adopted.”

“Yeah, but not by me. I knew you were adopted, but I also knew who you were and how you had turned out. That’s different than nurturing some illiterate, promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum’s offspring.

Who knows how they’d turn out?”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this.” Was that why he’d been so cool to the idea of her searching out her birth mother? Karen put her hand out, touching his shoulder. Did he think she was the offspring of some promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum? And was she? She realized she didn’t have the courage to ask him. “Please, Jeffrey,” was all she said.

Jeffrey shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re asking this,” he said. He threw his feet over the side of the bed and walked across the room. The light from the window hit him across the shoulders and down one long, lean flank. “Where are you going?” she asked. “I’m hitting the shower,” he said. To Karen it sounded like he wanted to hit her.

Karen never did get to call Lisa the night before and left way too early to do it the next morning. Karen got to her office by half past seven, but that was nothing new: ever since she’d had a single employeeţMrs. Cruz from Corona, Queensţshe’d gotten in early. All these years later Mrs. Cruz was still with her, now one of her two chief pattern-makers, supervising a workroom that held over two hundred employees. Mrs. Cruz had two long subway rides to get to 550 Seventh Avenue. Still, almost every morning, including this one, Karen met Mrs. Cruz there, outside the legendary building that now housed XK Inc, and they rode the elevator up to the ninth floor together where both of them had keys to open up the floor. On the way up, they passed the showrooms and offices of Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Rent, Donna Karan, and Bill Blass. All of the foreign fashion world was there, too: Karl Lagerfeld and Hanae Mori.

Five fifty was the temple of high fashion in the United States. Karen still couldn’t get over the thrill of seeing her name on the elevator directory along with those others.

But Karen knew what a slippery ride it could be. Back in January 1985, way before she had moved in, the Halston Originals showroom at 550

Seventh Avenue was dismantled. Whatever fixtures and furnishings that hadn’t already been carted away were sold to the next tenant, a newcomer in the fashion business named Donna Karan.

No one thought of Halston anymore. He wasn’t just dead, he was forgotten. He had been the first American designer to sell his name, and in his case it had meant his destruction. A corporate entity licensed Halston everythings, while poor Roy Halston Froleich had been legally stopped from using “Halston” ever again. He’d been well-paid but robbed of his work and identity. Karen thought of poor sick Willie Artech. What would happen to his work and his name? She shivered, and turned to the dark woman beside her.

“Good morning, Mrs. Cruz,” Karen said, and smiled at the short, stout co-worker whose black, glossy hair showed an inch of steel gray at the roots. Karen looked at Mrs. Cruz’s face and realized that the woman had had both children and grandchildren over the years they’d worked together, while Karen had remained childless. “How’s the new grandson?” she asked.

“Fat as a little piglet. How are you this morning, Karen?” Mrs. Cruz inquired. She nodded to a brown bag she held. “Would you like some fresh pan de manteca?”

“Oh, Mrs. Cruz. You’re killing me. I’ll wind up fat as a little piglet.

I swore I was starting my diet this morning.”

Mrs. Cruz shrugged. “You’re thin enough. Coffee?”

Karen couldn’t resist either the Cuban coffee Mrs. Cruz carried in a big, shiny metal thermos or the freshly baked bread. “Yes, please.

And a thin slice of pan de manteca.”

Mrs. Cruz smiled, pleased. They arrived on nine to find the door already opened. That was unusual. Was a thief loose on the floor or was some competitor going through her designs? Karen had heard of a hundred tricks that magazines and competitors used to snoop, to spy, to get a fashion scoop. One magazine regularly sent pretty girls to apply as fitting models to all the designers, including VIKInc. Just last month Defina had caught one sketching a design. Once a sketcher had dressed up as a florist’s assistant, complete with a smock, and delivered a huge bouquet personally to Karen while they were doing a final run-through of the line. He had been sent by a competitor, but they’d never been able to prove it was Norris Cleveland. Now, as word leaked out that she was doing the Elise Elliot wedding, someone could be snooping. Or had NormCo sent a due diligence team over to do a little unauthorized auditing? Or even worse: Did the camera crew that had been working on Elle Halle’s show decide to do a surprise morning visit? Karen wondered for a moment if she had time to put a little blush on before she got ambushed. She decided she didn’t, but she winced at her blurry reflection in the stainless steel elevator walls.

The two women shrugged at one another and stepped out onto the floor.

The only entrance was here, through the showroom.

The lights were on and Defina Pompey was standing at a pipe rack of clothes, flicking through each one and rattling the hangers as she moved along. Defina was never there until tenţand sometimes a little later. It had always been a bone of contention between them, but the few times Defina had shown up at nine had convinced Karen she didn’t want Defina earlier.

Defina was a night person, and stayed to all hours cheerfully. It was just in the mornings that she was dangerous.

“Aye. Caramba!” Mrs. Cruz muttered and scuttled across the beige carpeting to the door of the workrooms. The Cuban pollo. Defina confused Mrs. Cruz in a number of ways and the Cuban was scared of her. For one thing, Defina spoke Spanish with a perlect upper-class Madnd lisp. Mrs. Cruz could barely understand it. Why should an American black woman from Harlem be able to speak like that? Plus, all the workroom said Defina knew some strong Santeria magic. Mrs. Cruz avoided Defina whenever she could.

Now Karen smiled cautiously at Defina. The big woman scowled back.

“You’re in trouble, girlfriend,” Defina growled.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Karen sighed and walked past Defina to her office suite at the corner of the floor. Defina followed her.

“What’s up? How come you’re in so early?”

“I must have been thinking about the collection for Paris while I was sleeping. It woke me up.”

“Now I know I’m really in trouble. Nuclear holocaust wouldn’t wake you.”

“Well. It wasn’t just the collection,” Defina admitted. “Tangela came in at six this morning and made so much goddamn noise I couldn’t get back to sleep.” More beautiful even than Defina had been, Tangela was giving both of them a lot of trouble. Karen sighed. If Tangela had been out all night it wouldn’t be a good afternoon in the fitting rooms.

Mrs. Cruz scurried in with two cups, steaming full of cafe Cubano.

Silently she put them down on Karen’s work table and scurried out.

Karen sank into the glove-leather swivel chair behind her work table and sighed again.

She had hired Defina just a few months after she’d hired Mrs. Cruz, more than a dozen years ago. Defina had been tall, black, beautiful, and hungry. She was still all four, but had put on forty or fifty pounds since then. Naomi Sims had made the cover of Fashions of the Times back in 1967 but it had taken a lot longer for women of color to be accepted on the runways. Out of desperation, when she was broke, Karen had employed Defina as a runway model in her first show, and she’d been the first Seventh Avenue designer to use a black model.

Both the clothes and Defina had been a sensation, and they’d worked together ever since: through Karen’s marriage, Defina’s various affairs, through the birth of Defina’s daughterţ Tangela was Karen’s godchildţand on and on. Defina ran the showroom and modeling staff now, handling the sales force and sometimes even taking orders. Karen and Defina were more than close: they were a living diary for one another. They remembered the small day-to-day memories of more than a decade of working together, often for ten or twelve or fifteen hours a day.

“Listen, there were plenty of times you stayed out all night back when you were eighteen,” Karen reminded her. “That’s what you do when you’re young.”