Fashionably Late. Olivia Goldsmith

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СКАЧАТЬ on sale,’ Lisa said, and shrugged as if to say it wasn’t a big deal.

      Still crazy after all these years. Karen couldn’t get over their insatiable need to shop. She shrugged. Before she was a name, she had made the effort to get the two of them into most of the Seventh Avenue showrooms, despite the trouble and ill-will it often caused. Like the notorious Gabor sisters, her mother and sister had developed a reputation for returning more stuff than they bought. But Karen at last had come to understand that shopping for them, as for so many women, was a highly developed bonding activity. It was like men with sports: a father could be completely out of touch with his son’s internal life but they could always manage a conversation about those Mets. Lisa and Belle bonded by shopping. It was unfortunate that Karen and her mother, as adults, had no longer been able to do that shopping gig. Since Karen’s interest in design had deepened, Karen had become, in Belle’s words, ‘too particular.’ And ‘too dull. You need some color.’ Color to Belle meant red and aqua and royal blue. Even now, when women paid thousands of dollars for Karen’s unique vision, her exquisitely modulated color sense, Belle had never really acknowledged that Karen’s taste had been anything but difficult to understand.

      She managed to smile at her mother. ‘Where’s Dad?’ Karen asked.

      ‘Oh, you know your father. Working late on somebody’s stinking case.’ After more than forty years of marriage Belle had still not forgiven Arnold for only being a labor lawyer, ‘not a real lawyer,’ as Belle often pointed out. He’d never joined a Park Avenue firm and done lucrative corporate work. He’d formed his own labor practice and, worse, did a lot of pro bono. ‘A Harvard lawyer! He could have made millions,’ Belle always said regretfully.

      ‘So, are we eating?’ Belle asked them now. She moved through the arch to the dining room, where three places were set on the mahogany Sheraton-style table. The china was lovely – Royal Doulton – and the crystal gleamed. A tiny cachepot of violets sat at each place. Belle set a pretty table but she was less than a wiz in the kitchen. Food represented mess and bother: she’d discovered frozen entrées long before anyone else and served what Karen always thought of as ‘hospital meals’: the portions were small but no one complained because the food was so bland. And there were never any leftovers. Arnold didn’t seem to mind – aside from his work, Karen’s father noticed few details and often ate out. She’d been left on her own to Belle’s culinary torture.

      As a kid in Brooklyn, Karen had made a habit of hoarding chocolate and Bit-O-Honey bars from the neighborhood candy store. That way she always had something to eat when faced with Belle’s empty refrigerator. Karen had relied on the sugar. When they had moved to Rockville Center, in the sixties, it had been harder to get a fix. There were no stores within easy walking distance of their new suburban house and kids were not allowed to leave the junior high school during the day. Karen had gone into acute sugar withdrawal and lost a few pounds – to her mother’s delight – before she found a fat friend, Carl, who kept her supplied. Carl’s dad owned a deli/butcher shop and Carl could take anything he wanted from the shelves. A friend with greed was a friend indeed.

      Karen was still what her mother called ‘a big girl.’ At five ten, she towered over Belle and Lisa. Though she had slimmed down a lot, she still wasn’t thin and had accepted that she never would be. Yet even now, the two small, dark, thin women made her feel out of scale. She felt better when they all sat down.

      There were so many, many evenings when they had sat down to a dinner like this: ‘the three girls’ as Belle had called them. It was funny, Karen thought, how often Belle spoke in the third person or indirectly. ‘The three girls are going shopping,’ she would say as they drove to Alexander’s or Loehman’s. If she swerved in traffic, Belle would say, ‘She better watch where she’s going’ or ‘She better keep her eyes on the road.’ Belle was, no doubt about it, as distant from herself as she was from her daughters. Karen sighed. She would have liked to see her dad tonight. They didn’t talk very much, except about work, but Arnold had a solid presence, a calmness and comforting size that Belle lacked. Tonight, after the horrible news from the clinic and the cold, rainy ride, her father’s empty place at the table reflected his absence from her life so much of the time; it felt achingly familiar. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, she supposed. It was just that he was never around. No wonder she had always been so pathetically grateful for attention from men.

      But it wasn’t just that. She couldn’t blame Arnold. Lisa had always been able to play hard to get and she had never had attention from their father either. Was it genetic, or just her good looks? Even now, with Lisa’s fine skin beginning to show those tiny wrinkles at the eyes and the slightest beginnings of puckering around the mouth, Lisa was still attractive enough to turn any man’s head. Even so, it was Lisa’s elder daughter – who had not just her face but also Arnold’s tall, lanky body – who was going to be the real beauty of the family.

      As if she was reading Karen’s mind, Lisa looked up and smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how thrilled Stephanie is about her intern job.’ Stephie – who wasn’t doing well in high school – had opted for a study program. She was to work part-time at Karen’s.

      ‘Isn’t it dangerous, her going into the city like that alone every day?’ Belle asked. Still rooted in Long Island, Lisa and her family lived in Inwood.

      ‘Oh, Ma. She’s almost seventeen. She’ll be a senior in high school next year. All the kids in her class have jobs. But they’re stuck at Burger Kings and J.C. Penney’s. I think she can negotiate the four blocks from Penn Station to Karen’s showroom.’

      ‘Oh, don’t tell me. A schvartzer could grab her at any minute.’

      ‘Mother! Not “schvartzer.” “Black.” You can’t call black people “schvartzers” anymore.’

      ‘Why not?’ asked Belle. ‘It means the same thing.’

      Karen shook her head. How had Arnold put up with Belle for all those years? Karen knew there was no sense talking to her mother. She may as well talk to her own ovaries. Nothing would change. And technically Belle was right, schvartzer did mean ‘black’ in Yiddish, but the connotation was all wrong and completely different. Belle was an expert in the letter-of-the-law arguments: as a kid, Karen nearly had apoplexy trying to get Belle to admit to hypocrisy or unfairness in her positions. Belle couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge them. She spoke, for instance, about how the family had left Brooklyn because of ‘the element.’ Belle would have been shocked and disgusted by anyone who said ‘nigger,’ but wasn’t her code just an epithet by another name? Belle never specified exactly what ‘the element’ was, just that ‘the element’ had changed. When Karen had studied high school chemistry and gotten to the periodic table, she had asked her mother which of the elements on it they had been escaping from. Belle hadn’t seen the humor. Humor was never Belle’s strong suit.

      Karen looked over at the woman and suddenly wondered if her real mother was so … so Belle-ish. It wasn’t that Karen didn’t love and appreciate Belle. She was grateful. After all, Belle had taken her in and cared for her and educated her and taught her so many things. Despite Belle’s prejudices and her third-person disembodiment, Belle was a careful, involved mother. Sometimes too involved. Karen felt guilty for being critical of Belle in any way. But wasn’t that the unnatural inheritance of an adopted child: we couldn’t afford to reject a mother when we had already been rejected by one.

      Now Belle picked up the salad plates and compulsively wiped up a minuscule spot of salad dressing beside Karen’s place. It was a silent rebuke. Then Belle went out to the kitchen for the next equally small course.

      Lisa looked across the table at Karen and shrugged. They understood that there was no changing Belle. Lisa lowered her voice. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. Karen shook СКАЧАТЬ