Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Karen spent her morning at the office, frantically tearing the collection apart. Since she and Jeffrey had made their Real Deal she had been filled with energy. Now, since Louise had refused to give them the baby, she felt drained, lost, and miserable, but she had to work on the collection and was operating on pure desperation. Her only comfort was that, despite the two false starts, Sally at Harvey Kramer’s office had assured her that in the end this would work. ‘Those two didn’t have the normal profile anyway,’ Sally had said. ‘To tell you the truth, I was never really comfortable with Louise. You’re looking for a smarter-than-average young kid who’s looking for a way out of trouble. And believe me, she’s looking for you. It will come, I promise you.’ Karen carried the cellular phone with her this morning, but aside from a wrong number that almost made her heart stop, nothing materialized.

  Meanwhile, the Paris deadline ticked like a bomb as she made her eleventh-hour changes. She always went through a crisis just before she did a show, but this was worse than usual. Paris had her jittery. She reminded herself of Chanel’s motto: ‘Keep working till you hate the sight of it.’ So today, this morning before Tiff’s bat mitzvah, she was working nonstop. She was grateful to everyone for coming in on the weekend, but her gratitude didn’t stop her from feeling miserable and driving them crazy.

  She had to leave at three, to everyone’s relief. Karen and Jeffrey had been prepared to drive out to Inwood for the bat mitzvah ceremony and stay, of course, for the reception. But because of the two shows and last-minute problems, they were changing plans and going by limo. Then, immediately after the ceremony, Jeffrey would go to JFK and fly to Paris. He was playing advance man, trying to ease things through customs with a bundle of cash and firm up some of the final arrangements. Once he’d been dropped off, the limo would double back, pick up Karen from the party, and return her to the office for a midnight review. Karen knew that all afternoon and evening, while she attended the festivities, Mrs Cruz and all of the staff would be working their brains out. It made her feel guilty, but there was no way she could miss Tiff’s bat mitzvah. Despite the urgency of the Paris collection, for once Karen couldn’t use work as an excuse. She’d been late for and missed too much other family business. Still, the timing was incredibly bad.

  She ran home at the very last minute and tore into the shower, ready to get dressed. But even if she felt resentful, she didn’t allow Jeffrey to react. He had been in a really upbeat mood since they’d gotten the offer, but now, he was cranky. ‘Who the hell ever heard of a black tie bat mitzvah? Beginning at five? I don’t need this, Karen. Not with the week we’ve got ahead of us. And until the deal is signed and the NormCo check clears, anything could queer it.’ He looked at her with concern. ‘How’s the finishing off? You don’t have much time.’

  ‘I know that,’ she snapped.

  ‘Why you had to pick this year to show in Paris is beyond me.’

  Karen glared at him. It had been a mutual decision, but now that fifty million hung in the balance it had become her fault. Typical. She decided just to let this one roll by, or else they would be in a fight that would wind up with him refusing to go this afternoon, and there was no way he was getting out of this.

  As if he knew her thoughts, he looked up and grinned. ‘I don’t want to have to do this,’ he admitted. ‘Christ, all I want to do is lock myself in the studio and paint. I don’t need any of this. The whole ceremony is a trumped-up ridiculous thing in the first place. My sisters didn’t get bat mitzvahed. You didn’t get bat mitzvahed.’ Karen just sighed. She could read him like a book. A children’s book.

  ‘Girls didn’t get bat mitzvahs that often when we were thirteen,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Exactly my point! Even the word is stupid. The Jewish tradition goes back five thousand years. Coming of age for a boy meant a bar mitzvah. That was it. So how long have they been doing bat mitzvahs?’

  ‘Since women were aware enough to resent the daily prayer Jewish men are supposed to pray,’ Karen said. He looked at her blankly. ‘You know,’ she smiled sweetly, ‘the one that thanks God for not having created you a woman.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Nobody does that stuff anymore.’

  ‘Well, they still do bar mitzvahs, so they may as well do bat mitzvahs. Otherwise the message is that girls don’t count.’

  ‘Yeah, right! Religion should be like the Little League.’

  ‘Well, why not? Tiff is the first girl in our family to ever be officially confirmed in the Jewish religion. When you think about it, that’s something to celebrate.’

  ‘Oh, come on. When’s the last time you set foot in a shul? Anyway, religion isn’t about being politically correct. It’s tradition, that’s all. Look what happened to the Catholic Church after the pope did that Vatican II number. Meat on Fridays, and they went right down the tubes.’

  ‘Well, I’m proud of Tiff. This is really an accomplishment for her. She’s doing this for all of us.’

  He gave her a look. ‘Tiffany Saperstein, Religious Role Model. I think she comes right after Joan of Arc in the Book of Martyrs. And can you tell me why Leonard and Lisa invited my mother and sisters?’

  ‘Being polite, I guess.’

  ‘But they hardly know them. Do you know they asked June?’

  Karen opened her eyes wide. Was Lisa nuts? Why would she invite Jeffrey’s ex-fiancée, Perry’s ex-wife? Karen wouldn’t show her surprise to Jeffrey, though. He’d win extra points for Lisa’s crassness. Karen would be loyal to her sister, even if Lisa did seem to be insensitive at best.

  ‘Oh, stop it. You just don’t want to be hassled with putting your studs in.’ Now, as he struggled to get his arm through the overstarched sleeve of his dress shirt, he managed to smile at her. He did like the sapphires. ‘Lighten up, would ya?’ she asked him. ‘Just for me. Just as a favor,’ Then the doorman rang them. The car was already waiting. ‘Oh, God! Jeffrey, we can’t be late.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not me who has to blow-dry my hair.’

  It wasn’t until they got downstairs and saw the limo that Jeffrey really lost it. ‘What the fuck is this?’ he demanded. There was a twenty-two-foot-long, super-stretch, white Cadillac limousine waiting at the awning for them. George, the weekend doorman, was grinning.

  ‘Jesus, Jeffrey,’ she said, ‘I didn’t order it.’ The car was obscenely white. The driver got out. He, too, was all in white – a white three-piece suit, white dress shirt, and white cap. The Tom Wolfe of chauffeurs, Karen thought, but didn’t dare say anything.

  ‘Holy Christ, it’s one of the Rockettes!’ Jeffrey snapped. He turned to her. ‘Karen, I am not getting into that car. Pimps drive around in white Caddies. Nobody I know has ever been in anything but a black limo. Kahns don’t do this. My mother would die first.’

  ‘Genghis Kahn, upholder of the family honor. Jeffrey, I have no time for this now. Janet called at the last minute when we decided not to take the Jag, and I forgot to tell her to specify that no Kahn ever rides in a limo bianco. The service probably sent this as a courtesy. Now shut up and get in. This is one time I can’t afford to be fashionably late.’ Jeffrey shook his head with helplessness and disgust. He flapped his arms on either side and, in his formal wear, it came off as a fairly good imitation of an extremely tall, anguished penguin.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘but if this is how the party is starting, I don’t want to think about the next four hours. Excruciating is a word I’d rather say than experience.’

  The driver had difficulty in finding the temple, so Karen and Jeffrey arrived only moments before the service was scheduled to begin. They had no time to ditch it, so the ridiculous car pulled up right out front, where overdressed women were clustered at the door. All heads turned. Karen sighed. She had wanted this to be Lisa’s moment, and Tiff’s. She wanted – just for once – not to be noticed, not to be the famous older sister, but to let Lisa have this all to herself. The car halted.

  ‘Don’t get out here in front,’ Jeffrey commanded the driver. ‘We’
re enough of a spectacle as it is,’ he muttered to Karen. But it was too late. The driver hadn’t heard Jeffrey or chose to ignore him. The guy was out and the door was opened with a flourish and the people were staring and there was nothing left to do but to step out onto the sidewalk, and simply be grateful that the driver hadn’t unrolled a red carpet, or held aloft a glass slipper. They got out and joined the other guests.

  Lisa, Tiff, and Leonard stood just inside the door, a tiny welcoming committee. Karen saw that Tiff was wearing the pearls, along with the ridiculous taffeta dress. She kissed her niece. ‘Neat car,’ Tiff said, stretching the two syllables out until they were almost a yodel.

  Karen smiled. ‘Would you like me to take you to the reception in it?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Tiff breathed, her eyes widening. Sometimes Karen forgot that despite her height her niece was still very young.

  ‘She can’t,’ Lisa said curtly. Karen noticed that her sister wasn’t wearing either of the two outfits she’d sent over. Oh well. Instead Lisa had on something stiff, with a matching hat! Lisa turned to her daughter. ‘We have the two buses coming to take the guests over to the reception. You have to be on the first bus.’ Tiff’s face froze over in that look of mulish resentment it so often wore. Karen felt as if she could kick herself. She’d made a grand entrance and interfered in Lisa’s plans. She hadn’t taken a seat yet, and she had already fucked up twice. She kissed her sister’s cheek. She’d wait ’til later to tell her that Jeffrey couldn’t stay for the reception. There was so much that she hadn’t spoken to Lisa about. But she had been so busy and Lisa had been inundated with a million details of the party. Still, Karen felt a small stab of guilt. Perhaps she didn’t like telling good news to Lisa because she felt, sometimes, that it made Lisa feel as if her own life was insignificant. And she didn’t like to tell bad news to Lisa because … well, she wasn’t sure why, but somehow she hadn’t wanted to talk to Lisa about Dr Goldman or the horrible Harvey Kramer or Louise and the whole dialing for daughters episode. As she did so often, Karen suspected her own motivations. Was she protecting Lisa, or was she protecting herself?

  She leaned forward and kissed Leonard. He looked grim and shook hands limply with Jeffrey. Karen heard the little whispers and saw the nudges that happened so often now when she appeared in a crowd. ‘Her sister,’ she heard somebody say. ‘Her sister.’ The whisper seemed to run like a sibilant wave through the knot of people at the door to the sanctuary. Belle and Arnold were standing there greeting friends. Karen kissed them, moving quickly, hoping to get through the door and take a seat, getting the attention off herself as soon as possible. This was Tiff and Lisa’s day. But when Karen turned from her mother to kiss her father, she stopped dead for a moment. Speaking of dead, Arnold looked ghastly. How long had it been since she’d seen him? The brunch hadn’t been that long ago. What was wrong with him? A big man, it looked as if he had shrunk, and certainly his face was ashen. ‘Daddy? Are you all right?’ she asked. Arnold hugged her.

  ‘I’m fine. You look wonderful. How are you, Jeffrey?’ Despite his assurance, Karen stared at her father. He didn’t look fine. His skin seemed too big for his head, hanging in jowls, yet it also seemed as if his skull had shrunken. His cheekbones jutted severely and his nose, always arched, now looked razor-sharp. The only softness to his face were the puffy bags under his eyes, and they seemed as big as satchels.

  A crowd had gathered behind Karen, waiting to go in. Jeffrey nudged her and she walked through the sanctuary door, leaving her parents behind.

  The room was enormous and modern, with some kind of horrible architecture that Karen imagined the inside of a nuclear reactor would look like. A vast sweep of cement up one side served as a decorative wall and the ceiling sloped down asymmetrically from there. In the front, an enormous glass window backed the dais and was interrupted only by the tabernacle housing and the small modern stone podium that served as a pulpit. The seats, movie-theater style, were upholstered in a hellacious orange plush. The windows had an ugly orange-stained glass motif and cast a pumpkin glow over everybody. Orange was Karen’s least favorite color. Karen walked down the aisle and quickly took a seat. She looked around at the guests. Her mother had no siblings, but Arnold had four. Yet none of them had been invited, or if they had, they had chosen not to attend. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anybody of Belle and Arnold’s age, except Lisa’s mother- and father-in-law. The group was mostly lots of young children and their young parents. Where were all of Tiff’s friends? These events were usually filled with teens. Didn’t they still line up and dance the Alley Cat at the reception? That’s what had happened at the bar mitzvahs Karen had attended as a kid.

  Karen covertly scanned the crowd again. Everyone was, in her opinion, overdressed, except for Sylvia, Sooky, and Buff, who waved from the other side of the aisle. As always, they looked understated. Well, perhaps for once a bit too understated. After all, this was black tie. Was it a sign of their contempt? But the quantity of glitz, sequins, and beading on the rest of the women was astonishing. Looking around, Karen realized she didn’t recognize any other guests. Who were these people, Karen wondered?

  Jeffrey looked at his watch. They were already late in starting. People were getting restive. At last, a cameraman walked down the aisle and made some minor adjustments. Then, from the back of the sanctuary, Tiff, Lisa, Leonard, Stephanie, and Belle and Arnold walked in. They were followed by the rabbi. Slowly, they walked down the entire aisle nodding to friends. Lisa’s big straw hat was the exact melon color of her dress. What in the world was she doing? With her wide smile and her hat and her stiff-wristed waves at the audience, she looked like a Jewish Princess Di. At the first row of seats Belle, Arnold, and Stephanie stopped and sat down with the elder Sapersteins, but the rest of them continued up the three shallow steps to the dais. There, on either side of the tabernacle, modernistic stone chairs were arranged. Leonard, Lisa, and Tiff took seats while the rabbi began the service.

  Karen had never gone to Hebrew school or even Sunday school. Arnold had always been a pinko agnostic and Belle could never be bothered. On High Holy Days, she had schlepped the girls to services but Karen had spent the time daydreaming. She hadn’t gone to temple in years. She doubted that Belle had. Did Lisa and Leonard really care about all this? Karen had never heard them mention God.

  Why do people turn to religion when they have kids, she wondered. It seemed a kind of automatic thing. Lisa had once said she wanted the girls to grow up with a sense of reverence, but when Karen asked her if their own pilgrimages with Belle at the holidays had given Lisa reverence, she had changed the subject and Karen dropped it. She hadn’t wanted to sound critical.

  Karen smiled grimly as she thought of the irony of losing the baby, Louise’s baby, because she wasn’t Christian. Well, she certainly wasn’t a Jew, except in the birth sense. And then she stopped. For all she knew, she might not be a Jew by birth, either. Religion had been so unimportant to her, she had never considered that before. Who knows, maybe I’m Polish Catholic. But could I have told Louise anything different than what I did? Even if it meant I’d get to keep the child? Karen thought of the baby that she might have been given, and bit her lip. It seemed she was not Jewish enough to find comfort in this ceremony, but she was Jewish enough to be prevented from getting the child. It wasn’t fair. Where would Louise place the child now?

  I wanted that baby, I deserved that baby, and I would have been good for it. Better than its real mother. That thought made her pause. She was so confused. If she raised the child, would it be better off or would it always miss its birth mother, always feel uncomfortable, an outsider, as she did? That was not a heritage she would wish on a child. She herself would have been a lot happier if she could feel part of this or any group.

  Now, as the cantor joined the rabbi and the service began, Karen had to admit that there was something moving about the tradition of gathering together to welcome a new generation into the fold. There was a child almost directly in
front of her, perhaps seven or eight years old. The back of her neck was very white and her hair, pulled into a rhinestone clip, gleamed. Karen felt herself longing to stroke it. If she had a child would she and Jeffrey start attending temple? Would they sit together as a family at Park Avenue Synagogue? Would it feel good?

  Would she ever have a child?

  She looked over at Jeffrey sitting beside her. She couldn’t imagine him up there on the dais, patiently going through the motions as Leonard seemed to be. Surprised at herself, Karen felt very moved by the little group on the stone chairs. It was a ceremony of passage, one that she had missed. Lisa, despite other problems she may have as a mother, had made this happen for Tiff. And maybe it would help Tiff feel as if she belonged. Belle had done nothing like this for either of her daughters. Karen looked over at her mother. Belle sat erectly, with a proprietary air. In fact, she looked as if she were responsible for the whole affair, although Karen knew she hadn’t been involved at all.

  What, Karen wondered, would her real mother have done for her? Would she have made a confirmation dress for me, or taken me to Bible school, or brought me in for Hebrew lessons? What was her real mother doing now, while Karen sat with all these people? And what did it matter? She’s really nothing to me, Karen told herself. But if I’m not attached to my real mother, who am I attached to?

  Truthfully, she guessed she was connected to the line of Sapersteins and Lipskys sitting in the orange light cast by the stained-glass windows. They had tried to be good to her, to love her as best they could. If it wasn’t perfect, it would have to be enough. Karen looked up at Tiffany, nervously biting her lips. Karen was swept with a wave of pride, and she was grateful that her niece had put the pearls on. It made Karen feel more of a part of the experience, her tiny contribution. For a moment, Karen was overwhelmed with longing: to be connected, like a pearl on a string, in a line that moved from the past, through her, to the future. She looked again at Tiff and, despite her baby fat and her chipmunk cheeks, despite the rag of a dress she wore, Tiff seemed invested with the dignity of this moment. When the rabbi called her to the podium, Tiff stood up, and for once her height served her well. She was a big girl but in that enormous space she moved cleanly toward the rabbi. The Paris show, the NormCo buyout, the disappointment of Louise, all disappeared into the background. Yes, Karen thought, if I had a baby I would want it to be a part of this tradition. Karen felt very proud.