Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘You don’t have to get up now,’ Carl told her. ‘It’s still very early.’ Awkwardly, he took her hand. She had told him everything, and his round face drooped with sympathy – or at least it drooped as much as his round face could. ‘I’m so sorry, Karen,’ he said. ‘Nothing about Belle surprises me, but I’m shocked by Jeffrey’s behavior.’ He shook his head. ‘You just can’t trust heterosexual men,’ he told her. ‘But you’ll recover. Think of Rose Kennedy and how she had to deal with Gloria Swanson. It was an inspiration.’

  Karen closed her eyes.

  Carl cleared his throat. Try and think of betrayals as just a part of life.’

  ‘Yeah. So are genital warts. That doesn’t mean I have to like them when they happen to me. Oh, Carl, what should I do?’

  ‘I hate to advocate catatonia to anyone, but it’s always worked for me.’

  ‘I think I will try a little more sleep,’ Karen said. Carl tiptoed out of the room.

  She couldn’t bear to get up yet. Even with Carl’s help she wasn’t ready to face this day, or any of the others that would follow it. She lay there under the blankets and wept with self-pity. And why not, she asked herself? Who else would feel sorry for her? She wiped her eyes on the corner of Carl’s fat duvet and pulled it over her head. After a little while she drifted off into a light sleep.

  She was on the white duvet, but the ceiling had turned black around her. The duvet was rolling, and she realized she was on a sea. A white sea. She was in some kind of basket or boat and rolling with the waves. As far as she could see around her, there was nothing but the darkness of the sky and the shining, milky white sea. She began to weep again with loneliness, and her tears fell into the basket. She realized that if she kept crying she would sink, go down and down endlessly into the dark, cold water, but she couldn’t stop crying. And then she heard someone else’s weeping. It was high-pitched and came from the pool at the bottom of the little boat. She bent over and plunged her hands into the warm bath and pulled out a baby. It looked at her with slanted black eyes. It knew her, and she knew it. Karen held it close to her breast and both of them stopped weeping.

  When Karen woke, she was still cradling the pillow to her side.

  Karen was back at home packing when she heard the noise in the living room. Ernesta had left, so Karen stiffened with fear. But then Jeffrey called out. Funny that the fear lessened when she heard his voice. I guess that means he’s not as bad as a burglar or a rapist, she thought, and turned to the doorway and walked down the hall to the living room.

  He was sitting in one of the chairs at the refectory table, a pile of papers stacked neatly in front of him. The papers, the chair upholstery, and his face were about the same shade of white. ‘What is it?’ she said, because she had nothing else to say to him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘The company,’ he said. He didn’t move, and though he looked so pale, he sounded firm.

  ‘Fat chance,’ she told him. She didn’t feel safe turning her back on him, but she wheeled around and started back toward the bedroom.

  ‘This isn’t a choice you’re being offered,’ Jeffrey told her. ‘It’s a fait accompli.’

  She turned. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘You won’t listen to reason,’ he said. ‘So this is the only way. I met with some staff, some family. We’ve all agreed. With my share and theirs combined, we outvote you. We’re selling to NormCo without you.’

  She was drained of all words for a minute, but then the ridiculousness, the nerve of it, became so obvious that she felt a surge of energy. ‘That’s out of the question. Wolper won’t buy the company without me. He want me and he wants my name.’

  ‘He’ll get your name,’ Jeffrey said. ‘It belongs to us. And if he won’t pay as much for the company without you, he’ll pay enough.’

  Karen stared at him. She couldn’t believe it. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We own Karen Kahn,’ Jeffrey explained. ‘I’ve got thirty percent of the shares. With my family’s shares, with the stock you gave to some of the staff, with Mercedes and …’

  ‘Who is going to design the stuff?’

  ‘Who cares? We’ll get someone. Bill is talking to Norris Cleveland.’

  ‘Norris! You’ve got to be kidding!’

  ‘Hey, she’s interested. And she can do your kind of stuff. The customers will barely know the difference, Karen. They’ll buy the label, and that’ll be enough. That’s all Wolper really wanted from you anyway. Wolper’s dropped his price a lot, but we’ll still all get enough. Better that than let you run it into the ground.’

  Karen blinked. All that bullshit that Wolper had fed her! About buying her talent, about respecting her work, about respecting the customer! All lies, or only true enough to count on when the going went Wolper’s way. But this … Jeffrey. This was unbelievable. ‘You can’t do this,’ she told her husband. ‘I’ll take you to court. Robert offered to …’

  ‘Robert and Sooky have already signed over their votes. So has my mother. Some of the girls from the workroom, and Lisa, and your mother have all agreed. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Lisa?’ Karen asked. ‘My mother?’

  It was too much. Karen sat down heavily. Belle! Why was Karen surprised? Belle had to have the last word, land the last arrow. But perhaps she’d done it before. Hadn’t she said something about stock … Karen took a shuddering breath.

  ‘Maybe you can take the company, but you can’t take my talent. I’ll go work somewhere else.’

  ‘Do what you want, Karen. Just don’t think you’ll be doing anything as Karen Kahn. We own that name. You signed it all over as a corporate asset long before the NormCo offer. I control it now and I can do what I like with it.’

  She very nearly moaned out loud. Belle. Belle and Jeffrey. Working together, they’d stolen her life’s work from her. Karen had a strong regret at that moment. She wished she hadn’t forbidden Jeffrey to get a gun permit and a revolver for their apartment. Shooting him would be such an enormous pleasure that, at the moment, a life in prison seemed a fair trade.

  ‘I have all the papers here,’ he said then, and stood up to leave. ‘Don’t try to go back to the office. I’ll have the locks changed and I’ll hire new security. Janet is gone. So is Casey. And Defina. It’s perfectly within my rights. You’ll get your share of the money, of course. Robert will see to all of that.’

  And mercifully, she managed to keep standing there until after he had left. She didn’t fall back against the wall and slip to the floor until she’d heard him get on the elevator.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  A Horse With No Name

  When she looked back on it all, Karen realized that she had always had a plan B. But there, alone in the apartment after Jeffrey had gone, leaving only the legal papers that stole all her achievements from her, it took a little while for her to regroup.

  Whatever Wolper had paid for KInc, and however reduced her share would be, she would still have enough to live on. And she was sure she would have a plane to live. But she wouldn’t have her name, and she wouldn’t have her company – her baby.

  Karen lay on the white sofa, flat on her back, one arm hanging over the side, her hand on the floor. She stared through the darkness at the ceiling so high overhead. She couldn’t help but see some of her designs, some of her work: Elise Elliot’s wedding gown, the farm wife dress, the tunic that she had used in different fabrics for three seasons, and of course the Paris clothes. That her work would be taken away, owned by someone else, was incredible. She remembered that moment in the tent in the Place des Vosges when her name had looked so foreign to her. Well, it was only going to look more and more strange. They had her name now, and Norris Cleveland would be rooting through her designs, notes, and sketches. Karen could just imagine one of her tunics emblazoned with Norris’s stupid buttons. Or Karen’s new farm wife dress in poison yellow. Jeffrey would be putting out Norris’s disgusting line with Karen’s name o
n it. Would the public know the difference and would they care? Alone in the dim light, Karen blushed and she wasn’t sure if it was anger, embarrassment, or both that brought the blood to her cheeks. Too bad the KInc clothes to come wouldn’t self-destruct the way Norris’s perfume had.

  It was so unbelievable, so unexpected, that it was surreal. Maybe that was why she wasn’t in pain. Stripped of her name, her company, her family, and her husband, she didn’t feel as bereft as she might have. In a way, she felt relieved. Because, like banging your head against the wall, the wonderful thing about lying to yourself is that it feels so good when you stop. The web was torn to bits at last.

  Of course, she had built an entire life on lies. Well, why wouldn’t she? She had always been lied to. But what amazed her was how the truth had been lurking underneath everything all along. She realized, there in the silence of the apartment, that she had always known she had a better business sense than Jeffrey: he’d fucked up with the withholding tax, made bad deals with the factors, undervalued the company when NormCo first sniffed around, and she’d ignored or overlooked it all. She’d wanted him, and she’d overlooked whatever she had to so she could stay with him. She’d been the horse that had pulled their wagon, making the money, the clothes; making the marriage. He’d known she was a horse he could ride. He counted on her strength and then resented her for it, had been a lousy painter and used her business as an excuse to run away from that reality. Then he’d been a lousy businessman, while all the time they’d pretended that she was the impractical one. She’d always known the truth, but she couldn’t face it.

  And she must have known about June. All those late business meetings, all those poker nights when she had been too busy working to ask questions! June showing up at the bat mitzvah, Jeffrey’s disappearances, Perry’s tip-off about the loft, the glimpse of June in Paris. There must have been a lot of other indicators but she hadn’t wanted to see them. Cleo to the max.

  She also realized that she knew the truth – if not in specifics, then in emotional terms – about Lisa and Belle. Neither one of them had what it takes to love anyone. This last betrayal by them was no worse than the hundreds of small cumulative ones that had come before. Karen’s job had always been to give, and theirs to take. They had to be selfish because there was so little of themselves that they had to be vigilant.

  How much did Belle hate herself, Karen wondered. How did Belle’s panic, anger, and self-hate reflect in Karen’s tiny baby button eyes? As Karen had suckled at her mother’s breast, how much of Belle’s remorse, anger, guilt, fear – poison – had she sucked in, too? Karen took a deep breath and sank deeper into the sofa cushions. She said a silent prayer of thanks for Marie. Without those years of love and affection from Marie, Karen would have been as bankrupt as her mother and sister.

  Belle, never pretty, smart, rich enough, or clean enough, had made herself as pretty, clean, smart, and rich as she could figure out to do. But it was all lies. She’d enclosed herself in an armor of Adolfo dresses, David Hayes suits, Saint John knits. They looked smooth, silky, colorful, and warm but they were armor that imprisoned and stunted all growth.

  And Belle must have despised her own mother and herself for giving up her baby and lying to Arnold. No wonder there had been so little room for affection toward either of her daughters: Belle was completely occupied with her hate, living with it like a constant companion, between her and her husband, her and her daughters. Belle moved through the house in a coma, always hating, always wrong, despite the ultra-neat clothes, the cleaned bodies, the nuked meals, the unassailable rightness of everything.

  And worse, Belle’s self-hate had been passed on, to Lisa, to Karen, of course, and now to Stephanie and Tiff. A cascade of self-hate, taught by one generation of women to the next. I learned to be a horse, Karen thought. I was only as good as my work. That’s what Jeffrey loved me for, if he loved me at all. But at least I had that. What did Belle or Lisa or her nieces have?

  Karen saw her female family members as a bolt of cloth unrolled, the strands of the warp coming from the single, unrelenting skein of self-hatred. Whatever other thread was woven, whatever any generation might add to the warp, it was the skein of self-hate that gave the fabric of their lives its texture. The rest was merely the surface dye. Betrayed by men, told they weren’t good enough, three generations of women had all been taught they were worthless.

  If I didn’t hate myself, would I have conceived? Karen wondered. And if I had, would I have passed this hate on to my child? She thought of the baby back in the Marianas: its black eyes so alert, waiting to be filled. What would I fill them with? she wondered.

  And then she thought of Bill Wolper. He’d made a fool of her with his lies, and now with her name he’d make a fool of all the women who bought Karen Kahn clothes. They’d be overpriced, badly designed, and shoddily made. He’d romanced her. He’d made her feel like an attractive woman, but he saw her as a work horse. His had been the last betrayal.

  She was a horse with no name. She turned on her stomach and buried her face in the white sofa cushion. Her makeup would leave smears – lipstick and blush and eyeliner – but she didn’t care. If the slipcover looked like Veronica’s Veil tomorrow, she’d have a portrait of her misery. Her punishment for being so blind and living with all her lies would be to see her name on everything from chocolates to designer napkins. Maybe even sanitary napkins. Hadn’t Pierre Cardin licensed his name on plumbing? Saint Laurent had cigarettes and doormats with his initials. Karen Kahn would be sold to any woman desperate for a bit of glamour. And she couldn’t do anything about it.

  Or could she?

  She turned over and her body stiffened. She might never be able to design anything using her own name, but her name wasn’t really her after all. Her name had become a product, but she wasn’t Karen Kahn. That had been her husband’s name. She wasn’t Karen Lipsky, either. Arnold wasn’t her biological father. And why should she have the name of some sperm donor anyway? She knew who she was, and if the public didn’t recognize her work from Norris Cleveland’s, it wasn’t her fault. But meanwhile, she could stop some of the abuse that was about to happen. She couldn’t save her name but she could save her work.

  They stood outside in the dark in the doorway of the building across from 550 Seventh Avenue. As Karen got out of the taxi, she almost grinned. All of them were in black, as if this were some rerun of an old ‘Mission Impossible.’ Janet’s face was very white, but the others looked grim and cool.

  Karen wasted no words. ‘Let’s hope Casey stole the right key,’ she said.

  Carl, Janet, Casey, Mrs Cruz, and Defina carried the empty boxes. Carl handed two of the cartons to Karen. ‘Make it look like they’re heavy,’ he told her. ‘If we carry stuff in and out, it’s less suspicious than if we only carry stuff out.’

  Karen nodded. Casey looked as if he was staggering under the weight of the empty box. Clearly, he was from the Marcel Marceau School of Corporate Espionage. Janet crossed herself as they approached the security desk at 550. ‘What if the guard won’t let us up?’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ll kick his ass,’ Casey said. Karen grinned. She’d never seen this butch side of her marketing VP.

  The guard was dozing, his feet on the counter. ‘Make as much noise as you can,’ Casey told them. ‘This is not a covert operation.’

  ‘I can’t believe those bastards won’t wait till next week,’ Carl said loudly. The guard jerked his feet off the desk.

  ‘Unbelievable, huh? Well, rock stars and politicians want what they want when they want it,’ Defina said. She waved at the guard. ‘Want some danish?’ she asked. ‘Looks like you could use some coffee, too.’

  He rubbed his eyes. ‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ he said, defensive.

  ‘No, neither are we. Can you believe this? Madonna got Karen Kahn out of bed to sew up a trousseau. Can you imagine the lingerie? We’ve got boxes of leather and rubber here. A rubber wedding gown. Can you beat that?’

  ‘Madonna’
s getting married?’

  ‘Shh, don’t tell anyone,’ Carl warned.

  ‘Who’s she marrying?’

  ‘Bill Clinton’s brother. They’re doing it on Letterman tomorrow night. Live. Like Tiny Tim’s wedding.’ The guard whistled. ‘They’re having a reception at the White House the day after tomorrow. We have to get all the clothes out by this morning, including Chelsea’s first bustier.’

  ‘No shit?’

  ‘No shit.’

  ‘I’ll bet Hillary’s ballistic,’ the guard said.

  ‘To put it mildly,’ Defina told him as they stepped onto the elevator.

  It took a little over two hours to pack every sketch, every pattern, every notebook, and all of the fashion research that Karen had collected over two decades in the business. When they had filled each carton, Karen picked up the Oakley Award plaque and dropped it on the top of the last box. Casey taped it down. Carl looked at his watch and announced it was a quarter to four. Karen looked around the empty room. She had always loved this view of Seventh Avenue, but Bill and Jeffrey had taken this room away from her. ‘Let’s split,’ Casey suggested.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Defina agreed. ‘We got ’em. Women and gays conquer the hetero-male corporate universe.’

  ‘Damn straight,’ Casey agreed.

  Karen nodded her head. ‘I want to thank you. None of you had to …’

  ‘Oh, yes, we did,’ Mrs Cruz smiled.

  ‘What will Norris copy now?’ Casey giggled.

  ‘There’s one more thing I have to do,’ Karen told them. ‘Janet, I need your help.’ Her secretary nodded. ‘I need to dictate a letter.’

  ‘Yah need ta dictate a lettuh now?’ Janet asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ The others started dragging the boxes to the elevator while Karen sat beside Janet at the word processor. They worked together for a few minutes as Defina supervised the others while they got the boxes into a taxi and took off with them to Carl’s place for safekeeping.