Guilt by Association

by Susan R. Sloan

  Karen tipped the cab driver extravagantly, emptied her mailbox, and let herself into the first-floor apartment, turning on the lights and the stereo on her way to hang up her fur-lined coat. WQXR was featuring a Brahms symphony during this hour and the flowing melody suited her mood.

  The apartment was a study in browns and whites. White walls, white window treatments, white area rugs, brown velvet sofas and chairs, warm wood accents, polished parquet floors, a few lithographs displayed here and there for a dash of color, and the soft glow of lamplight throughout.

  There was a wonderful painting of Mitch’s at Demion Five, done in his inimitable serrated palette knife style, that would have been perfect over the fireplace. On the surface, it was a simple clearing in a wood, yet the longer one looked, the more complex it became, until the outwardly deserted space was seen to be inhabited by hundreds of creatures. It was a riveting canvas, but even with her acceptable salary, beyond her reach.

  Karen dropped the mail on the entry table and clacked down the hall into the bedroom, where she kicked off her pumps, shrugged out of her navy gabardine suit and silk blouse, and slipped into fuzzy gray slippers and a shapeless robe. Padding into the kitchen, she tossed some ice cubes into a glass and poured herself a Scotch. Then she headed for the living room, pausing on the way to pick up her mail.

  She was completely alone, to do whatever she wished whenever she wished. Even after five years, she hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea. Part of her still listened for Arlene’s key in the door. More than once she caught herself setting two places at the table. Then she chuckled because all that was behind her.

  This place was hers alone. At least, the first floor of the town house was hers. There was a gay man in the basement apartment who taught English literature at Hunter College, and an elderly couple, German refugees who wore long sleeves to cover the tattooed numbers on their forearms, who lived upstairs. But each had their own space, as she had hers. And each had their own secrets, as she had hers.

  Once the door was shut, Karen was surrounded by her own choice of furnishings. She knew exactly where things were, she could eat as she pleased, mess around with her thought pages without fear of prying eyes, watch the television programs she preferred, and she didn’t have to see or talk to anyone unless she wanted to. There were even times when she would let the telephone ring unanswered.

  “I called you last night, but you weren’t home,” her mother would say on those occasions. “Where were you?”

  “Out to dinner,” Karen would reply glibly, because she knew her mother would prefer the lie to the truth.

  “With anyone special?”

  “Just friends.”

  Beverly sighed. “Not those peculiar people you’re in business with?”

  “Formerly peculiar,” Karen corrected her. “Now they’re all fine upstanding members of the Establishment.”

  “I’m glad they’re so successful,” her mother said with a sniff.

  “But they’re still not good enough,” Karen remarked. “No doctors, no lawyers, not a dentist in the bunch—and none of them even came close to going to Harvard or Yale.”

  “Well, really,” Beverly protested, “you make me sound like such a snob. I thought, once you moved out of that degenerate neighborhood into a decent part of town, you’d be in a position to find more, shall we say … suitable companionship. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  Karen had stayed on at West Twelfth Street after Arlene got her Ph.D., married her orthopedist and moved to Scarsdale, because it was familiar and convenient and close to her friends. She originally intended to find another roommate, if only to ease the financial burden on her father. But, as the months and then the years passed, she came to understand that she didn’t really want anyone moving in on her. By the time she was ready to move uptown, it never occurred to her to seek a roommate.

  It was her sister Laura who told her about the apartment on Sixty-third Street. An ex-roommate from Mount Holyoke and her husband were being transferred to Chicago. It was a real find and Karen should rush right over to see it. She did and it took her all of a minute and a half to make up her mind.

  Now, as she sat on a brown love seat that faced its mate across a walnut coffee table and sorted through the mail, she wondered about the vagaries of life that could put one in the right place at the right time just as easily as they could put one in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Although she never spoke about that night, now almost half her life ago, the memory dogged her like a relentless shadow. The few men who were persistent enough to get her to agree to a date were soon put off by her aloofness and her insistence that they meet and part in very public places. She didn’t mind. Somewhere along the way, she stopped mourning for the life she had lost and learned to live with the life she had, and quite happily spent her time with what she had come to think of as the Sullivan Street set.

  Occasionally she saw Jill Hartman. Not unexpectedly, the Hartmans had divorced soon after Andy finished law school. Their daughter was now a delightful teenager.

  A lot of things had changed since she and Jill had been girls together. Divorce, for one thing, which had been such an anathema a generation ago, was now an acceptable solution to marital problems. Legalized abortion had removed the necessity for shotgun weddings. And, perhaps most ironic of all, careers were now something that women were looking forward to rather than falling back on. Whereas, twenty years ago, girls had dreamed of marrying doctors and dentists and lawyers, today they dreamed of being doctors and dentists and lawyers.

  “God,” Jill liked to say, “were we ever raised in the Dark Ages.”

  The Dark Ages, indeed, Karen thought now as she sipped her Scotch. Just the other week, she had read about a man who was actually on trial for raping a woman he had taken on a date. They even called it that—date rape. The prosecution argued that a woman who accepted a date with a man was not automatically agreeing to have sex with him, that she had the right to say no, and he was obliged to believe she meant it. The pendulum had swung. Karen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  She turned resolutely to the mail, separating the thick stack into four piles: advertising circulars to be tossed away unopened, magazines to be read at a later time, bills to be paid on the tenth of the month, and, finally, the cards—more than two dozen of them, to be opened and read right now.

  Today was February 8, 1979, and Karen was thirty-seven years old. Tomorrow, after work, she would make a trip out to Great Neck to be fussed over by her family. Laura had dutifully landed her lawyer and now had two adorable babies, whom Karen took enormous pleasure in spoiling. Winola would make one of her special double-chocolate birthday cakes and her mother would fudge the number of candles on top and no one would dare breathe a word about spinsters or maiden aunts or unmarried women.

  But tonight was hers, to scrutinize herself in the bathroom mirror and pluck out the stray gray strands that had mistakenly wandered into her dark hair, open a can of soup instead of taking the time to prepare a proper dinner, contemplate the inexorable passing of time, and wonder how the next year of her life would differ from the last.

  The Brahms symphony concluded and she was on her way to the kitchen for another Scotch when the intercom buzzed.

  “It’s Ione,” the art history teacher replied to Karen’s query. “Can I come in and talk?”

  “Sure,” Karen replied.

  “Mitch and I had a fight,” Ione groused, following Karen into the living room and dropping into the nearest chair. “I had to get out of Eden for a while.”

  Of all of them, Ione had changed the least. With her short blond hair, big gray eyes and tomboy body, she still looked more like a schoolgirl than a forty-five-year-old wife, mother, professor and business mogul.

  “I’m having Scotch,” Karen offered.

  “Make it a double,” said Ione.

  When Karen returned with the drinks, Ione was gazing balefully at the stack of cards.

&nb
sp; “It’s your birthday,” she moaned. “I forgot it was your birthday.”

  “No you didn’t,” Karen reminded her. “You sent an adorable card.”

  “I mean I forgot right now. You probably have big plans for tonight and I just barged right in.”

  Karen shrugged. “I didn’t have anything important on. Actually, I’m going out to my folks over the weekend and I was just planning to wash my hair tonight.”

  “Well, the least I can do to make up for spoiling your evening is to take you out to dinner.”

  “Nonsense,” Karen declared. “I can whip up something right here and you can stay and share it with me.”

  “I’m too restless to hang out,” Ione replied. “I feel like kicking up my heels, going to an extravagant restaurant and raising a little hell. Come on, say you’ll go with me.”

  “Well, I don’t know …” Karen began.

  “Please,” Ione urged. “I don’t want to go alone.”

  “Okay,” Karen gave in.

  “Great!” Ione cried, pushing her in the direction of the bedroom. “I’ll give you ten minutes to get dressed. And you can choose the restaurant.”

  Karen wore the only one of Jenna’s originals she could afford to own, a flowing patchwork dress made of colorful bits of silk and velvet and brocade with a high lace collar, and chose the Sign of the Dove, a nearby French restaurant that featured the most charming garden room. It had been the group’s favorite since they had come uptown.

  It was eight o’ clock when they arrived at the bright yellow building on Third Avenue. The restaurant was packed, there was a long line, and people were being turned away.

  “I’m surprised,” Ione admitted. “I didn’t really think the place would be so crowded tonight.”

  “I think it’s crowded every night,” Karen told her with a disappointed sigh.

  “Well, let’s just see if they’ve got some little spot they’re overlooking,” Ione said encouragingly. “You keep our place in line.”

  Before Karen could stop her, Ione pushed her way to the front of the crowd and Karen saw her whisper a few words into the maître d’s ear. The man smiled broadly and nodded. Ione turned and motioned Karen forward.

  “What on earth did you say to him?” Karen asked, feeling the irate stares of people who had been in line in front of her.

  Ione shrugged. “I told him you were a famous European gourmand.”

  Karen was trying to decide how to respond to that when she caught sight of a familiar bulk up ahead.

  “Look,” she exclaimed. “There’s Demelza!”

  “Really?” Ione grinned. “Look again.”

  Karen looked again and there, too, were Jenna and John and Felicity and even Mitch, along with eight-and-a-half-year-old Tanya, who came bounding over to throw her little arms around her best grown-up friend. Then there were hugs and kisses all around, as if they hadn’t seen each other for months.

  “Aren’t birthdays wonderful?” Tanya cried happily.

  “Surprise!” Demelza shouted. At fifty-six, her dark hair was turning white, but she still wore it in a thick braid down her back.

  Karen turned to Ione. “Big fight with Mitch, huh?” she accused with a smile.

  It was a wonderful party. They laughed and ate and drank and ate and laughed and drank some more. For a while, it almost seemed that they were just as they used to be. Except, of course, Karen knew with a small pang of sadness, they weren’t. Success, and the times, had changed them all. Going uptown had been much more than a geographical move—it had been a psychological one as well. Not so long ago, they had ridiculed people who went to restaurants like this. Now they thought nothing of dropping six or seven hundred dollars for someone else to do the cooking and the dishes.

  Karen could remember when having a little money in the contribution can meant they could splurge on a good bottle of wine. Now they were hiring financial advisers and buying real estate and investing in high tech companies. They had traded the Village Voice for the Wall Street Journal and the mellow edges of marijuana for the numbness of Scotch. They no longer spoke of the future and what they hoped to accomplish, only of the present and what they had already accomplished. Dreams had become responsibilities. They had joined the Establishment.

  The little family that had been her anchor for so long was gone. Like a rough diamond that had been cleaved into brilliant but separate gems, they would never be one again.

  “I really miss you guys,” Karen heard herself saying.

  “Yeah,” Mitch agreed. “We should do this more often.” He was trimmer than he had been in their lean days, and his woolly beard had been reduced to a neat graying fringe.

  “At least once a month,” Felicity said. Now almost forty, her wafer-thin body looked more anorexic than stylish.

  “Or even once a week,” John added.

  Karen had always thought of the sculptor as an awkward Ichabod Crane, but with the onset of affluence, he had developed a distinct resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. He admitted to being from New Jersey where, it was rumored, his people had more than a nodding acquaintance with organized crime. To his credit, even in his leanest years—and there had been many—he had never taken a dime from any of them.

  “Then it wouldn’t be special,” Jenna reminded him. The carrot-topped, rosy-cheeked former teen had matured into a Rubenesque delight.

  At that, a busboy wheeled up a cake, the top aflame with exactly the right number of candles. As the waiter popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and began to pour, Karen caught a glimpse of the label. Dom Perignon. She smiled softly to herself. They had indeed come a long way.

  When the glasses were filled, Demelza rose to her feet.

  “I know it’s Karen’s birthday,” she said, “which is lovely and all that, but not really why we’re gathered here tonight.”

  Tanya held up her glass with the two drops of precious bubbling wine her mother had allowed her to have.

  “Do we drink now?” she whispered.

  “Not yet,” Demelza told her. “After my speech.”

  “Will you tell me when?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you promise?” the little girl insisted. This was going to be her first taste of champagne and she didn’t want to miss the moment.

  “I promise,” Demelza said. “As you all know, I’ve been the manager of Demion Five for the two years of its existence,” she continued. “Two embarrassingly successful years, I might add. God help me, I have entered the top tax bracket.”

  “Who’da thunk it,” Mitch muttered.

  “Of course, there’s a perfectly good reason for all of this. Demion Five has become a bigger winner than we ever thought it would. Let’s face it, it’s one thing to fantasize about something and quite another to turn it into reality. It took nothing less than a superhuman effort to put five such distinct specialties into one house and make it work so well, as though they were joined at the hip from birth and always intended to enhance one another. Ione dreamed it, I designed it, but the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, and little lady,” she said with a wink at Tanya, “Karen made it happen.”

  Everyone turned and applauded Karen.

  “The only reason I was able to sell the Bookery for enough money to join up with Ione in the first place was because Karen turned it into a decent business. In her quiet way, she sees what needs to be done and does it.”

  “Hear, hear,” everyone saluted. Karen blushed.

  “Now?” Tanya asked.

  “Not yet,” Demelza murmured. “So, as the manager of Demion Five,” she continued, “I wanted you all to be the first to hear that I am no longer the manager of Demion Five. Say hello to your new manager. To Karen.”

  “To Karen,” everyone echoed, raising their glasses.

  Demelza turned to Tanya. “Now,” she prompted and they all drank.

  “Speech!” everyone cried.

  Karen looked around the table, stunned. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she stammered. She tur
ned to Demelza. “If you make me manager, what will you do?”

  “Same thing I already do. Get in everyone’s way, make a general nuisance of myself. Nothing’s going to change. You’ve been doing the work from the beginning, you deserve to have the title. Besides, I miss my books. Now that I’m a woman of means, I want to spend more time poking through them and maybe even travel around in search of new treasures.”

  “I still don’t know what to say,” Karen admitted.

  “Demelza didn’t mention it,” Ione put in, “but there’s a significant raise that goes along with the promotion.”

  At that, a happy grin spread across Karen’s face. “Now I know what to say,” she said. “I can buy Mitch’s painting.”

  two

  The woman appeared to be about Karen’s age, short and round with asymmetric blue eyes and dark-blond hair worn in a ponytail with straight-cut bangs, and this was the third time in less than two weeks that she had braved the blustery winds of March to come and look at the Micheloni sculpture.

  It was one of John’s best creations, a representation of Paul Revere on his midnight ride, a rough black mass that vaguely resembled a horse, topped by a sweep of translucent alabaster that suggested a cape. It stood barely a foot high, but it had enormous impact. And a five-figure price tag.

  Karen had placed it on a marble pedestal in a lighted niche at the back of the oval foyer, a position she set aside for only the most spectacular pieces. Like Mitch’s painting of the clearing in the wood that now hung over the fireplace in her apartment, it was a work of art she truly appreciated, But her admiration was reserved for working hours because not even her significant boost in salary was enough to cover the cost.

  The woman circled the pedestal slowly, considering the sculpture from every angle, with an expression of adoration mixed with indecision.

  “Excuse me,” she said finally, taking a deep breath and walking over to Karen. “Would it be possible for me to see the manager?”

  “I’m the manager,” Karen replied, smiling politely and introducing herself. “How may I help you?”