Possessions

by Judith Michael

  Chuckling at his wit, he fanned the sketches like playing cards beside the finished pieces and gave them serious attention. Katherine sat rigidly, hands gripped in her lap. No one had seen her work but Jennifer and Todd. In Vancouver she had been fooled by her friends' uncritical praise into thinking she was better than she was. She would not let that happen again. So she kept her designs hidden, even from Leslie. Now, finding no clues in Mettler's impassive face, she looked around his balcony office. On the paneled walls, framed photographs of

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  film and television stars were autographed, with gratitude, to Herman Mettler. "Friends," Mettler said. Startled, Katherine turned to find him watching her. "Women remember, when we help make them beautiful. Your work has promise; we'll start with a dozen."

  Katherine*s eyes widened. "A dozen pieces?"

  "Bracelets, pins, necklaces. No earrings; I have enough to pierce every earlobe west of the Rockies." Chuckling, he fastened his gaze on Katherine until she realized he was waiting for her to join him in admiring his joke. She smiled. "Now." He settled back. "What I like I buy outright; no consignments. I'll buy the blued steel pendants today; the other two pieces don't interest me. How much are you asking?"

  Katherine hesitated. "I haven't priced them."

  "I assumed you hadn't. There's a skill to it; ask around." He pondered. "I'll charge seventy for the seagull; ninety for the snail—nice use of the camelian, by the way; a center focus as well as an eye. One of the reasons I said you showed promise. My secretary will send you a check for sixty-four dollars—"

  "Sixty-four?"

  "Forty percent of the price I'll charge. Ordinarily, of course, my price would be a markup of what you charge me. Since you are uncertain what to charge, I've worked backwards. Any objection to that?"

  "No. I just wondered."

  "Well, then. I want ten more by the end of February, for our spring showing. We advertise heavily so your name will get around if you deserve it. Use color; some designers can handle black but nothing here tells me whether you can or not, so don't try. This sketch and this one are good; I'd try to ease the rose, however."

  "Ease—?"

  "Enlarge the opening in each petal. In other words, deflower it." This time he bellowed with laughter, and Katherine, knowing what was expected, smiled with him. Then he returned to business. "We do well with gold, silver, fine gems, cloisonne. Don't use enamel unless you have forms other than this."

  Stung, Katherine said, "Tony liked that bird."

  *Tony would. I don't like sculptured enamel. Private preferences, Mrs. Fraser. If you want me to make you famous, you'll indulge me. Or you can rely on Tony, who can't do a

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  thing for you. Now pay attention." He swept together Kath-erine's sketches and samples and pushed them toward her. "You have promise. You have a certain amount of talent; how much I can't say yet and I doubt that you can either, until you've tackled a wider range of materials and styles. Continue to work with Tony if you want, but you would be better off away from his aroma."

  "He lets me use his tools and equipment; I can't afford my own yet."

  "Use him, then, but don't let his onion soup get into your designs. I'm not buying Tony; I'm buying you. You've shown some facility with blued steel and copper, stay with them if you like. Pity you can't afford gold, but if you do well with this order, we may be able to advance you something in February. When a jeweler does that, it's an act of gemerosity."

  Shaking with laughter, he stood and held out his hand. Katherine took it and then found herself laughing with him. It was easier this time. She'd just made her first sale.

  To celebrate, Leslie brought a bottle of wine to go with Katherine's meatballs. "A celebration," she reminded Todd as they finished dessert. "So what's your problem?"

  "Mom," said Todd glumly. "She's eight million miles away, thinking about jewelry."

  Leslie regarded Katherine. "True. Good or bad thoughts?"

  "Mosdy worrying," Katherine said ruefully.

  "Not surprising." Leslie watched Todd and Jennifer carry the dishes into the kitchen. "Mettler's forced you to the wall. Come out of your safe little comer, lady, and your happy dreams of success. Do your thing, deliver your goods and see if the fickle public buys or turns thumbs down. Scary."

  Katherine gave a small laugh. "You're amazing. How do you know that's how I feel?"

  "Because that's how I feel every day. Slighdy different, but whenever I make a suggestion or decision it can be knocked down in three seconds by Heath's president or the executive committee. Enough three-second knockdowns and I'm out— slinking off to find another job. The big difference is that I'm anonymous, but you have to go public—how else can you make a name for yourself? Good reason to be scared. The dream of making it big ..." Her attention veered off.

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  "What about you?" Katherine asked. "What are your wor-riesr*

  "Me? I? What makes you think I'm worried?"

  "Is it Marc? Or something at the store? I tell you my problems; it's not fair to keep yours a secret."

  "Well." Leslie spread her hands. "What a coincidence that you should ask." She pushed a crumb of cheesecake around her plate. "Remember the Ralph Lauren sweaters I told you about at my birthday party?"

  "And Calvin Klein blouses. You're still trying to figure out what happened?"

  "We're pretty sure we know what happened. They were stolen. And maybe other things, too; we don't know yet how much. We did a couple of spot inventories without advance notice, and, in lingerie, we can't account for a box of Simone bras. Twenty-four, at seventy-five bucks apiece."

  Briefly, Katherine tried to imagine having enough money to pay seventy-five dollars for a brassiere. But then she concentrated on Leslie. "But if they were stolen, wouldn't they—?"

  "They didn't show up as stolen. Look. We have a computer system that keeps track of all our merchandise, from the time we get a shipment in the receiving room to the time it's sold and paid for. Today, the computer says every Simone bra that we received has either been sold or is still on the shelves. If we hadn't individually counted every bra and sales slip in lingerie we wouldn't know twenty-four were missing. Eton't you understand? The computer's numbers all balanced."

  After a moment, Katherine said, 'The computer. You're worried about Bruce."

  "One hundred percent." Leslie sighed. "And, of course, me. I got him hired to work in that department without divulging his unruly past. And now something is going on— maybe a computer operator making a bunch of simple mistakes, maybe sometfiing a lot bigger—and if my brother is involved, I'm involved. All those beetle-eyed vice-presidents, you know, watching for me to make a mistake."

  In the silence, they heard Todd weaving a story about dishes that washed themselves or were set to self-destruct if they were not clean in five seconds. Leslie shook her head vigorously, like a pony tossing off a rainstorm. "I needed to talk and I feel

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  better, for which I thank you, but we're supposed to be celebrating your triumph. So tell me—what are you going to make for His Highness Herman Mettler?"

  It took Katherine only a minute to decide. She went to her worktable for her sketch pad. This time she felt confident enough to share her ideas.

  **Much, much better!" Victoria exclaimed when she saw Katherine waiting in front of Podesta Baldocchi, framed by the shop's lush jungle of flowers and plants. "Forgive me for being late, my dear—but let me look at you! Katherine, you are quite lovely. I knew it. I am never wrong about women. Of course I am never wrong about men, either. Ah, and when you laugh you are really quite remarkable."

  Laughing as much from happiness as at Victoria's firm judgments, Katherine turned on the crowded sidewalk and kissed her cheek. "Oh, my dear," Victoria murmured. She stopped and looked about, as if unsure of where she was. "How quickly we forget—and then become greedy again."

  "You're thinking of Jennifer," Katherine said as they walked to Maiden L
ane. She felt a flash of jealousy, but then it passed. Jennifer was dead and it was Katherine, wonderfully alive, whom Victoria had asked to go Christmas shopping, and even the gray drizzle of the afternoon could not dim the way she felt when Victoria admired her—as if she had found both the mother and grandmother she had never known.

  "Some time we'll talk about Jennifer," Victoria said. "But not now. Now I am going to buy a new dress for Christmas dinner. Do you know it will be the first we've had at home in years?" They turned into Helga Howie. "Usually I am in Italy, or somewhere, but I thought, what a good idea, this year, for us all to be together. I hope I am not getting sentimental. At my age, it would look like senility. Renee, please," she said to a saleswoman and in a moment the designer appeared and greeted her as an old friend.

  After Victoria introduced her, Katherine browsed among Helga's designs and European imports while Victoria swiftly and decisively bought three knit dresses. "Done," she said as' they left. "I do not enjoy shopping. Such a waste of energy. I refuse to do it."

  "You just did," Katherine pointed out. 180

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  "But I did not enjoy it. The only civilized way to shop is to have everything sent home. Why should I disrobe in a store when I have an excellent dressing room of my own? However, I wanted you to meet Renee. Someday you'll buy your clothes from her."

  Katherine laughed. "Do you know that you spent two months of my salary on those three dresses?"

  Victoria paused. "Did I indeed? And yet you are not using the money that . . . arrives each month on things for yourself?"

  "No. Only for the children." She has trouble, Katherine thought, using Craig's name.

  "Well. I want you to help me with my shopping. The last few years I've given money but this year I shall once again give gifts. More sentiment^ty, perhaps. And difficult. How do I know anymore what most of them want?"

  "How do / know?" Katherine asked. "I hardly know your family."

  "Nonsense. You've spent time with all of us—a great deal of time with Derek, I gather," They walked into Gump's and for the first time Katherine discovered the heady joys of shopping with unlimited funds. Victoria had been serious about wanting her help: she asked for advice and most often took it, and Katherine chose what she liked, without looking at price tags. For two glorious hours they delved into the world's finest treasures, buying hand-carved lapis lazuli figures from Chile, Venetian opaline glass, Aynsley cobalt and gold china, suede jackets lined in sable, and Hermes purses for Melanie and Ann. "Though God knows why," said Victoria. "Ann won't use hers in the wilds of Maine and Melanie . . . well, Ross keeps his own counsel but it's my guess their marriage won't last out the year and if so, why am I buying that self-centered woman this magnificent piece of leather? Well, it doesn't matter. She can take it with her when she goes. We'll shop for the children on another day; they aren't ready for Gump's. But I am ready for tea. Come; I have a favorite place."

  It was a short walk, across Union Square. "Now," Victoria said, seated on a velvet couch at The Compass Rose. "Do you like it?"

  "It's amazing," Katherine answered. She did not say she had been there with Ross and that the room reminded her of

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  his wannth three months ago and how different he seemed just this week when he abruptly ended their phone call. She did not even ask Victoria what she had meant about Ross's marriage.

  "You need this room," said Victoria, ordering Brie and fruit and tea for both of them. "You need a little eccentricity. Your taste at Gump's—impeccable, of course, or I would not have agreed with your choices. But, my dear, to be so proper—at your age—!"

  "I don't understand. I thought—"

  "You thought you were pleasing me." Victoria fell silent, her eyes on a far wall. "I want to tell you a story. Fifty-six years ago, in 1925, a young woman discovered that the money she and her husband were living on was made by smuggling liquor into the country."

  "Prohibition ..."

  "Precisely. The young woman's husband was co-owner with his father of a small construction company, but he became obsessed with the thrill of defying the federal government. We will not discuss whether prohibition was good or bad; he was breaking the law and risking prison, and he continued to do so until Congress repealed prohibition. That was in 1933."

  Katherine nodded. Hugh Hay ward, she thought. Tobias had told her. But he said Victoria never talked about it.

  'The husband's father had died in 1930, leaving the company in the husband's hands. In his passion for smuggling, he had ignored it. By the time of repeal, when he began to pay attention to it, the company was almost moribund. Then he was struck by a new passion: to rescue the company that bore his father's name. It was not a simple task. The country was in a depression and construction companies were dying no matter how hard anyone tried to save them." Victoria drank her tea and gazed through the great doorway that looked into the busy hotel lobby. "By 1934, when it seemed he could not revive the company, he went into his own depression in the midst of the national depression. Day after day, he sat in his room, looking through the window at the worid passing by. You should have seen him, Katherine—tall and wonderfully handsome, with a smile that strangers turned to as if it were a beacon. When Ross smiles he looks exactly like him. He had broad shoulders and when he walked into a room he took

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  ownership of it just by being Hugh Hayward. I'll show you pictures of him, but they can't tell you how beautiful he was because you had to be with him to feel his magnetism. Then, to see him hunched in a chair, staring out the window, his fingers picking at his pants on his thigh—picking, all day long—and his mouth moving as if he were talking, but making no sound ... It was so terrible I had to get away. I had to get out of that house."

  Katherine let her tea grow cold, afraid to break Victoria's reverie.

  "In the fall of 1934, I went to the office of the Hayward Corporation and sat down in Hugh's chair. I had no idea what to do, but I knew that a construction company had to have something to build. So I called on the men who had shared Hugh's smuggling adventures and told them I would build them new houses. They laughed at me and patted me on the head. Never let a man pat you on the head, my dear, it means he is about to put you on a leash or kick you out. However, Hugh's firiends were great fools. They had written letters about their business and sexual activities—can you imagine? They wrote them down! And Hugh kept them. And I found them. In his dresser, under his boating socks. Naturally, his friends preferred that the letters not become public, so they ceased patting me on the head and the Hayward Corporation, under my direction, with the help of two fine men who had started it with Hugh's father, built some very expensive houses in Tiburon and Sausalito and Berkeley—oh, but land was cheap, then!— and I tucked the letters into the safe."

  Victoria signaled for more tea. "And more fruit," she told the waiter. "Katherine? More Brie?"

  Katherine shook her head. "Please go on."

  Victoria smiled. "We also had help, indirecdy, from money the government was spending. When schools and highways, and even post offices, were built by the WPA, people in the neighborhoods began to think about enlarging or repairing their homes. We could give credit because we had all that smuggling money. Once, we renovated an apartment building in Oakland. We stripped banisters and oak floors, rearranged walls and restored broken moldings, even replaced stained glass doors and windows. It took a year and a half. We finished on March 21, 1938."

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  The waiter put a plate of grapes and pears before them, and poured fresh tea. "You are wondering how I remember the date. I remember because on that morning Hugh woke up, dressed himself, and went to work, as if on a normal day. Four years had passed and he knew it, but his depression was gone, so he went to his oftice and sat down in his chair and began running his company."

  Katherine studied Victoria's expressionless face. "But it wasn't his company. You'd made it yours."

  "It was Hugh's com
pany. There was only one office and it was his, one desk and it was his. He thanked me for what I had done and sent me home to take care of our sons.**

  "But they weren't—how old were they?"

  "Curt was twenty and Jason nineteen."

  Their eyes met and they began to laugh. "But it isn't fuimy," Katherine said. "It's sad."

  "Certainly. But you see, Hugh was a genius and I knew it. I had kept the company alive, but he made it one of the largest and most influential in the state. And besides the monstrous projects that multiplied after the war—roads, bridges, dams, shopping centers—he carried the idea of restoration much farther than I ever dreamed. And if he took credit for thinking of it in the first place, what difference did it make, since he did it so brilliantly? You see, Katherine, all Hugh took from me was a small company. I never would have succeeded as he did."

  They were silent. Around them, conversations rose and fell, cultivated murmurs and the clink of silver spoons. "He took more than a company," Katherine protested. "He took your place. It was important to you."

  'True."

  "And you missed it when it was gone."

  "Oh, my, yes."

  Katherine was thinking. "Would you tell me," she said hesitantly, "what Jennifer was going to study in college?"

  "Ah." Victoria's eyes were bright. "I knew you would understand. Didn't I say I was always right about women? And men, of course. Jennifer wanted to be an engineer."

  "And work in the Hayward Corporation?"

  "In fact, we often talked about my financing her own company."

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  To finish what you began. You wanted Jennifer to live the life Hugh took away from you. So you could live it through her.

  Victoria sighed. "It's late, and we haven't talked about you. We must make definite plans for you, now that you have an order from Mettler. You'll come to tea so we can talk quietly.'* She signed the check, slipped her arms into her fur jacket, and kissed Katherine on both cheeks. And they walked down the carpeted stairs and through the lobby as clusters of people made way for Victoria's imperious figure and determined stride.