Possessions

by Judith Michael

  The golden bracelet lay with its matching necklace of thin gold textured discs in a cotton-lined box. Eight other pieces lay in separate boxes. Katherine stood beside her worktable, studying them, listening to the rain. She knew they were good;

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  tomorrow Mettler would tell her what he thought. Tomorrow, she repeated; tomorrow.

  The rain was still falling the next morning, blowing in long sheets across the pavement. Katherine heard it behind her as she entered the store, and then it was gone. In Herman Mettier's office, the only storms were those he made himself.

  *They're very good," Mettler said, turning Katherine's jewelry in his splayed fingers as if he were inspecting fruit for rotten spots. "Very good technique. Excellent technique. More than Tony has taught you—individual touches here and there— very good—very good technique."

  *Thank you." Katherine shifted in her chair.

  "I place great emphasis on technique," Mettler said, putting his palms together beneath his chin as if he were praying. "The best design in the world can be ruined by poor technique."

  She nodded, twisted inside so tightly she thought she would snap, waiting for him to talk about design.

  "However, the reverse is also true. The best technique in the world cannot disguise weak design."

  Katherine sat on the edge of her chair, her back straight.

  His hands still praying, Mettler looked down at the boxes of jewelry, jumbled from his handling. 'These pieces, now. Excellent technique. Very impressive. But the design, I fear, leaves something to be desired." He paused and gave her the same cool inspection he had given her jewelry. "Frankly, I'm surprised that a woman as attractive as you would be so cautious. Beautiful women can afford to take chances other women cannot. So why do you bring me safe designs similar to those I see in other fine stores?" He leaned back in his chair. "Customers only buy technique when they pay a high price for design. Am I making myself clear? These are nice pieces, pleasant pieces, superbly made. I have no doubt that I can sell them, and I intend to, but in the cases in the rear, not those up front. Our customers expect uniqueness at Mettier's. They are willing to pay for it. I see nothing here that is remotely unique."

  Furious, Katherine bit her lip to keep quiet. He could have softened his criticism. But suddenly Victoria's voice came to her. You need a little eccentricity. To be so proper . . . at your age . . .

  Mettler was waiting. Hastily, she said, "I was worried that

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  you might not buy anything too different, from someone new . . ."

  "No, no, no; what nonsense. You've studied our display cases? Then you know how much we value the avant garde. The excellent avant garde, of course; we are not interested in the merely sensational. Your designs are neither. They are simply—rather ordinary. In any case—" Shooting his cuff to look at his watch, he became brisk. "As I said, I intend to sell these. And you brought prices. Good." Reading from her hst, he jotted figures on his notepad. "One hundred for the bracelet .. . not much for your labor there. I'll have to charge five hundred; my competitors would run me out of town if I charged less. And you want fifty for the ..." He talked to himself for a while. "All right. Your total is fme; twelve hundred for the ten pieces. And I can take another dozen, even if they're like these. There is always a market for the tried and true. I need them by June, for our fall collection. Thank you, Mrs. Fraser. I'm sure we'll work well together."

  "But—"

  Mettler's secretary appeared in the doorway, invisibly sent for. Katherine stood up. Twelve more, four months from now. Not enough to quit her job; not enough to make a name for herself. All her dreams were sliding away. But Mettler, looking again at his watch, would not know that. She held out her hand, surprising him into shaking it. "Thank you," she said, her voice strong. "I'll get them to you as early as possible."

  And downstairs, lingering beside the glass cases at the front of the store, she vowed to herself that that was where her next twelve pieces would be displayed. Somehow, she thought as she left to face Lister's sarcastic wrath for being late—next time, I'll find a way to make Herman Mettler sit up and take notice.

  Victoria and Tobias had been back from Italy only a few days when they called, separately, to invite Katherine to dinner the following week. It was a blustery night, the beginning of March, and when she arrived the butler led her to the library, where she found them in front of the fire, with Ross.

  "My dear!" Victoria exclaimed, rising to kiss her, and Ross turned, as startled as Katherine. In the flickering light, she had thought at first it was Derek; then, in a swift comparison she

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  was barely aware of, she saw that the cheekbones were not as sharp, the shadowed hollows not as deep, the mouth, even unsmiling, wider and a little fuller. His face was gentler than Derek's but not soft; in fact, as Katherine sat between Victoria and Tobias, she thought he looked as severe as he had in Vancouver, when he was forcing her to accept the truth about Craig.

  He stood and greeted her formally and brought up Craig's New Year visit. "Victoria and Tobias told me about it. He still won't give you a chance."

  Tears sprang to Katherine's eyes. He was the only one who saw exactly why she had been so hurt and angry.

  He asked about her children. "Jon and Carrie enjoyed seeing them at Christmas."

  "We might get them together some time," Katherine said.

  "We might." They were silent. Victoria and Tobias watched with interest. Ross asked about Katherine's jeweler's tools and she asked about BayBridge and then silence fell once more. "I was just leaving," Ross said at last. "I'm expected at home, I only stopped by to greet the returning travelers. I'm sorry—" He paused. "I'm sorry we've seen so little of each other."

  "So am I," Katherine responded, puzzled by the strain in his voice. "But I know how busy you are. And I've been busy, too . . ."

  He nodded. "So I've heard." Their eyes met. Then, turning abruptly, he bent over Victoria and kissed her. "Lunch on Friday. Don't forget. Katherine ... it was good to see you. Tobias, I'd like to ask you about some books I'm thinking of buying." Tobias shrugged in silent apology to Katherine and left the room with Ross.

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. "Ross isn't usually so abrupt. But he's concerned about you, you know."

  "I doubt it," said Katherine.

  "Oh, yes." Victoria handed her a glass of sherry. "We all are."

  Katherine was puzzled. "Why? You can't know anything about Mettler yet."

  "Mettler? What about him? No, wait; Tobias will want to hear it, too. What we are worried about is you and Derek."

  "Derek?"

  "Well, my dear, it's been four months. People talk when a 223

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  beautiful woman is seen about town with Derek for one month, much less four. They talk to me, anyway, and to Tobias, and we were discussing that when Ross came in."

  "But what difference does it make if I go out with DerekT'

  "None, as long as you don't fall in love with him." Katherine was silent. "Are you in love with him?"

  "No. And I don't expect to be. I have a husband, you know."

  "When was that ever a guarantee—? In any event, you haven't seen your husband for ahnost nine months. It's natural that you would be attracted to other men. But it should not be Derek."

  Katherine drank her sherry and looked at the flames in the fireplace. "A strange way to talk about your grandson."

  "I am saying he's not good for you. Is it strange for me to tell my granddaughter that?"

  A rush of love swept over Katherine. My granddaughter. *Thank you," she said. "You make me feel as if I belong."

  "But of course you belong," said Tobias cheerfully, taking his seat and pouring more sherry into their glasses. "Though we were slow to see it at first. How have you been while we romped through Italy?"

  "Something is wrong about Mettler," Victoria said, and while the butler set the table beside them Katherine described what had h
appened the week before.

  "A pox upon him!" Tobias thundered.

  "What you must do, Katherine," Victoria pronounced as they sat at the table, "is choose one style and one material— gold would be excellent—which will give you an identity with customers. I've been thinking about your career, my dear, and I've decided you should take advantage of your charmingly old-fashioned quality which I find so endearing."

  "Old-fashioned?" Katherine asked.

  "My dear, I may be as old as the century but I am aware that, today, when a woman says she will not fall in love with someone because she has a husband, that may safely be called old-fashioned. I find it charming. Most people would, at least privately, because they long for what seems to have been a simpler past. If you pattern your designs, for example, on my antique jewelry, women will buy them."

  "No men?" asked Tobias mildly.

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  "Some; but women wear most of the jewelry, Tobias, you know that. You yourself wear none."

  "Who buys most of it?"

  "Ah." Victoria sat back to allow the butler to remove her soup plate. "So you think jewehy is aimed at males. That might be. Male fantasies?"

  " 'Hopes and fears and twilight fantasies—'" Tobias quoted.

  Katherine was struck by the words. "Who wrote that?" she asked.

  "Shelley." Tobias smiled, grateful for an audience. "From Adonais: Would you like to hear more of it?" Without waiting, he quoted, "'Desires and adorations . . . Splendors and Glooms, and glinmiering Incarnations of hopes and fears, and twilight Fantasies; And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs—'"

  "Yes," said Victoria abruptly, her keen eyes on Katherine's somber ones. "But I thought we were talking about Katherine's career. Katherine, before you do anything else, you must speak to the other important jewelers in town. Herman Mettler may think he's the only one, but I myself often shop at Xavier's and Laykin Et Cie. I'll call first and tell them you're coming. Take your sketches. A pity you have no more finished pieces; it's possible no one would agree with Mettler. Especially if he made such a point of your technique." Without warning, she struck the table. "Bastard! To praise your technique and then call you ordinary! I remember when he was peddling fake pearls during the depression. I shall buy nothing more from him. In fact, I shall write him a letter. If he thmks he can speak that way to my granddaughter—"

  "No, please. Don't do that." Katherine looked troubled. "I have to make my own way. Craig forced me to do it, but now I really want to." She smiled. "You did say I needed to be eccentric. And my pieces really weren't unusual. I mean, I thought they were beautiful, but I wasn't trying to be different—"

  "You don't need to be different," Victoria declared. "You must only be yourself, no one else."

  "How about a younger, successful Victoria?" asked Tobias, and the room was silent except for the whisper of the fire.

  "I am not trying to force Katherine into anything," Victoria said at last. "She does not have to be successful for my sake.

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  But" —she looked at Katherine through half-closed eyes— "you want a place to belong, yet you insist on going your own way."

  "Finding my own way," Katherine corrected quietly. "I need a place to belong, I need your help, or, at least, your concern and interest and—"

  "Love?" suggested Tobias helpfully.

  "Love," Katherine echoed. "It makes me feel wonderful when you swear at Mettler, but I don't want you to swear at him in person. I need to win him over myself, with my work. Otherwise, I'll never know whether I'm any good or not."

  "Even if you fail," Tobias prompted.

  "Of course. I'm sorry," she said to Victoria. "I know you want me to succeed. But I have to know."

  After a moment, Victoria took her hand. "Be sure to tell me when Mettler puts your pieces on display. I shall be the first to buy one."

  For a month, rumors had drifted through Heath's. Business was bad or the chain was about to be sold or somebody on the fifth floor was playing a hell of an April Fool's joke. Whatever it was, an outside accounting fum had been hired to examine the sales records of all departments, and inventories were being ordered in different departments without warning.

  When an inventory of the design department was called, Gil Lister went into a frenzy. "Do the windows!" he ordered Katherine the minute the store closed. "Everything! Merchandise, props, every fucking champagne bottle in the wedding scene! By God, they want an inventory, I'll give them one they'll never forget!"

  In the strange, cavelike windows, screened from the street, Katherine stood in the center of a gala wedding reception, with memories of her own wedding flooding over her. She could feel Craig's arm around her waist as they stood in the judge's living room; she could see Leslie and the judge's wife: their witnesses. In the comer a Raggedy Ann doll stared at the ceiling. Craig had said there was no one he wanted, and so they had begun their new family in a strange living room with only Leslie as Katherine's link with her past.

  In the curtained window, Katherine walked around the va-

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  cantly smiling mannequins, jotting down department and style numbers of dresses, men's cutaways, shoes, purses and gloves, glasses and bottles of champagne, trays of polyethylene hors d'oeuvres, silk and paper flowers. Long ago she and Craig had given parties, though never very many, and after a while they stopped altogether. Katherine had loved every part of them, planning, cooking, and cleaning for days in advance, grateful to Craig for letting her do it even though he was uncomfortable with groups of people and always breathed a sigh of relief when the last guest was ushered out.

  She'd always been grateful to Craig, Katherine realized, standing in the window beside the bride and groom. First because he loved her and married her, and then, over the years, for giving her a home, for taking care of her, for being a loving father to Jennifer and Todd, for building a beautiful house and encouraging her to buy whatever she wanted to make it perfect. She gazed at the mindlessly grinning groom. She had even been grateful for her orgasms. When I had them, she thought; usually I didn't. In the last two years, when Craig had been so rushed and preoccupied, there had been almost none.

  But he hadn't known that. He would have been hurt if she'd told him she wasn't satisfied. The groom leered at her, and suddenly the thought came to Katherine—No, he wouldn't. He wouldn't have been hurt at all. He'd have found some way to make it seem my fault. He would have run from it.

  It was as if she'd turned a comer and come upon a familiar view from a -different angle. "I have to stop this," she said aloud. "I'm beginning to sound like Derek." She hurried through the other window displays, scribbling numbers on her lined paper. With a final look around, she went back into the store and walked through the aisles, so eerily empty, her footsteps echoing as she went down the stairs to the basement.

  The display storeroom was empty. "Gil?" Katherine called. When there was no answer she put her clipboard on his desk and stood uncertainly, wanting to go home but afraid to leave anything undone. There was no new paperwork on her desk, but along one wall was a row of merchandise cartons packed with materials they'd removed from the windows the day before, when they created the wedding scenes. Perhaps he expected her to check them. They should have been sent back to

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  the warehouse that morning, but the driver had been sick and though Lister had been offered a replacement, he had refused, saying he'd wait for the regular man,

  I'd bener do them, Katherine thought, or he'll sneer at me for being in a hurry to leave.

  The dresses and shorts were neatly folded, layered with tennis rackets and hiking gear, and Katherine went through them rapidly, marking them on her master list. But halfway into the second box, she came upon a plastic bag with six Perry Ellis cardigans that had not been used in the window displays. Damn, she thought. If somebody's got new things from the receiving room mixed up with ours, it could take hours to straighten out.

  Methodically, she began emp
tying all the cartons. In the next four, she found merchandise that had not come from window displays or the display storeroom: Francesca of Damon dresses, Anne Klein blouses, ten boxes of Hermes silk scarves. She was about to begin the fifth carton when Lister walked in. He stopped short, a doughnut halfway to his mouth. "What the fuck are you doing?" he screamed. "Who told you to do that? Get away from there!"

  Katherine sprang to her feet. "I'm sorry, Gil; I didn't know if they'd been done and I thought—"

  "You thought! You thought! You're not supposed to think! You're supposed to do what I tell you and I told you to do the windows!"

  "I did the windows! I didn't have anything else to do and—"

  "And you didn't wait for my orders! How many times have I told you never to do anything unless I order it? Well? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? But you've never liked that, have you, all ga-ga'd up with your new haircut, and looking down your nose like the queen of Sheba—you and your high and mighty ideas about art and design and window decorating—but I'm the one in charge here, whatever you may think, and your sucking around a certain person on the fifth floor won't help you a—"

  *That - is - enough!" Shedding all her caution, Katherine strode across the room. Lister, a gleam of alarm in his eyes, scuttled backwards until he was against his desk. "Leslie is my

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  friend," Katherine said deliberately. "But I've never used that in my work here and you know it. I've taken your insults and rudeness and offensive jokes and I've never told anyone about them. I've never told anyone how many window ideas you steal from other stores. I've never told anyone how many of my ideas you've used and claimed credit for. Because I needed this job—" My God, she thought; I still need this job. But it was too late; the resentments of the past months were a torrent that drowned out everything else.