Fashionably Late (17 page)

“Have you started the coffee?” she asked Mrs. Frampton.

“No, Mrs. Kahn.”

“Well, could you start it now? Fill it to the brim. We’ll need at least twelve cups. And when you see it getting low, could you make another potful? And could you grind fresh beans? Jeffrey likes the hazelnut blend.”

She left Mrs. Frampton in the kitchen coping with the scream of the electric coffee grinder and carried the platter with the toughening lox out to the buffet Meanwhile, the florist had delivered an absolutely impossible arrangementţit was rubrum lilies and tuberoses. She must have been showering when it came. Karen rolled her eyes. Only in the suburbs.

Already the room smelled like a funeral parlor. No one would be able to eat with that perfume! Oh God. She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed both her temples.

All she wanted was to throw a nice little party, to get through the morning and early afternoon without hurt feelings, without an argument, and with a little bit of fun. This was a kind of obligatory gathering, but weren’t they all? Belle had reminded her more than once that she hadn’t entertained her family or Jeffrey’s in months, so she was paying off all her social debts in one swell foop. Guilt, Karen figured, was definitely hereditaryţyou got it from your mother. The erstwhile occasion was her niece’s upcoming bat mitzvah, but this was also a way to see all the family and friends she and Jeffrey were too busy to see very often. Still, even if she had been busy, she loved both her nieces and she wanted Tiff, especially, to feel special.

She also wanted everyone to get along. Stephanie would be meeting Tangela outside of work for the first time and she hoped the two of them might like one another. And if she wasn’t going to have or adopt children, and this was the only family she would get, she hoped that for once Belle would get along with Sylvia, Jeffrey’s mom, and that she, Karen, wouldn’t feel uncomfortable with Jeffrey’s two sisters.

Yeah. Don’t bet the farm.

She lifted the vase of heavily scented flowers and carried them out the back door. The grass was almost up to her calves: they’d fought the lawn and the lawn won. Jeffrey thought it looked more natural and less suburban this way, but Karen knew their neighbors did not approve. She looked around her. White lilacs grew alongside of the slate terrace, and if she denuded the garden, she could replace the offensive blooms in the flower arrangement with the milder lilacs. They wouldn’t give any color to the room but at least they wouldn’t make anyone nauseous.

Karen walked to the side door of the garden shed, found secateurs, and quickly cut two dozen branches of flowers. She did the best she could in pulling out the seventy bucks worth of lilies and rearranging the greens and the lilacs. They looked boringţreally second rate. Then she noticed a couple of dead branches on the bushes next to the forsythia. She cut them off and added them to the arrangement. They gave the flowers a kind of off-center balance, a starkness of death to contrast the rich pearly droop of the lilac bunches. She brought the vase into the dining room just in time to hear the front doorbell ring.

Jeffrey had put a Mozart CD onţ he always preferred classical music on the weekends, although she’d rather listen to the Spin Doctors, or even old Stones tapesţand apparently Jeffrey couldn’t hear the chimes.

Karen hustled to the front door.

Defina stood there, holding a foil-covered dish, accompanied by Tangela. “Well, I’m glad it’s you,” Karen said with relief. “I could use some help and I’m not ready for criticism yet.”

“Baby, I’m glad it’s you. I swear, if we had knocked on another door by mistake, we would have been arrested, or maybe sent to the back entrance. Are black folk allowed in this town?”

“If they can afford it,” Jeffrey said dryly and walked down the rest of the stairs into the foyer. Karen could tell he was already annoyedţhe hated entertaining the family. Oh, great. So much for their rapprochement. “Let me help you with your coats.” Karen took the dish out of Defina’s hands while the woman shrugged out of her full-length Luneraine mink. Karen didn’t like to touch it. She never wore furs, but she knew the coat was Defina’s pride. It was a bit too late in the season for fur, but hey, who’d complain? Tangela was also wearing a floor-length minkţDefina’s old white coatţand Karen had to admit that on her it looked good.

“I didn’t know what you were serving but I thought cornbread goes with everything!”

“I’ve never tried it with pickled herring, but it could just be the next culinary craze,” Karen told her. “Minsk soul food.”

“I said not to bring it,” Tangela complained, “but she don’t listen.

Everything has to be her way.” Tangela turned to Jeffrey, who helped her with her coat, and gave him not only a big smile but raised eyebrows and a comehither look to boot. “Thank you,” she breathed.

Jeffrey raised his own brows, shot a look to Karen, and disappeared to hang the coats. Defina followed Karen into the kitchen. “What can I do?” she asked.

“Find yourself a seat,” Karen said. “I’m just going to pop these croissants and the pain all chocolate into the oven.” She laid out a dozen flaky crescents on the cookie tin and slid them into the stove.

Was Mrs. Frampton eyeing Defina with disapproval or was that her imagination?

, There was a knock from the brass doorknocker and Jeffrey led in Perry Silverrnan. Perry was still Jeffrey’s best friendţone of the few that Karen sincerely liked. Perry, unlike Jeffrey, was still a painter, and if his career lately wasn’t brilliant, his paintings wereţor had been.

He was successful enough to still own the SoHo loft he and Jeffrey had once shared, paint fulltime, and get a show mounted every couple of years.

Karen had invited him for a lot of reasons, one of which was guilt.

Perry’s nine-year-old daughter Lottie had come down with a particularly virulent strain of leukemia and wasted away quickly, despite state-of-the-art treatment at Sloan Kettering. Since then, Perry’s marriage to June, his wife of eleven years, had failed. Perry was a messţjust recently he’d canceled his last one-man show. Aside from poker with Jeffrey, Perry seemed to go nowhere and do nothing. Karen felt honor-bound to invite him, but she was surprised he’d accepted.

Perry kissed both her cheeksţnot the New York social air-kiss but real smackers. She hugged him.

“Mmm, feels good,” he said. Then he greeted Defina and Tangela and looked around. He shook his head. “Connecticut,” he said grimly, “where the charm is strictly enforced.”

“Along with the racial segregation,” Defina cracked.

Karen rolled her eyes. Great. The two of them could bond in their negativity. And simultaneously piss Jeffrey off. Swell start to the brunch.

“Come on, let me show you the house,” Karen said. They walked through the swinging kitchen doors into the living room.

“Mother of God!” Defina exclaimed. “It’s as big as a church.”

“Mother,” Tangela whined, correctively. Tangela looked at Jeffrey, who was already playing bartender, handing her a goblet of orange juice.

“I think it’s beautiful,” she simpered. Jeffrey ignored her.

“What are you drinking, Defina?” he asked briskly. The doorbell chimed and Karen went to get it. Sylvia and Jeffrey’s two sisters stood outside. Since Jeffrey’s father had died, Sylvia spent most of her time with Sooky and Buff, her two married daughters.

SookyţSusanţwas married to Robert, an attorney who handled VIKInc’s legal work, but BuffţBarbaraţwas divorced from her Robert, an investment banker. Both sisters were the kind of wealthy Jewish girls who had made Karen feel insecure all during high school. They were smart, verbal, and caustic and neither one of them ever let herself outgrow her size six wardrobe.

Sylvia had a new hairstyle. It was now more white than anything else, but there was still some pepper-and-salt, like Jeffrey’s. It looked simple and chic . Her mother-in-law was wearing a Sonia Rykiel sweater outfit. Sylvia was one of the “Sisters of Sonia” cult and had been buying seriously from Rykiel for years. And Karen knew that when a wealthy woman did that she was not simply buying clothes but defining herself and her stake in a society that wore them. Karen didn’t know if she should take it as an insult that Sylvia never wore her designs, or if Sylvia simply didn’t think about things like that. But she suspected Sylvia did. “Come in,” she said with the best smile she could manage, and the three women, followed by Robertthe-lawyer, did.

Robertthe-lawyer himself specialized in acquisitions, but his firm had represented June in her and Perry’s divorce. June had come from some big family money and Robertthe-lawyer’s firm had made sure she kept it. Not that Perry seemed to have been particularly interested in it: he had taken Lottie’s death even harder than June. He didn’t seem to have any interests right now. Karen had been afraid he might feel ill-will toward Robert, but he just looked up at the arriving group and managed a nod.

He’d known them all since he was roommates with Jeffrey at school.

Belle arrived late, with an excuse from Karen’s father and a long story about how he almost came with her but then canceled, about how he changed his mind and was going to come later. It made Karen tired to hear even a part of it. Before Belle was done, Lisa, Leonard, and the girls arrived and the party was complete.

Karen spent the first half-hour or so exclaiming over clothes, getting drinks, and looking for Mrs. Frampton. The guests seemed busy with the food and one another, but there were definitely three camps: the Kahns, Belle and her descendants, and the outcastsţPerry, Defina, and Tangela.

Karen kept trying to get them to mix. It wasn’t easy. It was just as well that Carl hadn’t been able to come since he wouldn’t have made it any easier. It took a little while for her to have enough time to get a breather. Finally, she had a moment and stood at the kitchen door looking across the room at the assembly. It was funny to think that the room held all of the stockholders of VIKInc. In a way, they were all her business partners. They looked pleasant, affluent, and as if they were enjoying themselves.

But all at once, Karen was swept with a terrible sense of separation.

All of these people seemed like actors, strangers. What did they have to do with her? What struck her most was the difference between her mother and Jeffrey’s. Jeffrey’s mother somehow looked both younger and older than Belle. Her style was more natural, more casual, and a lot smarter, which gave herţ from a distanceţthe appearance of a woman of forty. Yet her hair color and her face with its subdued makeup showed her age, simply and without artifice. About Belle, people said, “She looks good for her age.” About Sylvia, people simply said, “She looks good.”

Belle looked forced. With her pleated dresses and fitted jackets she reminded Karen of a Jewish Nancy Reaganţall gold buttons and overstyled hair. Adolfo meets Rockville Centre. Poor Belle. She tried too hard.

Karen felt a wave of pity for her. Once, in an interview, a stern Russian journalist had said to her that she didn’t like people who dress too well because she was suspicious that they thought of nothing else.

That was Belle. Yet despite the care she took with her lacquered shell, Belle’s fear that she didn’t quite fit in the world she wanted so desperately to belong toţSylvia’s worldţwas well founded. Belle couldn’t quite penetrate the world of wealthy, educated, informed Jewish women.

Sylvia, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to everything but Jeffrey.

How she loved her son! She found every excuse to tap him, to pat him, to stroke his cheek or ruffle his hair. And Jeffrey accepted her adoration as if it was his due. He wasn’t a Jewish prince to his mother, he was a Jewish deity. Karen understood. She felt almost the same way about Jeffrey herself. It reminded her of the joke about Jesus: “How do you know Jesus was a Jew? Because he lived at home until he was thirty-three, because he went into his father’s business, and because his mother thought he was God.” Karen smiled. Jeffrey had always been close to his mother.

Jeffrey’s dad had wanted him to join the family real estate business, but with Sylvia’s help, Jeffrey had resisted, gone to art school, and become a painter. Karen knew what a sacrifice it had been to give it up in order to manage her business and still felt both guilty and grateful. It was good that now, after more than a decade, he was beginning to paint again. Of course he wanted out from under, wanted the NormCo deal to set him free. He deserved it, she reminded herself.

She’d have to try to be more supportive.

“Come and see, if you want to,” Jeffrey was saying now, and opened the door that led out to his studio. Since they’d built the Westport property, he’d designed a studio and had been working in it. Though he’d been very private about it, now it appeared he was willing to show his work to his mother and anyone else who chose to come along.

Just then Arnold arrived. Karen greeted her father, got him coffee, and settled him on a sofa while Sylvia, Sooky, Robertthe-lawyer, Buff, Belle, Lisa, Tangela, and Stephanie followed Jeffrey. Lumpy Tiff stood at the sideboard, waffling down yet another bagel. God, she looked awful. Karen felt her heart go out to the girlţKaren herself had been lumpy as a teenager and she hadn’t had a gorgeous older sister to compete with. Now Karen tried to seem casual as she crossed the room to the girl. “Tiff, don’t you want to see Uncle Jeffrey’s paintings?”

“No,” Tiff said calmly, and picked up another bagel. Was it her third or her fourth?

“I don’t want to see Uncle Jeffrey’s paintings either,” Perry volunteered. “If I do, he’ll want me to tell him what I think of them.”

To be honest, Karen herself was not actually thrilled with Jeffrey’s work. But what did she know about fine art? To her, the nudes seemed, somehow, too glossy, too obvious, rather louche. More Penthouse than Art News. Did Perry mean that he didn’t like them either? She respected Perry’s opinion and had come to love his subtle canvases.

She looked at him. Had he been drinking? Enough to be drunk? At noon? Not that she’d blame him. If she was in pain over not conceiving a child, what must his loss feel like? Lottie had been an adorable little girl. When Karen imagined losing a child that way, she thought perhaps she was better off infertile.