Always and Forever (26 page)

Some afternoons Kathy and Bella were driven down to Worth Avenue to roam among the magnificent shops. Bella was candid about the pleasure of buying clothes.

“You can always tell when I’ve had a fight with Julius,” Bella confided. “I shop like mad. I’m giving myself treats because he’s been a bastard about one thing or another. I don’t even care about his parade of floozies anymore. It’s the petty little fights, when he makes his snide remarks to me. I’ve done all right for the little stenographer from the Bronx whose folks thought the height of luxury would be to live in an apartment on the Grand Concourse.”

It was amazing, Kathy thought, how close she had become to Bella. After all these years Gail and Brenda were little more than strangers. She enjoyed Bella’s turning to her for advice about clothes. Bella said she had a real sense of style, she remembered with satisfaction.

In another two years she’d find out how good that sense of style really was. The day Jesse started the first grade would be the day she moved into the outside business world. She’d have to start at the bottom, she conceded, but she’d build herself a career. She wouldn’t allow Phil to stand in her way.

On their return from Palm Beach, Wally met them at the airport with the limousine.

“Mr. Phil said you two ladies were to meet him and his father for dinner at Le Pavilion at eight o’clock. He’s made reservations.”

“Thank you, Wally.” Bella sighed. “The circus begins again.”

In an exquisitely simple black crepe dinner dress with a pleated wraparound bodice and skirt—a line-for-line copy of a Dior—Kathy sat between Phil and Julius while the two men argued over the new contract drawn up for their world-class designer. Julius, as to be expected, was outraged at the designer’s demands.

Bella turned to Kathy with a sigh of impatience that on their first evening back from Palm Beach, over dinner at Le Pavilion, the two men had to talk business.

“How clever of you to wear black here,” Bella complimented Kathy. “It’s so dramatic against all this cerise upholstery. And of course, the red roses look as though they’d been ordered just for you.”

“Isn’t it a beautiful room!” Kathy gazed about with pleasure. “Everything is so perfect.” The tab would be enormous, she thought, but it would show up on either Phil’s expense account or his father’s.

“We’re going to a Broadway opening tomorrow night,” Julius announced with a complacent grin. “I own a piece of the show.”

“You invested in a play?” Bella was astonished. “You’ve always said that was for suckers.”

“That was until our accountant explained the facts of life to Dad.” Phil exchanged a knowing glance with his father. “It’s a smart move, business-wise. Theater people are always in the news. You travel with them—you’re part of that.”

“Is it a musical?” Bella asked.

“No.” Now Julius appeared slightly self-conscious. “It’s serious theater. They wanted Lee Strasberg to direct, but he was otherwise involved. But it’s that kind of play.”

“Julius, if it’s opening tomorrow night, you must have invested months ago. Now you tell me?” Bella shook her head in annoyance.

“What’s to tell? It’s another investment.” Julius shrugged and turned to Phil. “Make sure we have reservations at Sardi’s for after the performance.”

“They’re made,” Phil told him.

Instinctively Kathy guessed that Phil had prodded his father into putting money into the play. What pushed Phil back into the theater scene, she wondered curiously. The answer came quickly. Some sexy young actress looking for a break.

“Take home that sable cape for Kathy to wear to the opening,” Julius ordered. “Kathy, phone Roz and ask what you should wear with the cape.”

“I’ll know what to wear,” Kathy said with strained politeness. Under the surface there was always this aura of hostility between herself and her father-in-law, she thought. He still hadn’t forgiven her for refusing to have a big wedding. And she’d rejected his suggestion about having Jesse’s
bris
at the Hampshire House.

“What are we celebrating tonight?” Bella asked. Kathy noted she was wearing her diamond necklace, no doubt at Julius’s orders.

“Roz wants us here.” Julius glanced toward the entrance. “She and the publicity man for the play are working on a column item. Why didn’t you wear your diamond and sapphire necklace, Kathy?”

“I loaned it to Alice tonight,” she murmured.

For a moment Julius stared at her in shock, then broke into laughter.

“You mean, to wear to the Firemen’s Ball.”

“Here comes Roz,” Phil whispered. “Smile pretty, ladies.”

Even now—and she was sure the affair between Roz and Phil was over—Kathy tensed in Roz Masters’ presence. Who in tomorrow night’s play had replaced Roz?

Kathy made a pretense of being involved in the opening night excitement. Phil and his father saw the Kohn entourage—Brenda and Gail and their husbands—to their seats, then disappeared until a moment before curtain time. The instant Carol made her entrance—even before she had delivered her five lines—Kathy knew this was Phil’s latest fling.

By the end of the second act Kathy was sure the play would close within a week, though the opening-night audience circulating in the lobby between the first and second act had made the expected laudatory pronouncements. The cast was brought back for several curtain calls, but this was an audience of friends, Kathy realized.

After the show, Julius herded his party from the theater to Sardi’s, where Phil had made reservations in the wood-paneled Belasco Room, a favorite site for more intimate theater wakes.

“We’ll wait for the reviews,” Julius said firmly, though Kathy suspected even he realized this investment would be a tax write-off.

Gail and Brenda dissected the clothes worn by the actresses in the company. Bella said bluntly that the play was dull and that the critics would probably rip it to shreds.

“They should have brought in a Hollywood star,” Julius complained. “That’s always good box-office.”

“The director wanted John Garfield,” Phil told him.

“Garfield’s a bloody Commie,” Julius scoffed. “The whole world knows that.”

“Because
Counterattack
and books like
Red Channels
say so?” Kathy challenged.

“We have to protect ourselves against those creeps,” Julius blustered, color flooding his face. “They’re out to destroy the world.”

“During the Depression a lot of loyal Americans were drawn into the Communist Party.” Kathy ignored Bella’s pantomimed plea to redirect the conversation. It infuriated Julius to be contradicted by anyone in the family, particularly a woman. “Look at all the Americans who fought with the Loyalists in Spain.” Frank’s father, Kathy recalled, had driven an ambulance with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. “But they got out.”

“A bunch of
schmucks,
” Julius scoffed.

“Look, this is not a period to make waves.” Phil shot a warning glance at Kathy.

“Just to ruin careers and lives,” Kathy said sweetly.

“Here comes the cast.” Bella was intent on diverting the table talk into less controversial areas. “This must be a nerve-wracking time for them.”

The two Kohn daughters and their husbands remained for the usual lavish spread of lasagna, seafood Newburgh, salads, macédoine of fruit, and French pastries and then took off for Greenwich. Phil and Julius had made it clear they meant to remain until the early morning reviews came through. The company press agent put on an Academy Award performance, but most of those present knew the reviews would be bad.

Kathy was aware of the secret exchanges between Phil and Carol Graham, who sat at the next table with others in the cast. She heard Carol’s squeal of delight that the reviewers—when at last the newspapers were brought into the Belasco Room—had singled her out as “a promising young actress,” though the reviews in general were so bad that Phil said closing notices would be posted the following day.

As the Kohn party prepared to leave, Kathy saw Phil contrive to talk for a moment with Carol Graham. His drinking tonight had made him careless. She heard Carol’s response to an obviously amorous question.

“Phil, I can’t,” Carol trilled. “I’m having supper tomorrow night with this man I met who’s sure he can get me into Actors Studio, and you know how much that means to me!”

Who would replace Carol Graham, Kathy asked herself. Why did it still hurt, when she knew her marriage was dead? Pride, she taunted herself. Did people around Seventh Avenue talk about Phil the way they talked about his father?

K
ATHY WAS DELIGHTED WHEN
Marge wrote in March that she would be in New York in April—“with terrific news.” She put aside the letter, inspected the clock, and reached for the telephone. With the difference in time it was almost 7
A.M.
in San Francisco. Feeling deliriously close to Marge, she phoned, suspecting she would replace Marge’s alarm clock this morning.

“Hello—” Marge sounded vaguely awake.

“I just got your letter,” Kathy said. “How do you expect me to wait until April for your ‘terrific news’?”

“Kathy! It isn’t all really set yet, which is why I stalled. But it looks like I’m going to open my own shop!”

“Here in New York?” Kathy asked hopefully.

“In San Francisco,” Marge apologized. “I met this rich elderly couple who offered to back me. I gather they’ve got more money than Fort Knox, and they like to see young ‘entrepreneurs’—to use his word—move up in the world. His wife’s a steady customer in the shop where I’m working.”

“Marge, that’s wonderful! That means you’ll be selling some of your own designs?”

“I’m sure as hell going to try. Anyhow, I’ll be in for a week, staying with Mom in Brooklyn and listening to her complain because I’m not married and not providing her with grandchildren. But I’ll be in the city every day. We’ll have a ball!”

Kathy waited restlessly for Marge to arrive. She was eager to talk over her own plans to move into the business world. One year from this coming June, she thought with heady anticipation, Jesse would be six. That September he would start first grade. Emancipation day for her.

Kathy arranged a small dinner party for Marge on her second evening in New York. That same morning Phil phoned from the office to say he was flying to Palm Beach early in the afternoon to discuss a lease on a shop on Worth Avenue.

“I’ll be down there just for three days. Sorry to mess up your seating arrangements tonight,” he apologized. “I’ll bring you something pretty from Palm Beach.”

“I don’t worry about seating arrangements. It’s not Noah’s Ark,” Kathy said casually. In a way it would be a relief not to have Phil there. The guests were all
her
friends. Phil knew Rhoda and Frank, of course, but they had nothing in common. “Shall I pack a bag for you?”

“I’ll be home in twenty minutes to pack. I suppose Jesse is at nursery school?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell him I’ll bring him a present from Palm Beach.”

To Phil a present made up for missed storytelling sessions, which were frequent. Probably he’d have his secretary pick up something at F.A.O. Schwarz on her lunch hour, and he’d present it as a souvenir from Palm Beach.

Marge arrived early, as planned, kicked off her shoes and settled on the sofa for ebullient conversation.

“I love Mom, but she does drive me nuts,” Marge said good-humoredly. “You know the routine. Here I am twenty-eight years old and still single. She keeps telling me how I have to go out and join things—political clubs are her main
shtick
now. I should join the Democratic Club and meet young lawyers on the way up. I should take tennis lessons because she thinks I look good in tennis shorts. Maybe,” Marge sighed, “I’d look good in shorts if I dumped the fifteen pounds I’ve picked up from eating sourdough bread lathered with butter.”

“Tell me about the shop,” Kathy ordered. “I’m dying to know every little detail.”

When Jesse arrived, he was instantly the focus of their attention.

“I tell you, if anything could persuade me that marriage is great, it would be Jesse. He’s such a love.”

“He’s what keeps me with Phil,” Kathy admitted. “I want him to have the best of everything.”

Then the others arrived, and the apartment seemed to radiate high spirits. Here the conversation jumped from subject to subject, erupting regularly into good-humored argument. They lingered around the dinner table talking about the coming Republican and Democratic conventions.

“As much as I’d love to see Stevenson run for president, I think he’d be nuts to do it,” Frank declared. “Who the hell can win against Eisenhower?”

They dissected the question of who was winning in Korea and talked with anguish about the red-baiting that was destroying so many of the country’s creative talents. Kathy gloried in the stimulation that seemed to ricochet about the apartment. This was her real life—the hours spent among old friends with something on their minds besides the fur industry and making money. This and the hours in Borough Park, with Mom and Dad and Aunt Sophie.

Reluctantly the guests began to leave.

“Tomorrow’s a workday,” Rhoda reminded while Frank went to bring their coats from Kathy’s bedroom. She and Frank were the last to leave. “But it’s been such fun.”

“Phil’s flying to Denver in ten days for business,” Kathy remembered. “He’ll be away for the weekend. Why don’t you and Frank go up to the Greenwich house with me that Friday evening? We can come back into town sometime Sunday.”

“I don’t think it’ll be a good idea,” Rhoda said uneasily.

“Why not?” Kathy was puzzled.

“Frank and I are becoming active in a new group that’s fighting against the trapping of wild animals by fur traders.”

“You?” Kathy broke into laughter. “Rhoda, you’re the one who joined Marge in poking fun at me when I’d say I wasn’t comfortable walking around with furs that used to be on some wild animals’ backs. Marge said—and you agreed with her—‘Let Julius Kohn present you with a gorgeous mink, and you’ll change your mind.’”

“Frank converted me,” Rhoda admitted. “He read me the most heartbreaking plea—written back in the last century by Minnie Madden Fiske—for women to stop wearing furs because of the pain inflicted by the traps. For what? So we can prance around in those poor little animals’ skins.”