Always and Forever (34 page)

On impulse—excited about the possibility of an apartment—Kathy took a few hours off from the shop to go to the beauty salon across the street.

“This is a new life, Marge. I want a new look.” And she would feel safe from detection, Kathy promised herself, with a change in hair-coloring and hairstyle. She would no longer match the description of Kathy Kohn.

Marge greeted her with approval when she returned from the beauty salon. Her shoulder-length dark hair had been replaced by a honey-colored poodle cut.

“Kathy, you look about eighteen,” Marge crowed. “I’m jealous!”

Kathy had insisted that the shop pay her no more than her predecessor. Over the weekend, at Marge’s urging, she had gone over the shop’s books. Though not an accountant, not even a bookkeeper, she could see that the shop was fighting to meet obligations.

“I can’t convince Fred that we need to spend on advertising,” Marge said in frustration while the two women lingered over Sunday breakfast and Jesse worked over the latest puzzle Kathy had bought for him.

“Suppose I loan the shop some money,” Kathy said after a moment’s hesitation. It was frightening to realize that all she had in the world was the few thousand she had brought with her. But she had grown up with budgets, she reminded herself. She and Jesse could squeeze through on her salary at the shop if she was careful. “We’ll figure out where it’ll do the most good.”

“No.” Marge was firm. “We can’t gamble with that.”

“It’s not a gamble,” Kathy pushed. “I believe in the shop.”

They argued heatedly for a few minutes until Marge agreed to Kathy’s investing money in advertising.

“That makes you a partner in the company,” Marge said. “From my shares, so Fred can’t complain about that.”

Sunday afternoon, after an inner battle with herself, Kathy phoned home. Ignoring her mother’s anxiety about the cost of the call, she talked with each of her parents and with Aunt Sophie for almost an hour.

“I can’t take a chance on phoning again,” she cautioned her mother. “Phil and Julius will pull any dirty tricks to get Jesse. I’ll write care of Rhoda—she’ll get my letters to you. And I want you to write me care of Rhoda. Mom, it has to be this way,” she insisted when her mother began to protest. “I’m not being paranoid,” she told her mother again. “I know Phil and Julius. I’m not concerned about a divorce or alimony or even child support. I just want Phil out of our lives, and this is the only way to do it.”

“When will we see you?” Her mother’s voice was forlorn. “You and Jesse—”

“You’ll come out here,” Kathy soothed, fighting off a torrential wave of homesickness. This wasn’t like Hamburg. When could she go home again? “We’ll see each other. I promise.”

P
HIL SAT OPPOSITE HIS
father in the restaurant booth where they met for breakfast most mornings when he was in town.

“It’s over two weeks,” he said in exasperation. “Where the hell is she?” Not a word from any lawyer so far. Her parents pretended not to know where she was. He didn’t believe
that.
“And you know what I found yesterday?” he asked with an air of martyrdom. “I got the statement for a checking account I set up in both our names. She gave Alice a check for three weeks’ salary. And Alice went right to work for the Hales down the road from us in Greenwich. That was real bitchy.”

“Kathy was always a bleeding heart liberal,” Julius said contemptuously. “You knew that.”

“Kissing cousin to the damn Commies.” Phil dug viciously into a sausage. “She’s no better than her ‘red’ friends.”

“This is dragging on too long. Phil, I want you to find Jesse and bring him back home. I don’t want my grandson raised by her.”

“Dad, how the hell do I do that?”

“We hire detectives. She can’t hide out forever. I don’t care what it costs, Phil.” He leaned forward, his face flushed in anger. “I want her to know she can’t push us around this way.”

“We don’t have a lead! She’s just disappeared into thin air.”

“You hire the right detectives, they’ll find her. And you keep your nose clean,” he warned. “She may have detectives of her own out there looking for grounds for divorce. In this state she’ll have to prove adultery.”

“I’ll be careful,” Phil soothed. “Hell, she has no money for detectives!”

Unexpectedly Julius chuckled.

“What a dumb broad. She walked out and left a diamond and sapphire necklace behind.”

Bella found a spot in the supermarket parking lot, and reached into her jacket for the grocery list. The new cook took to her bed after the first sneeze. It was difficult to keep help these days—she’d put up with Amanda’s hypochondria. Once in a while, she didn’t mind doing the grocery shopping or even preparing a meal.

She left the car and started toward the supermarket entrance. Wasn’t that Alice just ahead?

“Alice?” she called out, her mind suddenly in high gear. Before Kathy walked out that way, she’d sent Alice a check for severance pay. Maybe Alice could fill in some of the gaps. “Alice?” Her voice louder this time.

Alice turned around.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Kohn.” She smiled but seemed oddly wary.

“Alice, may I talk to you for a moment?” Bella hurried to her.

“Of course, Mrs. Kohn.” Still wary, Bella noted.

“We’ve heard nothing from Kathy since she left.” Bella forced herself to appear casual. “I’m so worried about her. My son, well, he just said he and Kathy had a spat. I was wondering—I was hoping—do you know anything about that?”

“Mrs. Kohn, you don’t want to know.” Now Alice was agitated. “It’s not a nice thing to talk about.”

“Alice, I want to know desperately.”

“He pushed her around,” Alice said after a moment’s hesitation. “I mean, he hit her.”

“Oh, my God!” Bella felt sick.

“I was sure her nose was broken, but she refused to go to the emergency room at the hospital. She was always so sweet and thoughtful. She knew I had to make a train—she insisted on driving me to the station. I have to tell you, Mrs. Kohn. If ever she asks me to testify in court that her husband hit her, I’ll be there for her. She’s a fine young lady.”

Kathy watched Jesse anxiously for signs that he was upset by the changes in their lives. School, she thought gratefully, was a terrific diversion. He hadn’t even questioned her when she said they’d be in San Francisco for a while so he’d start school here. He was enthralled by this new experience. Once he’d asked when they were going home; but this was curiosity. He wasn’t homesick. Not yet.
He didn’t miss Phil.
He was used to his father’s absences.

Three weeks after their arrival Kathy signed a lease on an apartment. To people in San Francisco she was Kathy Altman. Later Jesse might wonder about this. Thus far, he was unaware of the switch in names.

“Mommie, it’s so little,” Jesse said matter-of-factly when they moved into the apartment with the barest essentials of furniture. “Everybody here lives in little places.” It wasn’t a complaint, just an observation.

Kathy fell into a pattern now. Five mornings a week she took Jesse to school, then joined Marge at the shop. Lee picked him up after school and stayed with him until she arrived home. On Saturdays—a busy day at the shop—Lee took Jesse on sightseeing trips about the city. Golden Gate Park, the cable-car barn, the Aquarium, the Science Museum, Hyde Street Pier. Sundays Kathy devoted to Jesse.

Her mother wrote that a man had been asking questions in the neighborhood about her.
“Darling, nobody knows where you are, but I should tell you Phil has a private detective looking for you and Jesse.
”

Kathy defiantly told herself there was no way Phil could track her down. This confidence was shaken when she returned on a mid-October morning from an appointment with a possible contractor for one of Marge’s designs. She was barely inside the door when she froze in terror. Marge was talking with a man at one side of the shop, their conversation destroying her earlier high spirits.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I haven’t heard from Kathy in months,” Marge told the man. “You know how it is when there’s so much distance between you. You lose touch after a while.”

“Oh Miss,” Kathy interrupted. Striving to sound casual.
Get him out of the shop.
“Would you have that beige cardigan in the window in a size 34?”

“Excuse me, please,” Marge told the man and walked to Kathy. Beautifully impersonal, Kathy thought while her heart pounded. “I don’t have it in beige in 34, but I have it in a lovely shade of blue. Would you like to see it?” No indication that she had ever seen Kathy before.

They played at the game of saleswoman and customer until the man left the shop.

“Marge, what’ll I do?” Kathy whispered in panic. Her instinct was to pick up Jesse at school and run.

“Relax,” Marge ordered. “We carried it off great.”

Now the woman who had been browsing at a table of sweaters was ready to buy. Marge hurried over to make the sale. They’d fooled that private investigator, Kathy tried to convince herself. He’d believed Marge. How stupid of her not to guess that Phil would try to track her down through Marge. He knew how close they were.

“Look, you’re not to worry about this,” Marge scolded her ten minutes later when they were alone in the shop again except for another customer trying on a skirt in the dressing room. “Phil contacted a San Francisco private investigator to make inquiries. I’m not surprised,” she confessed. “But the guy will just write back to Phil in New York and say he had no luck.”

“He scared the hell out of me,” Kathy admitted.

“You were terrific. He never guessed a thing.” Marge radiated confidence.

“The company has a store in San Francisco. Phil is out here a couple of times a year!” At odd moments she’d worried about this. “I could walk right into him one day!” She paled at the prospect of such an encounter.

“This is a city of 800,000 people, not counting the tourists. The chance of your running into Phil is microscopic. Look, we had a bad moment, but we were cool. I loved the way you jumped into action. That really got him out of here.”

“I’m lucky he didn’t have a photograph of me.” Kathy shuddered. “I was five feet from him. I acted without thinking of that.”

“He did have a photo,” Marge told her and Kathy gaped in shock. “Sweetie, he had a photo of you with dark hair that swung down to your shoulders. He didn’t recognize you.”

“Now I understand.” Kathy laughed. “Julius was looking for a bargain again. His bargain-basement P.I. was not very bright.”

“Forget about it. You’ll be okay here,” Marge insisted. “Phil will check San Francisco off the list. And stop being scared,” she exhorted. “We should celebrate. You’ve passed a terrific hurdle.”

Phil grunted in rejection as the phone on his bedside table jangled, destroying the Sunday noon silence of the apartment.

“Oh shut up.” He turned his back, but the phone continued to ring. Now he reached for it. God, he wanted to sleep. That little nympho he’d brought home last night couldn’t get enough. “Yes,” he barked into the phone.

“I saw you leave the party last night with that blond sexpot. How many times have I told you?” his father demanded. “You don’t mess around with women until you’re divorced from Kathy!”

“How can I divorce her when I can’t find her?” Phil shot back. “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Enter a monastery?”

“You’re out of town one week in four. Do what you have to do out of town, where nobody knows. I have this crazy thing in my head that tells me your bitchy wife is just waiting for you to slip up.”

“Okay, I’ll keep it out of town,” Phil soothed. This was no time to start a battle with the old man. They were talking about transferring fifty percent of the company stock into his hands. “I just got horny last night.”

“How was she?” Julius asked slyly.

“She couldn’t get enough. That one could take on a whole army. I finally told her to go home.”

“I called you because I’ve been thinking,” Julius told him. “Put the house in your mother’s name. The way real estate in Greenwich is rising it’s worth a fortune. I don’t want to see that crazy wife of yours trying for a chunk of it. And that company stock we’ve been talking about—”

“Yeah, I understand the papers will be ready by the middle of the week.” Phil pulled himself up against the headboard.
He’d waited long enough for that stock.

“I’m putting it on hold,” Julius said. “If your wife is up to something, let her find you with your assets as low as possible.”

“Dad, I don’t think Kathy’s got a private investigator dodging my heels.” He tried to mask his exasperation. Damn it, he wanted that stock!

“You’ll be out in San Francisco next month, right?”

“Right.” After eight months of fighting him the old man agreed it was smart to set up a concession in a top department store there. It wouldn’t take away from the store—it would be additional revenue.

“I’m not sure I trust that two-bit detective agency we hired to check on her pal out there. You make a trip yourself to that shop the woman runs in San Francisco. See where she goes when she closes the shop. Something your mother said last night convinced me Kathy’s involved with her.”

“You think Mother knows where Kathy is?” Phil asked in astonishment.

“No. But she was talking about all those classes Kathy took at F.I.T. I got the feeling she’s sure Kathy’s working in the women’s wear business. And where would Kathy turn if she needed a job and wanted to be in that field? Her bosom pal with a shop in San Francisco. Stay out there an extra couple of days if you have to, but you find her, Phil. You find her, and you grab your son and bring him home.”

K
ATHY WALKED HAND IN
hand with Jesse along Grant Avenue, Marge and Lee in lively conversation directly behind them. She was pleased by Jesse’s delight in this small adventure. He was entranced by Chinatown’s colorful bazaars, the grocery stores with their displays of bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, dried fish, rows of glazed duck, by the apothecary shops that offered mysterious remedies. His eyes glowed with admiration for the painted silk lanterns swaying in the breeze.