Always and Forever (40 page)

“It’s rotten. I can’t even get a divorce, and she’s hanging on to Jesse.”

“The kid’s almost nine,” Julius said, and David noted that Phil didn’t correct him. Jesse would be ten in June. “He needs a father in his life.”

“You never thought she’d turn out to be such a bitch, did you?” Phil challenged.

“I hear you’re doing great in the business.” David avoided a reply. “Uncle Julius was telling me how well things are going.”

Phil and Julius launched into a boastful discussion of their deals that continued until they paused to focus on ordering dessert. David intercepted Phil’s furtive glances at his watch. He wasn’t surprised when Phil decided to forgo dessert and coffee.

“You won’t be mad, old man, if I cut out early, will you? I have a meeting with our new promotion people tonight. We’re setting up a major campaign,” Phil explained. “We’re considering opening a shop in London.”

“That sounds marvelous,” David said. He’d lay odds Phil was meeting some woman. Was that why Kathy had walked out? No, he guessed. Kathy was bright—she probably knew long ago that Phil was philandering. That must have been just part of her unhappiness. “Good luck on the international scene.” That would be how Phil would regard this newest expansion of the business.

David was relieved when Julius finally decided to leave the restaurant and return to the apartment. Over dessert and coffee Julius renewed his tirade against Kathy. Now—as Wally drove them back to the apartment—Julius switched to complain about the jittery state of the stock market.

“I don’t like the looks of it. I got a gut feeling we’re in for a recession. And a recession plays hell with the fur market.”

David was grateful that it was sufficient to listen to Julius and appear impressed by his pearls of wisdom. His mind was in chaos over Kathy’s disappearance.
His fault that Kathy married Phil.
He should have declared himself. If he’d admitted he was in love with her, Kathy wouldn’t have turned to Phil.
He knew what Phil was like with women.
Somehow, he should have intervened.

W
ITH THE BUSINESS MAKING
increasing demands on her time, Kathy battled guilt that she wasn’t a full-time mother, yet her own mother insisted Jesse was not suffering from her involvement in the growing chain of shops. Now each time she made a twenty-four hour trip to Philadelphia or Boston or Washington D.C., her mother traveled all the way from Borough Park to Croton to have dinner with Jesse and Lee.

“He’s becoming the most pampered kid in Westchester County,” Rhoda teased her, but she knew Rhoda understood she was determined that Jesse should not feel himself lacking in love.

In late summer—when Kathy was exhausted from the daily commute plus side trips to their major stores—Rhoda and Frank tried to persuade her to take a week off to go to Montauk with them.

“You said Lee is going to spend a vacation week with her sister in Queens,” Rhoda pointed out. “Come out with Frank and me and the baby. We’ve rented this big old house right across from the ocean. You and Jesse will love it.”

“Isn’t Montauk somewhere near Southampton?” she asked uneasily. But the prospect of a week in a house across from the ocean was enticing. Jesse was scheduled to spend that week of Lee’s vacation with her family in Borough Park, in a hot, stuffy, crowded apartment. He’d loved the Southampton beach when he was little.

“Montauk is about thirty or forty miles beyond it,” Rhoda guessed. “Nobody from Southampton is running up to Montauk. It’s a fishing village—a whole other world from Southampton.”

“You used to talk about the magnificent beach at Southampton,” Frank reminded. “Wait till you see Montauk, without the social madness of Southampton but with a beach like nothing else in the world. Gorgeous sunrises, sunsets. You can walk for an hour and see nobody but seagulls. Remember that time up in Wells Beach?”

“Frank, it was heavenly.” Kathy smiled in wistful recall.

“This is more heavenly, and half the traveling time. Come on, give yourself a break.”

“All right,” she capitulated. Phil would never travel as far out as Montauk, she told herself. People went there to fish—or to cut themselves off from the rest of the world. That wasn’t Phil’s style, or his father’s. And Jesse would love it. “When do we leave?”

At first sight Kathy fell in love with Montauk. Jesse, too, reveled in the stretches of empty beach, the domain of the seagulls and a friendly pair of Labradors. He had a zest for living that brought joy to her. Together he and Harry romped joyously in the surf, Harry making a game of snapping at the waves as they rolled to shore, the two town Labradors often joining in the play.

Kathy liked the low Tudor buildings that were the local shops and the incongruous seven-story “tower” that rose behind the village green to remind the world that before the ’20 stock market crash, Carl Fisher had plotted to make Montauk the Miami Beach of the Northeast.

On her third day in town Kathy knew she would buy a house out here. It would be a runaway place when life closed in too frenetically about her, her refuge from the pressures of building a national chain of shops and a major designer—a house that looked down upon the Atlantic and that would be waiting for her every day of the year.

It was still a source of pleasurable astonishment that she was in a position to spend money this freely. To decide to buy a house and know that there was no financial problem. She had sent the family to Bermuda for two weeks last spring. She’d told Mom and Dad to scout around for a house in Borough Park. She coddled their guilt at this extravagance by assuring them it was a good investment for her. Her personal office had been redecorated to reflect the spectacular success of the business.

“You have to
learn
to enjoy money,” Marge had told her good-humoredly. Marge had bought herself a sprawling apartment on the Upper West Side, which she predicted would one day be chic. Right now, its major attraction was the view of the Hudson from the terrace of her apartment. She drove to the office each morning in a new white Porsche. “Of course,” she kidded, “you’ve got more experience at it than I have.”

She’d had access to a luxurious life style, Kathy conceded. But everything except her wardrobe—the furniture in the house, the restaurants they frequented, their vacations, their cars—were of Phil’s choosing. She relished her new independence and her personal affluence.

Kathy returned to New York from Montauk refreshed and ready to face the fall business season. The 4-S Shops empire was creating much talk in the trade. Marge was the new hot young designer. The entrepreneurs—still in their early thirties—were highly promotable, though Ellen Somers, their public relations woman, was repeatedly reminded that Kathy was to remain in the background.

Months sped past. Kathy found the perfect house in Montauk and arranged to buy it. It was a low, sprawling contemporary in the Frank Lloyd Wright style, with a huge deck that looked down upon the Atlantic. At intervals she drove up for a weekend, trying to sandwich in time to furnish the new house. At school vacation between Christmas and New Year’s, she stayed there with Jesse while Lee went off for a week’s visit with her sister. She relished the views of the winter ocean from her house—looking down from a cliff. Her parents came for three days, then Marge, Rhoda and Frank and little Sara for the long New Year’s weekend.

Marge was making personal appearances at their growing chain of shops, was interviewed for the national women’s magazines, and appeared on radio and television. In an interview for
Vogue,
Marge ebulliently said that while basic designs were hers, they were all embellished by her partner Kathy Altman, hitherto known by insiders as the brilliant business head behind the chain’s spectacular success.

All at once Kathy became the subject of much curiosity. Their publicity woman built up Kathy Altman as the reclusive mystery woman of the 4-S chain. Marge and Noel were delighted at the space they were garnering, not only in the trade, but also in consumer publications, yet Kathy was edgy about this.

“Kathy, relax,” Marge exhorted at regular intervals. “All the press knows is that Kathy Altman is a beautiful, highly talented honey-blond with a poodle cut and an obsession for privacy. Ellie makes a fetish of keeping your identity a mystery except to the handful of people you work with in the trade and those in our shops.”

“I worry about a slip-up,” Kathy confessed regularly.

Then early in February what Kathy had fought to avoid happened. The company had given a posh private party for their Manhattan business associates. Noel had flown in from San Francisco to attend. The press was not invited. But three days later photographs taken at the party were published in
Women’s Wear Daily.

Kathy sat at her desk, cold and trembling, as she saw the caption accompanying a group photograph: “Kathy Altman, brilliant young executive of the 4-S Shops, in a rare public photo.”

Kathy and Marge went into an anxious huddle.

“Look, you know Phil and Julius. They’re only interested in what concerns the fur business,” Marge tried to rationalize. “A thousand to one they’ll both skim right past that photo. Phil may not even be in town. You know he spends a lot of time on the road. And you’ve always said the only thing Julius ever reads is the stock market report.”

“Let me try and work from the house for the next week or so.” Kathy knew it was the old “ostrich sticking its head in the sand” routine, but she needed to disappear for a while to hold on to her sanity.

“In two weeks we’ll be in London and Paris,” Marge pointed out. For the first time they were going over for the couturier shows.

“And Jesse will be with us.” Kathy clung to this. She’d talked to the school about taking him away from classes for five days, and they’d agreed he was bright and able to handle this, and that a trip to Europe at his age would be educational.

“Kathy, maybe it’s time to go public.” Marge’s voice was gentle. “To divorce Phil. Judges almost always give custody to the mother.”

“Almost is not good enough for me,” Kathy said tersely. “And with the Kohn money and connections they might manage to have the divorce brought up before a judge of their choice. I can’t take that chance, Marge.”

Nobody here at the office knew that she lived in Croton, she told herself. The word was that she had an apartment on the Upper West Side. Nobody even knew she had a son.

Only the tight clique of Marge, Rhoda and Frank, her family, and Noel in San Francisco knew about the house in Croton and about Jesse. Rhoda had arranged for Jesse’s registration at the school. Nobody there connected Jesse’s mother with Kathy Altman of the 4-S Shops.

She was safe, she told herself, unless Phil or Julius had seen the photo in
Women’s Wear Daily.
But she knew that from now on she would be constantly looking over her shoulder to see if some sleazy private investigator was trailing her from the office to learn where she lived.

Phil returned from his Montreal business trip in high good humor. His stay in Canada had been expanded to include two days at a ski lodge in the Laurentians, where he’d met the attractive young model who most recently occupied his bed. He was now on a fitness kick, designed to restore him to his earlier image.

He settled in his office with a mug of coffee brought in by his secretary and proceeded to go through the mail. Once this was accomplished, he turned to the pile-up of trade newspapers neatly arranged at one corner of the desk.

He froze in disbelief at the sight of the photograph of Kathy taken at the 4-S Shops party. She was fair-haired now, and she’d changed her hair style—but it was Kathy. He couldn’t be in any phase of the garment industry without knowing about the spectacular success of the 4-S chain. He’d heard the name of Kathy Altman, of course, but he’d never connected her with Kathy Kohn.

Excitement charged through him as he put the facts together. Kathy had joined Marge in the shops. She had hidden behind her aunt’s name.
Incredible that Kathy could have risen that way in the business world.
Resentment soared in him.

He read the accompanying article. She was right here in Manhattan. Jesse must be here. Kathy wouldn’t send him off to school.

He reached for the phone to dial his father’s extension.

“Dad, the search is over,” he said with exhilaration. “I know where Kathy and Jesse are.”

“I’ll be right there!” His father’s excitement matched his own.

In minutes the two men sat across from each other in Phil’s office and dissected the situation.

“She has an unlisted phone number, and the office won’t give out her address,” Phil said. He’d had his secretary phone the 4-S offices to inquire about this. The devious ploy she’d contrived had failed.

“Kathy’s assistant,” he reported with sarcasm, “says she’ll be out of town on business for the next three weeks.”

“Shit!” Julius glowered. “How the hell did she push her way up like that? What did she know about business? So her father runs a two-bit candy store in Borough Park—what could she have learned from him?”

“She was forever taking classes at F.I.T.,” Phil said grimly. “And sopping up whatever I told her about business in general. You remember how she sat in on a lot of our meetings with Roz.”

“If she’s out of town for three weeks, it’d be a waste of money to put a P.I. on the payroll,” Julius said.

“I’ll set up a deal as soon as we know she’s back. I don’t want to talk to her,” Phil pointed out. “I want to find out where she’s living, then I can go grab the kid. He’s my son,” he said triumphantly. “You can’t be charged with kidnapping for taking back your own child.”

“In the meantime,” Julius told him, “draw a Dun and Bradstreet report on the company. We might come up with something.”

Two days before Kathy and Marge were to leave for Europe, Noel arrived to supervise the main office in their absence. He was spilling over with pleasure at Chris’s success. In December Chris would have a major gallery show in Manhattan.

“We’ll throw a big bash for him,” Marge promised. “Buy a Chris Logan painting and hang prints of it in all the 4-S shops. What do you think about that, Kathy?”