Always and Forever (41 page)

“I think it’s great.” She knew that both Noel and Marge were fighting to distract her from the ever-present fear that Phil was on her trail and would find Jesse and her.

“Relax and enjoy Europe,” Noel urged her compassionately.

“Remember, Montauk is the closest I’ve ever been to Europe,” Marge effervesced. “Or is Maine closer?”

Kathy had planned their accommodations on this trip to avoid the hotels where she had stayed with Phil. She took delight in Jesse’s eager anticipation of seeing London and Paris. He had been too young to remember the earlier trips. This one he would remember.

They would fly on one of the last of the piston planes, Kathy thought whimsically. Everybody was talking about how the old DC-7S were to be replaced in the autumn by the revolutionary new jets that would carry nearly twice the number of passengers. But Jesse was always fascinated by flying—jet or prop would not matter to him.

They flew first to London. In the taxi that took them from Heathrow to the Claridge, Kathy was assaulted by memories of the earlier trip to London. Bella and Julius had traveled with them. That seemed another lifetime.

Kathy was pleased to be seeing London off-season. There were no hordes of tourists; their hotel was lightly populated. In their suite at the Claridge, cozy fires were laid in the bedroom fireplaces. Huge logs burned in grates in the downstairs rooms, despite the fact that Mayfair was considered to be a smokeless zone. Jesse was fascinated to see all the footmen in the public rooms wearing velvet breeches in the evening.

Since this was Marge’s first trip abroad, and Jesse had little recall of their earlier trip, they contrived to see a few of the routine tourist sights between business appointments—mainly dealings with fabric houses. On their third afternoon in London they checked out of the Claridge to fly to Paris. Driving from Orly to the ultra-smart Hotel Meurice, which faces the Tuileries and the Seine, Kathy remembered how David had joined them in Paris for a day on that earlier visit. They had lunched at the Ritz, had dinner at Maxim’s. In the afternoon she and Bella had gone with David to the Louvre. She remembered how gentle—how loving—he had been with Jesse.

All at once her heart was pounding. Did she dare call David and ask him to join them in Paris for a day? It would be so wonderful to see him. Did he know that Phil and she were separated?
He must know.
Bella would have written him.

As had happened many times in the past years, she felt uncomfortable in not having written Bella to tell her why she had walked out on Phil. Her only contacts with her mother-in-law were the snapshots of Jesse she regularly shipped to her via Rhoda. She remembered the time in Paris when, in a moment of total candor, she said to Bella,
“I stay with Phil for Jesse’s sake. If the day ever comes when I think it’s not good for Jesse, I’ll walk out.
”

But how could she tell Bella that her son was a man who beat his wife and betrayed his wife’s friends?

At anguished intervals during that first day in Paris she debated about calling David in Berlin. Would his wife be upset if he came to Paris to see them? She and David were old and close friends—he was family, Jesse’s cousin as well as Phil’s.

She trembled at the prospect of David’s coming to Paris with his wife. She remembered the bow-shaped brooch she and David had found in the pawnshop in Berlin. Would his wife be wearing that brooch?

Finally, after Jesse had gone to sleep, she shared her ambivalence about phoning David with Marge.

“I keep asking myself if I should call him. It’s tormenting to be so close and not to see him.” Marge had often heard Rhoda and her talk about the months in Hamburg. Marge knew there had been a special closeness between David and her. “If it was Noel in Berlin and we were here in Paris, I wouldn’t think twice about calling.”

“Kathy, call the guy,” Marge told her. “If you go home without seeing him, you’ll forever regret it. There’s no way that seeing David will put you in jeopardy with Phil,” she reasoned.

“I’ll call in the morning,” Kathy decided, light-headed with expectancy. “It’s been so long since I saw him. It must be—” She squinted in thought. “Oh God, it’s been five and a half years—that summer in Paris! Where did the years go?”

Kathy lay sleepless most of the night, falling into troubled slumber at the approach of dawn. She couldn’t wait for the sound of David’s voice, to hear him say that, yes, he could meet them in Paris for a day.

He wasn’t angry with her for running out on Phil, was he? He knew her well enough to understand it would take something ghastly to push her to that. All at once she was anxious about seeing him. She knew his strong family loyalties.
Would he consider it disloyal to Julius and Bella to see her?
But however he felt, she had to know.

She waited until after breakfast to phone David. While Jesse and Marge discussed the sightseeing that would be interspersed with business that day, she called the Institute in Berlin where David was on staff, worried that both her French and her German were rusty.

Finally she reached the Institute. “May I speak with Dr. David Kohn, please.”

“Dr. Kohn is not here,” the woman at the switchboard told her. Her voice was almost brusque.

“When do you expect him?” she asked, fighting disappointment.

“Dr. Kohn is no longer with the Institute,” the woman said. “Not for quite a while. He left here to go to Copenhagen.”

“Thank you,” Kathy said politely and hung up. Trembling with disappointment.

David was living in another world. Their worlds would never meet again, she thought in raw anguish. Hadn’t she realized long ago that the timing was never right for David and her?

P
HIL WAS FIGHTING YAWNS
as he hurried into the restaurant to meet his father for breakfast. When was the old man going to stop this routine? Still leaving Greenwich at 5:50
A.M.
five mornings a week. Expecting him here no later than eight. Hell, he’d earned the right to come into the office at 9:30 or 10—to by-pass the breakfast shit.

He stared in surprise when he saw his father was not alone in their booth. The old man had dragged the P.I. here this morning. He slowed down as he saw the man rise from the booth. Whatever the old man said, the P.I. was pissed. He stared in recognition at Phil and strode past him without a word.

“What was that all about?” Phil asked as he slid into his seat.

“I just fired the bastard,” Julius told him. “We know she’s been back for five weeks now, and he still can’t come up with an address.” His father never referred to Kathy by name—it was always “she.”

“I told you, Dad. We can’t hire the creep for two days a week and expect results.” His impatience surfaced despite his intention of staying cool. “He’s got to be out there every day until he comes up with what we want.” The old man was always trying to cut corners at the wrong time.

“We’re hiring somebody new. I got the name of this hotshot guy. He’s cutting our throats with his fancy fees, but I’ve had enough of this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card. “Call him. Set up an appointment as soon as you can. We’re nailing her.”

The private investigator Julius wanted to hire stalled them for another two weeks, until he completed a current assignment. Then he went to work. Two days later he called Phil to report that Kathy took a train from Grand Central each night.

“She could be anywhere along the line. Tomorrow night I’ll be on the train with her,” he promised. “After that it should be a breeze.”

Three mornings later he phoned to give them definite information regarding Kathy’s address.

“She’s in a house on East Mount Airy Road in Croton-on-Hudson. The name on the mail box says ‘Moses,’ but she’s living there. She picked up a gray Dodge Coronet and drove to the house.”

“She could be visiting,” Phil pointed out in irritation. Moses didn’t ring any bells with him, but then he didn’t know all of her friends. “How do you know she’s living there?”

“I was back out there at 6
A.M.
to follow through. She drove to the Harmon station a little past seven. She wore different clothes.”

“Did you see a kid anywhere around?” Phil pushed.
This might be it.
“A little boy about nine. No,” he corrected himself, searching his mind for dates. “He’ll be eleven in June.”

“They’ve got this long driveway—it must run back three or four hundred feet from the road. There’s no way I can see into the house without digging up an excuse to get back there.”

“Then find an excuse,” Phil ordered. “Or park below, walk up in the dark. I want to be sure the kid’s there.”

“If he’s around eleven, he’ll be in school—the school year isn’t over yet. I’ll pull off on East Mount Airy a hundred feet or so past their driveway,” the P.I. decided. “I’ll let you know if the little boy lives there.”

Shortly past nine the next morning, the new investigator called Phil.

“There’s a little boy living there in the house,” he reported. “I saw him get on the school bus.”

“Great! I’ll call you later in the day with further instructions.”

Phil sat gazing into space for a moment. They knew where Kathy lived. She had Jesse with her. The name on the mailbox was a dodge. He tingled in satisfaction. The little bitch thought she was so smart.

He left his office and went to tell his father the news. He waited impatiently until Julius completed a lengthy call to London. He suspected it had been an incoming call. The old man would make a London call billed to them a short deal.

“Kathy’s living in Croton,” he said. “Jesse’s with her. Now we have to figure out how to get hold of him and—”

“Back up, Phil,” Julius rasped. “We’ve waited a long time for this. Let’s don’t mess it up. You want a divorce and custody of Jesse, right?”

“Right,” Phil agreed. Actually, he wasn’t so keen on full-time custody, he thought, but that was the road that would push the old man into turning over the stock. He’d do whatever it took. “So?”

“So let’s see you go into divorce court with evidence that guarantees she won’t walk off with any financial settlement, and that gives you custody of Jesse on the grounds that she’s an unfit mother.”

“That’ll be rough,” Phil warned.

“Look, any good-looking broad that’s come up as fast as she has must have been in a lot of beds. We’ll take our time, get enough to mess her up good, go into court. You get your divorce and Jesse. She gets shit. She’ll be sorry she ever tangled with us.” His eyes gleamed at the prospect of vengeance. “We’ll see her face splashed across the front pages of the
News
and the
Mirror.
”

“You’re talking about dirty scandal.” Phil felt a tinge of unease.

“So what?” Julius chuckled. “You’ll come out smelling like a rose, and she’ll get what’s coming to her. We won’t rush, we know where she is. Let’s just get the goods on her. It’s the old cat-and-mouse game, and she’s the mouse.”

This summer Kathy drove out to the Montauk house on Thursday evenings, remaining until very early Monday mornings. Usually Marge went out with her, so the weekends could become working periods. Jesse, Lee, and Harry were in full-time residence. At intervals Kathy’s parents and Aunt Sophie went out to stay with Jesse and Lee. Always Kathy was haunted by the fear that Jesse might be deprived of family.

“I’m keeping the house open all through the winter,” Kathy told Marge as their small entourage headed back to the city the Sunday morning before the school season opened. “I’ve hired a local handyman to keep an eye on things. The thermostat goes on fifty-five degrees as soon as the weather turns cool. I won’t have to worry about turning off the water that way.” Involuntarily, she remembered this had been how she and Phil handled the Greenwich house once they moved into the Fifth Avenue apartment. “You said you’d be going out to Fire Island next weekend, didn’t you?”

“I changed my mind.” Marge sighed. “It’s crazy. Every time I start to get involved with a man, I ask myself if he’s interested in Marge the woman or in Marge the designer with
mucho
money.”

“If you’re mad about somebody, you’ll forget that,” Kathy predicted.

“I guess I’m more mad about career,” Marge admitted. “And I resent the condescending attitude so many men take toward career women. If you’re a woman and you have a brain, you’re supposed to hide it. I’ve come too far, worked too hard to take second place.”

“Amen,” Kathy said softly.

In the fall the 4-S Shops launched another expansion. By the end of the year they would have shops in every major city in the country. In November Noel flew east for a weekend conference with Kathy and Marge at the Montauk house. Jesse was delighted to be spending that weekend with his grandparents and Aunt Sophie. It was a source of delight to Kathy that he felt so close to his grandparents and that there was an endearing relationship with his great-great-aunt.

“We’re entering a new age of flying,” Noel chortled as the three of them relaxed over espresso before the living room fireplace after hours of plotting their new business campaign. “Can you believe the new jets? They’re bringing the whole world close together. Now you can jet to London for the weekend.”

Did David ever fly to New York, Kathy asked herself. Was he married? He must be—he was seeing someone that time they met in Paris. Did he have a family? Why had he left Berlin for Copenhagen? These were questions that would never be answered for her.

In mid-November—when Kathy was planning a family Thanksgiving at the Montauk house—she received a phone call from Noel. He was close to hysteria. Three hours ago Chris had been killed in a freakish accident.

“Why, Kathy?” Noel mourned. “He’s twenty-six years old with a brilliant career ahead of him. Why did this happen?”

At last off the phone with Noel—shaken and grieving—she called Marge, in Atlanta to make a personal appearance at their new shop down there. She knew that either she or Marge must fly immediately to be with Noel. His sister Wilma and he were on bad terms. An aunt and several cousins had distanced themselves from him when he abandoned hiding his homosexuality.