Always and Forever Page 15

  Again—at the end of June—the family moved en masse to the Southampton house. Mollified by the success of their mother’s party the previous season and reciprocal invitations, Gail and Brenda planned to remain in residence until early September. Kathy looked forward to relaxed early morning walks along the beach, magnificent sunsets, lovely sessions of sand castle efforts with Jesse. She was resigned to the endless chatter of her sisters-in-law that focused on clothes, cosmetics, and cruises.

  She was astonished when Phil announced—as they prepared for bed on their second evening at the Southampton house—that he was making arrangements for the two of them to fly to Paris late the following month.

  “We’ll be there for the collections. I’ll talk with the designer we hope to sign up after he presents his collection,” Phil said nonchalantly, but he exuded excitement. “Our passports haven’t expired, thank God. That’s one less thing to deal with.”

  “Phil, I can’t leave Jesse—” While the prospect of seeing Paris again had initially entranced her, she focused now on reality.

  “Why not? Alice is great with him, and my mother will drop by to see him every day.”

  “Phil, he’s a baby. He’s two years old. He’d be terrified if I suddenly disappeared from his life!” Phil, of course, was often away for ten days at a time.

  “Okay,” Phil said after a moment. “We’ll take him with us—and Alice.” He seemed amused by the vision of traveling with a small entourage. “Talk to Alice in the morning. The office will push through passports for her and Jesse in a hurry and arrange for additional seating on the plane and a two-bedroom suite for us at the hotel in Paris.”

  “It sounds exciting.” Phil wanted her with him in Paris! He’d never asked her to go with him on any business trip before. Maybe in Paris they’d find the magic of their early days together. “Remember the last time we were in Paris?”

  “Yeah—” Phil began to sing the opening bars of Hammer-stein and Kern’s “The Last Time I Saw Paris.”

  “That wasn’t the Paris we saw,” she reminded. But in Paris he had asked her to marry him. Her whole world had become suddenly beautiful. For a little while.

  “You’ll see a different Paris this time,” he promised, an amorous glint in his eyes. She knew he’d make love to her tonight. Even though it wasn’t Saturday, she told herself mockingly. “Roz says it’s gay Paree again.”

  “Are we really going to fly?” she asked, remembering how terrified she’d been in that awful little plane that had taken them from Hamburg to Paris.

  “Kathy, it’s the only way to travel.” She caught a hint of condescension in his voice. “We’ll take an overnight flight, be in Paris for breakfast the next morning.”

  When Phil made a major deal of helping her choose her wardrobe for the trip to Paris, Kathy understood that she was playing a role in a Phil Kohn production. He arranged for Roz to accompany the two of them on the second frenzied buying trip in town. Afterward, Phil escorted Roz and her to a late luncheon at the Stork.

  All at once, she thought, Phil was intrigued by the café society circuit. Last night he’d talked about taking his parents to the Colony for their wedding anniversary. Last year it had been Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe.

  In the Cub Room—paintings of Cosmopolitan cover girls smiling down upon them from the walls—they concentrated for a few moments on ordering. Kathy was trying not to be dazzled by lunching at the Stork. Marge would want to know every minor detail: what they ate, what celebrities they saw, what the women were wearing.

  When the waiter disappeared, Phil and Roz embarked on business talk. Twice Roz interrupted Phil to say, sotto voce, that a celebrity had just arrived, and he would shoot a covert glance in the indicated direction. Kathy sat at the table with a polite show of interest, but her mind wandered into private reverie.

  She understood what was happening in their lives now. It wasn’t enough for Phil that his father was very rich. He was out to become part of the café society world, which created celebrities via such columnists as Winchell and Sullivan and Cholly Knickerbocker. The Kohns—Jews—would never make it into the Social Register. They could make it into café society. And Julius Kohn was willing to pay the bill.

  “Kathy, you wear clothes so well,” Roz interrupted her straying thoughts. “That’s a gift.”

  “Thank you.” She was wary of compliments from Roz. The few times they’d met she’d felt almost gauche beside Roz’s glossy sophistication.

  “How’s your French?” Phil asked Kathy in sudden curiosity. “I only passed high school French because David tutored me. I took German in college.”

  “I managed when we were in Paris last,” Kathy reminded and saw Roz lift one eyebrow in surprise. She detected the intimate exchange between Roz and Phil. It was as though Roz was reproaching him for not having mentioned seeing Paris with Kathy.

  Was Phil having an affair with Roz? She remembered the nights when Phil stayed late in Manhattan “to work with our publicity team.” She must stop this, she reproached herself. She hated those wives who suspected their husbands of having affairs with every attractive woman who was part of their lives.

  A few days before their flight to Paris Kathy went out to Borough Park with Jesse. She felt self-conscious at arriving in the chauffeured limousine, but Phil had insisted. Tomorrow afternoon Wally would pick them up for the return trip to Southampton.

  “I know it’s expensive,” her mother said, “but cable me when you arrive in Paris. I’m so nervous about you flying.”

  “We’ll be fine, Mom,” Kathy comforted her. “I don’t know how much Jesse will remember, but it’ll be nice to be able to say that he was in Paris when he was two.”

  “Don’t let him forget his grandparents and his aunt in Brooklyn,” Sophie teased. “We don’t have money, but we’re rich in love.”

  Kathy relished this brief time with family. Jesse enjoyed all the spoiling, she thought tenderly. Bella loved him, but she’d never learned to display affection. To Julius he was a toy, an entertainment at certain moments. When he was home, she acknowledged, Phil fussed over Jesse. But he was so wrapped up in business, and away so much.

  The day before they were to leave for Paris, Kathy phoned Marge in San Francisco.

  “Oh, baby, do I envy you,” Marge admitted. “Buy me something mad in Paris. Like a black lace-trimmed garter belt or a sexy pair of black panties. Not that I’ve found anybody to wear them for, but I can dream.”

  “Phil says we’re staying at the Ritz,” Kathy reported. She knew that Roz had suggested this. “And he’s promised to take me to dinner at Maxim’s.”

  “So romantic,” Marge drawled. “Why can’t I find a man who wants to take me to Paris and to dinner at Maxim’s?”

  Kathy waited for Phil to say that they would take a side trip to Berlin. The Russian blockade had ended in May—it was now possible to visit Berlin. They could see David. But Phil never made the suggestion.

  While they waited for take-off at the airport, Kathy remembered the excitement of sailing from New York for Hamburg. She remembered standing on the deck of their ship with Rhoda as the Statue of Liberty disappeared from view. She remembered David.

  They’d be so close to Berlin. Wasn’t it natural to think that they might fly there for a quick visit with David? Phil made a pretense of being close to his only cousin on his father’s side—but in truth, she thought, Phil was close to no one except maybe to his father and even then only in a false fashion.

  “Hey, Jesse, how do you like the big planes?” Phil joshed, taking his son from Alice and lifting him onto his shoulders. “Let’s go over for a better look.” Phil was playing to an audience again. Waiting fellow passengers were sending him admiring glances. Phil was forever onstage.

  This was different from the trip to Hamburg, Kathy analyzed. She had gone to Hamburg on a mission. Incredible that it was not quite four years ago. She felt fifteen years older now. For Phil this was a business trip. She meant to enjoy it as a tour
ist.

  She had never felt entirely comfortable in Germany, faced by constant reminders of the Holocaust. How did David survive in Berlin when he must face ghosts every waking moment? He could have become involved in research in the United States just as easily. But he’d been able to locate his father’s research, and he was building on that. There had never been room in David’s life for anything but his research.

  “My sisters can’t believe I’m going to Paris.” Alice brought her back to the moment. “That we’re going by plane.”

  Only minutes before their plane landed at Orly, Phil told Kathy that a Peugeot would be waiting for them at the airport.

  “You rented a Peugeot?”

  “I bought it through the Renault agency in New York,” he told her with a smug smile. “It’ll be there with license and all the necessary papers. We’ll use it in Paris and have it shipped back to New York. You’ll have my old Caddy for yourself.”

  “I thought it was a company car—” she gazed at him in surprise.

  “No more,” he said indulgently. “Mother, Gail, and Brenda drive their own Cadillacs. Why shouldn’t my wife?”

  “Thank you, Phil.” He realized, she thought, that their marriage needed bolstering. He cared. That was why he’d brought her along on this trip. How cynical of her to think he had done it for business reasons! And now he was giving her the Caddy to patch up that old wound about her driving. They would make this a fine marriage. They’d both work at it.

  She sat beside Phil on the front seat of the Peugeot while Alice sat in the back with Jesse. Phil pointed out historic sites as they arrived in the city. She had forgotten that Phil knew Paris from prewar days as well as when he was in service.

  “Roz was over last summer. She gave me the addresses of some great little bistros.”

  “How nice.”

  Why did Roz’s name come into so much of their conversation these past few months? But she was immediately ashamed of this fresh wave of suspicion. Here Phil was making an obvious effort to mend their marriage, and she kept jumping to ugly conclusions.

  Kathy was enthralled by their suite at the Ritz, which overlooked the Place Vendôme: the furniture elegant, the walls upholstered with lovely fabrics, tall French windows adorned by velvet drapes.

  “We’re having dinner tonight at the house of our prospective new designer.” For the first time Phil mentioned the designer by name, and Kathy’s eyes widened with respect. Now she understood Phil’s excitement about bringing off this deal. “He wants to meet me socially before we sit down with the lawyers. Wear the white chiffon dinner dress from Bergdorf’s. It’s classy.” These days Phil only liked what he labeled “classy.”

  To her astonishment Kathy enjoyed their dinner on the balcony of their host’s eighteenth-century townhouse. While he was multilingual, at times he was lost for a word in English and she was able to interpret for him. She felt warmed by Phil’s glow of pride.

  “Hey, we make a pretty good team,” he told her while they prepared for bed. His success had made him amorous, she thought. She willed herself to respond.

  The days in Paris passed in a euphoric haze, except for those intrusive moments when she remembered how close they were to Berlin. While Phil involved himself in business, she embarked on sightseeing, sometimes with Jesse and Alice, sometimes on her own. She moved in a dream through expeditions to the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower.

  In the evenings she and Phil dined at romantic places. She was dazzled by dinner at Maxim’s, refurbished now to mirror its 1900s elegance—red velvet everywhere, calla-lily lighting fixtures, baroque mirrors, murals featuring nude beauties. They dined at the Ritz and at Lapérouse and Grand Vefour. For luncheons when Phil was not involved with business and could join her, they sought out the bistros recommended by Roz.

  She was intrigued by the ground-floor boutiques of the great couture houses, where the prices were less astronomical. At Molyneux she bought deliciously naughty lingerie for Marge and Rhoda; from Vedrenne, elegant and lovely umbrellas for her mother and Aunt Sophie. For her father and Frank she bought exquisite silk ties at the shop where Phil had bought shirts for his father and himself.

  Boarding their flight for the return trip to New York, she felt wistful that they had not managed a quick flight to Berlin to see David. Rhoda and Frank had assumed that they would.

  Family fondness and loyalty among the Kohns, she realized, only existed on David’s side.

  Chapter 14

  AGAIN IN SEPTEMBER, JULIUS Kohn Furs presented their fashion show with debutantes appearing as models and a portion of the proceeds of the day’s sales going to charity. On Friday evenings now—she had overcome her fear of venturing so far behind the wheel—Kathy drove into New York to meet Phil for an evening on the town. They limited their dining to the Stork, El Morocco, “21,” and the Colony—the stamping grounds of café society, and Roz managed occasional mention by the columnists.

  Early in the new year Julius announced he’d bought a two-bedroom apartment in the East Sixties. “A company apartment. A tax write-off.” At Phil’s insistence—Kathy was upset at being away from Jesse for any extended period—the two of them stayed in the company apartment on Friday evenings, not returning to Greenwich until late Saturday night. They were joined on occasion by Julius and Bella. This year—with Phil so active in the business—Julius went with Bella and his daughters to Palm Beach for three weeks. Phil said he was on the phone with the office at least once a day.

  Uneasy about driving in Manhattan rush-hour traffic, Kathy made a point of arriving in the city no later than 4 P.M. This allowed her to meet with Rhoda for coffee and conversation on Fridays. Once a month her parents and Aunt Sophie came out to spend Sunday in Greenwich. Mannie and a helper managed the candy store. Phil slept most of the day, emerging only in time to sit down to dinner with his in-laws.

  At Passover—which went unobserved in the senior Kohns’ house except for the presence of a plate of matzoh on the table for each of the eight days—Kathy took Jesse and went to Borough Park for the first seder, remaining overnight to Jesse’s joy. Spending this precious parcel of time with her parents and her aunt, Kathy realized how bored she was with her life.

  Bella had dragged her into the charity luncheon and tea circuit, which was so important to Gail and Brenda. She’d succumbed after much prodding and played canasta two afternoons a week—the Argentine rummy game that was sweeping across the country. And there were the nights of socializing in Manhattan, when she felt as though she was playing a role in a stage play.

  Late in May she went into New York to be a witness at the City Hall wedding of Rhoda and Frank. Both families had created such an uproar that they decided upon a civil ceremony with only Kathy and Frank’s long-time best friend in attendance. In a burst of exuberance—and the knowledge that this could be charged to Phil—Kathy took them to a wedding luncheon at “21.” The others were impressed that the waiters knew her.

  At the end of June, along with the rest of the family, Kathy took up residence at the Southampton house. There were no trips into Manhattan now. The café society that Phil courted was out here in the Hamptons or at Newport or Bar Harbor—or in Europe. Except for Kathy and the nursemaids, the women of the household slept until ten or eleven, and by noon were sprawled on chaises on the beach. Lunch parties were frequent, as was canasta playing before the cocktail hour.

  In mid-July, battling boredom, Kathy adopted a habit of going into Manhattan once a week despite the sultry heat that so often assaulted the city. She spent two or three hours out in Borough Park, then left to meet with Rhoda. She made a point of being on a train that would bring her home in time to read to Jesse at bedtime.

  On a rainy Wednesday morning in August, with a thunderstorm predicted, Kathy received a phone call from Rhoda.

  “I realize this is a last-minute thing, but Frank just called to say he’s been offered a pair of tickets for today’s matinee of South Pacific. You know how impo
ssible it is to get seats—”

  “Are you inviting me to go with you?” Kathy interrupted blithely. “Because if you are, the answer is ‘yes’!” She dreaded a day cooped up here in the house. “When is curtain time?”

  They arranged to meet at the theater. With luck she’d be out in time to catch a ride home with Phil and his father, Kathy noted.

  She phoned for the schedule of trains into Penn Station, dressed for the city, played with Jesse and his Tinkertoys for twenty minutes, then drove to the station. She wouldn’t even mind the hot train ride into town, she thought with a delicious sense of freedom.

  By the time she arrived at the Southampton station, the rain was coming down in torrents. She left the car and ran for shelter. On the train—sparsely populated at this hour—she kicked off her shoes and dozed. At Penn Station she debated about calling her family in Borough Park. She decided to call later, when she’d have more time. Phone the office, she thought belatedly, and tell Phil she was in town.

  Phil was out of the office. Probably at lunch, she guessed. All right, she’d call him later. She pushed her way through the vacation crowds that milled about Penn Station, and walked out into the street to find a taxi. She glanced at her watch, anxious about the time. She’d forgotten how difficult it was to get a cab in Manhattan on a rainy day.

  Finally—her summer sandals drenched from the rain—she settled herself in a taxi and gave the driver the address of the theater. Rhoda would never forgive her if she was late. She tensed at the delay in traffic as the taxi crept uptown.

  She spied Rhoda waiting anxiously under the marquee. Most of the others had gone inside already. She overtipped the driver and hurried out of the taxi to Rhoda.

  “I was scared your train was late,” Rhoda said, relieved at her appearance. “Let’s go on inside.”