Always and Forever Page 17

  Phil and his father remained away from the business for only two Jewish holidays—Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. If the weather was suitable, they played golf. But on this Rosh Hashanah Phil came downstairs shortly before ten to announce he was going to his father’s house for a conference.

  “On Rosh Hashanah?” Kathy frowned in mild reproach. “Can’t you forget business today?”

  “This is a personal deal.” He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “How would you feel about our moving back into Manhattan?”

  Kathy stared for a moment in amazement.

  “I’d love it,” she told him. Joyous anticipation charging through her. “But what about the house?”

  “It’ll be our second home. We’ll come out some weekends, throw an occasional house party. I’m sick of these long hauls between Greenwich and the city.” He grimaced in distaste. “Of course, I have to convince the old man the move is necessary for business. More time for socializing, all that shit.”

  “What about the company apartment?” Her mind ordered caution. “Won’t your father suggest we stay over in the city part of the week?” But that wouldn’t work. Jesse had just started nursery school—they couldn’t drag him back and forth.

  “The company apartment will be for him and my mother. And we’ll put up management from the stores when they come into town. We should have been doing that all along.”

  The company apartment would be there for Phil and Julius to take their women, Kathy thought with bitter humor. And it was a tax write-off, she mentally mimicked her father-in-law. Julius Kohn took such pleasure in charging expensive items off to the business.

  “Are you having breakfast here or with your father?” she asked politely. It would be so wonderful to be back in the city. She could see the family more often. She could spend more time with Rhoda and Frank.

  “Over there,” Phil said. “We made a date.”

  Three hours later Phil returned to the house. His father had put up a battle, he reported, but he’d made his point.

  “I want you to go into the city and start looking at apartments. Something on Park or Fifth—we need a classy address. And while you’re apartment hunting,” he said in soaring high spirits, “start buying more clothes. We’ll be going out several nights a week. I’ll open more charge accounts for you.”

  “Open a checking account, too,” Kathy said casually. “It’s ridiculous the way I have to run to you all the time when I need cash.”

  For a moment she thought he was going to argue about this, then he shrugged and nodded.

  “Yeah. You pay the bills for the house and your charge accounts—save me wasting time on that crap. Oh, a news bulletin,” he said with plotted nonchalance. “As of the first of the month I’m president of the Out-of-Town Stores Division. Dad will head up the wholesale operation and the New York store. And my salary goes up again.”

  “Congratulations.” She contrived to sound admiring.

  “Your old man’s doing okay,” he boasted. “Dad realizes what I’m bringing to the business. And he loves those column items! I’m making Julius Kohn Furs a household name.”

  Kathy began immediately to search for an apartment. By the end of the month she had located a spacious, charming apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, with sufficient space for themselves and domestic help. A high floor that, she surmised, would assure them quiet.

  She arranged for Phil to see the apartment one morning. He called from the city to say he’d be signing a lease as soon as the broker had drawn it up.

  “We’re renting with an option to buy,” he said ebulliently. “Hire an interior decorator. I want to move in as soon as possible.”

  “I’d rather handle everything myself,” she told him. “I know what’s best for our life style.”

  “Hey, you’re becoming real independent.” Phil’s voice carried an aura of surprise. “That’s what comes of taking you into the outside world,” he joshed. “Okay, I gotta run. Start looking for whatever it takes to make that apartment classy.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Kathy promised. Didn’t he know another description besides “classy”?

  Phil had wanted to give a New Year’s Eve party in their new apartment but the celebrating had to wait until late February. Kathy was pleased with the apartment. She had consulted endless interior decorating magazines and books until she could visualize each room down to the most minute detail. She’d searched the city for the right chandelier for the living room, the perfect paneling for the den. She’d been glad to be involved in a project that was so consuming.

  Even Julius—who had been given a preview before tonight’s housewarming—reluctantly admired her efforts.

  “I hate to see the bills,” he’d told Phil in her presence, “but you could invite the Duke and Duchess of Windsor here.”

  Phil was in the living room now with Julius, who’d changed into evening wear at the company apartment and had come over early. Wally had driven back to Greenwich to bring Bella into the city. Brenda and Gail and their husbands were off on another cruise.

  Kathy had insisted that they keep the list small. “That makes it more important.” Neither her parents and Aunt Sophie nor Rhoda and Frank would be here tonight. This was their café society “inner circle”—including Roz Masters. While Phil was out of town last week, she’d had family and Rhoda and Frank to a preview dinner. Mom and Aunt Sophie had been so delighted with the apartment. Zipping up the back of her white chiffon evening dress, over which she would wear a black silk tight-fitting jacket, Kathy remembered Aunt Sophie’s remark: “Kathy, it’s like I’d died and gone to heaven. It’s the most beautiful apartment I’ve ever seen.”

  She heard Bella being welcomed in the foyer as she left the master bedroom. Bella would want to look in on Jesse, even though he was asleep. Kathy hurried down the hall to the living room.

  “Darling, you look beautiful,” Bella greeted her with a kiss. “Now can I look in on Jesse? I promise not to awaken him.”

  “Of course.” Kathy linked an arm through her mother-in-law’s.

  The party was a huge success, but Kathy was ever conscious of Roz’s presence. She caught the secret small exchanges between Roz and Phil. She heard Phil’s low expression of approval of Roz’s red velvet evening dress, cut daringly low. How long before he left Roz for someone new?

  “It was a marvelous party,” Bella told her as she and Julius took their departure—the last of the guests to leave. “But make Phil buy you some spectacular jewelry,” she ordered, loudly enough for the two Kohn men to hear. “Nothing advertises a man’s success like the jewelry his wife wears.”

  Kathy managed a show of enthusiasm when Phil arrived at the apartment a week later with a diamond and sapphire necklace that she knew must have cost a small fortune.

  “Don’t wear at until I have the insurance policy taken care of,” he admonished.

  “I won’t,” she agreed. The necklace was hers. Also, a small but growing savings account in her name. Rhoda had prodded her into managing this.

  Their lives were falling into a pattern. Four nights a week they played on the café society circuit. One night a week Phil would call to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner. “I’m tied up at the office, baby.” Kathy understood this to mean that he was holed up at the company apartment with Roz. She always knew when this happened. The next night Phil always brought her flowers.

  On alternate weekends they went up to the Greenwich house. Usually there was a small house party. Phil relished playing the genial host. Kathy contrived to hide her boredom. These people spent their waking hours seeking amusement. She was concerned about the Korean War and the possibility of World War III. Their conversations revolved around the “in” vacation spots, the newest splashy musical on Broadway, who was sleeping with whom. Kathy came alive in intense discussion with Rhoda and Frank about the ignominious Redbaiting through Red Channels that was infecting the country.

&nb
sp; To fill the empty hours, Kathy focused on building an exquisite wardrobe. She signed up for a class in fashion design. And she found pleasure in shopping for small but luxurious gifts for her parents and Aunt Sophie—conveniently charged to her account at one of the Fifth Avenue stores.

  On Alice’s midweek day off she waited downstairs for Jesse to be delivered home from nursery school, took him upstairs for lunch, then off to Borough Park. Business was good in the candy store. Her father had arranged for Mannie to come in on a regular basis, which allowed her mother some free hours.

  She was delighted when her father told her at the Passover seder that in August he and her mother and Aunt Sophie were taking a week’s vacation—for the first time in Kathy’s memory.

  “Mannie and his friend will run the store,” her father said with elaborate casualness. “We’ll go to the Catskills. Not to Grossinger’s or the Concord,” he said humorously. “A smaller, less expensive place. But for a week Aunt Sophie and Mom won’t cook and clean. Mom and I won’t stand fourteen hours a day in the store. We’re learning to live, Kathy.”

  She could survive, Kathy thought tenderly, because of the hours here with the family, and the hours with Rhoda and Frank, when Phil was out of town on his constant trips or was “otherwise engaged.”

  Phil sat with his legs crossed and one expensively shod foot jiggling impatiently as his father talked on the phone with an out-of-town supplier. At last Julius put down the phone.

  “Let’s shake a leg, Dad. If we’re not at the bridge by four, you know what traffic’s going to be like getting to the Hamptons.” The city had been like a steambath the past three days. When the hell was this August heat wave going to break?

  “Wally’s downstairs with the car,” Julius told him. “Bring along those reports from the Dallas store. We can go over them on the way out.” He glanced sidewise at his son with a sly grin. “You see that red-haired temp that came over from the agency this morning?”

  “I didn’t notice,” Phil said.

  “This one you’d notice. Even at my age she gives me that urge.”

  “I’ll let you know. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  The two men left the office and headed down the hall to the elevators. En route they passed the small office shared by the bookkeeper, the office manager and a pair of secretaries.

  “There she is—” Julius poked Phil in the ribs.

  Phil managed a fast glance into the room. Normally he wasn’t turned on by girls with no tits, but this one exuded sex. Tall and skinny, four-inch heels, with a curvaceous rump and a baby-doll face.

  “How long is she going to be here?” Phil asked while they waited for an elevator.

  “As long as Maisie needs her. Two or three days,” Julius guessed.

  The next morning Phil contrived to meet the new temp. Her name was Carol Graham, she was fresh out of Northwestern with a degree in drama, and she shared an apartment with another girl in the West Seventies. By late afternoon he’d asked her out for dinner, and she’d accepted. He called the Southampton house to tell Kathy he was staying in New York.

  “I’ve got a buyer from the Dallas store that I have to take out to dinner,” he lied. “See you tomorrow night.”

  He was whistling when he got off the phone. Roz was becoming a pain in the ass with all the hints she’d been dropping lately. Where did she get the nerve to think he’d dump Kathy and marry her? He had a good thing going—why should he change it? The trouble with Roz, she was all shook up at hitting thirty and no rich husband in sight.

  As pre-arranged, he met Carol at the soda fountain around the corner. She was sipping a Coke and carrying on a conversation with a male-model type behind the counter.

  “That soda-jerk has a walk-on in a TV show next month,” she said wistfully when they were on the sidewalk. “That’s a start.”

  Phil took her to dinner at an Italian place down in Greenwich Village, where they were unlikely to encounter anyone he knew. She was twenty-two and dying to make it big in theater.

  “Oh sure, TV is okay,” she said with mild condescension, “but theater is the real action.”

  “I took a flier in theater for a while.” All at once Phil felt ten years younger. Free. “I was in a couple of shows that closed before they even came into town,” he lied offhandedly. “That’s when I went into the business with my old man.”

  “Are you sorry you walked out on theater?” she asked, making no effort to remove her knee when it collided with his under the table.

  “Now and then. I still have a few contacts.” He saw her eyes light up. “Everybody I know is away for the summer, but I’ll put in a good word for you when they come back.”

  “Just looking at you, I guessed you’d been involved in theater somewhere along the line. You’ve got that look.” Under the table her knee jiggled against his.

  When he took her home to the brownstone apartment on West 73rd that she shared with another recent Northwestern graduate, he discreetly left her at her door after a good-night kiss that told him Carol Graham was a girl worth cultivating. He promised himself he’d make it into her bed within a week. She made him feel like a kid again. This could be a fun summer.

  Phil was disappointed when Maisie dropped Carol after three days. Still, he was taking her to some weird downtown theater to see a play on Friday night. He’d stay over in the city, go out to Southampton on Saturday. He’d invite her up to the apartment. The company apartment, he reminded himself. No need for her to know where he lived.

  On Friday he met her at the same drugstore as the last time. She was there waiting for him.

  “Where’d you work today?” he asked, sliding an arm about her waist as they left the drugstore to look for a cab. They were heading downtown to a pre-theater dinner.

  “Oh, I don’t go out on a regular basis,” Carol explained. “Just when my cash flow is bad. My folks give me money for the basics; but when I want something else, I go out for a few days.”

  At Carol’s suggestion Phil instructed the driver to take them down to Rappaport’s on Second Avenue.

  “It’s real close to the theater,” she’d pointed out.

  “How do you know Rappaport’s?” Phil asked curiously.

  “It’s where my father always takes my grandmother on special occasions,” Carol told him. “I’m from Irvington, up in Westchester.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “He’s an orthodontist. My name’s really Garfinkel, but I thought Graham would look better on a marquee.”

  “I can buy that.” Phil nodded in approval.

  While they ate blintzes and sour cream, Carol talked about the new little theaters popping up not only in Greenwich Village but farther east.

  “I mean, nobody makes any money in these crummy little playhouses, but you have a showcase. You can invite agents to come down and see you.”

  “You’re something to see,” he teased, aware that several male diners agreed with him.

  “We’re just around the corner from the playhouse,” she told him later while she debated between ordering strawberry shortcake or apple strudel. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  The playhouse—a converted store—was drab, tiny, and miserably hot. The cast varied from fair to awful. The play was pretentious drivel. When the lights came up for intermission, they discovered that a chunk of the small audience had crept out during the first act.

  “It’s so bloody hot,” Phil complained as they rose in their seats. “Do we have to stay?”

  “No. It was terrible. I’m glad I didn’t bother to try out for a part.”

  “Let’s go somewhere for something cold to drink. I’ve got a better idea,” he said, trying to make it seem spontaneous. “Why don’t we run up to the company apartment and have some chilled wine and great air-conditioning?”

  She gazed at him for a moment as though in deliberation.

  “I know this is when I should look you straight in the eye and say ‘no.’ But I’ll say ‘y
es’ if you remember this is only the second time we’ve been out together and I’m not popping into bed with you.” But the ingenuous smile was accompanied by a seductive glint in her artfully made-up hazel eyes.

  “A little romance on the sofa?” he coaxed with the potent Phil Kohn charm.

  “Yeah. Within limits.”

  Okay, so she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. In time he’d get there. And this little babe was worth waiting for.

  Early in the fall Bella called Kathy to tell her that David would be in New York in two weeks.

  “He’ll stay up here at the house for a couple of nights before he flies out to California for some medical convention. Why don’t you and Phil plan to stay with us, too? Phil can drive in to the city with Julius in the morning, like in the old days.”

  “I’d love that, Bella.” Kathy tried to mask her joyous reaction. David would be here in New York. She hadn’t seen him in three years! “By then the leaves will be changing color—it’s such a beautiful time in Greenwich.”

  “You know David—he never boasts—but I suspect he must be making a name for himself in his field. They wouldn’t ask him to come all the way from West Berlin to San Francisco unless he has an important contribution to make.”

  “I’ll tell Phil about it tonight,” Kathy promised.

  They talked awhile until Bella realized it was time to leave for one of her volunteer meetings.

  “I feel so guilty,” Kathy said. “I’m not involved actively in anything here in New York.”

  “Some of the committees!” Bella grunted in distaste. “The women aren’t concerned about raising money for charities. They fight over who’s to get credit for pulling it off. But I’d better run now. I loathe being late.”

  Kathy put down the phone and crossed to a window to look down on Central Park. She was glad she’d persuaded Phil that Fifth Avenue was more elegant than Park. That glorious sweep of open land down there filled her with such a sense of peace most times. But not today. All she could think about was that David would be in the city in two weeks.