Always and Forever Page 30

  “A plane crashed somewhere over Ireland a few hours ago. There were some Americans on board. Kathy, they were part of some Far East tour.”

  “Fred and Cleo were headed for Ireland the last we heard,” Kathy said, her heart pounding. “But there must be a number of Far East tour groups in operation this time of year. It’s the high season. Let’s don’t jump to wild conclusions.”

  “When I pick up Jesse at school, I’ll see if there’s anything in the newspapers,” Lee said. “If there’s anything important, like a passenger list, I’ll buzz you.”

  By late afternoon the tragic news had come through. All aboard the flight had been killed. Listed among the passengers were Fred and Cleo. For the first time—at memorial services several days later—Marge and Kathy met Fred and Cleo’s son and daughter. Both were married and totally involved in their own lives.

  “How could two such nice people have such cold children?” Marge whispered as they left the chapel. “Are you sure they weren’t adopted?”

  Five days later, when Marge was out of the shop, Kathy received a phone call from Fred and Cleo’s son, Earl.

  “Tell Miss O’Hara that it’s important she contact me immediately. We have business to discuss,” Earl said, his voice arrogant and disapproving.

  “I’ll tell her,” Kathy said. The call was not unexpected, but dreaded.

  When Marge returned, Kathy gave her Earl’s message.

  “He doesn’t know anything about the women’s wear field,” Kathy tried to comfort her. “He can’t take an active hand in the shop.”

  “He and his sister have probably inherited fifty percent of the shop.” Marge was grim. “He can be a real pain in the ass.” She was silent for a moment. “All right, I’ll call him.”

  Marge set up an appointment to meet with Earl at the shop that same evening. She insisted that Kathy remain with her. The two of them listened in shock when Earl Palmer told them he expected Marge to buy him out—or he’d go to court to force a sale of merchandise and fixtures so that he could take out the fifty-percent interest that belonged to his sister and himself.

  “I’ve gone through my father’s records,” he said tersely. “I know to the penny how much money he put into the shop. I want that back within six weeks, or I go to court.”

  Kathy and Marge were distraught. There was no way that Marge could raise that much capital. The move to the new, larger store had drained her liquid funds.

  “What about a bank loan?” Kathy asked. Her own assets would not make a dent in what Earl Palmer demanded. “We can show a healthy situation, Marge.”

  “I’ll try, but I doubt I’ll be able to raise enough to satisfy him.” Marge was pale and shaken.

  “Go to the bank,” Kathy urged. Marge had worked too hard to lose the shop now!

  “And pray for a miracle. In six weeks,” Marge reminded.

  For the next three days Marge applied for loans at various banks. They recognized the shop was profitable. They offered loans but in far lower amounts than what Earl demanded.

  “Talk to him about a lower first payment,” Kathy told her. “Then spread the balance over a period of three years. You can swing that.”

  “I’ll call him,” Marge agreed.

  Earl Palmer refused to discuss a delayed settlement. He insisted he wanted full payment within six weeks.

  “I’m leaving with my wife on a trip to Italy in six weeks. Either you’ve returned my father’s investment in the shop, or I turn the matter over to my attorneys. They’ll proceed with the suit. My father was absurdly naive about his investments,” he said with an air of contempt. “My sister and I are not.”

  Noel was outraged when they told him about the demands of Earl Palmer and his sister.

  “They’re taking advantage of the loose arrangement you had with Fred! You know damn well Fred wouldn’t want to see you in a spot like this.”

  “I wasn’t bright about the deal I signed,” Marge conceded. “But who expected something like this to happen?”

  “Look, you can’t borrow enough to satisfy that stupid bastard, but I can raise that kind of loan against my trust fund.” Noel’s face lighted. “Let me take out the loan for you. You set up a new company with you and Kathy as partners. Kathy’s a terrific asset. You pay off the loan over a period of five years.”

  “Noel, I can’t let you do that,” Marge protested, but her face was luminescent.

  “All right, give me a ten-percent interest in the company and split the other ninety percent between you and Kathy,” Noel said. “I’ve never in my whole life been anything but a dilettante. I think it would be great to work with you two. The three of us make a terrific team.”

  “Marge, it’ll work!” Enthusiasm ignited in Kathy. It was not just that she would love being part of the business. Here was security for Jesse. “We’ll go all out on pushing ‘Designs by Marge,’” she pursued. “We’ll promote your designs the way we’ve always been afraid to because of Fred.”

  “It’s a tremendous gamble, Noel,” Marge warned.

  “We’ll make it,” Noel insisted, his smile brilliant. “Tomorrow I go to my bankers. They know their loan is safe if it’s tied to my trust fund. Let’s go out and celebrate. We’re in business!”

  Noel had been right. His bank was happy to extend the loan against his trust fund. Now he worked alongside Marge and Kathy in the shop—each of the three now assigned specific duties. Though the fall season was almost upon them, Kathy prodded Marge into designing a line of sweaters and skirts, and she roamed the city in search of shops that could manufacture for them in record time, raced about the area in search of materials that pleased both herself and Marge. With his keen eye for color and textures, Noel made up the third member of their “board of directors.”

  Their Christmas sales soared. Their only complaint was that they ran out of choice items before the peak season.

  “We can’t be so scared,” Noel scolded at a Sunday business meeting at Kathy’s apartment. “We have to show more faith in ourselves. We’ll double our orders for spring merchandise,” he said ebulliently. “I’ll bet we could sell the original designs to other stores, too.”

  “Not in San Francisco,” Kathy stipulated. “Maybe we could sell a top department store in Los Angeles. Let’s try that, hunh?” She gazed from Noel to Marge. “But in San Francisco, if they want a sweater or skirt that’s a ‘Design by Marge,’ they have to come to the 4-S Shop. Let’s build on that.”

  A month later—grateful that her wardrobe included a few designer outfits from her life with Phil—Kathy flew down to Los Angeles to show samples of Marge’s small new collection to buyers of choice department stores. Her objective was to sign up one store to handle the line exclusively.

  Kathy was elated when the second buyer pounced on the line with enthusiasm. She returned to San Francisco with an impressive order. Marge and Noel viewed her with awe.

  “Kathy, how did you wangle such a large order?” Noel was entranced.

  “Can we fill it?” Marge betrayed some misgivings.

  “We have to.” Kathy understood Marge’s concern. This wasn’t New York. They didn’t have the Seventh Avenue “outside shops” at their command. There might be problems in receiving material in the quantities they’d need. “We’ll deliver on schedule,” she vowed. The challenge was exhilarating.

  The three of them worked longer hours than ever in their lives, all dedicated to making a success of the shop. By spring of the new year Noel was already pushing Kathy and Marge to thoughts of opening a second shop. They were meeting their bank loans and putting money aside for future development.

  With the Los Angeles department store asking for more merchandise, Kathy brushed aside Marge’s alarm about their filling orders and opened up accounts in fashionable department stores in San Diego and Acapulco. She searched the metropolitan San Francisco area for contractors to handle their burgeoning business. She was intoxicated by the potential of both “Designs by Marge” and 4-S Shops Incorpo
rated.

  “What about a shop in Berkeley?” Kathy pursued at an after-hours conference on her return from Acapulco. “A small store on Shattuck Avenue. No,” she corrected herself. “Later a shop on Shattuck Avenue. The next one should be Telegraph Avenue—catering to all those college co-eds.”

  They scheduled an August opening for the shop on Telegraph Avenue. Noel, ever charming and appealing to women despite his own sexual preferences, was to be in charge. They knew almost immediately that this shop, too, would be a success.

  Kathy’s family flew out from New York for a week’s vacation, timing this to coincide with the opening of the Telegraph Avenue shop. Their pride in her brought tears to Kathy’s eyes. Thank God for the telephone, she thought—at least they were able to talk once a week. Still, as much as she had learned to love San Francisco, she yearned to be back in New York, close to her family and friends.

  “Kathy, I was so glad to hear that Rhoda has a teaching job at last,” her mother said, and Kathy nodded in agreement. “She and Frank have gone through such a bad time.”

  “Frank’s sold a few articles in the last year,” Kathy told her. “And he keeps hoping his animal rights group will be able to afford to set up a paid staff soon.”

  Lee was enlisted to show Kathy’s family the sights of San Francisco during the hours when Jesse was in school. She showed them the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, with its myriad restaurants, its Wax Museum and Maritime Museum, Coit Tower, and the Mission Dolores, the oldest structure in San Francisco. They rode on cable cars. Through dime-in-the-slot telescopes on Telegraph Hill they saw Alcatraz, the island barely a mile away that was home to famous San Quentin, where several thousand of the Federal government’s toughest prisoners were incarcerated.

  Kathy’s mother and father and Aunt Sophie made a point of being at the apartment when Lee went to bring Jesse home from school. This was the high point of their visit—to spend time with him. In the evening Kathy took them and Jesse to dinner at Bardelli’s, at Julius’s Castle, high on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, with windows providing a breathtaking view of the waterfront, the Bay and the bridges.

  As on the last occasion, Kathy felt desolate when her family left. The prospect of these separations continuing through long years was painful. But thank God, she thought, for Marge and Noel and Lee.

  Marge had a casual social life with men that never developed into a serious relationship, but Kathy understood she was too wrapped up in the shop to be upset. Noel and Chris escorted Marge and her to the symphony, the ballet, and the theater at intervals. If Marge was seeing someone, then Noel and Chris and she were a festive trio.

  Noel gave a party to welcome 1956. In many ways, Kathy thought, when the guests had left and only she and Marge and Noel and Chris remained, 1955 had been a great year. The shops were succeeding beyond their expectations. They’d had to hire additional help for both sites and were opening on Shattuck Avenue right after the new year. Kathy envisioned a West Coast chain from San Diego to Seattle in the not too distant future.

  Chris went out to the kitchen to make coffee. Marge and Noel discussed Chris’s imminent gallery show. Kathy was caught up in introspection. Tonight—in truth, the first hours of 1956—she felt a surge of homesickness.

  Earlier she had phoned home to wish the family a happy new year. Then she had called Rhoda and Frank in Croton for the first greeting of 1956. There was so much she missed about New York, she thought wistfully. Winter snows, the new small theaters labeled Off-Broadway, the double-decker Fifth Avenue buses. Beaches where the water—unlike in San Francisco—was warm enough for swimming. And in New York they would have a much easier time with manufacturing, she remembered. A larger choice of materials. There was only one Seventh Avenue.

  Always on New Year’s she thought about David. Was he all right? Was he happy? Had he married that girl he talked about? Probably he was married and a father by now, she thought, remembering him with Jesse.

  “Coffee, everybody,” Chris called out exuberantly, walking into the room with a tray of mugs. He was so thrilled about his first gallery showing, Kathy thought with affection. At twenty-two, that was an achievement, even though it was being underwritten by Noel. “We’ve just ushered in what my crystal ball tells me will be a marvelous year for all of us,” he entoned with mock seriousness.

  “From your lips to God’s ear,” Marge said softly.

  Their success, Kathy thought, was almost awesome, because it was happening so quickly. They worked hard and long, but so did many others. At recurrent intervals she marveled at their progress. At moments she was almost frightened by the way their sales were spiraling, as though disaster might lie just around a bend in the road.

  January was a month of heavy designing on Marge’s part. Kathy was ever enthralled to be part of this. Her ideas were always incorporated in Marge’s sketches. She couldn’t sketch or sew, but Marge said she had a wonderful eye for small details that made a garment special.

  Guilty at having to leave Jesse behind—though she knew he was spoiled outrageously by Lee, Marge and Noel in her absence—Kathy flew on a brief selling trip to Los Angeles and San Diego, and shortly after that to Acapulco. As before, she returned with impressive orders. But manufacturing problems escalated sharply.

  After a week of fighting to organize a schedule that would meet their deadlines, Kathy ordered Marge and Noel to her apartment for an evening conference. With Jesse asleep they settled down over coffee to try to cope with their situation.

  “There has to be a way to cope with orders,” Kathy said with candid frustration. “As it is, I ought to try to set up department stores in Seattle and Denver.”

  “You know what I think?” Noel began with that low-keyed tone that usually indicated a discussion of major magnitude.

  “What do you think?” Marge joshed.

  “I think we ought to take off the blinders and admit we need to move our base of operation to New York. We need the facilities we can find only on Seventh Avenue. That is, if we’re to keep building the company—and kids, it’s ready to explode into a national organization. I can handle the West Coast operations. We’ll all make trips back and forth three or four times a year. And you two will take care of the manufacturing out of New York.”

  “Noel, I can’t go to New York—” Kathy’s throat tightened. They all understood they couldn’t work out of New York without her constant presence. “You know my situation.” All at once she was trembling.

  “Kathy, you can’t go on killing yourself looking for contractors. Going crazy arranging for delivery of materials. And once we start missing deadlines, we’ll be in serious trouble.”

  “After all this time—it’s almost three years—Phil and Julius must have given up trying to track you down,” Marge said.

  “Phil might, but Julius is carrying on a vendetta. You don’t know him the way I do.” Kathy was agonized by the situation. The business couldn’t stand still; it had to expand or slowly fall by the wayside. But how could she go back to New York? Gamble on Phil taking her into court over Jesse’s custody? Or worse—and she felt cold at just thinking of such a possibility—physically carrying off Jesse at some vulnerable moment. “It would be too dangerous for me to show up in New York again.”

  “Look, it’s a question of planning,” Noel told her seriously. “New York is a huge city. You’ll know how to avoid Phil. You’ll always be one up on him because he won’t suspect you’re around.”

  “You’ve changed your appearance, changed your name. You won’t move in Phil’s circles. Like Noel said, you know Phil’s haunts—you can avoid them. We can set up offices well away from Julius Kohn Furs. You’ll rent a house up in Westchester—the Kohns are in Greenwich and Southampton. What about a house up in Croton?” Marge pushed. “Near Rhoda’s apartment. Lee will go along to New York with us—she’d love to. She has a younger married sister in Queens,” Marge reminded.

  “I’m scared.” Kathy was fighting within herself now. She was pa
ssionately ambitious, aware of the logic of what they said. Could she handle this, being super-careful? She’d never set foot in Brooklyn—the family would come to her, she plotted. She’d keep a low profile both in the business and in Westchester. Would it work? She forever felt guilty at depriving Jesse of family. He was almost nine now, old enough to be aware of how alone they were. If she rented a house in Croton, Jesse could see Mom and Dad and Aunt Sophie regularly. That would make up for his not having the presence of a father. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “I’ll have to give it a lot more thought.”

  During the spring school vacation, Kathy flew to New York with Jesse to scout for office space and a house in Westchester. She had appointments with real estate brokers in Manhattan and Croton. She was amazed to discover that American Airlines’ new DC-7S flew from San Francisco to New York in seven hours and fifteen minutes eastbound—forty minutes longer westbound. When she and Jesse had flown out in 1953, the trip had taken three hours longer!

  Still—despite Marge and Noel’s conviction that she could lose herself in Manhattan—she felt a sickening trepidation as the plane approached Idlewild. The agony that brought on her flight to San Francisco was fresh again.

  On the rare chance that her parents’ movements were being followed, she’d exhorted them not to meet her flight. They’d made reservations for her at a small Upper West Side hotel, and would be waiting there for Jesse and her. She wanted to scream at Jesse for being so vocal in his delight at their arrival when what she felt was sheer terror. Had she made an awful mistake in bringing him back to New York?

  They collected their luggage. A skycap carried the valises outside and found a taxi for them. Now joy at the prospect of seeing her family washed away her initial alarm at being back in New York. She watched the passing scenery with that special feeling of coming home after a long absence. Excitement kindled in her as the taxi drove over the Queensborough Bridge into Manhattan and headed west.