Always and Forever Page 31

At the hotel she and Jesse were enveloped in the family’s welcome. Her parents and Aunt Sophie knew this was not merely a visit but the first step in a return from exile. She hadn’t told Jesse yet that they were moving back to New York. He thought this was just a visit plus business. She would make this work, Kathy vowed.

  They left the hotel and went over to Tip Toe Inn for an early dinner. Her mother would stay with them in their suite while they were in town. Tomorrow she would inspect the office space the broker had lined up for her to see, and Mom would take Jesse to the Museum of Natural History. In the evening Dad and Aunt Sophie would come into Manhattan to have dinner with them.

  The following day she would take the train up to Croton, be met at the station by the broker and shown several houses that were available as rentals. She would have a brief visit with Rhoda and Frank and tiny Sara before taking the train back into the city.

  Kathy settled for office space on Madison Avenue in the low thirties. While the address was only a few blocks from Julius Kohn Furs, Kathy knew it was foreign territory to both Phil and his father. 4-S Shops Inc. would take possession on July 1st.

  She rented a charming little house on East Mount Airy Road in Croton, set back behind a 400-foot dogwood-lined driveway that provided a maximum of privacy. On a whirlwind trip through the furniture department of B. Altman she ordered basic furniture to be delivered on their arrival in Croton.

  Despite her original decision not to tell Jesse until the end of school that they were moving back to New York, she broke the news to him while they were aboard their return flight to San Francisco.

  He sat in disturbing silence for a few moments.

  “You mean I won’t see Harry anymore?” Harry had been his “best friend” for the past year.

  “Of course, you’ll see him again,” she soothed. “We’ll go back on visits.” He’s upset, she thought. It wasn’t good to uproot him this way. “Jesse, you’ll love the house up in Croton,” she said gaily. “We’ll have a whole house to ourselves, with a huge deck, and almost two acres of land. Lee’ll live with us, and Marge will have an apartment in town.” Still, he seemed to be troubled. “With that house and all that land, maybe we could get a puppy.” All at once Jesse’s face was aglow. “How would you like that? He would be your puppy. You’ll have to take care of him,” she cautioned, relieved by his pleasurable reaction. This would see him through the move.

  “Can I call him Harry?” Jesse asked.

  “You pick him out,” she promised, “and you name him.”

  “He’ll be a collie, like Harry’s dog!” Jesse decided effervescently. “We’ll take pictures of him, and I’ll send one to Harry.”

  Somehow, she must make this return to New York work, Kathy told herself yet again. Jesse needed the security of roots. They couldn’t continue to run.

  Chapter 28

  THE SUMMER WEEKS WERE chaotic for Kathy both personally and professionally. She was grateful for Lee’s presence in their lives. It was Lee who supervised their getting settled in the house, who found a congenial day-camp for Jesse. Lee was the family chauffeur. She drove Kathy to the Harmon station each morning for the commute into New York, and picked her up on her return.

  The household now included the puppy Jesse had chosen at a Westchester animal center and named Harry, a rambunctiously affectionate mongrel of mixed ancestry—mainly collie and golden retriever, Frank had decided. It had been love at first sight for Jesse and Harry. Kathy, too, quickly succumbed to Harry’s charms.

  At disconcerting intervals Kathy was anxious about her presence in the city that harbored Phil, yet for most of the hours in the office she was so absorbed in work she might still have been in San Francisco. By the end of the summer—with Noel in New York for three days of consultations—Kathy brought up the subject of their hiring a publicity woman. She had learned the value of this from Phil.

  “We stress our designer,” Kathy said while she sat with Marge and Noel on the sprawling deck of the Croton house. “Marge, you’ll always wear your own designs.” Her mind flashed back to Roz, whom she’d disliked intensely but who had been so savvy about fashion publicity. “We’ve got to build a look for you. A new hair style, new makeup.”

  “Oh, God, you’ll have me on television next.” Marge grimaced in alarm.

  “We’ll hire a publicity woman with strong magazine, radio, and TV contacts,” Kathy stipulated. “And you’ll use just one name. Marge.”

  “Hildegarde and me,” Marge flipped, but Kathy saw her awareness of what lay ahead of them.

  By late fall their manufacturing was moving with a smoothness that elated the three stockholders of 4-S Shops Inc. Kathy made a quick trip to England to buy special fabrics. They were about to open their first Manhattan shop. She was negotiating with a major Philadelphia store to handle “Designs by Marge” on an exclusive basis. From the West Coast Noel was supervising the opening of a shop in Dallas and another in New Orleans.

  Noel and Chris flew in from San Francisco to spend Thanksgiving weekend at the Croton house, combining business with pleasure. Kathy was euphoric at having the dining room table opened to its full capacity for this Thanksgiving dinner: her parents, Aunt Sophie, Rhoda and Frank and little Sara, now a few weeks short of her second birthday, but happy to be seated on a pile of pillows at the dining table, and Noel and Chris, along with Jesse and herself. Marge had gone to her family in Brooklyn.

  Lee was at her sister’s house in Queens for Thanksgiving, but she’d insisted on preparing the turkey and seeing it into the oven before Kathy drove her to the station. Rhoda brought a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie, baked the night before. Chris had brought her a small painting of Jesse, done from memory.

  After dinner they settled themselves about the spacious living room while Frank and Jesse made a joyous adventure of laying a fire in the fireplace grate and coaxing it into an orange-red blaze. Sara napped now in Jesse’s bedroom.

  “Jesse, if Harry gets any closer to the fireplace, we’ll have roast dog,” Rhoda teased.

  “I want to take photos later,” Noel said. “I have to try out my new camera.”

  “Noel, take one of Jesse and Harry,” Kathy said on impulse. She’d send it to Bella. It was months since she’d sent a batch of snapshots to Phil’s mother, she realized guiltily. Bella truly loved Jesse. How sad that they couldn’t see one another.

  For the dozenth time today her mind wandered back to Thanksgiving Day in Hamburg, eleven years ago. They’d had dinner late in the evening because this had been another working day for them. Phil had just arrived in Hamburg a few days earlier, and he’d come to the flat for dinner. He’d brought chocolate bars bought on the black market.

  She’d given little attention to Phil at that Thanksgiving dinner, though the other girls, even Rhoda, had seemed fascinated by him. David monopolized her thoughts. She wore the brooch they’d discovered in a pawnshop in Berlin.

  “This is a long way from Hamburg,” Rhoda said reminiscently, and Kathy turned to her with a startled smile. Rhoda, too, remembered Thanksgiving in Hamburg.

  “We had Spam instead of turkey,” Frank recalled, “and canned cranberry sauce brought from New York. I wonder where the others are today—”

  It was unlikely David would be celebrating Thanksgiving in Berlin, Kathy thought. But if he looked at the calendar and realized this was Thanksgiving Day in the United States, would he remember that Thanksgiving in Hamburg? Instinctively, she knew he would.

  David was restless on the flight to New York. He’d debated over a month, since New Year’s, about going to discuss the offer to set up his own research center in Manhattan. He wasn’t making a commitment yet, he told himself. This was just to talk about what the group had to offer him.

  His friends at the Institute thought he was out of his mind to consider leaving Berlin now. Its postwar recovery was sensational, the spirit of the city high. And here was none of the frenzy of such prosperous cities as Frankfurt.

  The “Ku-Damm”—as Berliners
called the Kurfürstendamm—was lined with smart new shops, new theaters, fashionable hotels, bookstores, sidewalk cafés. At night, illuminated by myriad neon signs, the avenue exuded prosperity as well-dressed strollers thronged the area. On weekends shabbily dressed East Berliners sneaked into the Western Sector to walk on the Ku-Damm and stare in disbelief and fascination at the fine shops and their elegant merchandise. Glass-walled office buildings and cheerfully colored apartment houses had sprung up around the city.

  It was weird, he thought, that as West Berlin prospered, he grew more uncomfortable living there. Perhaps because he knew that the rebuilding was financed by capital from the German government—which had confiscated all the worldly goods of the German Jews—and by the United States government, its former enemy. West Berlin’s well-being was an affront to his memories of the Holocaust.

  Of course, not all of West Berlin was flourishing, he conceded. It was a city, also, of rubble mountains—stark reminders of the war years. A hundred thousand families lived in rude shelters or on the streets. Unemployment was high. Many streets still had ruins.

  It would be great to see New York again, David thought nostalgically. He’d been too wrapped up in work the last four years to accept invitations to participate in American medical conventions. He’d exchanged the usual two or three letters a year with Uncle Julius and Aunt Bella, but that was his sole contact with the States.

  Jesse would be about nine and a half now, he guessed. He doubted that there was a brother or sister—Aunt Bella would have written if Kathy and Phil had had another child. He remembered his suspicions that Kathy and Phil’s marriage was not a happy one. He hoped the situation had improved.

  On this trip he would stay with Uncle Julius in the company’s New York apartment. Aunt Bella was in Jamaica with Gail and Brenda for three weeks. He’d only be in town four days, just long enough for several meetings with the people involved in setting up the new research center.

  He was conscious of a tremendous pull back to the States. And in this new position—if he accepted it—he would be able to schedule time to work on the book he’d long hoped to write. A layman’s book on nutrition.

  It wasn’t only in the poor, backward nations that bad nutrition was taking a terrible toll. The middle and upper class and the rich often suffered, in the midst of such plenty, from the lack of a proper diet. Good health was the greatest gift in the world. The United States was the richest country in the world. But this wasn’t reflected in health statistics.

  As his uncle had arranged, the family limousine—with Wally at the wheel—was waiting for him at Idlewild. He was conscious of a flicker of excitement as they headed toward Manhattan, the winter sky bright with stars and a pale sliver of moon. He always had this feeling of coming home when he arrived in New York.

  He’d surely see Kathy and Phil and Jesse while he was here. His throat tightened at the prospect. Seeing Kathy brought him both joy and anguish. It was always so wonderful to be in her presence, but he suffered such anguish in realizing that he could have spent his life with her if he had not been so neurotically caught up in the past.

  That time when Jesse was ill with polio had been a precious period for him. He’d felt so close to Kathy. For a little while she and Jesse had been his family. Back in Hamburg he should have told her how he felt about her. He shouldn’t have stepped aside when Phil arrived.

  Watching the passing scenery with unseeing eyes, he remembered the night he’d asked Gretchen to marry him, and how later he had awakened in the night to see her standing by the window. He could hear her voice now.

  “David, who is Kathy?”

  “A girl I knew in Hamburg, One of our group. We were a team—”

  “You talked about her in your sleep. I think you love her very much.”

  Gretchen was right not to have married him. He would always be in love with Kathy. Gretchen was married almost a year now. She was expecting her first child.

  “You just missed a heavy snow.” Wally’s voice interrupted his introspection. “There’s still a little on some of the side streets.”

  “Is it my imagination or have some new skyscrapers gone up since I was here?” They were approaching the Queensboro Bridge now, with the brilliantly illuminated skyline a dramatic vista.

  “Yes, sir,” Wally assured him with pride. “This city is really moving ahead.”

  Julius—in one of his smoking jackets that he thought gave him a cosmopolitan air—was waiting for him at the apartment.

  “You must be starving,” Julius said jovially when they had exchanged warm greetings. “Let’s go out to the kitchen and dig into the delicatessen I ordered sent over from Reuben’s. Nothing like their hot pastrami and corned beef.”

  While they devoured enormous amounts of food, washed down with ice-cold root beer, Julius boasted about Phil’s success in the business.

  “He’s a real chip off the old block,” Julius said with pride, and then his face tightened. “He deserved better than he got from his wife.”

  A coldness enveloped David.

  “I don’t understand, Uncle Julius.”

  “Didn’t Bella write you? The little bitch walked out on him. My God, it was three and a half years ago!”

  “I didn’t know.” David’s heart was pounding.

  “She walked out of the house in Greenwich without saying a word. Just took Jesse and disappeared. It’s a terrible thing to deprive a man of his son,” he said with self-righteous indignation.

  “What happened? Why did she leave that way?” David was stammering. Reeling from this news.

  “She was always a queer duck,” Julius said contemptuously. “I never understood why Phil married her.” His eyes narrowed as he gazed at David. “You knew her in Hamburg. Did she seem kind of unstable to you then?”

  “Kathy was a fine, dedicated worker. Always compassionate and helpful. It’s not like her to act on impulse.” What did Phil do to drive her away like that?

  “I’ve spent a fortune trying to track her down. Phil doesn’t want her back. He wouldn’t take her back if she came to him on bended knees. Not after what she’s put him through. But he wants his son. I want my grandson.” He glowered in frustration. “We haven’t a lead. Her parents play dumb. They claim they don’t know where she is, but I don’t believe that for a minute. But hell, we can’t keep a P.I. on their trail twenty-four hours a day year after year. Every once in a while we try again. We’re getting Jesse back, David. I won’t rest till that happens.” Then he smiled. A devious glint in his eyes. “She walked out too fast to take anything with her. Even left her diamond and sapphire necklace behind. Cleaned out their joint checking account, but that wasn’t a hell of a lot.”

  Settled in bed for the night, David knew sleep would be slow in overtaking him. The conversation with his uncle about Kathy ricocheted in his mind. Were Kathy and Jesse all right? She’d gone off without funds. Again, the question plagued him: what had Phil done that pushed Kathy to walk out?

  It alarmed him that Kathy and Jesse were off alone somewhere. But like Uncle Julius, he couldn’t believe that her parents were out of touch with Kathy. They’d always be there for her and Jesse, he consoled himself. She might not be living the luxurious Kohn life, but her parents would not let her be in want.

  Would Rhoda know? They’d been close since Hamburg. But Rhoda would be afraid to tell him, afraid he might slip and alert Phil. Kathy wasn’t asking for a divorce because she was afraid of losing Jesse, he surmised. And instantly he felt guilty at thinking of Kathy divorced and free to marry again.

  On the following evening, after a day-long conference with the group he’d come to see, David was to meet Julius and Phil for dinner at Toots Shor’s. Julius was there when he arrived. Phil was ten minutes late. He watched with a sense of shock as Phil strolled toward their table. The last time he’d seen Phil, he remembered, was that time in Paris. Already—a few weeks from his thirty-ninth birthday—Phil was losing his magnetic handsomeness. His body was that
of a man who ate too much, drank too much, and never exercised.

  “Hey, I hear you may be coming back to the Big City,” Phil drawled. “Some fancy job being offered to you?” A hint of condescension in his voice.

  “I’m considering it,” David said quietly. “If I do take it, it won’t happen for another year. I have to wind up my affairs in Berlin first, then stop over in Copenhagen for several months. But yes, it’s fairly likely that I’ll take the job.” He hesitated. “I was sorry to hear about you and Kathy.”

  “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.