Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith Read Free Book Online

thought of the abortion of a fitting session she’d struggled through with Elise Elliot, her most important new client, an argument with Jeffrey, and the horror at the clinic, but she managed a smile.
    “Great,” she said, because from long experience she knew that was the only answer Belle was equipped to deal with. “How was yours?”
    “Great,” Belle answered brightly. “We went all the way over to NeimanMarcus. Lisa bought me a great outfit. She insisted.”
    “It was on sale,” Lisa said, and shrugged as if to say it wasn’t a big deal.
    Still crazy after all these years. Karen couldn’t get over their insatiable need to shop. Karen shrugged. Before she was a name, she had made the effort to get the two of them into most of the Seventh Avenue showrooms, despite the trouble and ill-will it often caused.
    Like the notorious Gabor sisters, her mother and sister had developed a reputation for returning more stuff than they bought. But Karen at last had come to understand that shopping for them, as for so many women, was a highly developed bonding activity. It was like men with sports: a father could be completely out of touch with his son’s internal life but they could always manage a conversation about those Mets. Lisa and Belle bonded by shopping. It was unfortunate that Karen and her mother, as adults, had no longer been able to do that shopping gig. Since Karen’s interest in design had deepened, Karen had become, in Belle’s words, “too particular.” And “too dull. You need some color.” Color to Belle meant red and aqua and royal blue. Even now, when women paid thousands of dollars for Karen’s unique vision, her exquisitely modulated color sense, Belle had never really acknowledged that Karen’s taste had been anything but difficult to understand.
    She managed to smile at her mother. “Where’s Dad?” Karen asked.
    “Oh, you know your father. Working late on somebody’s stinking case.”
    After more than forty years of marriage Belle had still not forgiven Arnold for only being a labor lawyer, “not a real lawyer,” as Belle often pointed out. He’d never joined a Park Avenue firm and done lucrative corporate work. He’d formed his own labor practice and, worse, did a lot of pro bono. “A Harvard lawyer! He could have made millions,” Belle always said regretfully.
    “So, are we eating?” Belle asked them now. She moved through the arch to the dining room, where three places were set on the mahogany Sheratonstyle table. The china was lovelyţRoyal Doultonţand the crystal gleamed. A tiny cachepot of violets sat at each place. Belle set a pretty table but she was less than a wiz in the kitchen. Food represented mess and bother: she’d discovered frozen entrees long before anyone else and served what Karen always thought of as “hospital meals”: the portions were small but no one complained because the food was so bland. And there were never any leftovers. Arnold didn’t seem to mindţaside from his work, Karen’s father noticed few details and often ate out. She’d been left on her own to Belle’s culinary torture.
    As a kid in Brooklyn, Karen had made a habit of hoarding chocolate and Bit-O-Honey bars from the neighborhood candy store. That way she always had something to eat when faced with Belle’s empty refrigerator.
    Karen had relied on the sugar. When they had moved to Rockville Centre, in the sixties, it had been harder to get a fix. There were no stores within easy walking distance of their new suburban house and kids were not allowed to leave the junior high school during the day.
    Karen had gone into acute sugar withdrawal and lost a few poundsţto her mother’s delightţbefore she found a fat friend, Carl, who kept her supplied.
    Carl’s dad owned a deli/butcher shop and Carl could take anything he wanted from the shelves. A friend with greed was a friend indeed.
    Karen was still what her mother called “a big girl.” At five ten, she towered over Belle and