Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

Lisa. Though she had slimmed down a lot, she still wasn’t thin and had accepted that she never would be. Yet even now, the two small, dark, thin women made her feel out of scale. She felt better when they all sat down.
    There were so many, many evenings when they had sat down to a dirmer like this: “the three girls” as Belle had called them. It was funny, Karen thought, how often Belle spoke in the third person or indirectly.
    “The three girls are going shopping,” she would say as they drove to Alexander’s or Loehman’s. If she swerved in traffic, Belle would say, “She better watch where she’s going” or “She better keep her eyes on the road.” Belle was, no doubt about it, as distant from herself as she was from her daughters. Karen sighed. She would have liked to see her dad tonight. They didn’t talk very much, except about work, but Arnold had a solid presence, a calmness and comforting size that Belle lacked.
    Tonight, after the horrible news from the clinic and the cold, rainy ride, her father’s empty place at the table reflected his absence from her life so much of the time, it felt achingly familiar. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her, she supposed. It was just that he was never around.
    No wonder she had always been so pathetically grateful for attention from men.
    But it wasn’t just that. She couldn’t blame Arnold. Lisa had always been able to play hard to get and she had never had attention from their father either. Was it genetic, or just her good looks? Even now, with Lisa’s fine skin beginning to show those tiny wrinkles at the eyes and the slightest beginnings of puckering around the mouth, Lisa was still attractive enough to turn any man’s head. Even so, it was Lisa’s elder daughterţwho had not just her face but also Arnold’s tall, lanky bodyţwho was going to be the real beauty of the family.
    As if she was reading Karen’s mind, Lisa looked up and smiled. “I can’t tell you how thrilled Stephanie is about her intern job.”
    Stephieţwho wasn’t doing well in high schoolţhad opted for a work study program. She was to work parttime at Karen’s.
    “Isn’t it dangerous, her going into the city like that alone every day?” Belle asked. Still rooted in Long Island, Lisa and her family lived in Inwood.
    “Oh, Ma. She’s almost seventeen. She’ll be a senior in high school next year. All the kids in her class have jobs. But they’re stuck at Burger Kings and J.C. Penney’s. I think she can negotiate the four blocks from Penn Station to Karen’s showroom.”
    “Oh, don’t tell me. A schvartzer could grab her at any minute.”
    “Mother! Not schvartzer.” Black.” You can’t call black people schvartzers’ anymore.”
    “Why not?” asked Belle. “It means the same thing.”
    Karen shook her head. How had Arnold put up with Belle for all those years? Karen knew there was no sense talking to her mother. She may as well talk to her own ovaries. Nothing would change. And technically Belle was right, schvartzer did mean “black” in Yiddish, but the connotation was all wrong and completely different. Belle was an expert in the letter-of-the-law arguments: as a kid, Karen nearly had apoplexy trying to get Belle to admit to hypocrisy or unfairness in her positions. Belle couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge them. She spoke, for instance, about how the family had left Brooklyn because of “the element.” Belle would have been shocked and disgusted by anyone who said “nigger,” but wasn’t her code just an epithet by another name?
    Belle never specified exactly what “the element” was, just that “the element” had changed. When Karen had studied high school chemistry and gotten to the periodic table, she had asked her mother which of the elements on it they had been escaping from. Belle hadn’t seen the humor. Humor was never Belle’s strong suit.
    Karen looked over at the woman and suddenly wondered if her real mother was so … so Belle-ish. It