Read Online Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith - Free Book Online Page B

and “overdone.”
    Everything but what he actually meant, which was “too Jewish.” Jeffrey and his parents had what Karen thought of as Ralph Lauren Syndrome: the unbearable longing to be understated gentiles. In her opinion, it was a problem all too common among wealthy New York Jews.
    It was the first time in their then-new marriage that they had had a big disagreement and it was the first time Jeffrey had fixed it by coming up with a Real Deal. From then on, whenever they made major compromises they always called them Real Deals. It was a serious kind of game they played throughout their marriage, a kind of formalized tit-for-tat. She could have this if he could have that. Jeffrey had given up his painting to manage her business but she had to give him free financial reign. She had agreed to build the Westport house if he allowed her to keep their apartment. The demilune table was the first one of their compromises and in return for buying it she had to let him hang his friend Perry’s painting, even though she didn’t like it.
    She’d gone to the auction without him, but once she got the crazy gilded thing into the apartment and put an enormous vase filled with white cala lilies and blue delphinium spikes in place, he had admitted that it was just the outre touch needed. And Karen smiled every time she looked at the grinning carved dolphins that supported the base of the zany piece. After a while she also found herself smiling at Perry’s painting. She’d come to love it. In fact, though it made her feel guilty, she now liked it more than Jeffrey’s painting, which she had tired of in time.
    Off the apartment’s living room there were two hallways: one led to the tiny windowless kitchen that had caused her mother-in-law such grief.
    The other led to an enfilade of doors, where the three bedrooms and a tiny maid’s room were located. Karen used the maid’s room as her at-home studio and simply kept the door closed on the chaos of fabrics, sketches, and trims that always littered the place. But both their bedroom and one of the guest rooms, which they used as a sitting room, were always immaculate. Her husband was very neat. Sometimes she thought she had married her mother. But didn’t everybody?
    “Jeffrey?” she called and he shouted out from down the hall. She took off her raincoat, her mushroom-colored cashmere jacket and shawl, and threw them on one of the dining room chairs. Then she threw herself onto the plump, downfilled cushions of the sofa, kicking off her suede wedgies before she put her feet up.
    “You’re home early,” Jeffrey said from the doorway. “I just got in from work.” He paused and looked at her. “Dinner go poorly? Lisa already called and said she wanted to talk to you. Didn’t you talk over dinner?”
    He crossed the room and picked up her coat. Wordlessly he walked to the closet hidden behind the bookshelves and hung the jacket up. She felt the reproach. Never marry a man more fastidious than you are, she would advise a daughter, if she ever had one. Karen sighed.
    “I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “Belle drives me crazy.”
    “Belle drives everybody crazy. It goes without saying.”
    She nodded. “How was work?” she asked him. Jeffrey had spent the morning taping his portion of Elle Halle’s television programţthey were both doing the interviewţand the rest of the day away from his office, meeting with the NormCo people. The NormCo situation was one she’d rather not think about.
    “Fine. Progress on all fronts.”
    “Did you say nice things about me to the television guys?”
    “Well, I told them you were lousy in bed but a great cook.”
    “Two lies!” she cried and tried to take a swipe at him. She wondered what he had said to the TV cameras but knew she wouldn’t get it out of him. He was a tease.
    “How did the work on the Elliot fitting go?”
    “That was lousy too.” But not as lousy as going to the doctor, she thought. She didn’t