Olivia Goldsmith - Fashionably Late

‘Yes?’ she asked the nurse who gave her a professionally bright smile as if it didn’t matter that this was the worst day of Karen’s life. The best night, followed by the worst day. Twenty-four rocky hours. ‘That will be seven hundred and forty-three dollars,’ the woman said pleasantly, without shame. Karen unzipped her De Vecchi bag and pulled out her checkbook. She fumbled for her Mont Blanc but couldn’t find it. The nurse, still smiling brightly, slipped her a Bic. Karen noticed her own hands were shaking. She tried to write out ‘7’ on the amount line and it looked more like a snake that had been mashed on the roadway than a number. It was hopeless. She tore the check out and into two pieces, threw the cheap pen on the desk, and chucked the pigskin checkbook back into her bag.

‘Bill me,’ she said, and her anger gave her enough energy to make it through the door to the elevator and down into the lobby of the building. How could they make you pay to get this news? Her lip trembled, but she wouldn’t cry. She never cried. She walked out of the building and onto Park Avenue. The awning over the door was flapping in the wind and a fine rain had begun to spray everything the brown-gray color, like wet wood smoke, that painted New York on its bad rainy afternoons.

Perfect, she thought. I’ll never get a cab to Penn Station in this. I should have taken a limo, just like Jeffrey had suggested. But Karen hated to keep the driver waiting. It wasn’t that she was cheap – it was simply an embarrassment to her. The idea of a bus or, worse yet, the subway, made her so dizzy she thought she might fall onto the wet concrete. New York is unlivable, she thought, and every place else is worse. I should have gotten the limo and taken it. Not just to here and the station, but all the way to Long Island. What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t give myself a break. Karen Kahn, woman of the people. That’s my father’s influence. Karen felt a wave of self-pity wash over here, and with it all her reserve of strength was gone. ‘Please,’ she said aloud. ‘Please.’

And her prayer was answered. A taxi pulled up to the canopy and two men stepped out, leaving it vacant for her. She got into it gratefully and took a deep breath. ‘Penn Station,’ she told the driver, who was dressed in the native garb of some Third World country that she would not be able to identify on a map. He nodded and she hoped he had a clue how to find their destination.

She leaned back into the impossibly uncomfortable seat. What an irony it was that her one prayer had been for a taxi. Just my luck, she thought. Major unanswered wishes in my life and that’s the one I make when the Wish Fairy is feeling generous. Too bad I hadn’t wished for a baby.

She glanced at her wristwatch, a chunky antique gold man’s Rolex – the only thing that made her big wrist look small. The cab was crawling through the usual midtown war zone. She’d never make the 4:07. She would be late.

Well, what else was new? She habitually ran late. Fashionably late. Jeffrey always told her she tried to do too much. But after all these years, Belle still got in a frenzy whenever Karen was tardy. That’s what Belle called it and through pursed lips expostulated: ‘There is no need for tardiness.’ Sometimes Belle sounded exactly like a second-grade teacher, which was exactly what she had been when she first met her husband. But once they adopted Karen, Belle had never taught again, at least not professionally. She had taught Karen how to dress; how to make hospital corners on sheets (‘Fitted sheets are for lazy women’); how to properly polish good leather shoes; how to wax her legs; how to set a table; how to write a thank-you note; how to correctly sew on a button; and a million other small but unforgettable life lessons. In some ways, Belle was born to teach.

Maybe that was her problem as a mother, Karen thought. Belle only had the two of us to work on. It got too concentrated, too intense. She should have spread it around among a class of thirty children every year. It certainly would have taken some of the pressure off Karen and her younger sister, Lisa. But if Belle had worked, would Lisa have been conceived at all?

Karen stopped herself. There I go, blaming my job for my infertility. Karen reminded herself again that the doctor had said the problem was not entirely age-based; that it was probably congenital. How had he put it? That ‘it was aggravated by age.’ Well, she was aggravated, all right. Karen couldn’t put the idea out of her mind that if only she and Jeffrey had tried earlier, if they had put just a little of their effort into reproduction instead of into the business, they might have succeeded. She was famous – infamous really – for never taking no for an answer. ‘If you don’t take no, you’ve got to get a yes,’ she often told her staff. But she’d have to take a no on this.

Of course, they could try to go the petri dish route. But Karen knew that Jeffrey would be opposed, and she was herself. After all, with all the unwanted babies, all the hungry and homeless in the world, how could she justify spending thousands just to try to perpetuate her genes? Somehow, it didn’t work for her. Not that there were any guarantees, anyway.

If only I’d tried earlier, Karen thought. If only I’d …

That’s crazy, she told herself. That’s the backlash of guilt women feel if they can’t do everything perfectly. Look at Connie Chung. Is she busy hating herself this afternoon? You’ll drive yourself meshuggah with this, so stop it.

The taxi jerked to a halt behind a bus that was belching black smoke and also had one of those annoying John Weitz ads staring at her. The cab was still three long blocks from Penn Station and they were the three cross-town blocks of Thirty-Third Street that would be hell on a rainy Friday. Fuck it, Karen murmured to herself, and leaned forward, putting her face close to the hole in the bulletproof plexiglass partition that separated her from the driver. ‘How much to drive to Long Island?’ she asked.

‘JFK?’ he questioned with a voice that rose in a hopeful Pakistani-like lilt.

‘No. Rockville Center. On Long Island. Only a little further than JFK,’ she lied. But she was desperate. Still, she wondered if she had enough cash. One of the perks of success: Karen hadn’t been in a bank in years. Her secretary got her cash, but Karen perennially ran short of it. She’d made a habit of tucking folded hundred-dollar bills into the zipper compartments of all her purses. Emergency money. She opened this one and, sure enough, there was the hundred. She took it out, unfolded the crisp creases, and showed it to the driver, slipping part of it into the little scoop for the fare. He eyed it hungrily and turned off the meter.

‘How we go?’ he asked. The accent didn’t really sound Pakistani. And that odd bolero jacket he was wearing was interesting. If it was done in a faille … Anyway, he wasn’t Pakistani. Maybe Afghan. They drove camels, not Buicks, didn’t they?

‘Through the Midtown tunnel, then the LIE. Not too far,’ she lied again. Well, it would probably take less time to get to Rockville Centre than it would to get across Manhattan. And she just might, with luck (and if they beat the traffic even by only a few minutes), make it to Belle’s house in time for dinner.

To her relief, the driver agreed. Karen directed him to turn east instead of west and leaned back on the thinly cushioned plastic seat, clutching her hands over her perpetually empty womb. It will be okay, she told herself. Jeffrey will understand. He won’t be too disappointed and we can start to talk about adoption. We may be a little old for the Spence-Chapin agency’s standards but Sid could probably arrange a private adoption, or know lawyers who do. Money would be no object and they would have their baby. It will be all right, Karen told herself. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.