Always and Forever (31 page)

“It won’t be an expensive cottage,” Kathy said sweetly. “I’m not talking Bar Harbor.”

With record speed—helped by Rhoda and Frank—she rented a cottage right on the beach at an unfashionable area just above Ogunquit. Frank knew the town and the beach.
“You
’
ll love it, Kathy. No crowds, marvelous beach.
” Both Alice and the housekeeper would go on vacation. The real estate broker assured her there would be a daily cleaning woman available, and she planned to do the cooking herself, though she knew the week that Sophie and her parents would be there, her aunt would insist on cooking. At eighty-five Sophie was still mentally sharp and physically active.

On an early Monday morning Kathy drove her small entourage out of Manhattan and headed for Maine, Dad beside her on the front seat, Mom and Aunt Sophie in the rear with Jesse. This was going to be a good time, she told herself joyously.

It was one of the most relaxing periods she could remember, Kathy thought on the last day of her family’s vacation time with her. No pretenses, no playing games. And Frank had been right. She loved this part of Maine. Most mornings she watched the sun rise. The sunsets were glorious.

The woman who came to clean was happy to baby-sit in the evenings so that Kathy was able to take her family out to some of the charming restaurants within comfortable driving distance. On two nights they saw summer theater productions.

The day her family left, Rhoda and Frank came up. The following morning, while Jesse, lulled by the sea air, still slept, Frank insisted on making breakfast for himself and the two women and serving it on the deck.

“Oh God, there’s something so wonderful about sitting here and watching the waves hit the beach,” Rhoda said rapturously. “Frank, you’ll finish that article out here for sure.”

“I saw him bring in the typewriter,” Kathy joshed. “He wasn’t fooling me when he said he’d collapse on a chaise and sleep away these two weeks.”

“Tell her, Frank,” Rhoda ordered.

“Tell me what?” Kathy demanded.
Was Rhoda pregnant?

“Well, first, let me tell you that I may be pregnant.” Rhoda glowed. “I know, I’ve been late before. But this time I’ve a premonition it’s real.”

“Rhoda, how wonderful!” Kathy leaned forward to hug Rhoda exuberantly, almost spilling a cup of coffee.

“Hey, I sweated over a hot stove making that coffee,” Frank kidded. “Take it easy.”

“Rhoda, I’m so happy for you.” She knew how desperately Rhoda and Frank wanted a child.

“I figure I’ll be able to work most of the first term,” Rhoda said, “then go on maternity leave. My salary goes into the bank toward that little weekend house we want to buy up in Putnam or Dutchess County.”

“We both love Manhattan,” Frank conceded, “but five days a week of the hassle is enough. We want to be able to get in the car and take off Friday evenings and come back Sunday nights. You like to get out to Greenwich for weekends; I know, you see Central Park trees from your windows in the apartment, but it’s not like the country—”

“Frank, tell her the other thing,” Rhoda prodded.

“I’m doing a series for the magazine about the agony of animals who’re being trapped for furs. And I hope to expand the series into a book. I have a publisher interested.” Frank was trying to sound casual, but Kathy knew how much this meant to him.

“That’s great, Frank. When will the first of the series come out?” Phil and his father would be livid, Kathy thought uneasily.

“It’ll be in the issue hitting the newsstands right after Labor Day,” Frank told her.

“That’s great timing, hunh?” Rhoda’s smile was dazzling. “Just at the time when women start thinking about buying fur coats.”

“I don’t want to run into Phil when the series starts appearing,” Frank said, grinning. “The fur industry is going to be in an uproar.”

“I don’t think it’ll be hard to avoid Phil. When was the last time you saw him?” Phil had a way of being tied up on business the nights Rhoda and Frank came to dinner, or when they were scheduled to go to Rhoda and Frank’s apartment.

“We both feel very strongly about this,” Frank said seriously.

“I know,” Kathy said. “I think it’s terrific that you’re doing the series, and that it may be a book.”

“It’s funny,” Rhoda reminisced. “Back in Hamburg I never suspected Frank would be anything more than a fling for me.”

“And I thought you were just a great lay,” Frank teased.

“Oh, shut up,” Rhoda scolded good-humoredly. “You’re talking to the woman who may be carrying your child.” She turned to Kathy. “I wanted to go for the rabbit test, but Frank said, ‘Why kill the poor rabbit? In another few days you’ll know for sure, anyway.’”

All at once Kathy was mentally hurtling back through the years to Hamburg. To David. If Phil hadn’t appeared on the scene, her life would have been so different.
She would have waited for David.
Was it this way with everybody? Could everybody look back to that one critical moment in their lives when they made the wrong move?

Was David married yet? He’d suffered such a terrible loss. He was a warm, compassionate man who shouldn’t be deprived of a home and family.
Let him be happy.

Immediately after Labor Day Kathy and Phil—with Jesse and Alice—returned to the New York apartment. The Southampton house suddenly seemed too small for the Kohn clan when Bella and Julius’s four granddaughters—spoiled and demanding their own bedrooms—came out to the beach house at the end of the camp season.

“My nieces are four prize Jewish Princesses,” Phil said disdainfully while they sat in the post-Labor Day Tuesday morning traffic. “Why do we have to go into the city a week early so they don’t have to share two bedrooms?”

“We’d be coming into town in another ten days anyway,” Kathy pointed out.

“Next weekend we’ll go out to the Greenwich house,” he decided. “It’ll be hot as hell in town. I’ll take Friday off and we’ll drive up in the morning.”

“Okay,” Kathy agreed. It would be a quiet weekend with just Phil and herself and Jesse at the house. For a moment she toyed with the thought of inviting her family up to Greenwich. No, Phil would be annoyed if she asked them. He liked to think of them as living on another planet.

“I’ll play golf,” he told her as traffic began to inch along. “Maybe next summer we’ll put in a pool.”

“We’re out at Southampton in the summers,” Kathy reminded, turning to check on Jesse on the back seat with Alice. He was fast asleep. In just two weeks, she thought with recurrent satisfaction, he’d be starting the first grade. The first step toward her emancipation.

“We can swim in the pool right through September. I talked to Dad about it. Maybe we’ll make it an enclosed heated pool, then we can use it year-round. Swimming’s top-grade physical exercise.”

Phil meant that they would put in a pool, Kathy interpreted, but his father would pay the bill. It would probably be written off as another business expense. Part of entertaining out-of-town personnel who came into New York for business conferences. “Writing off to taxes” was a way of life for Phil and his father.

On the following Friday morning Kathy waited with Jesse and Alice for Phil to bring the car around to the front of the house. He’d had dinner with his father last night, or so he claimed, and she’d been asleep when he came home. This morning he’d been in a foul mood. She’d told him not to yell at Jesse the way he did this morning. Too often lately, she remembered uneasily, he took his bad temper out by yelling at Jesse and her.

“There’s Daddy now,” Alice told Jesse—restless with the waiting—as the Peugeot approached. “As soon as we’re on the highway we’ll play our license plate game.”

Phil pulled up at the curb, then left the car to put the luggage into the trunk.

“Get in the car,” he said tersely.
What was bugging him this morning?

Kathy slid into the front seat while Jesse and Alice took their customary places in the rear. Alice was going out with them to Greenwich and would leave tomorrow afternoon to go to her sister’s in Levittown for the weekend. Phil had objected to her giving Alice the long weekend off.
“Let her come up with us and leave after lunch on Saturday. Christ, you spoil her the way Gail and Brenda spoil their kids!”

Not until they were on the highway did Phil break his silence. Sometimes—like now—she was embarrassed and humiliated that Alice was a witness to Phil’s ugly moods.

“Get that shitty magazine out of the glove compartment,” he told her.

“All right.” She tried to brace herself for an outburst.
Phil had seen Frank’s article.

She opened the glove compartment and withdrew the magazine. Her eyes clung to the cover line dealing with Frank’s article:
Man’s Inhumanity to Animals.

“Frank’s magazine.” She strived for casualness.

“What’s the bastard trying to do?” Phil flared. “I always knew he was a card-carrying nut. All this shit about women not wearing furs.”

“He belongs to some animal rights group.”

“Every ten or twenty years some creep comes along and starts up with that crap. I don’t want you to see Frank and Rhoda anymore.”

“It’s a free country, Phil. Frank has a right to say what he thinks.” She understood that Alice was trying to divert Jesse’s attention from their conversation. Even though he didn’t understand, he was upset by his father’s menacing tone.

“I hope the bastard croaks,” Phil said viciously. “We don’t see them anymore, you hear?”

Kathy was silent. No one could stop her seeing Frank and Rhoda. Along with Marge, they were her closest friends in this world. She had love and respect for Frank and Rhoda. So often she was shamed by the knowledge that she was enjoying a luxurious life style from the results of the killing of innocent animals.

“I remember Frank bragging back in Hamburg about how his father had driven an ambulance in Spain for the International Brigade. A bunch of Commies,” he said with contempt.

Kathy remained silent. Let him talk, she thought. Phil couldn’t stop her from seeing Frank and Rhoda. He didn’t have to know that she was seeing them.

Only minutes after they arrived at the house Kathy received a phone call from Irene Hale down the road. At last a young couple with one little girl and another on the way had moved into the neighborhood.

“I saw you drive up, Kathy,” Irene said effervescently. “If I’d known you’d be up this weekend, I’d have sent Jesse an invitation. Tomorrow is Gillian’s sixth birthday, and we’re having a small lunch party. Would Jesse like to come?”

“I’m sure he’d love it,” Kathy accepted for him. “What time would you like him to be there?”

With the party arrangements settled they talked another few minutes. Irene was upset that her long-time nursemaid—with her since Gillian’s birth—was tired of New York winters and returning to her native Florida in two weeks.

“I feel so safe when she’s here with Gillian,” Irene said, sighing. “It’s almost like having a member of the family moving away.”

Off the phone Kathy alerted Alice to the party situation. Walking down the stairs to the lower floor, she heard Phil’s voice. He was talking on the phone to his father about Frank and the magazine. He was going to be smoldering all weekend. She took off in the Caddy—kept at the Greenwich house now—to shop for a birthday present for Gillian.

Once she had found a suitable birthday gift, Kathy shopped for groceries. She’d brought along delicatessen and cold chicken from the city for lunch today. They’d have dinner at home tonight, she planned, but Phil would want to go out for dinner tomorrow night. Even out here he hated staying home on Saturday evening.

Turning into the driveway, she noticed the Peugeot was gone. She’d serve lunch for Jesse and Alice and herself now. Phil could help himself from the refrigerator whenever he came back. The less she saw of him this weekend the better.

Alice told her that Phil had gone to play golf.

“He said he wouldn’t be home for lunch,” Alice added in her pleasant, noncommittal voice.

“Thank you, Alice. I’ll put out lunch for us now. Why don’t we have it on the terrace?”

Late in the afternoon Phil returned to the house. He seemed to have worked off some of his rage, Kathy thought in relief. After dinner she’d curl up on the living room sofa and read. She’d brought along the Saul Bellow book that everybody was raving about—
The Adventures of Augie March.
Phil would be parked in front of the TV in the den all night, watching baseball.

Earlier than normal she went upstairs to the master bedroom. The baseball game was continuing well beyond the normal ninth inning. Phil would be too satisfied with baseball and beer to reach for her tonight, she guessed.

With increasing frequency he was foregoing what he called the national Saturday night pastime. While she was relieved that he probably wouldn’t be in the mood to make love tonight, she was ever haunted by his propensity to seek out other women. It hinted at a shortcoming in her as a woman.

Saturday morning was hot and sultry. As Kathy expected, Phil remained in bed until almost noon. He’d gotten out of bed to flip on the air-conditioner, then had gone back to sleep. Now she heard the shower beating away in the master bathroom and reluctantly abandoned the Saul Bellow novel to go out into the kitchen to put up fresh coffee and bring out Phil’s routine Saturday morning breakfast.

“Did you remember to bring up the nova?” he demanded a few minutes later, striding into the kitchen in his Brooks Brothers walking shorts and polo shirt.

“Right there.” She pointed to the shining red slivers of smoked salmon on a plate on the sunlit breakfast room table. “And I put out bagels and cream cheese. Shall I heat the bagels?” Their weekly moment of domesticity, she thought bitterly.

“It’s too hot,” he dismissed, then frowned. “The house should be centrally air-conditioned.”

She poured a cup of coffee for Phil and—as an afterthought—a cup for herself, and carried them into the breakfast room.
Why do I make a pretense of being a wife?
she rebuked herself. A wife shared her husband’s life. She shared Phil’s bed, and occasionally he indulged in his conjugal privileges.