Fashionably Late (25 page)

Her sister had run a small, exclusive manufacturing business. She’d run a small, exclusive shop. Things seemed just fine for a while. But the outcome of it all was predictable, even if she herself hadn’t seen it coming. The one thing the store didn’t do for her was make any money. At first it wasn’t expected to. Then it had held its own for a few fat years in the mid-eighties. But with her discount policy for all the socialites of the Five Townsţeven before Wall Street’s Black Monday in October and the end of spending as a sportţ the shop was a losing proposition.

Leonard had finally put his foot down. Since the shop had closed, Lisa had found her “friends” dropping away and her life reduced to an ever-narrowing circle. Boredom set inţJesus, it was her daily companion.

Meanwhile, her sister’s business and life got bigger and bigger.

But now, at last, Lisa felt she had a way to fight back. Throwing her daughter’s bat mitzvah was putting Lisa back into the spotlight again.

If she couldn’t be a successful businesswoman, she’d be a successful social hostess. This would be an affair to remember. She had begun drawing up lists over a year ago, combing through her files of old clients, her outdated address books, her clippings from Newsday and the local paper of attendees at charity events, the upper-echelon members of the temple and the one country club she and Leonard still belonged to.

Though she had already thrown herself into charity work to try and keep herself afloat in the circles to which she aspired to belong, her inability to either donate largely or bring in big donors had relegated her to the scut workţaddressing invitations, picking up circulars at the printer, and stuffing envelopesţdefinitely not what she’d had in mind.

By now she’d quit most of the organizations. God, if she had wanted to be a secretary she’d have gotten a paying job in the first place.

This affair, she felt, was her last chance to pull together some semblance of the sparkling social life she had always imagined for herself but never quite managed to achieve. She still couldn’t understand why: she knew so many women and she tried always to be nice, but somehow even when she managed to get an invitation out, she and Leonard seemed always to be on the fringe rather than the center of conversations. And they were rarely asked back.

Lisa blamed it on Leonard. After all, how interesting was the conversation of a suburban dermatologist? And even among suburban dermatologists, Leonard must rank in the bottom ten percent. It wasn’t that he talked about embarrassing things, postules or acne vulgaris.

It was rather that he talked about dull things or nothing at all. She should have married a real doctor.

There were times when she wanted to kick Leonard and beg him to either shut up or to say something interesting. But most often he left the burden of social conversation to her, so she chattered on, always feeling nervous and inadequate. She couldn’t really compete with the talk of trips to Monte Carlo or cruises up the Asawan Valley. And she had no glittering career. Talking about clothes had been appropriate when she ran a shop, but as she continued, in desperation, to talk about themţnow that she was no longer in the businessţshe was sometimes afraid that she, too, had turned boring. Doctor and Mrs. Leonard Saperstein, town bores.

But how could that be? Clothes play such an important part in every woman’s life. Unlike men, women had outfits that were markers, milestones in the progress of their existence, and they never forgot them. Every girl remembered exactly what dress she’d worn to the prom, and even if she didn’t have a hundred photos documenting the event, successful or unsuccessful as the evening may have been, she could tell you exactly what she had worn. Just as every woman could describe her wedding gown, down to the smallest detail. Men, of course, couldn’t describe their (usually) rented tuxedos and there was no need to. But imagine a woman renting a prom gown or a wedding dress! Lisa knew that Catholic women even remembered their First Communion dresses, just as Tiff would remember her bat mitzvah dress for as long as she lived.

Clothing was important. That’s why Lisa respected her sister so much, even if she didn’t always “get” her sister’s designs. Because to Lisa, Karen was doing something important. Creating clothes and magically making money at it, two important things that Lisa had failed to do.

No wonder Karen had no time to call her. Lisa understood her sister’s life was busier and better than her own. Karen was too busy being interviewed and getting even more famous and rich.

At this point, money was a central issue of Lisa’s life, running like a warp thread through the fabric of her day-to-day existence. To be more accurate, it wasn’t the money, but the lack of it, that had become such an issue. In the early days of her marriage, Leonard had just paid the bills and given her as much cash as she needed, but it had been years since that liberal policy had been in effect. Lisa sighed. One of the painful realities of her life now was that she had never appreciated how good it had been when it had been good. She had just assumed there would always be money for all the clothes and lunches and manicures and haircuts that she would ever need, or that her daughters ever needed.

Now it was disorienting to find that those things she’d considered necessities were luxuries that she might actually have to do without.

Lisa wasn’t given to introspection, but in some numb way she wished that she had been able to savor all that she had back then, before she had lost it.

Now Leonard’s constant refrain was that she had to “cut back.” It was such a medical phrase. He made it sound like a surgical procedure.

And Lisa felt it was a kind of amputation, because without her daily regimen of shopping, lunching, charity “work,” and beauty treatments she was left with too much time on her hands. She’d idly thought of a job at Saksţmaybe in a designer boutiqueţbut the pocket money and discount wouldn’t make up for the way her skin would crawl when she’d have to wait on some woman she knew. Lisa had never wanted a job, and even now the idea of showing up at an office to be under the rigid hand of some difficult boss while she was expected to perform monotonous routines was nightmarish. Yet there was something even worse looming on the horizon.

Twice now, Leonard had suggested that she take over his office: in his constant cut-back monologue, this had been an option he pressed on her.

Then he could save the salary he paid to Mrs. Beck. But being with Leonard all day, reduced to the cliche of the doctor-andwife-suburban-practice-team, was more than she could bear.

It actually made Lisa feel claustrophobic, as if she’d been buried alive. She had put her Joanand-David-shod foot down.

Unfortunately Leonard had put his foot down, too. He couldn’tforce her to take Mrs. Beck’s job, but there would be little of the luxury and display that Lisa had counted on at the bat mitzvah. Leonard had given her a clear choice: she could work with him and they could spend more on the affair or she could choose not to and they would spend a lot less.

So Lisa had thrown all her creativity into making the most out of what she could, while retaining her empty freedom.

Sometimes she wondered why things had gone so wrong for her, and how Karell had managed to do so well. But, she reminded herself, Karen had always been the smart one. Karen’s success didn’t surprise Lisa at all.

It just seemed to Lisa that things always came easily to her sister.

What did surprise her was Karen’s marriage. After all, she, Lisa, was the pretty one and Karen probably wasn’t very easy to live with. How she had managed to attract a man as good-looking, charming, and exciting as Jeffrey was the puzzle. But remembering their on-again, off-again courtship and how Jeffrey had kept Karen at a distance until her break-out year made it seem to Lisa that Jeffrey had only gotten serious once Karen had gotten a name. Lisa wondered, idly, whether Jeffrey ever cheated on Karen, but he didn’t seem to, or if he did he was very careful. Karen would have told her if she suspected anything, and Karen never had. After all, even if they hadn’t spoken much lately, they were still best friends, weren’t they? But why, Lisa asked herself now, did her elder sister always get everything? Wasn’t it the adopted one who was supposed to be messed up? Somehow Karen had managed to snag a great husband and a great career out of the air, while Lisa was losing her looks and her life was adding up to a big goose egg.

But now, each morning, she eagerly went to the mailbox to go through the RSVPs. She had a list that she had ranked by “Most Desirable,” “Second Tier,” “Family,” and “Obligatory.” There were many overlaps, of course (Karen, for example, was “Most Desirable” as well as “Family”), but Lisa was hoping that if she kept the proportions right and managed the party properly it would yield her another chance at making it in the Five Towns social scene. It gave her hope.

Today, though, the mail was a disappointment. There was a refusal from Marian Lasker and her husband, the developer. Along with it came acceptances from Leonard’s cousin Morty, and a deadbeat of a patient, a chronic eczema-infected plumber who Leonard had insisted they put on the list. He and his whole flaky family were coming. Damn it, that meant four places gone! Disgusted, Lisa threw the RSVPs onto the table and got up to get dressed. But first she stopped in the bathroom to check herself out on Mr. Scale.

For years Lisa hadn’t let her weight vary by more than three pounds.

She did it through discipline and constant vigilance. Getting on Mr. Scale had become the one part of her day that allowed her to still feel in control, to give her pride and a sense of achievement. Along with brushing their teeth, she had taught the girls to weigh themselves daily and for years they had all talked to Mr. Scale. Even now, as she walked into the bathroom, Lisa superstitiously began her ritual in a baby-high voice. “Is Mr. Scale going to be nice today?” she asked aloud. “I was a very good girl, except for the soy sauce last night.

But I didn’t have much.” It was a game she had played with Stephanie and Tiff, until Tiff had gotten mad at her and wouldn’t play it anymore. Well, Tiff was mad most of the time now and she and her sister made Lisa’s life miserable.

It was obvious that Tiff was jealous of Stephanie. Lisa could understand it: Stephanie was perfect. It must be difficult to have a sister so impossible to compete with. Thank God Karen wasn’t beautiful as well as successful, Lisa thought, and then immediately felt guilty.

Now Mr. Scale would probably punish her for her bad thought by making her fat.

Well, Lisa could see the problem Tiff had, but what Lisa could not understand was why Tiff didn’t even try. Karen made the most of her looks. Tiff could do so much more with herself if only she would diet and accept some help from Lisa.

Lisa stepped on the scale and, sure enough, groaned to see the two pounds that had inflated her weight. At thirty-seven, she knew it was critical to keep her figure. She watched, terrified by what happened to women in their forties, and she was determined to keep her belly as flat and her flanks as lean as they had ever been. It was the goddamned soy sauce! It must be water weight from all that salt.

Well, she’d have a fruit plate for lunch and dinner, and she’d do an extra class tomorrow at the gym. She looked in the mirror wall of the bathroom. Wasn’t her belly pooching out? Miserable now, she stomped over to the closet to pick out something that wouldn’t cling. The phone rang. She thought it might be Karen at last and went to it gratefully, but when she lifted it up she was greeted by a stranger’s voice.

“Mrs. Saperstein?”

“Yes?”

“I am calling to talk to you about House and Garden magazine,” the voice said breathlessly. “In the past, you’ve been a subscriber and we were wondering …” Shit! It was one of those interruptive, annoying, disappointing telephone salesmen. In one of his pointless cut-back moves Leonard had stopped all her magazine subscriptions. Now she just bought them at the inflated newsstand price behind his back. But Lisa would not let her exasperation show to the salesman on the phone.

“How nice of you to call,” she said sweetly. “I can’t tell you how interested in your magazine I am. I don’t know how I let it lapse, but we have been so busy.” She could feel the man’s hope jump at the other end of the line.

“Well I would like to … ” “Before you say anything, would you mind holding on for a minute? I’m so interested but there is something here I just have to take care of.”

Without waiting for an answer, she laid the phone down. She went back to her closet and slowly began riffling through the clothes there.

What would best cover her tummy? She began to hum Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” She’d been restored to her good mood and wondered, only for a moment, how long the idiot on the phone would hold. Well, she’d outwit him. It wasn’t like she was expecting any important calls.

After a few minutes, she settled on cinnamon silk Perry Ellis slacks and a Michael Kors overshirt that Karen had given her. She rooted around at the bottom of her closet for the black platform Charles Jordan sandals she had bought at the beginning of the season. Lisa took a minute out to go back to the phone and picked it up to hear if the poor sucker was still waiting. The receiver was neither dead nor buzzing, so she laid it down again gently. She went into the bathroom and adjusted the water for her shower. Then she put her hair in a shower cap, and after clipping her toenails, checked the phone again.

It was buzzing this time and she hung it up, turning on the answering machine so she could avoid the nincompoop’s call if he should decide to ring back.

It was only when she had finished showering, shut the water off, and stepped out of the shower that she heard the click of the machine and a voice beginning to talk. “Ah, hello? Lisa, are you there?”

It sounded like Jeffrey, her brother-in-law, but what would he be doing, calling her? Jeffrey never called her. Wet and dripping, Lisa made a beeline for the phone and snatched it off the hook.

“Jeffrey?” she asked.

“Lisa. You are there. Great. I wanted to talk to you,” he paused.