Fashionably Late. Olivia Goldsmith

blooms in the flower arrangement with the milder lilacs. They wouldn’t give any color to the room but at least they wouldn’t make anyone nauseous. Karen walked to the side door of the garden shed, found secateurs, and quickly cut two dozen branches of flowers. She did the best she could in pulling out the seventy bucks’ worth of lilies and rearranging the greens and the lilacs. They looked boring – really second rate. Then she noticed a couple of dead branches on the bushes next to the forsythia. She cut them off and added them to the arrangement. They gave the flowers a kind of off-center balance, a starkness of death to contrast the rich pearly droop of the lilac bunches. She brought the vase into the dining room just in time to hear the front doorbell ring. Jeffrey had put a Mozart CD on – he always preferred classical music on the weekends, although she’d rather listen to the Spin Doctors, or even old Stones tapes – and apparently Jeffrey couldn’t hear the chimes. Karen hustled to the front door.

      Defina stood there, holding a foil-covered dish, accompanied by Tangela. ‘Well, I’m glad it’s you,’ Karen said with relief. ‘I could use some help and I’m not ready for criticism yet.’

      ‘Baby, I’m glad it’s you. I swear, if we had knocked on another door by mistake, we would have been arrested, or maybe sent to the back entrance. Are black folk allowed in this town?’

      ‘If they can afford it,’ Jeffrey said dryly and walked down the rest of the stairs into the foyer. Karen could tell he was already annoyed – he hated entertaining the family. Oh, great. So much for their rapprochement. ‘Let me help you with your coats,’ Karen took the dish out of Defina’s hands while the woman shrugged out of her full-length Luneraine mink. Karen didn’t like to touch it. She never wore furs, but she knew the coat was Defina’s pride. It was a bit too late in the season for fur, but hey, who’d complain? Tangela was also wearing a floor-length milk – Defina’s old white coat – and Karen had to admit that on her it looked good.

      ‘I didn’t know what you were serving but I thought cornbread goes with everything!’

      ‘I’ve never tried it with pickled herring, but it could just be the next culinary craze,’ Karen told her. ‘Minsk soul food.’

      ‘I said not to bring it,’ Tangela complained, ‘but she don’t listen. Everything has to be her way.’ Tangela turned to Jeffrey, who helped her with her coat, and gave him not only a big smile but raised eyebrows and a come-hither look to boot. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed.

      Jeffrey raised his own brows, shot a look to Karen, and disappeared to hang the coats. Defina followed Karen into the kitchen. ‘What can I do?’ she asked.

      ‘Find yourself a seat,’ Karen said, ‘I’m just going to pop these croissants and the pain au chocolat into the oven.’ She laid out a dozen flaky crescents on the cookie tin and slid them into the stove. Was Mrs Frampton eyeing Defina with disapproval or was that her imagination?

      There was a knock from the brass doorknocker and Jeffrey led in Perry Silverman. Perry was still Jeffrey’s best friend – one of the few that Karen sincerely liked. Perry, unlike Jeffrey, was still a painter, and if his career lately wasn’t brilliant, his paintings were – or had been. He was successful enough to still own the SoHo loft he and Jeffrey had once shared, paint full-time, and get a show mounted every couple of years.

      Karen had invited him for a lot of reasons, one of which was guilt. Perry’s nine-year-old daughter Lottie had come down with a particularly virulent strain of leukemia and wasted away quickly, despite state-of-the-art treatment at Sloan Kettering. Since then, Perry’s marriage to June, his wife of eleven years, had failed. Perry was a mess – just recently he’d canceled his last one-man show. Aside from poker with Jeffrey, Perry seemed to go nowhere and do nothing. Karen felt honor-bound to invite him, but she was surprised he’d accepted.

      Perry kissed both her cheeks – not the New York social air-kiss but real smackers. She hugged him.

      ‘Mmm, feels good,’ he said. Then he greeted Defina and Tangela and looked around. He shook his head. ‘Connecticut,’ he said grimly, ‘where the charm is strictly enforced.’

      ‘Along with the racial segregation,’ Defina cracked.

      Karen rolled her eyes. Great. The two of them could bond in their negativity. And simultaneously piss Jeffrey off. Swell start to the brunch. ‘Come on, let me show you the house,’ Karen said. They walked through the swinging kitchen doors into the living room.

      ‘Mother of God!’ Defina exclaimed. ‘It’s as big as a church.’

      ‘Mother,’ Tangela whined, correctively. Tangela looked at Jeffrey, who was already playing bartender, handing her a goblet of orange juice. ‘I think it’s beautiful,’ she simpered. Jeffrey ignored her.

      ‘What are you drinking, Defina?’ he asked briskly. The doorbell chimed and Karen went to get it. Sylvia and Jeffrey’s two sisters stood outside. Since Jeffrey’s father had died, Sylvia spent most of her time with Sooky and Buff, her two married daughters. Sooky – Susan – was married to Robert, an attorney who handled

KInc’s legal work, but Buff – Barbara – was divorced from her Robert, an investment banker. Both sisters were the kind of wealthy Jewish girls who had made Karen feel insecure all during high school. They were smart, verbal, and caustic and neither one of them ever let herself outgrow her size-six wardrobe.

      Sylvia had a new hairstyle. It was now more white than anything else, but there was still some pepper-and-salt, like Jeffrey’s. It looked simple and chic. Her mother-in-law was wearing a Sonia Rykiel sweater outfit. Sylvia was one of the ‘Sisters of Sonia’ cult and had been buying seriously from Rykiel for years. And Karen knew that when a wealthy woman did that she was not simply buying clothes but defining herself and her stake in a society that wore them. Karen didn’t know if she should take it as an insult that Sylvia never wore her designs, or if Sylvia simply didn’t think about things like that. But she suspected Sylvia did. ‘Come in,’ she said with the best smile she could manage, and the three women, followed by Robert-the-lawyer, did.

      Robert-the-lawyer himself specialized in acquisitions, but his firm had represented June in her and Perry’s divorce. June had come from some big family money and Robert-the-lawyer’s firm had made sure she kept it. Not that Perry seemed to have been particularly interested in it: he had taken Lottie’s death even harder than June. He didn’t seem to have any interests right now. Karen had been afraid he might feel ill-will toward Robert, but he just looked up at the arriving group and managed a nod. He’d known them all since he was roommates with Jeffrey at school.

      Belle arrived late, with an excuse from Karen’s father and a long story about how he almost came with her but then canceled, about how he changed his mind and was going to come later. It made Karen tired to hear even a part of it. Before Belle was done, Lisa, Leonard, and the girls arrived and the party was complete.