Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith

there so many evenings when she herself had been a teenager and Belle had called her fat and cranky in exactly that same dismissive tone of voice.
    When Lisa had been no more than a toddler and Karen had started the rocky preteen years, she and Belle had begun to disagree for the first time. Most kids had fights over clothes with their parents but with Belle and Karen fights took on epic proportions. Arnold, predictably, refused to participate. A labor lawyer and negotiator, he refused to negotiate at home. His abstention meant, for all intents and purposes, that Belle had the field all to herself. The battles were all about appearances and control. Belle had threatened, cajoled, ridiculed and then gone back to threatening, all to get Karen to “dress properly,” to diet. And to give up the idea of Pratt and go for one of the Seven Sisters colleges. But, along with some of her baby fat and her status as an only child, in her teen years Karen had lost her eagerness to please.
    She was a rock, and when she started wearing thrift shop looks, Belle went ballistic. Remembering it now, Karen shook her head. There had been so much animosity over what had only amounted to a normal passing phase.
    Mrs. Watson had saved Karen. A WASP, one of the few left in the suburban town, Ann Watson had lived in the only old house on the streetţa whitepillar Georgian that was as disheveled as its ownerţa birdlike older woman who drank most of her days away. Once the land the Lipskys’ house sat on had been part of the Watson estate. Now Mrs. Watson’s lawn was weedy and smaller in size than the other plots, sold off one by one.
    But Mrs. Watson had taught Karen to play bridge, taught her about couture, about why the tatty Aubusson rugs on her floors were better than Belle’s spotless wall-to-wall, and she had given Karen her cast-off Chanel jackets (the skirts were too small), which Karen had worn with work shirts and jeans. Mrs. Watson had approved. “You,” she’d said, squinting at Karen over the top of her daiquiri glass, “you have a gift.
    Natural style.” Mrs. Watson had been a refuge.
    And Mrs. Watson had given Karen a major gift: a window to view her own future. Mrs. Watson told Karen about Coco Chanel, and Karenţnot a great readerţwent to the library and read everything she could about the design great. Gabrielle Chanel became Karen’s idol, her avatar.
    All the paper doll drawings, all the looking at clothes and fabrics came together and made sense. Mrs. Watson was the compass who showed Karen her true direction. Karen saw that there was a job she could do, a thing she could be that she wanted.
    Of course, Belle had never approved of Mrs. Watson. “Alte goyem,” she’d said. Whenever the woman’s name was mentioned, Belle made the same face, one of distaste, that she was making now about Tiffany.
    “Fat and cranky,” Belle repeated. Both of her daughters ignored her.
    “So when do you leave for Paris?” Lisa asked. She, too, wanted the focus of the conversation to change.
    “Not until the end of the month, and not then if things continue this way. I can’t seem to pull the Line together this season. Wouldn’t you know this is the year we pick to do our first show in Paris. Home of Coco Chanel and Worth, and I’m going to show them somefarshlugginer wrap dress.” Karen thought of the Oakley Award nightţless than twenty-four hours before, back in the Mesozoic periodţand sighed. What had happened to her enthusiasm? Her confidence? Had it drained out somewhere in l}r.
    Goldman’s office? “A designer is only as good as her latest line,” she said.
    “Oh, you say that every season,” Lisa tut-tutted.
    “Maybe you’re not ready,” Belle opined.
    Karen shook her head and wondered how it could be that both her sister’s unquestioning faith in her and her mother’s lack of same offended.
    I must be unreasonable in my expectations, she told herself. And today has certainly not been a good day. But it seemed