Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith Page B

wondered if Belle eventually would fill the whole house with her wardrobe and buy the old Watson place to live in.
    “Hallo. Hallo.” Arnold’s yodel came down the hallway, followed by Arnold himself. Karen’s adoptive father was a big manţmore than six twoţ but he slumped so much that it was hard to know just how tall he was. He wore suits that must have been unrumpled at one time but not in the last decade. Even Belle, with her compulsive neatness, couldn’t keep Arnold looking tidy. Now he came in, his battered briefcase under one arm, two wrinkled newspapers under the other. “I should have known you’d be in here,” Arnold said and smiled. He looked tired. When he bent down to kiss Karen, she saw the darkness under his eyes.
    He was a good man. When she was young, in her grammar school years, Karen would sometimes go with Arnold on the weekends to his office. He would take time out on those days to explain about the rights of workers and the power of unions. She still remembered the poem he had mounted on the back of his office door. It was by Margaret Widdemer, written back in 1915, around the time of the Triangle fire. Karen couldn’t remember all of it, but two lines were still clear: I have shut my little sister in from life and light/ (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair). Long ago, Karen had seen the irony in the fact that Arnold had spent his life trying to protect garment workers, while Belle kept shopping for a deal that had to be based on their exploitation.
    “You’re home?” Belle asked, unnecessarily. “There’s chicken,” she added as an afterthought.
    “I ate,” Arnold told her. “Hi, honey,” he said to Lisa, who had popped her head out of the closet to peck his cheek. Karen noticed that he didn’t kiss Belle and Belle didn’t make a move toward him. She was, after all, immersed in her Closetworld.
    “I have work,” Arnold said, turning his back on them.
    “What else is new?” Belle murmured.
    For a moment Karen wondered if the three of themţwomen togetherţ had bewildered him and driven Arnold away, or whether he had simply learned to fiH up the empty spaces. He was a nice man. She watched as his stooped and rumpled back departed down the hallway. Then Belle spoke up.
    “Now she’s going to show you something,” Belle said, and both of her daughters knew that she was referring to herself. Lisa looked on attentively, but Karen sighed and backed out to the bedroom and sat down on the loveseat. There, on the lower shelf of the coffee table, as always, sat the leather-bound photograph album from the early days in Brooklyn. Belle wasn’t proud of it and rarely took it out. Karen noticed it as if for the first time.
    “So, what do you think?” Belle asked, and held up a David Hayes-like dress and jacket ensemble. Very Queen Elizabeth. Belle was nothing if not predictable. “Look at this,” she said and showed them the jacket lining, a turquoise-on-black reversal of the black-on-turquoise pattern of the dress. Karen nodded, bored, but Lisa actually cooed encouragement.
    “It’s great.”
    Belle ducked her head back into the closet. In the moment they had alone, Lisa looked at Karen. “Call me tonight at home. Tell me what’s up.” Mutely, Karen nodded.
    “And what do you think she found to go with it?” Belle asked, and Karen watched the two of them disappear into the closet again. In their absence, quick as a snake, Karen pulled out the old brown photo album and set it on her knees. She flipped it open to the first page, where four aging photographs showed Belle and Arnold on their wedding day.
    Karen had perused it all before, so she turned now to the manila envelope glued to the front inside cover. In it were loose pictures that Belle had never mounted but had also not been able to throw away.
    Karen heard her mother and sister exclaiming over something. In just a moment they would be expecting her to join in.
    She put her hand into the envelope and