Free Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith Page B

private adoption, Jeffrey. It’s more expensive but a lot easier than going through the state. We might be too old for that already.
    And apparently there are a lot of babies available in Texas.”
    “You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not a problem with your ovaries.
    It’s a problem with your head. You’re obsessed. It runs in your family.”
    “What?” “Your mother is an obsessive, your sister is an obsessive, and your nieces are obsessives. You are obsessed with this baby thing.”
    Karen didn’t think it was the time to mention that if obsession ran in her family she hadn’t inherited it genetically. “What’s so obsessive?
    Don’t you want a baby?”
    “Karen, I don’t want some stranger’s baby, especially one from Texas.
    I’m a New York Jew. What would I do with a little cowboy?”
    “Love it,” she said.
    Jeffrey pulled away from her and sat up. “Wait a minute.” His voice sounded flat. “I always felt we could live without a baby. You were the one all gung-ho. I did my part. Now it appears that we can’t have one of our own. Okay. Okay. I accept that. But I don’t want to raise somebody else’s.”
    Karen felt her stomach tighten and the flesh went clammy on her back and thighs. She sat up, too, and looked across the bed at her husband.
    He looked back at her.
    “Come on Karen! Not the look’, I don’t want the look.” You can’t expect me to go for this. We never discussed it. It was not plan B.
    Adoption was not plan B. You never know what you are getting in a deal like that.”
    “I never knew you were so opposed to adoption.”
    “You never asked. You wanted your own baby. That’s what we discussed.
    I wasn’t wild about the idea but I don’t think men usually are. It’s a natural thing. But this isn’t natural. And look what happens. Look at the Woody Allen thing. And Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. When celebrities adopt, there’s always trouble. And then there’s all the heartbreak when a birth mother reneges. Not to mention the genetic roulette that you’re playing. Wasn’t Son of Sam adopted? And that serial killer in Long Island? Like I said, you never know what you’re getting in a deal like this.”
    “But Jeffrey, I’m adopted.”
    “Yeah, but not by me. I knew you were adopted, but I also knew who you were and how you had turned out. That’s different than nurturing some illiterate, promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum’s offspring.
    Who knows how they’d turn out?”
    “I can’t believe you’re saying this.” Was that why he’d been so cool to the idea of her searching out her birth mother? Karen put her hand out, touching his shoulder. Did he think she was the offspring of some promiscuous, white-trash, trailer-park scum? And was she? She realized she didn’t have the courage to ask him. “Please, Jeffrey,” was all she said.
    Jeffrey shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re asking this,” he said. He threw his feet over the side of the bed and walked across the room. The light from the window hit him across the shoulders and down one long, lean flank. “Where are you going?” she asked. “I’m hitting the shower,” he said. To Karen it sounded like he wanted to hit her.
    Karen never did get to call Lisa the night before and left way too early to do it the next morning. Karen got to her office by half past seven, but that was nothing new: ever since she’d had a single employeeţMrs. Cruz from Corona, Queensţshe’d gotten in early. All these years later Mrs. Cruz was still with her, now one of her two chief pattern-makers, supervising a workroom that held over two hundred employees. Mrs. Cruz had two long subway rides to get to 550 Seventh Avenue. Still, almost every morning, including this one, Karen met Mrs. Cruz there, outside the legendary building that now housed XK Inc, and they rode the elevator up to the ninth floor together where both of them had keys to open up the floor. On the way up,