Kate Jacobs (14 page)

* * *

Still, after the design was finalized and the
work under way, there was really no reason to see each other until the first
fitting. But it hadn't seemed so out of the ordinary when Cat suggested they
meet in midtown to look at shoes, said she appreciated Georgia's eye and would
love her help picking out this and that from Bergdorf and Henri
Bendel
.
"I could use the store's personal shopper, but can you really trust
them?" she offered by way of explanation. And, after all, the dress had
led to Cat's decision to have Georgia make her a twinset for every day and then
a luxurious cardigan that Cat gave as a gift to one of her siblings. Keeping
Cat happy was good business and Georgia had already received a commission from
a guest she'd met at Cat's
petite soirée
.
So Georgia asked
Peri
to come in a little earlier on
Tuesdays and Fridays, and she took the train to midtown and walked over to meet
Cat in front of whatever shop she wanted to check out. Cat would wait in her
car until Georgia arrived (though Georgia refused to rap on the glass and would
wait outside the vehicle until Cat exited) and then the two of them strolled
block after block. Meeting in midtown—not as far uptown as the store, not as
far south as Cat's loft in
SoHo
—was neutral territory
and it was there they did some of their best work. And so it made perfect
sense, as they shopped and talked, for Georgia to answer Cat's questions about
the store, even to tell her about the club.
"So everyone comes in and just knits? Like some pioneer-lady thing?"
Georgia suspected Cat was mocking her. As usual, she was hard to read, her face
impassive, her eyes flat. Cat had been more exuberant in the old days.
"I'll admit I wasn't so keen on the idea at first, but it's really grown
on me," said Georgia. "And Dakota loves it."
They were strolling up Madison, looking for luggage. I just need to pick up a
few things for a trip I'm taking; you don't mind if we go off the list today,
she'd asked. Georgia shrugged even though she was feeling tired, just reminded
Cat that she needed to be back in time for the night's club meeting.
"What do they say when people show up who can't knit?"
"You mean do they boo and jeer? Cat, you've got to hang out with some
knitting women." Georgia laughed. "It's so awesome—everyone just
pitches in and shows each other little tips. We have one member who was just
too afraid to try a pattern—any pattern. She did thirty-two practice pieces in
different yarns! And then Anita told her she needed to look at all those
practice pieces and secretly sewed them together and said there, now you have a
crazy baby blanket. So she'd already made something. And then Anita gave her
the easiest beginning—just cast on thirty and knit every row for two hundred rows.
Voilà
—a scarf! And everyone applauded when
she'd finished."
"But surely you have some really good knitters?"
"Well, we have our die-hard regulars, but they're not like me—knitting
isn't their career." Georgia turned to Cat, began ticking off names on her
fingers.
"There's Lucie, who's working so quickly on the sweater pattern we're all
doing, kind of a group thing, and K.C., an old friend of mine from publishing,
but I wouldn't qualify her as anything close to an expert. More like a lunatic
enthusiast.
Peri
from the shop comes to the club if
she's in the mood—she usually just pops in if she's meeting friends uptown for
dinner. And then there's Darwin. I don't think you could say she actually
belongs to the knitting part of the club—she doesn't even knit—but she does
come faithfully every week. Of course, there are drop-ins, or folks who come
for a bit and then beg off, depending on schedule. You know the city—it's hard
to keep up."
"I know! I wanted to join a book club, but I balked at someone else telling
me what to read!" Cat laughed. "Everyone wanted to read Sartre. And I
just wanted to read something fun!"
"Sounds more like school than fun," Georgia said.
"Oh, you know, everyone's overeager because it's a Dartmouth club—"
Cat realized too late what she'd said. In all the weeks they'd been working
together, shopping together, drinking tea, and splitting a quick sandwich when
they were hungry, they had, without ever saying a word, made a tacit agreement
to not bring up The Past. They made it all the more "normal" by
politely inquiring about each other's parents and siblings while still not
talking about high school. In fact, Georgia realized for the first time, she
didn't even know what Cat had majored in.
"Ah, Dartmouth." Georgia looked past Cat's shoulder, then breathed
deeply and looked her old friend in the eye. "So how was that for
you?" She wasn't surprised by the twist of frustration in her tummy; what
shocked Georgia was that she was actually interested in hearing about Cat's
experiences.
"I'd really like to know," Georgia repeated.
Cat let out a little
snorty
bark-laugh: "Of
course you would."
"No, really, I…"
"It was just…college." The laughing Cat of a few minutes ago had
vanished. "You know. Skipping classes. Taking exams. Meeting nice boys.
Sleeping with bad ones."
Cat looked hard at Georgia. "Stupid choices you regret but can't
undo." She bit her lip. "I have to go, Georgia. I forgot I have a
masseuse coming over this afternoon. I'll see you next Tuesday."
She began to walk away and then turned on her heel sharply, strode back with a
fierceness that made Georgia take a step back.
"It wasn't like you think," Cat said. Then she walked straight across
the middle of the street to her car waiting on the opposite side.

seven

James lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, deep
in contemplation.
Life doesn't always turn out the way you think.
Sometimes it's even better.
He had finally figured it out. Or, more correctly, Georgia had pointed it out.
If he wanted to spend more time with Dakota—and he did—then he simply called in
advance and made an appointment. Georgia had relented on her Sundays-only
policy, had made it clear that she would let him get to know his daughter—and
she'd also been adamant that the little unannounced drop-ins weren't cool. He
took the hint,
er
, the dressing-down fairly well. His
ears had forgotten how much volume Georgia could produce.
Now, at the office, he found himself thinking about what Dakota might like to
do on the weekend, or rushing into a store if he saw something in the window
she might need or want. She was his
insta
-family. And
it was fantastic.
He took Dakota to the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural History and
watched with a weird sense of pride as dozens of butterflies landed on her
shirt, and another time they went to a movie about some kid named Lizzie
McGuire. More than once they'd eaten at this crazy diner with singing waiters,
and he even took her out on that overpriced bike he'd purchased, discovering
too late that his legs weren't quite in the shape he'd assumed.
"Daddy, why are you breathing so hard? Like, I wasn't even going full-out
fast," Dakota hollered when he caught up to her, then rubbed his shoulder.
"Don't worry about it. You're pretty old."
James was almost forty, but his step was becoming lighter by the day. Being
with Dakota was more exhilarating than any party or club—and God knew James had
been to more than a few goodtime places. He'd met a lot of good-looking women
in Europe, dated many, and even had a handful of seemingly serious girlfriends
who had waited around for a proposal that James had no intention of making. His
last live-in left after she snooped upon the photo he kept behind the expired
New York driver's license in his wallet. It was a photo of Georgia with baby Dakota;
her friend K.C. from the publishing house had sent it to him in Paris with one
line scrawled on the back of the snapshot: "See what you're missing?"
He intended to contact Georgia when she was pregnant. But he didn't pursue her.
Not the way he pursued everything else. It had been less complicated to push it
aside, bounce from bed to bed, to leap at the great job offer he knew would
make his career. He partied hard when he first arrived in France, out of some
combination of guilt and desire to put his new baby out of his mind. Then he
made an attempt to touch base with Georgia by sending a letter or two; when he
didn't hear a reply, he let it go, sending money but never offering his
affection.
It was easier that way.
And harder, too.

* * *

And now here he was, getting ready to paint
pottery with his little girl. He soaped up in the shower, feeling the warm suds
wash him clean. The first of April had marked eight months since he'd come back
to the city, a vague idea about meeting his daughter in the back of his mind.
Before letting anyone know he was back in the city, James took a cab over from
the East Side and stood across the street from Georgia's shop until the day he
began to see children walking to school. When he was growing up, September had
always seemed like a time for new beginnings—new classrooms, new friends. Why
not a new father? (He had been so unsure of when school started that he showed
up at six A.M., running in for a coffee from Marty's deli and then crossing the
street. He waited for an hour and a half, fretting that he'd somehow missed
seeing his daughter, then worrying that he looked like a crazy stalker as he
paced up and down the block. But hey, it was New York. No one paid a damn bit
of attention.)
And then came the first fall day he saw that amazing café-au-
lait
girl stroll down the street in sparkly jeans and a
newsboy cap, talking animatedly with a serenely beautiful woman with a thick
mane of curly hair, her smile lighting up as her little girl gestured wildly to
tell her story. James had felt so sick with fear and regret and excitement that
he had to turn away, had to walk fast to West End Avenue and bite his cheek to
hold back the stinging wetness behind his eyes. How could he have stayed away
so long?
Sometimes the good moments hurt much more than the bad.
For two weeks after his first glimpse of Dakota, he filled up his work schedule
with punishing assignments that hardly left time for sleep—let alone the idea
of going to see Georgia. But then he found himself standing across the street
from the store on weekday mornings again, until the late September day when he
finally crossed Broadway and waited until Georgia returned from dropping off
her daughter. His daughter. Their daughter.
"Hello, Georgia," he said, wishing there was some more formal
greeting that implied "I'm sorry" and "Please forgive me"
and "How the heck are you?" all at once. He cleared his throat, spoke
more loudly. "Hello."
Georgia didn't miss a step. "Hello, James," she said without looking
at him, unlocking the glass door to her building and then locking it firmly
behind her. Standing on the sidewalk, he could see her walk up the stairs to
the store.
He stood there, flabbergasted, until he realized she wasn't coming back down.
The older guy who had sold him his coffee all those mornings walked out from
the deli. "Can I help you, buddy?" he asked.
"No, thank you," said James, then caught the man's eye and the look
of warning within. "Just trying to reconnect with an old friend."
"You might want to keep your distance. It looks like the feeling is far
from mutual," said Marty as he walked back into his business.

* * *

The day after that he had gone to the store
during lunchtime and tried to speak with her. Again, Georgia wasn't interested.
He didn't bother with flowers or candy or showy displays of his success; James
wasn't trying to buy Georgia's affection. He'd done that once and then
frittered it all away, created a debt of the heart. No, he would settle for the
chance to see his daughter. It had taken weeks of negotiation before he finally
met Dakota. And it was more than worth it.
Meeting his daughter was like finding out he had a fan club that he never knew
about. They'd been in touch for what? Just over six months. And it was a
never-ending discovery. Of Dakota's hobbies—she was all about baking, that one,
giving him little care packages of strawberry cupcakes or blueberry muffins—or
trying to learn her taste in music—she stared at him blankly when he offered to
lend her a Lionel Ritchie CD: "Do you mean a DVD of Nicole's show,
Dad?" she'd asked, genuinely perplexed. Not to mention their get-togethers
were a nonstop roller coaster of emotion for him. "I missed you, Daddy,
but I'm glad you're here now," she had said one day, all casual, as they
walked to Marty's to get a snack. It was their third week of knowing each
other, their first outing without Georgia (only to the deli for half an hour
and then back, he promised her). James thought then that it was the best
afternoon of his life and he found himself wishing he could get back the twelve
and a half years he'd pissed away. Nothing on the Champs-
Élysée
or in the Louvre could compare to his brilliant, captivating little girl.
First came the joy, for both father and daughter. Then Dakota followed up with
the questions and the anger.
"Didn't they have planes in Paris?" she said to him one night as they
sat, yet again, listening to the poodle-skirted actresses singing at the
Stardust Diner. Dakota had been sullen all evening, not even impressed that
he'd scored Broadway tickets and convinced her mom to let her stay out late.
("I go to shows with Anita all the time," she'd told him when he'd
picked her up. "It's no big.")
That evening she had gazed at him with cool authority.
"Why didn't you come visit me?" asked Dakota. "Or send me an
e-mail? Do you know that I've lived at the same address my entire life? And I'm
twelve and a half. That's a long time, you know."
"I, uh, um, yeah," James said. Oh, that was so lame. He'd practiced
answers to these questions so many times, but he was struck dumb when he looked
into Dakota's wide, sad eyes, the look of defiance within. "I'm sorry I
wasn't around. But I am here now."
Dakota gazed at her newfound father thoughtfully.
"I want dessert," she had said finally. "Something big."
"Okay," he said, glancing at her as he motioned for a singing
waitress and knowing she had his number. 1-800-GIL-T-DAD.
But even that phase had evened itself out. Well, okay, he was still
overcompensating with the gifts. Still, the two of them had developed a sort of
easy rhythm, walking around the West Side as James pointed out historical
buildings and shared his love of architecture, going to movies, watching the
Liberty basketball team at Madison Square Garden.
The bigger surprise over the past few months was that he was finding himself
lingering around the knitting shop when it was time to pick up Dakota. He was
showing up earlier and earlier and popping into the office for a quick chat.
Georgia always seemed vaguely annoyed, but some days the mood might pass and
they'd spend a few minutes making small talk. James felt supercharged when that
happened, though careful not to seem that way. (A decade with the French had
taught him the fine art of seeming disinterested.) Other times Georgia completely
ignored him and he left with Dakota, still happy but less so.
And then came that party. Seeing Georgia outside her shop made her seem more
vulnerable and more impressive. She was smart and funny, and he could see where
his daughter got her enthusiasm and optimism.
James Foster was not a stupid man. He recognized that some way, somehow—maybe
that time he helped an old lady who'd fallen down the stairs in the
Métro
?—the universe had given him an opportunity to make
things right. He also knew, with growing conviction, that he wanted more. He
had a great career, a long list of sexual conquests (some of them even
memorable), journeys from Mount Fuji all the way to Mumbai, and a finely honed
lust for luxury goods, from his Rolex to that uncomfortable black leather sofa.
None of it mattered as much to him anymore.
"Something crazy weird has happened," he found himself confessing the
night before to Clarke, his best friend from Princeton days, as the two met for
a beer. Clarke had never approved of James's decision to go overseas.
"I think I've fallen in love with my family."
Clarke laughed, then clinked his bottle with James's beer. "Congrats, old
friend—today you've finally become a man."