CHAPTER FIVE
THE SAMPLE ROOM buzzed when Ivory presented her improved design for the evening dress she had created for the summer line. Only Virginia Raines was less than enthusiastic about it. She deliberately absented herself from the sample room while Ivory was finishing her nips and tucks to adapt the dress to the model who would be showing it.
“It’s just dreamy,” one of the girls sighed, staring at it. “I wish I could afford one, but with a Kells-Meredith label, it will be out of my price range.”
“Mine, too,” Ivory confided, and laughed.
“Yes, but you can sew yourself one anytime you like.”
She frowned. “I don’t know that I can,” she said. “Actually, since I’ve sold the design to the company, I think I’ve restricted my right to duplicate it.”
“That’s probably true,” Dee said. “You could always ask Mr. Kells, of course.”
Ivory felt herself going warm at the mention of his name. “Oh, he wouldn’t bother with me,” she replied. “I’m grateful to him for giving me a chance to design something. I wouldn’t presume to ask for special favors.”
Dee refrained from saying that she could probably get them anyway. Curry Kells had taken Ivory home from the party when Dee knew for a fact that he didn’t ordinarily put himself out for minor employees. Ivory was young and pretty and she had a kind heart. She might very well appeal to someone with a palate as jaded and cynical as Curry’s.
Dee worried about Ivory. She was unworldly and could be badly hurt by someone like Curry Kells. On the other hand, she was an independent sort who wouldn’t take kindly to even the most well-meant interference in her private life. Dee turned her attention back to her own work. At times one had to trust that things would organize themselves for the best.
Ivory finished pinning the dress and gave it over to the seamstresses. She had one or two other ideas that she wanted to sketch, although she wasn’t really expecting anything to come of them. Miss Raines might have no choice about giving the white satin gown of Ivory’s a showing on Mr. Kells’s say-so, but she could effectively halt any others if she liked. Ivory’s career might hinge on this one design, and heaven help her if anything went wrong before the showing.
* * *
THANKSGIVING DAY DAWNED gray and rainy and cold. Ivory fixed herself a small baked turkey and some dressing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. She’d invited Tim and his family to come and share it with her, but they were getting a nice turkey dinner, courtesy of a group of people dedicated to helping the homeless. Because the weather was already cold and wet, Ivory had given Tim a new jacket early instead of waiting for Christmas, so that he could stay well when flu season began.
“For me, Ivory?” he’d asked, as if he couldn’t believe that anyone would buy him such a nice coat.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s your Christmas present, but I thought you might like it early. It’s very cold.” She didn’t add that with HIV, his immune system would start breaking down. A cold could go so quickly into pneumonia, and Miriam couldn’t afford doctors or medicine unless she could go through a government agency to get them.
“Wow! Thanks!” He’d paraded around in it, his dark eyes beaming with delight.
Miriam had thanked Ivory for her kindness. “But someone will steal it, you know,” she said sadly. “All that generosity will only go to waste.”
Ivory hadn’t considered that. In the small town where she came from, few people were mean enough to steal a jacket from a small boy with winter coming on. But this was a city where most people were strangers to one another. Hopeless poverty made thieves of some.
“Mrs. Payne can sew,” Ivory said. “Let her stitch Tim’s first name all over the jacket, with heavy thread, in some bright color. That will discourage some people, at least locally. Even if the thread is taken out, the holes will still spell out Tim’s name!”
Miriam grinned. “Ivory, you have a devious mind.”
“Well, sometimes you have to be devious,” she replied. “As long as it’s for a good cause.” She smiled at Miriam, who smiled back.
The one hopeful fact was that Tim was still robust and healthy. Every day, medical science came up with new ways to combat AIDS. She could only pray that there would be time to find a cure before the disease kindled in Tim’s small body.
Ivory ate her dinner and put part of the turkey in the freezer. If she ate it sparingly, it would last a long time.
She sat down on the sofa and balanced her checkbook, also totaling the amount she’d sent home. Her mother would certainly complain about the measly amount, even though it was half of Ivory’s salary. When she’d started sending the money to Texas, she hadn’t enclosed a note. It would only have been thrown away, unread. The money was all that mattered to Marlene.
As she fingered her ballpoint pen, she thought back to happier times, when her grandparents were still alive. She had always spent summers and holidays, including Thanksgiving and Christmas, with Grandmother and Grandfather Howard. They were sharecroppers, in their midfifties when she was a little girl and finding life harder and harder as big corporations took over family farms all over the area. They hardly eked out a living.
Ivory hadn’t realized until she was in school that they were very poor. The old, ramshackle house was so full of love that money never seemed to matter. There was plenty of food, because they grew their own; and if there was no running water and no indoor plumbing, that hardly concerned a little girl who adored them. It was so much better than being at home.
Her mind drifted to the rose garden that her grandmother had tended so lovingly. One renegade chicken liked to lay eggs under the thick branches, and Ivory had to crawl under to fetch them. In a mock orange tree in the backyard a family of mockingbirds nested every spring. The wild garden near the back steps bloomed with bachelor’s buttons and sunflowers, zinnias, verbena and black-eyed Susans in glorious profusion every spring and summer. And there was the kitchen garden, where she and her grandparents spent long, lazy hours weeding and tending, and then harvesting the fruits of their labors.
Grandma always had homemade fried apple pies in the cupboard to nibble on. Sometimes Ivory would sit on the back stoop and share one with her dog, while she watched the seasons pass over the fields and waited for life to come and get her. On lazy summer evenings, she would sit in the porch swing with her grandparents and listen to the crickets sing. Sometimes a thunderstorm would threaten, and from far away would come the deep bass sound of thunder amid hashes of magical-looking light in the dark clouds. Grandpa would smile as he smoked his pipe, grateful for the rain that would make his crops grow, ever hopeful of making a profit just one year. But he never had. He was eternally in debt to the landlord and always one season behind.
He was happy, though, working on the land and not being confined to an office and a time clock. Being poor, he told Ivory once, was worth a lot, because at least a man had time to see the world around him in the way he was meant to see it. The glory of nature was much more vivid close up. Captive now in concrete streets and the steel skeletons of high-rise buildings, Ivory remembered the smell of rain coming across the parched fields and the scent of pink roses climbing the oak tree at her grandparents’ house. She remembered the security of their love most of all.
Those memories had nourished her, fed her soul, in some of the worst times of her life. She could close her eyes even now and see the house, and them, safe and eternal in the cocoon of her thoughts. If her grandparents hadn’t died tragically in a house fire when she was in the second grade, how much different her life might have been!
The clock struck eleven and she went to bed, but not to sleep. The nightmares had come back lately. They did, sometimes, when she was under a lot of stress.
She had to make a lot of money, to protect herself from any charges that might one day be leveled by her mercurial mother. Ambition had lifted Ivory from hopelessness. Now she had to trust that it would take her to the top and free her from the threat of her money-mad mother.
She hadn’t much money, but she decided that she could at least afford a present for Dee, who’d been so kind to her. In one of the department stores that dotted the festively decorated streets she found what she was looking for—a beautiful silk scarf. It was more than she wanted to spend, but Dee deserved it.
She was getting ready to move to the checkout counter when something caught her eye. She paused in front of the display and stared and stared. A man like Mr. Kells wouldn’t expect or want a present from her, she thought, and it wasn’t even expensive, but it would suit him. He’d given her a chance to show her talent, and she wanted to do something for him. On an impulse, she reached out and took the small tie tack off the display. It was on sale at half price and was 10-karat gold. The pearl, the sign said, was genuine.
She placed it with the scarf and held her wallet tightly in her hand while she waited for the harried clerk to ring it all up. The total was enough to take most of her spare cash, but she didn’t mind. And they offered free gift wrap, so that was an added bonus. She smiled and thanked the wrapper. It would seem like Christmas, now that she had presents to give, even if she knew she wouldn’t get a present from anyone, except perhaps from Dee.
Now, if only she had a Christmas tree. She had studied them lovingly in the lot she passed on her way back to the office. It would have been so nice to have a tree. She could make paper chains to go on it and icicles, and she could afford a string of lights. It would make her spartan apartment so much prettier. But the trees carried price tags that would take half a week’s salary or more, and that was just too much to pay for something that would last only days. She’d have to get herself a little artificial tree and settle for looking at the gaily decorated large trees in store windows.
She’d just started into the revolving door of Kells-Meredith when the door suddenly swung open and out stepped Curry Kells, right in her path.
With a shocked cry, she jumped backward, because he looked furious.
He frowned as he recognized her. “Ivory, isn’t it?” he asked. His gaze landed on the small shopping bag with the two presents in it, glanced over her shabby coat and back up to her soft gray eyes and the golden hair peeking out from under the white beret.
“Been shopping?” he asked.
She nodded. “New York is so pretty during the holidays,” she said with a wistful smile. “I love looking at the lights.”
“Got your tree up yet?” he inquired indulgently.
“Oh, no, I can’t afford... I mean, I don’t really need one. They’re so messy, you know, live ones...” her voice trailed off, and she smiled to let him see that she didn’t mind.
“I’ve been down to see the progress on the summer line,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets as he shifted out of the path of passersby. “I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with enthusiasm.”
She bit her lower lip and looked worried.
“Your contribution is the only decent-looking garment I’ve seen,” he muttered irritably. “The junior designers, except for you, all seem to copy Virginia’s ideas.”
She might lose her job if she told him that Miss Raines insisted on that.
He saw it in her eyes. His lips pursed as he studied her. “You’re loyal. You won’t say a word against her, even though I have a good idea what’s going on.”
Her face lifted. “My grandparents said that you should never say anything about another person if it can’t be something good,” she said with a smile that became a wicked grin. “So sometimes I didn’t talk about people for years!”
He chuckled. She made him feel young and whole again. His gaze fell to her soft, bow-shaped lips and he remembered the delicious feel of them under his mouth.
She caught his eye and deep waves of sensation pulsed along her veins as that blackness enveloped her in its unblinking intensity. She couldn’t have looked away to save her life. She didn’t now, and neither could he.
His face tightened. “You’ll be late,” he said.
She took a minute to absorb what he was saying. “Late? Oh. Yes. I should go.”
He took a lean, beautiful hand out of his pocket and caught her arm. “Do some more designs for me. I’ll stop by your apartment Friday night and you can show them to me.”
Her breath caught. She beamed with delight, but that quickly changed to dismay. “But, Miss Raines...”
“Leave Miss Raines to me,” he said tersely. “Will you do it?”
“Oh, I’d love to!”
He nodded. “Think of it as covert operations,” he said. “Secret agent stuff. Industrial espionage. Except that we’ll be doing it for the right reasons. I want something that will set the fashion world on its ear, something that will get us operating in the black. If you can put some life into those tired old designs, I’ll give you senior design status.”
“Miss Raines won’t like it.”
“She’ll like having a job,” he returned. “If our sales don’t pick up, none of you is likely to have one.”
“Oh, dear,” she said.
“That’s the situation. Get busy.”
The sudden pressure of her job felt uncomfortable, even though the chance to do another series of designs was pure bliss.
He eyed the presents she’d bought again, and he lifted an eyebrow. “Only two?”
“Well, I don’t know anyone well enough to give them presents,” she explained. “Just Dee and...” She stopped, flushing as she looked at him and quickly looked away before her expression betrayed her.
But it was too late. He read the expression accurately. “And me?” he finished for her, stunned when she grimaced and verified his guess. “You bought me a present? And you won’t even buy yourself a new coat?”
She glared at him. “I’ll buy a coat when I want one. And I can buy you a present if I like. Anyway, how do you know it’s for you?”
He shrugged. “Wishful thinking?” He was smiling.
She grimaced again. “Well, it is for you, but it’s not expensive. I can’t afford anything really expensive. I just wanted some way to say thank you for what you’ve done for me.” She looked up belligerently. “And I don’t want a present back, either! That isn’t why I did it.”
His mind was full of women who expected diamonds or furs for a night on the town, rich women who didn’t need any more glitter than they already had. Not one of them gave a thought to him. He couldn’t remember ever expecting a present from one of his dates at Christmas, and here was this small-town sparrow pinching her belt tighter to afford a gift to give him. He was more touched than he wanted her to know.
“You should spend your money on yourself,” he said stiffly.
“I’ve embarrassed you. I’m sorry.”
“Embarrass me?” He chuckled amusedly. “Hardly.”
“I can take it back,” she began, knowing full well she couldn’t return the present because it had been on sale.
“Don’t you dare!” He led her to the door. “Get in there and go to work. And don’t give away my present!”
“I’ll bet you get carloads already,” she muttered, stopping to look up at him. “What’s one more?”
“My mother gives me a tie, my sister gives me a belt and I’m lucky to get handkerchiefs or desk sets from the staff.” He smiled. “I’ll bet you didn’t get me a tie.”
“God forbid, the kind you wear cost sixty dollars apiece,” she said without thinking, and put a hand to her mouth.
“They’re silk,” he told her. “I like silk. I like satin, too.” His eye narrowed. “Do you have fabric preferences?”
“Yes. Those. Silk and satin, but I can’t afford to make things out of them.”
“The company will spring for the fabric, for God’s sake,” he said irritably. “You design. I’ll pay.”
“You’re very grumpy,” she said.
“I’m tired. You try going six rounds with the board of directors over the new budget.”
She stuck her chin up and her gray eyes twinkled. “I’d love to! What do you want them to do, and when do I start?”
He chuckled. “I’ll keep you in mind when I lose control.”
She sighed. “I’ll be dead of old age by then.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure.” He checked his watch. “I’m late again. I’ve got to run. I’ll see you Friday about eight, and don’t tell anyone.”
“What if I have a date?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“Well, not yet...”
“You do now. Me.”
He turned and strode off without another word. Standing at the revolving door, she stared after him hungrily; she came to her senses just in time to avoid a collision with a couple coming out of the building. A hopeless longing for Curry Kells filled her. She couldn’t fight it. She decided to take the days one at a time and hope for the best. At least, she was going to get a shot at more designs. She could hardly wait to get her sketch pad out!
She started that afternoon, her hand moving rapidly over the paper as she began to visualize the many styles and effects she could create drawing upon the Tudor paintings that were her inspiration.
It was bad luck that Virginia Raines should see what she was doing and pause to glare over her shoulder.
“Too flashy,” she remarked haughtily. “Simple lines, Miss Keene, simple lines. No frills and flashes, they’re faddish and they don’t carry over from one season to another!”
Ivory looked up at her solemnly. “And if women buy dresses that they can wear for five years, don’t we defeat the purpose of designing new ones? If people buy fads that go out of fashion quickly, we sell more clothes, don’t we?”
Miss Raines gaped at her. She sounded just like Curry Kells. “You...you really have no idea about how to design properly, and you are impertinent!”
“That’s fortunate for you, isn’t it?” she asked gently. “Because if I’m that bad a designer, I’m certainly no threat.”
Miss Raines’s thin face went scarlet. She lifted her chin. “Certainly not.” She folded her arms across her chest. “The very idea... Why are you working on the spring and summer lines? We have all we need. You should be thinking about fall.”
Ivory didn’t dare tell her that it was Curry Kells’s idea. She had enough trouble with the woman as it was.
“I’m just trying out some ideas for...for next year,” she hedged.
“You should be working on the fall line,” Miss Raines repeated bluntly. “And scrap those way-out styles. Simplicity is the key to good design.”
She walked away, having had the last word. Ivory watched her, so stiff and set in her ways, and hoped that she wouldn’t ever become so rigid. It was important to be flexible. Creativity was the true key to good design. She supposed that Virginia Raines had long ago decided to play it safe, with no deviation from the tried and true. But it was the pathfinders, the risk-takers, who made progress in any field.
As she finished two new drawings, keeping an eye out for Miss Raines’s return, she felt vaguely guilty. It was uncomfortable to deceive Miss Raines. On the other hand, she recognized with a cynicism far beyond her years, that she had been deceiving people ever since she left home for design school.
Dee stopped by her office to take a look at the new designs and was enthusiastic enough to make Ivory smile.
“Has she seen them?” Dee asked, peering out the open door.
“Yes. She doesn’t like them.” Ivory hadn’t told Dee about her talk with Curry Kells, and she wouldn’t. The fewer people who knew, the better. She smiled at Dee. “Well, they’re fun to do, and I’m being productive. I suppose I’d better do as she asked and sketch something for the fall line.”
“Optimist,” Dee muttered. “The lack of enthusiasm on the line for Miss Raines’s new summer dresses is scary. If the seamstresses don’t like them, how does she expect the buyers to? You’d better do some smashing accessories, Ivory, or we’re all going to be standing in line at the local welfare office come February.”
Exactly what Curry had said, Ivory thought sadly. Probably it had been sticking to the old ideas all these years that had brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Styles changed with the times, and many of the buyers for the luxury stores who swore by the old designs had either lost their jobs as buyers or retired. The new buyers wanted trendy fashions, things that sold to a younger clientele. Kells-Meredith was still designing for wealthy women to wear to club meetings, not for female executives to wear to business meetings.
“Everything you’ve done is for evening,” Dee pointed out. “Have you any ideas for executive office wear? Please, not straight jackets and skirts with round-necked silk blouses...!”
Ivory chuckled at Dee’s prejudice. “In fact, I do have some ideas. I was doodling and one just popped out. It isn’t like the Tudor inspirations, though,” she added a little worriedly. “Those are strictly evening wear. This design is just a very simple off-white suit, made of a silk blend or linen, with wide lapels, and a jeweled butterfly design on the bodice beside the lapel. Something like this, worn with a soft-necked open silk blouse.”
She sketched it quickly and Dee loved it. “Why, that’s elegant. It’s appropriate, but feminine, and it would go from a conference room to a banquet. It’s...incredible!”
Ivory grinned. “And you don’t like suits.”
“Well, I like this one.”
“I thought that we could apply the butterfly in gold tone or silver tone, and fill it with Austrian crystal.”
“Yes,” Dee said, catching her enthusiasm. “And perhaps a nice black crepe or silk suit for evening—with pants or a skirt. You could use a black onyx butterfly, outlined in sapphires and diamonds and rubies...”
“Oh, what a great idea!” Ivory said, delighted. She roughed out another sketch, incorporating Dee’s butterfly onto the suit design. She showed it to the head seamstress, who oohed and aahed.
One of the seamstresses, passing by, peered over their shoulders. “Do I get to work on that?” she asked, beaming. “How beautiful!”
Ivory flushed. “Thank you!”
“That would be a joy to sew,” the woman sighed. “For a change.” She exchanged grimaces with Dee and kept walking.
Dee reviewed the sketches thoughtfully and pursed her lips. “Ivory, you have to show that to somebody who has the authority to buy it. Mr. Kells, perhaps.”
“You know,” Ivory said carefully, glancing around to make sure Virginia Raines wasn’t listening. “I just might do that!”