By contrast, Violet, dreamy-eyed and reticent with her long, wavy hair held back in pins, all of it now tucked under a perky cloche, always looked as if she had just stepped out of the last century and was befuddled to find herself in this one.
Both Violet and Slim shivered as they moved out of the cocoon of the walkway tunnel and up the Illinois Central stairs, outdoors and into a blast of arctic air at the corner of Randolph and Michigan Avenue. The Windy City suddenly lived up to its reputation as a tornadolike gust blew an assortment of men's hats off their heads: bowlers, derbies, and fedoras whirling up, off and into the direction of State Street. The wind whipped through the working ladies’ thin cloth coats, sending their shoulders to their ears as if they could shrug off the cold.
“Boy, if only that gentleman from Minneapolis had bought me that sable coat I sold him for his cow wife yesterday.” Slim's lament froze in midair. She tucked her chin into her squirrel collar to prevent the cold wind from needling her lungs. “The two of us could have fit into it comfortably together. Why, it was so enormous—”
“I feel warmish.” Violet was the color of those white silk bed sheets sold on Eight. Sweat beads were forming at her temples despite the terrific cold.
“Oh my dear, you're clammy.” Miss Wren emerged from the shelter of Pete's newsstand and closed in on the left flank. She'd been waiting for them under the portico of the Chicago Public Library where the small oil-can fire had momentarily taken the chill off her bones. The apple-cheeked Miss Wren sturdily lifted Violet's other elbow so that her tiny feet needn't bother to touch the sidewalk, just as they'd been doing every day this past week.
“She's getting heavier,” Miss Wren said behind Violet's ears.
“Don't be ridiculous. The girl looks like a scarecrow! Did you get my movie magazine?”
Miss Wren shoved the fan magazine across Violet's chest. She had just purchased the latest crossword puzzle book and a copy of Collier's for herself. As she slipped the copy of Silent Screen with a mournful Zasu Pitts on the cover over to Slim, she was struck by Violet's pallor. Miss Wren was suddenly reminded of her own poor mother, who had recently passed away.
“I tell you it's serious. She's too young to look so tired.”
At that moment Violet winced and placed her hands on her right side. She apologetically explained, “Gas.”
“Appendicitis,” Miss Slim decided, blowing her frozen words over to Miss Wren.
“Gallstones.” Miss Wren returned the volley.
Twins! Violet thought to herself in sudden horror. For months she had been hoping to hear the missing Mr. Organ's key turn in the door of their one-room Kenwood flat and announce that he was back for good to care for her and teach geography instead of traipsing the globe like a bespectacled Ulysses. Now she was seized with the terrible notion that he had brought her something more than the colorful souvenirs and native dolls from South America on his last trip home. What if it were something truly terrible, like syphilis? She had no idea exactly where Leland had been on his adventures; she had simply indulged his wanderlust, hoping it was just a thirst that time would quench. But if theirs was to be the Lost Generation, why did her husband have to take it literally? The pain that gripped her was double anything she had felt before. Why, if she had gone to a doctor, his diagnosis would have been “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
“Sex.” Violet blushed. How improper the whole business was. No, she didn't care if Mr. Organ ever came home.
“Divorce.” Violet Organ whispered the forbidden words into the wind. She wondered how Marshall Field's Department Store would respond to the very unorthodox act of having one of its salesladies behave like the society folk to whom they were supposed to cater.
Violet thought it was so unfair that it was perfectly all right for her to sell Mrs. Hollingsworth an extravagant trousseau for her third marriage to some polo-playing playboy, but heaven help an abandoned, pregnant salesgirl thinking of legally leaving her “gone far and away” spouse—especially if she worked in a store that sold family values every bit as much as silver place settings, diamond chokers, chocolate truffles, school clothes, and shoes for the entire family.
“Archaeologist my foot!” Her words angrily assaulted the icy air as she thought back to his only postcard. He'd run off to join the excavators of the newly discovered King Tutankhamen's tomb the way an impulsive child might run off to join the circus. “He's just a geography teacher with a shovel.”
“Uhhhhh!” A piercing pain shot through Violet's tummy like an eel weaving its way through her insides.
“Ohhhhh!” Miss Slim said, echoing the same sound, only in enchantment. The trio stopped in their tracks and stood wide-eyed in front of the big Christmas window.
Pain was pushed aside as Miss Slim, Miss Wren, and even the teary-eyed Violet fell under the spell of Fraser's greatest glory. Arthur Fraser, with his staff of twenty display artists, painters, carpenters, plaster molders, and electricians, created his windows like meticulously crafted stage sets. The sixty-foot window was breathtaking with its Noel magic and fashions of the hour. The two ladies balanced Violet between them as she pressed her nose against the window. It was too cold to snow outside, but inside the enchanted store window fake snow was softly falling, miraculously visible from two tall French windows that sheltered a stylishly decorated art deco living room. Inside, a happy family was gathered in front of a cozy fire. A mother mannequin wearing a Vionnet velvet evening gown and a father mannequin sporting a satin-collared smoking jacket were enjoying the magic with their two eager, round-faced mannequin children, a boy and a girl, while the doggy mannequin and the starched-white-aproned, crisp-capped maid mannequin looked on approvingly as she held out a tray of cheese puffs. A stern-faced nanny mannequin rocked her miniature mannequin charge, snug and warm in its Italian hand-crafted cradle, available in Infants’ Goods on Four. All the holiday gawkers gathered outside oohed and aahed into the frosty air, creating ice balloons with their breath.
The details in Field's windows were artfully impeccable, but that was why thousands of people poured into Chicago to see the spectacular displays. In the center of the window scene, a pyramid of presents encircled an elegant twelve-foot Christmas tree lit by flickering candles. But the real stars of the “Window Show,” decked out in red velvet with white satin trim and gold braiding, were the robust Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus who were sitting down with the Field's family to Christmas cider and yummy gourmet treats.
“Uhhhh!” Another piercing pain shot through Violet, turning her into a skinny question mark. “I think I'm going to expire.” Violet started to fold.
“Get her into the store!” Slim snapped.
“Why?” Miss Wren asked but did as she was told.
“Because nobody's ever died in Marshall Field's!”
“Oh dear, I'd hate for Violet to be the first,” said Miss Wren.
“Nonsense! Christmas is no time for tragedy.” And with that, the Misses Wren and Slim waltzed in the door of the employees’ entrance, the airborne Violet Organ between them, up the main aisles wreathed in holly, mistletoe, ribbons, and tinsel, to a lovely little creche with the baby Jesus and the barnyard animals gathered in the manger that greeted them as they clocked in for work.
“Going up!” Homer Jackson, the impressively uniformed elevator operator, smiled broadly, courteously greeting the regular shop girls on their way to their posts.
Violet clenched her teem to keep from screaming. The store smells of evergreens, fresh chocolates, brass polish, and rich perfumes accosted her nostrils, and she closed her eyes, ready to swoon in a dizzy vapor. The store was already full of anxious holiday shoppers. Somehow she thought if she could just get to her counter in Finer Dresses on Five, everything would be all right.
“Second floor. Linens. The Elizzzzabethan Roooom,” Homer sang. He ran his elevator like a streetcar conductor, calling out the most interesting stops and sights along the way. His routine never varied. Whether he was running his Otis car for customers o
r employees, he let everyone know where the goods were.
Homer pulled open the heavy iron door to reveal the Marshall Field's Choral Society hitting a crescendo in “Away in a Manger.”
“Oh dear! Violet looks like she's been hit by a train.”
“Let's get her to the first aid room.”
“Or the waiting room.”
“Homer, hurry! Can't you make this an express?” Slim was panicked.
“Company rules.” Homer sighed. “Gotta stop at every floor.” Once again, he pulled the ornate iron door open. “Third floor. Booooks—Staaaamps!”
“Ohhhhh.” A sharp stab in her lower back caused Violet to wince in pain.
“Fourth floor. Tooooys, stuffed animals, Weeeedgwood china, and don't forget to visit the Young People's Theater.”
Two surprised shoppers opted not to enter Homer's elevator. One of them pointed to a small rivulet puddling on the floor between Violet's ankle-strap pumps.
“Fifth floor.”
“Enough of the sight-seeing. We're getting out now!” Miss Wren announced. Violet's floor at last.
The pocketbook had just performed a somersault in Violet's stomach. Homer stopped the elevator perfectly level with the Fine Dress Department and the two women hurried Violet Organ out. Just in time. Violet's stomach performed one more aerobic maneuver. She let out a shriek that rattled the fine china off the shelves on the third floor, announcing the arrival of a wailing baby.
“It's a girl!” Miss Slim announced.
“Thank heavens—it's not a gallstone,” Miss Wren fanned Violet with her Collier's.
“Claire Organ!” Slim shouted out the first French name she could think of, thus christening Violet's daughter amidst the pearl necklaces, silk lingerie, high-fashion shoes, and women's fancy custom apparel directly beneath Louis Comfort Tiffany's grand mosaic dome.
“Boil some water!” A customer scurried through the aisles on rubber soles.
“Marshall Field's has just given birth to a baby girl!”
Miss Slim pulled on a long pair of white opera gloves from the fake display arms on the counter and helped pull the child into the commotion on Field's fifth floor. One sales clerk rushed over with a monogrammed motor blanket while Miss Wren seized the scissors used for wrapping gifts.
“I'll cut the cord!” Miss Slim called out as gaily as if she were cutting a holiday ribbon.
Miss Wren took it upon herself to scurry down the back stairs to Four, where she purloined a bassinet, two swaddling blankets, and, just for good measure, a silver rattle. After all, it wasn't every day a Christmas baby was born at Marshall Field's Department Store. As soon as she turned the corner on her return sprint, she saw Miss Slim kneeling on the floor, proudly holding the loveliest, tiniest babe in her bloodied evening gloves and showing her to an astonished Violet Organ.
“Oh joy!” Mrs. Winterbotham clasped her hands together and waddled closer for a better look, the nodding minks wrapped around her neck as a stole still in possession of their eyes and noses. “Imagine being born in this great store and having all of these wonderful layette doodads and imported baby things at one's fingertips.”
The nurse and doctor from First Aid on Seven bundled Violet and baby off the floor and onto a stretcher, carrying the new mother away as if she had the bubonic plague. Mrs. Winterbotham hurried off to telephone her husband, who was the editor of the Tribune, to tell him of the wonderful miracle that had happened on the fifth floor of Field's.
“Henry,” his wife puffed into the phone, her voice carrying the news as rapidly as one of her husband's wire services. “A mother and child born practically in the manger display. Why Henry, right in sight of the stuffed barnyard animals and women wearing jewels and garments as splendid as the Three Kings, this child was born! And to a working girl! Henry, a simple working woman whose husband is missing. Well, I don't know. In Egypt I think. Oh Henry, what if it's the Holy Land? Henry, it's a story!” Indeed. It was the Tribune's front-page Christmas Eve story, Field's being the Tribune's biggest advertiser and all.
In her febrile state, it was Violet Organ's true belief that fate revealed her daughter's destiny that December day. The new mother somehow felt it was auspicious of great things to come that her dimpled daughter was born in the midst of luxury, even if it was only a warehouse of other people's luxuries. After all, it wasn't as if Claire had been born on the eighth floor among the toasters and vacuum cleaners.
It was the article in the Tribune that saved Violet from being fired on the eve of Christmas 1923, when the not easily amused store manager, Mr. Trost, treated Violet to her own private inquisition in the bleak maternity ward of Cook County Hospital.
“Where is the father?” he demanded to know.
“Wandering the desert.”
“Missing in action.”
“Dead.” Miss Violet, Miss Slim, and Miss Wren answered in unison.
To the next question they silently established an order of protocol.
“Oh she's married, all right. They had a church wedding eighteen months ago. I was there.” Slim was the authority on romance.
“Legally married.” Wren was practical as she handed over the marriage certificate.
“It's just that he's excavating King Tut's tomb,” Violet apologized.
“He doesn't know about the baby,” Miss Slim added helpfully. She didn't know, so how could he, she thought to herself. How could Violet have been so duplicitous or so dumb? Either way this baby was going to be too much for Violet to handle on her own. Why, Violet could barely fend for herself! They'd just all have to knuckle down, pull up their socks, and pull together to be a family for the poor child.
When the nurse excitedly arrived carrying the freshly powdered infant and a late edition of the paper, Mr. Trost had to admit it would be bad policy to fire the mother of what the Tribune heralded as “Field's Littlest Christmas Miracle.” The caption ran under a photo of an expensively swaddled Claire cradled by Violet, wearing a quilted satin bed jacket, her long, wavy tresses flowing past her shoulders like Lillian Gish's. The two salesgirls, whom the article described as the infant's aunties from the Field's family, were gathered around the mother and child bearing gifts from First Floor State Street and Baby Goods on Four. Mr. Trost was later promoted for his good public-relations sense.
Slim read aloud from the paper. “‘The young lady appeared promptly at nine-twenty a.m. Field's newest accessory weighs seven and a half pounds, has sapphire blue eyes, a button nose, and a little figure that could model any fancy infant ensemble.’”
“Five toes and five fingers on each little hand and foot.” Miss Wren beamed broadly.
“‘Customers,’” Slim continued reading the story, “‘actually registered to buy gifts for the new baby from the store's vast collection of antique silver baby cups, christening gowns, warm woolen flannels, and English baby prams.
“‘Marshall Field's special events coordinator, one B. Cunningham, said, “You can't say that Field's doesn't deliver!” and presented the baby's mother, Mrs. Leland Organ, the wife of a prominent archaeologist’”—Slim rolled her eyes as she read on— “‘with a two-volume leather-bound boxed set of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. What a lucky little girl!’”
All the women's eyes were tearfully focused on the child, who was noisily sucking air around her. What would become of her? They looked at one another conspiratorially and nodded. They would see to it. The child would be safe in their collective bosom.
“We'll all be little Claire's aunties,” Miss Wren announced, making a mental list of all the practical things they would need. She clucked happily at the thought of reading to their baby.
“I'll teach her French and dress her in Paris couture.” Miss Slim could hardly wait. Maybe the war widow hadn't been denied a child after all.
“We'll love her.” Violet grazed her finger against her baby's dewy cheek.
And “their baby” she became. The three women and Cla
ire had somehow bonded amidst the bloody opera gloves and the excitement of a new birth, all in the spirit of Christmas. It was tacitly understood at this moment that they had become a family for a variety of reasons. Each of the lonely women had room to spare in her heart, room Claire would fill for all their lifetimes.
Chapter Two
Elevators and Escalators
Being a Modern Heroine, she realized that no Gallant Knight would come Riding to her Rescue—even if that could have done any good. No, she must do her own Rescuing. So she set about studying ways and means of Achieving her Purpose. She thought of this and she thought of that and at last she heard about the Lanchere Beauty Salon on the Fifth Floor at Field's.
—From “How She Triumphed,” Fashions of the Hour, Spring 1934
Claire peered her curly head from behind Miss Slim's hip, holding on to her hem, and smiled shyly at Sally Pettibone, who was being fitted for her traveling trousseau. The Perils of Pauline paled in comparison to the Adventures of Claire at Marshall Field's. For the precocious second-grader, school was only a prologue to the encyclopedia's worth of experiences to be sampled daily at the store.
“Come here, my little darling. You've got chocolate on your smocking.” Miss Slim scolded her favorite confection as she rubbed the gooey stuff off Claire's chin and the front of her dress.
“You've stopped off at the candy kitchen again, haven't you?”
Claire nodded. It was part of her everyday routine. Instead of coming home to cookies and milk in the family kitchen, seven-and-a-half-year-old Claire simply took the Illinois Central train downtown, accompanied by the seamstress Mme. Celine if one of the Field's delivery men couldn't pick her up and deliver her directly to the store. There were sure to be a dozen deliveries a day to Hyde Park anyway for the fleet of russet brown trucks all bearing the Field's insignia, carrying washing machines, coffee tables, bedding, and party dresses. When the Bret Harte Public School let out at three o'clock, all Claire had to do was dial the telephone exchange “State 1000,” and one of the uniformed drivers would be quietly dispatched to bring the child back “home” to Field's. There the after-school treats offered in the candy kitchen, with its bubbling copper kettles emitting inviting aromas of melting chocolate, mint, and vanilla, were infinitely tastier man anything her schoolmates were snacking on at home.
The Chameleon Page 2