The Chameleon

by Sugar Rautbord

  “I think I prefer the blue Schiaparelli but I don't want this silly design on just one sleeve! It's rather lopsided, don't you think?” Sally Pettibone pouted. She pointed her perky nose in the air so high she appeared to be snubbing her own shoulder.

  “It's very Paris that way. Schiap says fashion is art and art isn't always symmetrical, but we will do whatever you like, Miss Pettibone,” Slim fawned. If the silly girl insisted, they could cover the beaded abstraction of a woman's face, although it would be a fashion sacrilege. Slim was just grateful that the new fiancé hadn't been wiped out in the Crash. So what if a Lake Forest debutante thought she knew more than the current Parisian queen of fashion? The pretty blond with the marcelled waves was nearly eighteen and already impossible. But with a mother and three younger sisters all determined to be in the height of fashion from morning to night, they were a salesgirl's gold mine. And since many of Slim's clients had disappeared after Black Thursday two years ago when the stock market collapsed, any customer with cash was king.

  “A jeweled eye on one sleeve simply won't work anyplace but in Paris and we are only spending two weeks of our honeymoon there and where else will they know it's a real Schiaparelli and be impressed? Do they know about Schiaparelli in London and don't I have to wear tweeds there? Abra Tipps says I do and she should know. She didn't come back to Miss Porter's last year because she married that old duke.”

  “Ah, Miss Pettibone. Where love is concerned, age doesn't matter.” Miss Slim sighed aloud. Nor do looks, Slim thought to herself, having seen the Tribune's society page photos of Sally Pettibone and her Labrador-eared fiancé.

  “Imagine having to call your husband Duke,” the girl went on, nodding at a curious Claire, whose long skinny legs were twisted around one another like a pretzel. “Sounds like something you'd name a Great Dane, doesn't it? Oh, could you call up to Field's Travel for me and get tickets for the best plays—and Miss Slim, ask Violet to step in. She has such taste, don't you know. Ouch! And tell this seamstress not to prick me. I know I have a small waist but a girl simply has to have an inch to breathe.”

  “Mais oui, Miss Pettibone.” Miss Slim bowed out of the fitting room backwards, running her next sentences together. “Your figure is blessedly divine. You could wear anything better than the French mannequins they showed this ensemble on. It's terribly smart on you. Madame Celine, please be careful with the pins. You mustn't stick the customers. Pansy, we'll have a cup of tea in here, please. Claire, remember your posture. No man wants to marry a slouch.” Slim pushed Claire aside and hurried along to find the long-sleeved Charles James gown, decidedly more subtle than Schiapparelli's winking, surreal design.

  “Pretty girl,” Violet said to Slim as they collided in the hallway.

  “Yeah,” mumbled Slim. “Too bad she's got her mother's arms, thick as fence posts.”

  Claire skipped out of the fitting room and gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek as she turned the corner.

  “Why on earth is Slim looking for a husband for a seven-year-old?” Sally Pettibone whispered to her mother. “Unless she's a midget. She's not a midget, is she?” She pulled off the priceless dress with such disregard she tore the basting stitches.

  “A fatherless midget? God would never be so cruel.” In Millicent Pettibone's own mind, she had a heart.

  Claire knew she'd have a better time in the Costume Shop on Four, where she could try on every outfit from Guinevere to Robin Hood. This was her current favorite place to play and pretend, but today for a change she might pop into the Young People's Theater where trained dogs commandeered from a traveling circus were performing this September afternoon. The entertainment was bound to be better than the frantic grown-up theatrics in the dressing rooms of Custom Designs and Finer Dresses.

  “Afternoon, Homer.”

  “Good afternoon to you, Miss Claire.” A grinning Homer opened the elevator door wide for his best passenger. “Elevator”—or something closely approximating it—had been her first word.

  “And which magical land am I taking you to today?” he asked, pulling the iron gate shut. Homer was the wide-eyed child's guide to the diverse selection of worlds that were all gathered under one roof. Each time he stopped the elevator it was as if Claire were entering an entirely new land. Endlessly curious and fiercely independent (as long as she stayed within the confines of the store), Claire didn't need fairy tales or children's games to entice her imagination. She had the store catalog to dream on and all of Marshall Field's to explore, just like a little Gulliver. With its gossip, activity, and fancy goods from all over the world, Field's was like a giant playhouse, an enchanted land of make-believe, and hadn't Auntie Wren observed just the other night that having a vivid imagination was essential for a child to bloom in the modern world?

  Smoothing her school frock and wiping the ubiquitous chocolate off her mouth with the back of her hand, she pushed her chin out and looked straight ahead, mimicking the customers’ elevator etiquette.

  “To the dogs, please,” she directed. Sometimes Claire sat on Homer's lap, but she was feeling grown-up today.

  “Homer, is it true men don't marry women who slouch?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Just kinda heard it in the dressing room.”

  “Then gotta be true.”

  Claire squared her little shoulders.

  This morning at the first show-and-tell of the school year when the other children were bragging what their fathers did for a living, Claire had fibbed. She held everyone's attention regaling the class with stories about her father's store, Marshall Field's, and since every child in her class had on some article of clothing from the store or slept in a bed purchased there, Claire's classmates were green with envy. No way was anyone going to feel sorry for her just because her real father was missing an organ or something like Auntie Slim said, and would never be able to come home again. Claire's teachers had long ago given up checking on this child's stories, as so many “aunties” appeared for parents’ nights that no one could keep track, and she was always being whisked away after school by a French-speaking “governess” or a uniformed man from Marshall Field's. It was simply easier for Claire's teachers to believe “chauffeur” over simple delivery man and “nanny” over immigrant seamstress.

  Claire turned to look up at the two ladies in the back of Homer's elevator who were in a noisy discussion directly over Claire's head.

  “That was Eleanor Roosevelt!”

  “How could you tell?”

  “From the newsreels, of course. The woman's a marvel. She just finished a whistle-stop tour of the western states and she's still got energy to shop!”

  “Roosevelt will defeat Hoover, won't he?”

  “Well, I certainly hope so. If somebody doesn't fix this terrible economy, Horace will make me cancel my Field's charge!”

  “I had no idea she was so tall. Or toothy.”

  “Hush. She's going to be our next first lady. Horace is in Democratic politics, you know, so I can introduce myself.” The woman reached into her purse to pull out a ROOSEVELT FOR PRESIDENT badge and pinned it on her silk dress.

  Claire fell in with the Roosevelt ladies and got off with them on the first floor. She had never seen an “almost first lady” before. Maybe it was something interesting she could use for show-and-tell.

  There was a small flurry of activity going on at the tobacco counter, where Miss Wren was pinch-hitting for a pal. Two imposing women in floppy hats rimmed with battered flowers and accompanied by a burly fireplug of a man were the subject of a fair amount of stares.

  Claire stood behind the counter with Miss Wren and watched as Eleanor Roosevelt, her companion, Lorena Hickok, and her solidly built bodyguard, Earl Miller, all held up elegant cigarette holders and pretended to be smoking.

  “Don't you think Franklin will like this one? It's very presidential.”

  “He isn't the president yet.”

  “Don't you want him to win? Think positively, Eleanor.” />
  “Hick, you know that isn't the life I want to be living now.” She signaled to Miss Wren that she'd take the medium-sized holder.

  The stocky woman placed her hand over Eleanor's. “History calls, my dear.”

  As Eleanor looked at her friend's hand covering hers, she caught sight of the most beautiful pair of violet blue eyes staring up at her. Claire held her gaze and smiled.

  “Are you employed here, young lady? You know I have become quite an authority on child labor.” When she spoke teasingly to the child, she opened her mourn wide, displaying a crowd of teeth.

  “No, but I practically live here,” Claire said. “Are you going to be the president's wife?”

  Eleanor laughed. “Why, I am already Governor Roosevelt's wife and we don't know if he'll be president or not. That will be for all of you to decide.”

  “He's got my vote, Mrs. Roosevelt,” Miss Wren gushed as she wrapped the black enamel cigarette holder in Field's dark green paper emblazoned with the Fields’ family crest.

  “Now I should like to see some knitting needles,” Eleanor said in her peculiar, singsongy voice. Claire thought it was the greatest sound she'd ever heard, like a cappella singing in church. “Perhaps one of you will show us the way.”

  Claire shot from behind the counter and took the two ladies’ hands, walking snugly in between them as she led them over to the sewing counter, where Miss Wren displayed the finest silver needles and sold Mrs. Roosevelt two sets. “I'll take these with me. The rest of the things, will you please send them over to the Drake Hotel? We're stopping there overnight,” Eleanor said. “Now, let's take a quick look at their vacuums, but I don't want to see any Hoovers.” She drew out the “o”s like an owl and her two escorts chortled at her little joke right on cue.

  “We better get upstairs to the ballroom, darling,” Hick said, slipping her arm through Eleanor's. “The Junior League awaits.” They marched to the elevator bank with Claire two steps behind.

  Miss Wren tossed off her apron and smoothed her hair with the palms of her hands.

  “I'm going on my break now, Mary Lou. Cover for me, won't you?” Too shy to ride in the same elevator as Mrs. Roosevelt, Miss Wren waited patiently for a second car to take her upstairs to hear the candidate's wife speak. Twenty-eight minutes later, awed by the eloquence and integrity of the speech, Miss Wren vowed then and there to become one of Eleanor's “Rainbow Flyers,” a group of grass-tramplers going door to door to bring out women voters for FDR. Sitting in the back of the room with all the employees, little Claire was mesmerized not by the content of the speech, but by Mrs. Roosevelt's richly aristocratic manner of talking. She mimicked Eleanor's accent for a week, not stopping until she could startle shop girls into looking up in expectation of seeing Mrs. Roosevelt herself, and delighting in the smile that came when they discovered it was only their mascot, Claire.

  “Claire dear, could you come into the parlor please?” Violet's voice was hesitant. When Claire appeared in the little sitting room clutching her favorite teddy bear, she found Auntie Wren collapsed in a fatigued armchair patched with floral fabric squares, soaking her bunions. Her mother had her own shoes off and was rubbing her arches.

  “Store feet.” Auntie Wren smiled wearily as she curled her aching toes in the steaming hot water.

  Claire instantly recognized the familiar medicinal smell of Dr. Scholl's healing foot powders permeating the sitting room suite shared by Claire, Violet, and the Aunties at the Windermere Hotel.

  They lived in this dignified but affordable establishment for ladylike widows, well-bred women in “reduced circumstances,” and working girls looking for respectability. No transients were ever allowed in this residential hotel, and very few men ventured beyond the comfortably decorated lobby and homey Americana-style dining room with its antique convex mirrors topped by proud eagles. The Field's ladies, as they were referred to, enjoyed a small kitchenette in their apartment, allowing them to economize by eating in. The Misses Slim, Wren, and Violet had their own single rooms in this warren of doors, all ending up in the tiny sitting room. Just as they had vowed seven years earlier, they had come together to raise little Claire, and had been certain—until today—that they'd been doing a first-rate job of it.

  “Yes, our Field's feet have had quite a workout. I must have run ten miles today. No really, I was all over the store. But standing on them for eight hours is just as bad, why …” Auntie Wren said nervously, delaying the conversation. She knew what was coming.

  “Wren.” Violet said in the stern maternal tone she had developed of late. “Come here, Claire.” She extended a slender arm to her daughter, who climbed right into her lap along with her bear.

  “It's time we had a little talk. I've had another call from your school. The principal says you've been telling everyone again that Mr. Marshall Field is your father.”

  Claire's mouth moved to one side of her face.

  “I thought we had settled all this before.” As soft as Violet's voice was, it had all the rumblings of thunder. She disliked being a disciplinarian but it was a role she grudgingly played for the good of her child.

  “While I'm sure Mr. Field would love having you for a daughter—if he knew you—the fact remains that he is not your father. And people don't like being surprised by extra children.”

  Claire's eyes were filling with tears. She rubbed one away, pretending that Dr. Scholl's therapeutic steam, overwhelming with its heavy smell of wintergreens and curatives, was irritating them.

  “You can't just wish something up and make it so.”

  “Yes, but if he knew me, really knew me, he'd probably want to be my father.”

  “Unfortunately, dearest, it doesn't work that way.” Violet fought back her own tears.

  “The fact remains you don't have a father. You have three mothers who love you. That should be enough. You don't need a father and you're not going to have one no matter how much you pretend.”

  “She could, Vi. One of us could suddenly marry and then adopt—”

  “Hush, Wren.” Violet had even begun disciplining her store sisters, assuming the head position in their little family. She was still bitter about Leland Organ leaving her and forcing her to become resilient and independent. The truth of her situation had hit her hard. After he left her for King Tut, there had been a series of other “mistresses,” or so his occasional postcards had suggested, and how could she compete with women who had names like Hatshepsut and Nefertiti? Without a return address, Violet had had no way of contacting him to let him know he'd become a father. Out of desperation, she'd finally cabled him the news through an archaeological society at the university. She never heard from him again. It had taken all these years, but he was now as dead to her as the crusty bones he excavated. Violet composed herself and, turning to her daughter, addressed her gently.

  “You know dear, in the lion family …”

  “They call it a pride,” Claire corrected her, sniffling. She had been to the Field Museum of Natural History with Auntie Wren many times.

  “Yes, of course. In the pride of lions, sometimes the father lion leaves after the little cub is born.”

  “Where does he go?”

  “Out.” Slim slinked in the front door slightly tipsy, aiming her cocktail hat at the side table.

  “He goes hunting, or exploring, or sometimes he just moves on.”

  “Does he ever come back?” There was utter silence in the little room.

  “Not after eight years,” Slim answered. “And who'd want a necrophiliac around anyway?”

  Violet cast narrowed eyes in Slim's direction—her own patented subtle warning to back off.

  “We're an all-girl family?”

  “Well, yes. And a very brave one. We defend one another like lionesses and take care of each other. There's love and safety here.” Violet believed the words as she said them. She cradled her child's cheek and stroked her hair.

  “And will there never be a daddy?” Claire whispered into her mothe
r's breast.

  “Someday you'll have a man of your very own. And you won't have to borrow someone else's.”

  Violet reached into her needlepoint basket and pulled out a packet.

  “Claire,” she said softly. “These postcards are from your father. Picture postcards from different places. I was going to give them to you when you were older. That's all there is of him. You may have them now if you like.”

  Claire slipped off her mother's lap, dropping her stuffed bear to the floor with a thud.

  “Would you like to sleep with me tonight?” Auntie Wren popped out of her chair. “I'll even read to you from Little Women.” Wren was relieved the discussion was over. She hated any kind of unpleasantness. Claire was looking a bit peaked. Perhaps she should give the child a thimbleful of Lydia Pinkham's Tonic.

  Claire darted a glance around their meager apartment, so different from the vast luxuries at Field's, or the doll-like homes of her school friends with one mother and one father to match. She sighed, untying the ribbon holding the packet together, and fanned through the postcards with the cramped copybook handwriting on one side. Her eyes were drawn to the exotic, decorative stamps. She rubbed her finger over a stamp of a green sphinx sitting under a blue sky and rifled through the pile. All the other stamps were colorful and interesting, too.