“Look, it's Auntie Wren now,” Claire said excitedly, waving her arms so Wren could find them in the dining room with its richly patterned carpets and ornately carved walnut walls.
Other guests in the dining room spun around to watch the tiny lady lugging big green Field's shopping bags in each hand and under her arms bustle into the room. An oversized pin in the shape of a holiday wreath was pinned to her ample bosom. The Christmas Eve supper was reserved for certain employees of the store, special friends, and out-of-town guests. The mood in the room was festive. This year Miss Wren was taking Claire to midnight mass at St. Peter's for a Catholic celebration. Last year, because Christmas and Hanukkah happened to coincide, they'd also attended services at Rodfei Zedek Temple, as Wren was determined that Claire's spiritual education be ecumenically correct. Claire and her mother were pretty much Protestants, Wren was a lapsed Catholic, and Slim a devout Pantheist. When they worshiped together, it was at the Unitarian church in Hyde Park. But as Auntie Wren said, “the Lord is everywhere,” and Auntie Slim always finished with “especially at Marshall Field's at Christmas,” where the devoted ladies celebrated Christ's birthday along with Claire's.
God had certainly been good to them this Christmas, and just in the nick of time. They were in a very gay mood. Claire laughed and clapped her hands together now, and Violet and Auntie Slim laughed along as they waited for Auntie Wren to join them. All this gaiety was due to the largesse of the Tuxedo Park Harrisons, Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Harrison IV to be exact, who had with one ring of a cash register closed out their debts, paid their rent, and were allowing Auntie Wren to play Mrs. Santa Claus to her loyal friends and their collective child born in the store eleven years ago.
“Wren says Mrs. Harrison looked quite understated — plain almost—but her voice, it just reeked money.” Claire loved rehearsing the story of Mrs. Harrison.
“You can always tell by the voice. Money and breeding just tumble out of their mouths.” Slim pursed her lips as if she were going to pull out a cherry pit.
“Thank goodness we're having Christmas.” Violet sighed happily.
Field's had rewarded Wren by reinstating her permanent position at the store and giving her a bonus and the best table in the house for their Christmas supper. A triumphant Wren had told the others to gussy up and meet her there but to start without her as she had a lot of last-minute shopping to do. When she reached the table, the small-boned lady with the puffed-up chest dropped her heavy load of presents and wiped the perspiration beads from her temples.
“Oh, Auntie Wren. We thought you'd never get here! Hooray for you, darling Auntie Wren.” Claire threw her arms around Wren's birdlike neck and kissed her rosy cheeks.
“Sit down, Wren. You deserve it.” Violet pulled out her I chair, letting her have the one with arms. “You've truly saved the day. You did a smashing job. And just in time.”
Wren beamed. It felt so good to be helpful and even better to be necessary.
Tomorrow morning the ladies would open their presents following a lazy breakfast of Wren's special apfelp-fannkuchen—apple pancakes laced with a touch of calvados to bring out the fruity taste and topped by Violet's homemade plum jam and fresh peach preserves. Wren, however, had insisted on “bending” the ritual this year so that her gifts to the others would be opened in Field's dining room.
She shooed away a white-gloved waiter who appeared with the giant tasseled menu, eager to press directly ahead with her bags of boxes. She plucked a glossy green-and-red-coated box off the top and pushed it across the table. “Violet, you're first.” Wren tilted her face, looking girlishly expectant. It was such a thrill for her to be able actually to give something other than a hug and advice.
Violet was thrilled with her gift of a delicate wristwatch. She hadn't had one since Wren had accidentally sat on hers over a year ago. She held it up for the others to admire.
“You were such a game girl when I smashed yours.” Wren blushed and blinked her tears away. The difficulties of the past year had stimulated her tear ducts so that her handkerchief was working overtime.
“You're next, Auntie Slim. Go on.”
Claire's soft curls fell over her porcelain-fine china skin as nearby diners turned to stare at the three happily chirping ladies and the pretty child taking such pleasure in their Christmas. Their happiness was contagious as it spread around the room.
“Oh, what beautiful leather.” Slim looked puzzled as she ran a polished red finger over a long, narrow wallet. She'd never had much cash to carry around with her and wondered about the practicality of a fancy holder for her decidedly loose change.
“It's a passport case,” Wren explained.
“Is there a ticket to Paris inside?” asked Claire, leaning over the table for a look.
“Claire!” Violet raised a feathery eyebrow.
“Heavens no, dear!” Wren laughed. “I'm only newly reemployed, not Daddy Warbucks. But there is something that goes along with it.” Wren smiled puckishly as she handed Slim another box. “It's a sort of theme present. Paris, Paris.”
Slim loved her second gift, the French perfume Paris Nights, and lightly touched the stopper behind both of her ears as well as Claire's. The wide childish eyes were fixed on the perfume's packaging of a man and woman in silhouetted embrace. It made her reflect that the only thing missing from the table and their lives was a man with a good steady job.
This long year had in fact taught Claire that good times and good moods came with financial security. The sting of her mother and aunties’ anger at her for charging the Amelia Earhart case was still with her; having to return it had crushed her. All these months later, she still wasn't over it. So Claire was gleeful as she pulled back the white and gold tissue paper to reveal an Amelia Earhart traveling case, one that bore Amelia Earhart's autograph and the personal message inscribed especially for Claire. Wren had rescued the luggage tag and put it aside for her until the bad times eased up.
“Oh Auntie Wren! You remembered! I think you are the loveliest person in the world!” She hugged the dear lady and smiled triumphantly at her mother over her aunties’ shoulders.
Claire suddenly knew exactly what she was going to do to make sure they'd never have hard times again.
“Here's to Wren for giving us a wonderful Christmas after all.” The Aunties raised their sherry glasses in a single three-armed salute.
“Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus and all the powers above, for looking out for us.” Wren bowed her head solemnly. They all lowered their eyes in prayer.
“Yeah, and let's hear it for the Harrisons of Tuxedo Park!” Slim lifted her glass high again.
“To the Harrisons!”
Claire was perched on the enormous elk-horned hat rack in the Men's Shop like an owl. Her feet were demurely crossed at the ankles, her lace-scalloped socks turned down in a neat fold as she sat hidden in the branches of the elk horns hung with homburgs, two riding derbies, a trilby, several tweed caps, and a straw boater. The man she had been studying for three-quarters of an hour was directly beneath her. He was perfect, in her estimation. She wondered if she should ambush him or just seduce him. She had seen ambushes in the Hopalong Cassidy films and had heard all about romantic seductions from Auntie Slim. She sighed.
What would Shirley Temple do? Claire pondered. The pint-sized actress who was four years younger than she had been in the store only last week. At seven, America's darling was well on her way to becoming the nation's top box-office star. Even though Shirley Temple had an officious phalanx around her, which included her mother, bodyguard, fan-mail secretary, personal hair curler, and store executives, she and Claire had managed to escape the adults long enough to slip their feet into the fluorescent X-ray machine in the Children's Shoe Shop on Four. There they had giggled and joked as they each took turns sticking their feet into the large wooden machine for determining shoe size and shape, and stared down at their skeletal bones as they wiggled their toes and watched their bones dance. It reminded her, S
hirley told Claire, of her staircase number with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in The Little Colonel. The girls wiggled and jiggled their toes until they were discovered by the anxious grown-ups and marched on toward the Doll Department, where even the little star was overwhelmed by the selection of dolls from all over the world.
As Field's child-in-residence, Claire was acting as the store's special hostess to the miniature movie star for the day, a scheme cooked up by the store's publicity department. Later, as both girls gamely posed for photographers, each holding a Shirley Temple doll, a big seller for Field's, and the star's mother urging her to “sparkle, Shirley, sparkle,” Claire tried to sparkle, too. She thought how pretty Shirley was with her cheery round face. Was it any wonder that every man in her movies wanted to be her father or adopt her? Why, she could even melt the hearts of gangsters. She was always bringing couples together in her films so that they fell in love, eventually adopting the character Shirley played. She had brought Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard together in Now and Forever, and in her latest film, Curly Top, she played matchmaker to millionaire John Boles and Rochelle Hudson, Shirley's older sister in the movie. Every Shirley Temple movie had a happy ending.
“How do you get everyone to fall in love with you?” Claire had asked in all sincerity when they were at the marble water fountain together.
“By being nice,” the little star had answered. “And by remembering to always dimple after reading my line.” She twisted a plump finger into one of the famous circles penetrating either side of her mouth.
Contemplating her present situation, Claire decided she would probably be stuck in that man's hat display forever just by being nice. Dimpling just might work. Or maybe she could try one of Auntie Slim's seductions.
“So do you come here often?” she called down to the man from her owl's lair.
The gentleman was visibly taken aback. He didn't shop by himself very often. He usually left that to his wife and daughters. He looked around before he looked up.
“And who are you, young lady? The Cheshire Cat or a talking hat?”
“Oh, neither,” Claire uncrossed and recrossed her ankles on her precarious perch. “I'm one of Field's personal shoppers. And I can help you pick out almost anything in the store. I know where everything is.” She fluttered her eyes like Shirley Temple had shown her and wished she could have extended her arm in a languid arc like she'd seen Jeanette MacDonald do in Naughty Marietta, but she realized if she wasn't careful she'd fall out of the hat rack and break her neck. And how could she be adorable in a cast?
“Don't you have anyone to shop for you?” she asked pointedly.
“Well, that's the problem. I have too many people shopping and charging it to me. Now it seems I need a few things for myself. Really now, can I help you out of there? You're not a circus performer or something, are you?”
“No, I'm just a working girl.” Claire paused as if she were exhaling some of Auntie Slim's cigarette smoke. “And I'd like to help you.” Her voice sizzled with what she hoped was sophistication.
The gentleman broke into a warm, friendly, fatherly laugh. He held up a hand to her.
“Allow me,” he said, “to assist you.”
Claire hung on to his hand, a nice big gruffy hand, and stepped out of the hat rack and onto a column and then down on the counter where shirts were stacked in neat rows by collar size and color.
“I notice you're buying two of everything. Was your luggage lost?”
“No.”
“Did you have a fire?”
“No.”
“Do you have a wife?”
“I'm in that gentleman's limbo somewhere between marriage and divorce,” he announced before he caught himself. There was something disarming about this girl-child.
Bingo, thought Claire. And now he was separating from his wife. Evidently Claire had caught him only on his second day out of the nest. She had no allegiances to the institution of marriage; she had never even known a real family except from storybooks and store catalogs. So now Claire concentrated on sparkling. Somehow she'd pull him into her trap, just like Shirley.
“That shirt you're buying is from last season's stock and that collar is smart but trendy. You look like a man who'd want something more conservative, that would wear from year to year.” She pitched him with one of the lines her mother always used on her lady customers.
The gentleman looked impressed.
“But what's wrong with this shirt? It's got a turn-down collar and is plain white so it can go with everything.”
“Look over here,” she said, taking him by the hand. “You'd be much handsomer in this.”
“How are you such an authority? Where are your parents?” His expression turned serious.
“My father is missing and my mother works in the store.”
“Well, shouldn't you be running along to her?” He gave a helpless look around the emptying floor. He noticed that he was the last customer. He'd purchased just what he'd needed for a few nights’ stay at his club. When he'd moved out of his house, he'd only taken his briefcase.
“Nope. My mother's at home. She's probably worried half sick. I was supposed to meet her but I got stuck in those antlers and was too embarrassed to ask for help.”
“You should never be embarrassed to ask for help.”
She lowered her lashes and looked at the buckles on her shoes.
“Would you help me get home? If you hadn't come along, why, I could have been stuck in those horns all night!” she fibbed.
“Well, I'm glad that I did. I have a driver outside and we are going to take you home, young lady. Should we telephone your mother so she doesn't worry?”
“Oh yes.” Claire looked directly into his eyes. “How gallant you are.” She repeated Auntie Slim's mantra like a parrot from the Pet Store on Eight.
“But enough about me.” Claire took his arm as they made their way to the Men's Grill with its bank of telephones. “Let's talk about you.” Wouldn't Mother and the Aunties be thrilled. She'd tell Mother to put on her prettiest blouse. She was bringing home a man for her. She was bringing home the bacon.
Chapter four
Give the Lady What She Wants
A woman is like a finely plumed bird. If she is to survive, she takes on the colors of whomever's nest she is inhabiting.
—Old Folk Proverb
Claire's arrival with her catch at the Windermere had set off a waving of arms and tricky pirouettes worthy of the Ballets Russes. Violet and Aunt Wren reacted with elaborate body language and stunned silence in the shock of the moment. Claire had picked up a man and brought him home to Violet like a box of chocolates.
“Oh, you'll have to forgive Claire. She is only a child.” Violet colored to a high pink in embarrassment and tucked her delicate profile into the ruffles of her blouse. Wren fluttered off into the kitchen as if her exit had been choreographed, leaving Violet alone for her big solo.
“I have four daughters of my own,” the man said kindly as he introduced himself. “You've done a wonderful job raising her. Really. She's an outright delight.”
“Well, you're being very gracious, Mr. Pettibone,” Violet murmured, deliberately leaving out any reference to Mrs. Pettibone and the daughters who spent money like water slipping through their I've-simply-got-to-have-that fingers.
Mrs. Pettibone was high on Violet's list of names of ladies who handled their clothing bills like Board of Trade transactions, bartering, exchanging, and begging Violet to hold on to them until they could get their husbands “in the right mood.” The Pettibone listing of accounts due was thick in Violet's ledger. What a coincidence that Claire should bring him home. Claire. The child could take a cup of sugar and turn it into a three-tiered wedding cake.
Violet smiled at Claire's gentleman. Mr. Pettibone was very attractive in a reliable sort of way. Solid bearing, gentlemanly demeanor, a Patek Philippe watch cupping his wrist, he was well groomed but not handsome; Auntie Slim constantly drummed into Claire's head th
at the lady should be the pretty one and the man her stable foil.
Violet offered to make him a cup of herbal tea. As he sat down in one of the threadbare slipcovered armchairs, she stole a second look at him. There was a husbandly gentleness about him that came through his burly manner.
For a split second, Violet wondered what she might do if Millicent Pettibone wasn't her valued customer and if she wasn't mother confessor to her and her spoiled daughters.
She needn't have bothered. The living room door flung open and in slinked Slim, her hips moving so that Violet could practically hear the hip sockets grinding in and out. She had slipped into something “comfortable” after Claire and Mr. Cyrus Pettibone's phone call and doused herself with Paris Nights. She smiled at him with her vinyl-slick lips, boring straight into him with her kohl-lined eyes. Eyes that suggested all sorts of things that Mrs. Pettibone had probably never even heard of.
The rest was rumor.
“Hitler who?”
“Adolf Hitler.”
“Adolphe, like Adolphe Menjou?”
“Honestly, Cilia, don't you keep up on world events?” Hope Wentworth threw a gardenia at her.
“Cilia's been in a coma for the last two years.” Daisy Armstrong was putting curlers in her hair.
“Oh, that Hitler.” Cilla remembered the maids talking about it. Poland and France were where the household's girls came from, and the maids had been anguished when Germany invaded their homelands.
The Chameleon Page 6