Wish Upon a Star

by Olivia Goldsmith

  At a little before four she put down the circular needle and got out of bed to lay out the garment on her bureau. She felt light-headed and empty, but it was the middle of the night so she didn’t want to go downstairs to the kitchen. She’d once run into Jerry, standing nude in front of the open refrigerator, illuminated by its light. Instead of taking the chance of letting that happen she opened the bottom drawer of her bureau and looked at the treasures inside.

  Whenever Claire was sad or bored or lonely she made her way to one of the many knitting stores she knew and let herself be tempted by the beautiful colors, the delicious textures, and the promises that all the seductive yarn whispered to her. Now, spread in front of her, were the spoils from those frequent jaunts. Despite her misery Claire was moved, as she always was, by the colorful chaos. She took out her favorite, a costly and luxurious cashmere, in a color that was somewhere between blush and the inside of a shell. It was a very fine ply, and Claire had decided long ago to knit a sweater of it for herself in a tiny and complex cable pattern. She laid the skeins on her bed, then – after long consideration – fetched a pair of size three wooden needles from her knitting basket. She had saved the directions for the sweater though she thought she could do it without following the pattern.

  With a cable sweater she only had to resort to the pattern for the first full cable. Once she’d cast that on and knew the number of rows in between the cable twists she very seldom needed the pattern again. She got back into bed. It was windy, and she could hear the bare tree branches being whipped against the house by the wind. She felt cozy, tucked under her blankets, the cashmere on her lap. As she began to work she found that she would have to be certain to check the position of the twist and not forget to alternate between the front and back with the cable holder. With her state of mind now, she knew she’d welcome the concentration this project would require. As her fingers manipulated the needles she was especially attentive to what she was doing.

  She spent the next couple of days knitting, reading, sleeping, watching a few television programs and licking her wounds. She wished she had her own VCR so she could watch tapes up in her room because she didn’t want to go downstairs to her mother’s TV in the evenings. When Jerry came in he wanted to watch Cops or Junkyard Wars. Instead she stayed upstairs and finished the Jeanette Winterson book. Crying over it helped put things into perspective. Her life could be worse.

  Tina was concerned. When she came over for a visit, Claire pretended to be truly ill and kept the visits short. But she knew the retreat couldn’t last forever.

  Finally, on Sunday, she was over it. She had decided her silly idea that a man like Michael Wainwright could possibly have been interested in her – even for a moment – was not painful as much as ridiculous. She forced herself to remember who she was, where she lived and the small pleasures that she had. She would find more of them, go to some theater, buy her own VCR. She’d register at a gym. Since graduation her size kept creeping up and the desk job had helped her waist and hips spread. But a benefit of her illness was that she’d lost weight. She’d work out. Not, of course, that that was a pleasure nor that it was easy – she wasn’t comfortable in the expensive, high class gyms in lower Manhattan and she was tired from her commute when she came back to Tottenville. But she would do it and, she decided, she’d let Tina’s mother – a hairdresser – streak her hair.

  But those things wouldn’t change much and the Worthington incident – as she was now calling it – had showed her the sheer smallness of her life. And Claire knew that reading, knitting and watching television, no matter how uplifting the program, would alter nothing.

  Yet she couldn’t think of an alteration she could make. She wasn’t a badly cut pair of trousers. She was simply a rather timid young woman with solitary interests. She didn’t know if she read and knit because she had never been social, or if her social failures had driven her to her isolated life. And what could she do to change it? Go out with Tina’s cousins and in-laws and the brothers of her friends, all men she had nothing in common with and who saw her as a plain brown wren? What was the point?

  Go back to school? How would she pay for it? Travel? Alone? And to where? Join a club? A book circle? Go online to find friends, or even a soul mate?

  Claire cringed at the thought of all of it. She simply wasn’t a joiner. She crawled back into her bed. Even if she did put herself ‘out there’ the same thing would happen as always had. If a local hitter approached her she’d be bored, and if someone intelligent and attractive (by a miracle) spoke to her she’d freeze tighter than a jammed photocopier. No one would notice her and she would stand – or sit – on the fringes with nothing to do or say. She even considered, but only briefly, taking Tina up on her invitation to go on vacation but quickly – really quickly – got over that. She might have had a fever but she wasn’t delirious. What she did instead was call Tina and ask if her mom would do her hair. ‘Come right the fuck over,’ Tina said.

  ‘Tonight?’ Claire asked. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Hey, you’re only about five years late. My mom figured we’d have to wait until you went gray before she could do you.’

  So Claire dressed and went over. Tina and Annamarie, her mom, fussed over her. ‘Worst haircut I ever saw,’ Annamarie said. ‘It’s like three cuts on one head.’ So, mostly out of wounded pride, Claire let them cut and streak her hair.

  She was surprised by the result. Instead of the brassy colors that Annamarie – the queen of Big Hair – usually favored, she used subtle honey blondes that blended with Claire’s natural light brown. And the feathering gave her fine hair some body. ‘The secret to this cut is Product,’ Annamarie told her as she held up a mirror. ‘You need a conditioner, a thickener, and a finishing gel.’ Claire couldn’t imagine putting more things on her head than she had members in her family but, looking in the mirror, she was pleased.

  Monday morning she was dressed and composed when Tina came by to go to work.

  ‘You look much better. The haircut, and I think you lost a little weight in your face from the flu,’ Tina reported.

  It was an unseasonably warm day, and the two of them were sitting in the sun on the benches on the side of the ferry protected from the wind. Claire had her knitting out but it lay, untouched, on her lap. She felt as weak as a convalescent and held her face up to the sun as if she needed to drink in vitamins.

  ‘Though you sure could use a little color,’ Tina added. ‘Last chance for Puerto Rico.’

  Claire couldn’t withhold a sigh. Gone for a week, but the conversation continued without a stitch dropped. She closed her eyes and remained silent wondering, not for the first time, why Tina wouldn’t want to be alone with Anthony. Claire couldn’t imagine wanting to take Tina away on a trip with a lover – if she ever had the chance to make such a trip. She wondered if that made her a less loyal friend or less co-dependent. Or, perhaps, both.

  ‘So guess what happened with my boss?’ Tina asked. Claire was grateful she had her eyes closed. It made it easier to keep her face blank.

  ‘He’s at that ultimatum stage again,’ Tina was saying. ‘He wants to keep Katherine around but she’s found out about the on-again-off-again with Blaire and she’s insisting he break it off with Blaire or else.’

  ‘And will he?’ Claire asked, her tone neutral.

  ‘Get a grip,’ Tina said and laughed. ‘And even if he did, he’s obstinate and doesn’t like to be told what to do. If it wasn’t Blaire it would be someone else. His big mistake is being honest with them when they ask and theirs is asking.’ She shook her head. ‘Courtney hung onto him for almost a year because she never asked him what he was doin’ on the nights and weekends he didn’t spend with her.’ Tina shrugged. ‘But he ditched her anyway, in the end.’

  ‘That’s the fate of all his women, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tina agreed. ‘He’s the bomb. The only difference is how long they last and whether or not there’s a scene at the end.’

  ‘S
peaking of the end, we’re about to dock,’ Claire said and rose.

  ‘God, I’m hungry!’ Tina said, as always moving like clockwork to the next item on the agenda. ‘I hope Sy saves the biggest Danish for me.’

  Claire gave her a forced smile and filed down the gangplank with everyone else, and they made their walk up Water Street along with a portion of the crowd. A helicopter hovered overhead and Claire imagined from that height all of them must look like ants purposefully streaming into their anthills.

  Claire sighed. After her week off, the commute and the job seemed more oppressive than ever. She thought again about going back to college, getting a BA in library science, but what was the point? Libraries were closing down every day in New York. Her own Staten Island branch was only open three days a week – and only in the mornings on Saturday. She simply had to face the fact that she was a caterpillar – albeit a thinner one than she had been – and wouldn’t even graduate to moth, much less butterfly. Claire Bilsop, the social caterpillar.

  And now she no longer had her pathetic, secret little crush to dream about, to keep her from loneliness. Nor would she let herself take on a new one, not that she admired any of the other swaggering investment bankers. What was the point? She would deceive and distract herself no longer.

  So in a way, the incident with Mr Wonderful had had a salutary effect. It had been a kind of vaccination. A little bit of deadly Mr Wonderful in her blood stream had had its toxic effect, but after a brief illness she had built up Mr Wonderful antibodies.

  As they all sat over the lunch table later that day, the conversation drifted back and forth in its usual desultory way. When Tina contributed anything about her boss, Claire was relieved to find herself no longer hungrily grabbing at each syllable, filing it away for future contemplation. She blocked it.

  ‘Jeez, you look skinny,’ Marie One said to Claire. ‘It must be the new cut.’ They had, of course, focused on Claire’s new hairstyle and everybody approved, except Joan, which made Claire feel certain that it suited her. She didn’t welcome the attention, but she had expected it. She had borrowed a dress and matching jacket from her mother – a black knit with flecks of beige. She felt that after her absence she might as well look good, but Joan narrowed her eyes as if she suspected Claire had never been ill at all.

  ‘Hey. She was sick. Lay off,’ Tina said.

  ‘You want some liverwurst?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I got plenty.’

  ‘Now that would make her puke,’ Michelle said, to be rewarded with a look from Marie Two. Michelle always felt she was better than Marie Two because she had worked for Smithers longer than Marie had for Crayden.

  ‘Like you can cook,’ Tina replied.

  The talk moved to recipes and Claire was glad she was no longer the focus. She was concentrating on chewing and swallowing her egg salad sandwich, though it tasted like sawdust.

  ‘Vic wants us to go to Vegas, but I said fagetaboutit,’ Marie One said. ‘Last time we went to Atlantic City he dropped six hundred bucks cash,’ she continued as she nervously twirled her diamond ring around her tiny finger. ‘I didn’t know it, but he also got cash advances on our Visa and MasterCard.’

  ‘I don’t believe in gambling,’ Joan said. ‘Not even the lottery.’

  ‘Then you won’t get a share of mine when I win,’ Michelle assured her.

  ‘The odds are better in a casino,’ Marie Two said.

  ‘They got casinos in Puerto Rico, but that’s not what me and Anthony are going there to do,’ Tina offered.

  ‘Me, I say Disney World,’ Michelle said. ‘The Magic Kingdom is great for the kids and Epcot is good for the grownups.’

  ‘Epcot sucks,’ said Marie One. ‘I was never so bored in my life.’

  Speaking of bored, Claire could barely stand it. She was suddenly so tired of these tedious repetitions of the obvious that she was ready to throw down her sandwich – or possibly throw it up. Then, oddly, the conversation became riveting.

  ‘Mr Crayden, Senior is spending the next month in London doing some new business deal,’ Marie Two announced. ‘He may take Abigail with him.’ Abigail Samuels was Mr Crayden’s secretary of almost thirty years. Unmarried, tall and ultra-efficient, she was an office wife and handled every detail of Mr Crayden’s business, as well as a significant part of his social plans. She never lunched with any of the other secretaries. She was a haughty white-haired patrician with better things to do. Claire had seen her, once or twice, eating lunch alone in local coffee shops reading Balzac in the original French. Claire was impressed and awed by her.

  ‘Lucky Abigail,’ said Michelle sarcastically. ‘She gets to travel. Too bad she doesn’t have a husband or a life.’

  Marie Two ignored Michelle, as she often did. ‘Well, Mr Crayden, Junior may also go for part of that time, and if he does, guess who’s invited?’ A series of surprised coos and ooohs circulated the table.

  ‘Your husband would shit a brick,’ Marie One said.

  ‘Like that matters,’ Marie Two said. ‘Crayden asks, I go. I never been there.’

  Claire felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. She had never traveled much, but if she could go to London! If she had to go to London, so that she wouldn’t be nervous or tempted to cancel. If she were going there to work, so there would be some people she knew, some familiarity … well, she would never get the chance. Analysts were not invited to London.

  Tina put down her pastrami sandwich and raised her heavily penciled brows. ‘Hey, maybe that’s got something to do with Michael Wainwright going,’ Tina said. ‘I just booked him a couple of tickets for next Thursday.’

  ‘You goin’ too?’ Marie One asked.

  ‘Nah. He’s only stayin’ till the end of the weekend. And he’s taking Katherine. His new one.’

  Claire forced herself to take the last bite of her egg salad sandwich, wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and put it and the other trash in her lunch bag. ‘I have to run out to Duane Reade,’ she said. ‘Does anybody need anything?’ Nobody did, but Joan was quick to remind her she only had twenty minutes until she was due back in the department. Claire nodded, and freed herself.

  She didn’t need to shop. She just needed some air. She walked up to City Hall and paced the small park in front of it. What was she doing? Why did she spend her days in a windowless room, and her nights at home alone reading? She had sequestered herself from life; she may as well have been cloistered. But the fact was she knew she was nothing like a nun. She wanted to travel. She wanted an exciting job. She wanted to do new things and meet new people. She just didn’t know how. She sat, for a moment, on a bench. It had turned cold, but in the sun, with her coat wrapped tightly around her, she managed not to shiver. The thought of going back to Crayden Smithers and Joan made her shudder. Even out here, wind from the harbor on her face, she felt as if she were jailed.

  Manhattan was clearly the answer but it intimidated her. How could she manage to afford it and would she find a roommate? Other people did it, she reminded herself, but she didn’t feel like other people. In fact, she’d always felt different from everyone she had known. Worse yet, as best she could objectively see, everyone else agreed with her. No wonder she felt so lonely.

  I could sign up for a trip, some kind of tour group she told herself. I could go to Europe, if I had a guide. Then the idea of traveling with a bunch of strangers, winding up with Marie One and Michelle – or their equivalent – traipsing through Paris seemed ridiculous.

  Perhaps, she told herself, there might be an Abigail Samuels or even a well-read man. She had read all of The Human Comedy, and Jean Rhys and Collette. She felt as if she had already been to France and couldn’t bear to go for real as a stupid tourist, unable to speak the language, wearing the wrong clothes and going to the wrong places.

  The fact was, she was not only a coward but she was also a snob. A secret snob, the worst kind. She sat at lunch and felt superior to and amused by everyone. But who was she to feel that way? At least Michelle and Tina and
the Maries – and even Joan – went places and did things and slept with men. She would have to change, she decided, and stood up. She would have to change because not doing so, living as she was living, had become impossible.

  Claire looked at her watch. She would be late getting back to work and Joan would punish her by giving her the most onerous jobs for the rest of the afternoon. She wouldn’t mind because she had decided something important. She wasn’t sure if she could transform into a butterfly, but she’d transform herself into something. She had a new resolve: despite the obstacles, she was going to change.

  The problem was she didn’t know what she was going to change into.

  SIX

  The next day the women were sitting, as usual, at lunch and gossiping the usual gossip – the television of the night before, or the latest movie – when Tina came charging into the room all excited. ‘You’re not going to believe what just happened!’ She looked around the table to make sure she had everyone’s attention. ‘A minute ago, Katherine walks right past me into his office. I mean, I try to stop her but it’s like I’m totally invisible. He’s on the phone, but when he sees her, he’s like “gotta go”. Once he hangs up she says, “I don’t know who you think you are but I’m sure as hell not who you think I am!”’

  ‘She goes!’ said Marie One.

  Tina nodded. ‘She goes, but she ain’t goin’.’

  ‘Goin’ where?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘To London. She blew the trip.’

  ‘No shit,’ Marie Two said. Then she paused. ‘Did she tell him to stuff the trip up his ass or did he tell her that?’

  ‘No ass-stuffing was involved,’ Tina sniffed. ‘They didn’t swear once. She called him “a narcissistic self-parody” and he …’ she narrowed her eyes as if trying to remember Mr Not-So-Wonderful’s exact phraseology. ‘I think he asked her to keep her psychological profiles to herself until he requested one. Then Michael came out to me and ordered me to hold the second airline ticket.’