Wish Upon a Star

‘She family?’ Marie Three asked.

‘Fagetabout family,’ Marie Two said. ‘Has she got this table bugged? Because if she does, we’re all in deep yogurt.’

Tina looked over at Claire. ‘You tell her?’ she asked. ‘Because if word gets out among the executives about this … I mean they might not like it.’

Claire shook her head. Before the day Abigail Samuels had specifically requested her help, Claire had never spoken to the woman. And in helping her she hadn’t spoken much either. There was a social order at Crayden Smithers that was as unbreachable as Fort Sumter had been. Secretaries, administrative assistants, analysts, bookkeepers and all the so-called ‘support staff’ were working-class people. They lived in far-flown suburbs – never in Manhattan. They all said ‘the city’ when they meant Manhattan, even if they lived in Queens or Brooklyn or Staten Island – all a part of the city. They wore clothes from discount stores, cheap chains and factory outlets. Their hair never looked right, not the way hair looked in fashion magazines or on the heads of women professionals. And the inside of their heads had been educated in public schools, never the tony private ones. If they’d gone to college they hadn’t graduated, or if they’d graduated it had been from a junior college or a state school, never from the Ivy Leagues. They were an underclass and, though none of them would admit it, they either resented the elite professionals (as Joan did) or – worse to Claire’s way of thinking – basked in the reflected glory of the professional they worked for.

The one exception was Abigail Samuels. She’d probably been a secretary for fifty years. She’d gone to the best schools, dressed in the best conservative clothes and looked like a wife of one of the elderly partners. But Abigail Samuels had ‘gone to business’ back in the days when secretaries wore hats and gloves and women didn’t even think of law or business school. Her class separated her from the secretaries and her job separated her from the professional staff. Claire had always thought she must be the loneliest person at Crayden Smithers.

Claire had no idea how Abigail knew about the trip. She was also surprised that, knowing, she didn’t seem to disapprove. The thought that Abigail Samuels would be interested in anything that Claire did – besides photocopying – was as surprising to Claire as it was to the rest of the table. That Abigail knew about her trip, that she’d volunteered not only the information about the passport expeditor but actually threatened Joan on Claire’s behalf and then offered to lend Claire a bag was …

‘Fuckin’ amazin’,’ said Marie One.

Claire saw all the faces turn to her, and recognized the faint tinge of suspicion on each face. In this hen house, when anyone changed the pecking order feathers were ruffled.

‘She must like you,’ Marie Two said.

Curious and curiouser, Claire thought, but was wise enough not to quote Lewis Carroll at that table.

NINE

After work on Friday, Claire decided she’d better go get money for her trip. She had a little over nine hundred dollars in her account. A pathetic amount to travel with, but it was highly unlikely that her mother would be paying back her ‘loans’ anytime soon. She carefully counted the bills, then put them in an envelope and hid the envelope inside a beach bag in the bottom drawer of her bureau. And what exactly could Claire say to her mother as an excuse for going away? It was too early for a bachelorette party for Tina and it certainly wouldn’t require that many days. Claire would just come up with a plan at the last minute. Now she had more important things to worry about.

She began to sort through her closet. In less than half an hour she had a big pile of garments on her bed. Way too much stuff. It was only four days, she reminded herself sternly, but somehow it felt as if she needed everything she had and yet none of it was right. She was a little thinner than usual – not much – so while the size twelve tops fit, size fourteen slacks and skirts were a little looser than usual. But not loose enough. She sighed. Perhaps her problem wasn’t that her butt was too big, but that her tits were too small. She wondered if there was a scientific ratio to determine that. She thought of Katherine Rensselaer and her perfect body in her perfectly cut clothes. Claire’s best jacket came from Ann Taylor. Katherine Rensselaer had probably never been in there, just as Claire had never been in Prada. She would definitely have to shop, not that she had the money for that. She looked at the pile of clothes on the bed, shrugged and then smiled. She might have fat thighs and second-rate clothes, but it was she, not Katherine Rensselaer, who was going to London with Mr Wonderful.

Claire spent Saturday morning trying on almost every decent garment she owned. By lunchtime she was exhausted. She had decided on a pair of black slacks from a pantsuit (but not the jacket), a beige sweater set from BCBG, a black and tan tweed A-line skirt and not much else. There was also the possibility of a navy dress she’d worn to a wedding, but it was floor length, which wouldn’t work.

‘Where you been all morning?’ her mother asked when Claire, rumpled and tired, walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. ‘You’ve been so quiet. More knitting?’

‘No. I finished the sweater.’ And she had. It had come out beautifully and Claire would definitely take it with her. The thought made her smile.

‘So what were you up to?’

‘Just doing some spring cleaning,’ Claire told her mother. ‘Do you have any navy thread? I have to fix a hem.’

‘Look in the bottom drawer. I think so.’

Claire rummaged in the kitchen drawer full of old ice cream scoops and dull knives. She found thread, all of it in a tangle, and pinking shears that might or might not cut. Meanwhile, her mother got a can of beer and a diet Pepsi from the fridge and wandered out. Claire was hungry, but she wanted the skirt and pants to fit. So she made herself a tuna salad, poured an iced tea (without sugar) and took them back upstairs.

She ate lunch then tried on the navy dress. It was a sleeveless boat neck, a simple full-length sheath. If she cut it short, above knee-length, it might look nice. But before she began cutting she took out a pad, sat at her desk and began a list. Despite the piles of things she’d tried she really had no other clothes up to the mark. She’d need a nice black T-shirt and a good blouse – white or beige silk – along with a pair of shoes; maybe strappy heels. She had comfortable shoes for walking, but – she almost blushed – she’d definitely need some nicer underwear and a good nightgown.

Claire didn’t really enjoy shopping. Perhaps if she was a size ten she might, but she always found it dispiriting to hopefully pick out a size twelve, have trouble getting her thighs into it, go back for a fourteen and just barely fit. And then her taste was so different from everyone she knew. Claire didn’t read women’s fashion magazines and she was too modest to realize that she possessed style, though it was a simple, classic one. She just thought, as Tina so often told her, that ‘she dressed boring’. That reminded her that Tina would be over in an hour. She would prefer not to do the shopping with Tina, but that was absolutely impossible.

When Tina arrived, she was apparently over her sulking and was now acting as if the whole plan was her idea. ‘Victoria’s Secret, here we come!’ she yelled as they stepped out of the door.

‘I’m not sure I want to go there,’ Claire said.

‘But you said you need panties and a bra. And a sexy nightgown. I saw a red lace robe and nightie that …’

‘I want to go up to Saks.’

‘Saks Fifth Avenue? You’re crazy! It’s so expensive.’ The wind whipped the two of them as they stood out on the street.

‘But I have a Saks card,’ Claire said. It actually was her mother’s, but at this point she owed Claire something over a couple of thousand dollars. And Claire would pay the bill when it came in.

‘Well, that’s different!’ Tina said. She lived on her credit cards. ‘Let’s go.’

Two hours later, after cruising the third and fourth floors at Saks, Claire had on a cream silk blouse she was at last ready to buy, despite the price tag of two hundred and ten dollars. ‘You’re nuts!’ Tina told her. ‘This was thirty-nine dollars. On sale at Banana Republic.’ She pointed to her own top and Claire looked at the two of them in the three-way mirror. That decided her. The blouse she had on looked as if it cost five hundred dollars more than Tina’s. It was something Katherine Rensselaer might wear.

Getting the black T-shirt, thank god, was easy and so were shoes. In fact, two pairs. It was pleasant in the shoe department, a relief to be sitting down, to be served by a polite older man and easy to give him her size without blushing. She didn’t have to fight a zipper to get into a high heel. She selected backless black ones with beige stitching that were comfortable enough for walking and a pair of navy courts with a little leather bow – in the back. ‘They are something,’ Tina admitted. ‘And everyone’s wearing heels with pants now.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely!’ Tina assured her. Though Claire didn’t totally trust Tina’s taste, a mannequin near the shoe department was dressed in narrow slacks and four-inch spikes. That inspired her to go back to the fourth floor and get a pair of navy pants with side slits to show off the shoes. To her delight, she fit into an eight.

‘They run a little big,’ the saleswoman told them.

‘So does her ass,’ Tina said.

Claire ignored the laughter and bought the slacks, though the wisecrack made her think about getting undressed in front of Mr Wonderful.

Next, Claire and Tina went to the lingerie department. As Claire had feared, Tina kept managing to find the few things that were trampy or in bad taste or both. ‘I can’t picture myself in that,’ Claire told her as she held up a black lace bodysuit with underwire cups and a minuscule thong string.

‘It’s not what you picture,’ Tina said. ‘It’s what he pictures. And sees.’ She waggled her fingers through the crotch of the transparent lace.

After the remark about her butt, Claire certainly wasn’t wearing a thong. She just shook her head and finally selected a blush pink satin nightgown with lace across the bodice. It could be seen through but only just. ‘And you might want the matching robe,’ the saleslady suggested. Claire did.

It was only when they got to the raincoats that she had a crisis. Most of them were six or seven hundred dollars. She looked at her mother’s card and simply couldn’t do it. She’d have to wear her green coat, though now it seemed tacky and wrong. She sighed. ‘These are ugly anyway,’ Tina said.

On the ground floor, on the way out, Claire’s eye was caught by a string of irregularly shaped pearls. They weren’t real, but the luster was beautiful and they were strung on a gold cord with space in between each one. ‘Oh no!’ Tina said. ‘Why don’t we just go to Tiffany’s?’

‘Because they sell real pearls and these are just fakes.’

‘What’s the diff? You can’t afford this stuff either,’ Tina told her. But though they were a hundred and five dollars, Claire decided she could, along with the matching earrings.

‘But they’re so plain,’ Tina complained. ‘Everything you got is beige. Are you a beige person?’

‘I guess so,’ Claire said as she took the cute little bag from the sales clerk.

‘They do look lovely against your skin,’ the clerk said. ‘Enjoy them.’ Claire promised her she would.

As she and Tina walked through the thinning crowd on their way to the subway Claire refused to think about the total she’d spent. ‘What will you wear on the plane?’ Tina asked.

‘I guess whatever I wear to work on Wednesday. I’ll dress up.’

Tina shook her head. ‘People dress down for the redeye. You know, you sleep on it, so you don’t want to wear your best outfit.’

Claire hadn’t known that. ‘What does …’ she couldn’t bring herself to call him Michael, though she would have to try. ‘What does he wear?’

‘Jeans, usually. Sometimes with a T-shirt and blazer. Sometimes just a sweater. He changes at the office.’

Claire was surprised and mentally began revising her plan. She’d bring her Levi’s to work and she’d wear them along with the sweater she’d knit. ‘I still need a raincoat,’ Claire told Tina.

‘Century Twenty-one,’ Tina suggested. ‘You can go on your lunch hour, Monday.’

‘No. I have to get my passport.’ Claire shivered. It wasn’t just the March wind. If her passport didn’t come through, all this preparation, all the excitement and money spent was wasted and foolish.

‘Well, you only have to go and drop off your documents at Rockefeller Center. After that I can send up a messenger for it,’ Tina said airily. ‘We do it all the time. So I say after your drop-off we meet at Century Twenty-one.’

Claire knew all the women from Crayden Smithers shopped at the discount store but she could never stand the hustle or the hassle. Still, she knew the green coat simply wouldn’t do. She doubted that the classy, perfect, sophisticated raincoat she pictured would be hanging on the seventy per cent off rack in Century Twenty-one. But she might as well give it a try. She shrugged. She couldn’t spin straw into gold but maybe she could find a needle in a haystack! ‘Meet you there,’ she promised.

TEN

On Monday Claire took the morning off work, went straight up to the passport expeditor, dropped off her documents and took the subway back downtown for shopping with Tina. The store was as jammed as it always was at lunch hour and just walking in made Claire feel dizzy. But she had forgotten that she was with a pro. Before Claire even had a chance to register the racks and racks of men’s sports jackets, the display of dozens of scarves, bins with hundreds of sweaters – all at sixty per cent off – Tina had put a clamp on her shoulder and directed Claire ‘to the back, up the stairs, and to the right on the mezzanine’.

Claire pushed her way up the steps through the crowd of women with bags, umbrellas, purses, and other armor.

They were in a section with two rows – at least a hundred feet long – all lined with coats. ‘What size are you?’ Tina asked. ‘A ten? A twelve? Or bigger?’ Claire thought she heard contempt in Tina’s size-eight voice. ‘Will you wear a sweater under it?’

Before Claire could answer, Tina had turned away and, with an expression of intense concentration, began to click through the rack in front of her, the extra inch or two between garments used to push the rejected coats further away and give the next candidate a moment of breath. Tina surveyed each, then, heartlessly, clicked it beside the previous reject before Claire could even get a look. Soon, Tina had gone through ten feet of coats and had pulled three out. ‘Here. Want a slicka?’

It was a yellow plastic, exactly the color police wore when they directed traffic. Claire didn’t even respond. ‘I didn’t think so,’ Tina laughed. ‘How about this?’

It was black, with more straps, buckles, epaulettes, and pockets than any uniform the French Legionnaires had ever imagined. ‘No, I want …’

‘… beige,’ they said simultaneously and to Claire’s complete amazement Tina flourished a decent-looking light tan raincoat.

‘Ta-da!’ Tina said. ‘Looks like your style. Really boring.’

But when Claire began to unbutton it she saw the label and the lining. It was Aquascutum. And though Claire didn’t know anything about fashion she knew it was a label on the coats that the people with the windowed offices wore.

She slipped into it. The lining was soft and the color was more a light gray than a tan. ‘Hey. That looks good,’ Tina said as if truly surprised. She pushed Claire in front of a mirror and Claire had to agree. It did look good. The shoulders were slightly built up to enhance Claire’s narrow ones. But it flared enough to camouflage her hips. It hung from a raglan sleeve in a simple drape without a belt or extra gimmicks. ‘It’s a little plain,’ Tina pointed out. She held up the black one. ‘You get more for your money with this.’

But Claire continued to survey herself in the mirror. She thought of Katherine Rensselaer on the rainy night. She was wearing a raincoat similar to this one. ‘I want it,’ Claire said and only then looked at the price-tag. Reduced. But it was still three hundred dollars!

‘Get outta here!’ Tina said when Claire showed her the tag. She turned and checked the rack, checked the signs above and gave Claire the moderately good news, ‘Twenty per cent extra off any coat bought today.’

‘But it’s already reduced,’ Claire said. It was true. The original price was just a little under a thousand dollars.

‘So? It’s twenty per cent more off the three hundred. At least you save sixty dollars.’ She looked back at the black coat. ‘This one’s only a hundred and forty,’ she said.

But Claire had made up her mind. She looked at herself in the mirror. Somehow, in this coat, she could imagine herself on a London street looking up at Big Ben.

On Tuesday night Tina came over to ‘help with the packing’ though Claire suspected she actually wanted to snoop and report back to the lunch table, if not all of Tottenville. Claire knew that even if she asked Tina not to tell anyone, it would be far beyond her capabilities. Let’s hope, Claire thought, she doesn’t say anything to my mother.

‘Hello, Mrs Bilsop,’ Tina said, her voice sing-song with secret.

‘Hi, Christine,’ Claire’s mother responded, luckily – as usual – not interested. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothin’ much.’ Then Tina silently mouthed, ‘Did you tell her yet?’ in an exaggerated, cartoon way. Claire shook her head. Luckily, her mom’s back was turned.

‘We’re going upstairs,’ Claire said and, as she led Tina up the steps, she rolled her eyes. ‘Shut up.’ Subtlety was not Tina’s stock-in-trade.

In her own room, the door closed, Claire felt comfortable enough to take out her passport and her suitcase. She had decided not to embarrass herself with Abigail Samuels by borrowing her luggage. The passport was an adorable little booklet. What thrilled Claire the most about it was that behind the picture page there were another dozen pages of Entries/Entrees and Departures/Sorties. Her pages, of course, were blank but soon there would be a departure and an arrival. And a book to fill.

She wondered for another moment how many entries Michael Wainwright or Katherine Rensselaer had in their passports. She shook her head. She was twenty-four and she had never even managed to get this far.

Meanwhile Tina looked over at the bag. ‘Is that all ya bringin’?’ she asked before the suitcase was even open.

‘Well, I’m not quite packed,’ Claire admitted. ‘Oh, there’s my new sweater.’ She took it from the top of the packed pile of clothes and unwrapped the tissue paper. She slipped out of her T-shirt and pulled the sweater over her head.

‘Wow!’ Tina said. ‘Nice.’ She came over and fingered the delicate cables. ‘Feels good. Angora?’

Claire felt a moment of contempt. Angora was as much like cashmere as burlap was to silk but ‘Cashmere,’ was all she said.

Tina looked into the suitcase. ‘You’re the queen of beige. You sure you don’t want to jazz it up a little?’ she asked. ‘Hot pink or a little turquoise? I have a new tube top I think would fit you.’

Claire smiled. It was March, pink and turquoise were not her colors, and she didn’t have the anatomy necessary to hold a tube top up but, she reminded herself, Tina didn’t notice details about other people unless they made good gossip.

Tina, bored with the contents of the bag as well as the contents of Claire’s room, walked over to the desk and picked up an old framed photo taken at their high school graduation party. She smiled at it, put it down, turned and looked over at Claire.

‘Look, you know I don’t mean to hurt your feelin’s when I say this, but you do know it isn’t goin’ to last longer than the weekend. It’s nothin’ personal,’ she added. ‘It’s just the way Mr Wonderful operates.’

‘I know.’

‘And bitches like Joan are just goin’ to be thrilled to watch you fall to pieces when – I mean, if – you know, if Michael doesn’t …’

‘You mean when he drops me,’ Claire said calmly, folding her new nightgown carefully. Then she looked at Tina. ‘It’s not all about Michael,’ she said, forcing herself to use his name. ‘I mean I like him, but I like the adventure more. London! I can’t even imagine it.’ She gestured to the half-packed bag on her bed. ‘I don’t expect anything. I can hardly believe I’m going at all.’

Tina waggled her head in a dismissive gesture she used. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what ya say now. But afta ya spend a romantic weekend with the guy, ya may get othah ideas. He’s very good at what he does.’ She winked broadly.

Claire folded the silk robe and carefully stowed it in the bag along with the nightgown. ‘I know. He’s the star of the department.’

‘I don’t just mean his work. I mean everythin’. You should see the e-mails some of the women he’s slept with send him.’

‘How have you seen them?’ Claire asked.

‘Oh, it’s not like I don’t know his password,’ Tina said and then, for the first time Claire could remember, she actually blushed. She got up off the side of the bureau she was perched on and crossed to the bed. ‘Look, Claire, what I’m tryin’ to say is that people like Michael Wainwright, they’re not like us. It isn’t like I wouldn’t want to find a guy like him. But guys like him, they don’t go with girls like us. That’s why I’m with Anthony. He has a good job, a pension plan. He thinks I’m gorgeous and sexy. And his family loves me. You’d never even get to meet Michael’s family and if he saw this place …’ she gestured, her fingers with their long, painted nails wiggling at the tiny room, the wallpaper curling away from the wall under the window, the worn nylon carpeting.

And instead of shame, or gratitude, Claire was suddenly filled with such rage that she had to turn her back so that Tina couldn’t see it. She knew Tina didn’t ‘mean anything by it’ but for once Claire didn’t need to hear about how she wasn’t good enough, that she shouldn’t expect too much, and wasn’t going to get it even if she did. She knew all of that already.

Claire calmed herself enough to look at Tina. She was careful to control her voice so that it was neither loud nor shaky. ‘I’m not stupid, Tina. I know there’s nothing like what you’d call a “future” with Michael. I don’t have a real future. And I don’t even have a past. There’s no Anthony taking me to Puerto Rico, and there’s no wedding that I’m saving up for. And anyway that’s not what I want. But just because I can’t settle for some guy from around here doesn’t mean I’m going to make a fool of myself over Michael Wainwright. I’m going to have an adventure.’

As soon as she had spoken, she could tell by Tina’s tightened mouth and her body language how offended she was. Claire bit her lip, picked up the new blouse and began to fold it.

‘All I’m sayin’ is to be careful,’ Tina said. ‘I don’t want to see ya get hurt.’

Claire couldn’t bear to look at her. She just put the blouse in her suitcase and went to the closet. ‘I know,’ she said. Then, looking at the empty hangers and the rejected clothes – clothes she realized she never wanted to wear again – the thought came to her that Tina might be jealous.

In all the years that they had been friends, Tina was the one who did things, who went places, who had boyfriends. She was the one with the big family and lots of family parties. She’d had a sweet sixteen, an engagement celebration, and a string of rejected suitors. Claire had an aunt she never met, never had anything that Tina wanted, not even her good grades. Tina didn’t care about school. And, oddly, Tina would never believe that Claire didn’t want any of the things that Tina had.

Now, it struck Claire almost like a blow to the head that, for the first time, Tina might be envious, and that she felt Claire had also dissed her and Anthony. And with that knowledge Claire felt fear. But it was too late. Claire shrugged. ‘Is there anything in here you want?’ she asked.