Читать книгу: «Wish Upon a Star»
Wish Upon a Star
Olivia Goldsmith
For Millie Mohammad and her dear friend
Rose W. Ravid
…leaves all decisions up to us, including whether we wish to make any at all. It is up to us whether we wish to make any application to our life from a fairy tale, or simply enjoy the fantastic events it tells about. Our enjoyment is what induces us to respond in our own good time to hidden meanings as they may relate to our life experience and present state of personal development.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
The Uses of Enchantment
The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Epigraph
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SIXTY-FOUR
SIXTY-FIVE
SIXTY-SIX
SIXTY-SEVEN
SIXTY-EIGHT
SIXTY-NINE
SEVENTY
SEVENTY-ONE
SEVENTY-TWO
Acknowledgements
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE
Once upon a time in a magical city called New York a girl under a spell lived on an island.
It was Staten Island. And to get to work in Manhattan, Claire Amelia Bilsop had to commute almost two hours each way. She took a train from Tottenville, then a short walk to the ferry slip, then the ferry to Manhattan. She did it with her friend Tina and today was no different from most other days.
‘Oh, c’mon,’ Tina said. ‘Come with us. You never go anywhere and you’ve never done anything.’
Claire looked down at her knitting and frowned. When the ferry bumped against the pilings she had dropped a stitch. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, though in fact it pretty much was. She thought of her trips to the library, the video store, the wool department of Kelsey’s, all on Broad Street in Tottenville. ‘I have traveled broadly,’ Claire retorted, ‘and I come into Manhattan every day. Last summer I went to Long Beach Island.’
‘Long Beach, for god’s sake! In Jersey! And you went with your mother and that douchebag boyfriend of hers.’
Claire winced. Tina’s heart was in the right place but her mouth was in the gutter. ‘I prefer to think of him as a windbag,’ Claire said.
‘Douche, wind, whatever.’ Tina stuffed her magazine into her purse, fished out her sunglasses and stood up. Claire stood beside her. ‘Put that wool away, Granny,’ Tina told her and looked at her watch. Claire sighed. The ferry had docked and, as always, they had twenty minutes to walk up Water Street, get coffee and bagels from their regular street vendor, then be upstairs on the thirty-eighth floor of the Crayden Smithers Alliance Building. They had plenty of time but Tina always behaved like a child at a birthday party, afraid she wouldn’t get the last seat in musical chairs. As if anyone else would want their seats at Crayden Smithers. Claire picked up the dropped stitch, wrapped up her knitting, slipped into her coat and joined Tina and the crowd jostling to get off the boat.
As Tina pushed to the head of the line she pulled Claire in her wake. ‘Jersey, for Christ’s sake!’
‘I went to the Poconos,’ Claire murmured. People were looking at them angrily. Even in Manhattan, a city fabled for pushers, Tina stood out.
‘The Poconos!’ Tina almost spat as they stepped off the ferry. ‘That’s one step lower than Jersey.’ She shook her head and her big hair trembled. ‘And you went with that yutz. You didn’t even have sex with him.’
Claire colored. She looked around but the crowd paid no attention, busy dispersing to buses, subways, and a new day of boredom or aggravation. Claire’s sex life – or lack of it – meant nothing to them. ‘I slept with him,’ she protested. She wouldn’t admit to Tina that it had been mostly sleeping. Bob had not been an Italian stallion, as Tina always claimed her fiancé, Anthony, to be.
‘That’s even more pathetic,’ Tina said. ‘Sleeping with Bob. Fah!’ They stepped out of the terminal and the wind off the bay battered them. ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Tina complained. ‘It’s March, for god’s sake. When’s it gonna warm up?’ Claire knew Tina didn’t expect an answer so she didn’t venture one, letting Tina continue her ongoing monologue and possibly well-meaning harassment. ‘It’s warm in San Juan, Claire. Beaches. Casinos. Bars.’
The trouble was that Claire didn’t really like any of those things. She burned in the sun, she’d never gambled – not even on a Lotto ticket – and she hated bars. Though Tina had been her friend since they’d grown up on the same street in Tottenville, there wasn’t much that Tina enjoyed doing that didn’t make Claire bored or uncomfortable or both. People who lived in Manhattan referred to people like Tina as one of the ‘bridge and tunnel crowd’. Though they didn’t take a bridge or a tunnel to get to Manhattan from Staten Island, Claire felt this technicality wouldn’t affect Tina’s status. She was parochial, and not just because of her Catholic school upbringing. Claire hid a smile.
She often thought what a strange, ill-matched pair they made. Tina was tiny and dark, with big breasts she liked to be noticed and she wore bright, tight fitting tops. Her skin was olive and her make-up was dramatic. Claire was tall and, though fifteen pounds overweight, her chest was almost embarrassingly small – god must be a man because a woman god would not let all the weight she put on go to her hips. She had pale, fine skin and eyes that were somewhere between gray and green (but if she was honest – and she always was – closer to gray). Her light brown hair hung straight, cut below the chin in a simple bob. Aside from some pink lip gloss and an occasional (inept) wave of a brown mascara wand, she wore no make-up at all. Now the cold made her lick her lips and wish she’d brought the lip gloss with her.
The buildings on either side of them made a wind tunnel and Claire felt like Dorothy about to be battered by the tornado. Except, of course, there was no Oz. ‘If it’s about the money, hey, I got a few extra bucks,’ Tina offered. Claire blushed. She regretted telling Tina recently that her mother had begun charging rent. ‘Just for you to stay in the room you’ve slept in since you were four years old?’ Tina had demanded, outraged. Claire had nodded. Since Jerry had moved in, her mother seemed more short of cash than ever, though his contribution and the insurance money from her father’s death should have been more than enough for her mother to live on.
‘Ya know, it’s a sin the way your mom treats you. My uncle says if your dad left the house to you, you shouldn’t be payin’ no rent.’ Claire neither pointed out the double negative nor the fact that it was none of Tina’s uncle’s business. Of course, it sometimes seemed that Tina’s uncle – some of her other male relatives too – didn’t have a business. And their wives spent lots of cash and discussed everyone’s. But Claire never criticized – she knew what could happen to people who criticized Tony Brunetti. But if Tina was bossy, judgmental and a gossip, she did have a generous heart. ‘So, you want a loan?’ she asked.
‘No. It’s not that,’ Claire told Tina. They were only a block from the office but the chill was piercing. She tucked her chin down against the wind and tried to adjust her muffler – one she’d knit for herself – so that none of her throat was exposed. At least when they turned the corner, in sight of Sy’s pushcart, the wind abated.
‘Hello, ladies,’ Sy called out over the heads of the other customers on line for their morning caffeine and carbohydrate fix.
‘Hey, Sy!’ Tina replied. ‘Wanna go to Puerto Rico with me?’
‘Nah,’ Sy said. ‘I’d rather stand here in the cold, freezing my nuts off and doling out coffee to rich, cheap bastards.’
The rich cheap bastards on line were too busy reading the Journal headlines or talking on their cell phones to react, but Claire smiled.
‘Yeah. You got the life,’ Tina agreed. When she and Claire got to the front of the line Sy, without needing to be told, put their regular orders into two little bags. He handed them over to the girls with a flourish.
‘Tell ya what,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my wife’s permission. But screw Puerto Rico. If she says yes we’re going to Aruba.’
‘If she says yes, I’ll buy Aruba,’ Tina wisecracked. ‘Then I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.’
‘Been there, done that. That’s why I’m pushing this cart,’ Sy said. He turned to Claire. ‘But maybe a cutie like you could sell me the Williamsburg.’ He winked.
Tina was rooting around in her gigantic purse. She looked up. ‘Geez, I barely have enough money for Danish and coffee. Hey, Claire, can you lend me a twenty till Friday?’
Sy, still looking at Claire, shook his head. ‘Same shit, ‘nother day,’ he smiled.
Claire nodded, opened her backpack and handed the bill to Tina. ‘Thanks,’ Tina said, and handed the twenty to Sy. ‘My treat.’
Claire smiled. That was so Tina. Always there with her hand out but always willing to share. She’d give you the blouse off her back – but she’d probably already borrowed your money to buy the blouse. Claire was the kind of person who always had money saved to lend to Tina – who was the kind of person who always needed to borrow some. Claire wasn’t old or experienced enough to know the whole world was divided into those two kinds of people, one never happy with the other. She just smiled at her friend as Tina handed Claire the bag of black coffee and a buttered bagel. As they walked from the cart, though, Claire did idly wonder why she was more comfortable lending than borrowing. It certainly wasn’t her mother’s influence. Her mother owed money not only to Claire but also to most of Tottenville. But neither did Claire remember her late father being open-handed with money. Perhaps she didn’t take after either one of them. Despite genetics she had always seemed completely unlike her parents or her brother Fred.
‘My brothers and Anthony went out last night and got hammered,’ Tina said. ‘Boy, were they hung this morning. They said they missed Fred. How is he?’
The truth was Claire had no idea how her brother was. He had joined the Army and had been shipped off to Germany. Claire had written to him dutifully for the first six or eight months after he left but he had rarely responded and when he did it was only with a brief postcard (no picture). As her letters became more and more difficult to write, Claire had admitted to herself that she and Fred never had much in common. So her letters had petered out. That didn’t mean that her guilt did. Aside from Fred and her mom she had no relatives she associated with. There was an aunt on her father’s side, but Claire had been told that the Bilsops had disowned her forever.
Tina, on the contrary, lived amidst scores of complex ongoing relationships: cousins, second cousins, their wives or husbands, godmothers, goddaughters, and dozens of courtesy aunts and uncles where no blood relationship existed at all. Sometimes Claire was turned off by Tina and her boisterous clan, but now and then she was envious of their closeness and even their feuds. You had to care about somebody to bother to fight with them. Now Fred was away, she only had her mother and Jerry, her mom’s repulsive boyfriend.
‘I guess Fred’s okay,’ Claire told Tina. ‘My mother got a card from Dusseldorf.’
‘Dusseldorf? Who’s he?’
Claire just shrugged. She’d decided long ago that educating Tina was not her job.
They arrived at the enormous glass doors to their office building with the usual couple of minutes to get upstairs. The lobby was crowded and the elevator was, as usual, jammed. The ride in the elevator was Claire’s least favorite part of the day. She had told herself over and over that it was only ninety seconds but she still dreaded it. In the summer people’s sweaty bodies were oppressive and in the winter the smell of wet wool was equally unpleasant. But it probably wasn’t the smell as much as the crush. All those strangers’ bodies rubbing. At that very moment Claire felt the breasts and belly of a large woman pushing against her back while in front, inches from her, she faced the wall of a man’s black coat, almost touching it with her nose. Her coffee had to be cradled directly against the tall man’s back. She was waiting for the day when the bag broke.
She was always relieved when the doors opened on the thirty-eighth floor and she could make her way out of what she thought of as ‘the aluminum sauna’. But her relief was almost immediately replaced by dismay as she remembered her next challenge: Once she had said goodbye to Tina she would have to scuttle down the rows of secretarial desks lined up outside the windowed offices which were ranged around the edge of the floor. Then she would have to turn and make her way down the windowless hallway that led to an even deeper corridor. It, in turn, would bring her to the interior room she shared with half a dozen other ‘analysts’, lorded over by Joan, a woman who proved that a little authority could make one a petty tyrant. Another day, another ninety-two dollars take-home Claire thought.
As they filed out of the elevator Claire hunched her shoulders in her habitual way but Tina, beside her, was jaunty, queen of the floor. How could she be so cheery? Maybe it was because Tina worked for Michael Wainwright, otherwise known as ‘Mr Wonderful’. Claire repressed a sigh at the thought of him. All the girls in the office talked about him. He was thirty-one, single, gorgeous, successful, and deeply in love … with himself. He had a hot- and cold-running stream of women, all of them financial executives in size six Prada suits. That wasn’t mentioning the shoes they wore, which cost more than Claire earned in a week. Michael dated them serially, replacing an investment banker with a broker with a fund manager. Secretaries like Tina and analysts like Claire were not his style. Many of them hated him, many admired him, but Claire was the only one who was in love with him. Of course, she wasn’t stupid enough to betray that information to any of her coworkers, not even Tina.
Michael Wainwright had spoken to Claire exactly four times in the eighteen months she’d worked at Crayden Smithers. The first time he’d asked, ‘Would you make five copies of this right away, please?’ The second time he’d said, ‘I need these numbers crunched by this evening.’ The third time – Claire’s favorite – was when she’d delivered a report to his office and he’d said, ‘Thanks. Nice dress.’ The last time was a little over two weeks ago when he had brushed against her on his way out to lunch and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’
They got to Tina’s desk. Claire glanced at the office behind her but couldn’t see Michael Wainwright. ‘I’m meetin’ Anthony tonight,’ Tina said. ‘We’re goin’ to the bridal registry at Macy’s. You wanna go?’
Claire doubted that even Anthony wanted to go. Was the choice that or garroting (something Tina’s uncle might know about)? She just shook her head. ‘No. I want to get home. I have a book to finish.’
Tina shrugged. ‘You and the books.’
Claire shrugged back and refrained from saying ‘You and QVC.’ Then she began the unpleasant route which made her disappear down the corridor like Alice down the rabbit hole.
TWO
‘He ain’t gonna get away with it. Someone should tell him ta get ovah himself,’ Michelle D’annunzio said.
‘Yeah,’ Marie Two agreed, then laughed. ‘But he thinks he’s so big he’d need to mountain climb to get ovah Mr Michael Wainwright.’
Michelle, Joan and Marie Two giggled. Marie One shook her head.
There were three Maries in the office – four if you counted Marie LaPierre, but nobody counted her – so the Maries were called One, Two and Three to avoid confusion. Two of them, along with Joan, Michelle, Tina and Claire, were having their lunch together. It was interesting to Claire to watch how the secretaries’ status was a reflection of whom they worked for. Marie One worked for Mr Bataglia who was middle management – nothing much – and she didn’t get much attention or respect. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior who was one of the Craydens of Crayden Smithers. That meant Marie Two was considered much more important than Marie One or almost anyone else. Tina’s work for Mr Wonderful, the golden boy of the firm for the last few years, made her number two or three with a bullet. Michelle worked for the semi-retired David Smithers who was more a phantom than a physical presence. Everyone, it seemed, was more important than Claire, who only worked for Joan. It was a race Claire didn’t mind losing. She actually enjoyed watching the sudden shifts in power that change at the top wreaked on those at the bottom.
‘I don’t think he’s goin’ to get away with it this time,’ Marie One said. She put down her salami and egg sandwich. Then she picked up her Diet Coke and took a slug right from the can. Why, Claire wondered, did people who ate two thousand calories for lunch bother with diet sodas? Marie was still as large as the day that Claire first entered this lunchroom.
‘No. He ain’t,’ Michelle said, then took a bite of her triple-decker sandwich, followed by a potato chip. She didn’t have a problem with weight – she always had all the carbohydrates she desired and never put on an ounce.
‘Sure he will,’ Tina told them. She pushed some of her dark hair back over one ear and took a bite of her turkey club. ‘Hey, his social life is as busy as Grand Central Station, but I’m a great conductor. I keep all the different trains on separate tracks. They never crash into each other.’
Claire didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t a conductor’s job. Actually, she thought the conductor analogy was an apt one but she would have used the metaphor of a symphony orchestra, not a commuter station. Michael Wainwright had a complicated and splendid private life that, without his knowledge, was public to all of the clerical women on the thirty-eighth floor.
Marie Two gave Tina a sour look. ‘Hey. Tell Mike Engineer that someday two of those engines will crash. And we’ll all be readin’ about it in the Wall Street Journal.’
Joan, the head of the analysts and – aside from Claire – the only woman at the table who wasn’t either a secretary or Italian-American, shook her head. She was a divorced single mother in her mid-thirties and, in Claire’s opinion, justifiably bitter. ‘From your lips to god’s ears,’ Joan said. ‘The bastard deserves it.’
But Claire didn’t think that was fair. Though Michael Wainwright certainly played fast and loose, he could afford to. It wasn’t just the looks, brains and schooling. He was also socially connected. Claire, via Tina, had an almost daily update on whom he was seeing, whom he was about to drop, whom he was adding to his conquest list, and where he was taking his latest date. Claire’s mental calendar, empty of engagements, was full of Mr Wonderful’s life. She wasn’t sure if Tina’s ongoing conversation was good or bad for her private obsession, but she certainly couldn’t ask Tina to stop talking without raising Tina’s always-acute suspicions when it came to romance. And it wasn’t as if Claire even dreamed of any real connection to Michael Wainwright. She knew he traveled in a world of money, entitlement, and the natural aristocracy of beauty and that she didn’t belong in any of those categories. Michael Wainwright was not a romantic possibility and she had no illusions otherwise. But it didn’t mean that she didn’t have feelings. She just kept them to herself. Her interest, she thought, was a kind of hobby – like bird watching.
Tina put down her sandwich and angrily wiped her mouth with a Subway paper napkin. ‘Why does he deserve it?’ she demanded of Joan. ‘He never promises any of them anything. They’re big girls. They can take care of themselves.’ Claire smiled. In public Tina was loyal to Michael but Claire knew that she sometimes warned him of the dating Armageddon that she so nimbly put off.
‘It’s time to get back,’ Joan said primly and looked at Claire. Claire nodded and put her untouched apple back into her bag. Unlike the others, Claire didn’t work for an investment banker. And reporting to Joan didn’t always make life pleasant. She stood up and smiled at Tina, who flipped a bird behind Joan’s back.
Claire’s afternoon was spent doing what seemed like endless revisions to spreadsheets of figures. The worst part about her job was also the best. There were no changes, no surprises, no peaks and valleys. She knew that as soon as she completed an assignment, Joan would hand her another one. Unlike Tina and the three Maries, Claire didn’t get to glimpse the drama going on in and around the windowed offices: she didn’t see the clients arrive, the meetings held in the glass-enclosed conference rooms. She didn’t witness the hirings and firings. But she heard all about them. Sometimes Claire felt her imagination was a better place to view the dramas than in reality. Tina was a kind of human radio – all Tina, all the time – and Claire saw the wins and losses, the corporate coups and the promotions and demotions more vividly in her imagination than if she had seen them in reality.
The problem was that she had time to daydream – too much time – and too many of her daydreams centered around Mr Wonderful. She wondered uncomfortably if it was becoming closer to an obsession than she admitted to herself.
While Claire had the title of ‘analyst’ she wasn’t much more than an educated clerk. Of course none of the secretaries were called secretaries, either. They were ‘Administrative Assistants’ (though they all expected gifts and flowers on Secretaries’ Day). But the two groups had something important in common: there was nowhere for either analysts or administrative assistants to advance to within Crayden Smithers. After a decade of service you weren’t promoted to investment banker. At best, you might get Joan’s job. Not that Claire wanted it. Joan was the sphincter muscle in the bowels of Crayden Smithers.
That evening at five to five she was almost finished compiling a statistical table – she hated typing statistics – and stayed until a quarter after to get it done. It was unusual because, unlike the secretaries, the analysts had scheduled hours and usually left on the dot of five. Only Joan had to stay on to complete paperwork and arrange for temps or overtime work.
Now, as Joan put on her coat, she eyed Claire. ‘Don’t stay past six,’ she warned.
Claire smiled and nodded. The rule at Crayden Smithers was that an hour or more of overtime guaranteed a car service ride home. Of course, a ride to Tottenville meant going through Brooklyn, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and half of Staten Island. It was a two-hundred-and-ten-dollar fare in a chauffeured Mercedes. ‘We don’t have the budget for that,’ Joan told her as she walked out the door.
‘I know,’ Claire called after her. There, alone for the first time in more than eight hours, she took a deep breath. The commute this evening would be less brutal than at peak hours, though the wait would be longer. Getting to Tottenville after rush hour was the slow hour – or maybe two or three. Ferries, trains and buses didn’t run frequently. Everyone in Tottenville called Manhattan ‘The City’ – even though Staten Island was part of New York. Staten Islanders felt forgotten and inferior to the other boroughs. They were always coming up with new resentments and plans to secede. Her father had always said the place was too small to be a city but too large to be an asylum. Despite the four hours a day, lots of people made the long commute because they wanted to live in what seemed like – and what had once been – a small, waterside town within the New York City boundaries. But for Claire it was all tiresome, with nothing much waiting for her at either end.
Now she decided she would stop in a diner near the ferry terminal, have a salad for dinner, and then, she thought guiltily, maybe pie à la mode. Well, with or without dessert she wouldn’t go home until the rush was completely over. She was too tired to fight the crowd, for the long wait to board and perhaps having to stand for the whole ride. If she waited that would also mean she wouldn’t have to eat with Jerry and her mother. Now she’d be able to read while she ate, another guilty pleasure. She looked down into her bag. She had her knitting, and beside it was The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. Claire was almost halfway through, at that delicious place where she felt compelled to go on reading yet didn’t want the book to end. She felt herself looking forward to her modest evening, her little dinner, a special dessert (she would have the pie) and her book as company.
She sighed. She often wanted to read on the ferry but if she was with Tina – and she almost always was – it was impossible without offending her. That was one of the reasons she carried her knitting. Tina teased her, but it was something to do while Tina nattered on.
Claire finished the statistics, hit the print button and gathered up her belongings while the document rolled into the waiting basket. She was just putting on her new coat – a light green one that she thought complemented her eyes – when Mr Wonderful, Mr Michael Wonderful Wainwright himself, stepped into the room. It was a jolt because no matter how good he looked in her daydreams he was so much better in reality. He was slightly taller than Claire, his posture perfect, his chest broad and taut through his dress shirt. Mr Wonderful’s light blond hair was shiny in the fluorescent light of the office. As he surveyed the room with his hazel-colored eyes he almost looked through her. Claire froze then reminded herself to continue putting her arm into the sleeve of her coat. ‘Where’s Joan?’ he asked.
‘Joan’s left for the day,’ she told him, sounding more calm than she felt. She was afraid she’d begun to blush. She looked away from him, down at her bag. She picked it up and placed it carefully on her chair. Something to do. Keep busy and her eyes to herself. She also had to change into her sneakers but was embarrassed to do it in front of him.
She figured he’d leave then, but was startled by a loud thumping noise. She looked up to see Mr Wonderful had hit Joan’s desk with a thick document. ‘Shit!’ he said. Then he turned back to her and smiled. His smile was devastating, if not sincere. As irresistible as a frozen Mars bar in July and probably just as bad for her. ‘You don’t know where the Worthington numbers are, do you, Karen?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She went to the printer bin and held out the still-warm pages. ‘They’re here. And it’s Claire.’
‘Claire?’ he asked and looked down at the report in her hands as if she was talking about the document.
‘My name,’ she said. ‘Not Karen. It’s Claire.’
He reached for the print-out then looked into her face as he took the pages from her. ‘Of course. Claire,’ he said. ‘I was so panicked over this damn thing that I forgot. Excuse me.’ The closest Michael Wainwright had come to panic, Claire thought, was probably the day he feared he wouldn’t get into the right eating club at Yale. She just nodded and went back to her desk expecting him to go.
She picked up her tote bag, took out her sneakers and was about to sit down to put them on when she realized Mr Wonderful was still there. He was paging through the stats, then he looked right up at her. One of the shoes slipped out of Claire’s hand and bounced on the floor.
‘Look, Ka – uh, Claire,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘I already know I’ve made a couple of mistakes in this thing. We’re meeting on it tomorrow morning and I’ll look like a total fuck-up if I don’t have it right.’ He paused. She was afraid to reach for her dropped shoe so she just stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Michael Wainwright walked over to her, bent gracefully to the floor and, with the report in one hand and her sneaker in the other, offered her the shoe with a princely flourish. She reached for it and he, as if in return for the favor, raised his eyebrows in a faux pleading look. ‘Do you think you could stay just a little while longer and make a couple of corrections for me?’
Of course. Some prince. But her hand actually tingled, holding the old sneaker that his hand had touched. She told herself she was a very foolish girl, then nodded her head because her neck seemed to work, though her tongue didn’t.
‘You will?’ he said in a voice that sounded less than surprised. ‘That’s great.’ He turned and shuffled a few pages, scribbling with a red pen. Claire struggled out of her coat and stowed her purse – along with the errant shoe – under her desk. She glanced up at the clock. It was already five-forty and she doubted she’d be out by six but she wouldn’t forget Joan’s directive about the car service. Claire wondered if it had gotten a lot colder, and how often the buses from the ferry ran after seven.
‘Hey,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘Take a look.’ She stood beside him and looked at the papers spread in front of her. ‘Here are my corrections,’ he said, pointing to more than a dozen pages slashed with red. ‘And could you check my tabulations and change this to a bar chart?’ To her concern the changes looked like the kind of statistical work which was painstakingly slow to correct. And if she changed the layout of the chart, it would need reformatting. And that would probably alter the pagination of the rest of the report. Then she’d have to page preview the entire thing before she printed it out, just to be sure there were no widows or orphans.
‘Can you do it?’ he asked, and it was, of course, impossible to say no. Unfortunately it was equally impossible to say yes, since she couldn’t speak. She was close enough to him to smell his scent – some kind of soap and perhaps just a hint of a clean cologne as well as something that smelled like … like fresh starch. How, she wondered, could he still smell fresh at six o’clock? He was pointing to one of the changes and she noticed that his cuff was whiter even than the printer paper. Yeah. And her sneakers smelled. ‘Will it take long?’ he asked, interrupting her self-loathing.
Claire shook her head and then managed to find her tongue. ‘About two hours, I think,’ she told him.
‘Great!’ he said. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’ He gathered up the pile of papers and handed them to her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait in my office. And let me buy you dinner.’
THREE
Not counting the time Claire spent nearly fainting, then the dance she did around the room, it still took her a little longer to finish the Worthington revisions than it should have because she kept forgetting formatting codes and her fingers trembled for a long while after Michael Wainwright left the room. She also couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it would be like sitting across from that face for an hour. Would he ask her questions about herself or talk about his own life? What in the world would she say? Somehow she doubted he was interested in the kitchner stitch. Perhaps, she thought, Cinderella would get to go to the ball. Of course, she told herself, Michael Wainwright wasn’t interested in her, but even if the shoe didn’t fit she could wear it for one night.
She was hungry and tired by the time she was through, but she was also elated by the prospect of dinner with Mr Wonderful. She proofread the pages twice just to be sure that there wasn’t a single typo then printed the final draft out on high rag content bond. Ready to run it in to him she stopped her frantic activity, uncertain for a moment. Should she put on her coat and meet him ready to go out to eat, or just bring the document over then go back for her things? Perhaps she should call him. She knew his extension number was just one digit different than Tina’s, so she took a deep breath, sat down and dialed. He answered on the first ring. ‘It’s … it’s Claire,’ she said. ‘I’m finished.’
‘Terrific. Do you mind bringing it to my office?’
‘Not at all,’ Claire said and heard how stiff it sounded. ‘Sure,’ she added. ‘Right away.’
She emptied her bulky bag of her knitting, her sneakers, her book and her muffler. She put on her new green coat, smoothed it and checked the pocket for tissue since she was starting to get the sniffles. Then she quickly ran a brush through her hair and wished she’d remembered her lip gloss. But she was flushed with exhilaration, and as she glanced at herself in the mirror hidden behind the supply closet door, she was actually pleased with what she saw. She regretted not having the silk scarf she’d bought to go with the coat but it had been far too cold this morning to wear that. Oh well. Her muffler would do.
She walked out of the windowless maze and over to Tina’s desk. The office behind it had a single light on and in the shadowy room she could see Michael Wainwright at his PC, apparently still working. We’ve been working together, she thought and smiled. That and her new coat gave her the courage to enter his lair with a bit of confidence. ‘Here it is,’ she said, walking up to his desk. He continued working at his keyboard. She put the report down in front of him.
‘Thank god!’ a voice behind her said. Claire spun around. A slim, dark woman was sitting on the sofa behind her. Her legs, up on the coffee table, were crossed neatly at the ankles. Even though the light in that corner was dim, Claire could see the elegance of the cut of her hair and her gray suit. Claire didn’t know all the female investment bankers on the floor by name but she certainly would have noticed this chic woman. Was she a client from Worthington? ‘I’m absolutely famished,’ the woman said. Her voice was clear, her accent as polished as her obviously costly heels.
‘Me, too,’ Michael Wainwright agreed. Then he turned from the PC and looked up at Claire. For a panicked moment she thought he might invite the woman along for dinner. But perhaps Ms Chic just wanted the report and would be off to some elegant penthouse or spacious loft to study it overnight. Claire fervently hoped so. Mr Wonderful picked up the document, slipped it into his briefcase and stood up. ‘Ready to go?’ he asked.
Claire nodded, grateful she had worn her new coat. She could see that in comparison with the other woman’s clothes it was a cheap and shoddy thing but at least it was a hell of a lot better than her old one. ‘I’m all ready,’ she said.
Michael Wainwright and Ms Chic rose together. They both grabbed their own coats. Claire was ushered out the door in front of them and, to her dismay they walked as a trio to the elevator. In the fluorescent light of the hallway Claire could see the woman was about her age, with perfect skin, a size eight figure and the long legs of a fashion model. The shoes were spectacular, very sexy in contrast to the restraint of the suit. Claire hoped the woman would break a slender ankle.
‘Thanks a lot for doing this for me,’ Michael Wainwright said as they got into the elevator.
‘I can’t believe it took so long,’ Ms Chic complained.
‘I’m sorry,’ Claire apologized, then wanted to bite her tongue.
To make it worse the woman smiled at her. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s Michael’s,’ she said, dismissing Claire and focusing on Michael Wainwright’s face. She was not only much thinner but a little taller than Claire, and now she gave Mr Wonderful a look over Claire’s head. ‘You’re so inconsiderate,’ she told him.
Claire didn’t like her tone: it was provocative in the same way her shoes were.
‘Jesus, Kate, give it a rest,’ Michael Wainwright told her. When the elevator opened he allowed the two women to precede him into the deserted lobby, Ms Chic’s heels tap-tapping on the marble floor. At the huge glass doors of the building entrance a uniformed guard rushed up.
‘Let me unlock it for you, Mr Wainwright,’ he offered. Claire looked out into the dark. It was raining ferociously, but Claire was delighted to see a black sedan waiting at the curbside. She only realized the implication of a single car as the door was unlocked. Was this Kate going to go to dinner with them after all? Claire should have known not to get her hopes up or expect too much. She sighed.
Hearing her, Michael looked down at the top of her head. ‘You must be exhausted,’ he said. ‘Should I have Gus here call you a car?’
For a moment Claire was completely confused. He seemed to be looking at her but was he asking this Kate woman the question? Claire said nothing. Michael continued to look at her. Did he want to take two cars? Did he still have business to discuss with Kate before their dinner? What should she do? Now she felt both Gus’s and Kate’s eyes on her.
‘No, thank you,’ she said and hoped it was the right answer. What was going on?
Michael shrugged. ‘Okay. Well, thanks again.’ He turned then paused and put his hand into his pocket. He drew out his wallet and turned back to her. ‘I almost forgot,’ he told Claire. ‘I’m buying you dinner.’ He took out a crisp hundred-dollar bill and handed it to Claire. In her embarrassment and horror she accepted it. She felt tears rising, her throat closing.
‘Have a nice evening,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘Good night, Gus.’ He took the chic Kate’s arm and the two of them stepped out the door, almost running through the freezing downpour to the warm waiting car.
‘What a great guy,’ Gus said.
‘He’s the best.’ Claire sighed and Gus missed her disappointment and sarcasm.
FOUR
‘Yeah,’ Tina said. ‘Katherine Rensselaer. She’s new. She works for the Ford Foundation.’ Claire wondered why only the rich worked for philanthropists. She doubted there was one Hispanic single mother from the Bronx in charge of giving out charity. ‘He hasn’t dropped Blaire, but Kate is moving up fast. And Courtney is over. She just doesn’t know it yet.’
Claire sneezed. The weather had turned warm again and the sunlight glanced off the water of New York harbor. But the beautiful light only hurt Claire’s watering eyes.
‘Want a tissue?’ Tina offered.
Claire shook her head. ‘I brought some. I knew I was coming down with this cold yesterday.’
She had left the lobby humiliated, too embarrassed to go back upstairs for her sneakers, knitting or book. She’d gone out into the downpour without an umbrella and her muffler was drenched before she got to the corner. It had been hideously dark, no cabs in sight and, despite her hunger, she’d been too sick to her stomach to consider eating. Anyway, eating alone with nothing to read was no treat. In fact, on her wet and lonely walk to the ferry it had struck her as pathetic to eat alone at all.
Now she fished in her purse, pulled out a tissue, and blew her nose. She pinched her nostrils hard, but it wasn’t just because they were streaming. She wanted to pinch herself, to remind herself not to be so stupid ever, ever again. Her watery eyes cleared a little as two tears ran down her cheeks.
‘That’s some cold! You know, a beach would bake it right out of you. I’m getting our tickets today. It’s your last chance,’ Tina coaxed.
‘No thanks.’ Despite Claire’s intentions, tears continued to rise in and then fall from her eyes. She blindly reached for another tissue and pulled out what she thought was a crumpled one only to find it was actually the damp hundred-dollar bill. She’d gripped it in her hand last night until, after more than an hour, she’d realized it was there. Then she’d thrown it angrily into her bag. Now, of course, Tina spotted it.
‘Where’d you get that, just before pay day?’ Tina asked. ‘Did your mother finally feel guilty and decide to do the right thing?’
Claire pushed the money into her pocket, though she would have preferred to throw it over the side of the ferry. She sniffed. Despite her lack of Kleenex, she couldn’t stop her nose from running or her tears from escaping. She felt as if her whole head was leaking. ‘I’m going to run to the ladies’ room before we get to Manhattan,’ Claire said, ignoring Tina’s question.
In the ferry’s dim, gray-painted head she had a long cry in a stall. For a few moments she wished she were under the hull, down at the bottom of the harbor. Was it possible to cry under water? The thought made her stop and she got up and began to clean herself up at the sink. But the dented metal mirror over it gave her something else to cry about. She looked awful. She was actually grateful to her cold for giving her an excuse for the swollen eyes, the pink nose, the pallor, and the chapped, cracked lips she’d been biting since last night. As she looked at her image, the memory of Katherine Rensselaer’s came to her unbidden: the perfect skin, the understated clothes that discreetly announced big money, the well-cut glossy hair. Even her name was distinguished. Wasn’t there a city named Rensselaer in Connecticut or Pennsylvania?
Claire pulled out a comb and tried to give her hair some order while she wondered what it would be like to have your name on a place. Claire Amelia Tottenville. Ha! Even considering the dump her hometown was the name sounded more important. At least more important than Claire Amelia Bilsop.
As she was putting the comb away she felt the ferry bump gently. They were docking. How long had she been in here? Tina would be furious, waiting on the other side of the gangplank for her, angrily tapping her foot as the hordes of other commuters barreled past. As if Sy would give away her buttered roll. Claire, in the hold, knew all of the top and main deck would have to clear before she had a chance to get off and Tina would berate her along Water Street. Claire began to tear up again. She wasn’t sure she could stand it, or stand Joan’s questions about the Worthington work, or stand to look through her wet, tired eyes at today’s page of meaningless numbers until they blurred. The enclosed space of the toilet was unpleasant, but Claire realized that she felt safer there than she would feel once she was out. She wasn’t sure how she would make it through the day. But since she didn’t have a choice she shouldered her purse and stepped out to find Tina, waiting in exactly the attitude that Claire had predicted.
Claire kept her head down, literally and figuratively, during the walk to work, the stop for coffee, the entry into the lobby, the more-than-usually ghastly ride up in the elevator, and her scurry to her desk. She stowed her bag and hung her coat, and continued to hang her head. She didn’t know whose gaze she was avoiding; she almost never saw Michael Wainwright, and the Kate woman certainly wouldn’t be around. Gus, the guard, must be on the night shift. Nobody else had witnessed the event. In fact, it had been a non-event to Mr Wonderful and his woman of the day.
Yet, as she signed on, Claire realized the non-event had caused some seismic activity within her psyche, some significant rift. And the exposed subterranean gap seemed so horrifically visible to Claire that, somehow, she thought it must be visible to everyone.
As she sat at her desk and opened the bag holding her coffee and bagel, she realized that a belief she’d always held about herself might not be true. She had always ascribed her lack of passion to her own nature – reserved, introverted, shy, whatever. And she had never taken the crush that she had on Mr Wonderful seriously. She looked at it as a kind of avocation, not something you made a life’s work or took too seriously. But when he – as she had mistakenly thought – invited her to dinner, something had happened. Some feeling had burst through the scrim of her emotional life and flooded her with an undeniable joy. It had felt so intense, so complete, that to deny it would be a kind of sin. It had filled her to her very borders. In that hour or two of anticipation she had felt all of herself alive and knew how big she was capable of being, how much larger her repertoire of feelings was. Now, her limited life, her few outlets restricted her and she felt pain. It was as if she was a brilliant concert pianist who had always been forced to play with only one hand. Last night, for a few precious hours, both of her hands had been freed. This morning, knowing that she had to go back to living with a single hand, the future didn’t seem bleak – it seemed impossible.
She looked down at the keyboard in front of her, placing her hands on the home keys. A tear dropped onto her thumb but she wiped it away quickly. She spread out the work Joan had already assigned her and began. But she had trouble. Each dull line of figures was followed by yet another dull line followed by yet another … it seemed as if reading them or typing them into her consciousness and then onto the screen was building her into a prison, line by line, number by number.
She couldn’t imagine how to recover from this. Perhaps if she went out, had lunch alone, got an ice cream sundae and licked the spoon while she licked her wounds, she’d feel better. Something sweet with butterscotch sauce would be so … so soothing. But Tina wouldn’t stand for it unless she came too and that would spoil everything.
The odd thing was that even without telling Tina, with no one at all – even chic Kate or Mr Wonderful – knowing about her foolish misconstrual, Claire was experiencing such deep shame that it felt unbearable. She realized she had never known what that word meant until now, for, bearing the shame, she could hardly lift her head or her shoulders. No beast should be asked to carry such a burden.
Her cold gave her the pretext for her pink eyes and her posture. Luckily, there was a lot of work and no time for anyone else to notice her, at least not until eleven when Marie Two came in and started some kind of argument with Joan. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior, and she was very particular about the research done for him. She often asked specifically for Claire but that was against Joan’s policy. Not that Marie Two believed in any policy but her own. Claire ignored their conversation until the volume rose. And she heard her name. Then Joan and Marie were standing at her desk. ‘She’s already working on …’ Joan was saying.
‘I don’t give a shit what she’s working on. Mr Crayden needs this and Boynton’s stuff can wait.’
‘You can’t just come in here …’
‘Watch me.’ Claire lifted her head. Marie Two was standing before her with a thick sheaf of papers. ‘God, you look sick,’ Marie Two said.
‘I’ve caught a cold.’
‘No shit, Sherlock. You shouldn’t be here with that. A, you should be in bed. And B, you’ll get everyone else here sick, too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Claire apologized.
‘Madonne! What’s wrong with you, Joan?’ Marie Two asked, glad to use any excuse against her enemy. ‘Can’t you see you should send her home?’
Suddenly the idea of her bed, her pillows and the puffy quilt over her seemed not only irresistible but imperative to Claire. Her mother and Jerry would be out of the house. There would be silence and comfort. A cup of hot, hot tea. Then a nap. And maybe, after that, some soup with buttered toast. She could eat and drink and read in bed without her mother accusing her of being antisocial. And if she used up an entire box of tissues from mopping her brimming eyes, she had an excuse: she was sick.
‘Do you think you have a fever?’ Marie Two asked and, like the practiced mother she was, placed a hand on Claire’s forehead. ‘You’re burning up,’ she said. ‘Joan, call the car service.’
‘She lives all the way in Staten Island. And I don’t have a client to charge it to. Boynton’s over budget,’ Joan protested.
‘Oh, charge it to Cigna. Mr Lymington puts his Cuban cigars on their expense sheet. What the hell will one taxi ride matter?’
Claire sat there passively as if they weren’t talking about her. She felt light-headed and distant, as if she was already slowly moving away from them in a vehicle. Donna, the apprehensive analyst who sat beside her, was looking from Marie Two to Joan. So, Claire finally noticed, were the rest of the analysts in the room. Her shame and misery would be complete, if she could feel anything. But she was beyond that.
‘She’ll get us all sick,’ Donna said. ‘There’s no air circulation in here.’
A buzz of conversation began but Joan put a stop to it by raising the phone to her ear. ‘I’m sending you home,’ she told Claire, as if the idea had come to her spontaneously.
The rest was a blur. A car was called. Marie Two bundled Claire into her coat, Donna carried her purse and knitting bag and they took her to the elevator. ‘Car number 317,’ Donna said. ‘That bitch Joan didn’t want to do it,’ she whispered. ‘Like it’s her money.’
The elevator arrived. Claire wobbled as she got into it. ‘You okay?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I gotta get back to Mr Crayden or he’ll pitch a fit. Just go outside. The car will be right there.’ Claire nodded as the doors slid closed. In the still moment before the elevator began its descent Claire began to cry again. Oddly, the unexpected kindness of people – in movies, on television or in books – always made her cry and now, as the actual recipient of the concern, she began to sob again. It wasn’t just about her cold, or the miserable scene the night before, or the collapse of her small hope. Her entire life, suddenly, felt pitiable. In that moment, in the elevator, she had a glimpse of herself as others probably saw her: a single, slightly overweight woman still living at home and working in a dead-end job. No profession, no romantic prospects, and nothing likely to change.
The elevator continued its downward trip as Claire’s feelings continued to sink. Why, she asked herself, didn’t she have an ambition, a goal? Why was this good enough for her? She had run out of energy. Worse, as the elevator reached the lobby she realized she’d run out of Kleenex again. There was no way she could be seen in this condition, but though she scrabbled through her purse and pockets she had nothing at all to absorb her tears and smears. All pride gone, just as the doors opened on the lobby, she wiped her nose and her eyes on the cuff of her new green coat, now so despised that it didn’t matter to her at all.
Then, as she stepped out onto the marble floor of the lobby she was almost pushed over by Michael Wonderful Wainwright. He grabbed her arm – the snot-free one – and steadied her. ‘Sorry,’ he said then looked at her for another moment. ‘Claire? Is that you?’ She was beyond face-saving, beyond artifice, beyond caring.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sick?’
‘Yes,’ she repeated. He probably expected some sort of minimizing explanation, one that would make him feel better. That she was mildly flu-ish, not to worry, it was just allergies/sinus/pneumonia/SARS/plague and he shouldn’t be concerned. The cancer of hope was in remission.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She wondered idly how many times he’d already said that word to her.
‘I’m going home,’ she told him and pulled her arm away.
‘Okay. Well, I hope you feel better. And thanks for that work last night. It really saved my ass.’
She just looked at him for another moment and told herself to remember forever that men like Mr Wonderful did not ask women like Claire out for dinner. They asked them for favors, for notice, for admiration. They asked them to balance their checkbook, to juggle their love life, to pick up their tuxedo from the dry cleaners, to shop for a gift for their client, mother, or lover. They had them order out, order flowers, order supplies. Then they gave them a hundred bucks. She’d been stupid and deluded and ridiculous to think otherwise.
‘I have to go,’ she said and tried to turn and walk away with a shred of dignity. Impossible when you were holding a knitting bag and had a runny nose.
It was only when she walked out of the lobby that she recalled she still had the hundred-dollar bill in her pocket. She wished she had remembered that before so she could have given it back to him. The car was waiting. Claire sank into the back, more grateful for the shelter than she ever had been for anything.
‘Tottenville?’ the driver asked. ‘Staten Island, yes?’ Claire nodded, put her head down and closed her swollen eyes.
Perhaps she slept. Perhaps she dreamed something. She wasn’t sure. When the car pulled up to her house she roused herself. The long ride was over. Claire, feverish and achy, reached into her purse, took out the hundred and handed the bill to the driver. ‘But is paid for,’ he protested.
‘It’s a tip.’
‘But tip is paid, too.’
‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it.’
Almost tipsy, she got out of the car and slammed the door. If only it was that easy to get Mr Wonderful out of her life.
FIVE
Claire was in bed for five days. It was, after the first twenty-four hours, only a mild cold. Once she managed to stop crying she only had to put up with a runny nose for another day or two. She felt weak all over and the indignity of a nose that glowed from chafing was unpleasant. But it was the pain in her chest, which wasn’t bronchitis, that took longer to heal.
After surprising the car service driver with the outrageous tip Claire slept away all of the afternoon and most of the night. The next day she napped fitfully and was up until the small hours. She didn’t eat or bathe. When she woke she, mercifully, couldn’t remember the exact details of her dreams but she knew that in each one she had been humiliated. Michael Wainwright’s face had appeared at least once, but it had been twisted in malicious laughter. The evening of the second day, her mother brought her up a plate of meatloaf and macaroni and cheese – two of Jerry’s favorites – but Claire merely shook her head and her mother took it away. The act of going down to the kitchen and making toast and tea felt overwhelmingly difficult, and swallowing it was impossible. She couldn’t even manage to hold a book up to read. Claire went back to sleep.
When Claire woke at three that morning she took out her knitting. She was just binding off a waistcoat she had made for Tina’s dad. Tina had picked the yarn and the pattern. It was a variegated worsted, Claire’s least favorite yarn, in a profusion of browns and oranges, colors that Claire didn’t much care for either. She was grateful that the pattern was a one-piece so she didn’t have to sew it together. Finishing it wasn’t particularly satisfying, but neither was Claire’s life, she reflected.
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.’
‘Speaking 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.’
Then without a beat, Tina moved on to drop a new conversational grenade about a confrontation – almost a scene – in the outer office, between two of the other traders.
‘Well, I think a “go fuck yourself” wouldn’t have been inappropriate,’ Michelle said. Just then Abigail Samuels walked in, in time to hear the vulgarity. Claire hung her head. She was in the company of these people and surely perceived as one of them by everyone but herself. Still, she wished she hadn’t been there when the remote, educated Abigail – who was probably a virgin – heard the conversation.
Abigail, however, moved serenely by them to the refrigerator, took out a yogurt and turned to go. At the door, as a kind of after-thought, she turned back to the now-silent group. ‘Claire,’ she said. ‘Would you be free to photocopy some important documents for me?’
Every eye at the table turned from Abigail Samuels to Claire. Claire looked first to Abigail, then to Joan. Joan shrugged and nodded. ‘She can do it,’ Joan said.
‘We know she can,’ Abigail Samuels said, and Claire, most probably, was the only one who realized Joan’s grammar was being corrected. ‘The question I asked was if she was available.’
‘She’s available,’ Joan said after a moment’s pause. Claire stood up and wordlessly followed Abigail out of the lunch room.
They were along the row of executive offices, almost to Michael Wainwright’s, when Abigail turned to Claire. ‘You seem like a girl who keeps herself to herself,’ she said. ‘This is a job that I want to be kept exactly where it belongs.’
Claire nodded, and Abigail seemed to feel that was enough. They reached her office outside of Mr Crayden’s. ‘You’ll use the photocopier in the executive supply room.’ She lifted a pile of documents and handed them to Claire. ‘I’d prefer you don’t read them, but I don’t insist.’
Claire was shown through a door she had never noticed. The room was small but paneled, and leather-jacketed pads of paper, engraved personal letterhead and all manner of high-end office supplies were carefully placed on shelves behind glass cabinet doors. A photocopier, a shredder and a fax were built into mahogany cabinetry as well.
‘Do you know how the machine works?’ Abigail asked. Claire nodded. ‘It doesn’t have a collator and I’ll need two copies of everything. Can you keep them in order?’
‘Yes,’ Claire managed.
‘I thought you could.’ Abigail smiled. ‘If you have any questions, just call.’
Claire began the work. It was dull, but it made a break in her usual day. Anything that kept her away from Joan was a good thing, but she had a feeling that, just like in high school, there would be a price to pay for being singled out.
Feeding the first page in, she only glanced at the contents to make sure she wasn’t going to be a participant in grand larceny or fraud. Crayden Smithers was one of the few firms that hadn’t been involved in a nineties stock scandal but you couldn’t be too careful. Once she realized that the work was only employment contracts, and sensitive because of the salaries and bonuses involved, she didn’t look any further and simply did the job.
There was a certain repetitive comfort in lifting the flap of the copier, placing each page just so and removing the two copies and separating them. It was a task that required no thinking, but after she had organized it and gotten used to the robotic rhythm she had set for herself, having time to think was not necessarily a good thing. She didn’t want to remember the conversation at lunch, nor think about Michael Wainwright’s business trips or the companions he took on them. She wanted to get her work done, look out at the skyline on her ferry ride home and then finish her cable sweater. That idea pleased her. It was going to be a lovely garment and, though the purchase of the cashmere had been extravagant, she was glad she had done it. She was also glad that she was going to keep it for herself.
The small room was getting warm. Claire tucked her hair behind her ears and bent over the machine. She felt her face flush from the heat. She wondered if there was a fan, though she doubted anyone often used the room for this volume of copying. The noise of the machine and her concentration on the task kept her from hearing the door open and close behind her.
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