The Chameleon (5 page)

In a way, Violet mused, the store almost made up for whatever deficiencies existed in Claire's upbringing. In addition to the financially blessed from Chicago and the rest of the nation, the store played host to a wide variety of intellectually influential visitors.

Authors flocked to the Book Department on Three to lecture or read aloud from their works. Everyone from Aldous Huxley reading from
Point Counter Point
to one Walter Greenwood, author of
Love on the Dole,
passed through its wood-paneled rooms, and held young Claire enthralled. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Cornelia Otis Skinner—each had shaken Claire's hand and ignited her imagination. Even just one afternoon spent in their orbit gave Claire an education that could rival that of her mother's customers’ daughters, being educated and “finished” at the socially acceptable Foxcroft School or Miss Porter's.

Early on, the very young Claire would lie for hours in the book section listening to the parade of cultivated voices, her tiny elbows resting on the Oriental rug in the room that smelled of leather-bound books and musty antique maps, soaking up the rich knowledge as effortlessly as one of the sponges from the Bath Shop on Two. As she grew bigger, Claire would sit in an overstuffed leather armchair, her knees pulled to her chin, memorizing whole passages and imitating the mannerisms of the literary elite. Indeed, her gift for mimicry was becoming an inexpensive hilarious entertainment for her little family; her invocation of Greta Garbo was unparalleled by any comedian of the day.

Stacked on one wall of the book section were scores of magazines from Paris and London that showcased the English nobleman's domain and the French lady's chic.
English Country Life, French Vogue, Gun Collector,
and
Esquire
were Claire's Hans Christian Andersen. The prince that she encountered here was not a magic fairy-tale prince turned into a frog by a wicked witch, but rather the prince of Wales, sartorially splendid in a creamy double-breasted jacket and an ascot of blue silk foulard, casually watching a tennis match on the island of Nassau. Certainly, her mother would have been disappointed to know that her high-spirited daughter was combing the periodicals for a male lion—any lion—to head their comfortable little den. And so sometimes Claire fantasized about the single Prince Edward marrying Violet or one of the Aunties. But the Field's salespeople told the child there wasn't a chance in a million the prince would marry an American, especially a shop girl, so she continued her search for a suitable stepfather elsewhere.

More than two years had passed since her mother had given her Leland's postcards. Determined to make something positive out of something sour—and an itinerant invisible daddy was the pits—the day after the “postcard presentation” Wren hustled Claire into one of the most elegant and elite rooms in the store, the Stamp Department. With its brass chandeliers and revolving glass and polished walnut vitrines full of philatelic treasures, the stamp section was one of the finest in the world. Claire was immediately drawn to the faces of kings, queens, and adventurers emblazoned in miniature on the one-inch squares. Now the ten-year-old possessed a collection of her own representing over thirty countries in her burgundy bound book.

Claire's after-school Field's jaunts almost always included a browse through the quiet, green-carpeted room's inventory of eagerly anticipated new arrivals. Her days were also filled with chatty visits with the twenty-four operators who ran the store's telephone switchboard, a busy place handling up to forty thousand calls a day, or with a dizzying extracurricular schedule of “lessons.” These might take Claire from the gourmet kitchen, where she learned how to whip up deviled eggs and chicken pot pie, to the knitting studio, where she joined a large roomful of women receiving instruction in the hand arts—embroidery and needlepoint, and learning just enough fancywork to knit her mother and each one of the Aunties a scarf and pair of mittens for a Depression Christmas when money was tight but the holiday spirit soared.

There had also been the obligatory waltz and fox trot lessons during Miss Slim's tenure as the hostess of the ballroom dancing classes offered on Six and, owing to the two years Wren had spent in Fine Antiques, Claire knew the defining differences between a Louis XIV and a Queen Anne chair and could easily distinguish a Sheraton piece of furniture from a Hepplewhite or a Chippendale.

Today Claire breathlessly raced through the store's south rotunda, leaving skid marks on the marble, on her way to Six, where Amelia Earhart was going to be hawking her luggage and sports line at four o'clock. Claire never missed a “personal appearance” if she could help it, but this wasn't just a designer dropping by. This was the world's most famous female aviator, an adventuress.
Fashions of the Hour
had described the collection as “what the active woman wants,” however, at this moment in the spring of 1934, the aviatrix who'd achieved fame as the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air and for her daring cross-country solo flights was standing awkwardly on the sixth-floor Field's Sports-Room, amidst racks and stacks of her signature sportswear and suitcases. She financed some of her flights by endorsing cigarettes, and now she had added these articles of apparel.

Claire studied her latest heroine for a full half hour as Amelia amiably talked to the curious customers who stood around her gawking in an informal half-circle. With Earhart's spotlessly clean face, short, tousled hair, and clear, buffed fingernails, Claire thought how different she looked from the powdered and permed salesladies she encountered daily at the store, ladies who seemed to spend all their time getting
other
people ready to go places. This straightforward woman with her suntanned face and gap-toothed grin looked like she'd gone everywhere she'd ever wanted to and couldn't be bothered with fussy feminine adornments. She clearly lit up when she talked about her travels and setting her compass herself to embark on a singular adventure. Amelia's husband wasn't missing or dead, either. He was a real man, handsome and with a mustache, happily posed in the picture Amelia Earhart carried in her wallet—Amelia, her husband, George, and her Lockheed Electra—that she was now showing to the approving ladies around her.

The child stood wide-eyed, listening to Amelia describe her experiences in the air and her many landings in exotic locales. Claire inched forward for a better look at the pair of wings pinned to the woman's shoulder, which kept catching the light, shining like a silvery bird as she spoke. There was a special quality of independence about Amelia Earhart, a radiant aura of standing on her own, that Claire was drawn to. Suddenly ten-year-old Claire was convinced she had to know more of the real world beyond State and Wabash and under the Tiffany dome. She wanted to be just like Amelia.

She studied Earhart's shoes to see if there was any indication of “traveling feet,” the “condition” the Aunties claimed Leland Organ suffered from and which had caused him to abandon her even before he got the chance to meet her. “Dromomania” was how Miss Wren referred to his intense desire to wander, diagnosing it with its Greek clinical name, rendering the condition both medical and probably hereditary. Claire suddenly had an alarming notion. What if she had inherited the wandering virus from him? Just as quickly, she relaxed. After listening to Amelia Earhart, she thought maybe an adventurer's life would be rather exciting.

“And when you fly around the world, Miss Earhart, will you be going alone?” Claire spoke out for the first time, pushing her way to the front.

“I shall be taking a navigator.”

“What's a navigator?”

Amelia Earhart thought for a moment. “Well, he's someone who's very good at geography.”

Suddenly Claire did something she had never done before. She picked out a small, round overnight case from the neatly arranged suitcases and asked the saleswoman to “just charge it, please.” Amelia graciously autographed the luggage tag for the precocious child. Claire knew, she simply knew, she'd need this luggage, she had never been surer of anything. She was going places.

“How could you!”

“With money being so tight and all?”

Three perfectly manicured Lanchere index fingers were shaking menacingly at a woeful Claire in the chintz-covered parlor.

“We're still in a depression.”

“Well, now they're calling it a recession, Slim.” Miss Wren was a total Roosevelt follower.

“Rich people are out of work!”

“Rich people are going back to work!”

‘Why, Mr. Harry Davis, who owned his own store, is now selling sweaters and socks in the Men's Shop!”

“Last week two people jumped over the railings on Seven and Ten! S-U-I-C-I-D-E-S.” Wren spelled it out over Claire's head. “Right under the Tiffany dome.”

“And you go out and buy a traveling case like you were sailing first class to Paris on the
Homeric!
”

“Forty-eight dollars and fifty cents. That's food for us for three months, you know.” Violet had tallied up what the overnight case cost in groceries. “In one grand gesture you've jeopardized our budget, Claire,” Violet admonished.

“Who do you think you are, young lady—Shirley Temple?” Slim's red mouth was the only visible feature on her face. Imported French cold cream was smeared everywhere but her lips.

Claire thought she looked like Al Jolson in
The Jazz Singer.
She was turning into a giant mouth before her eyes. The day was turning into a nightmare.

“Mon Dieu. Mon Dieu.”
Slim slapped her hands to her face as if she were going to beat the vanishing cream into her pores.

“‘Charge it. Just charge it.’ That's what little Miss Field said to the salesgirl. Like she was Queen Mary.” Miss Wren was clucking like a hen with a nervous condition, her chest puffing up like a pouter pigeon's. “We've
spoiled
her!”

Claire couldn't help it. Big tears rolled down her wide cheeks and her shoulders were heaving up and down as the rest of her shook like a leaf. She had done something more terrible than murder. She had hurt her mother and aunties. She had damaged the small financial fortunes of her female family.

“Just today Miss Wren was laid off and is only going to work part time on commission.”

“We weren't going to tell you.” Miss Wren's finger was an inch from Claire's tear-streaked nose. “But if you're old enough to pretend to have a Marshall Field's charge account, Little Miss Marker, you're old enough to know just how bad things are!” The yellow canary in the brass cage from the Pet Shop on Four was in a nervous twitter. The sitting-room bird had never been exposed to raised voices before.

“That silly suitcase is going back tomorrow!”

‘Today!”

Claire looked stricken.

“Now here,” Violet said, extending a monogrammed handkerchief. “Blow.”

“What we all wouldn't give for a good cry.” Auntie Slim slumped into a side chair.

The frightened ladies were venting their own fear and frustration over their plight and the ongoing Depression, which still crippled the nation, even more than they were angered over Claire's impetuous purchase. The up-and-down escalator they had been riding for years had them all worried sick. And now there was Wren's news that she would no longer be a salaried worker at the store. How would they get by, and which one of them would be next?

“Go to your room, young lady.”

Violet watched the small figure with the long skinny legs disappear down the hall. Claire's bedroom was a shoe box of a room crammed with dolls and stuffed dogs from the store, many of them wearing bandages or slings, as Claire had been pretending to be a veterinarian the previous week. The ceiling, painted a powdery sky blue with cumulus clouds airily floating overhead, was crafted by the talented window-display artists who adored Claire and her aunties. If the talented fellows couldn't make the ladies’ lives easier, at least they could make life prettier.

Violet sighed quietly, sinking down into the Sheraton reproduction armchair and picking up her needlepoint.

“And please rewrap the suitcase so you can return it in the morning,” she called after her daughter. She waited until she heard the door shut. It was better if they discussed their situation out of Claire's earshot. She was, after all, only a child. They had already railed at Claire like a chorus of cranky witches. But what else could they do?

“Wren dear, could you hand me the ledger, please?”

“Yes,” Miss Wren responded, rushing to retrieve Violet's household accounting records from the bookshelves sagging under the weight of Claire's autographed first editions. Over the years, Violet had blossomed into a quiet but stalwart force to be reckoned with, someone who recognized what had to be done and simply did it with very little fuss. The others had shifted places and knew to fall in behind.

“These layoffs that were issued today were cruel and heartless!” Miss Wren tried to keep herself from collapsing into tears. Her top-heavy frame emitted an audible shudder.

“It's un-American!” Wren protested, wondering if she should dash off a note to Eleanor Roosevelt.

“How can Marshall Field's lay off twelve hundred employees—four hundred from retail alone—and still unveil the most expensive escalators in the world at the same time?” Miss Slim wiped all the cream off her face.

“Will Westinghouse's people-moving conveyances replace human beings?”

“Yes, and those escalators are moving real people right out of the store. Loyal employees who have served the company their whole lives. It's just too terrible!”

Miss Slim dabbed furiously at her naked lashes while Miss Wren pondered what she should write to Mrs. Roosevelt.

To Miss Wren, the most curious part of the whole fallen economy was that there was always a segment willing and able to pay for the fanciest dresses, the most expensive Georgian silver, or to take advantage of the many personal services offered by the store. But she had also noticed how some people lost a lot, earned back a little, lost more, and juggled their finances, making them erratic Field's customers. All except for Miss Violet's ever-loyal clients, who curiously continued to be regulars. But even if Violet was turning out to be a retail wonder, her stalwarts were not numerous enough to stave off the store's losses, now nearing eight million dollars, a fortune in anybody's book, and claiming in its wake more than a thousand jobs, including her own. Was it any wonder the ladies had gone to pieces over a suitcase?