The Chameleon

by Sugar Rautbord

  Honestly, Violet, what do you keep in that book? Blackmail, I suppose, from the way you guard the little sucker.” Slim saucily sported a knockoff of Schiaparelli's “Mad Cap” perched on her head, looking like a chic Peter Pan. “Here, let me see.” She grabbed for the metal-clasped ledger over their corner table at Trader Vic's.

  “Oh no. Never. If it's blackmail, why would I let anyone have a look for free?” Violet laughed and raised her lovely violet eyes.

  Unlike Miss Slim's brows, still penciled and darkened into an art deco look, Violet's feathery eyebrows were naturally arched high over deeply set eyes, the color of which jumped out at you like a train light coming out of a deep tunnel. It was an oddity in a face that was placidly calm and, while pretty, subdued to the point of plainness. Violet's one vanity of late, for she spent nothing on herself, was a good but inexpensive toilet water that smelled vaguely of violets to complement the occasional bunch of silk violets she pinned to her left shoulder or at the throat of her basic black dress. It was her uniform, and her customers were comforted and unthreatened by the familiarity of it.

  Violet instinctively understood the importance of not being competitive with her clients, many of whom had insecurities as high as the Wrigley Building or as tall as the Tribune Tower.

  “Look, I had Madame Celine knock off one of the new Chanel suits. Pretty snappy work for a Hungarian passing for a Parisian, eh?” Slim winked and twirled the pink-and-aqua paper umbrella around in her Blue Lagoon. “You should get one.” She slid a cherry down her throat and pulled the stem in the same move. “Gracious, Violet, I don't know how you can stand to wear the same thing day in and day out like a prison inmate or …”

  “Or a Foxcroft girl.” Violet's laugh was soft and bell-like as she unconsciously tugged at her uniform's other accessory, the wedding band that still encircled her slim finger. She'd continued to wear her ring even after all these years, not because it was valuable or had any stones in it (then surely she would have hocked it), but because it allowed the customers she waited upon and who relied on her almost neurotically to count on her married-lady expertise. The simple gold-plated ring held no sentimental value for her whatsoever, but just by wearing it she emitted a sense of propriety and correctness, as if the narrow band were a passport to some women's club whose doors only married ladies could enter. After all, what female in her right mind would feel comfortable purchasing a racy peignoir from an old maid? Violet dispensed advice to her lovelorn customers that only a worldly woman with years of marital experience might share.

  So what if she gathered most of this domestic wisdom from dressing-room gossip and the popular women's magazines that Slim read aloud from nightly? The customer didn't know the real truth, because in reality the customer didn't want to know about any unpleasantness when she entered the perfect world of the Store. Salesladies’ dilemmas were not to be hung out on hangers like skirt and sweater sets. But the customers’ dilemmas—now that was another story. Dear Miss Violet could be depended upon to know which transparent negligee might patch up an argument, or what second set of china would be just right for the couple who had smashed the bridal set during their first quarrel, and she was even willing to travel obligingly out to Lake Forest in the evening on the train to hold a certain plate up next to the dining room wall for color coordination. She could be counted on to pick out just the right hat for divorce court or the reconciliation lunch that followed when everybody made up. And, above all, she could be counted on for her discretion.

  Violet was breathless in the perfection of her craft. It was her soft, seemingly unaggressive way with people that allowed her to be promoted as others were laid off. That, of course, coupled with her ability actually to close a sale. And if some poor missy's misfortunes were her gain, she simply couldn't worry about it. She had Claire and her own little family to think about. It had been nearly a year since Miss Wren had gone on part time. Claire and the Aunties depended on Violet as never before, and she had risen heroically to their call of distress.

  Violet had, in fact, just been promoted to head the Bridal Salon, which had been enlarged to include the Trousseau Shop and Debutantes’ Dresses. Now she was doing the whole shebang: launching the deb, then dressing the bride, her bridesmaids, the mothers; planning the honeymoon and the appropriate trousseau; as well as bringing the Catering Department into all the related entertaining, including food and flowers. The Stationery Section for invitations, calling cards, and thank-you notes, was added to her full-range services. While some said Violet planned an event from soup to nuts, in reality she was in on it from the first dress for the first date to the “I now pronounce you man and wife” ceremony. She bumped Claire up from Crayolas to calligraphy so her little girl could assist in the arrangements that often kept Violet at her desk until midnight. She kept lists of ministers, priests, and rabbis; and for those hurry-up second and third marriages, she had the home phone numbers of “sympathetic” judges arranged in alphabetical order. Of course, she also served as mediator in any argument between the future mother-in-laws, taking the position that “Field's has always done it this way.” That was usually enough to settle a quarrel in Violet's quiet, diplomatic way.

  “Let's have another round.” Slim sighed and sipped the last of her Blue Lagoon. The tropical drinks at Trader Vic's in the Palmer House looked like punch in frosted glasses with floating fruit but packed quite a wallop.

  “No, we have spent our limit,” Violet replied firmly, exercising a self-control her customers at Field's fortunately lacked. To be sure, while some of these women's husbands had survived the 1929 stock market crash, others, like the Pettibones, had lost money in the mini-crash of 1933, turning the spending habits of Mrs. So-and-So and Such-and-Such upside down, killing the golden goose but not the appetite. Many of these society matrons, anxious to keep up appearances and launch their daughters in splendid style and then marry them off grandly, turned to Violet, relying on her taste and talent for finding bargains and then burying the bills for months on end.

  These were the important records Slim referred to that Violet kept in her leather ledger, the thick green book of secrets that lay between them on the teak table. Certain pages were folded back at the comer as if the book were actually a collection of poetry with favorite passages marked for rereading instead of the Social Register's lineup of deadbeat ladies who hadn't paid their bills. Even the Pettibones were on Violet's list. And the rumor in the salon was that Mr. Pettibone, fed up with his wife's spending, was sending Mrs. Pettibone to Reno right after the holidays for a divorce.

  But rumors held little interest for Violet, and, catty Slim's speculations to the contrary, her ledger had nothing to do with anything so crude as blackmail, social or otherwise. At first, Violet had extended the ladylike IOUs out of her own natural kindness, her worldview generous enough to look upon her customers as an extended sisterhood that, too, had been set adrift on the sea of the Great Depression, never mind that her own little family was clinging to a row-boat while her clients were holding on for dear life to their trim but tired-looking cruisers. But once the layoffs began, it had suddenly dawned on a toughened and wizened Violet that if she were to continue to lay her job on the line every day with each new IOU, there would have to be something in it for her. Or for Claire, to be exact. The memory of her daughter's plaintive bedtime plea still haunted her to the extent that nothing had become more important to Violet than providing for Claire's future. Never mind, as Slim liked to remind Violet, that Claire was already eleven years old and had never had contact with a single man, unless you counted the elevator man or the permanently single boys who did the windows. When the time came, her daughter's gender-sheltered life would not matter. Like a lace-trimmed version of Al Capone, Violet was waiting for just the right moment to start calling in her chips. Her “blue chips.” Just as she had planned.

  Unaware of her mother's well-laid plans, Claire was out exploring the opposite sex for herself.

  From time to time she wou
ld slip into the persona of a daughter waiting for her “father,” pretending to shop for shirts and ties and other manly accoutrements, just so she could browse through the Men's Shop and soak up the smells and textures that never entered her daily reality. In the company of women was where she spent all her time and acquired all her opinions. This, on the other hand, was a whole new geography. Claire would run her fingers across the handsome pipes in their upright stands on the counter and inhale the smoky, acrid smells of fresh tobacco just released from their pouches. She would roll a Havana cigar in her fingers under her nose before sneaking it back into its solid wood humidor and revel in its pungent intensity, which, along with the scents of sandalwood soap, tweed jackets, and leather shoes, deodorized the lavender whiff of her female world.

  Longing for a father was making Claire man-crazy. At first, she walked down the aisles of argyle socks and rows of shirts with collars called cutaway, button down, polo, or yacht as if she were an explorer in darkest Africa. As Claire grew accustomed to the terrain, she grew bold enough to touch, lightly at first, the rich roughness of a herringbone coat, buttons of leather, buckskin gloves, and silk foulard mufflers.

  This was a foreign world of sport and humor, hunting caps and green-felt table covers for cards and poker chips, brass spittoons and walking sticks with real animals like serpents or horses on their handles. Sometimes Claire felt like a boar or a wild tiger would charge at her from a darkened wood-racked aisle of Wellington boots or safari gear. Sometimes she imagined she was stalking them.

  She viewed the “male” as a special animal whose natural habitats were places of glamour to her: boardrooms, golf courses, and mahogany-paneled men's clubs, all of which were suggested in the shop's masculine decor; and she viewed herself as a predatory huntress in the little girl's game she played there. But the wild animals were never her prey. She was after the big game of the great white hunter himself.

  A father, she decided, was what was needed to complete her otherwise happy world. And so Claire's quest for the perfect man had begun.

  Miss Wren was a wreck. She was demonstrating a fly-fishing rod so eagerly that she snared a lady's veil right off the woman's emerald blue hat. It was freezing on Field's first floor early this frosty morning, the temperature comfortable for the fur-clad customers on their side of the counter, but nippy for the salesgirls standing on their side. As the day rolled on, the mass of humanity moving through the Corinthian-columned and marbled main floor would warm her up, but for now, even after three hot cocoas, Wren was catching a chill and, worse, could be fired at any minute without a sale.

  The fish weren't biting at her hook, baited with Christmas stocking stuffers from the special Mistletoe Shop featuring fancy gifts for last-minute shoppers. Everything from boxed and wrapped sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas trees dusted with green and red sugar crystals to priceless pear-shaped pearls was available in this windowpaned enclosed section, where Santa's helpers served hot toddies and gingerbread to the mostly gentleman shoppers looking for that perfect last-minute present without having to leave the first floor and their car conveniently valeted outside, engine still running.

  Miss Wren had almost sold the antique gold filigree and amethyst earrings to a couple from Cleveland. Mrs. Winter-botham had stopped in to say hello and happy holidays and sip a hot toddy, but hadn't purchased the Moroccan leather desk set she'd been looking at for her husband. Wren had wasted another forty-five minutes with a distinguished-looking gentleman who left his fingerprints all over a splendid pearl and diamond choker, examining it with a jeweler's glass before he confessed he used to be the head jeweler at C. D. Peacock and was now out of work. He congratulated Wren on her fine pieces and purchased forty-five cents’ worth of red and green jelly beans. She had earned only a dollar twenty-five in commissions by the time Claire whizzed by and kissed her hello on her way to French class, part of a new regime of language lessons given to the Fancy Dress buyers that Miss Slim had managed to enroll her in. Claire was spending her Christmas holiday assisting at the store, of course.

  Wren had just lost a sale to a young executive who decided right on the spot to take his wife to Bermuda for the holidays instead of giving her a diamond and ruby eternity ring when a tall, matronly woman coughed in front of her. It was an attention-getting kind of cough.

  Wren sneezed for real. Her sniffles were turning into a whopper of a cold. She sized up the customer to see if she was worth catching pneumonia for. After years of counter experience, Wren identified her as a woman who was probably pre-Depression grand but was now just a “window-shopper.” She sighed and parted her red nose, which, despite its congestion, was still able to sniff out the musky odor of mothballs. It was as if the clothes in the woman's wardrobe had been in the family forever, like heirlooms.

  Looker, not buyer, Wren thought. By then, only the threat of a Christmas without any gifts at all was making her fight her cold and stay on the job. She eyed one of the hot toddies, shivered, and pulled her sweater closer to her clavicle.

  “Can you help me with a very special Christmas selection, please.” The dowdy matron's tone was clipped and condescending. It was evident she was from the aristocracy, monied or nonmonied. It was also obvious that she wasn't from Chicago.

  Miss Wren was appropriately obsequious.

  “How may I serve you best? Is the gift for a lady or gentleman, madam?” Wren cooed.

  “It is for my husband. Let's move this right along. I haven't got all day.” A small frown appeared between the eyes and a quick smile across the lips. “He's quite fastidious about his attire and grooming habits. He travels out of a trunk for months on end, back and forth to Europe. Just took a Roosevelt appointment. A voracious reader. Books might be the ticket. No dear, put that away. He picks out all his own ties. He's mad for his horses and dogs, though. Do you have saddles or leashes? I'm in a bit of a rush.” The woman's quick eyes darted from left to right and then she turned her back entirely and was gone. Wren shut her order book and pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve.

  “I'd like to see that.” Mrs. Matron returned a minute later and pointed her stubby tan finger to something gold and gleaming in the locked display counter. “It” was an eighteen-karat-gold dressing table set that came in its own crocodile traveling case.

  “Oh, it's very grand. Made by Morabito in Rome.” Miss Wren unlocked the case, removing the octagonal beveled mirror, the hairbrush, cloth brush, and traveling clock one by one after donning a pair of jeweler's gloves so as not to leave any smudges on the smartly styled toilet set. The tortoiseshell comb set in gold with raised gold beading was sleekly masculine, like all the other pieces shimmering yellow gold in the bright store lighting.

  “The only other set like this in the world was sold to Miss Barbara Hutton as an engagement present for her husband, Prince Alexis Mdivani,” Miss Wren boasted. Salesladies were expected to know the shopping tastes and marital status of international celebrities. The Woolworth heiress's comings and goings held the attention of every shop girl and society matron in the nation.

  “Poor Babs. Hope it lasts.” The woman inhaled her words. “This is really quite handsome. May I?” The customer turned the gold toothbrush holder over in her hand, then examined the sophisticated scrollwork on the pillbox. Both carried the names of the craftsman engraved on the back.

  “The entire set is solid gold so it will never need polishing,” Wren added. “Quite practical.”

  “It is nearly identical to the one my Mr. Harrison admired so in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh last summer,” she mumbled like a ventriloquist. “Especially made for the third duke of Richmond in the sixteen seventies and given to him by his wife after he accepted a royal commission.” Mrs. Harrison was smug.

  “Well, perhaps it might be just the ticket for your husband and his commission,” Miss Wren piped in, chipper as a magpie. “So appropriate.”

  “Why, how clever of you. I'll have it then. My husband's appointment from the president is li
ke a royal commission, and he's quite the collector, too. This is a work of art. Four thousand five hundred, is that with tax or without?” The woman read the price tag without the benefit of glasses. “May I have it holiday wrapped and boxed? I don't have a shred of Christmas paper in the house.”

  “Will you take it or shall we have it delivered?” Miss Wren had to keep herself from jumping up and down.

  “If it can be in Tuxedo Park by December twenty-fourth, then you can ship it. Otherwise … oh, and I'll need a little something for the Roosevelts.” As she signed the sales ticket with a flourish, Miss Wren craned her neck to read Ophelia Harrison's finishing-school script.

  The woman wasn't nearly as old as she looked, Wren decided. Weatherbeaten, yes; perhaps summers on the rugged coast of Maine, sailing, horse jumping, gardening, carelessly uncared for as if she were above all that kind of middle-class foolishness. Mrs. Harrison gave Wren her East Coast aristocrat's address through a clenched jaw, known as Locust Valley lockjaw among the salesgirls, that peculiar way of speaking that allows velvety mumblings to escape from a mouth that is moving only at one corner, moving barely, imperceptibly, if at all.

  Uppercrust all the way, thought Miss Wren, beaming and taking a proprietary interest in her customer. Probably summered in Newport. Her chest cold had just up and left, flying south for the rest of the winter. Leaping lizards! She had made not only a sale but one of the biggest. Forty-five hundred dollars! Wren was jubilant. She had certainly caught her fish. The gifts could be delivered in three days. She would never forget Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Harrison IV of Charlotte Hall, Winding Way Road, Tuxedo Park, New York. No number necessary.

  Claire inhaled the smells of walnut dressing, steaming sliced turkey, and cranberries from her plate. She smacked her lips as the butter pad melted into the hollow scoop of her piping hot potatoes. Claire couldn't imagine how Christmas in anybody's home could be nicer than Christmas at the Walnut Room. The food was more delicious, the tree was bigger and, of course, far more beautiful than any other in the city. This year, Field's tree was a balsam fir from the woods of Michigan. Seventy feet tall, it was festooned with fifteen hundred handmade angels, snowballs, icicles, and other ornaments, as well as with thousands of yards of strung cranberries. A beautiful wooden painted angel with wings shot with gold dangled directly over Claire's shoulder. She longed to reach up and touch her, but Claire had been taught by the Aunties that impetuous behavior was a breach of good manners. So instead she craned her neck toward the entrance and then broke into a radiant smile.