The Chameleon (14 page)

All in all, Venice had been faithfully re-created in satins, Fortuny silks, painted backdrops, gold papier-mâché, and great expense, thanks to Millicent's careless extravagance, and paid for by Cyrus's guilty conscience. In an odd way, Slim told Claire as she dressed her for the gala, her auntie's invisible hand could be felt in all this. Had there been no Slim, there most certainly would have been no four-hundred-thousand-dollar ball celebrating the watery Italian city, now a trophy in the Fuhrer's Axis showcase. Cyrus would have put his foot down.

Slim, her kittenish eyes big as saucers, was as excited about the ball as if she were going herself. This was not just Cilla's coming out gala, she reckoned, but Millicent's going-away party. Hang the cost.

Claire walked through the doorway of the house her aunt was dying to claim for her own. She glanced toward her right, and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Pettibone draped in peach chiffon and brown velvet in deep discussion with the mayor and her husband, Cyrus (Auntie Slim's fiancé), who was standing smiling at her side. Peeking back at them over her shoulder, Claire thought Millicent certainly didn't look like a woman whose Vuitton luggage was all packed and ready to leave for Reno in two days. A high-pitched laugh trilled through Mrs. P.’s lungs as Mr. P., the mayor, the chairman of the Continental Bank, and Sally Pettibone Lambrecht all chimed in like a merry peal of church bells. No, it certainly didn't look like a fallen family on the verge of collapse.

“Sally dear, find your little sister. We must form our receiving line again.” Millicent gave a startled look at Claire's costume, regarding her up and down and up until she stopped and left her nose in the air.

“Gracious, she's certainly putting on a brave front,” Claire marveled, gathering up the folds of her stiff gown as she climbed the polished marble entry steps. A chill shuddered down Claire's surprised spine, when at the very same second Cyrus Pettibone winked at her, he gave his wife a kiss on the cheek.

“Come Pett, let's greet our guests.” She looked like Caesar's wife entering Rome as she strode arm-in-arm with her husband into their former living room, now a brilliantly candlelit ballroom fit for an emperor.

Claire gazed after them, a slightly puzzled look crossing her brow. Suddenly, she was swept up in a surge of Donnelleys, Smiths, McCormicks, and Fields gaily entering the ball.

Turning to the left of the main vestibule with all the other invited girls to check her cloak and freshen up, Claire squared her nervous shoulders and took a deep breath before she entered the ladies’ powder room, four times the size of the Windermere apartment and jam-packed with strapping girls in big dresses and elbow-length gloves noisily primping in front of the gilded Chippendale mirror.

“Did you see him? Gawd! A man in uniform. Isn't he spiffy!”

“Tall, dark, and solvent.”

“Oh, you should marry him.” Daisy Armstrong looked fetching, stuffed into a white strapless number with yards of tulle stitched into consecutive tiers widening like a Christmas tree. It was said she had the finest pair of shoulder blades on the North Shore.

“Yes, marry him. He's going off to flight officers’ school in a week.”

“Not until I sleep with him.” Snookie Cuthbert swigged a glass of champagne. “I don't want to wake up some morning to a limp regret.” She giggled and everyone giggled with her. Snookie had already been through the receiving line twice and the champagne-soggy dance card dangling from her wrist was already full of names followed by a Jr. or a Roman numeral. Her evening, like her future, was already laid out.

“Well if you don't snatch up Edward McCormick, somebody else will. All of them are getting engaged or married before they ship out.”

“If there was ever a time for a girl to act like a woman, it's now.” Daisy puckered her lips, brushing some Red Madness across them.

“Oh, hello, Claire,” she said into the mirror, not bothering to turn around. “I hardly recognized you.” Daisy tossed her lipstick back into her evening bag and returned to her conversation.

“Vogue
says time's awasting.”

“I'll say.”

“Claire, when did you grow a bosom?” Snookie studied Claire's new glamour-puss silhouette.

Ignoring Claire, Lily Dunworth returned to the matter at hand. “Shouldn't you get engaged first, the old-fashioned proper way?” she asked.

“Not in these times.”

“Marry them before they go to war, my aunt Susan says, or you'll be too old when they get back.” Weezie Rusk blew two perfect smoke rings over her shoulder.

“
If
they get back.”

“Oh shut up, Lily. That's not very patriotic.”

“Yeah, and then you'll be left behind like those spinsters from the last war.”

“Or a salesgirl.” Snookie flashed a look at Claire.

“You're such a slut, Snooks. You've already slept with Tony and now you're plotting to marry his big brother.”

“All's fair in love, war, and haute couture.”

Claire quietly slipped off her cloak, handed it to the ladies’ maid, and hesitantly joined the chatty lineup at the gilded mirror.

Suddenly all she could see was the Dress. The delicate Chanel masterpiece had the air of privilege and propriety as if the wearer were about to sit for a Winterhalter portrait. The seed pearls gave the dress a subtle shimmer, as if its glamour was just whispered. The peach and pink rosettes at the collarbone gave the gown its fresh quality, so that it had an understated innocence. It was perfection. The Chanel made all of the other dresses appear far too sophisticated to ostensibly herald a young woman's entry into polite society.

Claire stared at it in the six-foot-wide dressing-table mirror and then slowly lowered her eyes. Somehow the Dress made even Cilla Pettibone look lovely.

Yes, what should have been Claire's was now Pettibone property. On that day after Pearl Harbor when the hysterical Pettibone women had marched onto the 28 Shop floor to avenge the sinking of Cilla's dress, the quiet salon had been thrown into turmoil. Miss Slim was shoved by Miss Wren into the private elevator, and, with one stab of the Down button, was sent into lower-floor oblivion where she would be safely out of firing range. Wren then frantically tried to locate Violet, tracking her down at last in the window-design warehouse, where she was on her hands and knees scouting for last-minute party props for the ball. In the twenty minutes it took them to travel up the escalator full of holiday shoppers, Millicent Pettibone had muscled her own way into the 28 Shop's off-limits back room and after aggressively pulling out dress after dress, had found the “other Chanel.” Covered by a Field's garment bag, the gown had simply been marked,
Reserved for Violet's Customer.

By the time a breathless Violet sprinted on her flat-heeled working girl's shoes to the scene, it was too late. The Dress, painstakingly and lovingly fitted to Claire so that it hugged her tall body, rendering her a princess for one night, was already being pulled apart, let out, and patched together by a tearful Celine for the hefty debutante who was determined to fit into the Dress as if it held all the power of Cinderella's glass slipper.

Violet was crestfallen. Her daughter's dress was in tatters and now belonged to her best customer. The length of the masterpiece had been hacked off for rebuilding into the width. Only after Millicent and her daughters had cleared the store two and a half hours later and a weeping Celine sat sewing together patches and pearls was Slim summoned back in the private elevator on which they had posted an Out of Order sign, just in case.

There had been no time for tears.

Slim sprang into action like an uncoiled jack-in-the-box, calling up old debts and promising new favors until at last she had located a Charles James runway sample that was en route from New York to Elizabeth Arden's Chicago salon for a Women's Service League fashion show. The dress, she was told, had impact. It was every shade of nature's soft greens, changing hues with each billowing fold of the faille and slipper satin skirt, which hung like fresh petals from a tightly cinched waist. The dramatically elongated folds that crossed over the torso were artfully arranged to create cleavage where there was none, and to emphasize the gentle slope of a strong shoulder. This dress was what haute couture was all about. Fashion arbiters would point to it for years to come as a masterfully cut construction. More important, the Siren, as the sophisticated dress was called, was Claire's size and available for the night—just as long as it could be returned in mint condition the following morning.

Claire stared pensively into the mirror as the flock of girls suddenly rose up and took off like geese going south for the winter. Their nests were already feathered and secured, as were their positions as future social matrons or society gypsies. They already knew what charitable boards they would sit on, which schools their children would attend, to which clubs they would pay dues, and where they would spend their holidays. They could afford to be frisky and wild because they were only soaring free for a year or two before they landed feet first, smack into the respectable lives mapped out for them in the Rand McNally. Oh, there was the occasional eccentric, the brother who wore kilts or the sister who ran off with the tennis pro, but this was all just part of their familiar landscape. Only Claire's future was in question. Where would she land?

As Claire studied her reflection, she suddenly thought she looked ridiculous, done up like a magazine page photographed by Salvador Dali. Her Max Factor makeup had been so heavily applied that it was hard to see her features. Her eyebrows had been plucked, making her violet eyes jump out with star drama. Her small, pale lips were drawn into a wide red mouth big enough for Joan Crawford. She was unrecognizable even to herself. Her dress was exquisite, “certainly the most high-priced one there,” Aunt Slim had gloated earlier as she had gotten Claire ready, only the gown was much too sophisticated for a girl of seventeen.

Claire felt like a fraud and a phony. Worst of all, she felt like she was trying to be like one of them.

Just then the bathroom door opened. Two dowagers breezed in and Claire busied herself with her dress, trying to make herself invisible.

“One of those El Morocco types,” one whispered to the other, gesturing toward the avant-garde gown's sexiness. “Nightclub people.” Her raised eyebrow said it all.

“Such a commotion.” The turquoise dress fanned herself with her monogrammed handkerchief, a wide cabochon circlet of rubies concealing her bony wrist.

“A bit overdone.” It was unclear whether they were discussing the party or the dress. Or both.

“But then, Millie has reason to celebrate. Cyrus is home for good and there's to be no divorce.”

“Thank heavens.” The dignified heiress sighed. “A family needs to stay together during these dire times.”

A feeling of outrage imploded in Claire. She seethed as she thought of poor Auntie Slim in her silk lounging pajamas waiting expectantly by the telephone to hear all of the ball gossip.

Then Claire flashed back to the wink Cyrus had given her earlier while his lips simultaneously bussed his wife's ample cheeks. That phony. He'd done it again.

“When will these social-climbing shop girls realize our crowd comes together to hold our families intact?” The older woman pushed a hairpin into her nest.

“We may be polite but we use our claws when we have to.”

“And our charge cards.”

“Yes, but it was Bill Harrison who took him to the woodshed, lovey.”

“Harrison has pulled strings to have Cyrus appointed to the War Production Board.”

“What a distraction it would be from his important war work if he were to be involved in a scandalous divorce.” The silver-haired dowager adjusted her snood with hands gnarled from years of golf, bridge, and meddling.

“Good thing Millie got Ophelia to intervene. I'm sure it's the last we've heard of the slutty Miss Slim.” She brushed the Slim/Pettibone affair away with her hands like yesterday's lint.

“Well, ducks, there are so many
important
things to occupy us now. Millie is hosting a Red Cross tea next week and we're putting together travel kits—Field's is donating them, oh that Saint Violet—for our boys going overseas. They'll need pocket knives, wallets, and dobb kits. And stationery sets.” Both of the women nodded in agreement.

“Well, back to Millicent's Piccolo Venice.”

“Yes. Funiculi funicula.” The silver chignon laughed.

Claire's face suddenly turned white, her mouth went dry, and she wished she could disappear into the antique Chinese wallpaper with silver birds flying over the mirror. She stood by the sink trembling as the two society queens rustled out of the room, oblivious to the damage their gossipy buzz; bomb had ravaged.

Standing in the debris of insults, Claire started to shake violently and the tears at the back of her eyes streaked their way down her cheeks. Violet and Slim, one all common sense and the other all sensuality, had had their chances, and were locked out, as if in some perverse game of Red Rover. They'd call you over but never let you break through their daisy chain of closely linked arms. Claire would certainly not be content to sit on the fringes of a closed little circle. She had a suitcase. She'd find a place to go.

“I'm not going to turn out like Saint Violet, sucking up to society shoppers and dragging around their dirty dry cleaning,” she swore to herself. “Not me! And I won't be whispered about and pointed to like Slim just for being honestly in love.”

Her lower lip quivered as she thought about her aunt, whose only mistake was leading with her heart. Claire hoped that she'd never have one.

“No heart for you, glamour-puss.” She pointed to her fancy image in the mirror. And with that, she pulled out tissue after tissue and a pyramid of cotton balls from their crystal decanters and began wiping every ounce of artifice and makeup from her face. She picked up an expensive French linen towelette and rubbed vigorously with that, too, as if with a handful of vanishing cream she could rub out all of her little family's misfortunes. She reached for the swan-shaped faucets and twisted them on, splashing cold water over her face with both hands. The astonished maid handed her a towel and Claire rubbed her face dry. Her skin was natural again, her perfect complexion enlivened by cold water and anger.