Olivia Goldsmith - Wish Upon a Star

‘So what were you up to?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I want to go up to Saks.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Really?’

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

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

‘So does her ass,’ Tina said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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