Wish Upon a Star

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.’