Wish Upon a Star. Olivia Goldsmith

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.’

      ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it.’

      Almost tipsy, she got out of the car and slammed the door. If only it was that easy to get Mr Wonderful out of her life.

       FIVE

      Claire was in bed for five days. It was, after the first twenty-four hours, only a mild cold. Once she managed to stop crying she only had to put up with a runny nose for another day or two. She felt weak all over and the indignity of a nose that glowed from chafing was unpleasant. But it was the pain in her chest, which wasn’t bronchitis, that took longer to heal.

      After surprising the car service driver with the outrageous tip Claire slept away all of the afternoon and most of the night. The next day she napped fitfully and was up until the small hours. She didn’t eat or bathe. When she woke she, mercifully, couldn’t remember the exact details of her dreams but she knew that in each one she had been humiliated. Michael Wainwright’s face had appeared at least once, but it had been twisted in malicious laughter. The evening of the second day, her mother brought her up a plate of meatloaf and macaroni and cheese – two of Jerry’s favorites – but Claire merely shook her head and her mother took it away. The act of going down to the kitchen and making toast and tea felt overwhelmingly difficult, and swallowing it was impossible. She couldn’t even manage to hold a book up to read. Claire went back to sleep.

      When Claire woke at three that morning she took out her knitting. She was just binding off a waistcoat she had made for Tina’s dad. Tina had picked the yarn and the pattern. It was a variegated worsted, Claire’s least favorite yarn, in a profusion of browns and oranges, colors that Claire didn’t much care for either. She was grateful that the pattern was a one-piece so she didn’t have to sew it together. Finishing it wasn’t particularly satisfying, but neither was Claire’s life, she reflected.

      At a little before four she put down the circular needle and got out of bed to lay out the garment on her bureau. She felt light-headed and empty, but it was the middle of the night so she didn’t want to go downstairs to the kitchen. She’d once run into Jerry, standing nude in front of the open refrigerator, illuminated by its light. Instead of taking the chance of letting that happen she opened the bottom drawer of her bureau and looked at the treasures inside.

      Whenever Claire was sad or bored or lonely she made her way to one of the many knitting stores she knew and let herself be tempted by the beautiful colors, the delicious textures, and the promises that all the seductive yarn whispered to her. Now, spread in front of her, were the spoils from those frequent jaunts. Despite her misery Claire was moved, as she always was, by the colorful chaos. She took out her favorite, a costly and luxurious cashmere, in a color that was somewhere between blush and the inside of a shell. It was a very fine ply, and Claire had decided long ago to knit a sweater of it for herself in a tiny and complex cable pattern. She laid the skeins on her bed, then – after long consideration – fetched a pair of size three wooden needles from her knitting basket. She had saved the directions for the sweater though she thought she could do it without following the pattern.

      With a cable sweater she only had to resort to the pattern for the first full cable. Once she’d cast that on and knew the number of rows in between the cable twists she very seldom needed the pattern again. She got back into bed. It was windy, and she could hear the bare tree branches being whipped against the house by the wind. She felt cozy, tucked under her blankets, the cashmere on her lap. As she began to work she found that she would have to be certain to check the position of the twist and not forget to alternate between the front and back with the cable holder. With her state of mind now, she knew she’d welcome the concentration this project would require. As her fingers manipulated the needles she was especially attentive to what she was doing.

      She spent the next couple of days knitting, reading, sleeping, watching a few television programs and licking her wounds. She wished she had her own VCR so she could watch tapes up in her room because she didn’t want to go downstairs to her mother’s TV in the evenings. When Jerry came in he wanted to watch Cops or Junkyard Wars. Instead she stayed upstairs and finished the Jeanette Winterson book. Crying over it helped put things into perspective. Her life could be worse.

      Tina was concerned. When she came over for a visit, Claire pretended to be truly ill and kept the visits short. But she knew the retreat couldn’t last forever.

      Finally, on Sunday, she was over it. She had decided her silly idea that a man like Michael Wainwright could possibly have been interested in her – even for a moment – was not painful as much as ridiculous. She forced herself to remember who she was, where she lived and the small pleasures that she had. She would find more of them, go to some theater, buy her own VCR. She’d register at a gym. Since graduation her size kept creeping up and the desk job had helped her waist and hips spread. But a benefit of her illness was that she’d lost weight. She’d work out. Not, of course, that that was a pleasure nor that it was easy – she wasn’t comfortable in the expensive, high class gyms in lower Manhattan and she was tired from her commute when she came back to Tottenville. But she would do it and, she decided, she’d let Tina’s mother – a hairdresser – streak her hair.