Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (7 page)

“Hope Valley?”
Claudia repeated, padding down the hall to her bedroom. She had planned her outfit in the shower, and knew it would include her one good pair of black wool trousers. “You mean the soap opera?”

“It shoots at the Avenue M studios in Brooklyn,” Cheryl Polski enthused. “You live there, right? So it would be an easy commute.”

Claudia allowed herself to feel marginally hopeful, trying to ignore Edith's disappointed voice in her head, accusing her of being a middlebrow. “I've got mad lunch-ordering skills,” she offered.

“This is more than ordering lunch,” Cheryl said. “You'd be handling script continuity. You know what that is, right?”

“You bet your bippie I do,” Claudia lied, holding the phone with her shoulder and pulled her panties on under her towel.
Script continuity?
Was that where you typed
“Stay tuned for more unlikely melodrama shot on video, brought to you by Ex-Lax”
at the bottom of each script? She figured she would fake it, as women had been doing for years.

“And you know the show, right?” Cheryl continued. Claudia, who still suffered from the mortifying sixth-grade memory of Edith discovering her horde of Harlequin Romances in a Buster Brown shoe box, did not. But she glanced over at Bronwyn's television, pledging silently that the free time she currently had on her hands now served a purpose. She could become more than fluent in
Hope Valley
. She could become the freakin'
mayor.
“I think I spent my entire sophomore year in high school in a lather over the Denise/Diane evil-twin story line,” Cheryl was saying. “It was Anne Heche's first TV role, you know.”

“Cool!” Claudia exclaimed, having never heard the name. She flipped through her wardrobe of thrift-store blouses, selecting a drapey, merlot-red polyester number with a long, pointed collar.

“This could be your big break,” Cheryl encouraged. “Who do you think hires writers on TV shows?
The executive producer.
Shelly Gerson hires you, you do a great job for her, and when it's time for a promotion, she puts you on the writing staff. If you look at the credits, a lot of the writers, actors, and directors on the show do other things, too.”

“Like sell Amway?” Claudia quipped. The job sounded almost too good, like a well-lit path straight out of Dodge, with groomed terrain designed for one foot in front of the other, and as such it threatened Claudia's entrenched anxiety and despair, forcing her to retaliate.

“Like get nominated for Tonys.”

“Really?” Claudia breathed, impressed and humbled, instantly picturing herself in a well-cut Calvin Klein tuxedo over a push-up bra, thrusting a cast-bronze statuette aloft. She was glad she'd stolen a ream of resumé paper from Georgica Films as one of her last hurrahs. She sternly reminded herself that under the circumstances, Edith's assured scorn was beside the point. She would update her resumé on Bronwyn's word processor when Bronwyn was at her job at the morning show, and draft a Pulitzer-worthy cover letter. She would fax it from the corner store instead of asking Bronwyn to fax it from work, which would require telling Bronwyn she was unemployed. Then: “I'm on it, Cheryl.”

“Good girl,” Cheryl praised.

 

Claudia and Phoebe hurried to the subway arm in arm. The possibility of
Hope Valley
felt good to Claudia as it began to sink in. She liked the idea that cool people worked on soap operas, and that they started there and went places. Going places, in fact, being more real to Claudia than starting. But the illuminated Citibank lobby on the corner of President Street, as it now appeared, threw a bright, threatening light across her path.

“I need cash,” Claudia admitted to Phoebe, pulling her sister from the sidewalk's steady bustle. She'd earned one hundred dollars a day at Georgica Films, but had never had an idea what this sum added up to over the course of a month, or how to make her earnings last for that long, let alone how to engineer things so that there'd be leftovers when the new month began.

“I've got some,” Phoebe offered, digging her rainbow Velcro wallet from her barrel-shaped knapsack fashioned from Tibetan saddle fabric.

Claudia was startled by the notion of Phoebe's solvency.

“And how's that exactly?”

“Babysitting.” Phoebe shrugged. Claudia could see that Phoebe's wallet was neatly organized, the bills smooth and facing the same direction.

“Whose babies?”

“They're
kids,
” Phoebe explained, reading Claudia's suspicion. “Friends of Edith's from temple. You don't know them. I can pay for stuff, you know. You've been paying for everything.”

Claudia looked at her younger sister's expression, guileless and steady as she offered the neat, small knot of ones.
“You have no idea,”
Claudia considered replying, before reminding herself that Phoebe wasn't good with sarcasm, nor was anything her fault.

“Take it,” Phoebe insisted. “It's eighteen bucks.”

“Uh, yeah. No way,” Claudia scoffed, swiping her bank card and pushing open the lobby door.

Claudia and Phoebe took their spot at the end of the line for the ATMs. There was an air of pink-cheeked festivity among the young couples en route to ecumenical church services with full choir and the potbellied husbands who'd been sent out for last-minute eggnog, rum, and tulips.

Claudia immediately spotted Garth Kahn a few customers ahead. Garth was still clamped to the puffy vinyl headphones he'd worn as an undergrad. His curly dark head grooved in time to whatever he was listening to, the cord disappearing into his messenger bag. The same shop-teacher eyeglasses. Everything about Garth was short and thick, including his fingers, the stubble along his jaw, and what looked like a fresh pair of brown suede Wallabees. In his giant silver parka he resembled a beetle of the Volkswagen variety.

Claudia and Garth had been at Columbia together, and now they had four-odd years of adult life between them. At the miserably humid, very end of last summer, when it felt like anybody Claudia had ever met was enjoying a Campari cocktail at one of the venerable beaches of the Eastern Seaboard while she trudged a vacant city piled with hot garbage, Claudia had gone on a single, cringe-worthy date with Garth. First running into Garth at Café Roma, bristling slightly at his explanation that Roma was “his,” when it had been hers all along and she couldn't remember ever having seen him there before, followed by the request for her phone number, a boldly presented invitation, Fela Kuti at the Prospect Park Bandshell, and Jamaican goat roti and sorrel drink ordered with an uncomfortable hint of swagger. Claudia had sported an unflattering vintage dress she'd bought on credit in a frenzy of eager preparations and never worn again.

But it was after smoking a joint with Garth that he'd rolled with a filter and tobacco, as he'd learned to do during his junior year in Barcelona, that Claudia had become fatally distracted by Garth's perspiration. Staring at the side of his round, beaming face, she marveled at the subjectivity of sweat. How was it that Ruben Hyacinth's was a jasmine nectar she wanted to lick, while Garth leaked bottled gravy on that hot summer night? The deal breaker, however, was when Garth rose up on the fleece blanket he'd pulled from his backpack, and, unable to convince Claudia to join him, gave his body to the music in twitchy ecstasy, just like a white-boy former Deadhead who'd taken an African dance class at the Y and was now practicing his moves as a nearby klatch of home-care aides, still in their floral scrubs and perforated white clogs from work, convulsed in laughter—all of which, Claudia had realized with horror, was in fact happening.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” Garth had said to her when the concert ended.

“Thanks,” Claudia mustered.

“Thanks?”
Garth repeated. “How'm I supposed to lean in for the kill after that?”

“How about not?” Claudia countered. “Does
not
work for you?”

“Wow.” Garth was hurt and impressed. “That shit's ice-cold.”

“I'm sorry,” Claudia said. “It's just—”

Garth raised a paw. “This is the thing,” he'd interrupted. “And I don't want you to say anything, or kiss me if you don't want to. But when I look at you, I picture our son's bar mitzvah. There. I said it.”

Claudia stared at Garth in disbelief. At that moment, her immediate and entire future had consisted of nothing more than the ceremonial burning of her tragic dress.

“The event itself, tasteful,” Garth continued. “The after-party, bumping. I'm talking Phish. Or a Phish cover band. Or whatever the kids are listening to in . . .” He paused to silently calculate. “ . . . in 2013. Because that's how this family parties.” He was still talking about the bar mitzvah.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Claudia intoned. With no idea what else to do, she reached out and squeezed Garth's shoulder, then turned and began, very slowly, to flee. She'd known it was rude.

“Don't walk away, Renee!
” Garth cried, quoting pop lyrics of a bygone era, and loudly. Claudia ignored him with remarkable ease as the nighttime crowd of concertgoers buoyed her along Prospect Park West.
“You won't see me follow you back home!”
Garth hollered after her. Claudia considered turning around to offer Garth a very human shrug that would communicate her heartfelt appreciation and regret. “I always thought that was a Steely Dan song, but it's not! It's Left Banke!” Garth continued at top volume. “Banke! With an
e!
”

But Claudia
did
just walk away.

Over the next few weeks, Garth left several messages on Claudia's answering machine, but she'd never gotten to the meat, erasing them as soon as she'd heard: “Hey. It's me.”

All of that had been last July.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—two hundred bucks. Claudia couldn't see the bills themselves, just the relaxed movement of Garth's shoulders as he caught the money and secured it with a clip that he jammed in the front pocket of his corduroys. Claudia worried that Garth would notice her and say hello. Simultaneously, she hoped that in the five months since they'd last seen each other he might have forgotten they'd ever met. Garth's eyes immediately lit on Claudia and brightened. He wasn't angry, just hopeful. He ambled over, bowlegged.

“Will you look who the cat drug in!” Garth bellowed, his headphones still on.

“Boy, that's loud,” said Phoebe.

Garth pushed his headphones up. They leaked music, making a halo of hip-hop around his head. “Wow. You are so gorgeous right now with your pink cheeks.” Claudia noticed Garth's eyes, Siberian husky bright and pale, and his chapped lips, shiny with goo. “You're like Sabrina from
Charlie's Angels
meets Rhoda,” he praised.

“No, I'm not,” said Claudia.

Garth gave Phoebe a polite, disinterested smile. “And who are
you?
”

“Phoebe,” said Phoebe.

“My sister,” Claudia explained, adding pointedly, “she's sixteen.”

“Cool.” But Garth clearly wasn't interested in Phoebe. Penetratingly, he admired Claudia. “So how are two sophisticated Jewesses celebrating Christmas Eve?”

“We're headed uptown to my roommate's parents' house,” Claudia told Garth.

“East or west?”

“Side?”

“What else?”

“West. Eighty-First and the Park.”

“Picturing that,” said Garth. “Me and my pop, we do the movies–Chinese food thing. In a strange twist, on Christmas Day we do movies and Vietnamese. You guys wanna come?” Garth scanned the sisters' faces hopefully. “The pork chops on Bayard Street are crazy good, and as we all know, Jews love swine.”

“I don't think so,” said Claudia.

“Don't think,
feel,
” Garth urged. “That's what went wrong last time.”

“Maybe next time.”

“But next time is a year from now.”

“By then we'll have so much to catch up on,” said Claudia.

Garth smiled and slid his earphones back onto his ears. “It was a misstep,” he remarked loudly, as other customers turned to look. “If I'd just taken you to
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
at Film Forum and tomato soup at Fanelli's, we'd be making out right now.” Garth saluted Phoebe and ambled from the bank.

“Oh my God,” Claudia remarked as the line moved forward. “Freak show.”

“But you guys sound like you're from the same planet,” Phoebe observed. She waved to Garth, who was now gesturing from the sidewalk.

Claudia glowered. “Don't encourage him.”

“I wasn't,” Phoebe said as the bustle of Seventh Avenue carried Garth away. “He seems pretty encouraged in general.”

By now it was Claudia's turn at the ATM. She turned to face her foe.

Claudia punched in her PIN number and angled her body while the money machine churned, not wanting Phoebe to see her balance. When the numbers appeared on the screen, Claudia's chest constricted.

“You sure you don't want a few bucks?” Phoebe asked.

“I'm good,” Claudia said lightly, withdrawing her last forty dollars.

Claudia and Phoebe hurried down the stairs of the Grand Army Plaza subway stop into a holiday block party. It was hard to believe that Christmas held the possibility of disappointment or loneliness, what with the chatter and laughter hanging low over the crowded subway platform like cigarette smoke at a zinc bar. A young guy from across the park, his knit cap housing his dreadlocks in a striped mound, serenaded the guests with reggae-infused carols on a battered acoustic guitar as his open case gathered an impressive pile of bills on a bed of coins.

Claudia observed the Park Slope families: Wall Street dads in good wool overcoats and leather gloves, mothers in fleece earmuffs and Wellies, children in ripped jeans and new sneakers. They resembled one another effortlessly and took their natural, mutual devotion completely for granted. Claudia wished that she and Phoebe could fasten themselves to one of these solid pods, like the segment on
Live at Five
where a plump Riverdale house cat had taken in an orphaned gorilla. They could even share a wallpapered bedroom under the eaves and do their own laundry and light housework.