Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (8 page)

Will work for family.

Claudia and Phoebe emerged from the subway into Bronwyn's neighborhood, where progressive Brooks Brothers Jews, deeply empathetic WASPs, tenacious LaGuardia High School Puerto Ricans and wide-hipped Eileen Fisher divorcées were minted, to be turned out to the rest of the city. Snow was sketching paisley patterns on the shop awnings along Eighty-Sixth Street. “We need to bring them something,” Claudia said. They were about to duck into a Korean grocery when a lanky, lacquer-haired man with a leather trench coat appeared in their path.

“Excuse me.” His accent was fruity and Claudia immediately pegged it as a sham. “Hello.” He ducked his head slightly, as though doffing an invisible cap. “I'm Paolo Crespi.”

Claudia gripped Phoebe's arm, tightly. “Of course you are,” she said.

Paolo swung his droopy eyes between the two girls as snowflakes melted on his leather shoulders. “You are sisters?”

“No,” Claudia shot back. “I'm her trigger-happy bodyguard.”

“I wonder,” he continued, pointing his smile and his gaze at Phoebe, “if you model?”

“Wow, great line,” said Claudia. “You get that from the
Date Rapist's Handbook
?”

Paolo hesitated. “Because you have a great look.”

“Move along, Father Sarducci,” said Claudia, firmly steering Phoebe into the market and gearing herself up to get loud if he followed them in, which he did. Paolo brandished a business card in each of his long, outstretched hands, ineffectually insulated with perforated leather driving gloves. “Please. My card. Give me a call and we chat.” Claudia made direct eye contact with Paolo, memorizing his sallow face with its thickly lashed, deeply set eyes so she could select it from the inevitable lineup. She plucked a card from his hand—
IMAGE MODEL MANAGEMENT
—as did Phoebe, but Claudia pointedly tore hers in half and deposited the scraps in Paolo's gloved hand before he'd had time to retract it.

“Maybe not you,” Paolo said to Claudia. Phoebe, who was familiar with Claudia's occasional grocery-aisle smackdowns, slid Paolo's card into the pocket of her peacoat and hungrily eyed the cigarettes.

“What was that?” she asked Claudia rhetorically when Paolo had moved on.

“The shit that happens to you on a regular basis,” Claudia replied, piling a bunch of berried branches, a pot of lemon marmalade, and a box of Bahlsen Afrika cookies onto the checkout counter. She pulled the string shopping bag from her green vinyl purse as the storekeeper rung up her purchases. Claudia selected one of the two twenties from her wallet. Releasing the soft bill, she felt a pang, but was heartened by the crispness of the four singles returned to her as change.

 

The Tates lived in the Anselmo. The grand building had its broad shoulder to Central Park West and kept its face to the side street, in this way exemplifying a balance of prestige and humility.

“Oh no,” laughed Mr. Pettijohn when Claudia and Phoebe entered the lobby, “look who Santa brought me now.” The petite doorman came around from his desk and made his way across the marble checkerboard of the lobby in little dancing steps. Mr. Pettijohn's singsongy lilt of the islands seemed utterly sincere, not like he was hiding his Bushwick for the sake and comfort of his clientele. “I want to say you got bigger since the last time I seen you, but I know how the ladies are. You gonna get mad, right?”

Claudia handed Phoebe her bulging string bag and entered Mr. Pettijohn's familiar embrace.

Mr. Pettijohn was just Claudia's height, with a short, impeccably kept salt-and-pepper afro. With his bay rum cologne, corduroy trousers, and drugstore reading glasses on a chain, if Mr. Pettijohn wasn't hailing a taxi in the rain under a striped umbrella, or signing for another delivery from Gristedes, or monitoring the messy midnight comings and goings of the Anselmo's teenagers as they obliterated another winter break, he could have passed for a visiting humanities professor. He now held Claudia at arm's length. “You all grown now?” he asked with a rhetorical twinkle. “You got a job? You workin' hard? Or hardly workin'?” His friendly questions caused Claudia's skin to chill and prickle uncontrollably. She managed to nod and smile.

The elevator opened with a clatter, depositing Claudia and Phoebe in a wood-paneled corridor. Swathed in fresh pine garlands and festooned with plaid taffeta rosettes, the Tates' front door announced itself from the far end of the hall. The L.L. Bean boots and running shoes lined up neatly under long rows of enameled hooks from which all manner of foul-weather gear and faded Harvard sweatshirts hung suggested long walks over the heath, inclement weather be damned, decent sailing skills, and high SAT scores.

“I know,” Claudia remarked, as Phoebe absorbed the intimate sprawl. “It looks like Vermont exploded, right?”

Phoebe nodded at two decades' worth of law-firm-boondoggle golf umbrellas stuffed into a majolica stand. “At least we'll stay dry,” she noted.

Claudia rang the bell.

Paul and Annie Tate had bought their place in 1966, when the Upper West Side was still considered overly ethnic and dangerous. One of the first things they did was replace the shrieking buzzer with a proper bell. Its confident, brassy herald of the sisters' arrival now reverberated through the apartment, the sound snaking around many highly polished surfaces.

“Merry goddamned Christmas!” Bronwyn cried as the door flew open. Flushed with champagne, she stooped slightly in her towering heels to snatch Claudia into a skinny, fierce hug. “To say that the two of you are a sight for sore eyes would be the understatement of the millennium.”

“Exaggerate much?” Claudia grinned. Bronwyn grabbed Phoebe's wrist. In her stiletto sling backs she was just shy of the younger girl's considerable height.

“Why can't you be my sisters instead of mere
roommates?
” Bronwyn complained, pulling Phoebe into the circular foyer, already infused with the lively energy of the party.

“It's better this way,” Claudia countered. “If we were your sisters, you'd be complaining about us to somebody else.” As swingy Christmas carols played from hidden speakers, an eager young man approached Phoebe, his arms outstretched in a gesture she mistook for an invitation to dance.

“Maybe later,” Phoebe offered apologetically.

“He's asking for your coat,” Bronwyn explained, grabbing a pair of champagne flutes for her guests as Phoebe hesitated.

“
Give
it to him,” Claudia instructed firmly, holding on to her string bag full of offerings for the Tates and downing her champers like a shot. In the time it took Phoebe to struggle with the fan of cocktail napkins presented by another party helper, Claudia tossed back a second. The third glass Claudia was willing to nurse for the moment as, from her corner perch at the top of a wide set of steps, she surveyed the familiar sunken living room, dotted with clumps of chatting adults. Throughout the year, the Tates' home could always be counted on for whimsical seasonal decor, fresh flowers, thoughtfully selected ambient music, and a selection of stinky cheeses, but Annie Tate outdid herself at Christmas.

The towering tree, strung with cranberry ropes, emerged from a sea of wrapped gifts to scrape the ceiling. Bulging needlepoint stockings hung from the fireplace mantel, its hearth crackling. Claudia nodded to a miniature table, set near the tree with holly-printed linen and china, around which a pair of worn Steiff bears in matching Stewart-plaid vests and a Madame Alexander doll dressed in a form-fitting, fur-trimmed red ensemble enjoyed a tea party.

“So who all is here besides High-Priced Call Girl Claus and her gay best friends?” Claudia asked, enamored of the scene.

“Oh, Carter Kemp and the rest of Dad's boring-as-dirt associates from work that we might go to Odeon with later,” Bronwyn replied, indicating a group of ruddy young men in sports coats, clutching pilsners, as Annie's unruly older sister, Throaty Aunt Toni, held them prisoner. Aunt Toni's fuzzy curls, seasonal caftan, Frye boots, and childlessness bore a notable contrast to Annie's tidy presentation. “And Martha and her boyfriend, the couple most likely to be eaten by bears on the Inca trail.” Bronwyn gave a nod to her oldest sister, Martha Tate, a lean, deeply tanned young blond in a simple shift and bare legs, just back from her most recent Guatemalan research junket. Martha stood closely to an older man with a shaggy gray mane and matching crumb-catcher beard.

“Those two are
dating?
” Claudia marveled. “I thought he was her graduate thesis adviser or something.”

“He
was,
” Bronwyn replied. “And now he's her boyfriend. He's five years older than Daddy.”

Phoebe was incredulous. “Wait. Your
father?
”

“Ding ding ding,”
Bronwyn confirmed. “We call him Married Michael.”

“Do you think they'll ever get married?” Phoebe asked, unable to take her eyes off the unlikely couple. It was fascinating to see another woman of substance, besides her own mother, dating against type.

“No time soon,” Bronwyn guessed.

“Because he's too old?”

“Because he's too
married,
” Bronwyn explained. “Hence the name, hello. He and his wife have no kids, but they hyphenated their last names.
Curry-Baum.
How queer is that? They're like the John and Yoko of the orthopedic-sandal-and-safari-vest set. Except John never cheated on Yoko.” Here, Bronwyn paused, and frowned. “At least, I don't think he did.” She looked over to Claudia for confirmation. “Yoko wouldn't let him, right?”

“Whoa,” said Claudia. “That's cool with Annie and Paul? Their daughter
shtupping
Charles Darwin?”

“She's almost thirty years old,” Bronwyn observed. “What are they going to do?”

“Dock her allowance?” Claudia suggested, assuming correctly that Martha still received one.

“So where's his wife?” asked Phoebe.

“In remission.”

“Jesus!”
Claudia cried.

“In
what?
” Phoebe asked.

“Hey,” Bronwyn shrugged, effectively ending the debate.

Agnes Tate, the dark-haired, sharply drawn middle daughter, who'd been living at home, stormily, since bailing on her master's degree in European history last spring, was draped over the back of a wing chair. Tucked inside the chair, a slight young man curled up with a worn Chomsky anthology, his slim legs folded coltishly.

“I see Aggie's cut bangs,” Claudia observed. “They're very French.”

“She looks like an escapee from
Sweeney Todd,
” Bronwyn remarked.

“Who's the guy?” Claudia asked.

“That's Joel,” Bronwyn explained, settling into her role of docent. “I heard Aggie introduce him as her ‘partner,' which is hilarious, considering they're both living at home in separate states.”

“Claudia? Claudia Silver!” The trilling voice made a cheerful accusation of the girl's name. Bronwyn and Phoebe joined the crowd as Annie Tate, a spotless Christmas apron tied over her crisp Anne Fontaine blouse, emerged from the swinging, quilted double doors that led to the kitchen suite. By the fireplace, at the sound of her name, one of the associates turned expectantly, and Claudia caught his eye, realizing immediately that this was in fact her host, Paul Tate.

Boyish in his Levi's and loafers, with his monogrammed cuffs rolled above the elbow, Paul had been temporarily camouflaged by his younger guests. But now his retreating hairline, the laugh lines that crinkled his temples as he tucked his smile into the mouth of his beer bottle, and the heavy, five-figure wristwatch that glinted from his wrist as he raised his ropy hand in casual greeting gave him away.

Claudia had, of course, seen Paul Tate plenty over the years. With Bronwyn as her date, and feeling vaguely conspiratorial—as though they'd been playing hooky with their former T.A.—she'd enjoyed several more rounds of burgers and beers at the Corner Bistro since the miserable week of her college graduation. With the entire Tate household, including boyfriends and hangers-on, she'd attended elaborate meals at cavernous restaurants co-owned by Robert DeNiro, where Paul held court and did all the ordering. Claudia had watched Paul call for the check, tip the coat girl, and hail a taxi with a crisp arsenal of masculine gestures. She'd sat in the front passenger seats of various uptown-bound taxis while Bronwyn and her two parents occupied the backseat, and, drowsy and comfortable, had caught snippets of their familiar banter. She'd slept over and seen Paul and Annie head out to the park for a power walk in the morning, Annie in a coordinated tracksuit and visor, Paul in a faded and frayed sweatshirt from his varsity crew days.

But tonight, through Claudia's mud-splattered windshield, Paul looked different. Despite the twinkling lights, the sea of gifts, the houseful of guests, the swingy carols, the stinky cheese, and the undulating waves of chatter and laughter, he seemed to be maintaining an aura of cool, cordial remove. As though, quite like Claudia, he was
in
this living room, and yet, somehow, not quite
of
it. Had he always been this way? Simultaneously occupying the spotlight and the periphery, and she was just noticing it now? Or was this something new?

“Claudia,” Annie was saying. “How happy
happy
we all are to see you.” She pulled the girl in for a hug. “Merry, merry,
merry
Christmas, darling.” Claudia smelled Annie's Chanel No. 5 and felt the cool smoothness of her pearl earring against her cheek. Annie held Claudia at arm's length and scanned the girl's face intently. “Know that when I say ‘how are you,'” Annie continued, “you can say ‘just fine,' with no further questions asked. At least not on Christmas Eve.” It sounded to Claudia like a request to keep things light and breezy: she wondered how much Annie knew about her new role as Phoebe's illegal guardian. Annie lowered her voice. “So how are you, darling?” she asked.