Read Online The Chameleon by Sugar Rautbord - Free Book Online Page B

mother and aunties’ anger at her for charging the Amelia Earhart case was still with her; having to return it had crushed her. All these months later, she still wasn't over it. So Claire was gleeful as she pulled back the white and gold tissue paper to reveal an Amelia Earhart traveling case, one that bore Amelia Earhart's autograph and the personal message inscribed especially for Claire. Wren had rescued the luggage tag and put it aside for her until the bad times eased up.
    “Oh Auntie Wren! You remembered! I think you are the loveliest person in the world!” She hugged the dear lady and smiled triumphantly at her mother over her aunties’ shoulders.
    Claire suddenly knew exactly what she was going to do to make sure they'd never have hard times again.
    “Here's to Wren for giving us a wonderful Christmas after all.” The Aunties raised their sherry glasses in a single three-armed salute.
    “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus and all the powers above, for looking out for us.” Wren bowed her head solemnly. They all lowered their eyes in prayer.
    “Yeah, and let's hear it for the Harrisons of Tuxedo Park!” Slim lifted her glass high again.
    “To the Harrisons!”
    Claire was perched on the enormous elk-horned hat rack in the Men's Shop like an owl. Her feet were demurely crossed at the ankles, her lace-scalloped socks turned down in a neat fold as she sat hidden in the branches of the elk horns hung with homburgs, two riding derbies, a trilby, several tweed caps, and a straw boater. The man she had been studying for three-quarters of an hour was directly beneath her. He was perfect, in her estimation. She wondered if she should ambush him or just seduce him. She had seen ambushes in the Hopalong Cassidy films and had heard all about romantic seductions from Auntie Slim. She sighed.
    What would Shirley Temple do? Claire pondered. The pint-sized actress who was four years younger than she had been in the store only last week. At seven, America's darling was well on her way to becoming the nation's top box-office star. Even though Shirley Temple had an officious phalanx around her, which included her mother, bodyguard, fan-mail secretary, personal hair curler, and store executives, she and Claire had managed to escape the adults long enough to slip their feet into the fluorescent X-ray machine in the Children's Shoe Shop on Four. There they had giggled and joked as they each took turns sticking their feet into the large wooden machine for determining shoe size and shape, and stared down at their skeletal bones as they wiggled their toes and watched their bones dance. It reminded her, Shirley told Claire, of her staircase number with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson in
The Little Colonel.
The girls wiggled and jiggled their toes until they were discovered by the anxious grown-ups and marched on toward the Doll Department, where even the little star was overwhelmed by the selection of dolls from all over the world.
    As Field's child-in-residence, Claire was acting as the store's special hostess to the miniature movie star for the day, a scheme cooked up by the store's publicity department. Later, as both girls gamely posed for photographers, each holding a Shirley Temple doll, a big seller for Field's, and the star's mother urging her to “sparkle, Shirley, sparkle,” Claire tried to sparkle, too. She thought how pretty Shirley was with her cheery round face. Was it any wonder that every man in her movies wanted to be her father or adopt her? Why, she could even melt the hearts of gangsters. She was always bringing couples together in her films so that they fell in love, eventually adopting the character Shirley played. She had brought Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard together in
Now and Forever,
and in her latest film,
Curly Top,
she played matchmaker to millionaire John Boles and Rochelle Hudson, Shirley's older sister in the movie. Every Shirley Temple movie had a happy ending.
    “How do you get everyone to fall in