Unlovely (36 page)

"Sorry," the cashier grumbled,
putting the bottles into separate paper bags before putting all three into one
large one. "I'll bet you're a lot of fun at a party."

"Cash," Claudia said, missing
his last remark. She set sufficient bills on the counter to cover the cost and
tax, then left the store without waiting for her change, even though she would
have gotten almost three dollars back.

That evening, after lights-out for the
girls, Claudia poured herself a glass of liquor and began to mix ingredients
for the cookies. She drank several more glasses of Schnapps as she worked in
her tiny kitchen. The cookies did not turn out at all well, nothing like the
pictures, but she assumed that she had achieved the spirit of the recipe and
was content to munch what she produced. She'd planned to drink coffee while she
ate the tea cakes, but she was much too tired to brew a pot by the time her
baking was done. She fell asleep on her couch that night, her kitchen a mess of
flour and powdered sugar. Cookie crumbs dusted her sweater, and dreams of Mark
Adams danced in her head.

"To be honest, I'm afraid to go. I think I'd
rather stay."

"That's not unusual. Lots of
residents get nervous about leaving," Mary Ann said. She was sitting next
to Claudia in the common area. "Are you all packed up?"

"Almost. Toiletries still need to
go in, of course."

Mary Ann looked Claudia over. She'd put
on a few pounds. She'd lost that hunted look she'd had when she was admitted.

"Do you feel like you have a lot of
work left to do?" Mary Ann asked.

"Of course. I know I've got a long
way to go."

Mary Ann nodded. It would have been
problematic if Claudia hadn't recognized it. "What scares you about
leaving?"

"I'm not sure how great I'm going
to deal with stress. I'm worried I'll lose my way again."

"Do you have a doctor to see when
you're back home?"

"Yes. Melanie helped find
one."

"Good," Mary Ann said.
"And Melanie will be nearby. You can count on her. You have a lot of
support."

"Absolutely, if things get bad
she'll be there for me," Claudia conceded. "Still, I'd rather not
lose my mind again."

"You didn't lose your mind,
Claudia. You just needed to get things back on track. Take your meds, check in
with your doctors and you'll be okay."

"Maybe," Claudia muttered.

Mary Ann was of two minds about Claudia.
She suspected that Claudia wasn't as transparent as she pretended to be, and
consequently, although she'd seen signs of recovery, she wasn't entirely
convinced that her patient's progress was genuine. "Is there something you
haven't addressed in your sessions here? Something you need to talk about?"

Claudia grunted. "I think you guys
have done everything except scoop my brain out and examine it under a
microscope. No, I'm covered."

"What about your issues with Mark?
Are you thinking about those?"

"Issues with Mark? What do you
mean?"

Mary Ann thought she detected a wariness
in Claudia's expression. "Well, your problems with Mark were the catalyst
to this whole episode, right?"

"I thought so at first, but now I'm
not so sure," She answered carefully, her face resuming its mask of
detachment. "I think I have a general difficulty with relationships of any
sort. It seems too easy to blame it all on what happened with Mark. It's much
more complex."

Noting the quizzical expression on Mary
Ann's face, she added, "Dr. Phillips helped me to recognize that."

The spring semester flew by. As usual, there were
oceans of papers to correct, rivers of tears over grades that seemed harsh or
unfair to distressed students, and naught but a trickle of pity for the
unfortunate girls who came to complain or beg for mercy. Although Claudia was
distracted by the developments in her personal life, she'd been teaching her
German courses for so long now that she ran on automatic and had no trouble
keeping up with her lesson plans. As for her Russian class – that she attacked
with new vigor (or new ferocity, depending upon one's perspective). After the
odd day of gaiety following her initial discoveries about Mark, Claudia
reverted to the martinet. Her students were strangely relieved that the change
in their teacher's demeanor had been an aberration, not a new pattern of
behavior. This was especially true of the girls who had been with her for
years. Fraulein Milford had a difficult personality, but it was a predictable
one. They preferred no surprises.

Summer arrived and the long, warm days were
unencumbered by deadlines and grades. Claudia stayed on campus for the break,
developing curricula with the other teachers in the foreign language
department. Although the Jameson students had gone home for summer vacation, a
number of camps were using the school's facilities so there were plenty of
young girls about. The campers were housed on the lower floors of Claudia's
building, and while they could be noisy, they were far enough away that the
disruption was minimal. Anyway, Claudia felt she had no cause to complain.
Their presence meant the dining hall remained open from June to August, so
thanks to them, she didn't have to prepare all her own meals.

Curriculum development brought in a nice
sum of extra money, but in fact required very little of her time, so Claudia
was free to pursue her personal interests. Among these was a course she devised
for herself in Russian literature. She began to read fiction for the first time
since graduate school. She had tasked herself to read what Mark would have read
so that they could share an intellectual life. She undertook some of the
less-popular works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Chekhov. She remembered
Mark enjoyed early twentieth century Russian literature as well, so she picked
up some Gorky and
Zamyatin
. She tried reading some of
the more obscure Silver Age writers – in English, of course – but finding them
impenetrable, could only credit herself for effort rather than accomplishment.
She read for hours without pleasure, not looking to derive anything from the
literature but access to Mark. As she read she imagined Mark sitting shoulder
to shoulder with her on her bed, reading with her. "He read these books;
he reacted to them; he would have been moved by this scene," she thought.
Her satisfaction from her studies came not from being moved or stimulated by
the literature, but from her belief that she was strengthening her intellectual
kinship with the man she loved.

Toward the end of June, Claudia allowed
herself to open another Internet link. She looked up the white pages and typed
in Mark's first and last name and his zip code, then clicked
"Locate." Within seconds a new page appeared with his address: 5472
Old Farmer Road. It sounded very wholesome and quaint. Claudia liked it.

To the right of Mark's name and address
were the words "Associated people." Beneath that, a name: Susan K.
Adams.

Susan
. This was bad.

Wait. Wait. Don't panic. Perhaps there
was an explanation.

What was the chance of Susan K. Adams
being Mark's mother, or perhaps his sister?

Did Mark even have a sister? It wasn't
unheard of that adult children live together. Could that be it? Summoning all
the powers of her remarkable memory, Claudia became convinced that yes, there
was a sister, but she couldn't remember her name. It could have been Susan.
Indeed, it could have been!

But of course it wasn't.

Claudia sighed heavily, sat back in her
chair and closed her eyes, letting her head slump forward to her breast in
profound disappointment. Why bother grasping at straws? The overwhelming odds
were that Susan Adams was Mark's wife.

For weeks Claudia had purposely avoided
pursuing her suspicion that Mark had married, to no end but to postpone the
inevitable discovery. Of course he would be married. Mark was good-looking and
successful. He would naturally be the object of a lot of feminine interest.
Nonetheless, Claudia had been hoping that the interest would not be
reciprocated, that he hadn't found anyone he liked as well as he'd liked her.

She knew that it was a long shot. After
all, they had been separated since college, and at some point he would think it
was time to move on. People probably encouraged him to date, even if he'd been
loath to do it. Few people had the constancy that Claudia had, the ability to
be loyal for years with just a few minor slips. It was disappointing, but
hardly surprising, that Mark didn't share that virtue.

Nonetheless it was incredibly painful to
read Susan's name. Claudia opened her eyes to stare at the screen of her
laptop, suddenly overwhelmed with depression. Who was this Susan? Where did
they meet? What made her so special that he would choose to be united to her
forever?

Claudia imagined that Susan was like any
other middle-class faculty wife: an attractive woman (or a formerly attractive
one), highlights in her hair, charm bracelets, white wine in hand and keys to
the Volvo in her leather carry-all. There had to be something to her, though.
Mark wouldn't just pick any old cow from the herd. He had better sense – better
taste! –
than
that.

Of course, maybe there really was
nothing special about her. Maybe she was just a sexy little piece. It certainly
wasn't unknown for a man to find a woman sexually appealing, and then happily
discover virtues in her that didn't exist. He convinces himself that she's a
marvel, even marries her, and then after the spark dies he's left with an
aging, graying, spreading, boring specimen of a wife.

Susan. Claudia wondered if she worked
outside the home. She probably had a job with few intellectual demands: a real
estate agent or a preschool teacher, perhaps. It was possible she was smart,
but was it probable? It was unlikely she was as smart as Claudia. She might be
well-schooled in housewifery, though. She might be one of those women who used
napkin rings when they set the dinner table every night and knew how to remove
carpet stains.

Then, a horrible thought: what if there
were children?

Claudia's heart sank. A wife was bad
enough, but her presence didn't necessarily mean that Claudia had been
forgotten. After all, people remain married to people whom they dislike or even
hate for years and do nothing about it. They could be married and still regret
the one that got away. A child was another thing altogether. Claudia's dad
might be able to forget he had a daughter while he was peeling off some
stranger's clothes, but Mark wasn't like her dad. He would be the sort of man
who would love his children beyond measure. If there were children, there would
be no question that Claudia had been permanently replaced in Mark's affections.

Claudia got up from her desk and dragged
herself to her bedroom, where she threw herself down on her bed. She felt more
empty and dejected than she had in years, and she wept, utterly humiliated.
Jilted.

All this time, the hours upon hours,
she'd devoted to Mark and his life – reading the books, baking the cookies,
drinking the Schnapps (one bottle seriously depleted already) –what was it for?
She'd told herself initially that it was pure curiosity. Later, she'd spun it
into a sort of unrequited romance, pledging to remain completely anonymous,
living solely for the joy of becoming reacquainted with the man she loved. But
of course she'd been deluding herself. All along she had been entertaining the
possibility of an actual reunion. She had been working and planning, preparing
herself. She had been painstakingly building a bridge back to Mark, and now
Susan K. Adams had destroyed it, just by existing.

Claudia lay face down on her bed,
absolutely still except for the occasional heave of her chest. The facts had
become starkly clear to her, the scales had fallen from her eyes. She was not
beloved. She was forgotten, completely and utterly forgotten. She was the
cast-off, and Susan was the victor. Susan had played her cards right, had done
the things she needed to do and said the things that Mark wanted to hear and as
a prize she'd received the golden ring on her finger and the right to wake up
next to Mark every morning. What was the magical thing that Susan had done so
right? Was it simply a matter of timing? That seemed too easy. How had she done
it? What was so special about this woman that Mark said, "I cannot live
without you as my wife?" He certainly hadn't felt that way about Claudia,
or they would be together today.

And if there were children, then all was
utterly lost.

Claudia cried until her tears were
spent, then rolled over and lay on her back, watching the light change on her
ceiling as the night swallowed the day. If she didn't have Mark, she didn't
have anything. She was back to where she started months ago. She was looking at
failure and emptiness, loneliness. She was a missing person, and no one was
looking for her.

Why even keep going? What was the point?
Living in a dorm forever, teaching the same subjects, students learning the
same words year after year then going on to live their lives, completely
forgetting her. She held no meaning for anyone, she was a bit player in an
episode in other people's lives. It was pointless. The whole thing was just
pointless.