Unlovely (3 page)

Whenever the children had to pair up,
Melanie would look at Claudia with silent resignation, and Claudia would walk
over to take Melanie's damp hand in her own. It was gross, but it was better
than having no one to hold hands with, and much better than having the teachers
assign someone to her. Right after partnering, Claudia would ask to go to the
bathroom so that she could wash her hands. If she didn't, her palms would
smell. She and Melanie didn't talk to each other much, but Claudia appreciated
her presence. She felt like Melanie needed her, and Claudia liked that.

Of all the things Claudia hated about daycare,
nap time was near the top of the list. Claudia hadn't taken a nap since she was
two, and she resented the 45 minutes she was required to lie on the cot (who
knows who'd lain there yesterday? Claudia was young, but she was fastidious)
and pretend to sleep while the teachers sat around a table, drank coffee and
ate cookies. One time, after being sent back for a nap just when she was about
to finish a puzzle that had challenged her happily for several minutes, she
called from her cot to Mrs. Humphrey in order to plead her case for early
release.

"I don't nap. I don't take naps.
I'm not sleepy."

"Well, this is nap time, when all
the children take a little rest. Why don't you just close your eyes and see if
you can sleep?"

"I know I won't be able to sleep.
There are too many people in here breathing."

Mrs. Humphrey fixed her with a stare and
said nothing. Claudia hated when she received no response but silence, so she
was forced to repeat herself.

"I don't nap. I can't sleep in the
middle of the day."

"Well, you'll have to try."

Suddenly, inspiration. "Why can't I
sit on the mats and look at books? I won't bother you or talk to you. You can
eat cookies. I won't ask for one. You can have the cookies all to
yourselves."

Mrs. Humphrey set her jaw.

"Now listen. You are going to close
your eyes, hush your mouth, and go to sleep, or you will be in trouble,
Claudia. You are disturbing the rest of the children. Did you notice how well
they're behaving? They're trying to do what we've asked them to do, even if they
don't like it. It is a routine here, and routines are important. Do you want me
to tell your mother you're being disruptive?"

No, that was one thing Claudia did not
want. The Green Apple Youth Academy was such a nightmare for her that the
thought of having to go home and discuss any part of it at length with her
parents filled her with dread. They would talk to her about the importance of
making friends and respecting grown-ups. Her mom would get worried, and her dad
would give her a disappointed look. Better to cooperate with the teachers and
get it over with.

She closed her eyes until Mrs. Humphrey
left, then sat up on her elbows to look around. More than half of the kids
appeared to be really asleep. Remarkable. Some stared at the ceiling. One kept
opening and closing his mouth rapidly like a fish, without making a sound. None
of them looked as outraged as she felt.

At 3:45 on the afternoon of the nap
incident, her mom finally came to pick her up.

"You're late," Claudia
grumbled. Lorenzo yelled goodbye; she ignored him.

"I'm not late," her mother
said. "I came as soon as I could."

Claudia knew better. She was late. She
was supposed to be there at 3:30, and Claudia had been sitting on the bench
near the door with her coat on for fifteen minutes, waiting. She was sweaty
under the coat and now the cold air of the autumn afternoon made her shiver.

Mrs. Milford settled Claudia in the car
and then ran around to the driver's seat. Claudia pressed her forehead against
the cold window on the rear passenger side, and then sat back to watch two
water droplets race to the bottom. The drop she was hoping would reach the
bottom first, did. That, at least, was a small satisfaction.

Once they got home, Claudia collapsed on
the couch, utterly exhausted from the efforts of her day at Green Apple, while
Sylvia threw together dinner, wondering if this whole idea of her teaching and
Claudia "mixing" was really a good one, since she and Claudia were so
disheartened as a result. At 5:30 Tony came home and heard Sylvia out as she offered
her mild complaints and presented her alternatives, but he remained firm in his
conviction that it was best for all involved for Claudia to continue to
socialize with other children. Besides, wasn't it nice for Sylvia to have her
own money to spend on little luxuries?

Sylvia really couldn't have cared less
about the money, but in the end she would always agree with her husband. He
seemed so sure about the best way to rear children. Her own mother thought Tony
was probably right, so who was Sylvia to fight it? After all, sometimes it took
a little discomfort for a person to grow and develop. Claudia might hate the
daycare, but she went and didn't complain too much about it. She was such a
delightful little girl – so smart! –
this
all would
pass as a disagreeable episode, like the colic, and be forgotten.

"Do you want to play Scrabble?" Maggie asked,
having already set up the board.

"Sure, I guess so." Claudia
sat down.

They played for a while, keeping score,
chatting about home.

Jeff came up quietly and watched over
Claudia's shoulder.

"How's it going?"

"Fine," Maggie answered.

"How about you, Claudia? Are you
doing okay?"

"Sure, why?"

"Well, you're losing. How does that
make you feel?"

Claudia couldn't figure out what answer he
was looking for. What would seem normal?

"I guess I'm disappointed, Jeff. I
would very much like to win this game of Scrabble."

"Do you feel panicked that you're
not winning? Any palpitations?"

"I think I'll pull through. No
heart attack yet."

"Good. Let me know if you want to
talk. You too, Maggie."

"You bet."

"Okay. Well. Carry on."

"See you," they both answered,
then returned to their game.

Claudia survived her tenure at Green Apple Youth Academy
and proceeded to Smith Street Elementary School. The transition from occasional
daycare to school went smoothly, and the academic assignments were easy enough:
identifying letters of the alphabet, coloring seasonal pictures, counting to
ten forward and backward. Claudia already knew how to read, so she sped through
her assignments and then was allowed to sit quietly with a book from the
shelves.

Claudia moved through the elementary
grades with few problems. Sometimes her marks for citizenship suffered, with
notes on her report card about how she refused to share, or how she murmured
audible complaints when asked to do something she considered a waste of time,
but her academics were beyond reproach. She even received good marks in gym,
although she despised it.

She made friends, but not many. This was
a heartache to her mother. Sylvia wanted badly for her daughter to be more
popular than she herself had been, so she urged Claudia to join the Brownies or
to sign up for dance classes at the YMCA. Claudia resolutely refused. At first
Sylvia feared that this was because Claudia was shy, but in time she began to
suspect that it had nothing to do with that. Claudia simply didn't like other
people very much.

"How can you be like this, Claudia?
Don't you want to have friends? Wouldn't it be fun to go to parties?"

"I don't need more friends. I have
a couple of friends. I'm happy the way things are."

"Claudia, you can't get through
life without getting along with other people."

"I can get along with them. I just don't
want to spend time with them."

Sylvia would fret, but what could she do
about it? And the friends Claudia did pick! The whole thing was odd. When she
was in first grade, Claudia's best friend in her class was a girl with serious
developmental difficulties whose parents wanted to mainstream her into the
neighborhood elementary school. She was nice enough, most of the time, but
slow, and her family was a certifiable mess. One of her older brothers was
disturbingly weird – effeminate and sarcastic. The father was some sort of
truck driver or something, rarely home, and the mother was a disaster whose
breath was a miasma of cigarettes, whiskey and Hall's cough drops. But Roxanne
was Claudia's friend from September of her first grade
grade
year through the first months of summer.

By second grade, Roxanne's parents had
determined the experiment wasn't working and pulled her out of Smith Street
Elementary. Claudia's friend that year was a little girl named Trudy, whose
parents were divorced, and whose mother was a bartender at the Holiday Inn.
Never mind that Sylvia's own husband was divorced (ancient history – he was a
baby when he wed – Brenda was a monster), Sylvia found the lack of a stable
family reason enough to discourage this friendship. She limited the number of
times she would allow Trudy over for dinner (although it was likely the only
good meal she would get; her mother probably fed her out of a can, like a
puppy), and refused to allow Claudia to spend the night at Trudy's (what if the
mother has boyfriends traipsing in and out?). To struggle against Claudia's
choice of girlfriend was useless, however. Claudia saw Trudy for hours every
day at school, and she had decided that they would be companions, so they were.
Period. At least until next term.

The only friend Claudia kept for more
than a year or two was Melanie Stephens, her companion from the Green Apple
Youth Academy. They didn't play together after school, but Claudia was inclined
to tolerate her, and even went trick-or-treating with her one Halloween.
Melanie still licked her hands, but as she got older she only did it in
high-pressure situations. Unfortunately, she was clumsy and uncoordinated;
physical education felt like one, long, high-pressure situation to her and she
was a nervous wreck from beginning to end. Melanie would spend the entire
period discreetly licking her hands, avoiding the other children as best she
could until it was time to partner. Then, out of old habit, she would reach for
Claudia's hand. It was thoroughly unpleasant to grasp Melanie's moist fingers,
but for whatever reason, Claudia had long ago resolved to overlook it. So, the
friendship endured.

"You know, I've always worried that
Claudia wasn't social enough, but maybe I've been looking at this wrong. Maybe
it's that Claudia feels sympathy for little lost lambs," Sylvia posited to
Tony one evening after their daughter was in bed. "Maybe she's more
sensitive to their needs than the other children are. She sees they're lonely,
and she reaches out to them. She seeks out people to help."

"Yes, I suppose that's
possible," Tony replied, turning the page of his newspaper. His wife was
barking up the wrong tree, of course. Claudia picked friends who were needy
because she enjoyed being the superior person in the relationship. It would be
nice to think his daughter was kind by nature, but, regrettably, it was far
more likely that she was insecure, and sought out friends who wouldn't be in
any position to judge her. There was no telling that to Sylvia, though. She
either wouldn't believe it, or she would worry herself sick over it.

"You really should talk to her,
Tony. She needs to know she isn't expected to nurse every bird with a broken
wing back to health. She has to look out for her own happiness and enjoyment,
don't you think?"

"I wouldn't worry about it, Sylvia.
These things have a way of working themselves out. Let her be."

"I would, Tony, I really would – I
know children have to have their own identities, of course I do – except I just
see her ending up lonely, like I was. I don't want that for her. She needs to
be with children who are as bright as she is, who share her interests and who
have stable, happy families like ours. She doesn't need to confront all the
rottenness in the world at her age."

"I hardly think that's what she's
doing, Sylvia."

"Well, you don't see things the way
I do. I spend a lot more time with her than you do, you know," Sylvia
added, hoping to provoke him. "Talk to her, Tony. Tell me you'll talk to
her."

"Of course I'll talk to her, Sylvia.
I love her very much, every bit as much as you do. But I'm not going to talk to
her about this. She's doing fine in school, she's not getting into any trouble,
and she seems pretty content with the way things are right now. Leave her
be."

And with that, the conversation was
over. Sylvia could see there was no persuading her husband to be as exercised
about the situation as she was. She sat on the couch distressed, picking apart
a sock she'd been knitting and emitting angry little puffs of air. Tony sat on
the other end of the couch, annoyed and tired. He put in long days at the
pharmacy, and didn't see much point in creating dramas; problems came readily
enough of their own accord.

Meanwhile, Claudia was fast asleep
upstairs, dreaming about flying over her house, over the school, over the ocean
and into space, oblivious to Sylvia's agonies over her daughter's social life
at Smith Street Elementary School. Claudia's own agonies wouldn't begin for
several years.