Unlovely (31 page)

"No one has been here since Claudia
left," Mrs. Vineyard said. "We have respected her privacy."

"Thank you," Melanie answered.
"I'm sure she’ll appreciate that."

They climbed the stairs without speaking
to the third floor landing, where they turned down the hall.

"You know, Claudia has been an
exemplary instructor. We've all been so concerned about her health. She clearly
suffered some recent blow," Mrs. Vineyard chattered, taking the
opportunity to fish for information. There had been some tantalizing rumors
floating about. "The teachers in her department have been concerned about
her for months. Of course, we've agreed to keep her room reserved for her while
she receives the treatment she needs. You do think she'll be back, don't
you?"

Melanie said nothing, responding only
with a solemn smile and a nod.

"Some sort of neurological
problem?" Mrs. Vineyard persisted as they arrived at the rooms.
"Maybe gastrointestinal? She'd gotten so thin. Good prognosis, though,
from what I've heard."

"Yes," Melanie murmured,
turning the key in the lock. The assistant headmistress made to enter with her,
but after Melanie had poked her head in and done a quick assessment, she
thanked her companion and bade her goodbye.

"All right, as you wish," Mrs.
Vineyard said regretfully. "I'm happy to help. Many hands make light
work."

"Well, thank you, but I think I'll
do okay. My husband can help me if I get bogged down."

The administrator shrugged, then
reluctantly headed back to her office. Oh, well. Perhaps she could still get a
peek at whatever Melanie brought out of the residence; Mrs. Vineyard's office
had a window overlooking the parking lot.

Melanie tucked the key into her pocket
and walked over to the small sofa to consider the task ahead of her. She was
told she didn't have to pack everything up, just clothes and some essentials.
She could come back and get anything else Claudia needed later.

But looking around, Melanie realized
that packing was the least of it. Claudia's main living area was filthy. The
chairs were piled with old, unread newspapers in English and German. There were
drinking glasses, cups and plates on all of the dusty, print-smeared table
tops, some of them moldy or covered with a sort of crust. At the other end of
the couch was a plate with scraps of what appeared to have been toast. The
carpet hadn't been vacuumed for some time and was speckled with crumbs and
lint. Across the room, a laptop computer sat precariously on top of a pile of
notebooks. An empty Styrofoam box was next to them, and next to it, a glass
with a bright orange lip print. The curtains were closed, and the room had a
curious sour odor, some combination of dander and perspiration and wool. It was
the smell of an old, damp sweater.

Melanie walked over to the kitchenette.
The sink was full of dishes. There was a sack of broken glass on the floor near
the door. The garbage can was full, and there were bags of garbage, also
malodorous, sitting next to it. For some reason, Claudia had neglected to use
the trash chute down the hall. Four empty bottles of peppermint Schnapps stood
in a row near the trash bags; one half-empty bottle of peach Schnapps sat on
the tiny breakfast table. The floor was dirty with crumbs and spills. Melanie
opened the refrigerator. There was nothing in there but half a loaf of bread,
some jam, ketchup packets, some dried-up
french
fries
in another Styrofoam container and a quart of milk a month past expiration. The
counter had three teabags stuck to it, and the stains of many others that had
eventually found their way into the garbage formed a mosaic pattern on the
Formica.

Melanie entered the bedroom to find
Claudia had been sleeping on a bare mattress with a quilt thrown over it; the
sheets, which appeared to be clean, were rolled in a ball near the foot of the
bed, as though she'd never gotten around to putting them on. Dirty laundry was
piled in the corner; it seemed clean laundry was, too. Everything would have to
be washed. The closet wasn't as bad as much of the place; it was mostly in
order, except for a few items tossed on the floor.

The bathroom was a disaster. It didn't
look like the tub had been scrubbed for at least a couple of months. There were
hot rollers kicked into the corners, while their heating tray was perched
precariously on the back of the toilet. Some sort of gooey substance had
congealed on the floor near the sink – shampoo? The sink itself was full of
hair. One towel had been flung over the shower rod to dry, others were
mouldering
on the floor.

Poor Claudia. How could no one have
noticed how sick she was?

Melanie headed back down to the minivan,
locking the door behind her. Scott was sitting with the baby atop a blanket on
the grass nearby.

"So, what's it look like?"

"It's pretty bad. Nothing like the
Claudia I know. Let me nurse Michael first, and then you can take him into town
for an hour or two while I start cleaning up. We can't have him crawling around
in there yet."

"Do you have everything you
need?"

"She's got cleaning stuff under the
sink, she just hasn't used it. They told me there's a vacuum in the trash room.
It'll have to do. We'll throw her clothes in garbage bags to wash them at home.
Would you pull the bucket and rags from the back of the van? I'll give you the
key and you can take them up while I'm nursing."

Scott stood up, gave Michael to Melanie
and received the key in exchange, and headed to the van to fulfill his
assignment. Melanie sat on the blanket and hugged her baby to her breast.

Claudia spent the evening in her rooms, cleaning
furiously, considering the options available to her since her confrontation
with Peter in the afternoon. As she poured bleach in the sink and scoured,
breathing through her mouth so as not to burn her nostrils, she entertained the
idea of fleeing Jameson to start fresh somewhere new. She was wounded and
humiliated. She'd exposed her heart and Peter had used her cruelly. The halls
of Jameson were full of bitter memories.

After a couple of hours of deliberation in
a state of high emotion and high activity, followed by several hours of
restorative sleep, she decided against leaving. Why should she leave? She'd
done nothing wrong, after all. Why should the victim be forced away? Besides,
she had no other job or prospects elsewhere. She had no place to go.

Although Claudia dreaded the possibility
of awkward encounters with her ex, there were, in fact, few occasions when they
crossed one another's path. From time to time she might see Peter in the dining
hall or at a faculty event, but Claudia made a point of remaining as far from
him as possible. Social discomfort was successfully averted. Personal anguish,
however, was not.

After she and Peter had decisively
called it quits, after the initial flush of adrenalin had subsided, Claudia
felt the energy drain from her like the helium from a balloon. She was
completely exhausted, and no amount of caffeine could spark her or sleep
restore her. It was all she could do to drag herself out of bed in the morning
and push through the day. Nothing gave her pleasure: not her favorite novel,
not her favorite tea, not music. She felt as if she'd lost a dimension. Her
classes continued much as usual because she poured her meager emotional and
physical reserves into them, but everything else suffered. She stopped
participating in the Reader's Theater and even missed church services. This
lethargy lasted for about a month.

Gradually, the state of total exhaustion
dissipated like a heavy fog lifts with the sun. One morning the shrill of the
alarm clock penetrated her sleep and she woke up fully, not feeling drunk or
cotton-brained. She opened up
Der Spiegel
at breakfast and read an
article with interest. She laughed at an anecdote related in the faculty
lounge. She was back and functional again.

But with the return of energy came the
reemergence of the creeping darkness and anxiety. It started with such little
things – stomach cramps in the morning before classes began, a bad dream now
and then – that Claudia could pretend it was nothing serious. Nonetheless, the
discomforts had to be accommodated. During the period of smothering lethargy
she had frequently fallen asleep fully clothed; now she found all sorts of busy
work to occupy her evenings so she could avoid her bed and the inevitable nightmares.
And then in the morning, the anxiety rolled over her in waves. She never left
her rooms without anti-diarrheal tablets in her pocket.

If she had to choose between the
mysterious exhaustion and the reemergence of her old, familiar anxiety, Claudia
would choose the devil she knew. It wasn't an ideal trade-off, but the
judicious use of Imodium and Benadryl tablets meant she could control the
effects of the nervousness until she could find a way to defeat it. The
exhaustion had kept her paralyzed. Now she could concentrate on living again
instead of simply longing for her pillow.

Another year came and went; more young
girls enrolled in Jameson as seventh-graders, more young women left eager for
the future and excited to begin college. Claudia continued to teach many of
them German during their tenure at Jameson, and now she taught Russian as well.
She was a little rusty with Russian at first, but after a refresher course at
the local community college, she regained sufficient fluency to offer two years
of elementary Russian.

Roughly eighteen months after the
disastrous doughnut shop encounter, Mrs. Tomlinson passed away. The news spread
swiftly around campus and there was a great outpouring of support for Peter.
Her death was a blow to the community; Mrs. Tomlinson had been a force in
alumnae fund-raising, as well as a much-beloved character in the hallways. As
the headmistress intoned solemnly at a faculty meeting, she would be sorely
missed by everyone who loved the school.

Except, of course, for Claudia, who
wouldn't miss her a bit. Claudia had to give her respect for her longevity,
though: Mrs. Tomlinson had hung on a lot longer than Claudia had thought she
would. Lord only knew what her mental state was when she finally shrugged off
this mortal coil.

Shortly after the funeral, Peter left
Jameson to take a position at his own
alma mater
. Within a year, he was
engaged to an algebra teacher there, a woman the same age as he, divorced with
three children. They were married the following summer.

Claudia wasn't at all surprised that
events with Peter transpired as they had: he was a mama's boy, after all, and
he only felt free to marry after Mrs. Tomlinson was dead. His wife was probably
a younger version of his mother. Many members of the Jameson faculty were
invited to the wedding and subsequent reception; Claudia, naturally, had not
been. Of course she wouldn't have gone anyway. Seeing Peter happy when her own
plans were frustrated was not her idea of a good time.

She herself had gone on a few dates
since the disaster with Peter. Although Peter, with his troubling
mother-fixation, had been the wrong star upon which to hitch her wagon, it
couldn't be denied that the very process of courtship seemed to have cleared
the storms in her brain and eased her anxiety. It had given her purpose again,
a goal. It was eminently reasonable: finding a mate was, after all, a
biological imperative, and an imperative could only be ignored so long before
there were consequences. And so, despite years of practical misanthropy,
Claudia came to accept that she was hard-wired for companionship. The problem
lay in finding a suitable man.

Not knowing where else to turn, she
asked her friend from the Latin Reader's Theater to look around for her. It
turned out that the brother of the lead soprano in the church choir was
interested in being set up, and so a date was arranged at an Italian restaurant
in town. Claudia was given only the barest details about her hopeful beau: his
name was Regis, he had gone to excellent schools, and he was working in upper
management at a real estate development firm.

Claudia's high hopes for the evening
were dashed the moment Regis stood up from the table to greet her. Regis turned
out to be a man in miniature, diminutive and fragile, (except for his head,
which was disproportionately large) and much shorter than Claudia. His hands
were so delicate that when their steaks arrived she found herself tempted to
cut his meat for him. Further to his detriment, he was well into his fifties.
Of course Peter had been somewhat older than Claudia as well, but the
difference between forty and fifty was very pronounced in this case: Regis
reeked of moth balls and
VapoRub
, if not literally,
then figuratively. It was not a love connection.

Not fully abandoning hope of a set-up
from friends, but impatient to get things moving along, Claudia took matters
into her own hands. She went to places where attractive prospects would
congregate. She joined two book clubs at the local library and subscribed to a
lecture series on Etruscan art. She had no interest in the subject, but she
kept her eyes sharp for an eligible member of the audience. The lectures were a
total waste of time; most people sat down, listened, and left. A few stayed for
the cookie and tea receptions at the end, but generally these were women, very
old men, or men who appeared to be homeless. Similarly, the book clubs were a
disappointment, again dominated by women. The only men who came were
beleaguered husbands and boyfriends.