Unlovely (35 page)

The girls closed their textbooks and
looked at Claudia expectantly. All of a sudden, Claudia realized she hadn't
planned a thing to say.

"Language study is an intense
experience," she began, staring at her desk blotter, organizing her
thoughts. "It involves not just memorizing vocabulary lists and grammar
forms, but also trying to understand the heart of a people that is very
different from ours. Now, of course there are languages and cultures much
further removed from our own than Russian – just think of the bush people in
the deserts, for instance, or even some far Eastern cultures, those are quite
odd – but the Russian psyche is nonetheless different enough from ours to
provoke some fascination."

Claudia's students stared at her,
perplexed.
Psyche
? This was a new one. Claudia
Antonova
had taught them Russian conventions having to do with greetings and partings,
had instructed them on how to hold one's hands when dining with a Russian,
things of that nature, but
psyche
was a word that sounded more foreign
from their teacher's lips then anything they'd heard in years of study with
her. A couple of girls who had attended her classes since seventh grade began
to wonder if she were ill, or if perhaps she'd suffered a blow to the head.

Claudia was still floundering, not sure
how to get the discussion where she wanted it to go. "So, in that spirit
of understanding, I guess I'd like to know what drew each of you to study
Russian. In that way, perhaps, we can spend some time focusing on things that
interest you particularly, to make this course more valuable to you not just
academically, but perhaps personally as well."

Claudia wasn't sure that last part made
any sense at all, but at least she'd thrown the ball in their court.

The girls shifted in their seats, no one
volunteering anything. Finally, one of the seniors spoke up. "My parents
thought it would look good on my transcript." A couple of the other girls
nodded and murmured that their motives were similar.

A tiny eleventh-grader in the back row
who consistently received perfect scores on her exams said, "I read
Fathers
and Sons
last year and I really liked it. I thought it would be fun to try
to learn a little Russian."

Claudia waited for others to add
something to the discussion, but that was it. No one offered any other reasons
for being there. What now?

"Okay. Well. It is fun, isn't it?
And it is impressive on your resume, because it at least has the reputation of
being very difficult, although as you all know, consistent hard work makes
almost any task achievable if we set our minds to it. Do any of you ever plan
to go to Russia someday?"

A couple of hands went up tentatively;
Claudia nodded encouragingly.

"It is one of my sorrows that I
never went to the Soviet Union as a college student. I did go to Germany, as
many of you know from the stories I tell in my other classes, but I never made
it to Russia. I wish I had." Here it was, her chance to bring it around to
the right subject. "I did have a dear, dear friend, a boyfriend in fact,
who went. His name was Mark Adams. No, let me correct that, his name
is
Mark
Adams, he's very much alive." Claudia giggled.

At this, a couple of the girls perked
up, although most appeared to be daydreaming and a couple of others looked
barely awake. Those who perked up and were paying attention were thinking some
variation of the following: Claudia
Antonova
had a
boyfriend? Claudia
Antonova
was young once? Claudia
Antonova
is a woman?

Claudia sensed she'd gotten the
attention of her audience. "Mark is brilliant. He distinguished himself at
the university. He's a professor at a very good college in Pennsylvania, one
you should look into attending if you'd like to pursue Russian after you
graduate from Jameson. You can talk to me about it sometime after class if
you'd like. I'd be happy to write any of you a recommendation. Well, at least
most of you.

"Anyway, our relationship had to
end when he moved to Russia. The distance was too great to overcome. I never
saw him again, so I was never able to sit down and talk with him about his
impressions of his time there. But his letters to me indicated that it was a
fascinating country. Quite different from what he'd imagined from reading text
books and seeing movies, but utterly fascinating. If I recall correctly, there
was quite a lot of alcohol consumption. Well, I'm sure that comes as no
surprise, given the reputation of the place, right? As well, I remember him
going on at some length about how difficult it was to adjust to the
weather."

The girls stared stupefied at Claudia
Antonova
as she spoke, occasionally stumbling over words,
her tiny eyes bright and darting around the room. She appeared to believe that
she was sharing quite original details with them, things they couldn't have
imagined about Russia. It was a nice break from the usual grind of Russian
studies, but disconcerting.

Claudia continued, " . . . and
although he'd gone to Moscow to do research, in fact he was thwarted initially.
It proved very difficult, because access to the libraries that housed the
materials he needed was limited. Of course, he found a way to do what he needed
to do . . ."

After about five minutes, Claudia paused
to take a good look at her students' faces. Some girls were confused, others
were not focused on her at all. She didn't blame them; they were children. How
could they understand? Claudia sensed she was getting a little over-excited,
and suspected any lecture she came up with would be at best inadequate, so she
gave the girls some free time to catch up on their work. Meanwhile, she sat at
the desk, humming quietly and pretending to correct the homework her last
period students had submitted.

Over the course of the next week and a half, Claudia
gave herself permission to research Mark through two more links. To make the
experience more meaningful, she kept a diary next to her computer in which she
noted the Internet address of the website to which she was directed, and then
write anything that especially struck her about what she'd read.

One of the two links yielded little that
was revelatory. Mark was listed as one of a number of people participating in a
town hall meeting addressing concerns with mail delivery; apparently, Mark
lived back in the woods somewhere, and he and other rural denizens were being
asked to pick up their mail at a post office box rather than have it delivered
to their homes. Mark wasn't directly quoted. The article said he was one of a
group of citizens requesting continued home delivery. Claudia wondered if Mark
lived beyond the town limits because he liked nature, or because he couldn't afford
to live within them. It must be his love of nature. She couldn't imagine Mark
impoverished. Professors make good salaries.

The second link directed Claudia to an
article in Mark's town paper about a language department Christmas party. All
of the foreign language clubs sang Christmas carols, and a small buffet was set
up with cookies and cakes. There was an accompanying picture of a group of
young men and women, mouths open in song, dressed in sweaters and jeans, wool
hats and mittens; one of the men was holding sleigh bells on a leather strap,
one of the women was playing a recorder. The caption said it was the French
Club. Claudia stared at their faces. Some were looking at the camera, one
fellow had his eyes closed,
most
were looking,
presumably, at their audience. She opened her diary and wrote:

"Imagine if the girl in the
fisherman's sweater, second from the left, was looking at Mark as she was
singing, or even if she glanced at him just for a second, just as this picture
was taken. If I had the actual photo, I might even be able to see him reflected
in her eyes. I'm jealous of everyone in this picture. They were in the room
with Mark. They breathed the same air he did. They could see him walking
around, maybe shake hands with him or exchange a few words. I wonder if
Christmas makes him think of me."

Claudia read over what she'd written in
her book. It sounded so saccharin, she hated it. The words had flowed onto the
paper like poetry, but when she read it over, the passage seemed embarrassingly
juvenile. She almost ripped the page out of the book, but then she decided not
to. This book was a place for her to be honest. There was no one in this whole
world who understood Claudia, her relationships or her personal history, not
truly. She had only herself to rely upon for encouragement and even, bizarrely,
feedback on her thoughts.

Claudia returned to her computer screen
and read the caption under a picture of the laden buffet table.

"Among the many delicious treats
available for guests were
Belgi
galettes
(French), Italian almond cookies,
pffefernusse
cookies (German), and Russian tea cakes.
Tea and coffee were served as well."

Claudia stared at the screen and
thought. Mark would have lingered over that buffet. He may have nibbled
everything there, but he most certainly would have eaten some tea cakes. Either
he'd baked and brought those cookies himself, or one of his students had made
them for the event.

She did a quick search and found a
recipe for tea cakes. It didn't look beyond her rudimentary skills. Tomorrow
was Saturday; she would go grocery shopping, buy the ingredients, and then
spend the evening baking. Tomorrow night she would eat tea cakes and she would
prepare her coffee the way Mark liked his: double cream, no sugar. She would
taste the same things Mark did that evening (yes, this was spring and the party
had occurred months ago, but time was the same as distance – an abstraction).
Claudia toyed with the idea of making cookie-baking part of her Russian
curriculum for the next week, killing two birds with one stone, but then
decided against it. This was something for her to enjoy with Mark in privacy.
She didn't want to share it with anyone.

The next afternoon Claudia went into town
to purchase eggs, flour, powdered sugar and nuts for the cookie recipe. She
loaded the bags into her car and was shutting the trunk, when she happened to
look up and spot the liquor store across the parking lot.

Peppermint Schnapps. That was exactly what
her party required.

Claudia had never been inside a liquor
store before except once, when her mother had needed a bottle of wine for a
dinner party and sent her out at the last minute to buy it. Claudia didn't like
liquor stores. They seemed to her the kind of places where sad, lonely people
with relationship or money problems congregated. Nonetheless, if she were going
to do this right, she had to buy some peppermint Schnapps.

She entered the shop, the bell above the
door alerting the staff to her presence. It was mortifying. Claudia didn't want
people looking up and seeing her, imagining things about her, believing her to
be the kind of person who haunted places like this. There was a bored-looking,
middle-aged man behind the counter, reading a newspaper laid out in front of
him and digging into his ear with his right index finger. He glanced up at the
sound of the bell, then back down at the paper without a change of expression.
Claudia saw no one else.

She stood frozen on the entrance mat,
dazzled by all the bottles. Who knew there were this many ways to get drunk?
She didn't know where to begin looking, besides just walking up and down the
aisles until she located the Schnapps section. It would mean carefully
reviewing all the labels, because she didn't remember what the bottle looked
like.

"Excuse me," Claudia
approached the register and spoke in her most diffident voice. "I'm
attending a gathering and I was asked to bring a bottle of peppermint Schnapps.
I'm afraid I've never been in your establishment before. Would you please
direct me to where I might find it?"

The clerk regarded her shrewdly. Another
alcoholic. "Fourth row back on the right."

"Thank you so much. I really don't
have time to browse, you see."

Claudia charged with nervous, deliberate
steps toward the rear of the store, turned into the fourth row and quickly
located her liquor. She saw a bottle of peach Schnapps nearby. In truth, that
appealed to her more, but peppermint was the drink of necessity, so she picked
up a bottle. She looked at it, felt its heft in her hands, and realized that
she would probably need another bottle within a couple of months, even if she
sipped it slowly in the sort of ritualistic fashion she intended. She would
rather not return here any time soon if she could help it. Gathering two more
bottles, she headed back to the register.

The cashier looked up from his paper as
Claudia placed three bottles of Schnapps on the counter. Three bottles, not
just one. He let out a low whistle. "Must be some gathering. Lots of
people coming?"

"We're expecting a crowd,"
Claudia answered, extracting her wallet from her purse.

"We sell more of this in the
winter, not so much this time of year. What kind of a party are you going
to?"

The clerk's small talk was getting on
Claudia's nerves. "Would you be so kind as to ring up my purchase? I'm
afraid I don't see how it will help our transaction along to stand here
chatting about my personal life."