Unlovely (11 page)

"That's what I said, but he
insisted. He took me to lunch and then to a really nice salon. They kept saying
how beautiful my hair was and asking if I was sure I wanted to do it. I wasn't,
but Jim stood there to give me courage while they cut off the first big
chunks."

"You see? That was really nice of
him."

"They saved my hair and they're
giving it to bald kids!"

And with that, Melanie melted down again
and started to sob. Claudia cooed a few comforting words, convinced her that
she would feel better in the morning after a good night's sleep, a good shampoo
and some styling, hung up the phone and went to bed. She slept well for the
first time in days.

Melanie did look entirely different the
next morning at school. Insecure about her altered appearance already, she also
had to contend with her classmates asking over and over why she would have done
such a thing. It was a rough day and Claudia felt bad for her friend.

Unquestionably things had gone well, but
not as well as Claudia had hoped. She was very pleased that she hadn't had to
go to the superintendent with the note, but she'd been thwarted in her hope
that
Fulko
would have a heart and just break it off
with Melanie, sparing her the shearing. He was such a disgusting person. As the
day went on and Claudia had to comfort Melanie about her hair in person and in
a flurry of missives passed in the hall, she found herself furious with him
again.

Entering the physics classroom that
afternoon, Claudia deposited a folded sheet of paper in the homework folder
along with all of the other students. Instead of the completed assignment,
though, Claudia's paper had one word written on it: "Coward."

The next day
Fulko
returned the paper to her as he passed back the corrected assignments. Beneath
the word "coward" he'd written, "Give me the note." Claudia
caught his eye as he stood at the board. She smiled and shook her head. That
note was tucked in a keepsake box at the bottom of her underwear drawer. That's
where it would stay.

"So, you feel guilty because you stole those
notes," Dr. Phillips said.

Claudia nodded her head, looking at the
scabs on her hands. The last of the bandages had been removed only the day
before. "Yes. As soon as I'd taken them I wished I hadn't."

Melanie sighed. "You could have
just talked to me if you were so concerned about me, Claudia. Especially after
you read the notes. I wish you'd said something. I could have explained."

"I know that now, Melanie, but at
the time you seemed so wrapped up in him. I wasn't thinking it through. I saw
the letters in his drawer and I grabbed them on impulse. And then I found out
about the baby. That was too huge to just bring up."

"You know, I suspected you knew
something. I remember you acting a little weird."

Claudia lifted her eyes from the carpet
to meet Melanie's. Melanie was still so beautiful; softer and rounder since
having the children, but disarmingly lovely. Claudia wondered briefly what good
deed her friend had done, what mysterious magnificence of the soul she
possessed, to merit such luck. It was unfair.

Melanie continued, "Maybe I should
have told you. Jim told me it was a private matter between us and to be honest,
I agreed with him. I thought about telling you despite what he said, but I was
embarrassed and scared. I thought you would think I was an idiot. And I didn't
know what I was going to do. I didn't want you to judge me and decide you
didn't want anything to do with me."

Claudia nodded once more. "I see."

"So Claudia," Dr. Phillips
interjected. "Do you hear what Melanie is telling you?"

"Yes."

"What is she saying?"

"She's saying that
Fulko
didn't want her to tell me that he got her
pregnant."

Dr. Phillips considered this. "Yes.
She did say that, in so many words. Anything else?"

"She thinks she should have told
me."

Dr. Phillips moved her gaze from Claudia
to Melanie in order to gauge her reaction, and then back again.

"Okay. So what you heard is that
Melanie regrets not telling you about her pregnancy." Dr. Phillips looked
to Melanie and asked, "Is that true?"

Melanie licked her lips and thought for
a moment, conscious of her friend's intent gaze and delicate psyche. Should she
tell the truth? Would it hurt Claudia's feelings? Was it okay to contradict
her?

"Well, to be honest, I don't think
that's exactly what I said. Or at least, that's not what I meant to say."
Claudia lifted her eyebrows, but Melanie hurried on. "I think I'd make the
same decision today, not to tell Claudia or my parents. I didn't want to tell
anyone about the baby. Sometimes I thought I would like to talk to Claudia so
that I could unburden myself, but I didn't, because I thought it was the wrong
thing to do."

Claudia sat up, startled. "Really?
The wrong thing to do?" she rejoined sharply. Some part of her cautioned
her not to continue, but she did anyway. "Don't you think I had a right to
know?"

"You had a right to know? About my
pregnancy? Why?"

"Well, don't you think you owed me?
I was your best friend."

Melanie glanced at the doctor, hoping
for some sort of help, but failed to find it in Dr. Phillips' impassive
expression.

"Well, no. I don't think I owed
you. I love you Claudia, of course, but it wasn't really your business.
Obviously, if the pregnancy had continued I would have talked to you about it,
but I miscarried. The whole thing was just painful and horrible."

Silence.

"It wasn't just that I didn't talk
to you – I didn't talk to anyone," Melanie added.

"You talked to your cousin,"
Claudia spat.

"I had to," Melanie countered defensively.
"She had a car. She could take me to the clinic."

"Hmm." Claudia looked out the
window at the silver maple tree, its leaves trembling. She concentrated on the
tree. You would think age would have brought Melanie maturity and perspective,
but it evidently hadn't.

Dr. Phillips waited for almost a full
minute before asking, "Are you okay to continue, Claudia?"

"Yes, of course."

"Do you want to share what you were
thinking just now?"

Claudia turned to Melanie. She didn't trust
herself to look in her eyes, so she stared at her forehead. "I was feeling
ashamed of myself. I was thinking how irrational I've been. I know I have
trouble with boundaries. I'm sorry."

"That's okay," Melanie
ventured tentatively, not sure she could be relieved yet. "I'm sorry the
incident caused you so much anxiety."

"Well, that's not your fault,
Melanie. Obviously." Claudia smiled. It made Melanie feel cold.

"Okay, good then," Dr. Philips
purred, pleased that Claudia had shown an awareness of her motivations, and
perhaps had demonstrated a bit of empathy as well. "Now, just to wrap
things up, what did you finally do with those notes? Or, more to the point, I
suppose, what did you do with what you learned from them?"

Claudia looked to the ceiling, searching
her memory, before shrugging. "Nothing, really. After I took them I just
put them in my drawer. I guess you could say I punished myself with them. The
letters were a daily reminder that I was a rotten friend, that I'd betrayed
Melanie's trust."

"Did you ever let the teacher know
you'd taken them?"

"No."

"Why didn't you throw them
away?"

"I didn't think it was right to
throw them away."

"Why?"

"They weren't mine, of
course."

Melanie, who had been listening
intently, interrupted the discussion between the doctor and her friend,
"Claudia, do you still have them?"

"What?"

"The notes. Do you still have
them?"

Claudia's gaze snapped back to Melanie.
"No, of course not. Why? Do you want them?"

The expression on Claudia's face was so
severe that Melanie felt afraid.

"Well, if you still had them
–" she began, but Claudia suddenly unleashed a violent torrent of tears.

"Listen, what do you want me to
say? I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Go ahead and hate me! I told you
you
would!"

Melanie looked to Dr. Phillips in panic,
but the doctor gestured to her to just allow Claudia to cry for a few minutes;
sometimes these outbursts were purgative and allowed the patient to find some
relief.

In this circumstance the tears didn't
abate with time, and Claudia began to show signs of hyperventilating. Dr.
Phillips gave Claudia a tablet with a glass of water, watched carefully to make
sure it was swallowed, and then walked over to the door to ask her secretary to
locate Louis. He arrived with a warmed cotton blanket to throw over Claudia's
shoulders, and then he helped the whimpering patient down the stairs and back
to her room. Claudia lay down in her narrow bed and slept deeply until
midnight, when she was given a small boxed lunch by the counselor on overnight
duty. After she finished eating, she was sent back to bed for the night.

The next morning she made a mental note
to clean out the memento box she kept in her closet.

Melanie and
Fulko
continued
to see each other for several more weeks, but the relationship was doomed. His
interest waned (maybe due to the change in Melanie's appearance, maybe because
he couldn't deal with Claudia holding the bag that held the cat), and Melanie
resented him every time she looked in the mirror. By summer break they were no
longer a couple. It all worked out for the best. At least that's what Claudia
told herself, but in the end, she felt more defeated than victorious.

First of all, she felt guilty. She'd
acted behind her friend's back, even though it was for Melanie's own good.
Melanie never did tell Claudia about the pregnancy, so the fact remained there
were still secrets she was reserving in her heart. She wasn't the totally open
friend that Claudia had thought her to be before the
Fulko
incident.

And ironically, now that Claudia had
taken the steps she had, she found herself less likely to trust other people.
If she herself, who had been reared to know right and wrong and to discern
ethical actions from unethical ones,
was able to manipulate
circumstances to her advantage – and to do it with Melanie, whom she loved more
than anyone in the world – what was to stop other, less moral people from doing
it as well, but with more selfish motives? Claudia was a good person, and she'd
been driven to deceit. What about all the other people out there, people who
didn't have her ethics? She began to look at the world with different eyes.

By their senior year in high school
Melanie's hair was growing back. It was beautiful again, but perhaps somewhat
less lustrous than it had been. She put her wild days behind her. She did date
a boy who worked at the movie theater, but the relationship was nothing serious
and ended naturally after just a couple of months.

Mr.
Fulko
was
caught with a sophomore in his car –
in flagrante delicto –
after the
homecoming game, and was let go by the school district within the week. Melanie
was devastated. This sophomore was very beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than
Melanie, but she was so stupid, and had such an awful personality, that Melanie
couldn't believe Jim would be involved with her. It was all very disappointing.

With less drama in her life, Claudia was
able to enjoy her classes more. Her favorite course, by far, was German.
Claudia loved it. She loved the declensions, the order,
the
sharp, guttural tones. She loved the history. And Claudia excelled in German.
As some had ears for music, she had an ear for language and she spoke with
quite a good accent for a high school student. Her dream was to be a college
professor in some nice little town, in charge of the whole German department.

Senior year proceeded, for the most part, uneventfully.
In May, awards were passed out to the top performers in the graduating class:
Claudia received a medal in German and history, and was acknowledged as a
National Merit semifinalist. She'd been accepted to the big state university to
which she'd aspired, and had received a scholarship that covered the bulk of
her tuition. Moreover, she was admitted to the honors program; she was going to
be housed in the honors dorm, which meant she'd have her own room and wouldn't
have to bother with a potentially irksome roommate. Her future looked as secure
as she could hope it to be.

Melanie decided to go to the local
college. It was smaller than the state university and less prestigious, but she
already had friends there and she looked forward to attending. Her cousin was
going to have to stay for at least another semester, probably two, to
accumulate all the credits she'd need to graduate, so they'd arranged to share
an apartment come fall.

So, for the first time since Green Apple
Academy, Claudia was going to be on her own without any ties to family or
friendship to anchor her. Sylvia worried – what if Claudia didn't make any
friends? What if she were lonely, and there was no one she could reach out to?
Tony wasn't worried at all: Claudia didn't want a lot of people around her. She
was an introvert. She would be just fine.