Unlovely (25 page)

One lovely afternoon in late March, when the air was
warming and one could almost believe that the winter-weary denizens of Jameson
might enjoy an early spring, Claudia dropped by the chemistry lab to ask Peter
to open a window in her classroom that refused to budge. She'd done some
thinking about the slow progress of their relationship and had concluded that
the time had come to get Peter out of his territory and into hers.

Claudia popped into the restroom for one
last quick check of her face and hair. She'd bought a new lipstick over the
weekend and was about to debut it. Coral. It was a little brighter than she usually
wore, and it made her look vivacious. She tucked in her blouse, tightened her
trouser belt one more hole, and emerged ready to see Peter. This was going to
be the day to change things up. This was going to be the day to make things
happen.

Claudia arrived at the lab and had just
opened her mouth to offer a cheery greeting, when she was stopped dead in the
doorway.

Instead of discovering Peter alone at
his desk or, as sometimes happened, counseling one of his baffled students, she
found him happily engaged in conversation with another woman. Peter was sitting
on the edge of his desk, facing an attractive blond seated on the stool across
from him. Peter and she were so involved in whatever discussion they'd been
having that they didn't even notice the newcomer standing on the threshold.

After a stunned and confused moment,
Claudia identified the interloper as Vanessa Foster. Vanessa was new to
Jameson, a temporary English department appointee who had taken over the
classes of an ailing faculty member. Only twenty-three and recently graduated
from a prestigious woman's college, she had just returned from a post-graduate
semester in Reading. She was full of stories of life in England and college
life in general, and she'd immediately created a sensation among the students.
Vanessa's youth and enthusiasm in the classroom were so markedly different from
the maturity and grim demeanor of her predecessor that she was instantly
well-liked. General consensus held that she was adorable.

Vanessa was a compact person: small,
well-proportioned, and athletic. Claudia was familiar with her type: she was
the girl in your neighborhood who could do cartwheels all the way down her
lawn, the cheerleader on top of the human pyramid who leaps down in a
somersault with a twist and lands on her toes. She was always expensively,
fashionably dressed, (probably due to a generous clothing allowance from her
parents, Claudia suspected), and her teeth were as white as a toddler's. Her
sharp blond bob highlighted the delicate features of a face that glowed with
good health. She was difficult for a normal person to like.

Claudia had spoken briefly with Vanessa
a couple of weeks earlier when the English department chairman introduced the
new teacher to all of the regulars in the second floor faculty lounge, and had
immediately had a bad feeling about her. Usually Claudia was relatively
confident about her own appearance – she took pains to be neat in her dress –
but something about Vanessa made her feel as if her arms and legs were far too
long, made her feel as if her face were a potato with a nose stuck on it.
Around Vanessa she felt ungainly.

Vanessa was perky and outgoing. That was
without dispute. But even at their first acquaintance Claudia had thought the
new instructor's conversation revealed a woman who was, for lack of a better
word,
unexceptional.
Vanessa Foster was a small package with a lot of
flash and little staying power. Claudia anticipated that once the newness of
this woman was spent, public interest would move on. She certainly couldn't
imagine Vanessa being offered the teaching position permanently should the
original instructor fail to return.

So, with these impressions of Vanessa
Foster in mind, Claudia was nonplussed to find Peter speaking with her so
animatedly. She was even more distressed to see Vanessa rest her hand briefly
on Peter's forearm while they laughed over what appeared to be a private joke.

For a few moments Claudia stood in the
doorway watching, clenching and unclenching her fists in frustration and anxiety.
Vanessa's eyes never left Peter's face, nor his, Vanessa's. They were speaking
too quietly for Claudia to catch the words. Neither had an inkling that she was
standing there. Claudia's stomach turned over. She suddenly felt very old and
sad. She turned on her heel without announcing herself, and walked slowly back
to her classroom to gather the day's exam papers.

Walking the short distance back to her rooms over the
narrow brick pathway, Claudia was oblivious to a light spring rain that had
begun to fall, dampening her clothes and frizzing her hair. The initial shock
of discovery wearing off, she began to assess the scene she had just witnessed
in order to calculate the possible damage Vanessa Foster might do. It was
worrisome.

Claudia and Peter had been laying the
groundwork for a relationship for months now, yet there he was with another
woman. Vanessa was obviously too young for him, and not at all his type, but
she might turn his head. Men were naïve creatures, vulnerable to a pretty face.
Sometimes they worked counter to their own self-interest, preferring novelty to
security, sizzle to substance.

Peter was Claudia's territory. Claudia
had thought that was well-established. It certainly had been until recently. No
other woman on the staff had been sniffing around him, and she had it on good
authority from Linda Bauer, who had a friend in the mathematics department,
that Peter wasn't dating anyone at all. True, Peter had been slow to act upon
his feelings for Claudia, but she was confident there had been an understanding
between them. And she, for her part, had been unswervingly loyal to Peter. She
hadn't been going around looking at other men, she hadn't been flirting or
dressing provocatively. Just last week, when a man at church had grasped her hand
a little too ardently upon their introduction, she'd glared at him and removed
her hand brusquely, wiping it on her skirt, so as to leave him no reason to
entertain romantic hopes.

The more Claudia thought about Peter and
this chippie, the more she fumed. What kind of woman throws herself at a man
within a couple weeks of meeting him? Vanessa Foster was playing around with
the heart of a colleague, someone who was at a stage of life where he shouldn't
want to sleep around anymore, but could be tempted to. She was bringing trashy
college morals to Jameson Academy, and spraying her musk all over the most
eligible, most dignified man on staff.

And Vanessa was set, for some reason
Claudia couldn't fathom, on thwarting Claudia's happiness. She surely knew that
Claudia and Peter were an almost-item. Peter would have told Vanessa when she
pushed her way into his lab that he was expecting Claudia to pop in at any
moment. Yet Vanessa stayed and prattled away, distracting him. This was an
aggressive move, something that couldn't be ignored. Vanessa had an agenda.

What had Claudia ever done to Vanessa to
merit this behavior? They had only greeted each other once or twice. When
they'd met in the faculty lounge, Vanessa had flashed a big fake smile as they
shook hands, and complimented Claudia on a cardigan she'd worn that day. She'd
giggled about not understanding a word of German, about being terrible at
foreign languages. She was one of those vapid women who believe they can
ingratiate themselves to others by asserting their own stupidity.

"Stupid my ass," Claudia
thought.

Vanessa had probably looked around at
the assembled staff in the lounge, the widows and matrons, and decided that
Claudia was her primary competition on campus. It was a queen bee situation,
and she'd decided to take Claudia down. Perhaps that's what this was all about.
Perhaps Vanessa wasn't really interested in Peter at all, but only in sticking
it to Claudia.

What to do about it? Should Claudia go
to Peter? She cringed at the idea. Poor Peter. He was a man like any other. Of
course it would be hard for him to resist a woman who did everything but climb
into his lap. There weren't many women like Claudia, willing to reign in their
sexuality in order to build something meaningful.

Claudia saw she had no real option but
to confront Vanessa.

"Do you plan to go back to the school?" Dr.
Phillips asked. She was sitting in one of the big armchairs, part of her face
obscured by a shadow. This was one of the few rooms in the facility without a
window. A womb.

Claudia's palms were moist. One on one
therapy was the worst. The third degree.

"I do. At least at this point I do.
I'm taking a sabbatical, you know."

"They'll hold your position for
you?"

"Yes. I just need to have something
at the end of the year to show them. I said I would come up with a four year
Russian curriculum."

Dr. Phillips' one visible eye widened.
"That sounds ambitious. Do you think you can do that and concentrate on
your recovery at the same time?"

Claudia gripped the arm of the couch and
dug her nails into the upholstery. She saw Dr. Phillips' eye taking in the
motion, and relaxed her fingers.

"I'm not too worried. I think I can
do it in a few weeks. I'll follow the German model I already established. I'm
the only one teaching them both anyway."

"Okay," Dr. Phillips smiled.

Silence. How many more minutes to go?
Dr. Phillips just stared at her. Was she supposed to say something?

"Is there anything you're worried
about? Anything you'd like to discuss?" Dr. Phillips ventured, speaking as
if she had all the time in the world.

Claudia searched her brain. She didn't
want to share her worries, at least not any important ones.

"I guess I'm a little concerned
about moving back in with my parents. I don't want to, but I have to. They're
expecting me to."

Dr. Phillips nodded. "Okay. Let's
talk about that. Did they say they expect you to move back in with them, or are
you making an assumption?"

"They said it," Claudia said
triumphantly. Doctors love to catch you in assumptions.

"All right," Dr. Phillips
continued. "Do you want to share your concerns about moving home?"

That was easy enough, familiar
territory.

"Where should I begin? I don't want
to be infantilized: I know I'm not a child, but I'm pretty sure I'll feel like one
if I'm back in my old room again. I'm afraid of being caught up in their weird
relationship and all the tension. My mom is in no shape to have me living with
them; she can't even see me in here without tearing up. She's going to be
watching me every moment, and that will make her a nervous wreck, which, in
turn, will make me a nervous wreck. It's going to be horrible."

Dr. Phillips nodded as Claudia ticked
off her concerns. "So, why even consider moving in with them?"

Claudia was taken aback.
"What?"

"Why move back in? You said you had
savings. Rent a place."

Until that moment Claudia had believed
she had no choice but to buckle to her parents' wishes. She hadn’t lived on her
own in an apartment since grad school, and for some reason the option had never
come to mind. She'd had no other plan in place, her parents had told her to
move back with them, and she'd been easily persuaded. But now it dawned on her
that she didn't have to go back there at all. There could be an alternative.

"It would hurt their feelings,"
Claudia objected.

"It may. Is it wrong for an adult
woman to want to live separately from her parents?"

"No."

Dr. Phillips continued, "Would you
do it in order to hurt them, or in order to pursue your own legitimate
goals?"

"No, not to hurt them. Of course
not."

"So if they're hurt, it's because
they've chosen to make a morally neutral decision a hurtful one." She
looked for an indication of understanding from her patient. "You're not
responsible for the way they feel or react."

Claudia experienced a rush of relief, as
well as a surge of warmth for the therapist. She smiled.

"You're responsible for your
happiness, not theirs," Dr. Phillips articulated, just to be sure the
message got through.

Dr. Phillips saw the light go on behind
Claudia's eyes as she took this in: she was responsible for making herself
happy. She couldn't spend her life worrying about the happiness of others.

"Once you understand this,
Claudia," Dr. Phillips continued, "it can make a huge difference in
your life."

Vanessa was living in residence on campus, having moved
into an empty suite two floors below Claudia's. Claudia waited until ten
o'clock lights out, made sure her wards were in compliance with the rules, and
then headed downstairs. She rapped sharply on the door and waited for a
response. She heard a shuffle of papers, then a shuffle of slippers across the
hard wood floor.

"Oh! Hello, Claudia," Vanessa
said, opening the door and poking her head around before settling her gaze upon
her visitor's face. "I thought you might be one of the girls."