Unlovely (32 page)

Claudia started going to book stores
that had coffee bars. She would sit down with a magazine (afraid that if she
held a novel she might appear too engrossed to be approached) and nurse a cup
of decaffeinated coffee for an hour or two, waiting for likely prospects. If
she saw an acceptably attractive single man carrying a book that looked
interesting, she would smile in a way she imagined was inviting. This worked
twice. The first time, a fellow asked to join her, bought her a cappuccino, and
then left her fifteen minutes later with a stack of pamphlets about an
environmental cause he was championing. Another time a nice man did sit with
her. They had a pleasant conversation and she could sense his interest in her,
so it was especially vexing when he never called to ask her out. He never even
responded to any of the messages she left on his machine at work.

Claudia was at a loss to explain why she
couldn't tuck away this part of her life. A glance in the mirror confirmed that
she was still attractive to men of discerning taste; the familiar ravages of
time had left her unscathed. She hadn't let herself go to seed like so many
women in their thirties, and she was still very slender and lithe. In fact, she
was able to wear the vast majority of her wardrobe of woolens from her college
years and frequently did. Her hair was even better than it had been when she
was younger: it had thinned and wasn't as uncontrollable, and there were only a
few visible streaks of gray. She hardly wore makeup. When she went out on a
date she would swipe on a line of bright coral lipstick; it was all she
required for a polished look.

Nonetheless, Claudia was aware that each
year that passed removed a bit of fuzz from her peach. She was getting older, and
for women, that wasn't a good thing. She had a limited shelf life, and if she
wanted to find someone to marry – someone decent – it would have to happen
soon. But it didn't.

Sylvia and Tony didn't want their daughter to celebrate
her birthday alone, so as a special treat they booked a hotel in town for the
big event, drove up to Jameson and took Claudia out for a celebratory dinner in
a nice little French restaurant. Afterward, the three of them retired to the
Milfords
' hotel to have coffee in the lounge and talk. Tony
stayed around long enough to learn the salient details about his daughter's
health and the progress of her career (she was fit as ever, her cholesterol
numbers were excellent, she got plenty of exercise, and she had been published
in a professional journal this year), before excusing himself to return to the
room.

Sylvia watched his progress out of the
lounge with satisfaction. She relished the opportunity for intimate
conversation with her daughter, and as hope springs eternal, settled in happily
for a nice long chat.

She was disappointed, as usual. Claudia
was not in an especially talkative mood.

"So are you still happy in your
rooms, Claudia? You've been there a long time. Do you ever think of moving
out?"

"Of course I think about it,
Mom."

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Are you planning to move off
campus any time soon?"

Claudia sighed, aware of the trajectory
of the conversation. Tiresome.

"What would be the point?" she
asked, looking her mother squarely in the eye in an attempt to make her shrivel.

Not this time. "If you moved, you
could have a little place of your own, away from all the girls. Some privacy to
pursue your own interests."

Claudia stirred cream into her second
cup of coffee and muttered acerbically, "I assume you mean a place for me
to entertain men. Not necessary. Most of my interests are served quite well in
my current residence."

Sylvia was long past beating around the
bush with Claudia, and Claudia's blunt response to what Sylvia considered a
carefully worded query, in combination with the dwindling effect of that second
glass of Merlot at the restaurant, gave her courage to press on.

"Perhaps it's time for you to stop
spending so much time with other people's children and start concentrating on
having a few of your own."

Claudia was already bored. "Oh,
come on. Would you please let up on this, at least for my birthday?"

"It's just that I worry about
you," Sylvia simpered, fiddling with a napkin.

Claudia wasn't in the mood to assuage
worries. "You have no idea how I spend my time. It's not like I'm a
hermit. You think I don't want to get married? I do. I'm open to it. In fact,
I've been dating."

Sylvia had heard this before.
Deflection. "I don't see a ring on your finger. I don't see a man sitting
next to you here in the lounge. Are you dating someone regularly?"

"No. I'm not."

Sylvia lowered her eyes to the spindled
cocktail napkin in her hands. "You know, Claudia, I can't even remember
the last time I heard you excited about some man you've met. Frankly, I don't
remember ever hearing it. No, that's not true. Maybe way back when you were in
college – that fellow who moved to Russia – but since then, nothing. That's a
lot of years of nothing."

Mark Adams. Weird that her mother would
remember Mark. Hearing him mentioned after all these years gave Claudia a jolt.

"Look, I don't want to be a nag. I
really don't. I know I can't force this. Your father would kill me if he knew
I'd brought it up with you. I just need to know whether I should continue
holding out hope for grandchildren."

The word
grandchildren
brought
Claudia back. "Tell me you're kidding."

"I'm kidding," Sylvia
muttered.

Claudia regarded her mother through
narrowed eyes. "Not entirely."

"No, not entirely."

Sylvia and Claudia took a break from the
discussion to sip coffee and feign an interest in the live music in the lounge.
Claudia was as tense as a bow string. It was dreadful hearing it all laid out
like that. She concentrated on the couple on the makeshift stage: a woman in a
silver beaded cocktail dress was singing a medley from
Cats,
accompanied
by a man on the synthesizer. Claudia wondered if the man's hair was bleached.
It seemed unnaturally blond

"You know," Sylvia broke the
silence between them. "There has to be more in your life than your
work."

"I know, Mom," Claudia said,
beginning to suspect it was a wig. She wondered what would happen if she leaped
on the stage and yanked at it.

"Is there anything else in your
life? Anything?"

Claudia looked into her mother's worried
face. Sylvia suddenly looked old, the smile lines deep and the tear troughs
shadowed. It made Claudia feel oddly desperate to see her mother looking like
that.

"My career is important to me. I've
published a paper on the subject of introducing comparative linguistics into the
secondary school classroom. It was well-reviewed."

"I know, and I'm proud of you. I'm
not trying to make you defend yourself or your choices."

"It certainly seems that you
are."

They sat again without speaking. The
singer was taking a break; she and the synthesizer player were drinking
something with ice. Wouldn't ice make her vocal chords contract? Shouldn't she
be drinking something warm?

Again, Sylvia broke the silence.
"Claudia, I just want to know if you're happy. Are you happy? If you are,
then I can go home content. It's just so important to me that you're
happy."

Claudia sighed heavily. She wished there
were another mouthful of coffee in her cup. What could she say? Who's happy,
anyway?

"I think I'm reasonably
happy," she said, aware of how unconvincing it sounded.

Sylvia looked across the room instead of
at her daughter and asked, "Do you go to church, Claudia?"

"What? Do I go to church? Where did
that come from?"

"God can be a great comfort. There
have been times when I've been lonely or afraid, and knowing God was with me
helped. It truly did."

"Oh, Mom! Good grief! What is with
you?" Claudia was astonished at the way her mother's mind worked.
"You've got to be kidding me. Now you want to talk about my spiritual
life? How many bases do you plan to hit tonight?"

"What's wrong with talking about
God? Don't you believe in God? I thought you used to."

"Of course I believe in God,
Mom."

"Did you know that Melanie is being
confirmed a Catholic? I spoke to her mother in the grocery store and she told me.
Did you know anything about that?"

"I don't remember Melanie ever
mentioning any interest in becoming a Catholic," Claudia confessed, a
little peeved at not having been in the loop on this process. Catholicism
seemed an odd choice for a woman as sexually liberated as Melanie. She tried to
imagine Melanie dipping her fingers into a water
font
,
whispering her sins through a grate.

"She probably didn't think you'd be
interested. You never talk about God." Sylvia said, then ventured
cautiously, "Are you an agnostic now? You can tell me, you know. You can
tell me anything."

The boldness of the question, put forth
in Sylvia's timid whine, grated on Claudia's nerves.

"Okay, enough," Claudia
responded gruffly. "I thought we were having a nice evening, Mom. This
conversation is going off the rails."

Sylvia looked hurt. "I told you. I
want you to be happy."

"Well, I'm not happy right
now."

"That's what I thought."

"No! No, that's not what I meant
and you know it. I'm not happy with this conversation, Mom. I don't want to
talk about God with you."

Sylvia's lip quivered. "You don't
want to talk about anything with me," she pouted.

"Oh, stop it. Please, just stop it.
What on earth is all of this about?"

Sylvia started to cry. Not wracking sobs,
just a few tears squeezed out. She used the shredded cocktail napkin to dab at
her cheeks.

"Claudia, you're my only child.
You're thirty-three years old. I don't know you."

Claudia was at a loss as to how to
comfort her. Her mother was right. She didn't know her daughter, she never had.
Sylvia was a kind woman, but she was wasn't terribly bright and moreover, she
was simple, unable to understand the world or any of the people in it unless
those people were just like her: housewives with their knitting, baking, babies
and church bazaars.

"Come on, Mom. Let's get you back
to your room."

Sylvia nodded. Claudia waited for her
mother to rise, put an arm around Sylvia's shoulders and squeezed them
affectionately.

"You know me, Mom. Better than
anyone. You're my mother. There's no mystery to me. And if it makes you feel
better, I'll tell you: I am still going to church. And you know what? You may
be right. I may need to develop other parts of my life. I'm still young, Mom.
Don't give up on me, yet."

Sylvia snuffled. "I'll never give
up on you. I love you. That's why I worry. You know that, right? I'm not
disappointed in you, just worried."

Claudia grabbed a handful of cocktail
napkins from the bar as they walked around the corner and into the lobby. She
opened the heavy door that led to the corridor. They continued to the room
without speaking, Claudia's arm around her mother, and stopped outside the
door.

"Dad's going to wonder what I did
to make you cry. You'd better make up something good."

"Your dad is used to my
blubbering."

Claudia smiled. She did love her mother,
as exasperating as she was.

"Will you come to campus tomorrow?
I'll treat you to breakfast in the dining hall. They actually prepare a very
nice spread. It's at least as nice as anything you could get here."

Sylvia snorted into a napkin, tucked it
into the pocket of her sweater, and pinched her cheeks to pink them for Tony.

"Yes, of course we will, Claudia.
Is 7:30 all right?"

"That would be fine. I'll meet you
in the lobby of my residence hall, okay?"

Sylvia opened the door and they both
stepped in. Claudia found her father, sans shoes and tie, lying on the bed and
watching a detective drama. She walked to the side of the bed, leaned over and
kissed him. Then she returned to the door and kissed her mother, and with a
thank you, left for home.

Claudia returned to her rooms feeling
blue. She undressed and went to bed without taking a Benadryl. That night she
had a dream; it wasn't a violent one, but it was still disturbing. She was at a
dance in her high school gym, although it looked strange, as familiar places
always do in dreams. She was very hot, sweating in a turtleneck sweater and
skirt, miserable and lonely. Mark Adams and Gretchen were dancing. Gretchen
cast a look in her direction, then said something that made Mark laugh. He
pulled her close and buried his face in her hair. Gretchen nuzzled up to his
ear and whispered something, and then moved against him as they danced in a way
that left little doubt she was familiar with his body. Claudia didn't know what
it was that Gretchen said, but she was sure it was something nasty about her.
There was nothing Claudia could do about it, though, because she wasn't really
there.