Unlovely (21 page)

Days followed days, and still she
received no letter from him. She went to the mailroom every afternoon at four,
peeked through the little window of her box, and never received anything more
than the occasional encouraging postcard from her parents. Claudia was
surprised at this: over vacation she had relived and extracted the nuance of
every conversation, had reviewed all of their dates, and had concluded that there
really was something between them. Perhaps it wasn't a fully mature
relationship, but it was more than just the seed of one. It was a tender shoot,
requiring nurture, but definitely there was something there. Mark had said he'd
write, and he didn't. Claudia began to worry.

Was he okay? Was he hurt? She couldn't
just call and find out. She didn't even know if Mark had a telephone or access
to international lines. She couldn't ask anyone about him, because she didn't
know any of his friends in the Russian department except
Arkady
,
and he was gone now, too.

Whom could she ask? There were the
people with whom they'd gone to the movie, but she never saw them in day to day
life. It would be embarrassing to pop up out of nowhere to question them about
Mark. The more she thought about it, the more distressing it became. Mark
wasn't the sort of person to promise to write and then not do it, was he? It
was a torment.

Finally, in mid-February, she looked
through the window of her mailbox and saw a letter leaning inside. Her heart
skipped a beat as she unlocked the box to retrieve it. It was from Mark,
stamped with Soviet stamps. Claudia could scarcely believe she was holding this
thing in her hands that Mark had held, all the way across the ocean. She flew
upstairs to her room, shutting the door behind her and locking it, (just as
she'd locked it all those weeks ago when he'd paid his visit), to read in
absolute privacy.

Claudia carefully tore open the envelope
and unfolded the sheet of paper, thin and transparent as an onion skin. Mark's
script, written with a black fountain pen, was small and tight. That was
surprising: did it indicate a repressed personality? Interesting. Something to
think about later. The first three letters of the salutation were thick with
excess ink.

Dear Claudia,

Hope everything is well with you! I'm
doing great. Moscow is extremely cold – no surprise there, right? –
but
there's not much snow on the ground. No worse than it
gets back home, at least.

My seminar is harder than I thought it
would be, and my research is going slowly. Nothing like moving to Moscow to
find out how weak
your
Russian really is. Still, I
just got here so I expect that will improve.

Overall, I'm having a good time.
Arkady
came by to visit last Saturday. We went to a worker's
cafeteria for dinner, and then to a disco. I drank way too much champagne, but
nowhere near as much as
Arkady
. I'm a lightweight
compared to him.

Is your semester off to a good start?
Are you behaving yourself? (Ha, ha!) I hope you're taking some time to have fun
and not just studying all the time.

My address is on the envelope. I would
appreciate a letter if you could find the time to write. I'm ashamed to admit
I'm a little homesick.

Take care!

Love,

Mark

Claudia read the letter through three
times: the first time quickly, to get the general feel; the second time more
slowly, to understand the content; the third time very slowly, to understand
the subtext. With each reading, her heart dipped a little lower.

This was not a romantic letter at all,
but a friendly one. Claudia had expected some reference to the time they'd
spent together. She thought he would at least say he missed her. But there was
nothing.

Just before sinking beneath a wave of
despair, Claudia snapped to and issued herself a mild rebuke. What could she
reasonably expect from him, after all? The two of them had enjoyed such a brief
time together that it would have been creepy if he'd declared his love for her.
And anyway, there were incidents of mild flirtation:
are you behaving
yourself?
That was encouraging. She decided to give the letter an
unprecedented fourth reading.

Mark opened with a bit about the weather
and his studies. Both were boring topics but reasonable ones, nothing to be
ashamed of, no matter how pedestrian. (Not everyone shared Claudia's capacity
for wit on the written page, after all.) Right after that, he wrote about
spending time with
Arkady
. Now that was definitely
going in the right direction.
Arkady
had introduced
them to one another; Mark would have known that mentioning him would lead her
to remember their "arrangement" and that first night they were
together. How could he mention
Arkady
to her without
thinking about how they'd made love? It must have occupied his thoughts, at
least for a little while.

Claudia was somewhat perturbed with the
part about Mark's going to a disco and drinking champagne. Was that his
back-handed way of telling her that he planned to move on with his life while
he was in Moscow, that he was going out drinking and dancing so he could meet
other girls? Claudia pictured Mark and his square body. He wasn't the sort of
Adonis that shallow women who hang out in bars normally noticed; she couldn't
imagine him creating a sensation on the dance floor and then hooking up with
some admiring onlooker. On the other hand, she'd heard stories about those
Russian girls . . . well, she didn't like it, but she would have to accept that
he was going to be scoping for women. He was a man, after all, and that's what
they all do.

Finally, he asked her to write to him,
and he signed off with the word
love
. That, of course, was telling. It
didn't mean he loved her, she knew that. Claudia wasn't jumping to any
conclusions based on a single word. Half the people who signed her high school
yearbook signed off with the word
love
. It did indicate a certain
tenderness, though. It acknowledged a level of intimacy.

Now Claudia didn't know what to feel.
The initial joy at receiving word from Mark had become despair, then swung back
up to confusion. This wasn't a letter from one lover to another. It was a
friendly note. Pure and simple. But still there were hints of something more,
weren't there? Had Claudia been completely wrong about everything? Was she
nothing but a buddy to him?

No. Obviously they didn't just have a
platonic relationship; once you've had sex with someone, you don't have a
platonic relationship anymore. Once you've kissed someone – really kissed
someone – you'd moved beyond mere friendship. There had been something there,
absolutely.

She looked at the date in the corner. It
had been written on January 27. Today was the twelfth of February; the letter
had taken more than two weeks to get to her. Sixteen days had passed since he'd
written it; the facts of his life could have changed drastically since then. Any
letter she wrote to him would take at least two weeks to reach him, then she
would have to wait another two weeks to receive his response, and that was if
he wrote right away. That meant at least a month between, "How are
you?" and "I am fine." Even if Mark were invested in trying to
make their relationship work, (and she wasn't at all sure he was), the whole
enterprise was futile.

For the first time, Claudia really felt
the end of it all, and her heart was heavy. She'd been thinking they could
perhaps maintain some sort of loose long-distance relationship, but facts were
facts. It wasn't going to work out. She just knew it.

He wanted her to write back to him. He
said he was homesick. Claudia's impulse was to write back to him immediately,
to tell him that she missed him, that she thought about him all the time, and
that she thought she could fall in love with him. But she couldn't write that,
of course. She tried to think of something light and encouraging to put in a
letter, but she couldn't do that, either. It all seemed fake.

Claudia folded Mark's letter and put it
back in its envelope, then put the envelope in her keepsake box. She decided
that she wouldn't write back to him at all. She knew it would probably hurt his
feelings. He might be looking for a response even now, hanging around the
mailroom of his drafty Soviet dormitory, knowing her letter couldn't possibly
be there yet, but still hoping that it was. But writing would hurt her too
much. She couldn't do it.

Claudia lay down on her bed and cried.

The next several weeks were hard. She daily resisted
the urge to write to Mark. She kept her broken heart a secret, and nurtured the
ache because it was her last connection to him. At night she would pull out his
letter and reread it. Before returning it to the box she would kiss the stamp.

In March she received a postcard from
Moscow with a picture of Pushkin's statue on it. On the back Mark wrote:

Hi Claudia!

Haven't heard from you – you must be
busy – same here! Got a pass to the Lenin Library, so the research is finally
rolling. Spring's around the corner – can't wait. Looks like I may get to
extend my stay through the end of the year. Keep your fingers crossed!

Hope you're well. Write if you have a
moment.

Best,

Mark

This one was even less personal than the
first. Not even a
love
this time. He was pulling back, and not only
that, now he was looking to stay abroad. She'd been right not to pursue the
romance, despite how much it hurt both of them.

Claudia pinned the postcard to her
bulletin board and stood back to admire it. It looked good there, among her
mementos. Someday, she imagined, she would be strong enough to enjoy the
picture without becoming glum about the way things turned out.

After spring break, when the ground
warmed, the flowers bloomed, and the red tree buds littered the walks and clung
to the bottoms of her loafers, Claudia began to feel her mood lighten with the
days. She'd received nothing from Mark since the postcard. She tucked her
feelings for Mark Adams away in her heart the way she'd tucked away his letter
in her keepsake box, and she decided that this chapter of her life was
completed.

"So how did it go?" Lee asked as Claudia set
down her tray next to his.

"What? You mean the meet and greet
with my parents?"

"
Hmmph
.
How'd it go?"

Claudia sat down and spread a napkin on
her lap. She took a sip of her iced tea, "Just exactly as you'd imagine.
Mom wept and Dad was stoic."

"Are you glad they came?"

"I guess so. It would be pretty
shitty of them not to come, wouldn't it?"

Lee opened a pack of sweetener and
dumped it into his coffee.

"My wife didn't come."

Claudia felt a stab of regret for her
words, but then she remembered. "You mean your ex-wife, right? I thought
you were divorced."

"We are legally divorced. She's
still my wife."

"Isn't she remarried?"

"Doesn't matter. She's my
wife."

"She obviously doesn't think
so."

Lee stirred the sweetener into his
coffee and tapped the spoon on the rim.

"Doesn't matter what she thinks.
What matters is what is. She's my wife. Will be until we're dead. Will be in
heaven."

Claudia was interested in this.
"What about the guy she thinks she's married to right now? What's he?
Isn't he her husband?"

"He is the man with whom she is
committing adultery, as far as I'm concerned. I don't care what the law says.
The law isn't the arbiter of truth. Only God is."

Claudia smiled wryly. "And God told
you you're still married."

Lee sipped, put the cup down and smiled
back. "Yes, He did. Just as real as I'm talking to you now."

Claudia shook her head and smiled again.
"Anyone ever tell you you're crazy, Lee?"

"I hear that all the time,"
Lee said. "Don't make it true."

Claudia declared a double major in German and Russian
in the fall of her sophomore year at the university. She was adept at her
studies and she received departmental recognition for her academic
achievements. Oddly, she was friendlier and more talkative in Russian and
German than in her native English; maybe it was a desire to show off her
language skills, but she could actually be quite pleasant in a foreign tongue
when she wanted to be. After class, however, she would ignore the people with
whom she'd been in lively conversation minutes before.

In general she continued to interact with
her peers in much the same manner she had all her life. She lived in the same
dorm room all four years at the university and she never made a close friend on
her hall. This was the way she wanted it.

Mark never returned full-time to campus.
Claudia heard a rumor in the halls of the Russian department that he had
extended his stay in Moscow for a semester, and then had been offered a
position as a Russian instructor at a small Pennsylvania state college. From
what she understood, although most of his research was completed, he was still
working on his dissertation. He would come to the university only briefly and
infrequently until it was completed, and Claudia had no expectation of his
contacting her when he did. She felt a pinch of regret at the idea that she
might never see him again. It would be relatively easy to find out where he was
teaching and get his address, but she imagined by now he had moved on. It was a
small world, however; maybe someday, years from now, they would see each other
at a conference somewhere and remember what they had been to each other. She
imagined they would both look very beautiful.

After her junior year, Claudia was
offered an opportunity to study in Germany in a six week summer program. It was
a wonderful opportunity, her professors told her, to improve her accent and
expand her horizons, and this was the selling point she used on her parents.
They came up with the cash, and Claudia flew to Germany to attend classes in
Hamburg with a group of American students. They lived in student housing
separate from the German students, but in classes they were all mixed together.

Any hopes Claudia might have entertained
for meetings of the mind with other young American linguists were fully
evaporated by the time she boarded the plane (not that she had many hopes for
them). The students in the program irritated her just as much as the people
back home with their chattering and excessive enthusiasm. She made no friends
from among their number and, in fact, she ended up socializing with her fellow
Americans very little. She could endure somewhat more easily the companionship
of the German students in Hamburg, but again, made no real friends among them.
Instead, she spent a great deal of time with one person who was not a student
at all: Kurt, the middle-aged man attached to their group as a facilitator.

Kurt was tall and thin, beak-nosed and
morose-looking. He always seemed to be dressed too warmly for the weather. He
smoked any chance he had, and the second he was out on the street he lit a
cigarette – some sort of foul-smelling, unfiltered brand. You could not
interrupt Kurt during the first couple minutes of these smoking sessions; he
would not acknowledge your existence.

Kurt was a married man; he'd met his
wife at the language institute where they'd both studied. Martina worked for a
travel agency that specialized in tours for vacationers from the United
Kingdom; this meant that Kurt was frequently left alone in his home while his
wife rode the bus with tourists from town to town. During the tenure of
Claudia's group in Hamburg, Martina was home for a total of four days, thereby
leaving Kurt with an empty house, an available love nest.

Within a few days of touching down on
foreign soil, a sensational rumor spread among the American students that
Claudia was having an affair with Kurt. The most damning evidence was the word
of her roommate, who claimed that after their first week in Germany, Claudia
hadn't turned down her bed linens more than a few times. She would show up in
the residence hall shortly before breakfast, telling no one where she'd been
the previous ten hours, go straight to her room, and then head to classes.

The other students were alternately
flabbergasted – she hardly seemed the type to be involved in some sexual
dalliance – and amused. Of all the women in the study group, Claudia was the
least likely seductress. On the plane she had been sullen and snappish; she
still was very disagreeable with most of them, even complaining about the way
one of her classmates chewed her food. And her appearance wouldn't stimulate
fantasies in any normal man.

Many maintained that there just couldn't
be anything going on. There was simply no spark between Claudia and Kurt – to
be honest, there wasn't even indication of any fuel. Had two less sexual people
ever existed in the same space before? When Kurt and Claudia were standing next
to one another they didn't have the appearance of lovers. There was some
suggestion of intimacy between them as they spoke to one another in low tones,
but it was more like the intimacy one might see in an old married couple. There
was no sizzle, no flirtation whatsoever. There was certainly no touching or
display of affection. Maybe they were just friends, some students conjectured,
or maybe Kurt thought of Claudia as a daughter or little sister. Of course,
that would be weird, too. Still, there had to be something going on, some sort
of romance between them. One student claimed to have seen Kurt dropping Claudia
off in front of the dorm early in the morning; she must have come from his
house, right? And why would Kurt take her home and let her sleep over if they
weren't having sex?

He wouldn't, and they were. They weren't
having a lot of sex, but still, they were engaged in an affair of sorts.

Kurt and Claudia had intercourse three
times during her stay in Hamburg. It wasn't particularly enjoyable for either
of them, more something to be endured. Kurt wasn't so much looking for sex with
Claudia as he was eager for an opportunity to install an American school girl
as a lover in his home. He and Martina had bickered frequently of late, and he
suspected her of having given herself to a London tourist over the winter. It
made him feel less a cuckold and more a sophisticate to be able to say that he,
too, had taken a lover. He had been impressed by Claudia's nerve and her
fluency in German when she'd castigated the bus driver at the airport. She
seemed so different from the other girls – a little strange – that he'd guessed
she was either an innocent or a libertine. Either would work for him. So, his
confidence bolstered with alcohol, he'd approached her boldly during a group
visit to a beer garden.

Claudia hadn't had a physical
relationship with a man since Mark. She didn't find Kurt a handsome fellow or
an especially engaging one, but Claudia took up with him readily enough. The
thing she liked best about Kurt was that he wanted her (he declared it bluntly
over a beer early in their acquaintance), and one of Claudia's fondest wishes
was to be violently desired. He was occasionally interesting to talk to, as
well, having traveled all over Europe and the northeastern United States. Best
of all, he had a little house she could retire to at the end of the day, with
real furniture, and a kitchen, and a bathroom where she could shower alone,
with no other students to annoy her.

When Kurt told her he was married it had
given her pause. She hated her father's infidelities and her initial reaction
was to recoil from participating in anything similar. Since the incident in
high school she hadn't actually heard of any new mistresses, but she suspected
her dad was still cheating on her mother from time to time. He certainly
thought about it – she could tell. Whenever Tony came to campus his gaze rested
on the prettier coeds just a little too long.

The difference between Kurt and her
father, obviously, was that Kurt had no children. He wasn't betraying a whole
family, just one frequently absent woman. Plus, he was German, and they looked
at marriage differently. The fact that Claudia was sipping tea from Martina's
cup or putting her head on Martina's pillow bothered her not a bit. She'd never
met Martina, she never would meet her and she would be out of Kurt's life
forever in about a month. As far as Claudia was concerned, Martina was as good
as make-believe.

At the end of the six week session,
Claudia felt she'd had an international experience more true-to-life than her
peers. Unlike them, she'd practically lived on the economy, not in some rarefied
school atmosphere. Her vocabulary had been expanded to include many
colloquialisms with which she'd been unfamiliar, as well as all sorts of
colorful terms for sex. Kurt was a dirty talker; in bed she found herself
paying more attention to his bawdiness than his body.

As for Kurt, he was ready to see Claudia
go. He'd had his revenge on his wife, even though he had no intention of her
finding out about this relationship. It was enough that
he
knew. Plus,
Claudia was an odd woman, very proprietary. She was neither the shy ingénue nor
the sex kitten. She was, truth be told, a bit pushy. Kind of a battle ax. She
made almost all the decisions when they were together, from what they'd eat, to
when they'd go to bed, to what they'd do in bed. What she wanted to do was
pretty straight-forward, not really at odds with what he'd want to do, but
still, he didn't like feeling like he was the passive member of this coupling.
It was all very different than he'd imagined.

Their last night together Kurt took
Claudia to a restaurant in a neighboring town, where they shared a bottle of
wine with their veal and noodles. They had planned to make love one last time
as a proper conclusion to their affair, but after such a heavy dinner, Claudia
thought that perhaps a good night's sleep would serve them better. In the
morning Kurt prepared a plate of cold meats and bread while Claudia showered.
After breakfast, Kurt drove to the dormitory. Claudia packed her bags and
books, while Kurt organized passports for the student group. He accompanied
them to the airport, where he and Claudia sat next to each other, conversing
quietly about the headlines of the newspapers each was reading, before
exchanging a brief hug goodbye. Claudia boarded the plane, Kurt drove home, and
their mutual adventure was concluded.

With an international affair under her belt, Claudia
returned to the university in the fall to begin her final year of study as an
undergraduate. She intended to continue on to graduate school at the same
university in order to earn a master's degree in German. Most of her classmates
who were going on for graduate degrees were going into literature, so Claudia
chose to concentrate on linguistics; she didn't care much for literature,
anyway, and rarely read any fiction that wasn't assigned in class. In her
junior year she'd taken a survey course in nineteenth century Russian
literature to meet a requirement for her minor; the only author she really
enjoyed was Dostoevsky. Gogol, she didn't get at all. She did well in the
literature class, though, as she always did. She knew what professors wanted to
see in an essay.

Claudia was graduated
summa cum laude
to the delight of her parents. Tony had known all along that his daughter had
inherited his fine intellect, but it was gratifying to have it confirmed on
lambskin. Sylvia would have liked to have been introduced to a nice young man
at the end of the ceremony, but she had learned to accept that Claudia's goals
were different from her own.