Heart-Shaped Box

  Now Sawyer was back in Oregon, running hard for governor against a one-note anti-tax activist whose campaign literature lumped Democrats with devil worshippers. Even Republicans said privately that Sawyer would probably win. And most people speculated that a governorship might just be a steppingstone back to Washington, D.C. - only the next time Sawyer would be the one choosing the Secretary of Transportation.

  “Will you vote for him?” Charlie asked, turning the page.

  Claire didn’t have to think twice. “Of course. Even if the choice wasn’t so limited, I still would.” She reached out and turned the page of the annual open on Charlie’s lap.

  It began with the highlights of the school year - the sporting events. As a feeder school for several sparsely populated surrounding counties, Minor had been able to pick and choose only the best for its teams. So what if a third of each class failed to graduate - the football team always went to state!

  The section began with a full-page photo of a football player forever frozen in mid-leap, a football tucked under his arm. The opposing team milled in his wake. Claire didn’t need to look at the caption to know who it was.

  “That’s Wade Merz. Even I knew he was the best football player Minor ever had.” Off the field, Wade had worn his sunglasses constantly, indoors or out, rain or shine, and only answered to the nickname Suede. His hair was blond, but Claire now realized that because of the sunglasses she had had no idea what color his eyes were.

  “Did he make a career out of it?”

  Claire shook her head. “Three hours before the homecoming game, he got arrested for drunk driving. I heard that there was a scout in town that day, but when the game started, Wade was still sitting in jail. His grades were terrible, so that would have been the only way he went to college. The scout left at half time. Now Wade owns Wade’s Auto Haus. Maybe you’ve seen it - it’s kind of by Susie and J.B.’s on Eighty-Second.”

  Wade’s Auto Haus was sandwiched in between a pawnshop and an off-brand fried chicken franchise. Although she hadn’t spoken to him since high school, Claire sometimes saw Wade in the parking lot when she drove past on the way to her sister’s house. It gave her a secret thrill to see him, to know what he was doing when he knew nothing about her. A big man now running to fat, Wade seemed to spend most of his time polishing cars with his butt. He still wore his trademark sunglasses, but unlike the typical used car salesman, he favored well-tailored suits and crisp white shirts stiff with starch.

  Charlie flipped through the pages devoted to the basketball players, lanky and awkward-looking, then the baseball and track teams. Girls were represented only on the track and tennis pages.

  “Activities” followed the sports section. The title page was decorated with a few candid snapshots of popular students. “There’s Cindy Weaver.” Claire touched a photograph. “She’s Cindy Sanchez now. She used to date Wade.” In the picture, Cindy was surrounded by half-dozen boys, her face turned up in a laugh.

  “That woman who adopted the girl who might have been Lori’s?”

  Claire nodded. A few months before she had done a favor for an old friend and tried to track down the child Lori had surrendered years before to a secretive adoption agency years. At one point, it had looked as though Cindy might have been the one who had adopted the child. Claire tapped a finger on the bottom of the photograph, on the laced-edged white anklets Cindy was wearing with her black spike-heeled pumps. “I’d forgotten about Cindy’s jailbait look.”

  “She did look mature for her age,” Charlie said tactfully.

  Claire had a hundred memories of Cindy, who had been Minor High’s head cheerleader, party girl and general bitch. Cindy leading a routine, her large breasts seemingly without benefit of a bra. Cindy pulling Claire’s hair while she sat behind her in social studies, for no reason that Claire had ever figured out. Cindy showing up late for graduation rehearsal, her face pale and her eyes red. Later, Claire had heard a rumor that Cindy had spent the morning aborting Wade’s baby.

  “Oh, look, there’s Belinda Brophy.” Claire pointed to a girl that she had overlooked in the picture of Cindy. In the photo, Belinda stood literally in Cindy’s shadow, looking up at her with the same rapt attention the boys did. “I kind of liked her even if she did hang around Cindy. She was one of those girls who always wanted to be popular, but wasn’t ever going to make it.” Belinda had been too plump, too plain, too shy. “So she did the next best thing and turned herself into Cindy’s closest friend. Of course, Cindy used Belinda just as much as Belinda used Cindy. I don’t think Cindy ever did any of her own homework.”

  The next page showed the cheerleaders with their perfect thighs, their pert little asses barely covered by black skirts with yellow box pleats. Claire remembered how the yellow had flashed as the cheerleaders jumped and kicked through their routines. In every photograph, Cindy was front and center.

  Charlie turned the page to a series of photos from the school plays. Their only constant was a girl with Irish good looks: dark hair, blue eyes and flawless white skin.

  “That’s Jessica McFarland. We were pretty good friends in grade school, but we grew apart when we got older. She was more outgoing than me.” Jessica had been cast as the lead in every school production, from My Fair Lady to the Wizard of Oz. In the largest photo, Jessica stood in the middle of a line of actors taking their bows. The others grinned at the audience, but Jessica looked out with a studied expression, her eyes big and her mouth serious. She drew the viewers’ eyes past the half- dozen smiling faces on either side of her.

  “Does she still act?”

  “I’m not sure. She did for a while. She moved to New York City after graduation. I remember my mom was really excited when she got a part on that soap, Until Tomorrow. She used to tape the episodes Jessica was in so that I could watch them after I got home from work. But then her character was killed in a plane crash.”

  Charlie continued to leaf through the annual until Claire put out her hand. The caption across the two-page photo spread read, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Prom Memories.” The largest photo showed the prom court posed in a half-circle under a crooked crepe-paper rainbow. The girls wore pale Gunne Sax dresses, the boys pastel-colored or all-white tuxes with wide lapels.

  Cindy Weaver, who had naturally been chosen Minor’s prom queen, was on the top riser, wearing a black halter dress that stood out among the pale froth. A red cape, lined in white satin, was thrown over her shoulders. On her perfectly French-braided blond hair sat a rhinestone-studded tiara. Beside her, Wade wore a matching black tux, and was for once without his sunglasses. His blond hair - grown out from football season - was tucked behind his ears, and he had a thick mustache that had been the envy of the other boys since tenth grade.

  A collage of photos surrounded the larger photo of the prom court. A girl smiled shyly as her date leaned over her, trying to pin an orchid to the slick satin of her dress. Clearly no one had told him about the bra strap trick - or he didn’t feel comfortable attempting it. Another couple sat side-by-side, slumped in folding chairs. Even at seventeen they looked tired of each other. In a blurred sea of swaying couples, Cindy danced with her head tipped back, her body pressed close to her partner. The photo’s focus was narrowed to Cindy’s face, her parted lips, her closed eyes. Even her hands were reduced to white blurs against her partner’s shoulders, his head a dark smudge.

  Charlie flipped through pages with photographs of club members, the choir, the band, the orchestra. Claire recognized herself in one of the group photos, her curls all but obscuring her eyes.

  Before the alphabetized photos began was a single page set in plain type and headlined “Academic Honors.” Claire reached out to turn the page, but Charlie had already found her name. “Look at this! National Merit Scholar. Oregon Scholar. Presidential Scholar Nominee. Your family must have been so proud!” Claire gave her a look and Charlie remembered whose family she was talking about. The older woman’s face grew serious. “With your scores, why did you neve
r go to college?”

  “We didn’t have any money.” Claire kept her answer short, knowing that was only part of it. Part of the reason was that she had been scared.

  “But all the good schools are what I believe is called ‘need-blind.’ You should have qualified for many scholarships.”

  Claire shrugged. “No one told me that at the time. At Minor, we had one guidance counselor, but I’m not sure what he was there for. It wasn’t much of a secret that he believed girls should grow up to be wives and mothers.”

  Wanting to change the subject, Claire took the annual from Charlie and began to turn the rest of the pages, rows and rows of faces. She pointed at a thin boy with straight dark hair parted on the side. With his long, narrow pointed nose he looked something like a drawing of Pinnochio come to life, made the “real boy” he had always wanted to be. “Now this is the funniest story of all. Who would have thought that Dick Crane would turn out to be somebody important?”

  “Why is that name so familiar?” Charlie wrinkled her forehead.

  “He goes by Richard now.”

  “Richard Crane - he is that computer millionaire?”

  Claire nodded. Dick - or Richard - had invented the Simplex high-speed modem. Now anyone who spent time on the Internet wanted to do it via a Simplex, which was lightning fast and allowed its owner to use a phone without getting an additional line. Who could have foreseen that a member of Minor High’s Bi-Phy-Chem Club - which now sounded like a support group for drug addicts with sexual identity issues - would someday be well on his way to being one of the richest men in America?

  “He sat in front of me in calculus, but I don’t remember talking to him more than once or twice. He was kind of your typical smart, quiet kid. He worked on the yearbook and was a founding member of the Knights of the Log Table math club. Everyone knew he was a genius, but at Minor High that wasn’t anything to be proud of.”

  “I wonder how the people will treat him now?”

  “I kind of hope he comes, just to see,” Claire said, turning the page. “Oh look, there’s Tyler Kraushaar.”

  “Tyler Curlyhair? It fits, doesn’t it?” Charlie tapped on Tyler’s hat-defying blond Afro.

  “I didn’t realize that was German. When we were six, I told him there wasn’t any Santa Claus. When he was little, he had this terrible stutter, and he couldn’t even get any words out, he was so shocked. So instead he ran away, crying. His mom called me up on the phone after we both got home from school, screaming that I was a liar to have told her son that.”

  “He must not have liked you.”

  “Are you kidding? He always had a huge crush on me. He even asked me out on my first boy-girl date.” Claire smiled at the memory, the awkwardness faded by the intervening years. “I don’t know why I said yes. Ever since third grade he had been trying to prove that he liked me by pushing me down on the playground or stealing my lunch. Once when we were playing dodge ball he beaned me so hard that he gave me a bloody nose and I had to go home.”

  Charlie gave her a sympathetic smile. “What was your date like?”

  “Well, we were both fifteen, which meant he couldn’t drive. He had his mother pick me up and then we went over to his house and listened to records in the den. Every few minutes his mom came in with another tray of snacks. I still remember the look on her face, like she thought she was going to catch us having sex. The next week Tyler told everyone at school I was his girlfriend, and I had to go around taking it back.”

  “Was he angry?”

  “That was the sad thing. He wasn’t.” Claire rifled through the pages until she found the photo she wanted. “This was my first real boyfriend. Jim Prentiss.” She pointed to a boy with wavy light brown hair who was intently potting a plant in a greenhouse. He wore a puka shell necklace, flared jeans so tight you could see the space between his thighs, a belt with a buckle in the shape of a leaf of pot, and what looked like a hand-crocheted shirt. Her memory supplied the color for his eyes: the green of cat’s eye marbles. “We worked together at Pietro’s Pizza. I was head cashier and he was head cook. Sixteen years old and proud I was making twenty cents more than minimum wage. We used to stay in the restaurant after we finished closing it up.”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow but said nothing, having guessed what two teenagers would do in a building late at night with no adults present. Jean had never talked to Claire about birth control, but Claire had only to look in the mirror or at her sister to know the consequences of unprotected sex. The same week Jim kissed her in the cooler Claire had gone to Planned Parenthood for the pill. She remembered the way Jim used to touch her, his clear experience tempered with a genuine affection. Afterward, they would pass a cigarette back and forth. Claire had felt sophisticated, conversing naked with a boy. When he decided he wanted to see someone else, Jim told Claire straightforwardly and then held her while she cried. It wasn’t in Jim to lie, or to be with one girl for more than a few months. Whenever he had free time, he practiced guitar with his older brother in their garage. They had played for a few school assemblies, sweaty and happy, their hair hanging in their eyes, while the girls screamed out their names.

  “I heard he got some girl pregnant right before we graduated, and their parents made them get married just before she had the baby. I can’t imagine he stayed married long, though.” She realized what was unusual about the picture of Jim in a greenhouse. He had basically been a hood, as the bad kids were called back then. Claire flipped back through the pages. No one had taken pictures of the hoods, of the nerds, of the shy people. Or maybe they did, but their pictures certainly didn’t make it into the annual.

  Claire was about to close the yearbook when her gaze lit on the photo of Logan West. He had a shock of bright red hair, pale skin, and square-framed glasses that had not yet moved from geekiness to Elvis Costello cool. “There’s another kid I’ve known since kindergarten. His family lived down the block. The last time I saw him was about a week after we graduated. He was wild, shouting that the walls were listening to his thoughts, that people’s mouths were turning into volcanoes. He was wearing a kind of helmet he’d made out of tin foil. Everyone thought it was because he smoked a lot of pot, but later that summer he ended up in Dammasch, the old state mental hospital, diagnosed with schizophrenia.” Claire had visited him a couple of times. Now she felt guilty that she had let him slip through her life.

  Instead of answering, Claire turned back to the photos of the prom. “Looking at all these people, I feel like I have double vision. It’s been so long since I’ve thought about them I can almost see them as if they were strangers. At the same time, I remember the weight some of them carried, the weight of popularity. It was like the rest of us were insubstantial.”

  RD4MOR

  Chapter Three

  With a snap, Susie shook out a silver plastic cape and draped it over Claire’s shoulders. Already Claire was beginning to have second thoughts. Her gaze met her sister’s in the mirror. Their eyes were the same - the same almond shape, and the same shade of blue, like the flame on a gas stove. They had the same high cheekbones, the same narrow straight noses. Even their hands were the same - long with squared-off fingertips - only Susie’s were stained yellow with nicotine.

  Susie lifted one of Claire’s strawberry blond curls and then let it spring back into place. “You won’t look stupid,” she said, answering an objection Claire hadn’t raised. Yet. “This is going to be very subtle. Take a look at your hair real close. You already have blond, brown and auburn highlights. I’m just going to accent them a little. And I’ll guarantee it will take five years off your face and make your eyes look bluer.”

  “But will it freshen my breath and get rid of my ring-around-the-collar?” Claire asked.

  Instead of answering, Susie tugged a close-fitting rubber cap over Claire’s head and tied the ends of the white elastic bands under her chin. The cap was pockmarked with dozens of holes. Picking up a tool that looked like a crochet hook, Susie began to pull small sect
ions of hair through the cap.

  A thought occurred to Claire. “You don’t use this stuff on dead people, do you?” Susie had started working at Moyter’s Funeral Home a few months earlier. At her previous job at Curl Up and Dye, she had grown tired of all the clients who seemed to want a therapist instead of a hairdresser. As Susie had pointed out, dead people usually weren’t interested in telling her about their ungrateful kids or philandering husbands.

  “Relax.” Her sister patted Claire’s shoulder. “I keep all that stuff separate.”

  Despite the tugging sensation of having bits of her hair pulled through the cap, Claire closed her eyes and tried to follow her sister’s instruction to relax. It was impossible to clear her mind. She just hoped she was doing the right thing by letting Susie talk her into getting highlights.

  When she had first returned the card to the Minor High reunion committee, Claire had decided that she was comfortable enough with herself to go as herself. She wasn’t going to get caught up in trying to make herself over, the way she heard some people did before attending their reunions. No facelift. No breast implants. No Jenny Craig. No caps on her teeth.

  But then an idea began to nag at her the way her mother never had - would it hurt to try to look her best ? In the last two months, Claire had worked her way up to eighty-pound pec flys and now benchpressed one hundred and twenty five pounds. She was determined to draw attention away from her knobby knees and to her shapely shoulders. She loved junk food too much to diet for more than two hours, but now she was restricting herself to potato chips and crackers that said “less fat” on the label.