Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series) (2 page)

Charlie pulled the annual from Claire’s lap and began to page back through it. It was a catalog of styles that had come and gone and in some cases come back again. Cowl necked sweaters, flared pants, blouses with floppy self-bows, men’s shirts with collars as big as elephant ears

Seen from the perspective of a twenty-year absence, it all looked a little silly. The boys wore ties as wide as six-lane freeways, and their hair was long and shapeless. Most girls had ridiculous-looking feathered bangs that bore the marks a curling iron (a styling necessity, as Claire remembered it, as otherwise the wearer was unable to see). Everyone looked both young and hopelessly dated. Claire knew, though, that in two hundred years it would all run together in people’s minds, with no clear demarcation between the first and second times polyester was popular, between shrink-to-fit Levis and jeans worn so big they bagged around the wearer’s hips, between clunky wedge sandals from the Forties, Seventies and Nineties.

Claire thought about the painting she had inherited the year before, a small painting of a woman holding a letter. It had turned out to be a Vermeer, painted around 1650. She had learned a lot about Vermeer as the painting’s authenticity was debated. On one of her visits to New York, Dante had shown her a near-perfect copy of another Vermeer painting. For some time, it had even been attributed to the great painter, although it had actually been made twenty years after his death. The only giveaway was the woman’s missing sidecurls. The real Vermeer had them, and the fake did not, because the forger had found the style hopelessly dated. Three hundred and fifty years later, the modern viewer couldn’t tell the difference. Both women had costumes and hairstyles that the mind simply classified as “old.”

Charlie had reached the first page of the annual, which bore the inscription, “Dedicated to our teacher of the year: Sawyer Fairchild.” The page was filled with a close-up photo of a young man with a heart-shaped face, long dark hair and sideburns that tickled the corners of his full mouth.

“
Is that whom I think it is? Our candidate for governor?” Charlie asked. She was probably the last living American to use ‘whom’ correctly, but then again, her native tongue was German. In Dachau, nearly sixty years before, she had lost a husband, a small son and all affection for her homeland. Sometimes when people heard her accent, they would insist on knowing what she was. Charlie would always lift her chin and reply that she was, of course, an American.

Claire nodded. “Yes, that’s Sawyer. He was so much a part of our class that they’ve invited him back to the reunion. He was a student teacher for a year before he went into politics. Supposedly, he was teaching us biology, but it was clear he didn’t care if we never learned anything about cell division. He wanted to teach us about life. I remember how he used to have us push our desks back and then sit in a circle in the middle of the room. And Sawyer would pull down all the blinds, turn off the lights, and light a candle in the center of the circle. He would have us all hold hands, and we would take turns talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Not do, but be.” Claire remembered how Sawyer had said that was an important distinction. And how in the dark, kids would talk about things they never had before to anyone. And how everyone else listened and didn’t laugh, not at anyone, not even after the lights were turned back on.

“
And what did you say you wanted to be, Clairele?” Charlie said in a soft voice, as if they were sitting side by side on the cool linoleum in that darkened classroom, twenty years before.

Claire’s smile was rueful. “Oh, a teacher. Like about ninety percent of the other kids. We all looked up to Sawyer. He was so different from the rest of the teachers. I think he was the first adult I knew who wanted me to call him by his first name. He wasn’t that much older than us, but we knew he had been through a lot. He only started to talk about Vietnam a couple of times, and both times he stopped and stared off into the distance. All the girls were in love with him, and all the boys wanted to be him. Any guy who had the ability to grow facial hair started trying to coax sideburns, hoping Sawyer would notice. But Sawyer treated everyone the same. He paid attention to everyone.”

“
It sounds as if he had the charisma even then.”

“
He was the first adult I knew who admitted there were things about the world that he didn’t understand, and who said that stupid things were stupid. When I think back on it, he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he turned that school upside down. The teachers hated his long hair, and he didn’t make much of a secret of the fact that he had smoked a lot of pot in the past. But at the same time, they had to treat him as sort of a hero. A year as a POW, a year in the hospital getting skin grafts on his legs, and even still he has that terrible limp. All of us kids loved him because we felt he understood us, that he wasn’t one of ‘them,’” Claire hooked her fingers to make quote marks, “you know, the adults. When we voted him teacher of the year, his name wasn’t even on the ballot. I remember there was a big fuss because you weren’t supposed to be able to get the award if all you were was a student teacher.”

“
But he didn’t teach after that, did he?” Charlie asked.

Claire shrugged. “He must have figured out that he could influence a heck of a lot more people if he were a politician than if he were a teacher. Twenty-five kids or two point five million people - it’s a pretty easy choice if what you’re hoping to do is make a big difference.”

Through the years, Claire had loosely followed Sawyer’s career. He had moved to Portland, lost his first campaign for state senate and won the next. While in the senate, he had gained a reputation as a consensus builder who got things done - expanding mass transit and recycling, working for anti-discrimination laws. Then he had been tapped by the White House for Secretary of Transportation. Despite his high-level job, Sawyer had never given up the spark of iconoclasm that had marked his days as a student teacher. He still refused to wear a tie, and was famous among the White House press corps for showing up at highway ribbon cuttings wearing boot-cut Levis, snakeskin cowboy boots and beautiful old Pendleton shirts.

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.