Читать книгу Happy Endings Are All Alike - Sandra Scoppettone - Страница 11

5

Claire sat on the edge of her bed, unable to stop trembling, inside and out. Rage always made her shake. She tried lighting a cigarette. It took four matches. She inhaled deeply, knowing, but not caring, that she was damaging her lungs. She could have killed them. They were disgusting. So smug, self-satisfied. So sure of themselves all the time. And what were they anyway? Queers. Dykes. Perverts. She’d learned in her psychology classes they were sexually immature, retarded. It was sick. And it made her want to vomit.

She stood up and walked across the room. There was no reason for the action and now that she was there she didn’t know what to do. She walked to still another spot and found herself in front of the mirror. For years she had been telling herself to take the damn thing down. But she never did. Now she looked into it, hating what she saw. Everything was wrong. Her shoulders and hips were too wide, her breasts too small. She was short-waisted. And her face was a disaster. Her eyes were too close together, her nose too large, her mouth too full. If only she had been taller. It all might have worked on a larger person. But she was under five two. She spent half her time wishing she were different, an exercise in futility. She stubbed out her cigarette.

Why, she wondered for at least the four thousandth time, had Peggy gotten the looks? Even her slightly Roman nose gave her character, enhanced her. Why was life so unfair? Perhaps, Claire thought, she’d been a great beauty in another life and been cruel to someone ugly, laughed at a deformity, and now she was paying in this life. Claire was convinced she had lived many lives before, even though her belief was of little comfort in this life. This life was what she had to work with and it was hell. In this life she was a prisoner of her own body and her own face and there was no escaping either of them.

She lit another cigarette, sending up a smoke screen between herself and the mirror. Again her mind fixed on Peggy and Jaret. Both of them were attractive. Jaret might even be considered beautiful. Dammit, she was beautiful. If you liked the type, which Claire didn’t. But by American standards, by male standards, she was a knockout. And that was what really made Claire crazy. Jaret Tyler could have had any boy or man she wanted and she wanted none. Peggy, too, could have had her pick. And who did they choose? Each other. It was sick. Crazy. Enraging. Why, when they could have the cream of the crop, did they want each other? She could have understood if they’d been ugly, as she felt she was, if they’d had no personalities, if they were dumb or something. Who’d want them then? But they had everything and still they persisted in this demented thing. It made Claire dizzy with frustration.

She lay down on her bed. The shaking had subsided and now, in its place, there was a dull pain in her stomach, the kind she had felt for weeks after her mother had died. Claire’s mind went back to the day she’d discovered them in bed, to what Peggy had said to her: “I love Jaret and I’m proud of it and the fact of the matter is you’re just jealous because no one loves you.” And no one did. Not even her father, she felt. There was no one to love her. She’d never had a close friend and, of course, never a boyfriend. Her mother had always told her that she loved her but Claire had never believed it. Her mother had also told her she drove people away with her arrogance, her air of superiority. Well, could she help being intelligent? What the hell else did she have besides that? Could she help it if it showed? Damn!

She jumped up, squashing the cigarette in the glass ashtray. Round and round never getting anywhere. She had not told her father about Jaret and Peggy for fear of what Peggy would say. Her father had eyes. Claire knew he could see how ugly she was. But as long as it remained unspoken, there was the slightest chance that it might not be true. If she told her father about Peggy and Jaret, Peggy could say: “She’s making it up because she’s jealous, because she can’t get anyone to love her because she’s so damn ugly.” Claire sucked in her breath. Oh, no. Oh, no. If that was said out loud her father would have to acknowledge how horrid she was and then she would die. So she kept the secret, knowing she would never tell, but using it like a club whenever it suited her.

The thought of what Peggy might say to her father had propelled her back and forth across the room and, once again, she’d stopped in front of the mirror. Snatching up her hairbrush from the vanity, she threw it at the mirror, screaming, “I hate you, Peggy Danziger.” But the mirror didn’t shatter. Instead, the brush bounced off and hit Claire above her right eyebrow, breaking the skin. She stood there, her dreaded image staring back, a dribble of blood running down toward her eye. Typical, she thought, so damn typical.