Heart-Shaped Box (Claire Montrose Series)

by April Henry

  Dante nodded at the hotel. “Should we go check in?”

  “Sure,” Claire said, giving him a smile that felt forced. She had just caught sight of someone she was sure was Jim Prentiss sauntering into the lobby, his hands in his pockets. Alone, she couldn’t help noticing. How would it feel to face her long-ago lover with her new one at her side? Would Jim even care when he saw her? Would she? She felt as nervous and awkward as the day the bus had first dropped her off before the doors of Minor High.

  “You haven’t moved,” Dante pointed out.

  “I’m just wondering if people will still be divided into the same groups.” Actually, she had decided to give Jim a head start. She didn’t feel quite up to staring into those yellow-green eyes of his.

  “So what groups were those?”

  “The jocks,” Claire said, ticking them off on her fingers. “The nerds - those were the smart people who weren’t embarrassed to carry a HP calculator on their belt in a zippered case. The hoods - you know, the people who smoked pot and cigarettes and had zero plans to go to college.” She felt a flash of disloyalty as she thought of Jim Prentiss, who had more or less fallen into this category. “We called the farm kids goat-ropers. Oh, and then there were the theatre people, like my friend Jessica. We thought it was really funny to call them thespians, because it nearly rhymed with lesbians. And of course there were the popular people - the socs.” She pronounced it so-shas. “They were mostly the ones whose parents had money because they were doctors or lawyers or architects.”

  Claire shifted in her seat as she remembered longing to be just like them. With money, she could have dressed just like they did, in clogs and a pair of wide-legged San Francisco Riding Gear jeans (with the bottom edges rolled up, unhemmed). Old white tennis shoes and stiff dark jeans from Sears, Roebuck, hadn’t exactly cut it. With envy, she had watched the socs laugh at jokes she didn’t get or talk about vacations spent surfing in Hawaii or seeing Chorus Line on Broadway. Dante, on the other hand, had grown up in New York City, and fit in easily with friends whose families owned mega-corporations. She hoped he wouldn’t find Minorites, with their pretensions to sophistication, too laughable.

  “Which group were you in?” Dante prompted, and Claire realized she had been silent for a long moment.

  “Not any group, really. I was smart enough to be a nerd, but I worked after school instead of attending meetings of the math club.” It hadn’t really been a choice, although Claire didn’t tell Dante how much they had needed the money from her job.

  They got their bags from the car, with Dante carrying the bulk of them. He hadn’t said a word about how much she had brought, even though she knew three suitcases for a three-day weekend were too much.

  Behind the hotel was a ten-foot-tall wooden stockade fence. Above the pointed stakes she could see the Ferris wheel lifting people up into the air in rocking suspended cars, as well as a half-dozen other rides that looked a lot less gentle. Faint screams trailed behind the roller coaster riders as they did a corkscrew loop. Claire swallowed as she looked at the Tilt-O-Whirl, remembering an unfortunate picnic at Oak’s Amusement Park that had begun with four beers and ended with her riding the Tilt-O-Whirl and praying to God to let her die.

  They passed three or four other couples in the parking lot as they walked toward the hotel, but Claire didn’t recognize any one. Either they had come for the casino gambling and not the reunion, or they had all changed a lot since high school. When she wasn’t looking at the other people, Claire automatically scanned the parking lot for vanity plates. She found a

  RKNROL and a TOUCHE, which someone had illegally defaced by adding in a painted accent mark.

  Dante nudged her shoulder, and when she looked up at him, he gave her a reassuring smile. Even if Claire were uncertain about herself, she could relax a little when she looked at Dante. His white T-shirt contrasted nicely with his dusky skin and his curly hair as black as a crow’s back. How could she feel insecure when she had Dante on her arm?

  “Hey, Warty! Warty!” Heads turned as the cry cut through the parking lot. Claire froze. What was worse - to acknowledge this greeting or ignore it? Finally she turned and saw Jessica galloping toward her. How could Jessica have done this to her? Hadn’t she seen that Claire was with a man who wouldn’t understand this once humorous reference to their youth?

  “I had a little skin condition in second grade,” Claire murmured quickly to Dante. She couldn’t look him in the eye.

  As soon as Jessica caught sight of Dante, she skidded to a stop. Claire could practically watch her childhood friend grow up before her eyes, going from a giggly eight-year-old to a sophisticated thirty-eight in an instant. She wore silver-colored silk shantung capris and a matching boat-necked top with three-quarter-length sleeves. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Claire felt instantly dowdy.

  “Well, well - who’s this?” Jessica smiled up at Dante with eyes as blue as a summer sky. Her thick black hair was cut close to her face.

  Dante put the bags down and shook Jessica’s hand while Claire made introductions. “Jessica McFarland, this is Dante Bonner. Dante, Jessica. Jessica used to be on Until Tomorrow.”

  “Until I was in a plane crash. Or at least my character was,” she explained, directing her attention to Dante. “They had the whole cast involved in a mid-air collision. Some of the characters were killed off, some were severely burned. My character was one of the ones who died. Even if my character had lived, they probably wouldn’t have kept me playing the part. When the bandages came off, voila, you had a whole new cast of young actors willing to work for scale.”

  “But didn’t the new actors look a look a lot different than the old actors?” Dante asked.

  Jessica shrugged her small shoulders. She was only five-foot-two - a full eight inches shorter than Claire. The longer Claire stood next to her, the more she was beginning to feel wider, taller and sturdier. “They just explained that the plastic surgeons did the best they could. Some of the new cast even had different color hair than the people they were replacing. I don’t know how they expect the audience to believe that that happened because of plastic surgery!” She shook her head, then smiled. “But the whole thing has really turned out to be a blessing, because it’s freed me up to do theatre.” She gave the word an English spin. Thee-uh-tuh. “I was just saying to Meryl the other day that dying has proved to be the best career move I ever made.”

  Claire’s mind filled in the blank. Could Jessica mean Meryl Streep? “So you’re acting in plays now?” The longer she stood next to Jessica, the more she felt hulking. Monstrous. When she was in high school, she had longed to be the same size as Jessica. To be diminutive. To shop in the petite department. To wear size five shoes. She had wanted to have boys be able to pick her up and twirl her like a baton.

  Jessica’s answer was a snatch of song, “Give my regards to Broadway.” After a bit of soft shoe, she dipped low for the bow. As usual, Jessica had drawn an audience. When she raised her head, five or six people broke into a patter of applause. A radiant smile lit her face. She bowed her head again before turning to pull open the door.

  In the round lobby, they were greeted by a huge wooden bear that appeared to have been hastily carved with a chain saw from a single pine trunk. Jessica had fallen into an animated conversation with two of the women who had watched her mini-act, so Claire and Dante went up to the check-in desk. It was fashioned of plastic logs, and the young woman behind it wore a poke bonnet and a long calico-printed dress.

  “Montrose, Montrose, Montrose,” the woman said, tapping her teeth with the butt end of a white ballpoint pen. “Where have I heard that name before? Oh yeah - I have a package for you.”

  “A package?”

  For an answer, the woman slipped a small padded manila envelope in Claire’s hands. It bulged in the middle, filled with something hard that was a little smaller than a closed fist. The outside of the envelope was bare, except for a printed label reading, “Claire Montrose, Minor High Reunion, J
uly 1.” There was no return address - but then there wasn’t any stamp, either.

  “Who left it for me?” Claire asked, but the only answer she got was an uninterested shrug, the woman’s mind already turning to the growing line behind them. After handing back Claire’s credit card, she stepped from behind the counter to summon a bellhop. Claire saw that the feet peeking from underneath her pioneer dress were shod in aqua-colored Nikes.

  Dante and the bellman loaded their bags on top of his cart, and then they followed the cart to the elevator. Claire still carried the little package. The bellman’s breeches and shirt were fashioned of Ultrasuede, and a matted synthetic coonskin cap sat on top of his head.

  The hotel had been fashioned in the shape of a wagon wheel. The hub corresponded to the circular shape of the hotel’s lobby. The spokes were long blocks of rooms, three stories tall. Once the bellman opened the door to their room, Claire saw the covered wagon theme was carried over to the interior decoration. The room was lit by a sort of chandelier fashioned from an ersatz wagon wheel. The canopy on the bed was designed to mimic a covered wagon. But the decorator’s ingenuity only went so far. The TV still looked like a TV, the phone looked like a phone, and when Claire poke her head in the bathroom, she was relieved to find a toilet instead of a two-hole privy.

  The bellman palmed Dante’s tip and left. Claire slipped her thumb under the envelope’s flap. “Maybe it’s our name badges,” she guessed. She shook the contents into her hand.

  Out tumbled a heart-shaped wooden box a little smaller than Claire’s palm, hand-carved from dark-red wood that glowed under the light. The top was decorated with three freeform curlicues and a simple flower. On the left side was a silver hinge. Claire thumbed it open. Inside, glued to the bottom, was a picture she recognized right away, since it had only been a few weeks since she looked at it with Charlie. Aside from her alphabetized photo, it was the only other picture of her that had run in the annual. Whoever had put the photo in the box had scissored Claire from the group of forty or so members of the National Honor Society that had surrounded her. The photo showed only Claire, sitting cross-legged on the ground.

  Dante looked over her shoulder. “Why did someone send you that picture? What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. It’s from my annual.” She pointed at the edge of a coat behind her, the slice of another arm on her left. “These are other people from the Honor Society.” She looked inside the envelope. “There’s nothing else. No note or anything.”

  Dante said in a singsong voice, “Someone’s got a crush on you.”

  “I don’t know. Do you really think so?” Claire felt a secret thrill. “I wonder who it could be?”

  “Did you have many boyfriends in high school?”

  “Only a couple. And I can’t see any of them doing this.”

  “So it’s a secret admirer then?”

  “I guess so. So I’ll have to wait until someone ‘fesses up.” Claire put the heart-shaped box back in the envelope and set it on the nightstand.

  “So what’s first on the agenda?” Dante sat on the edge of the bed and bounced experimentally.

  Claire ignored the hint. “Tonight there’s what they are calling a mixer in the Hoe-Down room. The dress is supposed to be Western casual, whatever that means. I’m sure the guys will all just wear jeans, but I don’t know what the women are supposed to wear. Do you think I could get away with a denim skirt and a white T-shirt?”

  “I’m sure anything will be fine. People are going to want to see you, not what you’re wearing.”

  Claire thought to herself that Dante, who usually understood women, for once was completely wrong. She was sure that all the other women there would be checking out everything from body fat to marital status to income levels. But instead of arguing with him, she said, “I’m too nervous to think about eating. If you’re hungry, why don’t you go ahead and order from room service. I’m going to take a shower before I change.”

  In the bathroom, she regarded herself critically in the mirror. Her confidence in her appearance fizzled. She was a mature woman now - so why did she feel like the person looking back at her was still an insecure girl?

  Because her birthday fell five days before the cutoff for enrollment, she had been the youngest in every class. How Claire had longed to be older - or to at least look older - when she was in high school! It had been embarrassing, being the last to be able to get a learner’s permit and then a driver’s license. Senior year, some of her friends were getting into bars with fake ID, but Claire didn’t even bother exploring the option, not when she was seventeen and looked several years younger. Once when she was 18, she had gone on with a date to a movie. The old dragon lady taking tickets had asked her how old she was. Confused, Claire had inquired if the movie were R-rated. It turned out that the movie was PG - and that the ticket taker thought Claire qualified for the under-12 discounted children’s ticket. That had been her first and last date with that particular guy.

  But now she was finally all grown up, a woman with actually curves instead of an awkward stork wearing men’s shrink to fit Levis, sized 26-36. Maybe now she could even pass for sexy. She tried out a ‘come-hither look,’ but in the mirror she appeared simply to be a woman in search of her bifocals. Had she moved from being too young to being too old, skipping over the vital middle part of being just right?

  And then she saw it. The beginnings of a huge pimple threatening to erupt just below her mouth. How could she show up at her twentieth high school reunion with a zit the size of a slice of pepperoni decorating her chin? She turned on the shower. Maybe she could steam it out.

  Under the warmth of the shower’s spray, Claire closed her eyes and began softly singing as much as she could remember from My Sharona. Which wasn’t much. She remembered lying sprawled on a blanket in the park with Logan the spring of their junior year. They had listened to a giant boom box, and she had nodded in agreement when he told her that The Knack was destined to be as big as the Beatles. That was back when the radio still played music for Logan, although a few months later all he seemed to hear from it were voices that told him he was stupid and deserved to die. Once she had ripped the batteries from the back and held them out to him in her shaking hand, but he had screamed that the radio was still broadcasting, that the voices were still talking about him.

  Lost in memories, she didn’t hear the bathroom door opening. She only lifted her head from the spray when two strong hands gripped her shoulders. Claire gasped. Dante pushed aside the dripping rope of her hair to kiss her nape. She tried to turn to kiss him, but he held her fast as he nuzzled her. Forgetting all about how she looked, Claire closed her eyes and gave herself up to his attentions.

  Afterward, they sprawled on the bed. Claire propped herself on her elbows to look at Dante. He was half asleep, his eyes closed, a faint smile curving below his strong nose. It wasn’t easy, maintaining a relationship while living in cities three thousand miles apart. They had developed their own rituals to stay in touch. They e-mailed, they sent each other bizarre post cards, they called. When they had phone fights, they worked to resolve them as quickly as possible -- and they never hung up on each other. Living apart, the phone was their lifeline.

  Once or twice a week, they planned ‘dinner dates.’ They set up a time, each cooked a nice dinner, and then they got on the phone and ate together. (It helped that Claire didn’t mind eating at five p.m., while Dante, a native New Yorker, thought eight p.m. was just the right time to sit down to dinner.)

  Whenever they finally did reunite, they eased back into it. They had learned not to book surprise romantic weekend getaways or shower each other with dozens of long-stemmed roses. Instead, they were more likely to go out for lunch at a neighborhood restaurant or to take a walk - anything where they could just talk. It was way too much pressure to be ‘on’ all of a sudden when they hadn’t seen each other for a month or more.

  Even though Claire had really wanted Dante to be by her side for this reunion,
she hoped he wouldn’t be too bored. For anyone who hadn’t gone to Minor High twenty years ago, it was sure to be a dull weekend.

  AWAWEGO

  Chapter Five

  Just outside the Hoe-Down Room was a folding table covered with a line of shoeboxes. Sitting behind the table was Belinda Brophy. She looked basically the same as she had in high school, just a little more tired and a little more plump. The name badge applied to her black leather jacket read “Belinda Brophy-Muller” and showed a picture of the younger Belinda, her hair crimped by a curling iron. Today’s Belinda had a fuss-free perm. “Well, hello, Claire Montrose,” Belinda said, her hands poised above the shoeboxes, which were labeled with different stretches of the alphabet. “So what’s your married name now?”

  Dante leaned forward before Claire could answer. “She decided to keep the Montrose.”

  “How - modern!” Belinda simpered, distracted by Dante’s proximity. She handed over Claire’s nametag and they moved away.

  Claire pasted on her nametag, all the while complaining to Dante. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I’m afraid people are going to spend all night asking me about my occupation, my marital status and how many kids I have.”

  “Just let me know if it makes you change your mind,” Dante answered. He had talked about marriage, and even about kids, but Claire was undecided. She had long ago determined that if and when she ever did marry it would be forever - and part of her still doubted that Dante would always want her.

  She put her hand on one of the double doors to the Hoe-Down Room, but didn’t push it open. It seemed to faintly vibrate from the noise inside. “Go on,” Dante urged into her ear. “I’m right here with you.” He reached out and swung open one of the doors.