The Time of Her Life Page 10

  Claudia turned her head away and looked out the window so that nothing in her face would show how much she was hurt for Jane. Claudia knew that Jane was the best of all. The best of all the people she knew, the best of all the people she had ever known. Claudia was injured for her daughter, and she was very angry. It was the clearest thing she had felt for days.

  “Maggie, compared to Jane…” she began, but she stopped. She was not sure how she meant to finish. She wanted to explain that compared to Jane, who had known exactly when to embrace her own mother… compared to Jane with her lovely long bones and serious face, there was not a child in the world who was more than a piece of blank paper. Compared to Jane, Maggie’s own daughter, Diana, was… and she thought of a phrase of Avery’s. “Listen, Maggie,” she said, “Jane’s no small potatoes!”

  Maggie just looked at her. She didn’t ask what that could mean. “Jane needs some help, Claudia,” she said. “She could get some good counseling at the university. In fact, I brought over a copy of the form. It’s covered on Avery’s insurance. You know, any of you could go. It’s a good program. There’s only a hundred-dollar deductible.”

  But Claudia had drifted off into her own thoughts while Maggie chatted on. Claudia was imagining herself advising Jane on any matter whatsoever, and she was thinking that they had long ago passed that point. It would be an unthinkable presumption. They had passed that point as soon as Jane had understood, at about age two and a half, that she had her own separate will. It was lucky, Claudia thought, it was one of the nicest things in the world, that Jane had been born with a natural magnanimity.

  “Anyway, here are all the information sheets on the health plan,” Maggie was saying, “but the second thing I wanted to tell you about is something that could turn out to be a wonderful job for you. I think we have it all arranged.”

  Claudia got up from the table and put the kettle on. “You want some coffee?” she asked, and without turning back to Maggie, she began running water in the sink to rinse the leftover breakfast dishes before she stacked them in the dishwasher. “I don’t really want to think about a job right now.”

  Maggie was as close a friend as Claudia had, and Maggie’s friendship was not entirely conditional, but on this point Maggie would not give way. She was a respected scholar; she wrote long, erudite articles for major literary journals. She was becoming an important critic, and in fact, last year a student at Columbia had done his thesis on her. She believed in achievement; she believed that there must be something Claudia wanted to do in her life, and since she could never discover what it was, Claudia’s apathy had become a burr under her saddle. She seemed to resent it and view it as a threat to the way she lived her own life. Claudia didn’t know this; she only knew that Maggie’s prodding wearied her, and she didn’t have the inclination, this afternoon, to try to explain herself to Maggie.

  “When Avery and I get this settled, I’ll think about a job. I’ve got plenty of money, you know, Maggie. Enough money, anyway.” Maggie didn’t reply, and Claudia eyed her apprehensively.

  Maggie had pushed her short hair behind her ears and was looking straight ahead. She had tucked in the corners of her mouth so that her lips puckered slightly, and Claudia knew that look well. Maggie was like a terrier, and she wasn’t going to let go so easily; she wanted everything settled for her friend. So Claudia dredged up from the very center of herself the energy she needed to answer Maggie’s silent indictment and disapproval. Because she could not bear the weight of Maggie’s disapprobation, her words stretched out with a soft, lilting note of persuasion. “Listen, don’t worry about me. Lots of things interest me, but there never has been anything I’ve felt I need to do. Frankly, Maggie, I’ve always thought that the whole idea of doing something out of some sort of belief… I know it’s one of the things that you and Avery feel the same way about. I mean, you both have ambitions. I don’t know why it bothers anybody that I don’t! I’ll tell you the truth, it seems to me that ambition is sort of a naïve optimism. Well, maybe it’s more like hope. Or religion. Either you really are convinced or it’s too late to jump on board.”

  Claudia had spoken lightly and not in a manner of great conviction. This was a subject, in fact, that bored her. She glanced at Maggie and saw that there was an even grimmer quality to her silence. Maggie had settled down into herself in such a way that Claudia bent over the dishes in great concentration. She did not want to face the relentless power of her friend’s sense of purpose.

  “I invest pretty heavily in my friends,” Maggie finally said, softly, as though she were ruminating. “You aren’t especially frivolous, Claudia. And you’ve got such a good mind…”

  Claudia was more careful than ever not to turn around and look at Maggie. She didn’t want to acknowledge or debate her responsibilities as Maggie’s friend. In fact, she felt an embarrassing, tearful constriction in the back of her throat because she was suddenly panicky in her need not to hear whatever Maggie was going to say.

  “But, my God, Claudia! I’ll tell you, I hope more than anything that Avery doesn’t come back! You… I don’t think you have the right to impose the two of you on the rest of us. Jane. And me and Vince. And, of course, for Alice… well. You two can’t be together. It’s horrible for everyone. It’s like watching two people in a state of combustion.”

  Maggie ran her hand nervously through her hair, disarranging it more than ever, before she went on, and Claudia remained frozen at the sink with her back to her. “Do you know that he’s been absolutely sober since he left? He’s meeting his office hours. He’s even made it to committee meetings. I mean, Claudia, I know he doesn’t need to teach. Don’t you think he needs the discipline of it though? He has tenure, but it was getting to the point that something was going to happen.”

  Claudia put her hands up to cover her face because all at once her chin began quivering and her features became elastic and uncontrolled around a sudden flood of tears. “Oh, Christ, Maggie!” She had to pause until her throat untensed. “Oh, Christ! Please leave me alone!” She had never said anything as strong as that to Maggie. In all their long acquaintance she had never bothered to make any demands, but at the moment she had no control at all over anything she might say.

  “Sober! Avery’s been sober! What does that mean to you? He’s teaching well? Going to meetings, for Christ’s sake! That’s not his life, Maggie. For Avery… Don’t you know that for Avery sober is… is just like being drunk? It’s a luxury for Avery. It’s a choice! Sober is just one of his fucking vanities!” Claudia was not sobbing, but she had to pause, phrase by phrase, with each fresh onslaught of tears.

  “What do you think? Shit, Maggie, what do you think about how people lead their lives?” Her voice caught roughly on the phlegm in her throat, and finally she subsided into a wet coughing, and she leaned against the sink, still resting her hot face in the palms of her hands. She was exhausted and aghast at having told the truth in front of Maggie. What Claudia usually allowed herself to say was, in fact, the best possible camouflage for the things she really thought. But evidently Maggie hadn’t even taken into account the words she had said. Or maybe what Claudia had suspected all along was true: If she said the things she really thought, her meaning wouldn’t be clear to anyone at all. Claudia knew that she might be so out of kilter that what she said when she told people the truth would be as incomprehensible as if she had spoken to them in an alien language. There were very few people who were important to Claudia. In fact, there was almost no one to whom she felt the need to make herself clear.

  Maggie was quiet while Claudia pulled herself together, and she went on in a less insistent and more soothing voice. “We won’t talk about that, now, Claudia. Let’s not talk about Avery. It’s always been hard, anyway. We always seem to be talking about two different people. And I like him less and less. I can’t help it.”

  This both stung Claudia and comforted her. Maggie saw things so distinctly that she would be bound to take sides, and since that was going to
be the case, Claudia wanted her on her own side. Besides, Avery had never liked Maggie much, either, not without enormous reservations. He didn’t even like the way she looked. “I don’t mean I can’t see that she’s attractive,” he had argued to Claudia because Claudia had wanted them, in this case, to share the same enthusiasms, “but I just don’t like the way she looks.” They had never agreed about it.

  “But, Claudia,” Maggie said, “you’d really like this job. It’s just a job. It’ll keep you busy and get you out of the house. I’m hardly offering you your purpose in life. And it would help Vince out. He thought of it, as a matter of fact. Well, he can explain it all to you. Why don’t the two of you have lunch or something someday and discuss it?”

  Claudia was concentrating on drying her eyes and regaining some composure, and she was turned away from Maggie, but she nodded her head in assent just to be done with it. She was only thinking how much she wished her friend were not here.

  “And listen, Claudia, if you want me to get a concert ticket for Jane, I really think she’d like it. I’m going to call Ticketron tomorrow, and I’ll get the best seats they have left.” Maggie’s voice had become gentle with sincerity, with a real desire to be of help. “I know Jane would love it,” she said. “She and Diana would have a wonderful time. I didn’t have to twist Celeste’s arm. She likes being with the girls, and she wants to take them out to dinner at some place she loves. For barbecue ribs. I’ll put the tickets on Visa, and you can pay me back if you want one for Jane.”

  Claudia listened to the concern in Maggie’s offer, and she also suddenly realized that she hadn’t given a thought to Jane’s Christmas present. She hadn’t even glanced through all the shiny catalogues that were stacked beside her bed, and she hadn’t been out shopping at all. Besides, that was what Avery usually did. He usually had the best ideas about these things. She felt a little calmer and a little grateful to Maggie, who meant so well. She turned around and gave Maggie a slight smile and a small shake of her head to apologize for her outburst. “That would be great if you would do that, Maggie.”

  The two of them were in the kitchen at the table drinking coffee when Jane came in from school, and Claudia was still guiltily eager to be delivered from Maggie. So when her daughter entered the house in the dim afternoon, Claudia was ripe with entreaty, ready to discuss anything.

  “Janie! Listen, I have an idea. We haven’t really made any plans for Christmas. I mean, we haven’t done anything yet. Maybe we could fly down to Natchez and open the house there.” She got up and went to the sink again to rinse her cup and finish clearing up, with the hope that Maggie would take it as a signal to leave.

  “It would be so much warmer. It wouldn’t be the prettiest time of year, but it would be warmer than it is here.” Jane was still in her coat and boots, although she had taken off her gloves and was peeling an orange while she listened to her mother.

  Claudia hadn’t thought about Christmas at all this year. She had made only the odd gesture toward it. For families with children Christmas roughly divides the academic year. It becomes the day at which all things are either before or after, and it looms with a certain amount of gravity. However, this year it only wavered in Claudia’s thoughts like a mirage. She had spent the preceding Sunday making flat sheets of gingerbread for what had been, in their family, a traditional gingerbread house. But she had left the cakes sitting uncut in their pans. The gingerbread became rock-hard, and now and then she or Jane had prized off a chunk and fed it to Nellie, who preferred it to the generic dog biscuits that Claudia bought for her at Kroger’s. Finally Claudia had thrown it all away and washed up the pans. Now that she thought of it, it seemed to her a very good idea to go south for Christmas.

  “It wouldn’t be much trouble to open the house. I even know where the decorations for the tree are.” She was all ruffled up with enthusiasm now that this idea had come into her head, and she didn’t even take into account Maggie’s stern presence at the table. Jane was eating her orange and watching her mother. “We’d probably have to get new lights,” Claudia said, “but we could get the other kind. You know, the sort of bulb-shaped ones that come in different colors. We wouldn’t have to get those little Italian ones that your father likes.” She turned around to look at Jane, standing in the center of the room. “There are so many things going on in Natchez around Christmas. All kinds of parties. And everyone goes to the parties, Jane. I mean all ages. Even Christmas Day I’m sure we’d be invited out to Rose-down for brunch. Oh, and then everyone goes over to the Adamses’ for champagne, and Santa Claus comes and gives out quarters to the children.”

  Jane stood with her orange half-eaten, considering this. “When would we go?” She said.

  “Oh…” Claudia waved that away. “Well, I’d have to see when we could get reservations, and I’ll have to check with Annie to see what’s going on. I’ll have to make some calls.”

  “The thing is,” said Jane, “I’m concertmaster of the orchestra for the concert on the twenty-third. I can’t miss that. I’ve got a solo. The Bach piece. I’ve been working on it for three months.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Claudia, and she began to subside a little, not in disappointment—not at all—but she began slipping back into a sort of permanently absentminded state. “We might go down for New Year’s,” she said, although it was not a question or even a declaration. Claudia was feeling a familiar and welcome lassitude creep over her again, and Jane left the room and was out of the way of her mother’s undependable optimism before she even removed her coat and boots.

  Maggie got up and began assembling the clothes she had shed over the whole time of her visit, as though she had been molting. She put on a sweater and then a vest, a scarf, her jacket; she dropped her gloves, and it made Claudia so impatient to watch her that she sat down at the table while Maggie put herself together. Claudia sat tracing designs in the light dusting of crumbs and spilled salt that powdered the area around Jane’s place mat. They could hear Jane practicing her scales and then doing a warm-up with a fiddler’s tune. Claudia knew that Jane would be closed away in her own room for well over two hours until she had run through all her music and had played her concert piece over and over, with and without the tock, tock of her metronome. The prospect of the melancholy notes reverberating through their odd little shell of a house made Claudia very sad.

  “You ought to think about getting away for New Year’s,” Maggie said as she was in the process of wrapping herself up in all her garments. “You know, that’s a wretched instrument,” she declared, startling Claudia, who looked up at her.

  “The violin? You don’t like it?”

  “No, no. That violin. Can’t you hear how bad it is? Alice says Jane is the best pupil she’s ever taught. She thinks Jane is very talented. Maybe you should talk to her about getting a better instrument for Jane. It would be a good investment.”

  Claudia couldn’t quite catch up with what Maggie was talking about. “Oh, well. We’re only renting this one, you know. Until we’re sure she’s going to stay interested.”

  “You ought to be pretty sure of that by now,” Maggie said. She was finally settled into her scarves and her hat and her quilted jacket, and she was brisk and in a hurry all at once. Claudia had never got used to the fact that in this weather people dressed up to look like upholstered furniture. “I’ll talk to you soon,” Maggie said. “Take care!”

  Claudia sat on at the table after Maggie left, thinking a little bit about going to Natchez for New Year’s, and then she abandoned that subject and began considering what she should do about dinner. Claudia could not pin anything down; she couldn’t make any decisions. To be in the house that Avery had built without Avery was to suffer a wound.

  Avery had designed the house. It was a partially solar, geodesic dome that looked to Claudia now and then, as she approached it up the steep drive, like the outcropping of a mud puddle during this bleak brown winter. It was darkly shingled in green, but in the gray days it looked
almost black. Claudia didn’t care about it, really; she wasn’t interested in where she lived. When it was being built, though, she had caught on to Avery’s passion, and for a while it had been their mutual obsession and their mutual adversary. They had had an awfully good time being united in an endeavor.