The Time of Her Life (28 page)

Claudia and Avery were so engrossed in their own rage and the drama of it and the morbid thrill of saying
the very worst that could be said that Avery didn’t even notice that he was being defended, and Claudia had no idea that what
she had said would not only be believed forever after, but would never be forgotten. Avery turned on Claudia again.

“How can you
say
that to a child? To your own child…”

But Jane had raced up the stairs to her room, leaving them to indulge in their own gluttonously vituperative feast. She fumbled
with the clasp on the violin case and tumbled the violin out onto her bed, flinging the case aside. She seized the violin
by its neck and ran back halfway down the stairs.

“I
don’t
care! I don’t care about the violin!” she screamed into the ongoing melee. “You do everything wrong!
I
wish you hadn’t had me, too! I wish I weren’t even here! You do every single thing wrong! I didn’t ask for a violin. I didn’t
ask for you to go to any trouble. I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” She raised the violin up with both hands, high above
the banister of the stairs. She was shaking from head to foot, holding that beautiful violin that only she—only she—could
play so well. That’s what she knew. That’s what she thought her parents knew. In a second one of them would take it safely
away from her, and she looked down at them, standing stock-still below her. She had, indeed, stopped their fighting. She had
caught their absolute attention, and they were standing frozen there, staring back at her. But as she looked down at them,
she caught a fleeting look of interest passing over both their faces as they saw their daughter in such a melodramatic pose.
And it was also a look of undisguised curiosity—so much in the world was genuinely boring to Claudia and Avery. But
that one instant of dispassionate observance was more than Jane could bear. She gritted her teeth, and with a low moan of
fury she brought the violin smashing down across the banister, where its back cracked in two and the strings made a flat twang.

Everyone stood completely still until Jane flung the ruined instrument down the rest of the stairs and turned and ran back
to her room, where she put her jeans on over her pajamas and stepped into her boots. She pulled on a sweat shirt and grabbed
her parka. She came back down the stairs and walked between her two parents without speaking to them or looking at them, and
they were absolutely quiet. She went through the kitchen and out the back, not even slamming the door behind her. She had
used up the major allotment of drama in her own life.

After she was gone, Avery and Claudia couldn’t think of a thing to say to each other. They stood among all the boxes and ribbons
and wrapping paper utterly numb and unthinking.

“Aren’t you tired?” Claudia said, without any guile whatsoever, even though it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. “Aren’t
you tired?” She started up the stairs slowly, stepping over Jane’s violin, and Avery followed her. They got into bed, each
on his or her own side, and fell sound asleep before either one of them displaced their extraordinary and slightly drunken
fatigue with anything like lust or anything like remorse.

Jane left the house and walked straight down the path through the meadow, and she, too, did not allow herself to reflect.
She had forgotten to take her gloves, and she put her hands in her pockets; but they had already become so cold that she couldn’t
warm them, and she began to shiver in the frigid air. She headed toward the Tunbridges’, where all the windows spilled a soft
light out onto the dingy snow. Jane was moving like a dumb thing, no more thoughtful than the big turtles that migrated inland
every year from the Missouri River across I-70, where Avery and Claudia always pulled over onto the shoulder and rushed out
on foot into the traffic to rescue them. Jane was making her way through the meadow with the same blind instinct as the turtles.
The light ahead of her in the dismal day was like warmth itself, puddling the yard around the huge brick house in golden rectangles.

She went down the path past the landmarks of her own invention and made her way to the kitchen door. She was moving in such
a risky time, too, on this day, because for any people who celebrate Christmas, the
hours after lunch and until time for bed are the deadliest hours of the year, filled as they are with exhaustion and disenchantment,
but also colored with some unspecified expectations.

Maggie had told Jane long ago not ever to knock at their door since she was always welcome, and Jane believed her. She went
in through the empty kitchen and found the family and two friends of Celeste’s in the dining room, where some of them were
sitting around the table, some standing and talking. Maggie was at the far end of the long table, idly smoothing out the folds
of some wrapping paper so it could be used again and talking to Mark, who was slouched in a chair next to her. He was looking
glum, leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets. He had been genuinely appreciative when he had received an
electric typewriter earlier in the morning, and now he was trying to remember that gratitude, but he was also checking it
off against the list of things he remembered his sisters had received. As a middle child he always felt a trifle slighted,
and Maggie glanced at him and knew it. She wasn’t particularly irritated either. Mark was not a jealous or greedy child on
any day but this one. She was thinking that perhaps they all should go their separate ways until dinner. The children could
put their gifts away; Vince could take a nap. She was thinking about this at the very moment she spotted Jane slipping, white-faced
and tense, into the room.

In one second her whole family would turn and see Jane, and it would cause a stir and a delay. She would never get everyone
to disperse because Jane looked blanched with anguish. Maggie cared about Jane in a proprietary way since she was so important
to Diana,
and also Maggie had a simple and unambiguous concern for Jane. But not at this moment. She had three families coming for a
light Christmas supper around the tree, and part of the pleasure that they would all take in the buffet she planned was that
it would appear to have occurred spontaneously, without effort. Very little is more difficult to achieve. She did not want
the complication of Jane’s white misery, whatever its cause, although she did not think this all the way through. She was
not unkind; she was only harassed, and she deftly intercepted the situation.

“Oh, Jane! Merry Christmas! You look absolutely stunned. I saw the beautiful locket your father found for you. It must have
really been a surprise.” And this seemed so plausible that Maggie felt very fond of and pleased for Jane at the same time.
Since Avery had been away, his gift had obviously touched his daughter a great deal. “And you and Diana have to make plans
for the concert. Diana got a ticket, too, you know. You’ll drive in to Kansas City with Celeste. Diana, why don’t you get
some eggnog for both of you? You can put it on a tray with some cookies. There are all kinds. You and Jane can take the tray
up to your room. Show Jane that incredible jewelry box your godmother sent you!” She had been looking at Diana, but now she
turned to the rest of the room. “Jane, maybe you can help Diana carry her presents up to her room. And, Celeste, you and Mark
do the same thing. We have people coming at six. I really would be grateful if you would all put your things away and get
this room cleared.”

And so, when any one of them noticed Jane, her strained appearance had been interpreted for them, and they were absorbed in
their own day anyway. Celeste
and her friends got up and began to sort through the boxes, giving Jane scarcely more than a friendly glance. Mark gathered
himself together and stood up to look down the length of the table and see what he ought to remove. Only Diana looked at Jane
warily. Diana had had a lovely Christmas, and she had been looking forward all morning to arranging her new clothes in her
closet and putting her stickers in the sticker album Celeste had given her. Besides, Jane had hurt her feelings over the past
few weeks, and she wasn’t pleased to relinquish her plans to Jane’s mood.

Diana had always wanted to be like Jane a little bit. She admired Jane’s cynicism and wit even though it was sometimes disconcerting.
She was awed by Jane’s scorn, which was so wide that every aspect of their social lives was tinged by her disapproval. But
for the past two months or so Jane had been so sharp-tongued that Diana was tired of trying to please her. Maggie had said
that Jane would snap out of it, but when Diana looked at Jane standing rigid in the doorway, her spirits sank. She began gathering
her gifts together and simply handed some to Jane, who followed her upstairs without a word. Diana didn’t offer Jane any eggnog
or cookies; she wanted Jane to go home, and she didn’t make any pretense of graciousness.

Diana was often defensive around Jane—of her own family and their predictable domestic arrangements. Jane had a certain air
of authority and chic in their small circle in her own right but also by virtue of being her parents’ daughter. All the girls
thought that Claudia was exotic, and most of them were a little in love with Avery, who always was careful to remember their
names and never condescended toward them. He admired them—
each one—on her own merits. The Parks had a strange kind of glamour. What Diana had not figured out was that glamour gets
its shimmer by the possibilities it encompasses. It might lead to even greater things, a larger renown, but it is also dazzling
because it may be so very brief. It also encompasses the possibilities of ruin and decay. There’s nothing safe about it.

Jane put the gifts she was carrying for Diana on the bed and sat down in the big chair by Diana’s window while Diana moved
about, putting things away with her own face closed and set in response to the peculiar lack of animation of her friend. She
dutifully showed Jane this and that. She held up a sweat shirt-skirt and a matching striped top and leg warmers to show Jane,
and Jane just looked and nodded. “That’s really nice,” she said. And somehow that was more insulting to Diana than if Jane
had assumed that faint air of contempt which would have left Diana wondering if she should ever wear the outfit at all. Once
in a fit of pique Jane had told Diana that her tastes were “incredibly bourgeois,” and although Diana had resented it, she
had also taken down her bulletin board, about which Jane had said, “Oh, God, Diana! That’s awfully
cute
.” Diana had reassessed her whole wardrobe and insisted that her father detach the canopy from her antique bed.

Now, though, Diana was as tired as anyone from a morning of familial celebration, and she sat down cross-legged on the bed
and opened the jewelry box that had come so carefully packed and gift-wrapped through the mail. It was quite a handsome mahogany
box decorated with creamy inlaid mother-of-pearl flowers on top, but Diana was more interested in looking in the mirror fitted
under its cover. She took out a tiny pair of silver
unicorn earrings and put them in her pierced ears, then lifted the box to study the effect in the mirror. She shook her loose
hair back from her face so she could see her ears, and she put the box down again and reached up to remove the earrings.

“Do you have some kind of problem?” she said to Jane without looking at her, and without any hint that she wanted to know
about it in case Jane did. Diana was seized with what was, for her, unusual petulance on the dregs of this day. She had never
been so sharp to Jane.

Jane didn’t say anything, in any case. She didn’t seem even to have heard Diana. It would never have occurred to Jane to reveal
to anyone the things that went on in her own house. She thought that only she herself knew Avery and Claudia well enough to
have the right to disapprove of them or wish that they were in any way different from the way they were. A betrayal on that
scale had never crossed her mind.

Diana was fitting another pair of earrings, small enameled flowers, into her ears, and for the moment she looked quite satisfied
with herself.