The Time of Her Life (11 page)

Maggie was talking to Alice Jessup, who also taught Mark violin and who had interested Claudia for some time. Claudia was
always bemused by the intensity of this young woman’s presence. She had come to Avery four years ago to enlist his aid in
finding a publisher for a little book she had done on teaching techniques—modified Suzuki for older students. To everyone’s
surprise it was becoming a standard text, and Alice was invited all over the country to demonstrate and teach master classes.
Avery had persuaded her to teach Jane
privately, and she had taken on Mark, too. Since then she had become a sort of pet, a mascot, of their rather limited social
circle.

Alice was dark and small and frail and serious. She had on heels today, so she didn’t seem quite as tiny, but the shoes were
an old, scuffed pair worn down at the outside, and her ankles bowed out ever so slightly like a child dressing up in her mother’s
clothes. Usually she wore flat-heeled, soft Chinese shoes that buckled across the instep. They were very fashionable these
days, and both Jane and Diana had bought a pair in admiration of the violin teacher. But on Alice Jessup the little black
strapped shoes looked like the shoes of a good little girl. Alice was so slight, in fact, that with her long, long hair she
was often mistaken for a student, even at the grammar school where Maggie had persuaded the school board to apply for a grant
that would allow the school to pay Alice to teach orchestra. Whenever she smiled, it was only a tiny break in her otherwise
determined gentleness; it was only if she had made a
decision
to smile, or so it seemed to Claudia. She was a good instructor, though, coaxing the very best efforts from her students
by the sheer force of her humorless devotion to the instrument. She and Maggie were at the forefront of the nuclear freeze
movement at the university, where Alice taught a course in music theory, and the two of them were talking politics.

“I’ll tell you what I really worry about, Maggie. Well… you know…
despondency
overwhelming the whole movement,” she said. They were such a contrast. Alice was utterly motionless as if she had concentrated
every ounce of her being into a single stream of thought. It was endearing to Claudia to watch this fragile, reedlike
woman toss her thoughts into Maggie’s wake. Maggie was in motion all over the room.

“I think people will stay more involved than you think,” Maggie said. “Especially now that the people are the only ones who
have the ability to define reality.” She glanced at Alice, who remained stock-still with the effort of sorting out what Maggie
meant. “What I mean,” said Maggie, “is that
they
can define sanity, at least in this issue. The man in the street, don’t you think? I mean, it’s gone beyond being complicated.
Well, it’s so complicated that it’s become simple. Are we
really
talking about deterrents with nuclear weapons? How complex does disarmament have to be? And is it even possible? We’ve reached
a point where anyone’s opinion on what’s possible and what’s rational is pretty valid, you see.” Maggie was tossing the beans
in butter and chopped parsley in a large skillet with one hand and with the other she reached for the serving bowl and put
it in the oven to warm.

Alice stood staring at the floor in concentration, drawing her eyebrows together and biting her lower lip. She glanced up
earnestly at Maggie’s profile. “In the middle of an economic depression it seems to me that people aren’t going to be able
to concentrate on something that’s basically abstract. A philosophy,” she said.

“Oh, I think you’re wrong,” Maggie said. “In fact, if anything, the strain on the economy will fuel the freeze movement. It’s
something for people to pin their hopes on in an otherwise hopeless situation. And don’t you think that the freeze movement
gives the ordinary person a feeling of autonomy?” She emptied the beans into their dish and placed them on the counter. “But
not to worry, anyway,” she said. “I heard on the radio that this
whole depression is only a
glitch!
” Maggie laughed, and Claudia smiled from her corner of the stove where she was still whisking, but Alice was solemn. “What
in God’s name is a glitch?” Maggie asked the company in general. “What do you think?” she went on. “I love it, don’t you?”

Jane rose up on one knee that had been tucked under her on her chair. “I know, Maggie. I know! It’s like a word game we have
at school. Now, if a depression is a glitch, then it must be a gloomy bitch. A gloomy bitch! A
glitch!
Like in the cafeteria beef stew is barfew, and vegetable soup is vegoop!”

Maggie and Claudia both laughed, and Alice didn’t seem to have heard, but Maggie was surprised as well as amused. Her wariness
was apparent, and she looked to Claudia for a reaction, but Claudia was entirely pleased that her daughter was so clever.

Mark and Vince were in the room, too. Vince was leaning against the door, waiting to carry in the turkey, and he smiled, with
his long blue eyes slightly squinted into the brightness and turmoil of the kitchen.

Jane had everyone’s attention, and she became agitated with the pleasure of it. “And a gritch,” she went on to say, “is a
grinning bitch, right? And a snitch is a snobby bitch, and a litch is a lazy bitch…”

“I think a litch is more likely to be a female lech,” said Vince in his lovely voice that had a hint of a nasal drawl. Whenever
Vince spoke, he always had the effect of slowing down the pace of the conversation. His speech was lazy with what seemed to
be suppressed amusement.

“A glitch is a computer term for a hang-up,” Mark said.

Maggie gave them a blank glance and then smiled a little at Jane in the way of consolation. “That’s enough,” she said just
to Jane, although it certainly wasn’t a whisper, but then she enlarged her voice to include the room at large. “All right.
Everyone has to fetch and carry! I want to get these things on the table before everything gets cold.”

But Jane had got up and was moving around Maggie, trying to regain her attention in a ragged sort of dance of attendance.
Maggie looked at her with a quick, preoccupied smile. She was handing various things to various people to take into the dining
room.

Jane went on. “A fritch would be a French bitch, and a slitch would be a sloppy bitch, and a flitch would be a flirting bitch…”

Jane’s voice was strung out high and thin with a groveling anxiety, like Nellie when she whined, and Maggie was very calm
and deliberate. “Jane, don’t say any more about it. All right? It’s not appropriate.” And Jane’s mouth closed immediately
into a straight, tight line.

Claudia was so surprised that it took her a moment to understand what Maggie had said to Jane, and then it rankled. She thought
Jane was perfectly equipped to define what was or was not appropriate, just as Maggie thought that the man in the street was
equipped to define what was sane.

The dining room of the Tunbridge house ran the whole length of the original building, and there were always shadows in the
high corners of the room no matter what the time of day. When Celeste lit all the candles she had lined up down the center
of the table,
the shadows became a formidable presence, and the light flickering on the panes of the French doors and long windows showed
up the streaming day outside. The table glinted with silver and crystal and candlelight, and the guests took on the aspect
of refugees who had washed up at long last to the safest of harbors.

“You used the bone-handled silver, Celeste,” Maggie said. “It can’t go in the dishwasher, you know? We can’t even leave it
to soak.” Most of the guests had seated themselves, but Maggie was still all around the room in a flash. The unexpected illusion
created by Maggie’s astringent, everyday practicality was that—with minor variations—Maggie’s family was always thus: blessed
with abundance and irradiated by this shimmering light while the rest of the world might weep with rain.

“We’ll clear and wash up,” Celeste said. “You cooked. Mark and the girls can help.”

Celeste had set the table with the bone-handled silver and tiny salt dishes with miniature spoons from which the guests invariably
poured too much salt all at once upon their food and had covertly to redistribute it with the blades of their knives. She
had spread an aged damask runner the color of ivory down the center of the table and made an elaborate and sumptuous arrangement
of apples and nectarines, pineapples, oranges, kumquats with their green leaves still on, and clusters of dark purple and
pale green grapes. “Don’t worry,” she had said to her mother when Maggie had been distressed about all the bags of fruit she
had brought home from the store. “It’ll save you making dessert. I bought cheese, too.” Celeste had spent the morning on this
project, using toothpicks to anchor any piece of fruit that had rolled loose. The ten silver candlesticks stood
in a row amid the apples and grapes, and Celeste had tied a bow of shiny gold ribbon around each white taper.

It was a jubilant gathering; each person felt so singularly celebrated. Mark moved around the table pouring wine while Vince
carved the turkey. Only Jane, still anguished over Maggie’s reprimand, gazed with pallid interest at the long table. When
Diana reached into the centerpiece to take kumquats for them both to eat while they waited to be served, Jane shook her head
that she didn’t want one. Jane was sitting next to Miss Jessup, who was at the end of the table on Maggie’s left. Maggie was
sitting down, too. She had finally settled into her chair like a gaunt bird, with her hair feathering out around her head,
but as the plates were passed to Vince for turkey, she leaped up again to preside over the sideboard. She removed the lid
of a casserole and peered into the steaming dish of red cabbage and chestnuts in wine, and she stirred it a little with her
serving spoon. It was the only experimental dish she had made for this meal; every other thing was exactly what she had cooked
for this holiday year after year. She had even made the ginger pudding despite all Celeste’s fruit. But this cabbage worried
her.

“Now at least
try
this cabbage,” she said, as if all the thirteen other people seated at the table were her favorite children. “It’s Julia
Child. It really isn’t anything at all like real cabbage.” Everyone was amused, and in this endearing way of hesitant apology
she ensured that each guest would savor the pungent cabbage. Maggie had worried about it all morning, and Jane had been her
ally in the face of Diana’s scorn. It had been Jane who had arduously peeled the chestnuts and bobbed at Maggie’s elbow with
assurances of how good it smelled.
Jane had hovered and helped and tasted while Maggie assembled this incredibly complicated peasant dish.

There were too many guests for the conversation to remain general. Maggie, at her end of the table, had enlisted Alice to
help explain the music program in the public schools to William and Sally Fitzgerald, who were on Maggie’s right. The Fitzgeralds
had moved to Missouri from California and had arrived exactly two days ago. Will Fitzgerald was joining Vince’s law firm,
and he and his wife were listening to Maggie while also appeasing and diverting their disoriented and cranky eighteen-month-old
daughter. The little girl made determined lunges at the gold-tied candlesticks each time her parents released her hands. Without
seeming to notice their distress Maggie chatted on while she reached out and moved aside the three candles within the child’s
orbit. She plucked two lady apples from the arrangement in front of her and held them out to the little girl, who studied
them with suspicion but then took them both. Now that each of her hands was engaged in the effort of holding onto those apples
her parents began to eat their dinner with alacrity while Maggie carried on the conversation. That little girl knew she had
been tricked in some way, but each time she put down one of the apples, Maggie made a mock grab at it so that the child snatched
it back again with a shout of triumph.

As she listlessly moved a piece of turkey from one place on her plate to another, Jane was watching Maggie and that baby.
She ate some beans and looked at Diana’s plate to discover that Diana was waiting for a second helping. A new kind of exhaustion
was overtaking her, as though she were a windup toy running down. She recognized the heavy pressure behind her eyes, and
she didn’t want to cry. Her lower lip began to tremble uncontrollably.

“I think I’m going to be sick, Maggie,” she said all at once and with some belligerence. The prospect of someone throwing
up quieted the whole gathering.

“I really think I’m going to be sick. It’s this cabbage, I’m pretty sure. It’s all that bacon in it. I think it must be all
the fat in that cabbage that’s making me sick.” Jane said this to Maggie not loudly but with determination; her own mother
was at the far end of the table next to Vince and Celeste.

Maggie looked at Jane, whose hair was dank and clinging to her head, and whose sweat shirt was spotted from her efforts in
the kitchen. “Yes, you do look terrible,” she said. “Why don’t you go up and lie down, sweetie? Diana can bring a tray up
to you later if you feel better.”

Jane slid her chair back and stood up to leave. “I don’t think I ought to have any more of that cabbage that has so much bacon
grease in it. Just some turkey.”

“No, you shouldn’t. No, I think you shouldn’t try anything but some plain soda crackers until you feel a little better,” said
Maggie. That was not the comfort that Jane desired, of course, but no eleven-year-old could have known how hard it might be
for Maggie to appear relaxed and magnanimous while serving Thanksgiving dinner for fourteen.

Claudia excused herself and left the table a moment after Jane did. She followed her daughter and caught up with her in the
upstairs hall. In the room designated as Jane’s room Claudia pulled back the covers on the bed and slipped Jane’s tennis shoes
off while Jane lay down flat and stiff and tense and not crying.

Claudia sat down on the end of the bed and tentatively took her daughter’s sock-clad feet into her lap and massaged them gently,
running her long fingers along the muscles and tendons of the high arch of one foot and then the other. Jane was tall for
her age. She had elegant, narrow bones like Avery’s that Claudia could feel defined under her hand when she clasped Jane’s
slender foot. Claudia could discern the broad, round bone of the heel and the rigid sweep of the arch, and on the top of the
foot she could feel the distinct delineation of the complex metatarsal bones beneath her probing fingers. The sensation of
her own child’s body beneath her hands brought upon her for a moment the most profound nostalgia. She held Jane’s feet tightly
to her in the all-encompassing memory of early motherhood. She perceived intensely and briefly a thorough helplessness of
exactly the same quality she had experienced when she had paced the room weeping while Jane, at three months, had lain in
her crib with a cold, struggling to breathe. Claudia had wept then at her inability to be of any help, and now she sat stunned
with the same idea of futility in the face of being anyone’s parent.