The Time of Her Life (14 page)

“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.

Avery had planned the ingeniously spaced and shaped windows that caught the right light at exactly the right moment, and the
superstructure had gone up in the summer five years ago, during a long sunny spell. Every time they had visited the house
to be sure everything
was going all right it had been like stepping into a prism. Light poured in some windows and was refracted off others. Avery
had expounded to their builder, Harry Oliver, about how the flat planes of the building—the wood floors, the ceilings, the
pale walls—would give the illusion of motion as the light changed with the seasons and even during the length of one day.

“It will be different with each change of the
weather
, really, Harry,” Avery had said. And that particular day Claudia remembered noticing for the first time how attractive Avery
could be to all sorts of people in all sorts of ways. Avery was nicer than she was, she had thought at that moment. His interest
and generosity were enormous as he engaged his builder’s enthusiasm—coaxed Harry into imagining the building—while she stood
impassively by like a mannequin, peering up out of the unglazed windows and drawing lines with her foot in the sawdust on
the floor. She cared only that Harry did the work; she hadn’t cared if he enjoyed doing it. She wasn’t going to share with
him her sparse allotment of warmth. But Avery was insistent, leaning over Harry with fervent enthusiasm. “Don’t you see? The
space we’ll be enclosed in in the summer will be cool and shady because of the trees, but in the winter the walls will seem
to fan out with the light. I think it’ll counteract that feeling of being closed in in winter.” He had never quite induced
Harry to be interested in the theory that propelled the construction, though. Harry was concerned only with getting the job
done, and he worked well because he was very fond of Avery, but he had never cared about Avery’s idea of a house so flexible
that one would not feel defined by or trapped within it. Harry had been much more interested in getting the oddly shaped windows
to fit and storm windows to fit over them.

One day Avery and Claudia had arrived at the house and stepped inside, and it had been nothing at all like stepping into a
prism. In fact, they had been so surprised that both Avery and Claudia had reached out to brace themselves against the sensation
of falling down into their own hall. The floors, as far as they could see until a wall cut off their line of vision, had been
turned a dark blackish brown instead of the lovely pale unstained oak. Avery had been in despair. Every pinpoint of light
that fell in through the glass panes seemed to be absorbed by that dark surface. He guided Harry through all the rooms, showing
him how it was wrong, explaining how major a disaster this was. Harry followed him along, and he was sorry about it, although
he also seemed to be baffled by the scope of Avery’s distress, which was so broad that it had not been translated into anger.

Finally the three of them had stood clustered around the beautiful hand-hewn beam that ran the entire height of the house,
and Harry shifted back on his heels to make an apology.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “I’m afraid it’s that Jacob Bean.”

“Harry, what do you mean?” Avery said. “Did you contract this out? I thought your own crew was going to finish the floors
for me. I could have gotten Len Maroni even though it would have cost more. It’s going to cost more, anyway, to redo this.”

Harry had stooped down and run his hand along one of the dark floorboards. He traced the grain that showed up in black ripples
across each plank. “I don’t think we can ever get this as light as it was. We’ll have to take it down at least a quarter of
an inch. No, I used that Jacob
Bean. A lot of people use that on oak these days. It gives it this real rich look. We might be able to bleach it after I take
it down, but you’ll lose a lot of the grain. The floor will be real pale, though.” While he was assessing the floor, he handed
a can over to Avery, who looked at it and then passed it over to Claudia. It was a can of Gordon’s Jacobean wood stain.