The Time of Her Life (22 page)

“Answer me, for God’s sake! Is there something wrong with you? Can’t you
hear
me?” Claudia’s voice had become strained and frantic, and Jane’s mind was blank. Suddenly her mother leaped toward her and
slapped her across the face with a smack of her hand that Jane
heard before she felt it. It was Claudia, though, who then doubled over as if she were in pain and began crying in earnest.
Sobbing and gulping for air.

“Oh, God, Jane. Oh, God. Aren’t you happy at all? Am I so terrible? What can I do? What can I do?” Her voice had trailed off
into a helpless quavering. “Why won’t you help me? Oh, God. I really am the foulest person to walk the earth. That’s the truth,
isn’t it?” She backed up and sat down in a kitchen chair, and laid her head down on her arms, which she spread across the
table, and she was still sobbing. Jane just stood gazing at her for a little while, stunned. At last she went a little way
toward Claudia but stopped again in the middle of the room. Her face stung, and she was terrified to approach her mother.
She did move closer, though, close enough to reach out and stroke her mother’s back down the line of her shoulder. She stood
shyly tracing her fingers along her mother’s shoulder, and she left Claudia when Claudia was no longer shaking. She left her
mother there with tears still streaming over her cheeks and soaking one of the billowing sleeves of her robe.

Jane went to her room, walking through the house in the dark, and lay down on her own bed and did not cry at all. She just
lay there feeling light-headed and nauseated and knowing that she had done something terribly harmful when she had addressed
this self from her other self. She was filled with pity and anger and humiliation, and those powerful and contradictory emotions
sapped her of wakefulness. She finally fell again into a deep sleep.

Claudia fell asleep, too, at the table, but she didn’t sleep long. She slipped in and out of being awake just
long enough to stop crying, and then she opened her eyes in the bright kitchen, where the water was still running in the sink
and the refrigerator door stood wide open. The machine whined and hummed behind her. For one instant she didn’t remember where
she was, but only for a few seconds; then she got up to turn off the water and close the refrigerator door, and she was engulfed
with self-loathing.

She could not bear what she had done, the way she had behaved. She could not stand to be only with herself, and she moved
out of the bright kitchen and through the house without flipping on any of the light switches. She moved without thinking
and looked in on Jane, who was deeply asleep with a pale light falling across her bed from the round window above it.

Claudia left her and paced the upper hall, despising herself, sick with her own nature, but trapped in only these several
rooms with everything she was or had become. She was trapped with the consideration of consequences. She had infringed on
her daughter’s dignity, and the picture of Jane’s guarded but horrified gaze as she stood immobile in the kitchen was so painful
to Claudia that she put her hand up over her eyes briefly—like a flinch—and she tried to divert herself. She went from room
to room in search of her cigarettes.

That afternoon she had been appalled at finding the strange little slips of paper tucked away around her daughter’s room,
just as she was also appalled that she was searching the room at all. But she read each note as she came upon it and tried
to put it together in her mind with Jane’s long and serious face, her sweet, straight eyebrows, her total lack of guile. As
she turned up yet another note, dismay and anger spread through
her with a rush of blood to her face and fingertips. Even the backs of her hands turned rosy red. And she thought of girls
and women and their smug secrets. Maggie at lunch and all the things she had only implied. Herself and the things she never
said. She thought of female bodies and their recesses and mysteries and hidden places. And finding Jane asleep in the study
had heightened this sudden ire. Whatever could be more exclusive than the body of a sleeping woman? It was a repudiation.
She was baffled and enraged, and she hadn’t awakened her daughter. She had known that she was beyond reason at that moment
and untrustworthy. She had known that she was terrified of all the things she might not know and might or might not find out.

Claudia found her cigarettes in the kitchen, and now she smoked and walked and despaired of herself. Jane hadn’t stolen anything.
She hadn’t hidden money; she hadn’t hidden pills. The only things she had hidden away in her room were the peculiar and melancholy
little notes. But it had been unbearable to Claudia that her daughter had hidden away her thoughts. She felt more bereft and
alone than she had ever felt before in her life because even though Jane might have her secrets, it was also true that there
was no one else Claudia had ever trusted so much. Whatever Jane might know about her mother—all the private things that Jane
did know—she could be counted on to encompass that knowledge and still extend to her mother far more mercy than any other
person ever would or could, male or female.

Claudia was desperate, as she walked the house, to find some way to make amends, and she had a sudden burst of enthusiasm
when she thought of Jane’s new violin
tucked away in her closet. She went straight up to her room and brought it out from hiding and opened the case on her bed
to look at it, to see if it would be sufficient. She turned on all the lights in the bedroom, even the overhead fixture, and
walked around the bed, considering it from every angle. She didn’t know if it would impress Jane; it was such a plain brown
instrument. It would have to be properly presented, and Claudia took the violin down to the living room to prepare a surprise
for her daughter, to try to construct an apology.

She plugged in the lights of the Christmas roping that swagged up the stairs, and she turned on the lights on the tall tree
that was still wired upright against the towering center beam of the house. She took her black cape from the downstairs closet
and spread it over the Danisk teak coffee table, taking care to drape it in elaborate folds, and she put the open case on
one end of the table, exhibiting its plush red interior. She placed the violin at the other end, turned at an angle with the
bow canted across its strings.

As always with Claudia, one passion was quick to follow another without any sensational carryover. No immediate nostalgia
or shadows colored one mood to the next, and she had moved in the space of a few hours from a state of bereavement to anticipatory
euphoria.

She went back to the top of the stairs to see how it would look to Jane as she came down the steps, and she decided it lacked
drama. She went to the dining room for the Dansk candlesticks and searched through the storage closet for the elaborate candelabrum
she had brought with her from the house in Natchez. She even unpacked the set of twenty-four little votive candles that
released insect repellent as they burned, and that weren’t brought out until summer, when Avery placed them at intervals along
the broad top railing of the deck. She put the eight-armed candelabrum on the parson’s table behind the couch and then had
to go back to the closet to see if she could find eight candles. It took her some time to insert them properly because the
eight she had come up with were different sizes and colors, and she had to take the cellophane from some of them and wrap
it around the stem ends of several candles so they would fit tightly. She worked in a great hurry, though, fervent as she
was with this new enthusiasm.

She dispersed the small votive candles around the room and the two Dansk candlesticks on either side of the violin. At last
she went to the kitchen for wooden matches and lit them all. Then she sat down on the couch to enjoy the full effect of the
flickering light and even the sweetly pungent odor of insecticide enclosed in the winter-tight house. She was deeply satisfied
with the arrangement, and she had everything prepared, but it was only five-thirty in the morning.

Claudia tried to wait until six o’clock, but after fifteen minutes of moving around the room to see how it looked from every
corner she lost patience and went quietly up the stairs to Jane’s room. When she stopped in the doorway this time, Jane opened
her eyes immediately and saw her there and sat straight up in bed. Her mother was lit from behind by a strange, quavering
light in her gauzy robe, and it alarmed Jane. She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t see her mother’s expression, and she was
wary. Claudia felt the reverberations of her own yearning fan out into all the angles of Jane’s small room. What Claudia wanted
at that
moment above anything else was to extend comfort to Jane as Jane had once extended it to her, and she crossed the room and
awkwardly put her arms around Jane’s shoulders and stooped slightly to lay her cheek against the top of Jane’s head. But it
was a fleeting embrace, a reluctant and mortifying welling up of so much emotion that she only risked a soft encompassment
of her daughter for a moment. And Jane felt as though she had been briefly enfolded in wings. Claudia moved off to circle
the room.

“I’m so sorry, Jane.” Her voice was very solemn, and she had her back to Jane. It wasn’t enough to say, and she knew it. She
knew that nothing could be forgiven in this instance, and it seemed to her that after all, there was a sort of justice there.
There would be an indelible picture, for as long as Jane was in the world, of Claudia galvanized with rage and holding out
a streaming handful of the fragile little papers toward her daughter. For all the rest of her life there would be in Jane’s
head this little tableau of her mother’s betrayal.

Claudia moved again to the doorway, where her robe glowed transparently around her. “Janie, isn’t tonight the night of the
concert? Do you feel like getting up now? Could you just come downstairs for a minute and help me with something? And I can
fix us some breakfast. I don’t think either one of us had anything to eat last night.” Even when she mentioned the night before,
Claudia’s voice dwindled away bleakly, and Jane was still thrilled from her mother’s touch. Her entire sympathy was awakened
by now and was directed toward her mother, who was so encumbered and overflowing with sentiment; she was so awfully vulnerable
in a new way.

Jane got out of bed at once and followed her mother
to the top of the stairs, where she only watched her mother’s back preceding her down the steps, and then she became aware
of the peculiar scent of insecticide, a smell from midsummer, and of all the little candles everywhere. But it was not until
her mother had moved away from the bottom step that Jane caught sight of the violin, and she froze in place with one foot
still slightly raised above the next step. She did not move or speak for a moment. Across the room, standing against the light,
Claudia expelled a slow sigh of gratification, although she was uneasy, too, because she didn’t want Jane to thank her. Claudia
had always anguished over giving gifts; it had always seemed to her an awful thing, embarrassing to everyone and even unfairly
burdensome to the recipient in various ways. She thought people preferred to be prepared. She was not in the least stingy,
but she lacked the courage of the natural-born gift giver; she had no idea of any graceful way to accept thanks.

In fact, before Jane said anything at all, Claudia preempted her and began to speak very rapidly. “It’s just that I couldn’t
stand not to give it to you now.” And she held up her hand as if Jane were having some thought that she shouldn’t have. “And
I know… Well, I don’t think for a minute that this is to make up for anything. I wish it could, but I don’t really think that
one thing can make up for another. I mean, both things have still happened.” She paused at this point, because she heard herself
nervously chattering away, getting caught up in one of her pet philosophies. And she wondered if she even meant what she was
saying. Certainly when the idea had occurred to her, she had intended this to be a gesture that would wipe away the
night before. She talked on, though, because one way or another it didn’t really matter if she meant it or not.

“It’s really your early Christmas present, Janie, but you have your concert tonight. Actually I liked the dark wood better,
but Alice said that this was a better instrument. And don’t worry. Alice selected it. You know that I don’t know anything
about choosing a violin. I mean, don’t worry that it’s the wrong one. Anyway, Alice said that you could try it for a few months.”
She had finally become so nervous that she had to stop. There was something more that she meant to convey to Jane, but she
didn’t know exactly what it was or how to do it, and Jane was still standing on the stairs stiff with surprise.

“But why don’t you try it, Jane? I think you ought to try it by yourself, and I want to go fix some breakfast for us anyway.
I’ll fix French toast. And later today I’m going shopping for a dress for you to wear tonight. Something really special. A
beautiful dress for tonight. They’ll be so surprised at the concert! Everyone will!” And the triumph in her voice was solely
on behalf of Jane.

When Jane was left alone in the room with the violin, she stood still for quite some time, looking at it from across the room
before she moved over the rug to see it more closely. She was afraid even to touch it. She was horrified by it because she
knew that she had trained herself to a state of mastery of the rented instrument she had learned on and played for the past
five years. She had been coached by Miss Jessup and had learned for herself all the ways to compensate for the irregularities
and deficiencies of the other violin, and she had planned to amaze everyone—and anyone, too, anyone who might ever have taken
her lightly, even her father.
She had been sure she would surprise them all when she stood alone on the stage and played the Bach. Every energy she had
had for the past weeks had been directed toward that one idea. The only other thing in her life for that time had been her
newfound and unconsidered adoration of her mother. Until these past few days she had basked in and absorbed the remarkable,
shimmering quality of her mother’s undivided’ attention, and she had pinned any thoughts of the future on her music. But she
had seen such pleasure on her mother’s face as she stood in the room raptly happy and irradiated by the candlelight that she
could not possibly have explained to her that she ought to refuse this gift. She was unable to think of any way to postpone
accepting it. Jane had understood, when she saw the tension in every line of her mother’s body as Claudia stood over the violin
and among all those candles, that she was completely responsible just now for her mother’s happiness. All hope for herself
and her own triumph began to fade as she contemplated the light golden and beautifully made instrument lying before her on
the table.