The Time of Her Life (16 page)

Claudia began to protest. She was as astounded as usual to see Avery so frantically distressed. So loud and angry. And she
didn’t like to be accused in this way. But before she could say so, he flung himself down the stairs in three bounds and crossed
the room to stand menacingly in front of her. She was so dismayed that she raised her forearm instinctively in front of her
face, because
his expression was bleak with anger. He grabbed her arm and pulled her up so abruptly that she was not quite balanced, and
she sagged against his hold on her.

“You didn’t look for those stockings! You didn’t
look
for those stockings. So let’s find them. We’re going to find them now!” He pulled her out from behind the coffee table that
separated them and moved her along, and she staggered in front of him stocking-footed until they stood in front of the storage
closet that was under the stairs. He pulled the door open and shoved her in the direction of the shelves. For a moment he
dropped his hands to his sides and watched the back of her head as though he had forgotten what he was doing. He said to her
again, “See if you can find them! If you really look for them!” And he moved away to get his drink.

“You could do that much! You could do that much for your own daughter!” And when he turned and saw that Claudia had put her
arm against one of the closet shelves and was only standing there with her face buried in the crook of her elbow, he was back
behind her in a flash. He yanked her other arm and pulled her around to face him.

“You’re a bitch! A bitch! A bitch!” he said in a loud voice barely under control. “You really think this is all a waste of
time, don’t you? You really think it’s all shit!”

“That’s not true…” she began to protest, as she always forgot she had protested countless times before.

“Don’t
say
anything!” He exploded at her, and he turned her forcibly around toward the three sparkling Christmas trees. “They’re just
shit, aren’t they? They’re nothing at all to you! You think it’s nothing. You don’t care, do you? How much do you care about
this? You wouldn’t
do
it yourself, because you don’t think it matters.
You wouldn’t make time for any of this shit! And poor Janie! You don’t care about
her
Christmas!”

He suddenly let Claudia go and wheeled around to face the three trees himself. He stood rocking slightly from one side to
another, studying them for a moment. Then with one huge exertion and sweep of his arm he toppled the two smaller trees, which
burst upon the floor with sparks and breaking glass. He stepped over them and began to pull at the larger tree, which was
wired tightly to the central beam. For a few moments he pulled at it with both his hands, but then he subsided slowly against
the tree as if he desired it. He folded his arms into it and fell against its springy branches. He lay full out against its
resilient boughs, and his voice was harsh with despair.

“Oh, Christ!” he said. “I wish I didn’t know you. I wish that I could
unknow
you somehow. I just wish… I just wish that you thought that there was one thing in the whole world that was important.”

When Avery had swung around at the trees, Claudia had stepped backward up three of the steps to get out of his way, and now
she stood looking down at him, so hurt by what he said that she was crying. “Please, Avery. Please. Please. Come up to bed
with me. Please, Avery. Come up and sleep.”

Avery lay against the tree for a fraction of a second longer, and then he pushed himself away from it and turned without saying
anything more and slammed out of the front door. Claudia sat down where she was and put her head down on her knees. She stayed
like that for a long time before she got up and went to bed.

Upstairs in her room Jane had not moved. She lay still stretched out straight and dry-eyed, but all the
contentment and delight had sunk in upon itself with the effect of a collapsing star, a black hole. She became emptier and
emptier of any sensation until finally she fell asleep.

In the morning before school, while Claudia was still asleep, Jane made lunch for herself and packed her books and got her
violin, which she would need for rehearsal. She left them by the back door, and she dragged the two small trees out to the
edge of the driveway to be taken off by the garbage man. She swept up the fallen evergreen needles and the broken glass bulbs,
and she put the ruined light strands and bits of glass into a trash sack, which she placed outside with the discarded trees
before she gathered her things together and went out the back way to her school bus stop.

Claudia ran steaming water from the shower head. She was standing outside the bathtub in her robe, leaning into the steam
at the far end of the tub and fluffing her hair, pushing it away from her neck while the moisture collected heavily around
her head and penetrated the waves and puffs of her hair so that they coiled a little more tightly. She left the shower running
and moved to the mirror, which she had repeatedly to wipe clear with one hand while she used the other to make up her eyes.
She peered closely into the mirror through the steam to apply shadow just a shade darker than her skin and to outline her
upper lids with a soft brown pencil.

Three days after the disastrous decorating party she had called Alice Jessup, who had agreed to have Claudia drop by, and
the prospect of that meeting made Claudia feel nervous and oddly intimidated. It was true that Claudia was not often impressed;
however, she was quite easily intimidated by people who believed they led reasonable lives. She had not taken a step so conclusive
in a very long time, but when the baffling idea that Avery was not going to stay with her had settled in,
Claudia had roamed the house he had designed with an urgent restlessness. The past two mornings she had got up early with
Jane and got dressed and put on makeup and then wandered fitfully through the rooms that curved and angled in diverting and
charming ways. She experimented in the house, trying out different rooms to get a reading on their atmosphere. She wandered
into Avery’s study with its long windows set into the wall at an odd curve, and Jane’s room, in which Claudia could only stand
upright at its very center because of the arc of the ceiling. She lay down on Jane’s slender Scandinavian bed and gazed up
through the round window directly overhead and watched the snow slowly obscure the sky as it gathered on the flat glass pane.
Had Avery anticipated this effect? The white light that filtered through the snow illuminated the little room with almost
the same eerie glow produced by neon. Claudia lay on the bed and thought that she was like a figure in one of the glass domes
that children get in their Christmas stockings. She knew that she was as endangered right now as if she were enclosed in just
that way; she was as vulnerable to any hand that might pluck up her habitat and shake it to make the snow fly. Until now she
had not realized that she had assumptions about how her life would go; the things that had been certainties to her were suddenly
loose in the world; now they were a part of her history.

She had thought a good deal about what Avery had said to her. In retrospect she was very often enraged with answers and thoughts
that hadn’t occurred to her then. But it did seem to her that thinking about what people needed might be some sort of option
for her now. Perhaps he had been right when he had said that
she didn’t anticipate other people’s needs. She was willing to consider the possibility that she was sometimes insensitive.
At the very least, thinking about what other people needed was something to do. It was a little nugget of activity around
which she could begin to organize herself.

All she was certain of for the time being was that she was miserably at loose ends when she was alone in the house, with only
Nellie as company. Nellie was such an obsequious animal that her presence didn’t have much value. Claudia was unhappy when
Jane was at school, and she was making an effort to rally and cheer herself up. She had called Alice Jessup in order to make
arrangements to buy a good violin for her daughter, because she was swept up in tender gratitude toward Jane, who was so loyal
to her and was such a sturdy soul. She was pleased with herself for having thought of this gesture.

And she was also pleased to discover that when she got up in the morning and got dressed and went out to the bank and the
grocery store and to fill her car with gas, the time went by. The day did pass in spite of the fact that Avery had always
said that she would never be able to manage without him. Sometimes he had said it with a sort of melancholy fondness, and
sometimes he had said that to her in such a rage that it had signified danger, and she had taken Jane with her and the two
of them had driven out along the highway or around and around the town until he was asleep. But she was all right. She didn’t
need money, because she had a little from her parents’ estate, and she didn’t need courage, because she had Jane.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t particularly gratifying to
Claudia to be seizing these new responsibilities. Initiating this surprise hadn’t done as much for her as she had hoped it
would. She found that she had taken on a rather frightening burden. Surprises so often alter people’s lives.

When she had finished shading and outlining her eyes and had smoothed on a pale blusher beneath her cheekbones, she went to
the closet and forlornly considered all the various garments hanging on the rack or folded on the shelves. She was without
vitality in the face of this single decision of what to wear. Her wardrobe let her down, and even the tweed skirt and nice
gray blouse she chose didn’t lessen her apprehension. In fact, she lost interest in her outfit even as she was buttoning herself
into it. Before she was all finished, she had forgotten the effect she was after and had put on the boots that were nearest
to her in the closet. They were very high-heeled shiny black boots that were a little bit wrong with the muted country woolen
skirt.

She was shy about her meeting with Alice Jessup, because Alice knew some things about which Claudia was mystified. When she
had talked with Alice over the phone about buying a good violin for Jane, Claudia had become increasingly uncomfortable while
she listened to Alice talk about the three violins she had brought back from St. Louis for another interested parent to choose
among. There were two fine Tyrolean instruments to be had, although Alice thought it would be wiser to buy the reconditioned
Hungarian violin that wasn’t so expensive. It had a one-piece back, and it had been cracked, but Alice trusted the man who
had repaired it, and the violin was now in excellent condition. Alice was absolutely sure of all these facts. She cautioned
Claudia against buying a French or German violin which, in all probability, would not appreciate in value. Claudia was immensely
uneasy as she listened to Alice’s soft voice because she was entirely at the mercy of Alice’s knowledge.

“Oh, Alice,” she had said very lightly over the phone, “I’ll leave it to you to decide which one’s best for Jane. I can’t
even read music!” But Alice didn’t react with polite amusement; she was silent over the wire. She was often the same in person.
Alice had the disconcerting habit of listening with great attention to the things people said to her and considering carefully
before she replied. It unnerved Claudia. It pained her in a mild way not to be able to draw Alice out.

When Jane had first begun taking violin from Alice, Claudia had sometimes been irritated by those early, discordant notes
and especially by the shifts in tempo. “Jane,” she had said, “can’t you sense the rhythm? Why don’t you tap your foot? That
would help.” Alice had telephoned her after the lesson that had followed that advice.

“Mrs. Parks,” she had said very politely but definitely, “violinists
never
tap their feet. If you allow a child to tap his foot in the early stages of learning any instrument, it might be easier to
teach—especially the percussion instruments—but you’ll have to stop him later. You have to teach that child later that what
you let him do for so long is completely wrong. And you see, I don’t use those techniques. The
violin
is what Jane should be concentrating on, not her foot. Her foot is the farthest thing from her brain.”