The Time of Her Life (19 page)

Jane realized, after spending such a sweet time with her own mother, that all this was condescension on Maggie’s part. Maggie
pretended to these girls that they had a choice and were doing her a favor. But when Jane came into the large, crowded kitchen,
she saw how carefully Maggie had planned this activity. There were sheets and sheets of cookies laid out on the counters,
and on the table were separate bowls of colored icing at each place, and sprinkles and cinnamon hearts were ranged around
the table within everyone’s reach. Jane knew, anyway, that Maggie had never needed them for this task. Maggie was only pretending
this urgency to avoid any scorn that might attach itself to this diversion, which had always been a ritual part of Diana’s
birthday, since it was in December. In case any of the girls might think they were too old for this, now, Maggie had forestalled
their complaints, and this cookie decorating would keep them busy until dinner.

“I’m sorry, girls. I’m sorry,” Maggie said as she moved among them, distributing butter knives with which they could ice the
cookies, “but I’ve got to get this done. Mark
will be here later to put the lights on the tree, so you don’t have to hang these till after dinner. You can go on and put
the hobby wire through them, though. I’ve cut it in lengths for you. I’ve got two dishes to finish. The broccoli and a dessert.
I haven’t even decided what I’m going to serve for dessert, and I’ve got twenty-three people coming, so I’m counting on you
girls and Mark to get all this finished.”

Mark’s imminent arrival made an impression on Diana’s friends because he was good-looking and intriguingly older than they
were. They gathered around the table and sat in their chairs with an air of detachment. Even their various postures implied
their disassociation from the whole thing, as if they weren’t connected with what they were doing. All but Jane, who was disoriented
by this easy trick Maggie had played on them. When she took her place, she jostled Linda Barber’s elbow so that Linda’s knife
skewed across the cookie she was working on and spread red frosting over the sleeve of her shetland sweater. But Jane just
looked at her. She didn’t even think to apologize.

“God, Jane! Be careful! Leave me a little room, okay?” And Diana and Stephanie and Linda and Heather continued the conversation
they had begun upstairs. Jane sat there with a cookie in her hand and felt thoroughly removed from herself and these four
friends.

“I’ve got a terrible headache,” Linda said. “I’m doing the Scarsdale, and I think I’ve got low blood sugar.”

Diana and Heather both told Linda that she didn’t need to diet.

“Just three pounds. I’m not anorexic! Don’t get excited.”

“I think your headache is completely psychosomatic,”
Jane said loudly and grudgingly, surprising herself. “It’s just neurotic!” She had no idea why she was so angry at Linda.
“Your headache’s all in your imagination.” Jane was there in her chair saying that, and at the same time she was watching
the whole world from another angle, and she saw Linda and Stephanie exchange a look. She saw Diana bend over her work to avoid
everybody’s eyes, and she saw Maggie stiffen and turn and approach the table. Jane knew as well as anyone that it didn’t matter
whether what she said was true or not. It was not the kind of thing these girls said to each other. At the very least it was
unkind to Linda, who always lacked the attention she wanted, and it was rude, in any case. Jane knew also just then that she
had somehow got so far past her friends’ experience that they could never be of any help or comfort to her again. She didn’t
think there was anything about herself that she could ever explain to them.

“Oh, Jane…” Maggie said. “Diana, why don’t you… No, you have icing all over your hands. Jane, would you run upstairs and get
some aspirin for Linda? It’s in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom.”

Jane moved off through the house, carrying with her a sensation so deep and cold that she didn’t experience it as much as
she was possessed by it. She moved by rote; she didn’t think, but when she looked through the cabinet for the aspirin, she
also pocketed Maggie’s newly refilled prescription for Percodan. She did this without consideration, also. She didn’t even
bother to worry about if anyone would notice that it was gone or whether she would be suspected of taking it.

Jane stayed to spend the night, but early the next morning she decided to leave before breakfast.
From her new and expanded point of view she could see that her departure was a relief to everyone. And now that her mother
had come out of some sort of haze of her own, Jane was at least at ease in her company. Claudia never treated her daughter
with condescension; she didn’t treat Jane at all as if she were a child, and so Jane came back into herself a little and for
the most part was free of that horrifying, omnipotent perspective. Even when Jane was in her own room and Claudia was somewhere
else in the house, Jane was not overtaken by that alarming separation from her own actions. She played her music and she was
at home.

In the mornings, when the sun melted the frost off of the little porthole over her bed and the straight beam of swirling light
fell across her room, she was sure it boded well and was significant. She had tucked the little vial of Percodan tablets into
her bottom drawer, but she didn’t take one very often because she was in no real need of the expansive oblivion it brought
on. She began edging herself into sleep each night by thinking of the triumph she would have when she played in the school
concert. Maggie would be there, and Mark, and her father, and of course, Miss Jessup would be conducting. Day by day her anticipation
of this event grew into a conviction of what lay ahead of her, and as long as she was involved with her music, she was in
a state of satisfaction.

Claudia would not acknowledge to herself that she was waiting, but in fact, if there had not been some sort of expectancy
at the core of her, if she had believed that her life had come to the point at which it settled, it would have been intolerable
to her sensibilities. Suddenly, instead of having to fight off lethargy, she was having trouble sleeping. It wasn’t that her
dreams were disturbing—her unconscious seemed to have reached a state of exhaustion beyond dreams—but in sleep she was washed
through with a sense of such awful isolation that in order to bear coming back to wakefulness, she forced herself through
the process of placing herself in the world. She would envision the house, the town, the state, the country. Then at least
she would be located, but so lonely that the sensation of it truly weighed upon her as she lay helpless in her bed, heavy
in every part of herself.

She was beyond dreams, but she was possessed in her sleep by memory, and she awoke without animation. She awoke in a state
of grief, as if a death had happened. So she strolled through the nights, smoking and drinking
wine. She circuited the house and sorted through the drawers. She cleaned the refrigerator. Nevertheless, she couldn’t entirely
escape sleep. She awoke one morning on the couch in the living room, where she had only sat down in the early hours before
it was light. She woke up struggling away from an image of herself and Annie Dobbs fifteen years ago sunbathing on her porch
roof in Natchez and looking down through the crepe myrtle and across the drive where Avery was mowing the yard in front of
his house.

He was concentrated and methodical, pushing the mower down one long side and then across the front at a right angle, then
up and down again while the fine, moist grass flew up and clung to his long calves. When Claudia had seen his face, dispassionately
plotting the elaborate checkerboard he was making with the pattern of his mowing, she had felt a terrible, sad lurch of longing
even then, at seventeen. She would have liked to capture his attention and lie down with him and lick the little flecks of
green from his bare chest and back and down the long muscles of his legs. She had been so filled with yearning that it must
have been quivering toward him in the air. She knew in remembering that it must have been a tangible thing, piercing the hot,
sunny day. And yet he had gone on tracing the intricate crosshatching upon the ground with indifference, ambitious and determined
even in that project. She awoke filled with the sensation of the lush heat of that summer day, and to find herself stiff and
cramped in her living room in the dead winter of the Midwest was threatening to her hopefulness. Memories are much worse than
any dream. Memory was the worst thing for Claudia.

She tried to walk through her need to sleep. She tried to keep busy. She made extensive shopping lists and spent one day making
chicken Kiev, and she and Jane set the table with the Dansk candlesticks and had a celebration. Jane was earnest and quiet
and accommodating, and Claudia had a great need for her company. When they had been sitting across the dining room table from
each other eating the buttery little rolls of chicken, Claudia had looked at Jane’s straight glance directed her way and been
immensely reassured. She was filled with the deepest affection for her daughter. It seemed to her that the generosity of that
embrace Jane had once extended to her reverberated between them. Jane was safe as houses; she was what Claudia counted on
most.

Now and then in the warm little house, when Claudia was taken with a fit of organization, she would call to Jane to bring
a trash sack, and she would light a cigarette and begin to sort out another closet or some odd drawer. If the ashes from the
cigarette drifted onto the floor, she would tell Jane not to worry; she would vacuum later. If she were standing on a rug,
she would simply grind the ash in with her heel.

“It keeps the moths out,” she would say.

It was a great help to her to have Janie with her. At times Claudia’s nerves were drawn so taut that she was rendered listless,
and she would stop right in the middle of reordering the minutiae that had accumulated in some kitchen drawer. She would stop
and consider whatever she had come upon—packing tape, freezer labels—and she would wander off with it, vaguely wondering when
she had ever had such optimism that she had planned to date and label the food she put in her
freezer. But the next time she looked at the same drawer she would find that Jane had finished the job and left everything
aligned and tidy. She thought her daughter was a remarkable person to be so industrious in her every endeavor. A dozen times
a day Claudia would pass through the room where Jane was practicing or reading or luxuriously watching soap operas, and she
would feel a little better each time. She could even sleep for an hour or two when Jane was up and about and Claudia could
hear her moving around somewhere in the house.

And to Jane those days before Christmas, those cozy days at home, were the longest days of lazy serenity she had ever known.
She was right in the house assured that her mother was safe, that things weren’t changing, and that she had no order imposed
on her time. All the hours were there for her to shape, and to Jane that was an unusually pleasant condition in the world.

But Maggie could not leave Claudia alone about Jane’s staying home from school. When the phone rang and it was Maggie, Claudia
would hold it to her ear and listen with reluctance. She could not understand why Maggie continued to badger them. Why did
it matter to her in what ways the two of them found a small bit of comfort, a little bit of satisfaction in their dome in
the icy meadow?

“Diana is so worried about her, Claudia. Especially since her birthday party. And all her friends are asking about her, too.
Do you think this is really a good thing to let her do?”

Of course, Claudia couldn’t answer her on the phone since Jane was in the vicinity; besides, it seemed to her a very strange
question. Maggie ought to know them
well enough to see that it wasn’t a question of letting Jane do one thing or another. It went through Claudia’s thoughts occasionally
that Maggie was intrusive in their lives in the same way the sluggish, freakishly hatched winter flies were distressing as
they lived their short lives trapped between the storm and window-panes, clicking and whirring against the glass.