The Time of Her Life

by Robb Forman Dew

  Maggie seemed unusually placid. Most of the time she was filled with conviction and enthusiasm about one thing or another, but when she leaned toward Claudia, her voice was soothing. She lightly touched Claudia’s arm, but then she drew her hand back as if Claudia might easily bruise. “You look so good. Are you all right? How are you?”

  Claudia looked back at her a moment; she watched as Maggie leaned inclusively toward her. There was a note in Maggie’s voice that suggested that Claudia was even more damaged than Claudia might know herself.

  “I’m fine, Maggie.” But she felt slightly apologetic when she said so, because she had the clear impression that it was not what Maggie wanted to hear, and of course, Maggie knew it wasn’t true.

  “No, I mean it, Claudia. I know how hard it is. And you do just the opposite thing than I do when you’re upset. I turn into a stick. Just a string bean. But as a matter of fact, I like your face fuller like that. Not so sharp. I turn into a stalk when anything bothers me, but you look wonderful. Really voluptuous. Vince always says you’re like a ripe peach, anyway.”

  Claudia looked beyond Maggie out the window. Her eyes stung slightly with fatigue. She thought of her own disgusting habits, pacing the house in the middle of the night with a glass of wine in one hand and eating, eating as fast as she could. A peanut butter sandwich, an old and crusty piece of Brie, a leftover roll of chicken Kiev, cold, with the herbed butter congealed at the center. She felt nasty now, reminded of it. She felt sullied.

  “Well, Maggie, sensual pleasures are my best thing! Ripe peaches are just the ticket. Vince has the right idea.” She surprised herself with her unquavering snappishness; it was so rare that she bothered to be cross at anyone she didn’t care about inordinately. She surprised Maggie, too, who looked abashed and didn’t say anything for a moment. She fluttered her hand and shook her head to suggest that Claudia had taken this all wrong.

  “Listen, Claudia, I’ve really been awfully worried about you and about Jane. Avery’s worried, too, you know. He didn’t have any idea that Jane was staying away from school. He thought she was only missing her music lessons. I talked to him, and he said he was going to call you. You know how he feels about me, though. He’ll go to any lengths to avoid advice from me, and I’m not sure he sees what a problem Jane’s having.” She smiled across at Claudia, acknowledging disarmingly that she was intruding, that she even sympathized with Avery’s reluctance to listen to her. But there was also a look of conspiracy in her gently self-deprecatory expression, as though she and Claudia were in this together in opposition to Avery. “I’m not going to betray Jane to him,” she went on, “but what does he think you ought to do about her? Is there anything he can do to help?”

  Maggie’s whole person indicated genuine concern, and Claudia could hardly stand it. She had not talked to Avery about Jane at all. She looked around the restaurant at the stained glass windows in the bar and the old oak atmosphere there that changed into a gardenlike setting upstairs where they were eating. Claudia wondered if someone had thought this out, had perhaps done a market survey and concluded that exactly what was needed in Lunsbury, Missouri, was a restaurant that combined an English pub and a gazebo. Avery hated this restaurant, but Claudia sat back and regarded it with interest. And people turned to look at her, too. Even in her plain brown wool dress that was now a little snug through the bust and hips she was striking with her huge, hooded eyes and the corners of her mouth drawn down tight. Maggie reached over again and touched Claudia’s arm to elicit her response, to catch her attention.

  “I understand what she’s doing,” Maggie said, “but I’m really worried about her. She doesn’t want to admit that Avery’s gone for good this time. That he’s moved out. That’s perfectly natural. It really wouldn’t even mean a thing to her to explain that he’s staying sober and working on his book. He’s her father. And I think it’s hard for a girl especially. If she faces her friends at school, she’ll have to deal with it. But you know, she’ll have to deal with it eventually, and it isn’t ever going to get easier. Sometimes I think that those children are so sophisticated that they already take comfort in each other’s disasters.” Maggie was trying to keep her intention light; Claudia saw that, but she was astounded that Maggie would sit there and say these things to her. She just stared at Maggie, and Maggie tried again. “Well, it’s classic denial, I guess. But it’s gone on over a week. I’m worried about her.”

  By this time the waiter had brought them their drinks, and Maggie stopped talking to consider the menu. Claudia was watching her with excruciating attention. The flat winter light was filtered over their table through the fronds of a large palm, and shadows shifted slightly over all the surfaces so that Claudia couldn’t fix Maggie’s face; she couldn’t decide if it was because of the shadows or if Maggie’s expression really was so elusive. But she did see a tiny muscle twitch beneath Maggie’s eye as Maggie turned a concern equal to that she professed for Jane upon the decision of what to have for lunch. And Claudia abhorred every single thing about her all at once. Suddenly Maggie was enlarged in Claudia’s perception, and monstrous. Every small line and crevice of Maggie’s freckled skin, the white blond hair on her forearms, the pale lashes and eyebrows—these things disgusted Claudia, and when Maggie looked up, she was met with an expression of unquestionable loathing. It was so forceful a look that Maggie instinctively leaned back in her chair, and after a moment her whole manner changed. The sweetness of her sympathy and concern left her, and she was matter-of-fact.

  “You know,” she said, “I didn’t know anything about how to be… kind. I didn’t really know about empathy or compassion until Celeste was born. I was only ambitious. I don’t mean I thought it through like that. I didn’t even have enough information about myself to think it through. But what I mean is… Well, don’t you think that the only way to get out of absolute self-absorption is by having children? It’s such an incredible connection. God! I became completely absorbed in Celeste! You become your child. Well, I mean, for a while there your two egos are the same! And then it gets harder. Then you have to separate yourself from your children. You can’t define yourself by your children’s reaction to you. Don’t you think that’s true? I mean, don’t you think that’s the hardest thing to learn?”

  Maggie put this question so tentatively, and with a slightly embarrassed laugh, that it seemed entirely reflective. And Claudia didn’t have an opinion because she wasn’t sure she grasped exactly what it was Maggie was getting at, but she was appeased a bit by Maggie’s concession to their mutual humanity.

  “Listen, Maggie, Jane’s just sad,” Claudia said. “She’s as sad as I am.” She hated to admit her own sorrow to Maggie, but she had to throw up some barrier to protect Jane from Maggie’s ferocious scrutiny. “When Avery and I get this settled, she’ll be fine. It’s not as though she’s missing anything academically. Jane can judge that for herself. My God, Maggie! You know Jane! She’s not childish. She’s just sad and tired, and so am I.”

  Maggie sat back and didn’t say anything while the waiter served them. She looked around the room and reached up to smooth her short, spiky hair into place. She studied her chef’s salad thoughtfully when it was put in front of her, as though someone had asked her opinion of it. “Oh, Claudia…” And she seemed tired, too. “Well… you’re thirty-two years old, and Jane’s only eleven. She is brilliant.” And she gestured with her fork to hold Claudia at bay for a moment. “There’s no question about that, and there are things she can do. I think that probably she has things she wants to do. But she’s so self-destructive right now. She’s hostile to all her friends if they phone her, and those little girls aren’t completely without sympathy. If nothing else, they like the sheer drama of the situation. And Diana is really devoted to Jane. Jane’s a powerful little girl in her own circle. But she is childish, Claudia. She can’t decide what’s best for herself.” She looked down at her plate and carefully speared a bit of everything—a little ham, some turkey, a shred of cheese,
an olive—but then she stopped short as she brought the fork toward her mouth. “Look, Claudia, I don’t want to betray Jane in any way at all. I’ll be absolutely honest, sometimes I’m furiously jealous of her for Diana’s sake.” She looked at Claudia beseechingly, to see if this admission would mitigate the rest of what she planned to say, but Claudia didn’t react one way or another. In Claudia’s opinion it was perfectly reasonable that Maggie would want her own daughter to be more like Jane. Maggie lowered her eyes again to study her salad.

  “It’s a sign of real trouble, though, you know. I think you ought to know about it, Claudia. I’m pretty sure Jane’s stolen some things from our house. I’ve missed loose change from my dresser, and what worries me most is that twice, now, a prescription has disappeared. The first time I didn’t worry about it. I just thought I’d lost it, but now I’m really upset. It’s a prescription for Percodan. It’s a narcotic. I don’t really think that Jane would use it, but it’s missing. The second bottle. And Jane was definitely around. I’ve talked to my three kids, Claudia”—and she glanced up apologetically across the table—“and I really do think that it must have been Jane who took them.”

  Claudia had never understood how to parry back and forth, how to cajole or purposely be charming in order to defend herself, but she did think that she was being attacked, and in this case Jane was being attacked, too. Claudia just looked at Maggie, and she was absolutely at a loss, because she was filled with fury, but all she was able to do with it was to assess the immediate moment and tell the truth. It often rendered her childlike, so much younger than her own daughter. “Oh, Christ, Maggie!” And she didn’t pretend that she wasn’t angry. “She did not either!”

  Maggie had said what she had come here to say; she had got it over with and was relatively unperturbed. She was eating her salad. “You might keep an eye on her, though. You might want to look around and see if my prescription turns up. It’s a small bottle. It really does worry me.”

  And then Claudia frightened herself as much as she ever had because overhead there was a faint quiver in the air and a sudden downshifting draft, and a twenty-inch pot of English ivy crashed directly onto their table, shattering the clay pot and the two salads, and spraying both of them with shards of terra-cotta, lettuce, ham, blue cheese dressing, coiled roots and vines, and potting soil. Maggie leaped out of her chair, tumbling it backward and she was shaking and enraged while Claudia was still just sitting there amazed.

  “God damn it!” Maggie said. “God damn it! That could have killed one of us! That could have killed us!” And there was a hurried rush of people around them, waiters and a man from the next table, but all Claudia did was watch them in a daze and in mounting horror as she grew more and more certain of what had happened. The table had been whisked away, but Claudia had not moved at all. She sat with her legs neatly crossed and one hand resting on the napkin in her lap while with the other she still held her fork poised in midair. Maggie had gone from tender solicitation to a state of utter terror at having an event occur that was not at all within her control—and Claudia sat there positive that she had wished that pot down on Maggie’s head. Claudia believed that for a single powerful and concentrated moment she had hated Maggie to death.

  The maître d’ hovered over them and helped Claudia to her feet, gently taking the fork from her hand and passing it to someone behind him. After a moment he turned to Maggie, leaving Claudia to drip soil and lettuce onto the little straw rug on the red-tiled floor. In fact, a small cluster of people had gathered around Maggie, whose voice had dropped into intense anger. “No, no! I won’t stay in this place for a second longer than I have to. My God! I wouldn’t sit at another one of those tables for a million dollars!” Claudia saw that the tip of Maggie’s nose had grown red, and a flush was spreading across her white, white face. Even her eyelids were rimmed around with pink, and she looked rabbity and hysterical.

  “But I’ll call my husband, who’s a lawyer. I will do that! I’ll stay here until my husband gets here with a photographer, and if you clean away one bit of this mess before I get pictures, I swear I’ll call every guest in this room as a witness!” There was distress everywhere in the restaurant, and Claudia had become just another bystander. She edged up to Maggie and got her attention for a moment.

  “I’m going on, Maggie. I want to go home. I’m covered with food.” Maggie only noticed her enough to nod in her direction. When Claudia got into her old blue Volvo and glanced around at all the little Mazdas and Toyotas, she began to tremble as violently as Maggie had. She had to lean her head down on the steering wheel for a while until she was calm enough to drive. She was sure that Jane was far too cautious and too honest ever to steal anything from Maggie. Jane adored Maggie. She knew that Jane would surely never take things from the Tunbridges’ house. Claudia didn’t think that Jane would do that to her.

  She drove along the roads banked with snow on either side, and suddenly she was so exhausted by her increasing perception of the barrenness of the world that tears slipped down her face. She arrived home with her cheeks shiny and wet and every bit of color drained away. Immediately she saw that she had alarmed Jane, and it made her cross.

  “Oh, there was this stupid, stupid accident,” she said. “At the restaurant. It’s nothing. I’m just really tired.” Jane didn’t say anything, but she looked on at Claudia with her grave glance, and Claudia became infuriated all at once. All the safe days she had spent with her daughter fell away from her, and she was unsure about things and angry and shaken.

  “Jane, for God’s sake! You don’t have to watch me every single minute! You make me feel like I live in a fish tank. You ought to call some of your friends, or something, and not just mope around after me!”

  And this time Claudia went to bed and pulled the quilt up around her ears and hugged her pillow to herself and didn’t care if Jane was in the house or not. She slept without any inner or outer disturbance.

  8

  It was Jane, in fact, who felt as though she lived underwater. In these past quiet and gentle days the time had been without tension, muted and silky and languid. Suddenly the current had shifted and she was losing her bearings. Even the day after her lunch with Maggie, her mother was still cross and uncommunicative and brittle. It was worrying, and it made Jane restless. She couldn’t concentrate on her music or even on a book with her mother’s nervously grim disposition afoot in the house. To counteract this, Jane took one of Maggie’s pills in the afternoon so that the delicate sensation of safety and optimism would come upon her, and if her mother became mysteriously angry or critical or irritated, Jane could be in the same room with her and yet be away from it. Then she would look on beatifically at her mother, who was either a whirling dynamo of bristling energy or limp with absolute but equally irascible languor. In either case, when Jane was in that state in which she felt she embodied contentment, her mother was satisfying to observe. It made Jane happy and calm to have her mother nearby, and in that becalmed state she practiced her music and watched television and didn’t dwell on anything else.

  A few days after the luncheon at which there had been that mysterious accident that had so altered her mother’s mood Jane was left on her own in the house. Her mother had been so glum that she had retreated to her bedroom, again, to lie down, and when Jane looked in on her, she saw that Claudia had fallen soundly asleep and was completely still under the quilt. Jane felt so separate from her that it made her quite desolate and lonely.

  Jane went to her own room and sat cross-legged on the bed just staring up through the skylight for some time. She was sad and restless. Finally she got up and swallowed two of Maggie’s pills and sat on the bed again, leaning against the wall and waiting for them to work. She became dreamier and dreamier, sitting there, settling into a feeling of euphoric idleness. Her thoughts wandered and turned and drowsed. Eventually she was slightly bored by her own contentment, and from the table beside her bed she took up her school notebook, in which she had laboriousl
y diagrammed sentences. She read them over with some attention. She studied the little lines of verbs and nouns and adjectives branching off at right angles and slants, and finally she reached for a pen and began to write on a fresh page. She watched the letters as she formed them and was pleased with each new shape; they opened up into large, looping swoops and curls instead of the tight, small script that crawled across the pages of her writing assignments. She wrote:

  I am falling down the hole like Alice.

  She wrote that because she felt a little the way she had felt when she had been anesthetized to have her tonsils out and had experienced the strange sensation of tumbling slowly and helplessly through the ocean. And now she began writing the things that she had thought then to stop herself; she wrote down the thoughts she had used to fight the anesthesia:

  My mother will catch me.

  She wrote that in such a large hand that it filled a whole line, and she sat back against the wall to study it with satisfaction. She skipped down two lines and wrote:

  My father will catch me.

  Somehow this upset her. Those lines bothered her in conjunction with the words sprawling luxuriantly above them.

  Who will catch me

  She wrote, and then thought for a long moment about whether to put a period or a question mark, but in her large, dopey script those four words just exactly crossed the page from the dark red line on the left to the pale reminder of a line at the right-hand margin, so she put a period. There was no room for a question mark, and when she studied the effect, she was amused because she saw what that did to the words and to the intention of them, and she went on writing, carefully skipping one line between each sentence. Now her page looked like this: