The Time of Her Life

by Robb Forman Dew

  She went along the hall to Jane’s room, and all she meant to do was to be sure that Jane was there and tucked in. Claudia stood in the doorway where she could just make out the silhouette of her daughter turned away from the door with her face toward the wall. Claudia, for a moment, ached with such a terrible regret that there was no other important thing about this day at all. For a brief moment she mourned what seemed to her to be the loss of her daughter, and she moved over to the bed and looked down at Jane’s face, which was very pale and completely relaxed in sleep, just as she had slept as an infant. Claudia was afraid that Jane would awaken and that her severe features would register sweeping disapproval of almost everything that Claudia had ever done. She felt so sure that this might happen, she was so certain that there was anger in the room, that she froze there momentarily, alarmed that even a shift of the chilly air would induce her daughter’s wrath. But Jane didn’t stir, and Claudia didn’t have the courage to lean over and kiss her on the cheek; she had never had that courage except when Jane was very young and couldn’t object. She quietly left the room.

  Downstairs she unplugged the tree and let out poor Nellie, who had been making frantic circles around her ever since Claudia had come down the stairs. In the kitchen she looked at the clock. It wasn’t as late as she had thought; it was only a little after eleven. Finally she turned off the lights and went back to bed, stepping gingerly over the scattered boxes and the broken violin and keeping her mind empty of any implication they might have other than being impediments to her progress across the room and up the stairs.

  She lay in bed with Avery next to her snoring slightly, but she was restless. She turned on her stomach and embraced her pillow with her head turned to look out at the icy driveway and far across the meadow, where lights were shining in the Tunbridge house. She looked down the hill at their windows and became drowsy, and she reversed the process in her thoughts, placing herself inside Maggie’s house and gazing out over the meadow where she and Avery and Jane were warmly tucked in after a long day, and she fell back to sleep.

  Only Nellie stirred in that cold landscape over the next few hours. She trotted along to the grove of pines where she customarily relieved herself, although she was abashed even then, having understood since being housebroken that this might induce anger. She went farther up the meadow to the house above the Parks’, whose inhabitants thought they had a problem with raccoons. Nellie quietly tipped over a plastic trash can in which she found many mothballs and five fine bones from a standing rib roast. She settled down happily in the snow to chew on them, holding one between her paws so she could work her way down the meaty ridge that slipped away from her otherwise. In a little while, though, a light went on in the house, and Nellie made a stealthy retreat down the hill with a large rib in her mouth, moving cautiously so her tags wouldn’t jangle. Nellie was a terrible coward, but that made her all the more skilled as a thief.

  She carried the bone with her to her own front door, where she lay down to wait until someone came to let her in, and she dozed off with her chin resting on the well-chewed prime rib. She came instantly alert, however, and was overjoyed when she first heard the gentle crunch and then saw the lights of a car that turned from the main road and made its way slowly up the long, icy drive toward her house. Nellie was standing up and wagging her tail even before the car came to a stop behind Avery’s Citation.

  Inside the house the headlights had shifted fleetingly right over Avery’s face as the car made the upward climb from the road below, but he woke up after the light had passed over the walls and through the room when the car leveled out in the short, flat turn to the circular parking area. He was instantly awake, however, and he knew that something significant had awakened him because he was immediately anxious. He pushed the quilt back and sat up to look out the window.

  “Oh, Christ!” he said in a loud whisper of alarm. “Holy shit, Claudia!”

  “What?” she asked. She was only a little bit awake, and she turned over on her back to try to see Avery through the darkness. She reached out for the light next to the bed, but Avery grabbed for her arm.

  “Christ! No! Don’t turn on the light! The curtains aren’t even closed.” He was whispering, but his voice was very urgent. Claudia let her arm fall back to the bed.

  “What’s the matter?” And she was whispering, too.

  “Oh, shit, Claudia. It’s Alice. She’s right out there! Her car’s out there!”

  “In the driveway?”

  “Right out there. She’s right outside!”

  Claudia slid off her side of the bed and lay on the rug by the window, peering out. She didn’t say anything. It was true. Alice’s brown Dodge Dart was parked directly behind Avery’s new Citation. Avery rolled across the bed and slid off, too, so that he couldn’t possibly be seen through the window. The two of them lay side by side, peering over the rim of the window that ran almost floor to ceiling.

  “Oh, Christ!” Avery said. “I should have gone back. I told her I’d be back!” He still whispered.

  “What should we do now? What if she knocks on the door?” Claudia whispered back. They had been caught out together. They had even been in bed together.

  “God! Oh, God! We’ll get Janie to answer it. I should have called her or something. Fucking shit! Do you know what she was fixing for dinner? For Christmas dinner? It’s so awful! Shit! I should have gone back.”

  “What? What was she fixing for dinner?”

  “There were just going to be the two of us. Just the two of us. But she was going to roast a chicken!”

  Claudia was indignant, a little, on Alice’s behalf, and she whispered back to him, “Well, Avery…”

  “I know, I know. But doesn’t it seem awful to you? I mean, it’s such a pathetic sort of gesture. I didn’t want her to. I didn’t want her to fix that damned chicken. Christ, I bet it’s sitting there sort of horrible and puckered all over the way roast chicken gets when it’s cold. Oh, shit!”

  They were both very quiet, watching the car warily. Finally Claudia said, “Well, even so, Avery… I mean, in spite of everything I really am fond of Alice, and….”

  “Oh, God. I know. I should have gone back to her place!”

  And then they both began to laugh that terrible, stifled laughter that hurts inside because it has to be repressed. They shook with panicky, breathy laughter that made their ribs ache. Claudia buried her face in her elbows on the rug and laughed and laughed, and Avery laughed and gasped occasionally to get his breath. They were hysterical on the rug of their own bedroom, hiding from Avery’s lover.

  Below them, though, Alice opened the car door, closing it with a thunk that was hollow and didn’t reverberate in the cold air. And Claudia became completely quiet and still as she peered out at Alice, who had stepped back from her car and was looking directly up at their window with her hands in her pockets and her wool hat pulled down over her ears and her long hair streaming over her shoulders. Avery, though, still lay beside Claudia, keeping his head down, and was still racked with great silent shudders of laughter.

  “Alice has such beautiful hair,” Claudia said after several moments and very, very softly. “She always has had such beautiful hair.” But below them Alice continued to stand and stare at the house, ignoring Nellie, who pranced all around her in a friendly greeting.

  Claudia thought that Avery was still laughing into his crossed arms, but then she realized that he was stifling his own crying.

  “My God, Claudia. Think of someone who would cook a chicken on Christmas Day and serve it with cranberry sauce and stuffing…”

  Claudia looked away from Alice and turned to try to see Avery’s expression in the dark. She tried to see what he was talking about, and he continued to shake with a sound of half-muffled sobbing and laughing. She could only peer at him and wait.

  “You know,” he said, “she had an abortion last month.” He became still, too, stretched out on the floor with his head on his arms. “She didn’t want a baby,
anyway. And she thought I would leave her. She didn’t think I would stay. But I wanted her to have the baby. I don’t think she really wanted me to stay.”

  Claudia just looked at him through the dark where he was crying for the chilled chicken and the lost child. She just stared at him through the murky night, and she didn’t move at all. She just lay there watching him.

  Alice walked around her car and stood closer to the house, but she was not looking up at the windows anymore. She stood very still and straight with Nellie sitting at her side staring ahead at her own doorway.

  “That’s so stupid! It’s so stupid, so stupid! Why did you do that?” Claudia was whispering, but she was truly anguished. “Why did you go away from me? I don’t know why you go away from me. I know everything, for God’s sake! I know the very worst there is to know about you, and I want you with me! I always have wanted you no matter what!” And now tears were sliding down Claudia’s face, but she didn’t realize it. “And you even love me. You want to be with me. You can’t ever stay away from me for very long. But you do all this damage! Why do you go away from me? Why are you always leaving?” She really had to know this; it was something she had never caught on to. Avery didn’t move or answer for a little while, and Alice stood silently below.

  “Well…” Avery said, and he whispered so softly that Claudia could scarcely hear him. “Well… the thing is… you do. You do know the worst things… but you know the best about me too. Probably. You probably do,” Avery said. “I probably can’t do a fucking thing any better than you already think I can. It scares the shit out of me. It really does.”

  Claudia just listened to him. If she had been angry instead of so very sad, she would have torn this idea of his into little shreds with all the lacerating scorn she felt for his ambition and his vanity, but with that silent witness below them in the driveway she just heard him and made no reply at all.

  They both turned their attention to Alice, who held them prisoner on the drafty floor. For a long while no one moved, although down the hall Jane shifted one arm ever so slightly in her heavy sleep.

  Eventually Alice moved back around her car to the driver’s side and opened the door, and Claudia let her breath out in relief even though Avery didn’t look up at all. He lay as still as if he had fallen asleep. But Alice only reached inside to get her keys, and then she walked around to the trunk of the car and with some effort finally unlocked and opened it. When she closed the trunk, Claudia could see that she was holding the tire iron in one hand.

  “Avery!” And Claudia put out her hand to touch his arm in alarm.

  “Oh, God!” Avery said, and they were immobilized with shock in their hiding place behind the window. They hardly breathed.

  Alice hefted the tire iron in her hand while Nellie watched with interest. Perhaps Alice would throw it for her. Alice paced back and forth beside the parked cars, smacking the tire iron against her mittened palm, feeling its weight. At last she stopped alongside the Citation and raised the tire iron high above her head and behind her shoulder so that Nellie reared up on her hind legs, ready to retrieve it when Alice let go. But Alice swung it fiercely down, smashing it through the front window of Avery’s car, and Nellie let out a horrified yelp. Alice brought it back again and smashed at the window another time, and another, and poor Nellie ran off down the hill to turn and watch from a safe distance with her ears flat down on her head and her tail tucked between her legs.

  Alice moved a little to the side and worked and worked at the passenger windows, smashing them with all her strength, until only fragments of glass remained projecting jaggedly from the frame. She walked around to the other side of the car and stopped for a moment, leaning against the hood to catch her breath, and she heaved to again, swinging at and smashing anything on the car that she could break. Finally she stopped and stepped back and surveyed what she had done for a long minute. Then with great fastidiousness she stepped carefully over the broken glass, opened her trunk once more, replaced the tire iron, and got in and drove away.

  As Claudia and Avery watched the red taillights of her car retreat down the hill, they were all alone in the dark. They no longer knew anyone else except the other one, and the illusion that they ever could had come tumbling down around them on this Christmas Day. For quite a while they lay there beside each other in utter silence.

  THE TIME OF HER LIFE

  A NOVEL BY

  Robb Forman Dew

  A Reading Group

  Guide

  A Conversation with

  Robb Forman Dew

  How did you begin to write novels? Did you always want to be a writer?

  I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately—why I became a writer, that is. I used to think it was because I had something urgent to say. But I actually started writing before I could even write. I don’t know how old I was—four or five—and I would fill pages with wavy lines as though I were writing words. So maybe it’s a genetic imperative of some sort. I don’t think I’ve ever asked anyone why he or she became a painter, because I assumed it was simply a deep pleasure because that person was talented. But, of course, I’m sure painting is filled with the same euphoria and misery as writing.

  I grew up in a family where everyone seemed to write, or seemed to want to write. I remember being truly startled when a friend of mine avoided a class in college because she would have to write essays, and instead she took a science course. It was the first time I really understood that loving to read—my friend was a great reader—really didn’t have that much to do with wanting to write. And I’ve come to a few conclusions about why people do write. I think that writers really have to write or they become unhappy—even depressed and disoriented. And I think that they’re lucky if they also have talent, but whether talented or not anyone who writes is—for the time the actual writing is going on—imagining that he or she is imposing on some imagined reader a worldview. It’s an unconscious attempt at seduction, I think.

  When did you start writing your first novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death? How long did that novel take you to write?

  Oh, I think that I was growing increasingly frustrated with my inability to write good short stories. I was getting some of them published, but I knew they weren’t right. I was so furious at myself at one point—for finishing a story and knowing that while some of the writing was good the story didn’t work—that I picked up my typewriter and put it in the middle of the driveway so that when my husband came home that evening in the dark he would run over it! Of course, about a half hour later I rushed out and saved it—I couldn’t have afforded another and it had occurred to me, too, that it might ruin our car. Also, of course, how on earth could I have explained it to my husband? But I think my idea was that if my typewriter got run over by a car then it would hardly be my fault if I didn’t write.

  During my twenties and early thirties I struggled with short stories, and they were published in some wonderful journals, and those editors were extremely encouraging. I began the first chapter of Dale Loves Sophie to Death as a story. And I was pretty pleased with the ending for once, but I didn’t send it out right away, and I began another story which in the back of my head I knew was not a story; it was a second chapter. But I was too terrified to admit it. By the time I had four chapters I admitted to myself that I was writing a novel.

  Was writing your second book easier than writing the first?

  It was easy to sit down and write the book. I was still new to the process and didn’t second-guess myself so much that I froze, which is something I have to fight now. The second book had been taking shape in my head the whole time I was writing Dale Loves Sophie to Death. It’s a book that’s the other side of the coin of Dale Loves Sophie. But I hope never in my life to have to feel as… agonized, or despairing… well, heartbroken. I was heartbroken by The Time of Her Life. And yet I think it may be my favorite of the books I’ve written.

  How did you decide to write about such a different family in The Time of Her
Life?

  Well, as I said, it’s the other side of the coin. The family in Dale Loves Sophie to Death is a safe family despite everything, but the Parks family in The Time of Her Life is not one bit safe. As I was writing Dale Loves Sophie I had a sort of constant hum beneath the ideas that I was investigating in that book. I had the continual thought that, “Yes, this is right, but it isn’t the whole story. There are other families with different realities entirely.”

  The Parkses are not good for each other, but they do all love each other. The emotional well-being of every member of that family is endangered since it rests on the stability of the other two. Of course, it’s hardest on Jane, because she has no power; she is certainly the most vulnerable. Claudia and Avery, though, are not terrible people; they are both adults who never matured, and they haven’t any idea of how to be responsible for their daughter. It doesn’t occur to them that they are supposed to be taking care of her. They can’t even take care of themselves.

  The children in your books are so wonderfully and accurately drawn. Do you put yourself in a child’s frame of mind in order to write about your young characters or do you paint them from observation?

  I don’t know that I ever really think about there being any difference in writing about children as opposed to writing about adults. I remember my own childhood quite vividly—the mysteries and terrors and joy, too. And I have children. They’re adults now, but anyone with empathy who has children understands childhood a second time over, and from another angle. I’ve always thought one of the best current writers about children is John Irving. I don’t know him, but the generosity of his literal consideration of children is wonderful.

  I suppose writers are always afraid to write about children because they are terrified of being accused of sentimentality. I’ve never thought there was anything particularly sentimental about children or childhood, but I think too many writers make the mistake of endowing the children they create with a cynicism impossible for a child to have. Cynicism requires being old enough to have become jaded, and the most fascinating aspect of inhabiting a child’s vision is revisiting an issue about which one has become jaded as an adult, but which has to be unwound again—like a ball of yarn—and reexamined.