The Time of Her Life

by Robb Forman Dew

  Where do you find inspiration for your books? Is it all imagination or do you use stories and characters from real life as a starting point?

  Oh, I don’t think “inspiration” is a term that really describes how my books take shape. I think writers are generally people whose antennae are always up; they take in everything whether they want to or not. It isn’t always pleasant. But my own friends and family—or an utter stranger, say, standing in line at the grocery store—does or says something that makes me become alert. Some other person or event often triggers a reevaluation of a deep belief I wasn’t even aware I had. If I sense a challenge to something about which I’m passionate, about which I hold very strong ideas, then slowly a story or a character begins to take shape through which I’ll reconsider the issue. I’m beginning to sound very pompous or high-handed! That’s one of the reasons I dislike talking about writing. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I think the story starts to take shape the moment that imagination and reality converge. And once I’m entirely absorbed in writing, then every single thing that happens in real life seems astonishingly coincidental, since it inevitably resonates somehow with the tale I believe I’m inventing.

  What are your favorite books, books that have influenced you, or books you enjoy recommending to readers?

  Well, the usual suspects, I suppose. Austen, James, Virginia Woolf. And I’ve discovered that when I read many books when I was young I knew they were wonderful but I missed so much of what was brilliant about them. I’m rereading Eudora Welty right now. Delta Wedding. She’s so good that I didn’t realize just how brilliant she was until this reading. How it could have escaped me is mysterious to me. She has such tact and is so careful, but this book is like a pointillist painting. There are so many ways to understand her characters.

  I was enormously affected by Fitzgerald, who’s so visual a writer, and by Peter Taylor, who has exquisite phrasing. I worked very hard for a long time trying to achieve his sense of ease—the sense that the story already exists and is just being unraveled for you. But the hook that made me want to write—and which I came upon, oddly enough, in the Baton Rouge bus station when I was taking a bus to visit my cousins in Natchez—was The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead. When I got back to Baton Rouge it turned out that my mother had just read it as well. It’s an astonishing book. It’s a masterpiece, and it always seems to me the opposite, in a way, of War and Peace, which I also love for all sorts of reasons but especially for the wonderful story. Each of those books gives you an entirely believable world, but Stead’s starts wide and becomes so amazingly intense that finally it’s like a laser of compressed emotion. Tolstoy explodes into a universe and gets wider and wider.

  What are you working on now? You mentioned a trilogy…

  The Evidence Against Her is the first in a series of three novels, each of which will stand on its own. The second book is tentatively titled Greenside Lane, and the third book, also tentatively titled, is Two Girls Wearing Perfume in the Summer. The series is a tale of a particular American family from its inception, beginning with the gradual confluence through marriage of four midwestern families in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and that family’s evolution through the 1900s and into the early years of the twenty-first century.

  I’m interested in the careless, random, ironic, or merely accidental circumstances from which communal and familial myths and expectations are first derived, and of course, I intend to unravel the intricate—sometimes tragic—consequences of those myths.

  I have always been interested primarily in an investigation of character, and that still absorbs me, but I also want to give readers a whole world, so that when they have finished any one of these books they will be able to revisit its landscape in their imaginations. I want any reader to believe that he or she grasps more about the essential lives of the characters than those characters understand about themselves. I want to make it clear that the accuracy of those legends and myths by which we all define ourselves is irrelevant in the long run. We inherit or grow into expectations based on who we are assumed to be because of family, class, gender, race, etc. And much of the struggle of discovering a way to be happy is choosing which myths and legends we embrace and fulfill, and at what point it’s necessary to discard the expectations of anyone else altogether.

  Questions and

  Topics for Discussion

  The novel opens with a description of the weather in the town of Lunsbury, Missouri. Is this significant? What does the weather seem to indicate? Are there other scenes in the novel in which weather seems to play a large role?

  Claudia Parks is a somewhat enigmatic figure. Do you think she is really as “nihilistic” as Avery implies? Are there in fact things that she cares about? Why do you think she is like this? And why do you think her life revolves so much around Avery?

  Avery Parks, for all that he tries to distance himself from Claudia, resembles his wife in many ways. What do the house, the book he is writing, his drinking, and his departures tell us about him as a person? Why is he unable either to commit to Claudia completely or to leave her once and for all?

  Are Avery and Claudia harder or less hard on each other than you think they should be? The word that a psychologist today might use to describe their relationship is codependent. Do you think Avery and Claudia should stay together and try to work things out, or would it be better for them to part ways for good?

  Jane is a very precocious eleven-year-old, and she is an extraordinary and dedicated violin player. How does this factor into her relationship with her parents? How has Avery and Claudia’s “regard” for their daughter affected her?

  Do you think Jane feels anything amiss in her family or is it just normal to her? How does her admiration for Maggie Tunbridge and her friendship with Diana Tunbridge influence Jane’s relationships at home, if at all?

  What do you make of the novel’s title? Do you think it might refer to more than one “time of her life”?

  Even after the shocking and violent episode with the violin, Claudia and Avery don’t seem to register the meaning of what they’ve done. What does the ending of the book signify to you? What do you think will happen in the next few months and years?

  Does the Parks family remind you of any other fictional families? How is their situation better, or worse? How do the novel’s specific settings and time periods affect both the life of the Parks family and your assessment of them?

  About the Author

  Robb Forman Dew received the National Book Award in 1982 for her first novel, Dale Loves Sophie to Death. She is also the author of a memoir, The Family Heart, and of the novels The Time of Her Life, Fortunate Lives, and, most recently, The Evidence Against Her.

  Following is a selection from the opening pages of

  The Evidence Against Her.

  THERE ARE any number of villages, small towns, and even cities of some size to which no one ever goes except on purpose. There are only travelers on business of one sort or another, personal or professional, who arrive without any inclination to dally, or to dawdle, or to daydream. And yet, almost always in these obscure precincts there is a fine grassy park, a statue, perhaps, and benches placed under tall old spreading trees and planted around with unexceptional seasonal flowers, petunias or geraniums or chrysanthemums in all likelihood, or possibly no more than a tidy patch of English ivy. A good many visitors have sat on such benches for a moment or two, under no burden to take account of their surroundings, under no obligation to enjoy themselves. A stranger to such a place may settle for longer than intended, losing track of the time altogether—slouching a bit against the wooden slats, stretching an arm along the back of the bench, and enjoying the sun on a nice day, comfortably oblivious to passersby and unselfconsciously relaxed—without assuming the covertly alert, defensive, nearly apologetic posture of a tourist.

  By and large these towns are middling to small, and are never on either coast or even any famous body of water, such
as a good-sized lake or major river. These are communities that lie geographically and culturally in unremarkable locales: no towering mountains, no breathtaking sweep of deep valleys, no overwhelming or catastrophic history particular only to that place. In fact, with only a few exceptions, these unrenowned districts are all villages, towns, or small cities exactly like Washburn, Ohio, about which people are incurious, requiring only the information that it is approximately forty-five miles east of Columbus.

  As it happens, Monument Square in the town of Washburn is not four sided but hexagonal and was a gift to the city from the Washburn Ladies Monument Society, ceded to the town simultaneously at the unveiling and dedication of the Civil War monument on July 4, 1877. The monument itself is a life-size statue of a Union soldier at parade rest, gazing southward from his perch atop a thirty foot fluted granite column, the pediment of which is over twelve feet high. Altogether the monument stands nearly fifty feet, and on its west face is the inscription:

  OUR COUNTRY!

  BY THAT DREAD NAME

  WE WAVE THE SWORD ON HIGH,

  AND SWEAR FOR HER TO LIVE

  FOR HER TO DIE.

  —Campbell

  Within a year of the dedication ceremony the common idea among the citizens of Washburn was that the stonecutter—imported all the way from Philadelphia, hurrying the work, eager to catch the train, and possibly with a few too many glasses of beer under his belt—had chiseled into that smooth granite the mistake “dread name” as opposed to “dear name.”

  In the spring of 1882, Leo Scofield, soon after he and his brothers had cleared the woods and begun construction of their houses on the north side of the square, had written to Mrs. Dowd, who commissioned the statue but who had moved back to Philadelphia soon after its unveiling, to inquire if he might have the mistaken inscription altered at his own expense. He had attempted to cast his offer along the lines of being an act of gratitude for her generous gift, but Leo was only thirty-one years old then, a young man still, without much good sense. He was enormously pleased by the largesse of his idea—which had occurred to him one day out of the blue—and delighted that he finally had the wherewithal to make such an offer. A slightly self-congratulatory air tinged the tactlessly exuberant wording of his letter, and he was brought up short by her reply:

  … furthermore, I shall arrange to have the statue removed piece by piece if need be, as it is I who pays out the money each year for its upkeep, should the inscription in any way be altered. I never shall believe in all the days left to me that the preservation of the Union was worth the price of the good life of my dear husband, Colonel Marcus Dowd, who left his post as President of Harcourt Lees College to head Company A. He died at Petersburg. The statue was undertaken at my instigation only as an honor to him. I shall live with nothing more than despair and contempt for this Union and Mr. Lincoln all the rest of my life. As my children do not share my sentiments in every respect, however, I have made arrangements to fund the maintenance of the monument and the fenced area of its surround. I have engaged a Mr. Olwin Grant who lives out Coshocton Road as a caretaker, and any further questions you may address to him. I implore you, Mr. Scofield, not to raise this matter to me again.

  Leo spent several long evenings sitting in the square, contemplating that handsome statue, which towered over the young trees installed by the Marshal County Ladies Garden Club. It was his first inkling of the fickleness of legend, the ease with which one is misled by myth. He wrote a letter of deep and sincere apology but did not hear again from Mrs. Marcus Dowd, nor had he expected to.

  He was young and perhaps still a little brash, but he was not an insensitive man, and he applied this glimpse of the possible effect of grief to his own circumstances, admonishing himself to take all the good fortune of his business and his marriage much less for granted. The spirit of expansiveness that had characterized his outlook up until the receipt of that letter was checked somewhat over the year that followed, and as his business ventures grew increasingly complicated, as his house took shape day by day, as his infatuation with his new wife inevitably grew more complex and profound, he became a man of a fairly solemn nature.

  The three houses built just north of Monument Square in the early 1880s for Leo, John, and George Scofield fronted on a semicircular drive and shallow common ground that in the summer became a crescent of feathery grass that bent in bright green ripples across the lawn in the slightest breeze. In time the grass at the inner curve of the drive gave way to a golden velvet moss under the elms as the trees matured and produced heavy shade all summer long.

  The houses were comfortable though not grand. They were well built and nicely spaced, one from the other, and for a number of years those three south-facing houses marked the northernmost edge of the town of Washburn, Ohio. During the several years the houses were under construction, and long after, the residential property of those three brothers was known all over town simply as Scofields, whereas the twenty-odd buildings comprising the flourishing engine-manufacturing business of Scofields & Company, begun as no more than a foundry in 1830 by Leo’s grandfather, had for some time been referred to merely as the Company.

  The second Sunday of September 1888, on either side of a muddy wagon track that led into the east yard of his new house, Leo Scofield, at age thirty-seven, planted eight pairs of cultivated catalpa saplings. Six days later, on Saturday the fifteenth, there occurred the unusual incident of the births—all within a twelve-hour span—of his first and his brother John’s second child—a daughter and son respectively—and of the third child of Daniel Butler, a good friend and pastor of the Methodist church. John and Lillian Scofield’s first child, Harold, born in 1883, had died before he was a year old, so the Scofields’ compound had been childless for some time.

  Some years earlier Leo had given up the idea that he and his wife, Audra, would have children. His wife was twenty-nine years old with this fourth pregnancy, and through the early months they both had dreaded and expected another miscarriage. They had been married for eight years when Lily was born. The planting of those young catalpa trees was only a coincidence, of course; Leo hadn’t intended any sort of commemoration, but in spite of himself he developed a superstitious interest in the welfare of those trees. He had started them himself from seed six years earlier, and they were just barely established enough to transplant. Several days after his daughter’s birth, when it was clear she and his wife and the other mothers and babies were thriving, his brother John and he walked the lane he had created, staking the saplings when necessary to guide them straight.

  “And on the ides of the month, John,” Leo said. “It’s an amazing thing! All the Scofields are born on the ides of the month.” Leo’s birthday was March fifteenth, and his youngest brother George’s was the fifteenth of October. John’s birthday was February fifth, when he would turn thirty.

  “Well, but this is September, Leo. The ides of the month was on Thursday. On the thirteenth, this month.” But Leo wasn’t paying close attention, and John himself, not born on the ides, was just as happy to be a little disburdened of “Scofieldness.” He followed along, helping his brother. “But this is really something, isn’t it, Leo?” John said. “Here we are. Two papas. Only three days ago, Leo—three days ago!—we were… fancy-free. We were just not papas.”

  Leo glanced sharply at John but didn’t reply for a moment. John was a tall, elegant figure among the little sloping trees, which were leaning this way and that. Leo himself was one of those men no more than average height who are somehow imposing because they possess an inherent certainty, a lack of hesitancy, an easy assumption of authority. “No, you’re right about that, John. You’re right about that. Three days ago we were only two husbands.”

  John had squatted to secure the burlap around the spindly trunk of one of those young trees, and he aimed a considering look Leo’s way and finally grinned, acknowledging the edge of chastisement in his brother’s voice and feeling a genuine joyousness spike through him at all his
sudden connection to the wide world. “Ah, Leo. Don’t you think this’ll make a good husband of me? Don’t you imagine I get a clean slate now? The first baby… Leo, that nearly killed Lillian. And me, too.” John’s ebullience abruptly fell away. “But Lillian was just… It was like she had broken. That was it. That was what she must have been feeling,” he mused. “But I was so stupid. I was just scared to death. I didn’t know what it took… That poor little boy. Poor Harold! I couldn’t do anything to help, though, Leo! It nearly drove me crazy to see Lillian so sad.

  “But this one’s so… he’s so lively, Leo. Why, he hardly stays still a minute. Healthy as a horse! And I haven’t even raised a glass to toast their health. I haven’t touched a drop, Leo. And I won’t. I won’t.” Then John fell back into his usual wry tone, which signified that it was at the listener’s own peril to take him entirely seriously. “I’ll start all over with the lovely Lillian. And I can, you know. Because at least she loves me more than you do,” he said, but with a lilting, teasing cadence.

  Leo watched John a moment as he stooped to hammer in a stake at an angle that would pull the rope tight, and he thought that even in so small a task his brother was graceful in the uncommon way with which he was at ease in his own body. “There isn’t anyone in the world who doesn’t love you, John. But that might not be such a good thing,” he said, and he was quite serious.

  “You’re harder on me than anyone, Leo. Even Dan Butler’s not so stern!” John straightened up and exhaled a short laugh, leaning his head back to take in the pale sky. “You’ll have to go a little easy on me, you know. I’ve got to get used to it, still! It’s wonderful that they’re all healthy. As strong as can be. Lillian… and Audra and Martha Butler… everyone doing so well. All of them,” he said. “I can hardly believe it!” They moved along, carefully wrapping the tender trunks before they looped and staked the guide ropes.