The Time of Her Life (12 page)

She got up and tucked the covers snugly around her daughter, then stood away from the bed, wanting to do something more for
Jane but completely at a loss as to what it should be. Jane turned her face away and lay perfectly still, looking out the
window into the rain.

“I’ll come up later, Janie, and see if you want something to eat. I can bring you a turkey sandwich. I know how you like them.
I’ll put cranberry sauce on one side, okay?”

But the gray light that filtered into the room fell across
the tense jaw and the angry, pouting, turned-away mouth of her daughter, and Claudia was afraid of her. She took two awkward,
hesitant steps backward before she turned and left the room, as if she were moving away from Jane because Jane had accused
her of something.

While the Thanksgiving dinner progressed downstairs through the second helpings, more wine, various turns of conversation,
Jane glided like a sylph through all the upper story. She was triumphant slipping along the corridor so secretly, like a wraith,
like a spirit. She wasn’t fearful of all the wisping shadows as she sometimes had been in this house on other days, after
Vince had told them all the stories she and Diana asked to hear once again. She had, in fact, the peculiar sensation of moving
with the house, of being one little bit of all that was mysterious about the Tunbridges. She was finally permeating their
history, that great stretch of events that belonged to them alone and was their frame of reference. Jane lost the consciousness
of the weight of her body; she floated as if she were the embodiment of all the mottled shades of gray that fled along the
walls and around the corners with even the smallest shift of light through the windows.

She went to Celeste’s room first and traveled around its edges, as though she might be discovered if she stepped into its
central space. She paused at the night table and leafed through Celeste’s journal, which had intrigued her ever since the
first time she had seen Celeste writing in it. It was a large black leather-bound volume that Celeste had special-ordered
from the stationery store. But it was disappointing. It was full of Celeste’s notes to herself about classwork and meetings,
with scarcely anything personal and nothing at all about Jane.

She circuited Vince’s room briefly, although she didn’t linger among his things; they didn’t interest her. In the huge bath
and dressing room that connected Vince’s room to Maggie’s she opened all the closets and cupboards and studied with great
satisfaction the many folded towels arranged by color, the shelf of pretty soaps, bath powders, lotions, and creams, and in
one corner closet she found a toilet bowl plunger, exactly like the one in her own house, tucked away with a mop and bucket
and sponges. She closed each door behind her before she opened another. She stood for a long time looking in at Maggie’s shoes
and dresses and suits and blouses and slacks, which were hung on a clever, multiple hanger.

She opened the old wooden cupboard where Vince’s shaving kit was, and cough syrups, aspirin, Pepto-Bismol, Alka-Seltzer, Paropectolin.
She picked up a beige box to scrutinize its prescription label:

Celeste Tunbridge: Motrin: One or two tablets at onset of cramps then one tablet every four hours as needed.

She rummaged through all the plastic bottles of prescription medicines and read them carefully:

Celeste Tunbridge: Lasix: One tablet each morning with orange juice as needed for fluid.

Margaret Tunbridge: Percodan: One tablet every four hours as needed for pain.

Margaret Tunbridge: Valium: ½ to one tablet before each meal and one/two before bed.

Diana Tunbridge: Ampicillin: One tsp. every four hours.

Diana Tunbridge: Novahistine DH: One tsp. every four hours as needed for cough.

The Novahistine DH had crystallized into green sugar all around the channeled childproof cap. Jane opened the bottle, sniffed
it, and took a taste of the liquid onto her tongue, but it had a vile sweetness. She capped it again and put it back right
where it had been on its sticky circle. She lined up all the bottles carefully just as she had found them, but before she
closed the cabinet, she took down the bottle of Percodan tablets and put them on the counter while she used both hands to
shut the heavy hinged doors so that the clasp would catch properly. She took one tablet from the bottle and swallowed it with
water she sucked up from her cupped hands beneath the faucet. There was no water glass beside the sink. She put the bottle
in the pocket of her jeans and pulled her sweat shirt over it.

Before she left the room, she turned to be sure that nothing looked disturbed, and she wandered into Maggie’s room, which
was the place of most solace to her in all the world. At Maggie’s long window next to the chaise longue Jane peered out toward
the river, but it was obscured by the steady rain. She moved over to the dresser, where Maggie’s comb and brush lay intertwined
with short strands of white-blond hair that were almost incandescent in the gloom. Jane had always wanted to
know the feel of that brush in her own hair, and she stroked her head gently and was surprised to find that the bristles were
not very effective. They were soft and short in the elaborate chased silver base, and she tended to bang herself on the head
with each sweep of her hand. She replaced the brush just as it had been and stood regarding herself quietly in the mirror.
She took up a handful of change from a silver dish next to Maggie’s purse and put it in her pocket along with the bottle of
pills.

Except for the nickels and quarters she had pocketed nothing was changed in Maggie’s room, nothing was askew, and she left
the room and shut the door softly behind her. She went back to her corner room under the eaves and resettled herself peacefully
under the covers, enclosed as though she were in an envelope by the sweetly flowered wallpaper and the rain outside. As she
lay there, a feeling of absolute contentment began to come over her in degrees in the same way warmth suffused her body when
she came in from the cold. She was removed from any careful consideration of her life. The knowledge of the events that had
moved along in the past few weeks coursed through her, but it only rushed along like a dark river as seen from a high, safe,
grassy place along the bank. All that knowledge was at a far remove from any emotion she felt at the moment. She was smug
in her warm bed with the muted sound of a party at a comforting distance. She was so pleased that she was mildly surprised
by her own condition. Her silent investigation of the Tunbridge rooms seemed to have been perpetrated by another self, some
restless other child who did not feel the hum of tender self-satisfaction unnumbing all the far reaches of herself. She
fell asleep with pleasure, not with any wariness at the idea of being unconscious.

In the dining room the long meal had reached that tattered stage at which point the hosts and guests alike had begun to suffer
from an undefined regret. Any successful celebration has some momentum of its own, and Maggie had carried the day along for
a while with her own idea of how the time should go. Finally, however, the whole party began to sense that they had stayed
with each other past the peak of interest. Curiosity abated, and the energy of the gathering was rapidly dissipating.

Sally and Will Fitzgerald were taking turns walking their daughter around and around the table because she was fussy from
sitting so long, but they were not quite yet ready to take themselves away. Trays of cheese had been put out after the dinner
and dessert dishes had been cleared away, and people had switched places or got up to move around a bit.

Claudia had come back to her same seat next to Vince and across from Celeste, and her energy had flagged so early that when
she had run out of conversation to have with them, she did not even have the impetus to move on to another group. She sat
quietly over her coffee. Claudia knew all the other guests in the room with the exception of the Fitzgeralds and their daughter.
She had met them at Maggie’s at one time or another. However, she didn’t know any of them very well, and one glance around
the room convinced her, in the middle of the color and sound, that all these people had clear plans ahead of them for after
this meal. In a little while they would be off. They would hurry through the
rain toward whatever they did, and this notion intensified that sense of loss she had felt as she had tried to give comfort
to Jane.

Claudia had inclined her head forward a fraction and raised her hand to push her hair back off her brow. She was not aware
that this was her habitual gesture of avoidance, a private gesture to distract herself from unpleasant thoughts. Vince had
been leaning back in his chair at the end of the table and watching her for some time. He made a sweeping motion with one
arm, inclusive of the room, the day, the idea of Thanksgiving.

“These traditional celebrations,” he said, and paused with the irony in his voice curling over even the notion that very much
was worth such a ceremony. “These kinds of days are a strain on the best of us.” He didn’t smile at her, but he leaned back
even farther in his chair, stretching his legs out so that the chair tilted backward, and regarded her with interest.

Claudia was not guileful. She tipped her extraordinary face back and looked at him in surprise. She was startled at being
caught out in what she was thinking. Her hand still held back the cloud of her hair, and she released it, and it settled gently
in place again over her forehead. The candles had burned so low that they cast an uplight over Claudia’s pointed face, but
even with the light trapped beneath the high arch of her brows in a way that threw her eyes into shadow, she had no expression
of concealment about her. She only looked as though she were struck with wonder. This was the face she turned to Vince.

“The main thing,” she said, “is that I don’t have any idea of what to do now.”

Vince looked on at her without changing expression,
and after a moment he clicked the front legs of his chair back to the floor as he gathered himself forward to stand up. Just
as his head was nearest hers in that one movement he spoke without looking at her. “Well, we’ll think of something. I’ve got
a couple of ideas.” But his tone was vexed, and he didn’t elaborate; he moved off to chat with the Fitzgeralds, who had their
daughter bundled up and were ready to leave.

Claudia stayed where she was, and in a few moments Maggie took the place Vince had left vacant. She settled into the chair
with a great flurry of garments coming to rest, of herself being collected. Whenever Maggie stopped, it was as if some other
part of her had to catch up—a stray hand that was busy finishing some other task; her attention, which sometimes seemed to
be several paces behind her. However, when she was absolutely there and assembled, there was no concentration as powerful
as that which she could bring to bear on whatever had caused her to relocate in the first place.

She put her elbows on the table and hunched forward toward Claudia, holding her cup of coffee firmly with both hands. She
was soft-voiced with the power of a secret to impart.

“When I talked to Avery this morning, I told him that you and Jane would be here for dinner. He was going to come along with
Alice, but he thought it would be better for everybody if he didn’t come, too. You know, he’s been absolutely sober this past
week.” Maggie pursed her lips over her coffee, sensing that it was too hot to sip. “He’ll be coming by about seven-thirty.
I thought you might rather not run into him. Of course, Jane’s welcome to stay and have a chance to visit with him, but I
knew it might be hard for you to see him.”

Claudia stared at Maggie without comprehension, except that she knew from Maggie’s tone that Maggie was doing her some favor.
That much was clear, but grateful as Claudia knew she ought to be, she suddenly felt claustrophobic, trapped as she was under
Maggie’s wing. “Maggie, I’m only
angry
at him.” She wanted to see Avery very much, and when she noticed Maggie’s face cast over in disapproval, she wondered if
Avery had requested not to see
her.

“That’s a lot to expect of Jane, isn’t it?” Maggie said.

“I don’t know what you mean. Jane misses Avery, too.”

“I know she does, but, still, having to see you together again and then apart. Shouldn’t you see Avery when she’s at school?
There’s not much you could get settled tonight, anyway, in the middle of all of us.”

Every one of those considerations went out of Claudia’s mind, though, when the idea Maggie put forth came into focus as a
picture of what would happen. She would see Avery and stand near him—his long body—and not touch him. He would not touch her,
and before she would ever touch him again or be touched by him, there would be all the conversations, anguish, endless talking.
That condition had never been so between them. Their other separations had been only brief and private; they had not been
such public property. The two of them had always had access to the other since they were children. Claudia was defeated, and
she looked down at the table to avoid looking at Maggie, who had imposed this condition upon her. That was not a rational
conclusion, but it was what Claudia thought, and she was very angry.

“I’ll go check on Jane,” Claudia said, and left the table. But when she was in Jane’s room, she didn’t wake
her because Jane looked warm and safe and comfortable, and Claudia could not deprive her of a condition she yearned for so
desperately for herself right now. She went down the back stairs and found Celeste in the kitchen.

“Jane’s sound asleep. Phone me when she wants to come home, and I’ll come pick her up.” Celeste said she was sure that Jane
was welcome to stay over and that she would look in and check on her later to be sure she was all right. Claudia left the
house through the kitchen door and trudged all the way around the enormous building in the rain to get to where she had left
her car. She did not want to have to thank Maggie for a lovely day, although she didn’t like herself for her own stingy nature.