The Time of Her Life (13 page)

Claudia thought that as Christmas approached, the days passed with remarkable singularity. They did not oblige her and slip
away into weeks. Instead each day rolled out long and inflexible from morning to night; there was no snap to any one of them
that marked it off succinctly so that she could have the satisfaction of reaching a particular moment and going on from there.
And the weather was sullen, too. The rain had stopped at the end of November, and a deep freeze had settled in with no precipitation.
The meadow spread away from Claudia’s house pocked with muddy patches of ice. The long grass was flattened and yellow and
was brittle underfoot, and the sky, day after day, stretched out low and dull and unshifting. When Claudia went out, which
was seldom, or when she looked through her windows, she thought the landscape looked mean.

She watched passively and without curiosity as the world tightened down unsympathetically into hard winter. She put off making
plans of any kind. She avoided thinking about the future to such a degree that she had not even settled into a state of waiting
since
Avery left; she was only being there until the time went by.

Maggie often dropped by without warning, and that made Claudia mildly uneasy all the time. Maggie had expectations of her,
and just now Claudia didn’t want to expend the energy even to figure out what the expectations were, much less fulfill them.
When she thought about it, the most Claudia wished from her friends was that her own life not be a topic of their consideration.

One afternoon Maggie arrived on foot, having come up the hill through the frozen meadow, and Claudia was caught unawares,
without even the sound of Maggie’s car as a warning. Maggie gave a perfunctory knock and stepped straight into the house.
She always entered that way; she stepped straight into one’s life all prepared to help out and set things right. She walked
in that afternoon and startled Claudia, who was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and idly bending over the pieces
on the chessboard. She was wearing her long red robe, over which she had put on an oversized mustard-colored cardigan sweater
that Avery had left behind. She sat back in surprise when Maggie put her head around the kitchen door, and she pulled the
cardigan more closely around her and hugged her elbows.

“I can only stay a minute,” Maggie said, “but I wanted to talk to you about two things.” She was, as always, very deliberate
about this:
two
things. It was her habit to warn people, to insist upon their endurance. But Claudia was thrown back in time into the sort
of dread with which a child hears a parent announce in midafternoon that after dinner the two of them must have a serious
talk. In Claudia’s experience this had never amounted to a
conversation; it had always turned out that Claudia sat and listened while someone else gave her unwanted instruction or advice.
Now and then Maggie had said to Claudia that she and Vince had met at Belden’s restaurant or the Faculty Club to discuss this
or that problem in their marriage or with their children. She had tried to admire Maggie’s rational determination, but she
had always cringed for Vince, who probably approached that meeting place with his usual air of detachment, but with his stomach
clenched. Now Claudia looked back down at the little chess pieces and tried to indicate by her passivity that two might be
just a little too many things to discuss.

“Um-huh. Okay,” she said mildly, making it as clear as she could that although she was right there in the room, her attention
was not all it might be.

“Well, first,” said Maggie, settling in across the table from Claudia, “we’ve got to decide what you’re going to do about
Christmas.” Claudia gazed up at her after a moment without any inflection of expression. “Celeste has offered to take Diana
in to Kansas City in March for the Men at Work concert if I’ll buy the tickets. They’re playing at the Kemper Arena. It would
be a much better present for Diana if Jane could go along. I thought you might like to give Jane a ticket, too. I don’t think
they really know if they like the music or not. It’s the idea of going that they’ll like. They can stay overnight with one
of Celeste’s friends who lives right outside Kansas City. Diana will be ecstatic.” Maggie said this with a wry smile, to encompass
the eccentricities of eleven-year-old girls. But when she saw Claudia smile back at her automatically without having paid
attention to what she was saying, she became more abrupt. She
leaned forward on her elbows to be sure that Claudia listened to her. “Diana says that Jane won’t
do
anything with their group anymore. And, I have to tell you, when she’s at our house, she’s only barely civil to Diana. Of
course, Diana will put up with anything from Jane. As far as she’s concerned, Jane hung the moon. But Jane’s hostile to every
overture Diana makes, even though she seems to need Diana’s company. Jane’s always around.” She stopped for a moment and opened
her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t like to be the one to tell you this. I feel as if I’m betraying Jane, because
she seems to count on us somehow. But she’s right on the edge, Claudia. She’s right on the edge of losing it.” Maggie was
absolutely sincere, but Claudia could not hear these things said without also hearing the undercurrent of satisfaction that
Maggie felt because her own child was not in such a state. Maggie continued, “I can’t keep insisting that Diana’s friends
try to include Jane in everything when Jane’s so antagonistic to all those little girls!”

Claudia turned her head away and looked out the window so that nothing in her face would show how much she was hurt for Jane.
Claudia knew that Jane was the best of all. The best of all the people she knew, the best of all the people she had ever known.
Claudia was injured for her daughter, and she was very angry. It was the clearest thing she had felt for days.

“Maggie, compared to Jane…” she began, but she stopped. She was not sure how she meant to finish. She wanted to explain that
compared to Jane, who had known exactly when to embrace her own mother… compared to Jane with her lovely long bones and serious
face, there was not a child in the world who was
more than a piece of blank paper. Compared to Jane, Maggie’s own daughter, Diana, was… and she thought of a phrase of Avery’s.
“Listen, Maggie,” she said, “Jane’s no small potatoes!”

Maggie just looked at her. She didn’t ask what that could mean. “Jane needs some help, Claudia,” she said. “She could get
some good counseling at the university. In fact, I brought over a copy of the form. It’s covered on Avery’s insurance. You
know, any of you could go. It’s a good program. There’s only a hundred-dollar deductible.”

But Claudia had drifted off into her own thoughts while Maggie chatted on. Claudia was imagining herself advising Jane on
any matter whatsoever, and she was thinking that they had long ago passed that point. It would be an unthinkable presumption.
They had passed that point as soon as Jane had understood, at about age two and a half, that she had her own separate will.
It was lucky, Claudia thought, it was one of the nicest things in the world, that Jane had been born with a natural magnanimity.

“Anyway, here are all the information sheets on the health plan,” Maggie was saying, “but the second thing I wanted to tell
you about is something that could turn out to be a wonderful job for you. I think we have it all arranged.”

Claudia got up from the table and put the kettle on. “You want some coffee?” she asked, and without turning back to Maggie,
she began running water in the sink to rinse the leftover breakfast dishes before she stacked them in the dishwasher. “I don’t
really want to think about a job right now.”

Maggie was as close a friend as Claudia had, and
Maggie’s friendship was not entirely conditional, but on this point Maggie would not give way. She was a respected scholar;
she wrote long, erudite articles for major literary journals. She was becoming an important critic, and in fact, last year
a student at Columbia had done his thesis on her. She believed in achievement; she believed that there must be something Claudia
wanted to do in her life, and since she could never discover what it was, Claudia’s apathy had become a burr under her saddle.
She seemed to resent it and view it as a threat to the way she lived her own life. Claudia didn’t know this; she only knew
that Maggie’s prodding wearied her, and she didn’t have the inclination, this afternoon, to try to explain herself to Maggie.

“When Avery and I get this settled, I’ll think about a job. I’ve got plenty of money, you know, Maggie. Enough money, anyway.”
Maggie didn’t reply, and Claudia eyed her apprehensively.

Maggie had pushed her short hair behind her ears and was looking straight ahead. She had tucked in the corners of her mouth
so that her lips puckered slightly, and Claudia knew that look well. Maggie was like a terrier, and she wasn’t going to let
go so easily; she wanted everything settled for her friend. So Claudia dredged up from the very center of herself the energy
she needed to answer Maggie’s silent indictment and disapproval. Because she could not bear the weight of Maggie’s disapprobation,
her words stretched out with a soft, lilting note of persuasion. “Listen, don’t worry about me. Lots of things interest me,
but there never has been anything I’ve felt I need to do. Frankly, Maggie, I’ve always thought that the whole idea of doing
something out of some sort of belief… I know it’s
one of the things that you and Avery feel the same way about. I mean, you both have ambitions. I don’t know why it bothers
anybody that I don’t! I’ll tell you the truth, it seems to me that ambition is sort of a naïve optimism. Well, maybe it’s
more like hope. Or religion. Either you really are convinced or it’s too late to jump on board.”

Claudia had spoken lightly and not in a manner of great conviction. This was a subject, in fact, that bored her. She glanced
at Maggie and saw that there was an even grimmer quality to her silence. Maggie had settled down into herself in such a way
that Claudia bent over the dishes in great concentration. She did not want to face the relentless power of her friend’s sense
of purpose.

“I invest pretty heavily in my friends,” Maggie finally said, softly, as though she were ruminating. “You aren’t especially
frivolous, Claudia. And you’ve got such a good mind…”

Claudia was more careful than ever not to turn around and look at Maggie. She didn’t want to acknowledge or debate her responsibilities
as Maggie’s friend. In fact, she felt an embarrassing, tearful constriction in the back of her throat because she was suddenly
panicky in her need not to hear whatever Maggie was going to say.

“But, my God, Claudia! I’ll tell you, I hope more than anything that Avery doesn’t come back! You… I don’t think you have
the right to impose the two of you on the rest of us. Jane. And me and Vince. And, of course, for Alice… well. You two can’t
be together. It’s horrible for everyone. It’s like watching two people in a state of combustion.”

Maggie ran her hand nervously through her hair,
disarranging it more than ever, before she went on, and Claudia remained frozen at the sink with her back to her. “Do you
know that he’s been absolutely sober since he left? He’s meeting his office hours. He’s even made it to committee meetings.
I mean, Claudia, I know he doesn’t need to teach. Don’t you think he needs the discipline of it though? He has tenure, but
it was getting to the point that something was going to happen.”

Claudia put her hands up to cover her face because all at once her chin began quivering and her features became elastic and
uncontrolled around a sudden flood of tears. “Oh, Christ, Maggie!” She had to pause until her throat untensed. “Oh, Christ!
Please leave me alone!” She had never said anything as strong as that to Maggie. In all their long acquaintance she had never
bothered to make any demands, but at the moment she had no control at all over anything she might say.

“Sober! Avery’s been sober! What does that
mean
to you? He’s teaching well? Going to meetings, for Christ’s sake! That’s not his
life
, Maggie. For Avery… Don’t you know that for Avery sober is… is just like being drunk? It’s a
luxury
for Avery. It’s a choice! Sober is just one of his fucking vanities!” Claudia was not sobbing, but she had to pause, phrase
by phrase, with each fresh onslaught of tears.