The Time of Her Life (18 page)

So Jane stopped going to school, although she continued to get up in the morning and get dressed and go down to the kitchen
to have breakfast before returning to her room to read for a while. Her mother had only been curious that first morning, and
Jane simply said she didn’t feel good. But even that first Monday Claudia was only vaguely inquisitive; after that she seemed
to accept Jane’s presence as a given.

Jane spent a great deal of the time working on her music, on the Mozart Miss Jessup had just given her and on the two Bach
pieces for the Christmas concert. She knew she was making unusual progress, and she knew that Miss Jessup would be very surprised
when she played her solo at the concert because she was also skipping her music lessons. She called her father, who always
took her to music, and told him she was sick. When he stopped by the house for one thing or another, Jane took care to stay
in her room and stay in
bed. Lately she had developed a great reluctance to be away from her mother; she didn’t want to leave the house if Claudia
was in it. She knew that Claudia wouldn’t think of the lessons unless she was reminded of them.

The nights were a trouble to Jane, but these were lovely, lovely days, these days at home. Her mother was her only companion,
and she was the most enchanting person Jane could imagine. Not competent, like Maggie, but quick and magical and young. Jane
could bask in her mother’s risky enthusiasms that previously she had only observed; she hadn’t dared take part. Now that Avery
wasn’t home it was mostly a pleasure to Jane that her mother lacked caution, and the two of them talked about all sorts of
things: the adventures of her mother’s life; the foibles of her mother’s friends.

One afternoon when Jane was practicing, Claudia wandered into her room and sat cross-legged on the bed with her head cushioned
against the wall by the pillow of her frothy hair. Claudia listened idly and was looking up out of the window in the ceiling
when all at once some private thought amused her and she came away from the wall, leaning toward Jane with her elbows on her
knees.

“What?” asked Jane, continuing to hold the violin beneath her chin but dropping her bow hand.

Her mother’s face was pleased and relaxed in a lazy smile. “I was thinking about the Tunbridges. Maggie called, you know.
She’s very anxious that you come to Diana’s birthday party on the nineteenth. She says even if you don’t feel great, she thinks
it would be good for you.” The two of them looked at each other; in the past few days they had become conspirators without
ever
admitting it or carefully thinking it out. “You’re over there a lot,” Claudia went on. “Don’t you think that Maggie is a strange
person? I mean, for all her good qualities… sometimes she’s so rigid, I think. Of course, that’s why she and Celeste are at
loggerheads all the time.” Her voice dwindled off with this thought, and Jane sat absolutely still in case her mother might
notice her and not continue. Jane could scarcely believe that in Maggie’s life there had ever been a bit of trouble. Jane
knew that Maggie would not allow it. And Claudia did go on, gently talking and plucking at the bright printed flowers on the
Marimekko spread with her fingers.

“Maggie’s so definite about everything. It’s kind of endearing. Well, I always think it’s touching. It drives your father
crazy, of course.” And whether she knew it or not, she glanced over at Jane with the exact expression that came over Avery’s
face when he was exasperated. Then, just as quickly, her face became her own again, pleasantly reminiscent. “Do you know what
I mean? Things are
this
way”—and she moved one hand in a chopping motion and held it stiffly suspended—“or they are
that
way.” She made the same motion with her other hand, and she sat like that for a second to illustrate Maggie’s nature before
she turned her hands palms up and let them fall to her sides, smiling at Jane blandly as though the two of them had agreed
upon something. But then she tilted her chin down and glanced at Jane as if she were doubtful and were having second thoughts.
She was musing as she spoke. “Maggie said something so odd to me once after she had been out to Seattle to see her mother
when her mother was dying. It was a horrible situation, of course. Her
mother had cancer, and she had been misdiagnosed at first. Oh, well, it was sad and horrible… but Maggie was over here one
afternoon, and she was just incensed.” Claudia paused to think if that was right. “No, she was indignant! She said, ‘You’d
think that if they can make a missile that can hit a target halfway around the world, they could cure this disease!’ “ Claudia
lifted her full face to Jane with her eyebrows stretched into an arc of amused wonder. “That’s how she sees things,” she said
with a shade of amazement in her voice. “She believes everything is
related
somehow. And she really does believe that anything can be solved if people will
apply
themselves.”

Claudia shook her head just a fraction to indicate her resignation in the face of other people’s peculiar notions. Jane was
watching her carefully, though. She had put her violin down so she could study her mother, because she herself would have
thought along the same lines that Maggie did. When she saw her mother’s remarkable, mobile face indicate the folly of that
restricted point of view, Jane’s own mind flew wide-open to all sorts of possibilities, and she fell in love, entirely, with
her own mother. She had been caught between her two parents for such a long time that this retarded sensation was all the
stronger for coming over her so late in her life. She didn’t even have a frame of reference for this fit of joy that had overtaken
her; she just sat in the room, watching her mother and feeling weightless and without any responsibility. She was in the throes
of devotion, and she sat in the sunlight, elated.

“But that’s not the thing you were thinking of that made you laugh, was it?” she asked her mother, who
seemed surprised and took a moment to backtrack in her thoughts.

“Oh, no. No.” And she laughed again. “Well, after Celeste and Mark were born, you know, Maggie went back to teaching, and
she did a lot more writing. Reviewing and articles. Anyway, they really didn’t want any more children, and, my God! Maggie
checked out every possible birth control device.” She looked at Jane and smiled. “You know how absolutely thorough Maggie
is. At every dinner party we would end up talking about the pill versus IUDs. What she
wanted
was for Vince to get a vasectomy, but then she would go on and on about how Vince was sure that if he had a vasectomy, he
would get fat. Poor Vince. Vince would look so detached when she launched into all this that your father said he was afraid
that some night Vince would come loose from his moorings and just float away out the window. You know, though”—and her face
closed down for a moment in a hooded expression of contemplation—“Maggie just doesn’t have that sort of radar… it’s not a
question of bad taste, really. I mean, no one was offended. Mostly we were just bored with the whole subject. But Maggie’s
so odd sometimes. Don’t you think it has something to do with a lack of charm?” She glanced at Jane to confirm that notion.
She wanted to be sure that Jane shared that idea, and she subsided against the wall again to think about it herself.

“Is that the story?” Jane asked because she didn’t understand it. The point wasn’t clear to her, but she was delighted to
be entrusted with information that no one but her mother would ever have given her.

“Oh, no,” Claudia said, and gathered herself back into
the moment. “Maggie was horrified when she got pregnant! She wouldn’t even believe it for the first four months. She went
to two doctors, in fact. She really didn’t want that baby, and she was
outraged
when it finally sank in. She was so mad that she and Vince filed suit against the company that made the condoms!” And Claudia
laughed with no malice at all, only a kind of helpless delight. “After all that research they were using condoms! And they
sued for the amount they calculated it would take to raise the child and educate it. Oh, God… we spent hours… your father,
well, you can see that it’s exactly the sort of thing he can’t possibly leave alone. Maggie and Vince figured in the cost
of the university. Oh, you know, your father just can’t ever resist baiting Maggie. Avery threw himself into it totally. He
rushed around phoning all over the place. ‘Why not Harvard?’ he would say. ‘Have you thought about Reed or Oberlin?’ “ This
still surprised Claudia and amused her whenever she thought of it, and she was almost giggling. “Do you know that when they
were first married, Maggie sued a frozen food company because she’d found a fly in one of her TV dinners?” Claudia laughed
indulgently again, although she had never laughed when faced with Maggie’s fury on these matters. It astounded Claudia that
anyone as intelligent as Maggie would expect perfection in the world.

Jane looked on at her mother, pleased but dum-founded. She was trying to grasp whatever it was her mother meant to signify
by all this. “Did they win?” Jane asked.

Claudia looked up at her and waved her hand to dismiss the whole topic. “Oh, they got a case of frozen
dinners, or something. I’m not sure what finally happened.”

“No, I mean about Diana. Did they get money for Diana?”

Claudia was quite still and silent for a moment. Jane could see that her mother was wary and somehow taken aback. “Well, it
wasn’t really
Diana
. I mean, it was an abstract thing, then. Maggie didn’t want another
child
! But Vince and Maggie dote on Diana. They just panicked at the time. They love Diana.”

Jane didn’t say anything at all. She would have to think this over in her own time. It was an unexpected weak spot in her
best friend’s enviable life.

In the evenings Jane and her mother cooked exotic meals together as an adventure, and Claudia came in to watch
Magnum
and
Malt Houston
and Jane’s favorite,
Remington Steele
, on TV and then persuaded Jane to stay up and watch the reruns of
Hawaii Five-O
, which, she argued, was much more professionally produced than any of her daughter’s favorites.

“And, Jane, you can tell when you’re watching that show that Jack Lord really does believe that he’s the head of a police
force! Oh, it’s great! I hope they show the one where he’s running around in a rain forest wearing a sort of safari outfit
and a planter’s hat. He can do it. I mean, he can carry it off with a straight face. I bet his camera crew hated him. Well,
just wait! Wait till you see what I mean!”

They sat up late at night in front of the color set, and Claudia played a game that was much more entertaining to Jane than
watching the show. More often than
not, Claudia could anticipate the lines and say them with the characters on
Hawaii Five-O
. Jane and her mother would sit on the couch with their feet tucked up under them and a bowl of popcorn between them, and
Claudia would follow the show and stiffen her torso and cock her head precisely at the moment Jack Lord did the same thing
on the screen. She would say with him, “Okay, what’ve we got, Chin?” A few moments later she would swivel straight-backed
toward Jane and synchronize her lines with the TV once more. “Patch me through to the governor’s office, Danno!” And her face
would take on the same ludicrous expression of absolute conviction with which Jack Lord played Steve McGarrett. At the end
of the show she would watch very carefully and turn her head in perfect imitation of the hero’s resigned disdain. “Book ‘em,
Danno!” she would say as justice inevitably prevailed.

Claudia was a quick study. She could walk with a swivel, like C.J. on
Matt Houston
, or feign Sue Ellen’s bewilderment on
Dallas
. “Oh, J.R., I’m so confused!” Claudia could become anyone she wanted to, and she utterly charmed her daughter as they sat
together watching television in the empty house.

For the moment her mother had collected all the diverse and free-floating aspects of her personality into one bright stream
of energy, and it flowed around Jane and assured and cosseted her. It was the most gratifying thing in the world to be the
object toward which her mother directed every element of her piqued and newly delighted regard. Jane thought that she and
her mother were having a wonderful time.

And these days, too, her violin finally did begin to feel like an extension of herself, as Miss Jessup had predicted
it would. Jane did not have to collect words and speak them; she only had to balance the bow on a slight angle and with delicacy,
and the music came as it should. The sound she made satisfied her, and she learned all the tricks of this particular instrument.
She avoided the friction of the poorly glued fingerboard, she used a little more pressure from her bow than she ever had before,
and she coaxed forth a very pleasing sound from the mass-produced and peculiarly boxy instrument. The use of vibrato was all
at once a perfectly natural thing; it came to her with a miraculous and easy control. She was beginning to know that she had
made more than progress. She realized that something extraordinary was happening to her to allow her to play this music.

Jane stayed at home, and most of the time she was serene and pleased with the smooth days. She didn’t spend any time with
her friends until the afternoon she had to go to Diana’s birthday party. She had no choice but to go because Maggie would
not accept her excuses. Diana had invited Jane and three other girls over to spend the night, and Jane was comfortable among
them for a while and even smugly proprietary as she always was in the Tunbridges’ house. In the late afternoon Maggie asked
them to help her ice the cookies she always used to decorate the huge tree in the kitchen.

“Now listen,” Maggie said, coming a little way into Diana’s room, where the girls had stacked their sleeping bags and were
lounging and gossiping a bit disconsolately and with the edges of ill temper beginning to come through. They were ranged around
the room, leaning against the furniture or sitting on the bed. “Listen, I’m afraid you girls are going to have to help me.
I’m frantic. I’ve got to get this tree done before tomorrow
night. I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I just can’t get everything finished myself.” Maggie was brisk and confident. She waited
for a moment to see that all five girls were gathering themselves together to get to their feet, and then she turned away
and went back to the kitchen. She knew they would follow her. It was at that very moment that a final, hard wedge of doubt
began to come between what Jane thought and what Jane did. It was not Maggie with whom Jane was suddenly disenchanted; it
was the state of childhood itself, the terrible dependency of it, the awful hypocrisy one suffered because of it.