The Time of Her Life (24 page)

Claudia glanced away. She looked around the room, where people were still greeting each other and chatting in the aisles,
and she looked at the stage, where the chorus was falling raggedly into place. She thought Avery spoke as if he were no longer
related to his daughter, as if he were relegating her to memory.

“My God, Avery,” she said, “she’s your own daughter.” But she said it so softly; she spoke out toward the stage without any
particular inflection or urgency, and Avery only picked it up with the corner of his attention and didn’t comment one way
or another.

The room was filling rapidly, and Claudia turned in her seat to look for Maggie and Vince. Beyond the wide double doors of
the auditorium the heavy, cold air and the dark clung so closely to the earth that as the people entered, it was as though
the icy gloom had adhered to them and then evaporated upward in the warmth to chill and shadow the remote corners at the rear
of the large room. The colors of the sweaters and blouses and shirts were vibrant, and the company took on an extra degree
of animation. The scent of the snow and the night were exciting in this safe enclosure. The frigid dark was something substantial
to have come in from. It was an evening that enhanced humanity and made all the people glad to be with their acquaintances.

The seats were filled now, although parents and grandparents and aunts and siblings continued to stream into the lighted room,
and so the men in the audience began to get up, many of them, and move out of the rows of seats to stand against the walls,
vacating their places for their wives and mothers and children, or for
the wives and mothers and children of other men. Avery made his way to the aisle and joined Vince and Mark, and Maggie and
Celeste came to take places next to Claudia. Maggie and Claudia exchanged a customary light embrace and a pleasant greeting,
and Maggie turned to chat with a woman she knew who was sitting in the row behind them.

Avery and Vince leaned their shoulders against the long black-paned windows, and Avery stretched his arm out loosely across
the high sill while he leaned toward Vince to tell him something. Claudia was watching them, and she absently raised her hand
to her lips and passed her fingertips softly across her mouth as though she were stopping some words she might say. She looked
at the two men and all the other fathers in their crew-necked sweaters and tweed jackets and then, in the audience, at all
the women leaning together to speak to each other, or bending forward to rein in a small child who was heading off on some
adventure. Claudia had a sudden inclination to double over and bury her head in her lap, to hide away from the evidence of
such kindly sexuality. One father caught an escaped child and lifted him to sit high on the windowsill; another raised his
daughter up over his head so she could straddle his shoulders and hold on around his neck. Their wives, sitting down at last,
were weary from the effort of organizing the children, rushing them through the early dinner, worrying over and reassuring
that child who would be performing.

Claudia looked around and knew that later a husband in his nice blue sweater would collect his family after the concert, would
move them along toward the car, would, perhaps, put his hand at his wife’s waist to
guide her through the crowd and through the snow while she glanced back to be sure the children were coming after them. And
she would not take special notice of that hand at her waist; that wife would be accustomed to that touch, and her husband
would be accustomed to the touching. Claudia looked once more at Avery and Vince, who appeared to be unmoved by the implication
all around them of such intimate involvement. It seemed to her all good, those intricacies of domestic life. It seemed to
her to be a condition full of ease and grace, and she even imagined that the orderly sensuality she attributed to these people
was something she had once had. Then she did have to look down at the floor, and she put her hands up to her face, because
she was wounded by what was lacking in her life, she was overcome by lust and longing.

The houselights came down, and the audience began to grow quiet as the musicians took their places. The string section was
seated, and Jane was the last to take her seat in her position of first violin. Alice Jessup stood calmly waiting for her
students to settle into their chairs, and Claudia watched her and was moved by a wave of sympathy and goodwill as she studied
that serious little figure at the front of the brilliantly lit stage. In fact, as Alice raised her arms and the strings began
to play their first piece, a selection from the
Messiah
, Claudia could not turn her eyes away from Alice Jessup to look at Jane. Her attention was riveted to Alice’s slightly undulating
figure as she coaxed forth the right notes at the right moments. She was so very small and straight with her long, long hair
to her waist, and she was wearing her black-strapped Chinese shoes and, strangely enough for
December, a mid-calf gauzy beige skirt with an India-inspired design around its hem. Against the light the skirt was completely
transparent, and Claudia could not look away from Alice’s thin, slightly bowed legs beneath the skirt and her bright turquoise
blue bikini underpants with elastic that was sprung so that they slipped fractionally with each upreach of her arms.

Claudia didn’t dare glance around to see if anyone else had noticed this; instead she directed toward the stage the intense
wish, on Alice’s behalf, that the wispy little pair of underpants would not fall down around her ankles with her next exhortation
to her students. And she forgave Alice everything. She forgave her for her superior knowledge of music; she forgave her for
the absolute possession of her own life; she even forgave her for the slight and mysterious disdain with which she suspected
Alice viewed her. Alice had endeared herself utterly to Claudia by such an amazing lack of vanity and foresight.

When the two Handel selections were over, Alice did not turn to the audience while they applauded her and her string students.
She had caught sight of Jane’s violin and was watching Jane intently during the brief applause before she moved to adjust
Jane’s music stand at center stage for Jane’s solo. She met Jane’s eyes for a moment, but she was stopped by something in
Jane’s expression from indicating anything with that glance, not even a question. When Jane stood up and came to the front
of the stage, she had to wait while Alice tried to get the stand to slide to the right height. Jane stood still, holding her
bow across her waist and her new violin straight down the line of her thigh, and she looked out for a moment with a clear,
half-lidded gaze at the
goodhearted and generous-spirited audience. She was full of alarm and awfully conscious of fatigue and fear that weighed down
her arms with a peculiar numbness. But the audience became still, too, frozen there in their kindly tolerance. All their benevolent
intentions were caught up and stopped dead as they were held so briefly in Jane’s regard. She was tired to such a degree that
she was not associating the performance she would give with the audience who would hear it. It was only Miss Jessup who worried
her. She stood beside Alice and waited, and she looked out over the audience with curiosity and an air of pure assessment
that was disconcerting to them. It was only for a moment that she stood and plied her gaze over the rows of people, but a
faint stir broke out where her eye had passed.

“Hasn’t she grown up?”

“She’s gotten so tall this past year, hasn’t she?”

“Isn’t she going to be an attractive girl?”

They turned to each other uneasily because they saw something about her that made them want to alleviate the peculiar trepidation
they felt as she stared so intently ahead. She was forfeiting their charity. And when Alice moved away and Jane poised her
violin beneath her chin, they felt that just by the assurance of her motions she was indicating that it might be a grudging
concession to them that she was performing at all. She drew out the first note of Bach’s “Air for the G String,” and it was
a clean, pure sound that the audience listened to with attention. She had called forth their judgment with her level gaze.
She had alerted them not to listen with a sympathetic ear and its corresponding condescension, and when she finished, they
applauded seriously. Some of the audience knew how well she had
performed, and they all realized that she had played the piece without a mistake.

For the moment Jane was pleased, and that was all. She had learned this wonderful new instrument in one day; she had fitted
her skill to its eccentricities. She was too tired to be particularly triumphant or euphoric, though. She was simply relieved
for herself and for her mother.

The concert continued. The audience was tired, with Christmas in the offing, and they were easily distracted by a stray child
racing away from his mother, down an aisle, through a forest of knees. But Claudia was so enamored of the evening that she
loved it all, now that Jane had played so beautifully. When the youngest children, the beginning students relegated to the
lowly Red Band, finally played their one selection, Claudia was very moved by their desperately earnest expressions and their
careful attention to Mr. Walters. She put her arm over Maggie’s on the support that separated their seats and leaned toward
her.

“Oh, Maggie! It really is exciting what these children can do! It’s amazing what they’re exposed to so early. It’s John Cage,
isn’t it?”

Maggie’s pale brows frowned over her program. “That’s something called ‘Band Room Blast.’ Arranged especially for the Red
Band by Mr. Walters, it says. I guess it gives all the children a chance to make some kind of noise.”

But Claudia was a trifle jolted in her headlong enthusiasm.

By the time the band had finished its last number even the most temperate parents were relieved. The mothers with infants
on their laps were tired of the effort of
keeping them quiet and still, and the fresh air had been displaced by the breath of all those people so closely grouped. The
room had become stuffy. Avery had been tense from the moment he had seen Jane come onstage with the pale brazilwood violin.
He was stiff, too, from leaning against the wall, and he was glad to be able to make his way toward her as the orchestra and
band members emerged in small, excited groups through the stage door leading into the auditorium. He and Claudia reached her
almost at the same time, and Claudia had a quality of incandescence, she was so obviously pleased for her daughter.

“Janie, I wish you could have been a fly on the wall,” she said. “I wish you could have been in the audience and could have
seen yourself!” Claudia hardly ever smiled wholeheartedly; she always seemed to have her private reservations, but she smiled
at Jane now, and she spoke very deliberately, choosing her words with care. “You had real poise onstage. I don’t know exactly
what it was…. You were
elegant
, not just a talented child who plays well.” She wanted to explain the powerful satisfaction she felt on Jane’s behalf. It
was not in the nature of how the two of them were that Claudia would presume to be proud of her daughter, but she was deeply,
deeply pleased. And finally Avery could not resist that pleasure either; his face lost its tension, and he smiled at Jane,
too. Before he could say anything, though, the three of them caught sight of Alice approaching them slowly through the crowd,
brushing aside the students who implored her to pay attention. She was determined, and her mouth was sternly set. She moved
stiffly, as though she were wading through deep water. Claudia thought for a moment that Alice was
moving with such restraint because she had finally realized that her little bikini underpants were sliding lower and lower
over her narrow hips, but then she realized that Alice was unaccountably angry and that some of that anger seemed to be directed
at her. As Alice drew nearer, that impression intensified. Claudia was especially surprised and baffled, since all during
the performance she had extended to Alice every ounce of her empathy. Alice was thin and intent, and her progress toward them
was inexorable, and Claudia grew agitated in spite of herself as she watched her approach.

Alice was so tiny in her flat shoes that when she stood among the three of them, even Jane looked down at her, but Alice’s
immense irritation made her presence loom large. Claudia was a bit indignant by now, and uneasy, and Alice stood directly
before her in an obvious confrontation.

“You really don’t pay attention to what people need, do you? I explained to you that it would take months for Jane to get
used to a new instrument,” she said to Claudia. “You really didn’t pay attention. It’s like you didn’t even hear me!” Her
voice, which was usually so inconsequential, had filled out with anger, and Claudia realized that she had always underestimated
this severe little woman. She was completely at a loss, although to be attacked like this for no apparent reason made her
eyes fill with tears and her chin quiver embarrassingly. It was the surprise of Alice’s rage that affected her. But Alice
wasn’t deterred. She was not through being angry, and no one attempted to interrupt her because her quiet ferocity was so
vehement. “I thought Avery was just feeling sorry for himself when he said you don’t
listen, but he really was right. You could have ruined this concert for Jane!”

Claudia just looked at her, astounded that she would be the object of Alice’s interest right now, much less contempt. She
looked to Jane, but Jane was looking away from all of them as though this were not happening; she was staring out into the
crowd. Avery reached out and put his hand on Alice’s shoulder.

“Well, we probably shouldn’t have done it, Alice. One of us should have told you. But you know, it really was irresistible.”

Claudia turned slightly to look at him. She didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t know why a note of conciliation
had crept into Avery’s voice or why he was smiling his persuasive, slightly crooked smile. It distracted her. He was almost
unctuous, and everything he said was infused with mediation and pacification. A shudder of protective irritation for Avery’s
sake passed over her, because she could never bear it if he was being in the least bit foolish, and she didn’t know what he
was up to now.