The Time of Her Life (25 page)

“We gave the violin to Jane a week ago, and she’s been practicing every day for hours. I know”—he held up his hand—“I know
that’s not enough time, and we never would have let her play it tonight if she hadn’t been so good at it. You made a perfect
match with that violin, though, Alice. It’s exactly the right one for Jane, and I would have chosen the darker of the other
two. You knew it was right instinctively. It was a brilliant choice!” Avery gestured again to hold Alice off. “I should have
told you. I know I should have told you, but Jane made us promise. She wanted this to be a surprise.”

Alice turned to look dubiously at Jane, who did not look back. “You haven’t had a flu? That’s so stupid, Jane. I thought you
knew better. I could have helped you. You should have filled the auditorium with sound from this violin! You could have. It
will give you more volume. And I could have explained that to you. You can’t possibly figure that out if you’re just practicing
in your bedroom. You have to suit the sound to the environment.” She was instructively earnest when she spoke to Jane about
the violin, but she was angry again when she turned back to include Avery and Claudia.

“This is really not my idea of a fun surprise! I would have thought that at least
Jane
would have had more sense than that.” Alice was calmer, now, but quite firm, and Claudia could not bear to have her say these
things to Jane no matter how tightly strung Alice’s nerves might be this evening because of the concert.

“Alice,” Claudia said, and she was plaintive, because she had learned over the years that people aren’t really very reasonable,
“Jane was the success of the concert. Jane was wonderful!” She could not understand how Alice could be so cruel as to lessen
this occasion for Jane. Jane had been valiant and careful standing beneath the lights. She had stood and looked out at the
adults sitting in the audience and made it clear that she was not to be pitied. Claudia had realized that Jane had taken a
great risk, and she had succeeded. She was brave and admirable and undeserving of this attack, but Claudia wasn’t mad at Alice
in return; she was inured to people failing to fulfill her expectations of them. And for her part, Alice only gave a small
shake of her head in resignation.

“That’s because she’s incredibly talented,” Alice said.
“And lucky. Tonight she was awfully lucky.” Her anger was less forthright now, and by this time her other students had found
her and were beseeching her and tugging at her attention, so she turned away, and Claudia looked after her a moment, saddened
a little and bewildered. She didn’t want this to ruin anything for Jane.

“She’s wrong about that, Jane,” she said to her daughter, who might have been anyone’s child, she was so apparently unconnected
to her two parents and her teacher. “It had absolutely nothing at all to do with luck! I watched you all the time, and you
weren’t
lucky
. You had tremendous poise, and you were more concentrated than I’ve ever seen you be, but you weren’t one bit lucky!”

Jane turned to her mother and smiled at her because more than anything, tonight, it had hurt her when Alice had counted her
lucky, and she loved her mother very much at that moment. She knew her mother understood the heart of the matter, and she
thought that in her own vague way her mother did pay attention to what was needed, even if it was only now and then.

“Avery, why don’t you come with us?” Claudia said. “I’m going to take Janie somewhere to celebrate. She hardly ate any dinner,
and I think we’ll go get a sundae or something.”

Avery didn’t reply for a moment. He stared off thoughtfully above the heads of the crowd. Then he bent down and kissed Jane
carefully on the cheek in the same self-consciously guarded attitude that he had taken toward Claudia earlier. And his voice
indicated a mournful resignation. He was quite serious about this part he was playing of the estranged and lonely father,
Claudia thought, and she was impatient once again.

“Oh, well, I can’t do that. But you ought to go celebrate, Janie. I’ve got a special plan for Christmas morning. We can celebrate
then. The Bach was the best thing on the program. You were wonderful, Janie. You ought to feel very proud of yourself.” He
began to usher them in the direction of the aisle, and Claudia and Jane turned and started out ahead of him. At the end of
the row they moved with the crowd into the wide central corridor toward the major exit, but when Claudia reached the top of
the sloping auditorium, she looked around and saw that Avery had branched off the other way and was moving away from them
toward the other end of the room.

“Oh, he really isn’t coming with us, I guess,” she said to Jane. “He must have parked around back. We’ll see him Christmas
morning.” She turned back to join the crowd of people who were halted in their progress since only a few people at a time
could make their way through the big double doors. Jane didn’t mind at all; she was just as glad to have her mother to herself.
She looked back at the stage just in time to see her father approach Alice, who was being detained, still, by several sets
of parents offering their congratulations. Jane saw her father move alongside her teacher and slide his hand beneath all her
brown cascading hair and press her forward gently at the waist to guide her away from the lingering parents who turned, as
she moved away, and waved good-bye. Jane wasn’t paying much attention, however. She was remembering that while she was standing
before that audience playing the Bach, she had been briefly, absolutely, and only herself. Not her teacher’s pupil or her
parents’ daughter or her friends’ acquaintance. She had experienced a moment of undivided
self-involvement. It was a heady business, even remembering it. And in retrospect it did not seem to be a state that was in
the least bit dangerous, only giddy and desirable. For the several minutes of playing the “Air for the G String” she had been
cast adrift from loving or caring or knowing about anyone but herself.

Jane stayed in her pajamas late into Christmas morning even though whenever her mother noticed her she urged Jane to get dressed.
“Why are you still in your pajamas on Christmas Day? We’re going to have champagne and everything. Why don’t you at least
put on a pair of jeans?” But Jane turned on the television and wrapped herself in a blanket and watched the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir. She was uneasy and sullen and overcome by a familiar feeling of dread which she was trying not to dwell upon. It was
not as threatening if it remained amorphous, if she did not pin it down. With the effort not to think, her face took on a
vaguely truculent expression, dull-eyed and grimly set through the mouth and jaw, and when Claudia looked in on her again,
she thought that Jane might be coming down with a flu.

Claudia herself was frenetic with energy. She had thrown off all traces of lassitude and had been up since dawn. She had put
on a dark maroon velvet dress with a fitted shirtwaist bodice and a huge collar that framed her face in a way that gave her
features sweetness, so
that with her frothy hair she looked like a valentine. The skirt of her dress was cut on the bias and lay closely over her
round hips before sweeping out at the hem. She liked the feel of the cloth as she moved. She swayed against it a trifle when
she walked so that the luxurious fabric swung around her legs. She was alarmingly talkative and euphoric, and she was all
over the house, fluffing the pillows and cleaning the counters. Everything was exactly right and in its place.

She had waited too late to cook anything. Christmas Eve Jane had gone along with her and waited at the deli while Claudia
selected a sinister-looking pâté with a dark row of truffles down the center. She had bought smoked salmon, red caviar and
black caviar, black bread, rye bread, four different cheeses, and two pounds of sliced Boone County ham, which Avery liked
better than Smithfield, and she also chose one of the small smoked turkeys that were trussed and hanging by their leg bones
one above the other on knotted ropes behind the counter.

She had rarely in her life indulged herself in such a gluttony of frivolous buying, and it went to her head. At the organic
food store she bought all kinds of fruit, great spills of grapes, and lemons and onions for the caviar. She stood in the store
oblivious to the many people milling about and held the grapes up to show Jane. “I hadn’t ever realized how sexual this fruit
is,” she said to Jane meditatively as the grapes hung down heavily over her hand where she held them before her. “It’s nature
copying nature. My God, if you look around, though, I suppose that all this food could have a human sexual equivalent.” She
turned to see if Jane agreed with her, but Jane had moved away and was studying
the dairy case full of imported yogurt.

At the bakery Claudia got a dozen meringues, filled croissants, and a streusel for Christmas breakfast. Jane saw that her
mother was slowly—from store to store—working herself into a peculiar and flushed furor of acquisition. “Janie, this is incredible!
Just incredible. I don’t think I’m even a greedy person. I’m really not. But when you stand there looking at all the things
you can buy… and you get to choose… God! It’s proof that you’re a grown-up. I mean, if you have the money for it, no one is
going to say anything to you at all. They just give you what you ask for. Anything you want!”

Jane was becoming alarmed as she watched her mother’s increasing elation. “We have plenty of stuff now,” she said. “It’s so
cold. Can’t we go home?”

But Claudia hardly noticed; she flashed her daughter a smile across the front seat, and they stopped at the liquor store,
where Jane decided to wait in the car. Claudia bought three bottles of champagne, a good bourbon, scotch, gin, and a bottle
of Finnish vodka that had a stalk of rye grass in it. “Look at that, Jane!” she said, turning the bottle so Jane could see
it from every angle. “What an idea! It probably tastes foul, but it’s so pretty, isn’t it?” Jane didn’t say anything until
her mother had settled the packages on the front seat. And even when she did speak, her voice was without conviction or hope.
In fact, all she felt was a sort of doleful resignation.

“I don’t know why you always buy this stuff when Dad’s going to be in the house.” Her words came out flat in the enclosed
air of the car with the dullness of coins falling on a wooden surface. But for the first time that day Claudia fell back into
her habitual passivity. She
was bending forward to turn the key in the ignition. When Jane spoke, Claudia dropped her hand to the car seat and leaned
her head back against the headrest and to the side so that she was looking out the window for a long moment.

“Oh… well, Jane… it’s Christmas. It’s a celebration. I have all kinds of things for tomorrow.” But she said this to Jane without
turning to look at her, and she remained still and pensive as she looked out at the snow-encrusted parking lot. Finally she
drew herself together and started the car, but she was not as brisk as she had been, and she was short-tempered with Jane
for the rest of the afternoon.

By Christmas morning, though, her optimism had returned. In fact, she was giddy with what was partly terror at coming into
the kitchen and seeing evidence everywhere of the risk she had taken. In the refrigerator and spread over the table were the
makings of an event, and that was Avery’s domain; she had taken a plunge into improvisation.

“We won’t open any of the presents until your father gets here,” she said to Jane. “Is that all right with you, Janie? And
your main present was the violin, but I know there’ll be a few surprises.” Jane kept her eyes on the TV and only nodded, and
Claudia wandered off.

Jane’s idea of Christmas was her collective memory of all the ones before, and always her parents—especially her father—constructed
it out of the most fragile material, constructed it out of his own enthusiasm, which was infectious and irresistible. For
weeks before Christmas Avery would come home with mysterious boxes, and as early as August, Claudia would begin to pore over
catalogues. By late November and December the UPS
man would be making almost daily stops. Every year that Jane could remember, however, it had become too much for Claudia.
Her mother would share her father’s enthusiasm, but she also could not bear the idea of Jane’s suspense. She would waylay
Jane in private with this or that sealed box and furtively slit the brown tape.