The Time of Her Life (30 page)

She went along the hall to Jane’s room, and all she meant to do was to be sure that Jane was there and tucked in. Claudia
stood in the doorway where she could just make out the silhouette of her daughter turned away from the door with her face
toward the wall. Claudia, for a moment, ached with such a terrible regret that there was no other important thing about this
day at all. For a brief moment she mourned what seemed to her to be the loss of her daughter, and she moved over to the bed
and looked down at Jane’s face, which was very pale and completely relaxed in sleep, just as she had slept as an infant. Claudia
was afraid that Jane would awaken and that her severe features would register sweeping disapproval of almost everything that
Claudia had ever done. She felt so sure that this might
happen, she was so certain that there was anger in the room, that she froze there momentarily, alarmed that even a shift of
the chilly air would induce her daughter’s wrath. But Jane didn’t stir, and Claudia didn’t have the courage to lean over and
kiss her on the cheek; she had never had that courage except when Jane was very young and couldn’t object. She quietly left
the room.

Downstairs she unplugged the tree and let out poor Nellie, who had been making frantic circles around her ever since Claudia
had come down the stairs. In the kitchen she looked at the clock. It wasn’t as late as she had thought; it was only a little
after eleven. Finally she turned off the lights and went back to bed, stepping gingerly over the scattered boxes and the broken
violin and keeping her mind empty of any implication they might have other than being impediments to her progress across the
room and up the stairs.

She lay in bed with Avery next to her snoring slightly, but she was restless. She turned on her stomach and embraced her pillow
with her head turned to look out at the icy driveway and far across the meadow, where lights were shining in the Tunbridge
house. She looked down the hill at their windows and became drowsy, and she reversed the process in her thoughts, placing
herself inside Maggie’s house and gazing out over the meadow where she and Avery and Jane were warmly tucked in after a long
day, and she fell back to sleep.

Only Nellie stirred in that cold landscape over the next few hours. She trotted along to the grove of pines where she customarily
relieved herself, although she was abashed even then, having understood since being housebroken that this might induce anger.
She went farther up the meadow to the house above the Parks’,
whose inhabitants thought they had a problem with raccoons. Nellie quietly tipped over a plastic trash can in which she found
many mothballs and five fine bones from a standing rib roast. She settled down happily in the snow to chew on them, holding
one between her paws so she could work her way down the meaty ridge that slipped away from her otherwise. In a little while,
though, a light went on in the house, and Nellie made a stealthy retreat down the hill with a large rib in her mouth, moving
cautiously so her tags wouldn’t jangle. Nellie was a terrible coward, but that made her all the more skilled as a thief.

She carried the bone with her to her own front door, where she lay down to wait until someone came to let her in, and she
dozed off with her chin resting on the well-chewed prime rib. She came instantly alert, however, and was overjoyed when she
first heard the gentle crunch and then saw the lights of a car that turned from the main road and made its way slowly up the
long, icy drive toward her house. Nellie was standing up and wagging her tail even before the car came to a stop behind Avery’s
Citation.

Inside the house the headlights had shifted fleetingly right over Avery’s face as the car made the upward climb from the road
below, but he woke up after the light had passed over the walls and through the room when the car leveled out in the short,
flat turn to the circular parking area. He was instantly awake, however, and he knew that something significant had awakened
him because he was immediately anxious. He pushed the quilt back and sat up to look out the window.

“Oh, Christ!” he said in a loud whisper of alarm. “Holy shit, Claudia!”

“What?” she asked. She was only a little bit awake, and she turned over on her back to try to see Avery through the darkness.
She reached out for the light next to the bed, but Avery grabbed for her arm.

“Christ! No! Don’t turn on the light! The curtains aren’t even closed.” He was whispering, but his voice was very urgent.
Claudia let her arm fall back to the bed.

“What’s the matter?” And she was whispering, too.

“Oh, shit, Claudia. It’s Alice. She’s right out there! Her car’s out there!”

“In the driveway?”

“Right out there. She’s right outside!”

Claudia slid off her side of the bed and lay on the rug by the window, peering out. She didn’t say anything. It was true.
Alice’s brown Dodge Dart was parked directly behind Avery’s new Citation. Avery rolled across the bed and slid off, too, so
that he couldn’t possibly be seen through the window. The two of them lay side by side, peering over the rim of the window
that ran almost floor to ceiling.

“Oh, Christ!” Avery said. “I should have gone back. I told her I’d be back!” He still whispered.

“What should we do now? What if she knocks on the door?” Claudia whispered back. They had been caught out together. They had
even been in bed together.

“God! Oh, God! We’ll get Janie to answer it. I should have called her or something. Fucking shit! Do you know what she was
fixing for dinner? For Christmas dinner? It’s so awful! Shit! I should have gone back.”

“What? What was she fixing for dinner?”

“There were just going to be the two of us. Just the two of us. But she was going to roast a
chicken!
”

Claudia was indignant, a little, on Alice’s behalf, and
she whispered back to him, “Well, Avery…”

“I know, I know. But doesn’t it seem awful to you? I mean, it’s such a pathetic sort of gesture. I didn’t want her to. I didn’t
want her to fix that damned chicken. Christ, I bet it’s sitting there sort of horrible and puckered all over the way roast
chicken gets when it’s cold. Oh, shit!”

They were both very quiet, watching the car warily. Finally Claudia said, “Well, even so, Avery… I mean, in spite of everything
I really am fond of Alice, and….”

“Oh, God. I know. I should have gone back to her place!”

And then they both began to laugh that terrible, stifled laughter that hurts inside because it has to be repressed. They shook
with panicky, breathy laughter that made their ribs ache. Claudia buried her face in her elbows on the rug and laughed and
laughed, and Avery laughed and gasped occasionally to get his breath. They were hysterical on the rug of their own bedroom,
hiding from Avery’s lover.

Below them, though, Alice opened the car door, closing it with a thunk that was hollow and didn’t reverberate in the cold
air. And Claudia became completely quiet and still as she peered out at Alice, who had stepped back from her car and was looking
directly up at their window with her hands in her pockets and her wool hat pulled down over her ears and her long hair streaming
over her shoulders. Avery, though, still lay beside Claudia, keeping his head down, and was still racked with great silent
shudders of laughter.

“Alice has such beautiful hair,” Claudia said after several moments and very, very softly. “She always has
had such beautiful hair.” But below them Alice continued to stand and stare at the house, ignoring Nellie, who pranced all
around her in a friendly greeting.

Claudia thought that Avery was still laughing into his crossed arms, but then she realized that he was stifling his own crying.

“My God, Claudia. Think of someone who would cook a chicken on Christmas Day and serve it with cranberry sauce and stuffing…”

Claudia looked away from Alice and turned to try to see Avery’s expression in the dark. She tried to see what he was talking
about, and he continued to shake with a sound of half-muffled sobbing and laughing. She could only peer at him and wait.

“You know,” he said, “she had an abortion last month.” He became still, too, stretched out on the floor with his head on his
arms. “She didn’t want a baby, anyway. And she thought I would leave her. She didn’t think I would stay. But I wanted her
to have the baby. I don’t think she really wanted me to stay.”

Claudia just looked at him through the dark where he was crying for the chilled chicken and the lost child. She just stared
at him through the murky night, and she didn’t move at all. She just lay there watching him.

Alice walked around her car and stood closer to the house, but she was not looking up at the windows anymore. She stood very
still and straight with Nellie sitting at her side staring ahead at her own doorway.

“That’s so stupid! It’s so stupid, so stupid! Why did you do that?” Claudia was whispering, but she was truly anguished. “Why
did you go away from me? I don’t know why you go away from me. I know everything, for God’s sake! I know the very worst there
is to know
about you, and I want you with me! I always have wanted you no matter what!” And now tears were sliding down Claudia’s face,
but she didn’t realize it. “And you even love me. You want to be with me. You can’t ever stay away from me for very long.
But you do all this damage! Why do you go away from me? Why are you always leaving?” She really had to know this; it was something
she had never caught on to. Avery didn’t move or answer for a little while, and Alice stood silently below.

“Well…” Avery said, and he whispered so softly that Claudia could scarcely hear him. “Well… the thing is… you do. You do know
the worst things… but you know the best about me too. Probably. You probably do,” Avery said. “I probably can’t do a fucking
thing any better than you already think I can. It scares the shit out of me. It really does.”

Claudia just listened to him. If she had been angry instead of so very sad, she would have torn this idea of his into little
shreds with all the lacerating scorn she felt for his ambition and his vanity, but with that silent witness below them in
the driveway she just heard him and made no reply at all.

They both turned their attention to Alice, who held them prisoner on the drafty floor. For a long while no one moved, although
down the hall Jane shifted one arm ever so slightly in her heavy sleep.

Eventually Alice moved back around her car to the driver’s side and opened the door, and Claudia let her breath out in relief
even though Avery didn’t look up at all. He lay as still as if he had fallen asleep. But Alice only reached inside to get
her keys, and then she walked around to the trunk of the car and with some effort finally
unlocked and opened it. When she closed the trunk, Claudia could see that she was holding the tire iron in one hand.

“Avery!” And Claudia put out her hand to touch his arm in alarm.

“Oh, God!” Avery said, and they were immobilized with shock in their hiding place behind the window. They hardly breathed.

Alice hefted the tire iron in her hand while Nellie watched with interest. Perhaps Alice would throw it for her. Alice paced
back and forth beside the parked cars, smacking the tire iron against her mittened palm, feeling its weight. At last she stopped
alongside the Citation and raised the tire iron high above her head and behind her shoulder so that Nellie reared up on her
hind legs, ready to retrieve it when Alice let go. But Alice swung it fiercely down, smashing it through the front window
of Avery’s car, and Nellie let out a horrified yelp. Alice brought it back again and smashed at the window another time, and
another, and poor Nellie ran off down the hill to turn and watch from a safe distance with her ears flat down on her head
and her tail tucked between her legs.

Alice moved a little to the side and worked and worked at the passenger windows, smashing them with all her strength, until
only fragments of glass remained projecting jaggedly from the frame. She walked around to the other side of the car and stopped
for a moment, leaning against the hood to catch her breath, and she heaved to again, swinging at and smashing anything on
the car that she could break. Finally she stopped and stepped back and surveyed what she had done for a long minute. Then
with great fastidiousness she stepped
carefully over the broken glass, opened her trunk once more, replaced the tire iron, and got in and drove away.

As Claudia and Avery watched the red taillights of her car retreat down the hill, they were all alone in the dark. They no
longer knew anyone else except the other one, and the illusion that they ever could had come tumbling down around them on
this Christmas Day. For quite a while they lay there beside each other in utter silence.

THE TIME OF HER LIFE

A NOVEL BY

Robb Forman Dew

How did you begin to write novels? Did you always want to be a writer?

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately—why I became a writer, that is. I used to think it was because I had something
urgent to say. But I actually started writing before I could even write. I don’t know how old I was—four or five—and I would
fill pages with wavy lines as though I were writing words. So maybe it’s a genetic imperative of some sort. I don’t think
I’ve ever asked anyone why he or she became a painter, because I assumed it was simply a deep pleasure because that person
was talented. But, of course, I’m sure painting is filled with the same euphoria and misery as writing.

I grew up in a family where everyone seemed to write, or seemed to want to write. I remember being truly startled when a friend
of mine avoided a class in college because she would have to write essays, and instead she took a science course. It was the
first time I really understood that loving to read—my friend was a great reader—really didn’t have that much to do with wanting
to write. And I’ve come to a few conclusions about why people do write. I think that writers really have to write or they
become unhappy—even depressed and disoriented. And I think that they’re lucky if they also have talent, but whether talented
or not anyone who writes is—for the time the actual writing is going on—imagining that he or she is imposing on some imagined
reader a worldview. It’s an unconscious attempt at seduction, I think.