All the Time in the World (23 page)

“You should have seen my first apartment,” says Jess. “I had to name the mice in order to help myself sleep at night. Like, oh, Byron is too shy to run over my face in the middle of the night. Gussie is afraid of heights—he would never climb up my sheets and hide, waiting to nip at my toes.”

“That's horrifying.” I stand up from the rickety chair to take off my jacket and lay it over the back, noticing that the edge of twine right beneath my fingers could be pulled on just slightly, and the whole top part may well come crashing down.

“There was always the option to stay in academia, until it branched off into a clearer professional path,” she says.

“Everett did,” I say. “Academia was not for me.”

“I was surprised to hear that Everett was accepted into that doctoral program,” she says. “Makes me think they've relaxed their admissions standards.” If Everett had been saying these words, they would have been full of arrogance, a degree of rivalry. But the way Jess says them sounds completely objective, and that makes them much harsher. “Maybe it was just a fluke. They haven't had a trumpet player in a while.”

“Not since you?” I say.

She smiles. “I don't have a DMA. Only an MFA. You can't call me Dr. Fairchild.”

“That's funny. You let us call you that all the way through the semester at school.”

“Not you, Charlotte,” she says. “You always called me Jess, didn't you?”

“Only behind your back.”

“You talked about me behind my back?”

“Constantly,” I say. “We all did.”

She pulls the tea bag out of her mug and wraps it around her spoon, squeezing the water out. I can tell she is happy with that answer. “I'm not much of a trumpet player, anyway,” she says. I have heard her play the trumpet. The sound is aggressive, raw, heartbreaking. Beautiful, in a way that feels unholy. There aren't many people, if any, on the planet who can sound that way on the
trumpet
. Yet she isn't being modest. Of all her musical strengths and talents, trumpet skills are not the thing she would choose to highlight.

“Well, that's not Everett's only instrument,” I say, feeling like I need to defend him, which he would hate. “He's got like six or eight other … proficiencies.”

“So does your average high school band teacher,” says Jess, and it's the first thing she's said that really sounds like an on-purpose insult.

“He wants to compose symphonies. It's not like his instrumental concert skills matter all that much.” I sound hostile to my own ears and wonder if she hears it.

“They used to, for that program,” Jess replies. “If you looked in every corner of the earth, you could find yourself a colony of people that could design a competent symphony. You know what you would have trouble finding?” She gets up and retrieves a notebook full of staffed papers from the piano bench in the living room and puts it down in front of me at the table. “This.”

“You wrote this?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sure it's lovely.”

“It could be. I want you to tell me what's wrong with it, though. There's something missing. I can't make it work. I have the sense that it would tie my whole new piece together if I got it right, but I'm having trouble getting there. So, how can I fix it, do you think?”

“It's the wrong time signature,” I say, without thinking, “for a start. But you might also try reversing some of this phrasing.” I start to mark it up, remember where I am, and put the pencil down on the table. “You constructed it strangely. You … you, like, stacked everything on top of each other. These two sections should switch places.” I fold my hands in my lap and squeeze them together so hard that the knuckles crack.

“Will you come to the piano?”

I stand up and follow her, and I think of what Eliza said to me, about Patrick and the darker side of herself. There's a way of living in the present that Jess has mastered, and being with her feels euphoric, careless, light-headed. We work on her piece for so long that when I glance outside, I can see that the light has completely changed over the river water. How long have I been here?

I'm about to stand up, and then she says, “The world should hear you, Charlotte. You're keeping it all to yourself.”

“I'm not keeping it to myself on purpose,” I say. “But Jess. Holy shit. The
rat race
. Everybody scrambling, all the time. Living hand to mouth. People lying and cheating and stealing.” I think of the way Everett was laughing the night of his concert. Not his real laugh. “That's been my experience of the lifestyle in the land of musicians, and I'm not cut out for it.”

“I would have helped you,” she says. “If I knew that you were having trouble figuring out where the work is, I would have made a connection for you. Or brought you onto some of my projects.”

“If I knew where to find you,” I say. “If you hadn't disappeared all of a sudden, maybe I would have asked.”

She doesn't say anything. Personal accountability is not a thing she does, and I hear it as her fatal flaw in the lack of response. I haven't made much of an accusation, but to her, I might as well have requested that she recalculate the speed of sound. How could she run all over the globe being famous and brilliant if she had to answer to someone?

Something in her living room catches my eye. It's folded neatly, cashmere, straight out of a Ralph Lauren ad. Everett's scarf.

“You should think about switching those two sections in the piece.” I gather the loose sheets of music on the piano, stacking them into a neat pile and sliding them back into her notebook. Jess still handwrites the majority of her work. She probably has an army of copyists inputting the music she scrawls into composition software for her.

“You can come and work for me whenever you want,” Jess says. “I'd hire you in a heartbeat.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket, making my heart race with an adrenaline surge. Scotty, Matt, George—which one?

I read the text—“Dr. O'Neill office called, moved us up 3/4 hour, can you make it?”—and relax. No one is in a state of peril or meltdown. I realize that I am standing up and have done so in a way that must have seemed abrupt.

“Is that clock right?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I had it set. What do you think of it?”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I didn't realize that it was so late. I have to get going.” If I find a taxi immediately, I'll make it to the appointment on time.

She walks with me to the kitchen. “I'll be here for a few weeks. Maybe you and Everett and I can get together.”

“I'm sure Everett will want to come back for his scarf.”

“I'm playing a salon, of sorts, at the Park Avenue Armory,” Jess says. She doesn't recognize sarcasm as a valid form of communication, never has. “A fundraiser for my foundation. I'll reserve tickets for the two of you. You'll get to hear the whole piece, complete with your revisions.”

“Great. So I guess I'll see my name in the program, then.”

“If that's what you want,” she says, “I'm sure it can be arranged.”

The option to have it out with her is right in front of me, but now I'm in a hurry, and I'm suddenly distracted by the possibility that maybe I forgot to pack sweatpants for George to nap in this weekend at Aunt Lila's.

I hurry across the kitchen to the elevator and push the button. Of course it isn't there right away. I press it seven or eight times, even though I've told Matt over and over that pressing the button a bunch of times won't make the elevator come any faster.

It comes, finally. “I forgot to ask, Charlotte, what is it you're doing with your time these days?” Jess asks, as I'm about to step inside.

“Babysitting,” I say. As if that one word could sum it all up.

February, six days after

After Gretchen's graveside service, I somehow end up in a large black car with the boys, Patrick, and Jeanne and George McLean. The silence in the car for much of the ride is pregnant with regret, but I get the feeling that it's an old regret. George the Younger tries once or twice to rope us all into a discussion about which two animals combined would make the best villain in a story he is making up about chickens, but so far, no one will engage with him past a halfhearted smile in his direction.

“Maybe the chicken could be the villain,” I say to him. “Like a mutant, featherless chicken. The chicken who ate New York City.”

“That not the
real
tory, Tahr-lette. Chicken is the hero.”

“Okay, I see. Does he have a cape?”

“No.”

“Can he fly?”

“No. Chickens don't fly. Them not have long wings enough. Long enough wings,” he corrects himself, before I can.

“Well, what are his powers, then?”

I'm not doing a good enough job of taking Georgie seriously, I suppose, because he narrows his eyes and doesn't say anything for a while. Then, “He doesn't HAVE to fly to be the hero,” he says. He turns his head away, and it's not long before he falls, still scowling, into sleep. I don't know how to assess the emotional toll that the day has taken on him because, unlike Matt, he hasn't cried or screamed or had any meltdowns. It's been almost like a normal day in the life of Georgie. That thought fills my chest like a balloon. I wish with all my might to release the air without upsetting the balance in the car. Who knows what poking a hole in this tension could do?

Across from me and the boys, Patrick sits next to his parents. Dull-eyed, vacant Matt is in the middle, leaning against me, and Georgie has gone to sleep with his head against the window. I feel Patrick's foot stir against mine, so slightly that I wonder if he did it on purpose. When I look at him, I know that he did. George the Elder seems to have noticed as well, while Jeanne wears much the same expression as Matt, staring straight ahead. I'm disconcerted to see both fully grown McLean men looking right at me, but no one says a single word until, just as we're pulling up to the building, without ever changing the direction of her straight-ahead gaze, Jeanne says, “Not this, Patrick. Think of your brother.”

Matt holds on so tightly to my leg that I couldn't get free of him if I tried as we take the elevator to the top floor in silence. “Can you put him in with Matt, please?” I say to Patrick, who is carrying Georgie.

We pass through the entryway to the apartment, and I can see that the side table is covered with food, piled artfully, a sculpture of helplessness rendered by people who don't know what else to do besides send food. I am preparing to concede to Matt that yes, he may have one pastry and maybe a small cookie, but he passes right by the overflowing trays of treats without a sideways glance.

“Are you ready for bed, buddy?” I ask him as Patrick disappears off down the hallway with George's prone body.

Matt's eyes are rimmed in pink, and splotches of the same color are visible through the translucent skin at the tops of his cheekbones. All of a sudden he seems to really take me in, zeroing in on my waterless eyes, without knowing what a struggle it's been for me to keep them that way. “Not
you
,” he says. “Daddy.”

George Senior comes to my rescue. “Come along, grandson. I'll walk you to your room, and you can put yourself to bed. There's a young man. Come, now.” And, poor thing, Matt doesn't seem to know his grandfather well enough to throw a tantrum, so he follows, his footsteps soundless, as Grampa George leads the way to his bedroom. Jeanne remains taciturn, standing in the foyer like she's waiting for someone to take her coat and direct her to the ballroom.

Uncle Max's wife, Ashley Lynn, passes them in the hallway as they go, on her way back from putting her own five children to bed, all of them crowded into George's room. As she passes, she reaches out and touches Matt's head briefly, but he leans into it for a moment longer, and I think to myself that certain women are simply born with a maternal energy, and that the McLean men seem to be drawn to them, and that maybe it has something to do with their own mother's lack of warmth.

I see my chance for escape then, the opportunity to walk home through the punishing cold, daring my ears to be frostbitten. I am rifling through my purse to make sure I have everything while anticipating drowning my sorrows in a large glass of wine and the White House press briefing, set to play over and over in a loop while I fall asleep, when I become aware that Ashley Lynn has gotten very close and is addressing me.

The way she speaks is breathy, lilting. Kind of romantic. “Oh Charlotte, do stay through the cocktail hour and tell us all about being a composer. Won't you?” It's past eight, at least, but apparently Gretchen's funeral will not be usurping the daily rituals.

I miss the beat where I can make an excuse. Scotty and Gretchen have never referred to me as a
composer
, at least not to my face. I'm surprised to hear it come out of the mouth of a member of their extended family.

I follow Ashley Lynn into the formal living room, where Scotty is sitting with his brother Max. Both men stand when we enter, probably due to a long-ingrained habit, and Max scoots his chair up so that it's adjacent to Ashley Lynn's. He puts his hand on her knee when she sits down. Actually, his hand is more on the inside of her thigh, but I'm pretending it's on her knee. Patrick comes in with his father, and Jeanne hands each of them a drink. Scotty gets up again when his father enters the room, automatically, like he's forgotten something and only just now remembered. I watch as George Senior sits down in the chair occupied only moments ago by Scotty, and Scotty takes a seat farther away, next to the windows. I don't sit down. There is nowhere in this room that I want to sit.

“Did you know that Charlotte has a master's degree in music?” Ashley Lynn addresses the room at large, but really, her energy is focused on George Senior.