Perfect Pitch

by Mindy Klasky

  But serving as the Summer Queen had taught Sam a lot in ten months. Composure had become her default state, and she held her chin high through the harried question and answer sessions at the end of each presentation.

  Again, she must have said something right, because she was invited to speak to the entire fifth-grade class during their last hour of the academic day. Taking a quick break in the deserted teacher’s lounge, Sam went over her notes. What a day—from the sternest of principals to the mix of teachers… Now, she was past the gatekeepers. She could finally talk to the kids she wanted to work with.

  And she couldn’t be more pleased with the way the session turned out. Her goal was to convince the kids to participate in Musicall on a long-term basis. Ordinarily, that would mean adding music classes to the daytime curriculum, offering after-school sessions one day a week during the school year, and promoting two-week camp sessions during the summer. With only a month of funding, though, and the school year reaching a fever pitch as teachers tried to complete their agendas, Sam had thrown all her energy into the after-school program. She would offer classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, weaving together the activities so that each day built on skills mastered the meeting before.

  Now, at the end of a long academic day, she gave the kids a taste of the program. Starting with clapping exercises, she taught them the difference between whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes. She tossed in whole rests and half rests. Then, she divided the room into sections and set them to perform a song. The first two attempts dissolved into cacophony and laughter, but by the third try, they had the rhythms down well.

  Sam couldn’t keep her eyes off a little girl in the front row of the “quarter note” section. The child had frizzy blond hair, and freckles splashed across her face. Her arms were scrawny, and Sam could make out scabs on both her elbows. The girl’s jeans were ripped out at the knees. She was a fighter.

  But she was determined, too. Even when Sam set the group a more complicated task, spicing the rhythm with alternating half rests and quarter notes, Blond Girl settled in with a tight smile. She nodded her head as she counted time, fiercely determined to complete the entire song.

  Sam could have been looking through a time machine. Sure, the hair was different. And Sam’s headstrong ways never translated into torn and dirty clothing.

  But Sam knew the look of a child who would sink her teeth into battle to get what she wanted. Sam had been desperate for her first piano lessons, pledging everything her parents required. Her first four sessions at the keyboard had cost her three months of table-setting, table-clearing, and dishwashing, without help from anyone. But Sam had been driven. She had succeeded.

  Another child caught her attention, a big boy sitting off to the side, as if he wanted to disappear in the shadows at the edge of the auditorium. His hands were meaty, and his cheeks jiggled as he clapped.

  But Sam saw herself in that child as well. She recognized the shining joy in his eyes as he mastered a particularly tricky rhythm. She saw the way the boy took a deep breath, how he relaxed as she applauded her appreciation at the group’s effort. Sam understood that rush of success, that feeling that once, just once, she had accomplished what an adult asked of her, perfectly, without any excuses. She had followed the rules, and she had succeeded, and she had made her music teacher proud.

  Laughing, Sam called out, “All right! One more pattern, and then we’ll call it a day. But if you come to Musicall on Monday, I’ll teach you a lot more!” She started the kids on an especially challenging clapping pattern, drawing on African rhythms to drive the music into their lungs, their bones, their brains.

  The school bell rang just as the room settled into its final, exultant silence. “Excellent!” Sam called out. “Pick up a flyer for Musicall on your way out of the room!” She stepped back as the teachers began shouting their own instructions, reminding the kids to pick up their books, to leave the room quietly, to make sure they had all their homework assignments.

  The end of the school day had a rhythm all its own, one that Sam remembered from a dozen different schools. That had been one constant, as her family moved from base to base, from country to country: children loved to break free at the end of the day. As the kids cascaded out of the auditorium, the volume of their chatter rose.

  But out of all that jumble, a single dark shape made its way down the aisle, away from the door, from the corridor, from the boisterous joy from the end of the school day. Sam was collecting the left-over flyers, tapping them together into a single neat stack. Intent on keeping the corners from turning under, she barely looked up as the child came to stand before her.

  “Miss Samantha?”

  The voice was so small that she took an involuntary step forward. That was when she looked up, when she actually realized that the child in front of her was Daniel Thomas. She called out his name in pleased surprise.

  “Miss Samantha, can I take music instead of math class?”

  The boy was so serious, she had to fight not to laugh. “I’m sorry, Daniel. Musicall is an after-school activity.”

  “But we learned about it during social studies, today.”

  “Today was special. We’ll meet on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons for the next month.”

  “But I can miss Mondays and Wednesdays, right?”

  “No, Daniel. If you make a commitment to the program, you have to commit to being there all the time.” Each lesson built on the one before; kids would be lost if they skipped meetings. Besides, dedication was important. That sort of obligation had given Sam’s life structure when she’d first discovered music. The precise day of her lessons had changed from home to home, but once the commitments were written on her mother’s master calendar, they’d been carved in stone. Music lessons had become the skeleton that Sam had relied on, the framework that had brought logic and order to the rest of her chaotic life.

  The boy’s lower lip started to tremble. “All right,” he whispered. “Thank you, Miss Samantha.”

  “Daniel!” She had to say something. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t see him dash away a tear from his cheek with the back of his hand. “What is it?”

  “I have baseball practice on Mondays and Wednesdays.”

  Baseball practice. The two words were simple enough, but they were filled with emotions—dread and hatred and despair.

  Sam shook her head and guided the boy toward a chair. “What’s wrong with baseball practice?”

  Daniel shrugged.

  “Are you not good enough for the team?”

  He shook his head and refused to meet her eyes. Sam wasn’t a fool, though. She knew that if she waited, he’d be forced to fill the silence. Her own pulse beat loud in her ears, and she had to fight the temptation to shift from foot to foot. But her instincts were right. Daniel finally said, “I’m the best hitter we have. And I’m the best at second base, too.”

  “What’s the problem, then?”

  Another interminable wait. This time Sam nearly did break the silence; she couldn’t believe the boy would ever gather the wherewithal to speak. His eyes were filled with misery when he finally pulled his gaze from his tangled fingers. He whispered, “I’m not as good as Daddy.”

  Her heart swelled with pity. “Daniel, your father is a grown man! He’s had years and years to become the baseball player he is today! I’m sure you’re better than he was, when he was ten years old.”

  The boy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Daddy wants to play for the Rockets.”

  “What team do you want to play for?”

  Apparently, that was the wrong question. Daniel lost his valiant effort to keep his lower lip from trembling. Instead, tears broke over the dams of his eyes, flooding down his cheeks. His sobs were all the more pitiful because they were silent.

  Without thinking, Sam gathered the boy toward her. The instant her arms folded around him, he started crying in earnest, shaking, and struggling to fill his lungs. He buried his face against her
blouse, sobbing as if he were six, not ten.

  “Hush,” she whispered, rubbing his back. “It’s going to be okay. Take it easy…”

  Sam knew this type of tears. She’d cried them often enough, when her father came home and announced he’d been posted to yet another new base. She’d sobbed as if her heart would break every time she had to leave behind a new best friend, a new favorite teacher.

  That was why she’d finally thrown herself into her music. She’d never need to leave music behind, no matter how many times her father’s career cast the entire family into upheaval.

  But that had been years ago, when music classes were still funded.

  The only good thing about such a violent emotional storm was that it couldn’t rage for long. Daniel’s gasps slowed. He drew a shuddering breath. Another. He pushed himself away from her and, embarrassed, dragged his sleeve across his face. He looked at the door, as if there were no place he’d rather be than the now-quiet hallway.

  Sam forced her voice to sound cheerful, as if she spent every Friday afternoon with desperate pre-adolescent boys. “I’ll talk to your father,” she said. “I’ll explain to him that you want to do Musicall.”

  Daniel stared at her, the expression on his face aging him half a dozen years. Right, his gaze said. Like that will do anything. When he spoke out loud, he said, “Forget it. It was stupid for me to ask.”

  “It wasn’t stupid. It was very brave of you to ask me.”

  She could see the longing on his face, the desire to believe that she was telling the truth. But he shook his head. “I don’t have time for music,” he said. He raised his chin as he spoke, looking for all the world like a soldier facing discipline.

  “We can make time,” she said.

  He shook his head again. “It was a dumb idea.”

  And Sam didn’t have anything else to say. She couldn’t force Daniel to abandon Little League to join the music class. Instead, she followed his lead and climbed to her feet, dusting her palms together. “Well, then. Let’s call it a day.”

  The boy led the way down the aisle to the hallway. In the corridor, the school was eerily quiet. Sam could hear the squeak of gym shoes on a floor, somewhere far to her right. The light was on in the school office in front of her, but there wasn’t a student to be seen.

  Daniel looked guilty. “I think I missed the bus.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I can drive you home.”

  The boy said, “I can call my niñera.”

  “Your what?”

  He shook his head a little. “My nanny. She can come and get me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. My car is right here.” Sam didn’t realize until the words were out of her mouth, that it might not be appropriate to offer a ride to a child. But she wasn’t exactly a stranger.

  Daniel must have come to the same conclusion—she was safe. No threat at all. “Thank you,” he said, all proper and polite.

  Sam made short work of walking him out to her beat-up old Ford. The car was a far-cry from DJ’s luxury sedan, but the child didn’t make any comments as he buckled his seat belt. Instead, he gave Sam directions to his home like a pro, telling her when to turn left and when to turn right.

  She soon discovered that her car wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t up to DJ’s standard of living. The neighborhood she turned into from the main road was a far cry from her own suburban enclave. Here, the houses were set far apart, each invisible at the end of a long, winding driveway. At Daniel’s instruction, she pulled up in front of a particularly magnificent house, stopping in front of a double garage.

  Daniel thanked her and got out of the car, skipping up the front steps of the house without looking over his shoulder. When he pushed on the front door, though, it didn’t budge. He tried again, with no better result.

  He turned back to the car, as Sam rolled down her window. “No one’s home,” he said. Before Sam could figure out a solution, Daniel said, “That’s okay. I can go in through the garage.”

  She couldn’t let a child enter an empty house on his own. She grabbed her handbag and called out, “Wait up, there!”

  Daniel punched four numbers into a keypad built into the frame of the garage door. One. Zero. One. Five. The garage door clanked up, and Sam followed Daniel into the house as he said, “My niñera probably realized I missed the bus. She must have gone to school to get me.” From the tone of his voice, he’d missed the bus before. Probably lots of times.

  “Can you call her?” she asked, but Daniel was already reaching for the phone.

  He punched in a number from memory. Apparently, it was answered on the first ring. “Si, Isabel,” the boy said. “Soy yo. Lo siento. Estoy en casa.” There was more, a torrent of Spanish that Sam couldn’t follow. Daniel said, “Lo siento,” again, and then he hung up the phone. “She’ll be home in a minute,” he said.

  “You speak Spanish to your nanny?” Sam asked.

  Daniel nodded. “Dad says that’ll help me when I play. It won’t matter if my catcher speaks English or Spanish, I’ll be ready.”

  Sam made some sort of response, a sound that was meant to imply it was perfectly normal for a ten-year-old to practice language skills for a job that was at least a decade in his future. Even as she tried to seem nonchalant, she looked around the house.

  The kitchen blended into a great room. From her vantage point, she could just make out the corner of a home office and the edge of a formal living room. A hallway led into the distance, presumably to bedrooms.

  Everything looked tight, controlled. The floors were polished hardwood, swept perfectly clean. In each room, she could glimpse the identical rug—short pile, sturdy weave, an indeterminate color somewhere between beige and grey. In the great room, there was a couch and two armchairs, all settled around a glass-and-chrome coffee table. The furniture was upholstered in charcoal-colored leather. Each corner was perfect, as if the pieces had just arrived off a furniture showroom that morning. Three massive photographic prints were framed in brushed steel—black and white abstracts that might have been scenes from a skyscraper under construction.

  Astonished that a home could bear so little personality, especially one with a ten-year-old child in residence, Sam looked around the kitchen. The appliances were all brushed aluminum; there wasn’t a surface to hold a single magnet, much less the collage of schoolwork and photographs and general household jetsam that Sam would have expected. The cabinets were faced with glass, and Sam could make out neat stacks of plain white dishes nestled beside clear drinking glasses.

  The house was like a museum, an exhibit on twenty-first century life. Every single thing was measured. Perfect.

  What a horrible place for a boy to grow up.

  Before Sam could say anything, a door opened to her right. Those must be the steps to the basement, she told herself. They were finished with the same immaculate hardwood that stretched through the rest of the house. The paint on the walls matched the cool white—

  A tiny portion of her brain babbled on about home decorating. But that was only because the vast majority of her consciousness was filled with awareness of the man who stepped into the kitchen.

  “Dad!” Daniel yelled as he threw himself across the kitchen, slamming his arms around his father’s waist.

  * * *

  DJ automatically reached down to ruffle Trey’s hair, but he froze when he realized that the woman standing by the center island wasn’t Isabel.

  Wasn’t anything like Isabel. Wasn’t anything like a sixty-year-old, plump Honduran woman, whose tight grey curls were more likely to smell like baby powder than honey and cinnamon.

  His abs tightened as he realized that he knew exactly what Samantha Winger smelled like. He knew what she felt like, too. Knew enough to want to feel more.

  What the hell was she doing, standing in his kitchen? It was like all his daydreams had come true, all the thoughts he’d had as he ran his ten miles on the treadmill downstairs.

  Of course, the guys at t
he clubhouse had spent the past week doing everything they could to plant those thoughts in his mind. He still hadn’t figured out who had taped that goddamn picture to his locker, the full-color spread from the newspaper. Even Old Man Benson wouldn’t be able to protect the guy who had added a thought balloon that detailed DJ’s distinctly X-rated intentions—once DJ figured out who had been the brilliant jackass.

  He’d torn down the first copy of the photo. And the second one. Third one, too. He’d finally given up, though, when yet another copy of the damn thing was there after he returned to the locker room from his morning treatment. Coach would have his hide if he realized how tightly DJ was clenching his fists. Coach was big on pitchers resting one hundred percent the day after they went. And DJ had gone another nine innings the night before. Not a perfect game, but a complete one. And his arm was only a little tired, two days later.

  Now, standing in his own kitchen, DJ was suddenly aware of the fact that he was wearing a towel—and nothing else. Right about now, his routine of showering downstairs and coming up to the master bedroom to put on clothes seemed pretty goddamn foolish.

  And it wasn’t going to get any better, with him standing here gaping at Sam. “Um, hello?” he said, far too belatedly. And damn if that didn’t come out sounding like a question.

  She obviously took it as one—she started babbling on about that music program of hers, and Trey’s school, and missing the bus, and—

  “Hey,” he interrupted. “Thanks for driving Trey home.”

  That stopped her short. He glanced over at his son. The kid followed up as if they’d rehearsed the moment. “Can I have screen time, Dad?”

  “Half an hour,” he said automatically, and he even managed to make it sound routine. Not desperate. Not like he would have allowed Trey to take an hour, two, the rest of the entire afternoon and evening, hypnotized by his games on the computer and safely away from the kitchen. And Sam.

  But what the hell difference did it make? Isabel would be back soon enough, guaranteeing that DJ couldn’t do half the things he’d imagined as he’d tossed and turned the past few nights.