Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  She peered at the house. She rushed across the street into her yard and scooped up bark mulch and sticks and threw them at the van. She pounded its sides, trying to break in the windows. She fell to the ground and cried.

  The house was quiet. The car was spattered with dirt. She got the hose and washed it off. As she coiled the hose back up, the door opened and the dark-haired woman came out. She started when she saw Grace, and looked back at Jack in the doorway. He stepped out and darted a glance at his watch.

  “Hi, Punkin! You’re home early aren’t you?”

  Grace stood scowling at him.

  Jack called to the woman. “I’ll have to run the numbers. I’ll let you know.”

  She smiled. “I’ll call you.”

  “No!” He recovered his cool. “Let me call you.”

  She smiled and waved, got into her car and drove away.

  Grace stood still, waiting for Jack to say something to allow her to excuse him.

  “Insurance. It’s very complicated. You got your whole, your universal, your term, your annuity— whew! Better her than me!”

  Grace finished coiling the hose and walked past him into the house, sat down at the kitchen table and took out her books. Jack stood, his hands on the counter, looking at her, arguing to himself that she could not possibly know. She didn’t see anything, so how could she know? She’s just surprised I’m home early. She probably wanted to smoke a cigarette or something and I fucked up her plan. “Look at you, just off the bus and already buckling down to the books.” She copied down numbers from her math book. “Guess I should, too. Still on the clock.” She glanced at him, then turned back to her work. He got a beer and went upstairs to straighten the bed and then work at his computer. She sat still, listening. She heard his steps as he went from the guest room to the office. The beer can clished open. She let out her breath and returned to her math problems.

  Grace said “‘Bye!” to her mother and grabbed her duffle bag and her present and ran to Kelsey’s front door, along with two other girls who had also just arrived. Kelsey and other friends opened to them, they squealed their hyper-greetings and crowded through the door into the house. Kelsey led them all downstairs to the dark paneled basement playroom. A popular group was playing on the CD player, 10,000 Maniacs or Cowboy Junkies, it was hard to tell, the subdued music a mismatch to the girls’ high spirits. Kelsey’s mother had set up a punch bowl on the bar and put out bowls of chips and candy. Later the girls would order pizza and try to guess which cute high school boy would deliver it. They would just die if it was Roy, oh my God!

  Mrs. Gagnon had made Kelsey sit down with her the night before and dream up games to play, so the night won’t drag, honey. The room was jumping with the girls’ talking and giggling, an endless stream of words coming out of each of them, like a magician’s never-ending handkerchief chain, their bodies bouncing to some other music, played with hormonal juice instead of electricity, a permanent soundtrack to their early adolescence. The pre-cake games were never needed, the girls entertaining themselves with talk and teen magazines. Mrs. Gagnon brought down the cake, they sang Happy Birthday, and Kelsey opened her gifts, Mrs. Gagnon furiously scribbling down the contents for later thank-you note writing. She missed Ashley’s and Courtney’s, but Kelsey remembered them.

  Sometime around nine o’clock, Mrs. Gagnon retreated upstairs for a long night of hoping the girls got some sleep, anyway. Kelsey decided it was time for ghost stories and ordered the girls to get into their pjs or whatever. Nicole changed the CD to something more energizing and the girls all imitated strippers for a second, then giggled and ran behind the chairs and sofa to finish changing, putting gowns over their clothed bodies, then carefully removing shirts and pants without showing any underwear.

  Grace strutted to the center of the room and peeled off her sweater and turtleneck, swinging them over her head and throwing them at the wall. She played with the zipper of her jeans, opening and then closing it again as the girls crooned, “Ooh!” She slowly lowered her pants and kicked them up to the ceiling. She pranced around the room in her bra and panties, pretending the wide-eyed girls behind the furniture were men. She picked up a teen magazine and kissed the centerfold and pressed it against her breastlets as the girls whooped appreciatively. She moved the magazine down her concave abdomen and gyrated her hips as she pressed the idol’s face to her crotch amid screeches of “Oh my God!” Ashley and Courtney sank down behind their chair, unable to watch, and felt inadequate but told themselves they were superior. When the noise had died down, they peeked and saw Grace in her “YEAH, BUT” nightshirt, guzzling a can of soda as the other girls came out of their hiding places.

  The girls got drinks and snacks and sat in a circle and the lights went out and a group scream went up. Courtney held a flashlight on an opened book and Nicole read, her big lips working hard to get the words out. She could not read a paragraph without embellishment by Grace. When the girl heroine was described as “pale with somber, dark eyes,” Grace added, “Her lips were red as blood, almost as red as the lips of her mouth.” The girls looked at each other, then giggled nervously, guessing it was something sexual, anyway. When the boy savior arrived to do the heroic thing, “brandishing a knife blade whose gleam was mirrored in his fierce blue eyes beneath the crown of blond curls,” Grace interjected, “She longed to feel the hardness of his thighs beneath his jeans, as he stood there, ready to vanquish the evil spirit. She hoped he would not be too tired to then vanquish her.” The girls erupted in ghost-fear-dispelling laughter and they decided to move on to the seance.

  It was unanimously decided that Grace should be the channel. She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed and her palms up on her knees, as she thought she had seen worshippers of some exotic religion do on T.V. The girls on either side of her took her hands and the circle was completed.

  “Joshua, we call you to come to us,” Grace intoned in a voice she deepened to sound eerie. “Come to us and speak to us. Speak to us of love, and sex, and show yourself to us. We love you, Joshua. We will always love you. You are our teacher, teach us how to love you. We will do whatever you say, you are the most totally beautiful boy in the universe, and we know you love us. Come to us Joshua. Speak to us.”

  She waited. The girls’ breathing was heavy and uneven, their hands moist with sweat. “Click!”

  Grace opened her eyes and looked sternly around the circle. “Cut it out, Kelsey!” She closed her eyes again and calmly spoke to recreate the spiritual mood. “We do believe, Joshua, we believe you want to be with us. Make yourself known to us, we beseech you. We are your faithful servants. We await your command.”

  The girls waited silently, their eyes closed. After two minutes, they peeked at Grace, who continued to keep her eyes closed, her face upturned, the sandy blonde hair falling down her back, her expression calm and sure. They closed their eyes again and squeezed their hands harder. They sat another whole minute. “I feel you! I feel you coming! Oh, Joshua! Oh, yes! Yes! Yes!” Grace whipped her head up and down, frenziedly. She laughed and her gleeful eyes sprang open.

  The girls tsked and let go of each others’ hands. They berated Grace for breaking the mood; she told them she couldn’t help it, she had to go to the bathroom. She got up to go and there was a tapping at one of the ground level windows. The girls screamed and sat back down, huddling together. They all looked up from one window to the other above the couch. A grinning face was peering in, looking all around the room. Grace stared at him; his gaze rested on her and he stopped smiling.

  “Who is it? Who is that?” the girls asked each other. The face was replaced by another one.

  “Eric!” Kelsey ran toward the window and slapped at it, her hand falling short by a foot. “Mom!” Kelsey ran up the stairs. “Eric’s looking in the window!”

  Eric’s face disappeared and the first face reappeared and found Grace again. He smiled at her, and winked, and disappeared.

  Kelsey came back downstairs swearing at her brothe
r. “Who was that?” asked Ashley.

  “My dork brother and his dork friend.”

  “Who? Who was he?” The other girls crowded around to hear.

  “Shane Butts.”

  “Shane, Shane, Butts, Shane Butts, Shane,” the girls repeated. They wanted more details so Kelsey told them he was a senior, like her brother, and he didn’t do any sports, he didn’t do anything, he was a complete dweeb.

  “He’s cute, for a dweeb,” said Nicole, pushing her hair behind her ears.

  “He’s got a cute wink,” said Ashley.

  “Bet he’s got a cute butt,” said Courtney, trying to fit in. They all looked at her in surprise.

  “Shane Cute-Butt!” they yelled, and they got into their sleeping bags. They changed the music to Boyz II Men, the soft strains hushing them.

  Grace sat on the toilet, thinking about the new boy. He had winked at her, she was sure of it. He must be seventeen, if he’s a senior. She thrilled at the memory of his muscular arms and shoulders as he got up from the window. She walked around the dark playroom, grabbed a handful of M & M’s and noted with relief that the girls were all one to a bag. It was so embarrassing when they paired off, like they had at Nicole’s slumber party when they were in the sixth grade. She slinked down into the cotton envelope and listened to the girls sing along to the CD. They fell asleep, one by one. Grace waited until the last girl was nodding off and then brought Shane’s face before her. She spread her lips red as blood and thrilled silently to the memory of the older boy who had singled her out from all the other girls. Yes! Yes! Yes!

  Chapter Twelve

  Send Flowers

  AIDS! The answer screamed itself at Michael when he awoke the next morning. She must be afraid he had AIDS. Why had he not thought of that? She wanted to have sex with him, but she couldn’t. Because she feared he harbored HIV! And she was too embarrassed to ask him to get tested. Of course! Jesus! That’s an easy thing. I’ll tell her I’ll get tested.

  He thought over his sexual past and concluded that any of the women in his chance liaisons— the Swiss woman he met at a music festival in Salzburg a couple of summers in a row; or the Danish woman he met at a conference in Texas, of all places; or that girl from Alabama he had known at Juilliard, but, no, that was before the age of AIDS— any of the others could have carried HIV and he would have no way of knowing if they had come down with AIDS. Of course, he had always practiced so-called safe sex, so there was little chance, he hoped, that he was HIV positive. Besides, those women had been before Laura, before 1985. By then he had become fearful of AIDS. There had only been Laura and Pam since then. But Justina didn’t know this, he thought. That whole discussion of his dating past was not just a woman’s melodramatic curiosity, he now realized. It was as important as knowing he was not a criminal, not a bum, not a woman-beater, and whatever else it is that disqualified a man from a woman’s consideration. It was important, so he would tell her everything, especially the safe sex part. Then he imagined her reaction to the two, at best, women he had managed to seduce, although it had never felt that way. They had put themselves in his path, their faces lit up, trying to get him to laugh, to see their brilliance, insisting that he respond; he had been just as seduced as they. Better to not speak of them; just get tested and let the result speak for itself. He waited till ten and called, to hell with the roommate.

  Charles cooked roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for Michael and himself that evening. He was pleased that the tricky pudding had turned out well this time. He wiped his hands on his “SCHOLARS DO IT IN THE MARGINS!” apron and opened to Michael with a triumphant smile.

  “The goddesses are smiling on me today! The pudding is perfect!” At his friend’s morose face he added, “Be that way, then!”

  Michael put his brown-bagged offering on the counter and went into the dining room, wishing he could take some comfort in the delicately rendered drawings of birds on the walls. He sat at the table, staring at the print of a cardinal laminated into his placemat. “I screwed up,” he said.

  Charles examined the contents of the bag. “Slivovitz! Thanks, chum!” He brought Michael a glass of red wine.

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s a Beaujolais! Your favorite!”

  “She won’t talk to me,” moaned Michael.

  Charles carved the rare roast beef. “Excellent sign,” he said. Michael shifted impatiently in his chair. “All right, give me the details.”

  Michael told him everything, including his invitation to sex, and her perplexing rejection of him, and her silence. Charles prepared the serving platters with the red beef and the puffy, delicately browned Yorkshire pudding and brought them to the table.

  “‘Prick,’” Charles said, sitting down. “Even that is probably okay.” He took a bite of the pudding— “Mm—” and swallowed. “She pushed you, you told her how you felt about it, she apologized. You learned something about each other. Always contributes to later intimacy. Try the pudding.”

  “I don’t care about the intimacy. I want to know why she doesn’t talk to me. I mean, I was stupid that I didn’t think of AIDS, but is that an exam question now? If he doesn’t offer to get a test, without asking, then dump him?”

  “She just doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  Michael frowned.

  “She cannot risk talking to you.”

  Michael put down his knife and fork and rested his elbows on the table.

  “There’s something dangerous about even merely speaking to you.”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “The poor girl is in love with you. You knucklehead.”

  Michael’s knees spread wide and his napkin fell to the floor. “You think so?”

  “It’s one possible explanation. The most likely one.”

  “But why she cannot talk to me?”

  “Love is a problem for her.”

  “Why?”

  “Ah, now that I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “But she won’t talk to me!” he said.

  They ate in silence a few moments. “More gravy?” offered Charles; Michael waved it away. “I said it before,” said Charles, swallowing, “and I’ll say it again. Wait.” He would not let Michael, or anyone, stay sad while in his presence. “We’ll have a nice dinner, crack open the pear brandy, and get gloriously soused.” Michael tried to smile. “Then we’ll grace Moe’s with our dazzling wit and turn down offer after offer from the chicks with the beautiful rounded limbs New England is famous for.” Michael let himself be amused. “Well, you will, anyway. I, on the other hand, will take the second offer, never the first, in honor of my dearly divorced first and only wife. I will take the lady home and spend the next eight hours plucking her brains out.”

  “Sounds good.” Michael spent the remainder of the evening sipping a glass of Slivovitz with Charles in the living room, studying the pattern of feathers stuffed into the glass lamp beside him, listening to Charles tell stories of his days at Harvard, again. He left when Charles half-heartedly followed up with the Moe’s suggestion, and called Justina when he got home.

  Kim answered, said, “Yeah, hold on a sec,” then came back to say he forgot, Justina had gone to bed. Michael asked Kim to just let her know he had called. He hung up, cursed, then called back. She answered, not expecting him.

  “Justina.” He paused. “I don’t know what to say.” She was silent. “Justina, I hate to ask this over the phone. Could I come there? Or we could meet somewhere.”

  “No, just talk.”

  “Are you afraid of something? Something, specific? Something medical?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He began to think that AIDS was not it. “Are you afraid of AIDS?”

  She was dismayed to think he had no idea how she felt. “God. No.”

  Michael tugged at the coiled phone cord. It kept jumping back into knots.

  “Justina, this is difficult.”

  She felt a sob slipping out and suppressed it
.

  “Can we not figure this out, together?” he pleaded.

  She spoke the line she had been practicing all day. “I can’t see you anymore.”

  He pulled the cord taut, flattening the coils. “Why? Why? Justina! What’s wrong?”

  “I just can’t. It’s too much.” A stifled sob was burning her eyes. “Goodbye.” Kim came out of his room on his way to the refrigerator, saw her crying, got a beer and slipped back into his room.

  Usually the fall produced a feeling of optimism and anticipation of renewed closeness with the people in his life. Michael looked forward to Christmas with its concerts, caroling with his students on the campus, the faculty parties, and the annual return to his family in Costa Rica. He spent the fall preparing for these yearly highlights, slowly savoring the changing of the seasons, marveling at so much beauty with no human effort, a gift bestowed simply on his aware sensibility. As November approached, the slow pace would abruptly become frenzied, but in early fall he took pleasure in letting himself move from pensively hoping to boisterously jubilant simply by being in that place.

  Justina’s refusal of him muted this fall with its more stereotypical undertones of approaching death and subsequent decay. He imagined himself already walled in by the high, dirty snow banks of midwinter. He reported to his classes, he followed the core syllabi he had developed over the years, his courses becoming almanacs with pages missing that brought spotty information and no insight to his bored students. Lawson gave up wisecracking, getting no rise from his teacher. Minnie guessed Mister C was preoccupied with something and she imagined bringing him the succor he needed. Then she would be ashamed for wanting to cash in on his sadness. She barked so at the clueless ex-soprano that the silly girl considered dropping the course. She changed her seat instead.

  They did not meet at the fac, which did not surprise Michael, though the first week he stayed an hour or longer each day, hoping. On Friday he sent a rose to her office. She did not respond.