Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  “One more thing, Michael. No letters, no phone calls, no private meetings.”

  “Okay. No letters?”

  “It has to stay in the background. Michael, it doesn’t want to stay in the background, it’ll use any excuse to come forward.” She felt the old confidence coming back from hiatus as she sat there instructing him. She smiled. “I need you to be my background man.”

  “All right. Only, I hope I don’t find someone else at the front door.”

  “Why is it you know ‘backdoor man’ and not ‘popular?’” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Interesting question, isn’t it? It has research paper written all over it. I’ll be your Subject A.” She smiled, shaking her head. “You’ll make your mark in the world. Justina Trimble, mother of modern linguistics.”

  “Mother of Hispano-American Socio-linguistics.”

  “There you are. Study away, I won't move a muscle,” he said, stalling for time.

  She touched his hair, his expression turned pleading. She kissed his cheek. “I should go,” she said.

  “No! Why? Stay a little longer. It’s Sunday. What have you been doing?”

  “I don’t know. Not much. What’ve you been doing?”

  “Wasting time.” The last scene was passing by, unsavorable, the curtain hanging heavy above their heads.

  “What a mess I made of things,” she said.

  “No, I should have realized— it doesn’t matter, now we know.” She stood up. “I can’t believe I won’t see you till May.”

  “We’ll see each other,” she said.

  “All week long I didn’t never saw you.”

  “I’ll be at the fac.”

  “We may have lunch together?”

  “Only in a group. We shouldn’t try to talk to each other privately after or anything. Otherwise, we can’t do it.”

  “Okay.”

  She looked around, restless. “I still don’t have any groceries.”

  “I must ask you something,” he said, “since I won’t have the chance again until May. That night, if we had—” He paused while she mentally filled in the blank.

  “If we had done that, Michael, I’d be a lost woman now.”

  He wondered how many times she had been in love before, and whether she thought it was always the same. “You’re sure?”

  “Michael—” She leaned close for a confidence. “Imagine a blow-job that’s just on the verge, for a solid two weeks.”

  He averted his eyes and blushed.

  “Kind of leaves everything else,” she said, “namely work, out of the picture, know what I mean?”

  “You have an incredible deep, deep feeling for the words, Novel Girl.”

  She smiled. “I better go.”

  “You must let me to do this.” He held her shoulders. “Then I’ll go.” He saw the invitation in her eyes and kissed her. “Till May,” he said softly. She went into the store, waving at him as she went through the door.

  I’ll do the Missa Solemnis this spring, he thought, walking back to his car. Justina will come and it’ll be fantastic. I wonder who has a score. He got into his car and drove off. He ordered Chinese for Charles and himself that night, but he did make an apple crisp with cheese sauce and jalapeños. He told Charles about the new terms in his relation with Justina. Charles said, “I told you to wait, and I told you she was in love with you. You may worship me now.” Michael got down a bread basket and put a pocketful of change in it and handed it to him, saying, “Paid in full.” After Charles left he went through fifty-four student compositions before crashing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Paper

  The restless children in the checkout line were so cute, the checkout girl’s gum-popping smile was so warm, the haul up the stairs so effortless, and her plans for the coming week’s lessons were so orderly in Justina’s mind. He loves me! she thought. She brought his face before her and remembered the contour of his cheek, and she felt capable of anything, that all people everywhere knew she was good.

  She had thought she was in love with Rourke, but it was nothing like this feeling. And she had never really loved Omar, though she imagined he was very lovable and kept hoping he would fall in love with her. But whenever she was with Michael, he was hers, she had felt that from the first week. And now she knew he was hers even when they were not together. It was fantastic, how quickly it had happened, but she believed it was true. She only hoped it would still be true in seven months.

  Pascale greeted the news of their new arrangement with much noise and gallic kinesics. “Till May?” she screamed.

  “I know. It’s a long time.”

  “It’s an eternity!” Pascale showed her the whites of her eyes. “When I said ‘play with him’ I didn’t mean once a year!”

  “I’m not playing with him. I’m managing—”

  “You’re managing him?”

  “I’m managing myself, Pascale. I haven’t had as much practice being in love as some people around here. I’m afraid of going off the deep end.”

  “Ah!” Pascale railed at this imbecile of a woman. “That’s what it’s all about. If you don’t ‘go off the deep end,’ you’re not in love!” She scrutinized Justina, who just smiled to herself. “So you have an appointment to start things back up in May. Fine. Good luck. I hope he’s still available then.”

  “He loves me. And I love him.”

  “You are hopeless, Justina. At least—” she leaned forward, putting her hands on her desk— “did you take him to bed once?”

  “You don’t understand, Pascale, okay? You just don’t, so don’t bother yourself about it anymore, okay?”

  Pascale went to the door. “I don’t need to understand you. It’s Michael who needs to understand you. I hope he does.” And she went out. She poked her head back in, all smiles. “You like your new T.A.?”

  “Oh, yeah, fine. He’s fine.”

  “James Benn,” Pascale sang. “He’s very nice,” she said, her eyes wide.

  “Denis on the road again?”

  Pascale made a sound of disgust, invoked the Robot Woman, and left.

  October’s reds burned into browns and the stiff autumn winds whipped the leaves across the campus lawns to pile up against the buildings and in the yews and junipers. The grounds crew attached the clippings bags on the mowers to do one last mowing and vacuum up the leaves. All this work proceeded entirely invisibly to the self-absorbed students who took the beauty of their campus for granted. Twenty years later they would grow nostalgic and call the New Hampshire Tourist Board to request fall travel brochures with glossy photos of roadways bordered in yellow and red, the road’s bright yellow center line perfectly color-coordinated as though the highway department had sent a handful of leaves to the paint store to obtain an exact match.

  Later that month Justina delivered on a promise to Richelieu to present her Ph.D. thesis research to the Department. The talk was scheduled for the last Thursday in October, at three, prime napping hour, she had remarked with disappointment, when Eugenia told her. She came back from the language lab at ten-thirty and shut herself in her office to review her presentation foils. She wanted to do it now, before lunch, rather than wait till after, in case she got caught up with students. She sat with her folder of transparencies, rehearsing the points she wished to make with each one, when there was a knock at the door. She ignored it, but it came again.

  “Come in!” she croaked.

  “I brought you your mail!” called Pascale. She wore an uncharacteristically colorful slate blue dress with an orange and yellow scarf. She came in and put a stack of mail on top of Justina’s folder of transparencies, and sat down.

  “I’m working?” hinted Justina.

  “I brought your mail,” repeated Pascale, her round eyes on the stack. Justina saw the envelope marked “Calderón.”

  “Thank you. Now buzz off, please.”

  “Aren’t you going to see what it is?”

  “I’m giving a talk today? To the
entire school, especially my boss? I’m trying to prepare for it? Do you understand any of what I’m saying?”

  Pascale took the envelope and hefted it. “Not very heavy. Probably a single sheet. Two seconds to read it.”

  “It’s not a letter, Pascale,” said Justina.

  “You don’t know—”

  “Yes, I do.” She opened her drawer and took out a newspaper clipping and read. “The Franco-American Centre Franco-Américain of Dunster will host an exhibition of photographs by Franco-American photographers documenting early twentieth century life of French-Canadian immigrants to Dunster, October twelfth through seventeenth. Address, et cetera.” She took out another clipping and read, “The Librairie Française of Boston will screen a series of films by French directors, November fourth through tenth.” She took a handful of similar clippings from the drawer and spread them on her desk. She picked up the new envelope. “That’s probably what this is.” She opened it and took out the two clippings: one about an exhibit of wood carvings by Franco-American artists, the other about a show by some members of the Comédie Française, the Comédie Française, from Paris, being held down in Boston.

  “I was right,” said Pascale. “It was a love letter.”

  Justina fingered the envelope, looking again at his signature, “Calderón.”

  “You nervous about your talk?”

  Justina shrugged. “No more than usual.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Justina growled, miming an electrocution.

  “If you were seeing Michael, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “Why not?”

  “He would have fixed you last night.” Pascale raised her eyebrows and pushed the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

  “Why do you think sex is the answer to everything?”

  “It’s the answer to an amazing number of things.”

  “You’re starting to sound ridiculous, Pascale.”

  “Ah,” said Pascale. “You love a man but you don’t go near him, because if you did, you might show him you love him, and you give him no other way to show his love for you than to send you scraps of paper.” She stood. “And I’m ridiculous?” She went to the door. “Have a good talk.” She threw her head back and smiled, as though giving talks was just another of the irritating obstacles the academic life put in the way of real work, and went out, closing Justina’s door behind her.

  Justina arrived at the designated classroom five minutes ahead of the hour to arrange her foils and situate the overhead projector just right. Most of the Modern Languages department showed up, some from actual interest, the rest for solidarity, and many of the grad students, including James Benn, and even a handful of undergrads. A trio of English exalted scum, Charles and a couple of buddies, trekked over and, of course, Kim, happy for an excuse to get away from the microjoyce programming Charles had yoked him into. It was a respectable turnout for a relatively minor event. Richelieu was pleased. Justina was gratified that it was more than five.

  Richelieu introduced Justina, there was polite, “let’s get on with it” applause, Richelieu sat down, and Justina flipped on the overhead with the first transparency: “Perceval: Coming of Age in Medieval France.” She began her talk by giving the history of Arthurian legend from 400 A.D. up to the twelfth century. She started with Wace’s account of the provenance of the famous round table when Michael walked in. He seemed surprised to find he was late, and with an apologetic air, slinked into a seat at the end of one of the long tables.

  Justina wondered if this was incredibly boring to him. Her fellow French faculty asked a few questions and the star grad student, Lucas Champclair, asked questions that made her realize just how much further she could have taken her thesis. She was annoyed, but later realized Lucas just might become her first Ph.D. thesis advisee, if she could stoke his interest higher. Romance as an expression of archetypal myth was interesting. “But,” asked Lucas, “does it mean the twelfth-century author was aware of how closely he followed existing coming-of-age myths?” Justina thought the question was bone-headed.

  She hunched her shoulders and looked at her notes. “I can’t believe,” she responded, “that any author of something as original as this is aware of following any pattern that we’re later able to discern. That would be too much like taking a piece of music, making a minor change here and there, and then playing it as a new piece, but something that sounds suspiciously familiar. A computer would write that way, but not a person. It’s not human.”

  Lucas pondered the validity of her last sentence, his lips protruding in a childish pout. Justina glanced from him to Michael, who solemnly nodded. “If this is an expression of a myth,” she went on, “then it simply means that the human condition leads us to make sense of our world in ways that are remarkably similar across all cultures, no matter how different they are from each other, Maori or post-war France, Native American or ancient Chinese. Thus the outer trappings of the story vary according to the particulars of a culture, in this case, twelfth-century France with its knights and its courtly love ethic. But the same underlying myth is discovered time after time because the author is a human being who experiences the same constraints on his life as anyone else living in his time or any other time.”

  She paused as she noticed Michael’s smile. Did I say something funny? she wondered. She finished her response to Lucas and blinked, and her lids relaxed.

  She saw Michael rest his head on his hand. She could not see his face. Did he find her tedious?

  Richelieu said something and the room applauded. People stood up and she could not see Michael anymore. She gathered up her slides as Pascale and her other French colleagues came up to say, “Boffo talk! Lots of big words! But what the hell’s ‘diegesis’ mean?” before going back to their offices to finish reading that article, or meet a student, or simply wait for a seemly hour to arrive when they could go home. When the last one had left her, she looked for Michael, but he was gone. She took her folder and started out.

  “Justina?” Charles was looking at a folded piece of paper on the table next to him. “I think this is for you.” He pushed it toward her and went out.

  ‘Justina,’ she read, ‘I told you I really wanted to know what you did your thesis of. —M. P.S.: Brilliant handling of the scum. I think he’s in love. Too.”

  She smiled to herself and went back to her office with Lucas. He had another question. She gave him a list of Old French romances and names of modern mythologists and he went away. She pinned the clippings from Michael to her bulletin board. She wished he would send her a love letter. She put his note in her wallet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On Schedule

  Shoes were closeted and boots were kept by the door as November winds and rains came, warning clearly of the coming winter. Jeans and turtlenecks, plaid shirts and sweaters were everywhere, in somber hues, belying the excitement among the people. The first snow had yet to fall; it would be welcomed with nostalgic memories of childhood fun on snow days home from school, even though the first snow typically stayed on the ground only a day. Thanksgiving break had arrived, then a short three weeks of term and the endless Christmas break.

  Justina arrived home the day before Thanksgiving and helped her mother cook while her father sat by in the kitchen reading and talking to them, and reported who walked by on the sidewalk outside. She told them about her classes, her boss, her colleagues, her students. She did not know what to say about Michael. Was he her boyfriend? If she told her parents he was, should she also tell them that they weren’t going out, right now, anyway? They would wonder why, and she could not tell them it was because she was sex-crazy for him. “I don’t know what to think,” she could hear her mother saying. Forget it. They wouldn’t understand.

  They did not understand, as their blank expressions showed, when Kim asked George and Mavis at Thanksgiving dinner the next day what they thought of their daughter dating an older man. Kim muttered, “Hypothetically, I mean,” when he
caught Justina’s glare, and wished he could be a bread crumb on the rug.

  “What man?” asked Mavis.

  Kim’s parents and his brother Robin, and Justina’s parents all looked at her, waiting for a juicy morsel. Kim looked at his green beans almandine.

  “Just a man I know,” said Justina, hoping that would satisfy them.

  George decided if Mavis was satisfied with that, he would be, too. Mavis made a small smile and picked up the bread basket. “Have a roll, Robin. What’s the latest on your start-up?”

  George was thankful for the change in subject. “Yeah, is our not too shabby investment going to be worth anything next year?”

  Robin obliged with an account of how he and his partners were very optimistic about their prospects; they had come through with the first two deliverables a month ahead of schedule. Justina knocked her knee, hard, against Kim’s thigh under the table. “I thought they knew,” he whispered in self-defense. “You mean you didn’t tell them?”

  “Shut-up!” she whispered through her teeth. “What’s your company make again?” she asked Robin. Robin enunciated five words in English, all familiar to her, but put together meant absolutely nothing to her. Some computer thing. “Ooh, I want one,” she said.

  Justina stayed in the kitchen after dinner to help her mother clean up, reporting for the grilling she expected. Mavis told her to go into the den and visit with the Kanes, she would just stack these and be in in a minute. Justina sat on the couch between Robin and Jean. Bob looked at the football game on T.V. and was trying to convince them all what was wrong with the Bears. George, the only man not related by blood to Bob, was the designated listener.

  Robin sat back against the sofa arm and looked expectantly at Justina. She finally looked at him and he whispered, his eyes wide, “Who’s the guy?”