Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  “I don’t need to.” You need me more, he left unsaid, but she heard him nonetheless. He watched her a moment more, then turned his head and watched T.V. with her. The show ended; they watched a car commercial, a restaurant commercial, a long distance commercial, a diaper commercial, so many darling babies toddling around in such cute, clever, neat diapers. She swung her legs off of the couch and onto the floor and started to get up. Michael jumped to his feet. “What do you need? Let me get it!”

  “I’m going to the bathroom?” she said, her growing annoyance finding its way into her voice. He held her arm as though she could not balance alone. She pulled it away. “I can walk! There’s nothing wrong with me!”

  He let his arms fall and watched her go toward the bathroom. He had had a feeling she was going to be difficult. She would probably not want to rest all day. She was supposed to, doctor’s orders. He was supposed to see to it that she did, he was the husband. But he knew she would not see it that way.

  The pink water swirled down the toilet. The door opened and the clamorous sound burst into the room. Justina came out and went to the windows and pulled the cord to open the heavy drapes on the sliding glass door. Michael rushed to take over for her.

  She would not let go of the string. “Damn it! Would you leave me alone! I’m not an invalid!” she screamed at him. He let go of the string and she jerked the drapes open the rest of the way. “Shit!” she yelled and walked to the closet. She put on her jacket.

  “Where are you going?” asked Michael.

  “‘M’going to school.” She risked a look at him, his mouth was pinched with disapproval. “I can’t stay here all day with you hovering around me.”

  “Okay, lookit, I’ll go,” he said. “You stay here and rest.” She was zipping her coat. “Remember what the doctor said. You don’t want to start bleeding again.”

  “I’m going to bleed. I’m still bleeding. Like a squeezed-out sponge, okay? That’s what happens.” She went back in the living room and found her backpack. “It’s flushing itself out.” She came back to him at the door. “Everything, whoosh! Gone. Can’t help it.” She opened the door. “See you tonight.” She gave him a perfunctory parting peck.

  He watched her start down the path, worried at her impatience. “Let me drive you!” he called.

  “No!” she shouted. At a more reasonable volume she said, “I’ll be fine.” She got into her car and drove away behind a pile of dirty snow, the remains of the mountain shoved there all winter by the plow.

  She tired herself out teaching all her classes, French Three and Middle French Literature in the morning. She had lunch with Michael and Pascale as usual. He urged her to go home and rest. Pascale overheard and volunteered to take her Advanced Conversation Two class. “No! Look, I’m fine. It’s better if I’m in the swing. Okay? Besides, I want to hear their oral reports.” The newlyweds walked to their parting point at the common in silence; she had her hands deep in her pockets, he put an arm around her waist anyway.

  “Why not come home after your class?” he pleaded. “Really, you worked all day. It’s a tough day even when you’re well.”

  “I have some work to do at the library.”

  “It can wait—” he started.

  “No, it can’t! I’m on a schedule. I have to get this report out by the end of the week, it’s a condition of the grant. That’s how these things work. They give me money, I give them reports. Lots of them. It’s working really well. There’s no reason to stop.”

  He was alarmed at her manic behavior. “Justina—”

  “I want to do this. I’ll see you tonight.”

  The evening snuck up on her. She spent from four o’clock on in the library locating articles and photocopying them. The days were lengthening, so she did not notice the hour until dusk fell at six-thirty. She knew Michael was expecting her at home. She did not want to go there. His tiptoeing around her was making her nuts. What's the big deal? Can’t a person have a miscarriage without bringing out the violins? Jesus!

  She packed up her book bag and used the phone at the periodicals desk to call her husband and tell him she would be working late and not to wait dinner for her. He wanted to know when she was coming home. “I don’t know, just, later. Okay? ‘Bye.” She hung up before he could plead with her to come home soon. She got in her car, relieved to be sitting, and drove off campus.

  The O’Donnell’s orange rings promised a little punch of buoyancy that she found irresistible, and she went through the drive-through. She got a value meal and sat in her car in the parking lot and ate it, watching the people inside. Mostly college men in ball caps. There were also a table of college women, an elderly couple, a couple of families with children. Justina watched the loners. A man of about thirty with thinning wan hair sat reading as he ate, probably an habitué of the place, since he came prepared to pass the time. At another table a younger man in dirty clothes sat eating and looking at the wall opposite; the food was diversion enough for him, it seemed. In each family, the members sat staring over each other’s shoulders; one of the mothers chided her children. The other mother was talking with exaggerated expression to her husband; it was impossible to tell if he responded, he neither spoke nor looked at her. The kids sat eating, absorbed in their own thoughts. It had always been fun when she and her parents went out places with the Kanes and Kim and Robin. They always had more fun than just the three of them. Larger families were more fun, she had always thought. Except when they were little kids and Kim would cry because she and Robin would leave him out of their game. He just got in the way, but their parents said they had to play with him. Sometimes people got in the way, and she would just go home and play by herself; but when they’re in your family, you have to deal with them every day, like it or not.

  The caffeine in the cola drink was making her feel better. The research is going so well. Even Lucas’ contribution is surprising, he really got that old guy going on his days as a hockey player. And I’ll have plenty of time to study the transcripts, now that— her mind juxtaposed her father’s bent-over, emaciated, bald appearance, and the image of the babies in the diaper commercial, and Michael’s eyes as he held the tea to her lips, the brows pushing the lids down across the tops of his eyes like crooked blinds. Flush it out. She blubbered a few tears then started the car and drove a big rectangle along the dark country roads through town, trying to bring back the caffeine-induced confident feeling of a moment before, the trip north zipping by as she meandered in her thoughts, the trip back south endless. She arrived at home an hour later.

  Michael sat reading in the burgundy plaid chair Justina had given him as a wedding present. Her key turned in the lock and she came in. He looked at his watch; eight-thirty. He put aside his book and sprang to his feet, apprehensive of her emotional state.

  “Hi,” she tossed out. She hung up her jacket and laid her book bag on the couch and went to the stairs, avoiding his look.

  “You going to bed?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He followed her up the stairs. She rolled her eyes and went into the bedroom. She brushed her teeth at the bathroom sink. In the mirror she saw him turn down the covers on her side, then sit on the edge of the bed, waiting. She went into the toilet and closed the door. “Shit!” she whispered, and she called out to Michael, “Could you bring me some underpants?”

  He knocked on the door and handed them to her. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.” She wrapped up the blood-soaked pad in toilet paper and dropped it in the basket, took off the stained underpants and ran the water in the tub. Drying herself she got a bit of blood on the yellow towel. She put on the new underpants and a fresh pad, rinsed the red-stained underpants in the tub and hung them over the shower curtain rod to dry, stuffed her pants in the laundry hamper, and came out.

  He was still standing there; he looked down at her crotch, as though to find evidence of her over-stressing herself. She frowned at him. He took the hint and went out of the bathroom and r
esumed his vigil on the side of the bed.

  She came into the room and took off the rest of her clothes and put on a long-sleeved cotton nightshirt, she was feeling a chill. He watched her carefully, as though he needed to memorize the order in which she did things: take off shirt and bra first, then socks, then put on nightgown.

  He got up as she came to the bed. He arranged the covers over her as she sat up against the pillows and looked toward the window. He watched her face and seemed to be thinking of some way to improve her situation, which he took to be unsatisfactory. “You want me,” he said, “to bring you a book?”

  “No, I don’t want you to bring me a book or a cup of tea or help me take a crap or anything!” she exploded. “What is it with you? Why do you act like I’m sick?”

  “Justina, you had a miscarriage. You are a little sick.”

  “I’d be much better if you’d just leave me the hell alone! Just leave me alone! Quit making such a big deal about it!”

  He sat alongside her legs. “It was my baby too,” he said. He had not wanted to complain, but really, was she angry at him for getting her pregnant?

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, not sounding very sorry.

  “You didn’t disappoint me. It’s not your fault, Justina. What’s the matter—”

  “There’s nothing the matter with me, okay? I’ll get over it. Some people may think it was my fault, but I—”

  “Who? Who said it was your fault?”

  “Your sister! ‘Next time, Hoostina, you let me come there and I help you, eh? I cook and clean for you, let you rest, hm?’”

  “She didn’t mean it was your fault.”

  “You were always telling me to come home early, to take a nap.”

  “That’s what the doctor said, after you had bleeding, remember? He said you should take it easy, for a while.”

  “I did.”

  “You didn’t come home to rest.”

  “I didn’t need to. I wasn’t tired. I took plenty of naps before supper, don’t you remember?”

  “Because you were so exhausted! You couldn’t keep your eyes open!” His eyes were dull with resentment.

  “You do blame me for this,” she said. "I knew it."

  “No, I just think you can learn from it.”

  “What do I learn? That I’m a bad mother, won’t even let her unborn child—” A glob of tears pushed their way up into her head; she turned away from him and cried.

  He put his hands on her arms. “Justina! It’s not your fault.”

  “I wanted this baby. When we decided to try, I really wanted it.” She sobbed as she remembered her reasons. “I wanted it for my dad. I wanted him to hold his grandchild. And I wanted it for you.”

  He tried to quiet her. “I know, I know you did.”

  “You keep saying you’re so old, you’re going to be dead before your kid can even tie his own shoes. So, I thought it’d be best to have a baby now.”

  “We can try again.”

  “No, but you don’t know.” Her face drew tight as her feeling resounded within her. “When the baby died, at the moment he said we lost it,” she said between sobs, “I was so relieved. I didn’t really want it. But it was there, it was alive for three months. It was our baby and I was glad when it died.” A fresh sloshing of tears came over her and she wept quietly.

  The magical feel of the last half-year, from October to now, April, slipped away from Michael as he understood how difficult it had been for her, unable to conform to everyone’s expectations of her when she had become pregnant. He knew he had been most at fault, gushing over babies at the mall, complaining of being old, putting subtle pressure on her to begin childbearing now, when they were barely married, when she was still new at her career. He had been wrong, so wrong, and now their baby was dead. He closed his eyes and wept with her.

  Michael’s silent tears brought Justina out of herself and the false feeling of being alone slunk away. She pulled him to her and kissed his head while he cried.

  “I’m sorry,” he said between cries. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay, we know now,” she said softly to him. A year ago she was despairing over how she would ever get over this problem of having let go the man she loved so imperfectly. Since then she had realized that was the only way she could love. And that had been fine with him, he did not mind imperfection, he expected it, and so she had married him. Problem solved. But now, whatever happened to happily ever after?

  She snorted softly. “Hey, listen. We’ve been married, what? Six months?”

  He sniffed and sat up. She took a tissue from the box on the bedside table and wiped his eyes. “Five months,” he murmured.

  “It’s been pretty good, all in all, don’t you think? Ups and downs, well, really, just this one down.”

  He smiled quietly, appreciative of her cheering them up. “You forget what I said to James.”

  “What you said to James,” she repeated, trying to remember. “Oh, yeah. ‘You sing to my wife again, I keel you.’ That was a down. You’re right. ‘Course, if it had been anyone else but James, he’d have known you were kidding.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  A self-satisfied smirk crept up one side of her face; her flattered femininity announced itself with a glottal stop: “Unh!”

  He hummed a glissando of a laugh. “It has been, really, not too bad, I think.”

  “What do you say we keep going? Make it a year,” she said.

  “A whole year.” He shook his head. “You think we can stand it?”

  “I can if you can.”

  “Okay,” he said and he squeezed her. “Momentico. We need to promise each other something.” She waited, her expression grave to match his. “We don’t have a baby until we both want it, for ourselves. Not for someone else.”

  “Okay.” She felt ashamed. She should have told him this earlier, right away. It had been wrong to keep the shame to herself and berate him for his grief. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

  “I was worried,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You know it’s very hard for me to see you upset.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I just want us to be happy.”

  “Me, too.”

  He embraced her and told her she was adorable. She told him, no, he was the adorable one, she was the pain in the ass, and they argued about that inanely for a minute. She told him she was too tired to play with him anymore, she was going to sleep, just as soon as she called Pascale to see if she could take her French Four tomorrow. He kissed her goodnight and went downstairs. At the kitchen table he wrote a letter to his parents telling them Justina was recovering just fine and they weren’t going to try again for a baby for a while, so they shouldn’t get their hopes up. He closed by saying he was happy and he hoped they were ready for the change that the rainy season would bring.

  “No way!” Grace smiled lazily and pushed the boy’s brown head. Gerbil hair, she thought, exactly like little Jerry’s fur. Stripes of shadow shuffled across his face as the bus drove down between the trees lining Longmeadow Road. He put his face in hers and pushed his lips up and out in a playful sneer. She kissed him. He glanced at the bus driver and pushed her down on the seat.

  “Way,” he murmured and kissed her. “I’ll prove it.”

  She pushed his chest and sat back up. She looked toward the front of the bus and saw Kelsey turning her head from having just looked at her. “Here’s my stop, doofus,” she said.

  He stood in the aisle and she scooted out of the seat and followed him off the bus. His buttocks rounded out the seat of his pants, leaving slack where the seat met the top of the thigh, the folds pulling taut then breaking in two with each step.

  “This your room?” He looked around at the white walls, the curtains in a fresh green and pink primrose print on a white field, the single dresser, the framed prints of New England scenes and the double bed draped with a light
green, pink and white plaid bedspread and topped with a pillow in a pink eyelet sham. His mouth was open, the teeth a child’s white, the interior sweet and moist. The boy felt the presence of Grace’s mother in the square set of the pillow centered at the head of the bed. He also felt Grace’s hand rubbing his butt. She squeezed one of the cheeks and he grinned. He sat on the bed and pulled her to him, spreading his knees wide.

  “No, it’s the guest room,” said Grace. Clish. She took a sip and handed the can to him. He chugged it, showing off, leaving nothing for her. She took the can and kissed him as he put his hands under her sweater.

  She said, “Our guests stay here.”

  “Am I staying here?”

  “Not for long.” She pulled off her sweater and unfastened her bra.

  He laid back on the pink pillow and pulled her on top of him, tossing her bra against the wall. Quick work finding the place to satisfy himself. Quick but unhurried; there was no one home.

  PART TWO

  El Niño

  Chapter One

  Arrival

  Teresa wanted only to get the kitchen things put away and get to the store before dinner. She looked around at the boxes on the kitchen counters and on the floor lining the breakfast nook and called upstairs to her son Derek.

  “Can you help me get this stuff unpacked?” she asked him when he came in, points of sweaty hair in front of his ears.

  He pried open the nearest box and took out a wad of packing paper. “Where you want the glasses?”

  Teresa looked around at the cabinets and opened the one closest to the sink. “Here, I guess.”

  Derek unwrapped the glass and put it upside down on the lower shelf of the cabinet. He worked on emptying the rest of the box. The rotating fan blew the discarded paper all over the floor.

  Teresa opened another box and took out a wrapped plate. She chose a cabinet near the stove. It was lined with a green plastic sheet with orange and yellow and white flowers. Circa 1972. “How you like your room?”