Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  Aaron decided to believe she had come. “I’m still hard,” he murmured as she lay on her side beside him. “Suck me?” he whispered.

  She had, once, against her better judgment. She had to assume some percentage of these guys were HIV positive, although probably none of them had ever had themselves tested, the morons. Never again, she had told herself. She had enjoyed it for about a minute. She had endured it for another five. He had probably had it done to him before, by some other girl, otherwise it shouldn’t have taken that long. “In your dreams,” she said, and rolled onto her back.

  He ran his hand up her torso and cupped one of her breasts. “Want me to eat you?” he negotiated.

  “Ha!” she laughed and she sat up on the edge of the bed and scooped up her underpants.

  “Come on, Grace!” he pleaded. “Don’t go.”

  “Why the fuck should I stay?”

  “Come on.” He sat up. “You want some shit?” He went to fumble in the dresser drawers.

  “Let me just say no to that, Aaron, darlin’.” She finished dressing and got her purse and went out.

  Aaron stood naked in the doorway and called after her, “Wham, bam, thank you, Ma’am!”

  “Fuck you, shithead!” she sing-songed and went down the stairs.

  After wreaking havoc down south upon coming of age, Hurricane Luis moved in and rained upon New England on September tenth, a Sunday, and Pascale had her baby the next day, two and a half weeks early. He was a robust seven pounds, 4 ounces, so no one worried about him, and for months afterward when Pascale related in astounding and discomfiting detail the tôme of her labor and little Nicolas’ delivery, she would remark, “Thanks God, he did not come on his due date, he would have been a Gargantua!” Denis stayed home for two weeks, and his soft chest served as a bassinet for the baby between feedings while Pascale catnapped. Pascale was glad to see her husband’s sunny nature return, and once again Denis saw his wife

  “Standing on my eyelids

  And her hair mixed with mine,

  She has the shape of my hands,

  She has the color of my eyes,

  She disappears in my shadow

  Like a stone against the sky.”

  Chapter Two

  Pebble On the Window

  It was to be a Carmina fall. The Concert Chorus had not done Carmina Burana for four years, so it would be new to everyone, except the lucky few who might have had directors who actually believed high school kids were up to the challenge of a tough classical piece. Most of his students came to him with extensive experience in popular repertoire and a pitiful smattering of short classical pieces, usually the Schubert “Ave Maria” and the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Adolescents were such an under-utilized resource, it occurred to Michael. They would do the Orff piece in the first half of the concert, and in the second half a couple of classical Christmas pieces, to be determined, and of course the carols. Even the soloists would be students. He knew who he wanted for tenor and bass, but he would hold auditions anyway, to be fair, and for the students’ practice. He only needed one soprano, not a mezzo. He knew who could do it, but she did not seem to have her heart in singing this year. He tried to remember if this was a pattern of hers, starting off slow at the beginning of a school year. She had been an eager student from the first, three years ago, when she was a high school senior. She had been going to Nordstrom for years; her parents had decided to spring for a more experienced voice teacher. Her mother had hinted that Grace tended to let herself get involved in “non-productive activities” when she was bored; her senior year was coming up and they wanted her to concentrate on her studies. Her mother hoped singing, the only thing the girl seemed to really love, would anchor her mind, give her a focus. Michael felt Grace had a future in singing, if she could keep herself free of deadly disease. When he thought of the grasping boy he had seen her with, he felt an impulse to thunder his disapproval and deliver an ultimatum: listen to me and fly, or stay on your belly in the dirt. There was no middle alternative for her. He picked up his score and walked out into the choral classroom. Maybe she would settle down and focus as the semester got under way.

  Michael sat on a stool at his music stand at the front of the room, the full score to Carmina Burana before him. With his empty hands he conducted the imaginary orchestra on the opening to the baritone solo “Omnia sol temperat.” It was written high for that voice. At the entrance he sang, keeping his voice light to avoid straining it on the low notes.

  “To thoughts of love

  The mind of man is turned

  And in pleasure’s haunts

  The youthful God holds sway.”

  The antique Latin lines evoked little emotion in him as he sang; he concentrated on his tone, admiring it on the higher notes. He wished the tenor solos in this piece were more appealing, he did not care to sing them.

  Grace heard Mr. C singing as she came down the empty hall with Ryan, a tall, muscular junior with an easy laugh and quick eyes that seldom looked in hers. A great summer boyfriend, she was starting to think of him, exciting for maybe two months, just as ready to move on when the time came as she knew she would be, which would probably be well before two months had gone by. She shushed him as they came to the choral classroom door.

  Grace and her boy peeked in and saw Mr. C singing and moving his arms for the benefit of no one. Ryan started to guffaw, Grace put her hand over his mouth. He pulled her hand off his face and pulled her close and kissed her, separating the flaps of her denim jacket and caressing her breasts through the cotton tee shirt. Grace whispered, “Stop it,” but smiled and kissed him some more. He pulled her hand down to his warm bump and she pulled away from him, rolling her eyes as he smirked at her, and she went into the classroom.

  She approached Mr. C from behind his right shoulder. He was singing the last verse.

  “Love me truly!

  Remember my constancy.”

  He slowed the tempo and colored his voice with intimacy.

  “With all my heart and all my mind

  I am with you even when far away.

  Whoever knows such love

  knows the torture of the wheel.”

  Is he singing for me?

  She walked past him to the piano and put her backpack on top of it.

  “Grace! It must be Tuesday!” he sputtered.

  She stood waiting, armed with a condescending smile.

  He sat at the piano and played a chord and began a scale.

  “I’m all warmed up,” she interrupted, smirking.

  He stopped playing. “Good. Shall we do the Mozart?”

  She pulled down a corner of her mouth and sighed and took from her backpack “Voi che sapete,” from The Marriage of Figaro. Her tone was bright and strong, she was mastering the difficult movement into and out of her passagio, the little hitches of pitch did not trouble her today. He stopped her after two verses.

  “I see you know it,” he said, “now, could you sing it please?”

  She clicked her tongue— “tsih!”— to keep from moaning and turned back to the beginning of the song. He played and she sang, just as before. He interrupted her.

  “You are not sincere! You ask me about love, you don’t know what it is. You feel something, it is so powerful—”

  “It’s brain-dead.” He was waiting for her to explain herself. “It’s a stupid song,” she continued. “‘You who know about love, I seek for a treasure outside of myself; I don’t know who holds it or what it is. I sigh and I groan.’” Nobody says that.”

  He sat with his hands on his knees, his neck sunk into his shoulders. He dipped his head and looked at her. “All right. What do they say? What do you say?”

  Something about the way he was baiting her, as though he just knew she would say something insipid, betraying her immaturity, provoked her. “I don’t say anything,” she said, “I just do it.”

  Never, never had he known a more impudent young woman! He banged out the song’s introduct
ion and growled, “Again!”

  “It’s just a joke, Mister C,” she said, failing to sound apologetic, “lighten up!”

  The effect of her contrite look was lost on him, he kept his eyes on the music. “It’s not funny,” he said to the song sheet. He started the intro again and said, “And it’s not what a lady says.”

  “I didn’t know you gave lady lessons now.” She waited for him to look at her.

  “I am your voice coach,” he said slowly, trying to control his temper, “if you’re not here to sing—”

  She flipped her music up in front of her face. “Okay.”

  He turned back to the piano and put his hands on the keys. “Although, a little instruction does not hurt.”

  She drew in her lips and pushed her music back into her backpack and said, “I can’t believe I’m paying for this.”

  “Grace, I didn’t mean to say it.”

  She put her backpack over her shoulder and looked him over, taking her time, simply because she wanted to and because it made him uncomfortable; she ended her look on his face. “Yeah, well, whatever,” she said and went out.

  Jack found old habits hard to break. He still came home at four-thirty every day, though the days when he needed to keep an eye on Grace were long gone. She still lived at home, to save the family money, but they did not impose any rules on her, other than that she keep her clutter out of the way, namely, out of the family room, kitchen, dining room and living room. It was really only Linda who made this rule; she reveled in having these rooms the way she wanted them, finally; she could tolerate no objects other than her own and sanctioned ones of Jack’s in those rooms. Perhaps the idea of sharing was becoming difficult to Linda. She had shared her husband for several years now; well, not shared, really, since she had no use for him herself, anymore. But he was still her husband, so, technically, she was entitled to him, and yet she tolerated the use others made of him. But her house was another thing, and she shared it with her family only grudgingly.

  The knowledge that her husband was unfaithful had come to her slowly. She did not want to believe it and she let Jack convince her she was imagining it. But at the end of two years of his philandering, she could fool herself no longer. She erupted in anger at him on occasion, hoping to shame him into repentance. When this failed to work, she stopped. Talk could only lead to divorce and she was afraid of what that would do to Grace, who was clearly troubled already, two abortions by the age of fifteen scaring Linda more than Grace, it seemed. So Linda kept her anger and grief to herself and kept busy at her work. At the end of five years her thoughts became dominated by the promise of change. Surely a change would not make things any worse than they were. She had a sex-addicted husband and a promiscuous daughter. Her entire emotional life had been these two people. There was more to the world than that.

  She gave Jack the job of telling Grace about the divorce. He feared what Linda would say to her about him, so he did not object. He procrastinated, though; he meant to tell her during the summer, to give her time to “digest” it before school started. But it was not until the second week of classes that he stumbled upon a way of telling her.

  He came home on Tuesday and got a beer and went upstairs to his computer. Grace was sitting at it, typing something in an online service window. The several short lines of text told him she was in a chat room, which probably meant she was typing suggestive remarks to fifteen-year-old boys who tried to sound like men, with handles like Blaze, ake4u, pussiplz. It all seemed harmless enough, to Jack. He just kind of wished he didn’t have to pay for it, though, at three dollars an hour or whatever. He went into the room and sat on the bed.

  “Hey, Punkin!” he said in his camp counselor’s voice.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said, without looking at him.

  Jack waited, both hands on his bottle between his knees. He took a swallow and sat watching her screen.

  She took a look at him. “Just a second.” She double-clicked and the chat room window disappeared. “What’s up?” she asked.

  Jack took another swallow of his beer. “Not much, how ‘bout you?”

  She shrugged. “School.”

  He nodded reverently and took another swallow of his beer.

  His stiff posture told her he wanted something. “You want to get on?” she said, getting out of the chair.

  He put out a hand to stop her. “No!”

  “I’m done,” she said, pointing the arrow at “Sign Off” from the online service’s main menu.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I just, want to talk to you, a little bit.”

  She sat back down.

  He dipped his head and smiled self-consciously. “Oh, Grace,” he said, tossing back his head. “Ah, this is not going to be easy,” he said, trying to sneak into the nastiness.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Something wrong?”

  Jack smiled, just like he used to when she had not gotten some part or other she had tried out for. I’m sorry, his look said, I’m sorry to see you sad. She became alarmed: what was she supposed to be sad about?

  “Daddy!”

  “Ha!” sighed Jack. “Your mother and I are—” He tried to think of a way to phrase it that left out the word ‘divorce.’ “We’ve decided we can’t make it anymore, so—” He had thought of a synonym and came straight to the point. “We’re going to split up, Punkin.”

  She shook her head and grimaced. ‘Split up?’ What, like a couple of hippies, they’ve decided to ‘move on?’ They can’t do that, they’re married. They have a kid, for Christ’s sake. “You mean, like, a separation?”

  “No, we’re going all the way. The big one, the big D.”

  “Divorce? You’re getting a divorce?”

  She had never seen him look so solemn. He looked wise to her, as though his years of sinning had made him so, and remorseful. She felt a hope that this would not be, that in the end it would heal itself. He took a swig of his beer and her feeling of misgiving returned.

  He wished Linda were here to take care of the tears that would be coming any second now, he guessed from her look. He stood up. “We’re real sorry about this, Grace. But it’s the best thing we can do. Really.”

  What, he’s just going to walk out, now? Isn’t he supposed to stay and apologize some more? “When?” she asked, trying to pin him down by making him focus on details.

  “Whenever. Your mother’s seeing about a lawyer.” He went to the door.

  “Where? Where are you going to go?” She swiveled in her chair to face him, but she would not get up, trying to make him see that he was supposed to sit with her.

  “I’ll be here, for a while. Don’t worry about me.” His look darkened a moment as he contemplated life alone. Then he smiled and said, “See you,” and went out and down the stairs.

  She listened wide-eyed for the garage door to open, but instead she heard the T.V. set go on. The hominess of that sound rendered the news just now delivered incomprehensible. He was home, in the bosom of the family, but the family would soon be taken apart. The body of the three of them was being put to rest forever and they were faced with the challenge of keeping alive its spirit. They would no doubt only remember the good times. She thought of those good times, rough-housing with her father on the family room rug while her mother took pictures of them, eating ice cream together after her performance in a play, all of them going for walks with the dog in the orchard. These souvenirs took her to about age twelve. Then she skipped to the time they were reunited by her first abortion, for a few weeks. She pressed her jaws together and squinted at the Condamned! computer game manual sitting on the table. That was it. She could not think of any happy times since then. Her mother sitting in her room watching T.V., her father out, she in her own room working on some project or other, the family feeling suspended for bad behavior. They didn’t deserve to be a family.

  She went out of the house and crossed the street into the orchard. There were a few couples gathering the first Cortlands and Macinto
shes. She walked past them and their happy murmuring. “Apple crisp,” “Pie,” “À la mode?” “With cinnamon,” “No ginger?” “Grill them! Swear to God, you’ll love them!” She walked straight down the long aisle and stopped when she came to a small pond. She walked out onto the rotting diving platform and sat down. The overhanging branches of the surrounding maples and poplars and birches were reflected in the water. She let her eyes send signals to her brain regarding the colors and shapes she saw there, as her mind ran over and over the wad of feelings evoked by the words “Daddy” and “Mom,” trying to flatten it and see it clearly, to see the beauty of the patterning. But the tugs of feeling evoked by her memories only subsided the more she contemplated them. They had not loved her enough, it was their fault.

  She looked up at the reddening treetops. The tips of burning orange sent a shot of warmth to the ache just beneath her throat. Something might still happen, she could feel it. Someone might still love her, really love her. Someone might look at her with loving eyes, ready to devote his life to her. She imagined herself among the treetops, leaving Ryan and Aaron and all of them down on this decrepit plank, and in the orange she would sit and wait for her love.

  Michael glanced at the headlines as he walked back up the driveway. Another hurricane was forming in the Caribbean. He looked around the yard. Luis had been no more than an ordinary rain storm here. The grass was still littered with colored leaves and bits of the more tightly-clinging still-green ones. And the burro was still on its side. Three days was long enough, his penchant for order shouted, Fix it! He tucked the paper under his arm and squatted down and heaved the cement lawn statue up on its feet. He went in the front door.