The trumpet was playing “Birds Do It,” one of the songs on the Cole Porter album Armando had given her.
“That’s her.” He leaned forward to kiss Callie’s cheeks and then looked toward the jazz club again. “Okay, I’m out of here.”
He started across the plaza and then came back. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
She smiled. “Yes.” She had stopped shaking.
He left, and then came back. “There really is no need for you to take the lesson, Calecita.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Then you agree, Chou?”
“Let’s think about it.”
“I have thought about it.” He caught himself moving his shoulders to the rhythm of Pamela’s improvisation, and drew them back into rigid attention. “I have to get out of here.”
“Go. We’ll talk later.”
He gave her another kiss on the cheek, and then started walking toward the Church of Guadalupe. She stood watching him go. He walked slowly, turning several times to wave at her. When he began moving his shoulders to the music again, he stopped and shook them, and then he took off running.
Ten
TILTING HER HEAD TO ONE SIDE, CALLIE LOOKED at the trumpet standing on her center island. Armando could not see her blasting it. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. Well, neither could she. Keeping her gaze on the trumpet, she circled the island. She wouldn’t have to blast it though. She settled on a stool. She could play quietly, like her father had when she had had a bad dream. “I’ll whisper you to sleep,” he would say and then go for his trumpet. Pamela could teach her whisper notes. Pedal tones would be okay, too. She had no reason to blow hard and high. She wasn’t planning to don a studded suit and join the mariachis. She leaned toward the trumpet.
When her father went to the basement in one of his moods, his trumpet began by shouting accusations or whining resentments. And then it switched to singing lullabies sometimes ending with a song so sad that she, leaning against the wall opposite the basement door, held her baby doll close and cried. On those evenings, when her father found her there, he would give her a pat on the head and ask if she would read one of her books until her mother called her for supper.
Once when she went to the kitchen before being called, she saw her father sitting across from her mother at the table, his arms stretched out, his hands holding hers. He spoke of losing his mother when he was four years old. Of his older sister saying she was sleeping and would wake in heaven with the angels. He told of lying awake furious with the angels. Of being angry at his mother, too, for leaving him for them. Of his anger blotting out everything about her. And of wishing later that he had lain awake recalling the sound of her voice.
Callie laid the trumpet down, patted it as if hushing a child, and then knelt to open the safe under her kitchen counter. The philosopher had left it empty, and the only thing she had put in it was a manila folder, one she allowed herself to open only once a year.
INVESTIGATOR Joyce Lai’s office had been in downtown Chicago on the floor above the Yang Café. “A good place for lunch,” the investigator’s secretary had said when Callie called for an appointment. But though she had had nothing but tea for breakfast and had arrived an hour before her two p.m. appointment, she passed the restaurant and climbed the stairs to the waiting area. The fragrance of ginger and garlic normally would have whetted her appetite, but that day it made her nauseous, and so she sat there enumerating the elements of the periodic table and trying not to breathe.
A few minutes before her scheduled appointment, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Her heartbeat picked up, and she adjusted herself in her chair, hoping to look calm. A woman appeared wearing a lavender dress with a jade necklace. “I’m Joyce Lai. Are you Ms. Quinn?”
Her mouth was so dry, all she could do was nod.
Joyce opened the door to her suite and motioned for her to enter.
The outer office looked cozy. Lace curtains, an oval braided rug, and two rocking chairs with needlepoint pillows. She felt her shoulders relax.
Joyce gestured toward the decor. “My secretary,” she said, as if to explain. “She’s at her knitting circle.” She nodded to a closed door and said, “I’m in here.” She opened the door to an office furnished in Scandinavian design, offered Callie a chair, and sat down at her desk. “Now, how can I help you?” She looked more closely at Callie, and then asked, “Oh, excuse me, would you like a cup of tea or coffee?” She stood up as if to move to the outer office.
Callie shook her head.
“Some water then.” Joyce leaned forward to pour a glass of water for each of them from the crystal pitcher on her desk.
Callie was thirsty, but she dared not reach for the glass. She could not trust her hand to stay steady. She managed a quiet “thank you.”
Joyce sat back down and folded her hands on the desk. “Well, then?”
“I understand you help women …” Callie choked and then coughed until tears rolled down her cheeks.
“It’s all right,” Joyce said. She moved the glass closer to Callie, and then she turned a photo in a silver frame on her desk toward her. It was a photo of Joyce and a young man. He wore a black and white flowered Hawaiian shirt, his arm resting across her shoulders, both of them smiling broadly. “I know how you feel. Someone helped me find my son.”
Callie handed Joyce a sheet of paper with the date and time of birth, the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of the hospital and adoption agency, and her own telephone number and address.
Joyce smiled. “You’ve done your homework.”
“When do you think … ?”
“It shouldn’t take long. A week, maybe less.”
She drew in her breath. “So soon.” She had waited almost thirty years.
Joyce leaned across the table to touch her hand. “How do you want to handle the information?” She looked down at the sheet again. “You live in Lincoln Square, right? Shall I mail it to you?”
“I can come down here.”
“That will be fine.”
“How much do I owe?”
“There will be no charge, unless I run into something unexpected.”
“But …”
“Please allow me. It’s my way of expressing gratitude for finding my son.”
She looked again at the photo of Joyce and her son, their faces filled with joy.
Descending the stairway to the exit, Callie took in a long, slow breath. The ginger and garlic smelled like hope.
JOYCE had called before the week was out. She had sounded reassuring, saying, “Oh, yes, Dear. She’s fine,” when Callie had asked first thing: “Is she all right?” But, Callie thought as she sat anxious on the L to downtown, hadn’t Joyce’s voice sounded a little strained? Maybe she had meant she’s fine now. It was before, sometime before, years before, that something terrible happened.
The first thing she noticed when entering Joyce’s office was the file on her desk. She read the words across the top: Gwendolyn Annabel Brown. She nodded toward the file. “Her name?”
“Yes.” Joyce gestured to the chair, but Callie just stood there. Her baby had a name.
“Gwendolyn.” She liked the feel of it in her mouth. She studied the words. Gwendolyn Annabel Brown. With such a beautiful name, her daughter must be safe. “Gwendolyn Annabel Brown.”
Joyce opened the file.
Callie sat down and leaned forward. “Is she here? In Chicago?”
“No. Her family moved to Boston, while she was still in high school, and she went to college back East.”
She leaned back in her chair. For many years, none of the dark young women who had taken her breath away in Chicago had been her daughter. “She graduated from college?”
“And completed an MA in Education. Your daughter is a sixth-grade teacher.”
A teacher. She was all right then. She must be all right.
“Her husband, Earl Brown, runs a restaurant.”
A husband. Callie felt a lump f
orm in her throat.
“They have two children, a girl and a boy, ages seven and five.”
Children. Tears came to Callie’s eyes. Children. Was it possible? “Then she is all right? She’s safe? She’s well?”
“In perfect health.” Joyce smiled and pushed the file toward Callie. “There’s more information. Her address. Her telephone number.”
“Oh …” Not her telephone number. Was that legal?
“I can make the call, if you like. Sometimes it’s easier that way.”
“Oh, no. I don’t want to bother her. I … I just wanted to know that she was all right. That’s all.” She meant those words, she told herself. It was enough to know her daughter was all right. More than all right. Safe and happy. “She didn’t see you, did she?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Oh … You mean someone else?”
“We do this for each other. It saves travel.”
“Of course.”
“My colleague is very discreet. I asked him to drop by the neighborhood to take a photo. It’s in the file.”
“A photo, too.” She would see her baby.
“Would you like to look through the file? You could use my secretary’s office.”
“Thank you, no.” Callie clicked open her handbag and reached for her checkbook. “You said you might run into additional costs.”
“We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”
She shut her handbag, picked up the file, and cradled it in the crook of her elbow. A manila folder with a few papers and a photo. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then why did her heart feel like it would burst with joy?
SHE put the photo of Gwendolyn back in the folder and smoothed her hand over the top. It had been over five years since she first saw the photo of the young woman with a yoga mat slung over her shoulder. Then she so wanted to show everyone the photo, the way other mothers showed off their babies, counting off every resemblance. She could hear herself saying the words, “Look how lithe she is, just like her father. And she’s short, like me. She has his lips. That dimple in her left cheek is mine. And her skin’s a blend of dark chocolate and peaches and cream. Imagine that? She has my father’s hands and my mother’s widow’s peak …” Oh, how she could have gone on that day. On that day, too, the day she first held the photo of her grown daughter, she longed to see her face to face, to hear the timbre of her voice, to hold her close.
It was all she could do not to tell. Not just her aunt, but the clerk at the corner grocery, the librarian, the postman, complete strangers on the L. She wanted to tell them she had a daughter. A beautiful daughter. A smart daughter. A married daughter. A daughter with children. A safe daughter. In perfect health. With all her fingers and toes. Hard. It had been hard. So very hard not to show the photo. Of Gwendolyn Annabel Brown.
But she had promised not to tell. Promised her father. Promised herself, for her daughter’s sake. It was her daughter’s choice. She would not take that away from her. It was one thing for her to find her daughter, to know that she was safe, to see her face in a photo. It would be another to tell others, especially those who may not be so discreet as she.
It was best that way. Best that she not disturb her daughter. Best that she not talk. Best that she protect herself from longing. She looked from the folder to the trumpet. It looked just like the one that released her father’s anger, uncovered his sorrow. Armando was right. She had no business playing it. She had her garden and her cleaning. She had a full schedule of work. She lowered her head slowly to one side and then the other, releasing tension in her neck. She had her calls to her mother and her aunt. Her walks with Armando. Juanito coming to her door with his treasures. The trumpet, no matter how softly played, would disrupt her life. She let out her breath with a sigh. She had grown accustomed to the sound of silence.
She opened the folder one more time and leaned over the photo of Gwendolyn. “Happy Birthday,” she whispered. Then she put the folder back into the safe and locked it.
Eleven
CALLIE DROPPED HER KEY TWICE TRYING TO LOCK her entry door. It wasn’t the lock this time, which turned easily when she finally got the key in. The problem was her hand, which was shaking.
Was she nervous about seeing the young woman again? She would have been, before finding Gwendolyn. Before, whenever she had seen a caramel-colored girl of the right age, she wondered if she could be her daughter. The child in the stroller. The girl tossing a basketball into a hoop. The teen in the march for freedom. The lead in the school play. Each time she would give her heart to the child as if she were her own. Often from a distance. Across a park. The last row of the bleachers. The back of an auditorium. To get closer to the children, she had become a volunteer tutor, changing grades every year, to the grade her daughter would have been in. And then, when she went to a school event, she could say, if anyone asked, that one of the children she tutored had invited her.
She started down the callejón. Armando had come by the night before, discouraged that the neighborhood cop refused to do anything. But Chou could help out, couldn’t she? Pamela would never give Tavelé to him, but with Chou’s sweet, motherly voice, Pamela would surely hand over Tavelé, in spite of her being his friend. He took a leash she had given him from his shoulder bag and asked her in French, of course, to please take the lesson after all.
She had never seen him so anxious. Not about Tavelé. About Claude. He had begun catastrophizing again and was sure there was another man. Perhaps the new violist Claude had spoken so highly of in his string quartet. That’s why Claude wanted to meet him in Veracruz. To tell him in person.
Callie had taken a risk and told him about John-James, the husband with the two heads, both jealous because she could kiss only one set of lips at a time. She mimed the awful looks each made when she kissed the other. Armando had laughed and even thought of some things for John-James to say. But she could tell, by the way his shoulders dropped when he turned to leave, that he still feared the worst.
Her own shoulders sank at the thought. The least she could do was help find Tavelé. Take the blooming lesson. Not that she had nothing else to do. The translation service had called that morning wanting to move up her deadline, and then her aunt called when she was packing to leave. What had Aunt Ida said? Something about her mother’s girlish laughter. Odd. She must not have heard right. Been too occupied trying to stuff the trumpet in her backpack. She had almost dropped it. But it was safe now, the bell bumping against the small of her back as she walked down the callejón.
Nacho passed her with a gunnysack of sand across his shoulders.
“Chamba?” he mumbled when he went by.
“Ahorita, no.” Not at the moment. She didn’t need anything carried. Then she remembered and called after him. “But are you going to look for Tavelé?”
He turned and called back, “Si, señora. No se preocupe.”
She watched him continue down the stairs, his shoulders bent from the weight of the sand. Don’t worry, he had said. How could she not? With Tavelé lost. And Armando as upset as he was, and soon leaving. She’d done all she could think of to help, even agreeing to take the trumpet lesson, though she knew Tavelé wouldn’t be there. There had to be some other way she could help.
She looked up as if she could find the answer in the sky, and her foot caught on a cobblestone. She reached out to a wall to steady herself. Focus, Callie. And slow down. Better to get there late than to break your neck. Actually, maybe she should sit down. Scoot down the stairs. Oh, that was silly. She was not disabled, just a little nervous. About Armando. But also about the lesson. She did not know Pamela. And she had no good reason for taking a lesson. What if Pamela asked her why she wanted one?
“El Niño Perdido” floated through her mind. Oh, criminy. Of course, Pamela would ask. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
She turned to head back up the hill. She would call Pamela. Explain that she’d been out of her mind. She had been, hadn’t she? A woman her age tak
ing up the trumpet, of all things. Pamela would understand. But Armando. What would she say to him? She willed herself to turn and take another step down the callejón. And then another. And another. She could do it. Slow and steady. Almost to the corner. She wouldn’t be late, would she? She glanced at her watch, and so didn’t notice the loose cobblestone on the stair below. It tilted down when her foot struck it, and she lurched forward. She began stumbling and couldn’t stop. Her father’s voice came to her, “Roll.” She lowered her shoulder and closed her eyes. Her feet lifted off the ground, and then her shoulder bumped into something soft and strong. She opened her eyes and looked up into Nacho’s surprised face.
She pulled away, “Perdón.” She coughed. “Perdón.”
Nacho laughed and said that she had hit him, her head lowered like a bull.
“Como un toro,” he said, putting his index fingers up to his head to make horns. “Un toro.”
She watched him walk up the callejón with the empty gunnysack, turning several times to laugh at her.
She looked down the callejón of the geese and then down to the corner where she’d seen the Jehovah’s Witnesses before. Where were they when you needed them? She shrugged and continued on to the lesson. Might as well get it over with.
“LET’S see your ax,” Pamela said, motioning Callie to a folding chair opposite hers.
“What?”
Pamela laughed. “Your instrument.”
“Oh.” Callie unzipped her backpack and pulled out the trumpet. The leash was looped around its bell. Why in the world had she brought that thing! She glanced up.
Pamela was smiling. “Were you afraid it would run off?”
She felt her face redden. “Ah, no.” She shook the trumpet, and the leash slid back into the backpack. She held out the trumpet, her hand shaking so much she almost dropped it.
“Hold on there, partner,” Pamela said, taking the trumpet. “Is this your first lesson?”
The Trumpet Lesson Page 6