The Trumpet Lesson

by Dianne Romain

  “Even a bookworm like you can’t get much nutrition out of that. Trust me, I’m pre-med.”

  She laughed and closed the book.

  He came around the table and pulled her chair back. “I’ve never seen anyone concentrate like you.”

  Wasn’t that just what she had noticed about him? She stood, still looking at the book she had been reading, but she was thinking of his hand on the back of her chair. When she bent to pick up her purse, she dropped it.

  “Are you okay?” He picked up her purse and handed it to her. “You’re not going to start coughing again, are you?”

  She laughed. “Let’s go.”

  “I know a great barbecue place. You’ll love it.”

  While they walked side by side across the campus, she kept up a steady report on Einstein’s theory.

  At one point, he stopped and looked at her as if appraising her anew. “You know, Bookworm, you got more out of Einstein in one sitting than I would have in five.”

  It wasn’t true, she knew, but she liked his saying it. It meant she was safe with him.

  They started walking again, this time occasionally bumping against each other. She stepped away each time and continued telling Noah about Einstein’s theory, but all the while her mind relived those moments when Noah’s shoulder touched hers.

  Soon he stopped again. “I’m getting lost,” he said. “What were you saying?”

  She stopped talking and looked at him. What had she been saying? “I … I don’t know.”

  He laughed. “So even you can lose your place.” He took her hand. “We need to get that brain of yours fed. But would you mind if we make a stop on the way to dinner? I’m looking after a prof’s cat. It’ll only take a minute.”

  She looked down at his long, sure fingers wrapped around hers. His hand warm and familiar, as if it had held hers many times before. Her own hand began to warm, and her heart slowed down to a steady beat. A minute alone with Noah.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Did you know Einstein liked cats?”

  He laughed again. “Let’s go,” he said, and they ran along the campus path, across the street, and down to the next street. Halfway down the block, they turned onto the sidewalk of a brick house with a wide porch, protected by a trellis covered with wisteria. The front door had a stained-glass window of a calla lily framed in amethyst. He took out the key and opened the door. Her heart rate had picked up again with the run, and she was gasping for air, but she had never felt so happy. The doorway looked like the opening to a new world.

  Nineteen

  SO DO YOU?” CALLIE FELT SOMETHING BRUSH against her shoulder and took in the words as if in a dream. Believe in love at first sight, wasn’t that what Pamela had been asking before falling asleep? Not a safe topic. She kept her own eyes closed.

  Pamela began again. “I was wondering. Do you miss the people you’ve left behind?”

  She roused and saw Pamela propped on one elbow, gazing at her, a questioning look on her face. That last, long look on her baby’s face came to her again.

  She sat up and brushed fallen leaves off her clothes. “What?” Her hands were shaking. Whom did she have in mind?

  Pamela lifted a leaf from Callie’s hair. “The ones you left back in the States.”

  An image came to her of Gwendolyn leaning across the cafeteria table, whispering to Pamela: “I never want to know my birth mother. Never.” She cleared her throat. “I have left people. When I went to college, I left my father. In my twenties, I left any number of lovers. But there are those I have never left, no matter how far away I lived.” She started packing her backpack, her fingers trembling. “I have not left my mother or my aunt.” When she stood, she dropped her backpack. “We talk regularly, and I go back for visits.” If only her hands would stop shaking.

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve been too direct again.” Pamela reached down for her backpack. “Here let me help.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just that we need to pack up. It looks like it could rain.” She dropped her backpack again. Darn.

  “Callie.” Pamela put her hand on Callie’s shoulder. “Are you sure you are all right?”

  “I’m fine, really.” Callie said. She leaned toward the backpack.

  “Allow me,” Pamela said, picking up the backpack. “They could follow you, you know,” she said, holding the backpack for Callie to slip her arms through. “You know, like that song ‘Whither Thou Goest?’”

  She felt the backpack settle into place. All those months at her aunt’s, waiting for her baby, she had dreamed of Noah following her. Imagined him patting her growing tummy, his warm smile, the fragrance of cinnamon. Would he have followed her, if he had known? If the world had been different then? She remembered sitting at her aunt’s dining table, having a cup of tea, the newspaper spread open in front of her, her aunt reading over her shoulder, saying “Well, it’s about time.”

  Callie recalled the date. June 13, 1967. The Supreme Court had ruled bans to interracial marriage unconstitutional the day before. About time, yes. Too late for her. By then her baby was almost four years old. And with a new mother. There was, by then, no point in Noah following her, even if her father would have accepted him. She cleared her throat and turned to Pamela. “A song. You mentioned a song?”

  “‘Whither Thou Goest.’ My mother sang it for weddings,” Pamela said. “She had a beautiful voice. Still does, though she rarely performs now. She sings her way through the dinner dishes. Spirituals, blues, Cole Porter.”

  The words to “Night and Day” came to Callie. He had been the one. In spite of it all. For a long time, the only one. Noah.

  “My mom taught me what I know about phrasing, vibrato, and breath,” Pamela said. “I still sink at my knees to reach a high note the way she does.” She modeled the posture, bending her knees slightly and lifting her arms as if she were playing the trumpet.

  Callie was adjusting the straps of her backpack and humming “Night and Day.”

  “Callie … Callie?” Pamela waved her hands in front of Callie’s face. “Like this.” She held her hands up again to hold the imaginary trumpet, bent her knees, and sung a high C.

  It looked so easy. She bent to lift Pamela’s blanket and then rose to fold it. Her hands felt steady now. “Were you saying something about your mother?”

  “‘Whither thou goest I will go.’ That’s what my mother said when I left home. And she has, too. Though she’s terrified of flying, she flew to France twice when I was there. She regularly visited me in California. Took the train. She’s been here already and will be back again later this summer.”

  And your high school friends? Callie wanted to say, Do they follow you? She put the blanket in Pamela’s backpack.

  “When I started playing jazz, she came to every one of my Chicago club dates, though she’s not one to drink or smoke.” She shifted the backpack on her shoulders. “She came early enough to get a table right in front. Had her Bible with her.”

  At a jazz club?

  “She would take it out and put it on the table by her glass of mineral water.” Pamela mimed the way her mother placed the Bible with the weight of conviction. She started down a donkey path. “Come on.”

  Callie patted Pamela’s backpack. “Got a Bible in there?”

  Pamela laughed.

  Callie pointed to a place ahead where the path divided into two branches. “Which one should we take?”

  “The one that goes to the mine shafts.”

  Callie laughed, then shivered. A cloud had drifted in front of the sun. “Even if we knew which that was, are you sure it’s a good idea?” She pointed up to the darkening sky.

  Pamela laughed. “Are you made of sugar?” She fished the map out of her pocket, turned it this way and that, and then tilted her head in the direction of the path leading to another ruin. “Come on. I think it’s in this direction … Anyway, I’m not finished talking about the trumpet.”

  Twenty

  CALLIE Z
IPPED HER JACKET AND FOLLOWED PAMELA up the path. “You look so natural playing the trumpet, as if you were born blowing one.”

  “Well, not quite. My first instrument was the piano. Good for learning theory. Oh, and I played the flute for a week.”

  “A week?”

  “Yeah. In seventh grade. When the band director handed out instruments, he offered trumpets, tubas, trombones, and drums to the boys and flutes, oboes, clarinets, and chimes to the girls. I picked flute. But no matter how I blew, I couldn’t get it to sound like a trumpet.”

  Callie laughed.

  “Mr. Ringle said I could try the French horn, if I liked, but the trumpet was out. When I told my father, he shouted to raise the dead. ‘No one is going to prevent my daughter from playing the trumpet!’” Pamela laughed. “And he had been so pleased when I came home with the flute. He had played one, you see.” She stopped walking and turned toward Callie.

  “Your father must have been disappointed with your choice, and yet he supported it,” Callie said. Her father had been able to do that. Sometimes.

  “He sure did. Dad went out that weekend and bought me a trumpet. First thing Monday morning, he took me to school with the flute and marched into the principal’s office.” Pamela started walking again, illustrating her father’s determined stride. “He handed the flute to the principal and said, ‘My daughter is playing the trumpet, and if she wants to play tight end on a football team, she’ll do that too.’”

  Pamela stopped again and looked at her. “It’s hard to operate against societal expectations, but it’s not always a good idea to operate within them either. In either case, there’s stress—of holding yourself back or of standing up to those who expect you to ‘stay in your place,’ whether that’s the back of the bus, the kitchen, or the flute section.”

  Or with a mate of the opposite sex. Pamela seemed comfortable challenging that expectation, too. Unlike Armando.

  “Following your heart, pursuing your deepest desires, gives you courage to face the naysayers. But you need support, too, to be yourself in a hostile environment.”

  “Your passion and your dad’s support allowed you to choose the trumpet. I understand that. But I am still puzzled. How do you have the courage to play the trumpet? I mean to play in public.” She had once fainted when giving an oral presentation. “Just thinking of playing for other people, even kind ones, makes my hands sweat.”

  “You and a lot of other people,” she said. “I once read that for many people public speaking is more frightening than death. Playing in public would be worse, I suppose. But, like anything else, it’s not so hard, if you practice, taking it one baby step at a time. You may wobble a little with those first steps, but eventually you get it. I learned that from my Louisiana cousins.”

  As they walked along the path, she told Callie about her cousins. The girls were older, already married with babies of their own. Pamela and her mom spent long summer days with them and their mom shucking corn for canning. The babies took wobbly steps from chair to chair.

  “Is that how you learned about taking baby steps?”

  Pamela laughed. “No, my younger cousins, all boys around my age, taught me to take baby steps, though they never used those words.”

  Pamela took Callie’s arm as they walked along. She related how as a preteen she had roamed the woods on hot, humid days with the boys, dressed like them in overalls and floppy loafers. They taught her to dive at a rocky outcropping by a pool in the river that wound through the woods. They never dared or teased her. They just invited her to dive along with them, each day going a little higher up. They made it look like so much fun, whooping before they dove and crowing when coming to the surface. She belly-flopped a number of times. But fear never crossed her mind, even that day when she dove from the highest place on the rock.

  Pamela let go of Callie’s arm and stopped to look at her. “I use the baby-step technique with my students.” She laughed. “It works … most of the time.”

  Could it work with Armando?

  Pamela sat on a flat rock by the path. “All this talking makes me hungry.”

  “I have muffins.” Callie dredged around in her backpack. “Somewhere.” Seeing the dog biscuits, she ducked her head closer. She pulled out the bag of muffins.

  “I’ll take that,” Pamela said, reaching for it. She beckoned Callie to sit beside her. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. “

  What now?

  “Do you hear that?”

  Was that the question?

  Pamela pointed to Callie’s backpack. “Do you have a cell in there?”

  Armando, of course.

  “Why aren’t you home dusting?” he asked when Callie answered his call.

  Callie mouthed to Pamela: “Armando.” She stood and walked up the path a ways.

  “I am with Pamela. Remember.”

  “Oh, right. Poor you. Is Tavelé there, or has she hidden him? Just a second, Claude. I know she has him, Chou. A friend saw him with her groupies. It’s ‘ajo,’ not ‘ojo.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Not you, Callie, Claude. He just ordered pizza with an eye, instead of with garlic.” He lowered his voice. “He’s constantly talking to waiters. It’s driving me crazy. They love it, of course.”

  Was he jealous or proud? It sounded like both. She heard music in the background and Armando tapping.

  “The music is Cuban.”

  “What?”

  “Claude was just telling the waiter how much he loved Mexican music.”

  “And?”

  “They’re playing Cuban music.”

  “But you love Cuban music.”

  “Yeah. But I don’t congratulate Mexican waiters for it, Chou. Look, I’ve got to go. When will you be home?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Callie turned and saw Pamela coming. She backed up.

  “Well, no need to stay after you find Tavelé. Just make your excuses and leave.”

  “I can’t just leave. We’re in the mountains.”

  “You walked all the way to the mountains?”

  “Pamela has a car.”

  “You let her take you in that death trap? Well, you’ll have to find an excuse not to drive back with her. I don’t want you and Tavelé risking your lives.”

  “Tavelé? He’s not here.”

  “Then why are you there?” The tapping stopped. “You never go to the mountains with me.”

  What was going on? He never wanted to walk in the mountains. He must be feeling jealous because she was with Pamela.

  She glanced up. Pamela was getting closer, and so she backed up again.

  “And you are always buying useless things from Juanito.”

  And jealous of Juanito. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  He sounded impatient. Perhaps if he talked to the Virgin. “Didn’t you say there was a historic church near your hotel?”

  “What’s that got to do with Juanito? Anyway, don’t worry. I’ll get rid of that junk as soon as I get back. Oh, and I’ll call Jorge. Now. He’ll come pick you up. Hold on a second.”

  She heard him call out to Claude: “I’m coming.”

  “I don’t like this, Chou. Claude’s whispering to the waiter and looking over here.”

  “Callie, watch out!” Pamela grabbed her arm, and the phone flew up over her shoulder.

  She turned. The mine shaft. Her phone bounced, landed, scattering some loose rocks at the edge of the shaft, and then fell in, landing with a plunk. She leaned toward the shaft, cupped her hands around her mouth and called out, “Armando. The Virgin. Talk to her.”

  Pamela whooped and nodded toward the mine shaft. “What a piece of work.”

  She shook her head. Pamela gleeful. And Armando, anxious, on the other end of the phone. She kneeled, peered into the pit, and broke out in a sweat. She closed her eyes and scooted back. She needed to get away. Clear her head. But what if Armando were calling out to her? She had t
o do something. She tightened her jaw and turned an ear to the shaft. Not a sound. She leaned to look inside. Just for a second. But long enough to notice woody-stemmed plants growing from cracks. Maybe the phone hadn’t fallen to the bottom. The plunk could have been a loosened stone. She held her breath and inched closer.

  Pamela squatted by her. “I suppose he doesn’t like it that you’re with me,” she said and added, “I saw how he shuttled you off that night at the restaurant.”

  Of course, he had shuttled her off. He had been upset. And now when he was upset again, she had dropped the phone. And there she was feeling queasy when she should be trying to reach him. She forced herself to look into the shaft again. Had one of the plants caught the phone? She had to find out. Gripping the edge of the shaft with her left hand, she closed her eyes and felt down between the plant and the side of the shaft, moving her hand slowly to avoid accidently dislodging the phone, in case it was there.

  She thought she felt something smooth with the tip of her fingers and leaned to reach a little further. Then her left hand slipped and her collarbone struck the edge of the shaft. Her right hand jammed into the woody base of the plant and grabbed hold.

  “Whoa,” Pamela said, putting an arm around the back of her waist.

  She sensed the shaft swirling around her.

  “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Let go.”

  She wasn’t okay, and she couldn’t let go. She tightened her hold on the plant.

  “Come on, Callie.”

  Bile seeped into her mouth.

  “You’re already safe. Just let go.”

  It was taking all her energy to avoid throwing up.

  Pamela tightened her grip. “You’re going to be okay, Callie. Let go of the air in your lungs. Remember? Slowly, fully.” She put her face next to Callie’s. “I am right here, breathing with you.”

  She felt Pamela exhaling and began exhaling with her.

  “Now let the fresh air pour into the bottom of your belly.”

  Air swept into her.

  “That’s good. Keep it up. I’ll count.”

  After ten breaths, the spinning stopped. After fifteen, she felt the weight of her knees on the ground. She opened one finger at a time and then drew her arms from the shaft.