The Trumpet Lesson

by Dianne Romain

  She read over the first part of her manuscript and then stopped and leaned back in her chair again. Too bad she hadn’t told Armando of that husband. But she clearly had not had her wits about her, especially once Armando started in on her. And not just about failing to search Pamela’s house from the get-go, but for spending so much time with Pamela that she had not even missed Tavelé. She didn’t care about Tavelé, did she? Admit it! That’s what he had said. She felt so hurt, she almost said, “Who has been looking for him every day? Not you!” But instead she told him how she especially missed Tavelé in the evenings. How in other summers, when Armando was away, Tavelé would lie by her chair after dinner while she was working and then rest his head on her knee so she would pet him. They would stay there like that until bedtime. Both of them missing Armando. And now she missed both of them alone.

  She returned to her manuscript and then stopped again. As for telling him about being the baby’s local grandmother, there was no reason to tell him right away. Pamela would surely wait to announce her pregnancy until after the first trimester. So she had months to figure out what to say. And by then Armando would have calmed down about Claude, as he had always done before. And with that reassuring thought, she returned to her translation.

  Twenty-Nine

  CALLIE CHECKED HER BACKPACK AT THE ENTRANCE to the library, a security measure that annoyed her because it meant she then had to juggle laptop, notebooks, pens, pencils, billfold, and keys up the stairs to the reading rooms. But she climbed the stairs cheerfully enough, happy that she would have no problem meeting the deadline she set for herself, which, as was her custom, fell a day before her translation was due. That had served her well, since she never knew when Armando might appear with an emergency. Something was brewing now, she was sure.

  She set up at her customary desk by a balcony overlooking Truco Street. Truco. Trick. Dodge. Funny, she hadn’t thought of that the other day when she managed to dodge the Jehovah’s Witnesses there.

  She read through the document. Just the usual mining language. She should be able to get a draft done in time to catch Pamela after rehearsal and set up another lesson.

  She had just finished the last sentence when she heard the clock strike a quarter past one. That gave her fifteen minutes to pack up and get to the theater by one-thirty. More than enough time. She juggled the items back down the stairs to retrieve her backpack.

  On the way to the theater, she passed a taco stand. The sautéed onions made her mouth water. Which reminded her of Pamela. She should start thinking about taking good care of herself, eating well, getting plenty of sleep. She could mention that when she saw her. Oh, and see if Tavelé had turned up again. Pamela had promised to hold him, if he did. And wasn’t there something else? She looked up a moment. Oh, yeah, she needed to schedule a trumpet lesson.

  She paused. Perhaps she should make a list. She slid out of her backpack and opened it. Her notepad was there, but she couldn’t find her pencil. She leaned against a wall and started looking through the pack. As she did so, a man carrying stacked boxes of Coca-Cola on his shoulders tried to get between her and the bus in the street. She turned to make way for him, but nonetheless he jostled her backpack as he went by, and in her attempt to hang onto it, she dropped her notepad, which fell under the bus. She would just have to remember what she wanted to ask Pamela.

  Hadn’t she read somewhere about using imagery? Might as well give it a try. The first person Tavelé followed home from orchestra rehearsal played the trumpet. That linked two things. She held up two fingers. And for reminding Pamela to rest. What? Ah, a hammock. She added a third finger. She imagined Tavelé lying in a hammock and playing the trumpet. That would do it.

  A doorman stopped her at the theater door and said, “Musicians only.” Miguel, a clarinet player, clarified as he passed by: “The guest conductor. He doesn’t want anyone seeing how he treats us.”

  “Oh …” Too bad. At least Armando was spared.

  Miguel turned back. “If you’re looking for Armando, he just left.”

  “Armando?” She took in a breath. What was he doing back? She had just talked to him the day before, and he hadn’t mentioned coming back early.

  “He’s on his way to Maestro Chávez’s.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He must be. And it must have been such an emergency that Armando hadn’t time to let her know. She should call him. But there was something else she was to do. She noticed her three fingers waiting to remind her. Tavelé. Hammock. Trumpet. “Is Pamela here?”

  “She’s here all right.” He pointed a thumb inside. “Can’t you hear her?”

  Callie leaned toward the door. “Is she practicing?”

  “She’s blasting her trumpet up to the ceiling. It sounds like she’s trying to rival the firework rockets.”

  Like her father on a bad day.

  The sound stopped. She started to push by the musicians exiting.

  “You’d better wait here.” Miguel said, “No tarda.”

  No tarda could mean anything from five minutes to five hours. She looked at her watch again. It was one-thirty-five. She stepped back from the door.

  Miguel went off, leaving her standing there, tapping her foot. Armando back. Was it Maestro Chávez? Or had something happened with Claude?

  She heard an angry wail of trumpet. Had Pamela been insulted by the guest conductor? Callie looked at her watch. She should call Armando, but the noise of the passing buses made talking impossible. She started to walk away. Then she looked at her fingers again. Tavelé playing a trumpet in a hammock. A hammock. That’s what Pamela needed. Rest. She would tell her that. Then they could walk up the hill together, and she would call Armando from home. If only Pamela would stop blasting and pack up her instrument.

  A bus stopped and people piled in. More musicians came out of the theater and, finally, Pamela.

  She headed straight to Callie. “Hoping to conspire with Armando, were you?”

  Conspire. Oh, dear. She cleared her throat. “I …” She held up her three fingers. “I wanted to ask you …”

  Pamela looked up at the darkening sky. “I’ve got to get a taxi.”

  She looked at her three fingers. “Tavelé.”

  “What?”

  She kept her eyes on her fingers. Lying in the hammock. Playing the trumpet. She started coughing.

  “So Tavelé is all you care about?”

  Why had she started with Tavelé? “I was wondering …” She wanted to ask her about sleep, but she couldn’t get out the rest of the sentence before coughing.

  “Wondering what?”

  She turned toward Pamela, who was flagging down a taxi. If only she could stop coughing. She stepped into the street behind Pamela.

  “I’ve already told Armando all I know about Tavelé.” She opened the taxi door. “If that’s what you’re wondering about.” She slammed the door and turned away as the taxi drove off.

  Callie stood there as the downpour began, staring at the taxi and holding up her three fingers.

  HUDDLING at her entry door, her soaked jacket pasted against her, she regretted not having an awning. It might help, too, if she would carry her umbrella. But the weather had been so lovely in the morning. She took off her backpack and unzipped it, holding it close to protect the laptop. She felt for her keys in the top pocket, where she always put them. Nothing. She tried to remember whether they had been among the things she had juggled up and down the stairs of the library. She always had them there. She glanced down the callejón and then looked at the backpack. She must have put the keys somewhere else, but where? She felt around under the laptop. Nothing. She unzipped the side pockets. No keys. She slipped her hand into the side pocket of her jacket. Not there. She opened the top pocket of her backpack again. The keys had to be there. She felt and looked again. No keys. She stared down the callejón. Had they fallen out when the Coca-Cola man bumped into her backpack?

  She zipped her
backpack and cradled it against her chest. She may be locked out of her house and all wet, but she had her work, and—with Pamela so angry—she no longer need worry about being her baby’s local grandmother. What had she been thinking anyway, agreeing to coddle a baby, and at the risk of meeting Gwendolyn. It was better this way. If she and Pamela were not close, she could leave town when Gwendolyn came to visit. No need to explain her absence. She would be no one important to Pamela or her baby, just a neighbor who had taken a trumpet lesson. Learned to breathe.

  She closed her eyes and rested her back against the door. Had she learned to breathe? It seemed not. Not if she considered honestly how she felt now. Which was like fainting.

  She felt herself falling backward. Was she fainting? No. The door was giving way. She grabbed the handle to catch herself and turned toward the opening.

  Doña Petra stood just inside, her shoulder against the partly open door. “Señora? Está bien?”

  She paused, pondering Spanish usage. Doña Petra continued to use formal pronouns and verb forms with her. Juanito and other children had used informal forms from first meeting her. Were times changing?

  Doña Petra shook her keys to get her attention.

  So, it was as simple as that. She had left her keys in the lock. She had never done that before. And then she remembered the Jehovah’s Witnesses questioning her when she was leaving. No wonder she had forgotten the keys.

  She let Doña Petra out and then returned to the dining room. The trumpet stood on its bell by the terrace door. She put her hands on her hips. No point in asking Pamela for a lesson now. She would get rid of the trumpet. It’s what got her into this mess in the first place.

  When she picked it up, it looked as if it were beaming at her. “Happy you’ve caused so much trouble,” she said. She glanced at the jaguar, who appeared to be thinking: just like your father, blaming anyone but himself. “Well, so be it!” she said. “This trumpet is out of here.” The case would go back to Pamela, if she ever spoke with her again.

  She went into the kitchen for a bag, put the trumpet in it, and placed it by the entry door. She would carry it to a dumpster herself, she thought, brushing her hands against each other in satisfaction. While she was at it, she may as well get rid of the other things she had bought from Juanito. Stop kidding herself. Fixed or not, they cluttered up her house, distracting her. She had her work. Good work. That should be the focus of her life.

  She shivered. She had to get out of those wet clothes. Then she noticed the answering machine blinking. She went over to the machine and played the message. Her mother. She wanted to talk to Callie about her trip. Her mother taking a trip? That was odd. Her mother resisted driving fifty miles to the closest city. She headed back toward the terrace. Her aunt must be behind this one. Where could they be going? She looked out over the garden. Maybe to that new B&B in the town down the highway, the one with the Civil War cannonball in a column of the court house. Aunt Ida had said the town was courting tourists. She smiled thinking of her aunt taking her mother to a B&B ten miles away. “Baby steps,” her aunt had said to Callie when she got frustrated learning to knit. “That’s how you learn. Baby steps.” The same language Pamela had used. Was that what her aunt was doing, using baby steps to help her mother overcome fear of travel? Well, she couldn’t find out now. She had to warm up first. When she entered the terrace to go downstairs, she glanced at the trumpet in the bag by the door and then at the angel by the stairway going down. They looked like sentinels, both of them.

  Thirty

  CALLIE HAD TAKEN HER SHOWER AND JUST LIFTED the receiver to dial her mother when someone pounded on the callejón door. Armando. She looked over at the jaguar, whose eyes filled with compassion. She put the phone down and frowned at him. Compassion? For whom?

  “Callie, Calecita.” Armando’s voice sounded anxious. She looked at her watch. Three p.m. The personal deadline for her translation was six p.m. No time for a scene. “I listen,” she heard her aunt say, when she’d asked how she calmed down families in conflict. “I listen.” That’s what she would do. If she had to say something, she would repeat what he said to show him she had heard. That would have to do for now.

  He was still pounding on the door when she got there, and it opened so quickly she backed into a potted cactus. “Ouch.”

  “I told you to move that pot.”

  She pulled out the spines. “I’m okay.”

  The telephone rang. “I’ll let the answering machine get that,” she said, and went to turn off the ringer.

  He followed her into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Chou.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m just so upset. That Pamela. She won’t give Tavelé back.”

  So he was upset about Pamela. But he hadn’t come back early because of Pamela, had he? She recalled her aunt’s advice again. Listen. Just listen.

  She patted a stool by the center island, and he sat down, his shoulders slumped. He leaned his head into his hands. “I knew she couldn’t be trusted.”

  “You knew she couldn’t be trusted.” She didn’t like how that sounded. He might think she agreed with him.

  “Boy, did the guest conductor lay into her.” He smirked. “She deserved it, though. I’ve told her not to play those jazz riffs.”

  “You told her not to play jazz riffs.”

  “She plays them in rehearsals. It’s annoying. I told you that before. Maestro Chávez tolerates it, but this guy set her straight.”

  “He set her straight.”

  “He told her to stop it or go back to Harlem.” He mimicked the conductor pointing the way for Pamela.

  She gasped. She could not repeat that. She felt sick to her stomach. “Armando …”

  Armando looked down a moment and his voice became soft. “I’ve been trying to tell her for months. She wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Set someone straight with a racist comment!” Callie was shaking all over.

  “Okay, no one deserves that, not even her.”

  She looked him in the eyes. “Certainly not.”

  “Okay, I never should have talked that way. But listen to this. When I asked her to give Tavelé back, she told me she didn’t have him.” Armando stared hard into her eyes. “Can you believe that? Didn’t she know I would find out the truth?”

  “She told you she didn’t have Tavelé.” She coughed. Was she really supposed to just repeat words?

  “I got really angry then.”

  “I can imagine. But Armando …”

  “I told her she had twenty-four hours to get Tavelé back from wherever she had hidden him and give him to me.”

  There was so much she needed to say to him, but not now. She looked over at her backpack.

  Armando followed her eyes. “You have a deadline, don’t you?”

  “Six p.m.”

  “I’ll clear out of here,” he said. “Meet me for dinner at the Santa Fe?” He scooted his stool back and stood up. “I just can’t get over her lying like that.” He shook his head. “Who does she think she is?”

  “Armando …”

  “Okay, I’m going. I’m going.” He headed across the terrace toward the callejón door and stopped when he saw the trumpet in the bag. “I’ll get rid of this for you.” He picked it up.

  “Armando, I …”

  “I know how you don’t like clutter. Besides, I told Pamela you wouldn’t be taking any more lessons from her.”

  Callie took in a breath. “You told her I would not be taking lessons.”

  “I told her you were helping me find Tavelé, that’s why you took a lesson.”

  “You told her … What?!” Her chest tightened.

  “I thought she was going to hit me.” He put the trumpet under his arm and opened the door. “You can get to work now.”

  She walked up to him and reached out. “Give me that trumpet.”

  “Don’t tell me you want this thing?” he said holding it away from him, as if it stank.

  She took it from him. “Now, g
o back into the dining area and sit down.” She shoved the door shut, put the trumpet back where it had been, and followed him.

  Armando took a seat at the dining table, and she sat across from him, her back to the terrace doors.

  “Pamela does not have Tavelé.”

  “But he went to her house.”

  “He is always running off, Armando. He ran off from you, remember?”

  His face turned dark. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Armando. Please.” She paused, trying to control her breathing.

  “You seemed to have gotten really buddy-buddy with Pamela. I suppose you made muffins for her.”

  She said nothing.

  He leaned toward her. “Why can’t you just come out and say what you’re thinking?”

  “Oh, so you’re the model of candor?” She cringed, regretting her words and tone. But didn’t she have a right to be angry with him for attacking Pamela the way he had? If only he had stayed in Veracruz with Claude the way he should have.

  “Model of candor.” He mimicked her tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She considered stopping before she said more things she would regret, but her tongue had other ideas. “What happened in Veracruz? Why did you come back early?”

  Armando knocked his chair over standing up. “What has she done to you?”

  Callie stood between him and the terrace door. It wasn’t the best time, the best place, or the best manner, but she was not going to let another minute go by without telling him. “Armando …” She reached out to touch his arm. “It’s time you were straight about Claude.” What had she said? Straight about Claude. That sounded strange. She coughed. “I mean …”

  “There’s nothing to be straight about.” He pushed her aside, stalked across the terrace to the callejón door, and then turned to look at her. “It’s over.”