The Trumpet Lesson

by Dianne Romain

  CALLIE stood at the open door, watching Armando walk down the callejón. She should follow him. But what would she say? That she, too, knew about loss? She shut the door and leaned against it. The trumpet stood there shrouded in the bag. Why hadn’t she just let him take it and go? She took in a breath. She needed to stop interrogating herself. She lifted her chest. She would get back to work.

  SHE had feared Claude was becoming impatient about living apart from Armando. She opened her laptop. And she had said nothing to warn Armando. She clicked the power button. Nothing at all.

  She looked at the clock. Four p.m. Two hours until the document was due. The call to her mother would have to wait.

  She read the first sentence and changed a word. That conversation could not be brief. And now she would have to talk to Pamela, too. But what could she say? The next line looked okay. Was Armando right? Was she siding with Pamela? Well, if she hadn’t been before, she was now. How dare he call her a liar! The next line looked okay. No wonder she was angry. How many paragraphs to go? She counted them. Ten. She really needed to move on. And Pamela. So what if Armando told her Callie had asked for a trumpet lesson as a pretext for looking for Tavelé. Pamela should have given her a chance to explain instead of running off after rehearsal. Callie counted the paragraphs again. Still ten to go. She edited three lines. Didn’t Pamela see how upset Armando was? Couldn’t she have had some sympathy for him? She looked at the flyer of Tavelé on her desk. Where have you gone this time and why for so long?

  The doorbell rang. Let it ring. She had to get her translation done. She read the next paragraph. Thank goodness it looked okay. The bell rang again. Wait a minute. Hadn’t she seen the Jehovah’s Witnesses down the hill when Armando left? She ran out the terrace door. The bell was still ringing. She ran back to her desk, stuffed the flyer in her pocket, and ran out the door again. The bell stopped ringing. She picked up her speed, calling “Espérame, espérame,” pulled open the door, and almost bumped into Juanito who was standing there holding out a plaster Virgin de Guadalupe. A gift from Armando, he said. Juanito had something else, too. Another letter for Callie that had been delivered to Juanito’s grandmother by mistake.

  Callie shoved the letter in her pocket, took the statue, and, looking up and down the callejón, asked Juanito if he had seen the Jehovah’s Witnesses. When he pointed up the hill, she took off with the Virgin under her arm.

  The first flight of stairs felt steeper than usual. She stopped and looked at the Virgin. How much do you weigh? She studied the hill. There were three callejones off the next landing. Which one had they taken? She had just started up again when she saw two men in slacks and pressed shirts coming from the callejón to the right and headed to the one to the left.

  She had to catch their attention. “Señores, señores.” They turned their heads in unison and stood looking down at her holding the Virgin de Guadalupe over her head.

  SHE stood the Virgin on the dining table and then sat down at her desk, leaning back to catch her breath. She had offered the men an hour of her time to talk about the Bible, if they found the dog in the picture. They looked at each other a moment, and then the older of the two, a man close to her age, bowed slightly and said that they would be happy to look for Tavelé, but expected nothing in return. The man said she could count on them, and with another slight bow, introduced himself. “José Martín Gonzales Guzmán, a sus órdenes.”

  She had heard the customary tag, “a sus órdenes,” many times before. But when Señor Gonzáles said the words, he looked at her in the eyes and smiled in such a way she knew he was truly at her service. She felt chagrined at her presumption, the crassness of the exchange she had offered. Could she do nothing right? She looked over at the jaguar, who stared back at her without comment.

  Thirty-One

  CALLIE NEEDED TO FOCUS ON HER WORK. A CUP of tea. That would help. She got up to put on the kettle and noticed a light blinking on the answering machine. It must be Armando. She pushed the button. “We need to talk.” A woman’s voice. Pamela? It had to be. She listened to the message again. Yes, Pamela. She sounded warm, almost contrite. How could that be? She looked at the phone. Dare she find out? She backed away. Not now. She had to finish the translation. And call her mother.

  She was pulling her chair back to sit down when the doorbell sounded. She glanced at the translation, sighed, and then went to the terrace.

  “Callie,” Pamela called through the door. “Callie, are you there? Callie.”

  Her mouth went dry.

  Pamela called again, “Callie. Callie.”

  She took a step toward the door and noticed the trumpet in the bag, ready to be given away. Her heart started pounding. What would Pamela think? She took in a slow breath. She could pretend she was not home. She turned to go back inside and then saw the look on the jaguar’s face. She stopped. She hadn’t been able to focus on her work anyway. She took in another slow breath. She may as well get it over with. She shoved the bag behind a pot and opened the door.

  Pamela came rushing in. “Oh, you are here. Thank goodness.” She gave Callie a little hug.

  She studied Pamela’s face. She looked friendly enough. But how could she be, after what Armando had told her?

  “Do you have anything to eat? I am famished.”

  Pamela famished. Well, good thing she had gone to the door. “Yes … sure. How about a muffin?”

  “Or two.” Pamela laughed.

  She caught herself glancing at Pamela’s flat tummy. Where did she put it all?

  “And some water. I’m dying of thirst.”

  She led Pamela through the dining area to the kitchen island, set the table, then filled two glasses of water, and got out some muffins, butter, and homemade mango jam.

  “Anything else?” Callie picked up the tea kettle. “I was just going to have tea.” She felt her eyelid twitch. She needed to calm down. She took in a breath. “I have fruit. Would you like a banana or an apple?”

  Pamela patted a stool. “Sit down, Callie.”

  She set the kettle down. “Would you prefer orange juice?” She pointed to a turquoise bowl filled with oranges. “I could make some.”

  Pamela patted the stool again. “Take a load off.”

  She sat down and looked at Pamela. Her heart was racing, and she could barely breathe, but she had to say something. She clasped her hands to steady herself. “You wanted to talk, you said.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry about Armando. He told me what he said.”

  Pamela picked up a muffin and rolled her eyes. “He’s been on me from the beginning. First, he tried to get me to change my hair.” She patted her curls. “Then he carried on about the jazz riffs.” She put the muffin on her plate. “And now that ridiculous story about you taking a lesson only to find Tavelé.” By the time she finished, she was near to shouting. She looked at Callie. Her voice softened. “You wouldn’t have …”

  She fingered the rim of her water glass. “Well …”

  Pamela reached for the muffin, then stopped and put her hands down. “If you want to come to my house to look for Armando’s dog, then do it.” She looked up at Callie. “I just need you to be honest about it.”

  Be honest? Now she felt hot and sticky all over. She took in a breath. “Well, Armando did think you had Tavelé. He asked me to look …”

  “So it was Armando’s idea. That makes sense.” She put a muffin on her plate. “Ami Mai told me not to jump to conclusions about you.”

  She hadn’t finished explaining. She cleared her throat.

  “That Armando.” She shook her head. “Look, Callie, I’m sorry about how I acted at the theater. It’s just that trust doesn’t come easily to me.”

  She understood that, and she was trying, but Pamela kept interrupting. Callie put a finger against her pulsing lid. She had to get on with it. “I had my own reason for taking the lesson.”

  Pamela put her palms against the table. “I need to get things straight. That’s how I am.”

&nb
sp; Get things straight. Okay. She took in a breath. “It wasn’t my reason. Looking for Tavelé.”

  Pamela went on as if she had not heard her. Her voice softened and she looked down at her hands. “The summer I turned seventeen, my cousin, the one who taught me to dive, he tried to kiss me.”

  She leaned back. What was Pamela saying? Her cousin? Didn’t she want her to explain about the lesson? To be honest? To tell her now? Wasn’t that why she called?

  “When I pulled away, he said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not related.’”

  What was Pamela saying? “Not related? Your cousin said that?”

  “He said, ‘Ask your mom, if you don’t believe me.’” She held out her hands and looked at them. “I am lighter than my mom, but so is my dad. I thought I’d taken after his side of the family.” She looked at Callie. “But no. It was like my cousin said. I was adopted.”

  So, Pamela was adopted. Was that what she wanted to talk about? No. It was how she learned. Oh, my. She reached out and touched Pamela’s hand. “That must have been hard, finding out that way.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” She looked up at Callie. “But wait a minute … What did you say, about having your own reason for taking a lesson?”

  “I wanted … to get to know you.”

  “That’s why you asked for a lesson?”

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s why.”

  “Then it was me you were looking for, not a dog?” She laughed.

  She smiled. “Yes, you. I heard you playing pedal tones one day when I passed your house. It reminded me of my dad, and then when you played “The Lost Child” … I had never heard it played that way …”

  Pamela looked down at her hands. “Well, I guess I know what it’s like. Feeling lost.” She looked up at Callie and smiled. “But now everything is different.” She stretched her arms above her head. “I would like some tea.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief and got up to put the kettle on.

  Pamela started up again. “When my mother confirmed I was adopted, I told her I was a lesbian and not to expect grandchildren. I don’t know why I said that. It just popped out. And here I am … pregnant!” She looked down at her tummy.

  Callie looked at Pamela’s tummy, too.

  “I have an appointment with a doctor.” She sat looking at Callie, as if she were hoping she would say something. Then she went on, hesitantly at first. “I … I also came by to see if you would go with me … It was Ami Mai’s idea. She wanted to fly down herself. Dance through the clouds.” She held her hands up over her head, dancing her fingers. She lowered her hands. “But she has performances.” She took in a breath and looked at Callie, her face serious. “To be honest, I wasn’t so sure about asking you. Not after what Armando said.” She paused, and then went on. “But Ami Mai said I should take a chance and trust you.”

  Take a chance and trust her. So that’s how trusting her seemed to Pamela—risky. She wanted to reassure her. She wished she could. But what could she say when she had been vacillating so? Nor had she been fully open with Pamela, or Armando, for that matter.

  “That is, if you have the time … I know you work and all … But it wouldn’t take long. And …” Her voice became soft. “It would mean a lot to me to have you there.”

  The scene in the Jardín came back to her again. The plaintive cry of the trumpet. Of course, she couldn’t let Pamela go alone.

  “So …” She opened her hands. “What do you think?”

  She laid her hands on Pamela’s and smiled. “I think yes.”

  Pamela laughed, sounding relieved. “Ami Mai was right again!” She took her hands back and put another muffin on her plate. “Funny, now when I think of it, what I said to Mom way back then, but I wasn’t trying to be funny then. I wanted to hurt her. I said lots of other things, too.”

  She looked at the muffins on her plate, but did not reach for one. “The trumpet kept me sane. It balanced the darkness that came over me, seeing my mother anew. Not the woman who helped me up when I fell. Not the woman who taught me how to sing. Not the woman who loved me beyond measure. But the woman who made my life a lie. I no longer knew who I was or where I belonged.”

  She felt her stomach sink. Had Gwendolyn felt that way?

  “Even now I sometimes feel that way. Especially when I go to a new place and don’t yet have a cadre of friends or even one person, like you, whom I trust.”

  Could Pamela trust her? She thought of the trumpet she had snatched back from Armando. Yes, she could. She smiled. But then she thought of the loyalty Armando expected. Could he trust her?

  “I told Mother she never would have lied like that to her own child.”

  Callie gasped.

  “I know. My reaction was extreme, but I was a teenager, after all. I had hormones.” She looked at her tummy again. “They’re acting up now, too. Ami Mai reminded me of that when I was yelling about you.”

  “Oh.” Callie felt her stomach tighten.

  “Even back then I didn’t yell for long. But neither did I talk to Mom or hang around her the way I had before. Mostly, I stayed in my room, practicing trumpet. I stopped seeing my friends, too. I didn’t want to talk about the lie with anyone. Not even with my father. Everyone else brought him their troubles. But I could not. He was too close to my mother. I changed my college plans, too. I had been planning to stay in Chicago. But after I found out about the lie, I chose Mills College.”

  The kettle whistled, and Pamela paused.

  “Oh, sorry.” Callie’d forgotten all about the kettle. She turned it off and then poured the steaming water over chamomile leaves in the teapot. She set the pot in the center of the island.

  Pamela leaned forward to smell the fragrance, smiled, and then leaned back again. “My father drove me there. To Mills. The week before we left, he came to my room. He said he had been remiss in not talking with me earlier. My mother’s blood pressure had gone up, and he was worried about her—and me. He said it was not good for either of us to be estranged, and it would be worse with me so far away. He asked me to say something kind to Mom before we left. ‘I suppose you want me to pretend nothing happened,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just want you to say a few kind words, and I want you to look your mother in the eyes when you do.’

  “Before he left my room, he asked me to sit down, and then he sat beside me and took my hand in his. He reminded me that, as a rule, African Americans didn’t know their history. Their ancestors, stolen from Africa, lost their language, their religion, their family connections. He said that what defined them, what defined me, was not blood relations, but actions, and that my behavior toward my mother defined me as unforgiving and unkind. He asked whether that was how I wanted to define myself.” She sighed, as if hearing her father for the first time.

  “Later in Paris I read Sartre.” She took out a little book in French and put it on the table. “I don’t think my father read him, but his lesson sounded the same. Choosing is not easy. You can’t just choose to become a forgiving person any more than you can choose to become a great trumpeter. You have to take the many little steps to become one. You have to put yourself in the right environment. But it’s also how you choose to see where you are, what you choose to make of where you are, what risks you choose to take. Of course, there are all kinds of limitations. And yet we have options within them. And sometimes, with attention, we can alter the limitations. At least those we have imposed on ourselves.” She laughed. “That was quite a speech.” She licked her lips. “My mouth is dry.”

  Callie poured tea into a cup and set it in front of her.

  Pamela picked up the cup and blew on the tea, then set it down again. “I waited until the day we left. My instruments, bags, and boxes were already packed in the car. I thought we had everything, but my mother came out with another box. She set it on the hood of the car and turned to me with a look on her face I will never forget, a mixture of sadness and hope. ‘I made something for your dorm bed. I hope you like it.’ I open
ed the box. She had quilted together pieces of my favorite dresses from the time I was a little girl. I was so choked with tears I could barely speak, so I whispered, ‘It’s beautiful, Mom. You’re beautiful, Mom.’ We hugged until Dad said we had to go. I cried all the way to Omaha. Seven hours of crying.”

  Callie could feel the tears streaming down her own face.

  Pamela looked up at Callie and laughed. “And now I’ve got you crying, too … and I haven’t even finished.” She laughed again. “But I’ve got to eat first.” She picked up a muffin and took a bite.

  Thirty-Two

  WHEN PAMELA FINISHED HER SECOND MUFFIN, she brushed the crumbs off her fingers and said, “Have you read Plato’s Symposium?”

  “Some of it.” It was one of the books the philosopher had left. “I liked the part where Socrates describes ascending a ladder of love, starting with passion for a beautiful body.”

  “Hum.”

  Odd. She didn’t sound that interested, given she’d asked the question. But it was fascinating, what Socrates said. “There’s passion, too, for the beauty of science—you, know, like the elegance of the periodic table.”

  “The periodic table?” She sounded skeptical.

  “Really. I have one downstairs, if you’d like to see it.”

  Pamela laughed. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Anyway, the seeker ends up contemplating beauty itself.” It sounded like the philosopher, off by the lake in the mountains, away from the clutter of her house. Contemplating. A nice, quiet life. “What did you think of that part?”

  “I haven’t read Symposium.”

  “No?” Her mind strayed back to beauty. Unchanging, eternal, otherworldly beauty. It sounded blissful. She should ask the philosopher.

  “But Ami Mai has.”

  “What’s that?” She pinched herself discreetly. She should be listening to Pamela, not letting her mind wander or giving mini-lectures.