The Trumpet Lesson

by Dianne Romain

  “He’s in the country.”

  She saw Tavelé running across a gravel road, his tongue flapping and his eyes dancing, and then a car, the squeal of brakes, a thud. “How did it happen? Was he hit … ?”

  “They would never hit him.”

  “They? Who?”

  “The Petersons. A New Orleans family. Friends of Samuel, the tuba player who left for the summer to play jazz in The Big Easy.”

  “Tavelé’s in New Orleans?”

  “No. The Petersons are staying at Samuel’s cabin. You know, the place near a village way out in the country. Where we sat by a stream, eating pizza baked in a brick oven. I took you there a couple of years ago. Remember? Tavelé loved the pizza.”

  “I remember him stealing mine.” He had been a scamp, that Tavelé.

  “The Petersons are looking after Samuel’s dog. She’s Tavelé’s mother. That’s why Tavelé’s there.”

  “So, he’s okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s okay. He jumped in the Peterson’s car last month when they came in for some supplies they couldn’t get locally.”

  She scratched out “Dead.”

  “I’m going out there to see him. But I’ll never get him back, Callie. After being there, he won’t come back to me.”

  Hadn’t he just talked about giving Tavelé away? To Pamela, of all people. She put the pencil in her mouth. Bit into the rubber tip.

  “He’ll want to stay there with his mom.”

  She spit out the pencil. “Remember those other times he ran away? He always came running when you found him.”

  “But he wasn’t with his mom, then, was he?”

  He sounded bitter. But why? “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.” She glanced through the draft. Just a question of typing in the changes. “I can be ready in no time.”

  “Oh, no, you’re way too busy. What with your mother there. And Pamela’s baby.”

  “Pamela’s baby?”

  “When were you going to tell me, Granny Callie?” He sounded dejected. “So, no, I’ll just go on my own. I might as well get used to it, with you chumming around with Pamela.”

  Oh, dear. She bowed her head and put a hand over her eyes.

  His tone turned determined. “But if I do get Tavelé back, she can’t have him.” He hung up.

  With the phone still in her hand, she thought of the jaguar. She imagined him looking back in disgust.

  SHE took a papaya out of the refrigerator. Her mother had been right. Armando needed her support. Especially now. She cut the papaya in two, put one half cut-side down on a plate, and put it back in the fridge. But instead, she had betrayed him. No wonder he was angry. She scooped out the round, black seeds, and discarded them in the compost bucket. At least he would get Tavelé back. She smiled, thinking of Tavelé running to Armando the way he always did. How she would like to be there. She slid a paring knife under the papaya skin. But she couldn’t, because of her own selfishness. She peeled off smooth strips of skin. Attaching herself to Pamela when she knew from the start that would hurt Armando. But she hadn’t been able to stop herself. And now there was no way she could give up Pamela. She sighed. If only she could have been candid with him. Maybe, then, he wouldn’t be so angry. She cut the papaya into slices and then cut the slices into chunks. She had lost her mother’s respect, too. She divided the chunks into two azure bowls and set them on the table by the place settings, where she had already placed tea, cereal, and soy milk. All because she had been drawn to Pamela. Mesmerized by how she played “The Lost Child.” Now she felt lost herself.

  Forty-One

  HER MOTHER CAME TO THE TABLE WHEN CALLIE called. She looked down to spread a napkin across her lap and then up at Callie. “I had a long talk with John last night.”

  A long talk. Without laughter. “I am sorry, Mother. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “No, Callie, I’m the one who’s sorry. I should not have said what I did.” She smoothed the napkin across her lap. “I needed to look at my own behavior, the words I left unsaid, the deeds I left undone. All those years you lived in Chicago, and I never went once, even after your father died. Not once. But what I regret most is not being there with you when your baby came. Leaving you alone like that, Callie. It is unforgiveable.”

  “That was a long time ago, Mother. It’s all right.” She couldn’t say she had not wanted her mother there. She had not even let Aunt Ida come to the hospital. “I understand. It was Dad. He made you promise. You had no choice.”

  “Let me go on, Callie. That’s why I came here.” She pushed her chair back a little from the table, turning toward Callie. “They say you can’t go home without reverting to who you were. You were always a good girl, Callie. Quiet. You did your homework, helped with the dishes. You did what we asked. Your father and I.” She took in a breath and then went on. “It’s no longer necessary for either of us to please your father. That promise your father extracted from me, from both of us. You don’t have to keep it.” She looked into Callie’s eyes. “You don’t need to be that ‘good girl’ now. You don’t have to hide.”

  So that was her mother’s idea of quality time with her. Bringing up her past. Encouraging her not to hide. Not hide? And expose Gwendolyn. That was not an option. But she knew her mother meant well. She reached out to touch her mother’s hand. “It’s in the past, Mother.”

  Her mother sat up straighter as if to give herself courage. “I never told you what happened the morning your father died.” She paused a moment and then went on. “Pastor’s daughter had been in church the Sunday before, back visiting her parents. ‘Why couldn’t Callie be like her,’ your father said. ‘She honors her father and mother.’ It wasn’t the first time he’d made a comment like that. I never told you that either. Things he would say about you not coming home.” She looked away and then back at Callie. “I’m not sure what came over me that morning, but I told him it was his fault you didn’t come home. What did he expect the way he had talked to you? The way he continued to talk. As if he had been a victim.”

  “I suppose he apologized right then and there.” Callie could not keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  “Callie, please.” Her mother looked as if she would cry.

  And then it came to her. Her mother would have felt responsible for her father’s death. She took both of her mother’s hands into hers. “Dad’s fall. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Maybe he was distracted by what I had said. I don’t know. But that’s not what’s worrying me. It’s that I hadn’t been fair to him. It wasn’t all his fault that you didn’t come home, or that, in a way, we had lost you.”

  She sighed. Would her mother never stop defending him.

  As if she had read her daughter’s mind, her mother went on. “I won’t make excuses for your father. I’m done with that. But it’s not his behavior I want to talk about. It’s mine.” She took her hands from Callie’s and sat up a little straighter in her chair. “After he died, I realized my silence wasn’t just protecting him. I was protecting myself.” She leaned forward. “I was afraid, Callie. I was afraid of his temper. I was afraid of his tears. But more than anything I was afraid he would leave me, and I would be alone.” She paused a moment and then went on. “When he died, I thought I would die, too. I wanted to die. I waited to die. And then one dawn, I heard a robin singing in the garden. It was four years to the day he died, and the first time I woke without reaching to feel him by my side. I had stopped being afraid. I still missed him, but I was no longer afraid of being alone.” She paused again. “I sometimes wonder, Callie, if you are afraid? Not of being alone. It’s not that. It’s that I wonder if there are things we would have talked about, if I had not protected Dad—not protected myself—for so long.”

  “It’s all right, Mother. It’s better this way. Truly.” Her hands had begun to perspire. Didn’t she have a translation she could do? She started to stand up.

  “Callie, please. Stay.”

  She wiped her hands on her shirt and sett
led back in her chair.

  Her mother leaned toward her. “I was overjoyed when I found I was pregnant. If someone had taken you from me, I don’t think I could have gone on. And yet I made you give up your baby. It wasn’t just Dad. I said you could go stay with Aunt Ida. That no one would have to know.”

  She reached out a hand to her mother. “Please don’t worry about that.”

  Her mother took her hand between hers. “And then, afterward, you and I never talked about it. Even after your dad died. I never once asked how you felt. I never told you how sorry I was.”

  She thought again of how her mother had avoided the topic of babies. Tears came to her eyes. “Please don’t feel bad, Mother. Maybe you were protecting yourself and Dad, but I felt protected by you, too.” If her mother had pried, it would have been more difficult to keep her promise to her baby and to Gwendolyn, the woman her baby had become.

  And she had never wanted to talk about how she felt about letting her baby go. It was one thing for her mother to have expected her teenage daughter to give up her baby. It was another for her to give up her own baby. She’s the one who did that. She, herself. Her mother did not steal the baby from her. She just left her alone to do what she would do. And that’s what she did. She opened her arms and let her baby go.

  She took her hand from her mother’s and then sat back and picked up her fork. “Shall we eat?”

  Her mother looked taken aback. “Oh, well, I thought …” But then she recovered. “Yes, of course.” She started to reach for her fork and then paused. “Do you mind, Callie, if I say grace?”

  Her mother always said grace at home, but had not since her arrival in Guanajuato. She put her fork down. “Please do.”

  “Thank you, Lord, for the food before us. Thank you for giving me the daughter who served this food. And, most of all, dear Lord, thank you for making it possible for us to share this food, mother and daughter, together. Amen.”

  Mother and daughter together. She was not a believer, but she would thank the Lord for that. Mother and daughter together. Tears came to her eyes again. “Amen.”

  IT didn’t take long to finish breakfast and wash up, not long enough for her to decide how to distract her mother, who had begun to ask questions about Armando and Pamela. She felt comfortable enough telling her mother about Armando’s resistance to Maestro Chávez retiring. About how he blamed Pamela’s hair for the maestro getting lost. But then she was stymied. She couldn’t relate Armando’s wild theories about Pamela being responsible for Tavelé’s disappearance. Her mother might bring up her deceiving Pamela again.

  To her relief, her mother didn’t seem to notice her uncomfortable silence. When the dishes were done, she dried her hands on her apron and said she wanted to get on with the booties she had started making for Pamela’s baby.

  After helping her mother settle in the shade of the avocado tree, Callie made herself another cup of tea and went to her desk. She looked forward to finishing her translation.

  Just as she was opening her document, the phone rang.

  “You won’t believe this.” Armando said. “At rehearsal break I was talking with this sweet elderly lady in the Plaza Baratillo. We were watching a couple of dogs chase each other around the fountain. One of them was brindled, like Tavelé, and I started telling the lady about him.”

  His voice sounded light. Was he no longer angry? Or was he just rubbing it in? That he had found someone else to share his troubles with.

  “I told her how worried I am that he won’t want to go home with me when I see him this afternoon, and with you busy with other things, I had to go alone.”

  No hint of sarcasm. That was good. Or was it?

  “And do you know what?”

  “No. What?”

  She heard a drum roll and then he said, “La bonne femme offered to go with me. Just like that.”

  So, the good woman was taking her place. What if she also spoke French?

  “And then when we were discussing where to meet, Pamela showed up.”

  Pamela did speak French, but that would probably only annoy him.

  “I ignored her, of course.”

  Of course. Should she say how sorry she was about Pamela now? Before it was too late.

  “But the lady put her arm around Pamela and asked me if I knew her daughter. I almost fell over. That sweet lady with her tailored suit and her hair pulled back into a chignon was Mrs. Fischer.”

  Pamela’s mother offering to go with Armando. She couldn’t have picked a better replacement. But, still, she wished she could go herself.

  “Can you imagine? She didn’t seem anything like Pamela.”

  Perhaps not. Superficially, anyway.

  “You should have seen the shoes Pamela had on—you could puncture a tire with the toes, and those crazy red curls sticking out all over her head.”

  So, some of Armando’s feelings hadn’t changed.

  “Of course, she tried to go along with us.”

  How was she supposed to be on his side when he said things like that?

  “But when she offered to postpone her lesson and take us in her car …” another drum roll came from Armando. “… the dear lady said ‘No, Dear. You mustn’t upset your schedule. Armando has arranged transportation.’ Then she took Pamela’s arm and they started to walk off. Oh, but then Mrs. Fischer turned to me and said, ‘Now don’t you worry, Dear. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.’”

  When she, herself, had said that, he hadn’t been convinced. But now, quoting Mrs. Fischer, his voice sounded calm. She would have been the one to go with him, if it weren’t for Pamela.

  Before hanging up, he said, “You’re okay, aren’t you? Everything’s okay there, isn’t it?”

  So, he hadn’t been trying to make her feel left out? He did care? She looked out to see her mother take a break from crocheting to wave at her. She lifted a hand back. “Yes, of course.” She would be okay—once she got to work.

  SHE had just finished one translation and started another one, when the phone rang again.

  “You won’t believe what happened.” Pamela sounded worried.

  That Pamela’s mother was going off with Armando. Yes, she would believe it. “Armando told me.”

  “Does he know, too?” She sounded incredulous.

  That Pearl was going with him to pick up Tavelé. “Well, of course.”

  “But how could she have told him, when she didn’t say anything to me?”

  “I thought you knew. Armando said you came by when he and your mother were talking about picking up Tavelé. He said you offered to take them.”

  “Oh, that. I wasn’t too happy about her going off alone with him.”

  She frowned. She hadn’t been as happy as she should have been either.

  “But it was clear he didn’t want me along. He got his way on that one. But that’s not what I called about.”

  “No?”

  “No. I was rifling through my backpack to look for a hat for Mother to take with her, and the baby shoe came out with it.”

  “Oh, dear.” She thought of the leash that slipped out of her backpack at her lesson. Pamela had noticed it. Had Pamela’s mother noticed the baby shoe?

  “I grabbed it and slid it back in the pack, but I think she saw it. She didn’t say anything then, but just before she left, she said, ‘Is there something you want to say before I go?’ and all I could think of was, ‘Armando’s a handful.’ I didn’t know what else to say. It just wasn’t the time to bring up the past.”

  “I know what you mean.” She wished her mother felt the same way.

  “There wasn’t time to go into it, not with Armando champing at the bit to get Tavelé. He’d already called three times. I wish I’d never given him my cell number. And so she left—with that image of the shoe in her head, and she’s with Armando of all people.”

  “À cœur vaillant rien d’impossible.”

  “French. Let’s see, that means… ah, it’s been a while …”

&nb
sp; “It just came to me, Pamela. I’m not sure why. But it’s true, I think. The saying. To a brave heart, a brave love, nothing is impossible. You’re worried about your mother. You’re afraid she will suffer. I understand. But you can tell her what happened just the way you told me, and she’ll be fine. Your heart is brave, and, from what you’ve told me about your mother, so is hers. So you’ll be fine, too. You’ll see.”

  Forty-Two

  THE DAY WENT WELL. HER MOTHER FINISHED the booties, Callie made progress on her translation, and Juanito brought them fresh papaya. Callie had even thought up some safe topics for their dinnertime conversation.

  She filled their plates with beans, Spanish rice, sliced avocado, and tossed green salad, and then arranged their trays to take down to the patio. It looked like the rain would hold off long enough for them to finish dinner under the avocado tree.

  Her mother had already talked for hours about her wedding plans, how they would be married on a Saturday evening, the entire congregation invited, as was the custom, and then there would be a reception in the church basement. The next day after church, there would be a gathering for family and close friends at John’s house. They had not planned a honeymoon. Yet. John wanted to take her somewhere, anywhere. But she was happy to stay at his place, sitting on the porch, watching the geese fly low over the lake. Luckily, questions remained. What would her mother wear? What songs would be sung at the service? Was there anywhere her mother might be persuaded to go for a honeymoon?

  The sun had set, and they were still talking about the wedding. Callie got up to turn on the patio light. Soon it would be time for her mother to go to her room and call John. She could relax now.

  Her mother seemed in no hurry to retire, so Callie began asking about how she could help her mother. She expected to have a translation deadline a few days before the wedding. But she could help serve the Sunday lunch. She would take charge of cleaning up, too. And she could stay for a while to help her mother clear out her house.