Counterpointe

by Ann Warner

  It might be as close as he would get to knowing what it felt like to be a father.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elegé

  A lament

  After the holidays, Sally Prentice, the teacher who’d helped Clare with tutoring suggestions, called to make a coffee date. Clare met her in a café near Northeastern.

  “You know how it is when they get carried away,” Sally said, concluding a story about her husband’s brief foray into woodworking that resulted in an oversupply of napkin holders she was still trying to dispose of. “Does your husband have any hobbies?”

  “Being a professor seems to take all his time.”

  “A ballerina and a professor. It’s an interesting combination. It must make for lively discussions at dinner.”

  Clare shook her head. “Rob knows very little about the ballet and I know nothing about chemistry.” Although, in the beginning, they’d never had difficulty finding things to talk about.

  “So, how did you meet?”

  “At a ballet reception.”

  “Well, he may not know much, but he must enjoy it if he’s attending receptions.”

  But he didn’t enjoy it. He merely tolerated it for her sake. That insight had the clarity and sharp edges of broken glass.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” Sally said. “We’re having a career day next Wednesday, and you know how little girls all go through the stage where they want to be ballerinas.”

  Discomfort bloomed into full-blown agony.

  “And I thought. That is...” Sally cocked her head and smiled tentatively. “I think it would be good for them to hear what it’s really like. That it’s not all about costumes and toe shoes and bright lights. The hard work behind the scenes...” Her voice trailed off, her expression uncertain.

  Clare looked away, taking a deep breath. “Since the accident—”

  “I put my foot in it, didn’t I?” Sally bit her lip. Then she smiled brightly. “I’m sorry. Forget it, okay? Hey, you haven’t updated me on Tyrese yet.”

  Clare went along with the change in subject, but Sally’s career day request kept her company all the way home and continued poking at her through a sleepless night. In the morning, after her shower, she examined her reflection in the full-length mirror.

  Although she’d gained some weight recently, she was still much too thin. She lifted her hands from her sides and clasped them in front of her, flexing her fingers. Then she moved her arms over her head, and her feet automatically shifted into position. She was no longer beautiful but she could see the elegance in the pose. She dropped her arms and let her shoulders slump. Another move she’d perfected for the dance.

  But then, all of them were. Every move she made. The way she walked, held her body, moved her arms...all refined, then polished by hours of rehearsal for Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, Nutcracker, and a dozen other ballets. Even her facial expressions were studied, practiced, and then forgotten as it became second nature to be able to project happiness, sadness, anger, tragedy.

  So, was that all there was to her...rehearsed movement, studied emotion?

  No. It couldn’t be. Artists had to sacrifice for their art. She’d sacrificed her body, not her soul.

  Or had she? And how did one answer such a question?

  Shivering, she dressed quickly. Then she called Sally’s voice mail at the school and said she would do the career day.

  “You were the star,” Sally told her afterward.

  “You said it yourself. Every little girl goes through a ballerina stage.”

  Sally shook her head. “No. More than that. You let them know how important it is to go after their dreams no matter what they are.”

  Clare had been so nervous in the beginning, she didn’t remember what she’d said. As for dreams, did she have any?

  “That bit with Peter and the Wolf was amazing, Clare. I loved the way you showed them that discipline and concentrated study were needed to understand a character before you can portray him or her on the stage.”

  She had brought a recording of Peter and the Wolf and used two short passages to demonstrate how facial expression and body posture helped create a character.

  She could have picked something from The Nutcracker or Cinderella, or another ballet, but she wasn’t yet ready for that. Baby steps.

  “You have a real gift as a teacher, Clare.”

  It was the second time someone had told her that. Still, she shrugged it off because it was too late to do anything about it. But the interaction with Sally’s class, the first time she’d played a piece of classical music since her injury, awakened a hunger in her.

  Back at the apartment, she looked through Rob’s albums and found amongst the country music, Jimmy Buffett, and classical jazz, the scores of the ballets she’d danced during her year and a half as a principal with Danse Classique. He also had a recording of the one ballet she hadn’t danced.

  She put Swan Lake on and sat listening to the ebb and flow of the music. What happened to her still hurt, although the pain had receded from active roar to dull ache, but her guilt over the pain she’d inflicted on Rob, rather than diminishing, had grown.

  He was such a gentle man, one who’d always put her needs before his own. Something she’d neither sufficiently valued nor reciprocated.

  And time was running out for making restitution.

  By the beginning of February, that cruelest of months, there were times when Clare was walking to Hope House when she suddenly realized she’d covered several blocks without any memory of waiting for lights, crossing streets, encountering people. Clearly, she needed to make some decisions about her future before she wandered into traffic. And, actually, the first decision, whether to stay in Boston, was also the easiest one. She’d already said the words out loud, to John—that a new start called for a new place.

  She would miss Beck, Vinnie, John, and Tyrese terribly, of course, but leaving felt like the right thing. Both for her sake and for Rob’s. But where to go and what to do once she got there were questions she still couldn’t answer. They represented the same dilemma she’d faced after her injury.

  Then she’d made the mistake of taking the easy way out by marrying Rob. This time, she’d do things differently.

  In early February, Rob talked one of the men into taking him to visit a nearby spontaneous clearing, after Jolley said such places were scientific enigmas. The Machiguenga believed them to be the work of supernatural beings and usually avoided them, but Javier was willing to show Rob the one nearest the village. Some of the smaller boys followed along.

  Rob didn’t consider himself sensitive to atmosphere, but there was something about the clearing that made him uncomfortable, or maybe he was picking up on Javier’s discomfort or that of the boys, who stood in a silent cluster. As usual, the group included Javier’s son, Tatito, who stood, uncharacteristically solemn-eyed with the others, the giggles and happy talk that had been the pleasant music along the way stilled.

  “One theory is that the flora growing there exudes a substance that’s toxic to other plants,” Jolley had said. “Or it may be the ants found in those particular plants destroy other types of plant life. If so, it’s an effective relationship for both the ant and the favored plant.”

  Rob finished his examination of the scant vegetation and nodded to Javier that he was ready to go. The man looked relieved. The boys ran ahead, their laughter once again mingling with bird sounds and the far-off bellow of a howler monkey.

  They were nearing the village when ahead of them a high-pitched animal squeal was followed by a scream of pain that was distinctly human. Rob tightened his grip on the machete he was carrying and ran behind Javier toward the sound.

  The faint trail they’d been following widened into an open area caused by the loss of a large tree. A child was lying on the ground near the tree and standing over him was a wild pig, swinging its head, squealing. Several other peccaries milled around as if trying to decide what to do.

  Javier charged
the animal, his machete coming down in a swift chopping motion. The peccary stumbled, twisting its head as it ran past Javier straight at Rob. In desperation, Rob swung his machete in an upward motion, managing to slice the peccary’s throat and cutting the animal off in mid-screech.

  In the sudden quiet, the tooth clicking of the other peccaries was audible. Rob lifted the bloody machete and, with a roar, charged past the fallen child toward the cluster of animals. They scrambled away, disappearing among the trees.

  He turned back to Javier and found him bent over the injured boy, his own leg bleeding profusely. Rob jerked off his shirt to make a tourniquet for Javier’s leg. The other boys dropped out of the trees they’d climbed to get away from the animals.

  Feeling a deep foreboding, Rob looked at the fallen child. Tatito. He felt for a pulse in the child’s neck, averting his eyes from the wound in Tatito’s abdomen. A pulse still beat, but it was fluttery and weak.

  Rob lifted the boy into his arms, briefly meeting Javier’s anguished eyes as the other man struggled to stand. Rob turned and hurried toward the village, led by one of the boys. Behind him, he heard Javier speak to the remaining boys. Then he closed his mind to everything but getting Tatito to Sam as swiftly and carefully as possible.

  His arms soon ached from their burden and his lungs burned with the effort to get enough oxygen. He walked rapidly, trying not to think about how much blood the child was losing. It dripped onto Rob’s arms, mingling with his own sweat. To add to his misery, flies attracted by the gore crawled on his arms and buzzed his face.

  Sam, alerted by a boy who had run ahead, met Rob at the edge of the village clearing. “Here. Lay him on the table.”

  She laid fingers on Tatito’s neck then slipped on her stethoscope and checked before putting her hand gently on Rob’s arm. “He’s gone.”

  Rob pulled away from Sam and placed his own fingers on the spot where he’d felt that faint pulse before. Nothing. He shifted his fingers, trying another spot. Sam took his hand firmly in hers. Then Javier arrived, stumbling along, supported by two of the boys, the awful knowledge dawning in his eyes as he looked at Sam and Rob. He came and stood over Tatito, swaying, before he slipped to the ground, unconscious.

  Sam knelt by Javier’s side. “Help me, Rob. You need to move Tatito.”

  As if he were caught in the tangles of a nightmare, Rob moved the child to the ground and helped Sam lift Javier onto the table.

  “Hand me my surgical kit.” She loosened the makeshift tourniquet on Javier’s leg as she spoke. Only the calm authority in her voice made it possible for Rob to respond.

  “I couldn’t have saved him, you know,” Sam said.

  The village, lately filled with the sounds of grief, was now nearly silent. Javier was back in his own hut, his leg stitched and covered with both a modern bandage and a poultice prepared by Soraida.

  “You worry that if you’d just been able to get Tatito here sooner it would have made a difference. But if I’d been right there when it happened, the outcome would have been the same.” Sam, the physician, saying what she thought was needed to make him feel better.

  She took his slack hand in hers and rubbed firmly. “Javier told me the peccaries could have done a lot more damage if you hadn’t chased them off. And the tourniquet saved his life. You did well, Rob.”

  He had a sudden image of Tatito, peeking from behind a tree, his eyes dancing with delight. He swiped at the tears running down his face. “He was such a sweet, funny little kid.”

  “Yes. He was.”

  “How do you stand it?”

  “Losing patients, you mean?”

  Rob nodded.

  “In the beginning, you spend hours going over every move you made. Second-guessing every decision. Looking for explanations. You can’t keep doing that, though, not if you’re going to be able to function. So eventually you learn to go over it once and forgive yourself any mistakes you may have made, and then you try to learn from them.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. “After I lose a patient, I go to the beach and fly a kite. When the string is all the way out, I cut it loose and watch until I can’t see it anymore.”

  “What kind of kites?” It was just something to say.

  “Different ones. Dragon kites from Chinatown, elaborate box kites, even the two-stick ones you buy in the grocery store. I fly them all the time. I only set one free when I need to let go of something.”

  Maybe he’d try that when he got home. Go to the Cape and set two kites free. One for Tatito and a second for his marriage.

  When Sam left to go to her hut, he sat for a time, picturing an empty beach lapped by endless ocean with bright red and yellow kites soaring into the infinite blue of a clear sky. Trying to find comfort in it.

  As Javier recuperated, Rob sat with him watching the village children play, remembering not only Tatito but the child he and Clare had lost. Given his pain at that memory, he knew Javier’s anguish was impossible to put into words even if they had been fluent in each other’s language.

  “You were right,” Clare told Vinnie, as she hung up her coat. “I do need to find a job that pays a salary.”

  “Well now, beautiful. Can’t say that’s a surprise. Had a feeling something’s been going on with you.”

  “It is. I’m getting...a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Clare. Don’t sound like that’s what you want.”

  Clare fingered the copper key John gave her at Christmas that she now wore to remind herself she was moving toward a new life. “Whether I want it or not, it’s the fair thing to do.”

  Vinnie looked at her for a moment with a thoughtful expression. “I think the Father’s got big plans for you.”

  “I very much doubt that.” Certainly none of the jobs she qualified for would even fall under a classification of “medium.”

  “Now don’t you be that way, you hear me, beautiful? The Father’s taking real good care of you. You got to learn to trust.”

  Vinnie’s comfortable relationship with God never ceased to amaze Clare. The other woman talked as if He were sitting in an easy chair in the next room, and Vinnie seemed to manage whatever difficulty life handed her by saying it was in the hands of the Father. Clare teased her once that she shouldn’t have to work so hard, then.

  Vinnie quickly disabused Clare of that notion. “The Father expects us to do our part. Don’t just hand us nothing for nothing. We got to be partners.”

  Clare fervently wished she had Vinnie’s certainty a higher power was watching over her...and Rob. But she didn’t.

  Clare sat at the dining room table with a pad of paper, determined to make the decision about where she was going. Somewhere old or somewhere new? Salina maybe? There she would have family to provide backup. Which was a positive that might also be a negative if it weakened her resolve to be fully independent.

  Or perhaps one of the big cities she’d spent time in—New York, Seattle, Atlanta. All would provide opportunities, although they’d be expensive, and it would take time to make new friends. Or what about Cincinnati? She’d lived there seven years which made it familiar, and the city was both large enough to provide opportunities and small enough to be comfortable and affordable. The major negative was it meant returning to the place where she’d been almost as unlucky in love as Boston. Although she should be able to avoid the bits that held bitter memories, something that could also be said of Boston.

  But her Cincinnati memories no longer stung, while any thought of remaining in Boston made her chest tighten. Perhaps because running into Rob would be more than a faint possibility, given the proximity of Hope House and Northeastern.

  “I’ll...we’ll miss you,” John said when she told him her plans. He turned to pick up a tool. “When do you leave?”

  “As soon as I get everything arranged.”

  “Here, steady this, will you?” He was building containers for the garden.

  Clare took the end of the board he�
��d indicated and held it in place. While he nailed it into position, she looked around at the complex pattern of planters designed by John and the men, trying to picture it in bloom. “You don’t belong here forever, John. You have a good brain. You need more challenge than...” She waved a hand taking in the tired house and yard.

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Remember, I’ve seen the kind of reading you do.”

  He finished nailing the board in place, set the hammer down, and ran his hand over his forehead, leaving behind a smear of dirt. He reached out and caught her hand. “You aren’t wearing your wedding ring.”