Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  The rims of his eyes were red, his nostrils big and round with trying to keep the anger under control, and possibly the tears. “But you don’t care about me, do you?”

  She was silent. Her impatient expression gave him the bad news.

  “Why did you do it? I thought you were a special person, you were kind, you were funny, you were thoughtful.” The force of her indifference made him feel foolish and angry with himself. “How could you be such a bitch?”

  ‘I’m sorry’ sounded so weak as it echoed in her mind. She bowed her head and submitted to his ranting.

  He was not really surprised that she was not responding. “And now you’re bringing out the worst in me. You’re bad news, that’s what you are. Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  She looked at him and saw the hurt she had caused. He had been too starry-eyed, but he had had an excuse, he was in love. And she had sensed it, even if she had not really thought about it. She had not really thought about him at all.

  “I don’t know why I did it,” she said quietly. “I knew it was wrong, but that wasn’t enough for me to stop it. Until that night. I couldn’t do it because I don’t love you and I respected that you loved me. I don’t understand any more than that.”

  He was calmer now. “I keep hoping you’ll love me, someday, when you get over whatever it is that’s messing you up. Because you’re a brilliant teacher and researcher and everything, Justina. But you suck at love.”

  She could not help a self-deprecating snort. “You need to get out there and find that girl who’ll take you all the way. To the other side of the world. You’ll be brilliant with her, James.”

  “I wanted to stay home. With you,” he said, continuing the theme of his song.

  She said a brutal thing with the kindest expression she could manage. “That’ll never happen.”

  He looked as if he was trying to figure out something. Abruptly he said, “Goodbye, Justina,” and strided silently out of her office. She was not torn apart with pain. She had been very bad toward James, but she had known it for some time. She was glad that he finally knew it. She had been deified, now she was vilified; perhaps she could find the middle ground and be respected.

  “Bobo!” Charles practically shouted the name. “Oh, I’m sorry, Helena.” He made himself stop laughing. She crossed her arms and glared at him.

  “What is your maiden name, Helena?” asked Michael.

  “Basdekis.” She looked a warning at Charles who smiled impishly to try to make up. She unfolded her arms and shook her head at him.

  “‘Helena Basdekis,’” said Michael, listening to the sound of it. “You should go back to it.”

  “What’s wrong with Bobo?” she asked, pretending to be peeved.

  “It’s someone else’s name, now,” said Michael. “And besides, if you will teach Greek, why not to use your Greek name?”

  “‘Ms. Basdekis,’” she assayed.

  “Beats ‘Ms. Bobo,’” said Charles, smiling obliquely at her. He raised his hands in front of his face as she threatened to pound him.

  Justina saw her the minute she walked into the fac, she was laughing, slapping the table as Michael chuckled and Charles guffawed. She saw Michael glance her way and then place his hand on the blonde wannabe’s arm and incline his head toward her and say something, to which she responded with a look askance at him, her eyes big and round with a ton of mascara, Justina could tell from where she was.

  Pascale prodded Justina in the ribs. “There she is. She’s a piece of work, hein?”

  “Let’s not sit with them, please, please, please, Pascale!”

  “Okay, but you’re going to have to meet her sometime. She’s very friendly.”

  Justina fixed her eyes on the sandwich man as he prepared Pascale’s sandwich. She kept watching as the sandwich man then prepared her usual; he glanced at her when he globbed on the mayonnaise. She said nothing. He dabbed some mustard on the bun and closed the sandwich. She took it without a word.

  “Hi!” Helena came up to Pascale, Michael and Charles just behind. “You’re Pascale, right? Remember me? Helena?”

  “Of course I remember you. You haven’t met—”

  “Helena Basdekis, this is Justina Trimble,” said Michael, stepping up.

  “Hi!” Helena stuck out her hand and Justina shook it, forgetting to smile, studying the older woman’s lively face.

  “Justina is in the French department,” Michael continued.

  “We’ll be practically neighbors, then!” enthused Helena.

  Justina was dumbfounded.

  “Actually,” said Michael, “you’ll be in a different building, Helena. With Charles.”

  “Oh! Well, nice meeting you, I’m off to my interview now. ‘Bye! Wish me luck!” She smiled with pre-interview vim and went out, followed by Charles who beamed with the simple pleasure of being in her company, and Michael who seemed to bow his head, avoiding Justina’s confounded look.

  “‘Helena Basdekis!’” said Helena. “I feel like a kid again!” Charles muttered something and Helena hooted.

  “Interview?” said Justina, after they were out of sight.

  Pascale shrugged. “J’sais pas! Guess she needs a job?” Pascale made a mental note to clue Michael in on Justina’s news.

  In the late afternoon Justina sat in the periodicals room with a journal on her lap, her feet propped on a low round table. The daylight fell on her face, shimmering through the lightened hair that had undraped itself from behind her ear, shining on the blue irises, making them appear lighter. She was frowning with concentration, which deepened the line by her mouth. The carpet muffled the sound of his shoes as he stopped next to her. “Hi,” he said quietly.

  She did a double-take while sitting up in her chair. “Hi.”

  He sat in the chair next to her, leaning toward her, his elbows on his knees. “I heard about your father. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s okay, he doesn’t look sick. He just gets tired, you know.”

  “They going to operate?”

  “Say they can’t. Going to start him on chemo next week.”

  “Must be difficult for him.”

  “We’re hopeful for a cure.”

  “Oh! It’s not terminal, then?”

  “They haven’t said so. But it’s not not terminal, at this point.”

  He looked in her eyes a brief moment, long enough to see her look of worry. “How you doing?” he asked, his voice dropping to piano.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just, stupid.”

  He did not understand, but he would not ask. He glanced out the window and saw students passing briskly, more numerous than before. “Well, I have composers to meet.” He stood up. “I’ll pray for him.”

  She had not thought of praying. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He left, his walk smooth and light. That this man, susceptible to jealousy and not above petty acts of revenge, was capable of that beautiful walk was marvelous to her. She had been angry at him; now she was only disappointed. Could she really blame him for having another woman? She closed the journal and put it back on the shelf and headed back to her building to meet her French Two.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Skinny Girl

  How did it happen? He said it couldn’t happen. He said he knew what he was doing.

  That nice feeling when he touches my breasts, like they’re connected to my stomach. If he does it too much, it starts to feel gross. When he puts it in something inside me swells up all the way to my ears. It feels so good, like stretching, but better. Then after a few minutes it doesn’t feel like anything. His shoulders get ribbed-looking, you can see the muscles underneath, like Dad’s when he’s putting up the sail. He turns his head and makes this grunting pant. Then he gets real quiet, I think he’s holding his breath. Then he lets it go, he sounds just like the kids at the lake trying to see who ca
n stay under the longest. Only he doesn’t spray, not from his mouth, anyway. It still feels good for him for a minute after, and he kisses me, but not on the mouth, and then he gets off me and lies looking at the ceiling, breathing hard, like he just ran a race or something and he’s so glad it’s over. He said he would come out before he blew his wad, but I guess he forgot. He said it was okay.

  But it’s true, I knew it, and now I know it’s true. Oh my God! What’ll I do? I’m dead.

  Grace looked again at the square of white plastic with the pink ‘+’ on it. Hearing the door close downstairs, she picked up the test and all its accoutrements, the tiny dropper and the urine cup and the glossy instructions, and rammed them into the trashcan by her desk. She grabbed them back out and put them back in the medical white pharmacy sack and pushed it under her mattress and sat on her bed, her heart thumping, and waited for her mother to burst in on her. She heard a step on the stairs and then by her door and heard the chair in the computer room creak. Clish. She let out her breath and stood up slowly and went out of her room.

  From the office doorway she watched the back of her father’s head as he played a computer game on CD-ROM, gun shots smashing in the air from the tiny speakers. His arm convulsed as he maneuvered the joy stick, the curls shaking on his head held rigidly still as he watched the screen. Grace entered the room and sat on the bed by the computer table.

  Jack, that daredevil, took his eyes from the screen long enough to glance at his daughter. “Hi, Babydoll!”

  “Hi,” she said and she lay on her side on the bed and watched him play. There would issue a crashing sound from the speakers, Jack would swear under his breath, the beer can with the fraulein on it would go to his lips, then the joy stick would pivot on its base for a few more minutes until the next crashing sound. He says I’m his little woman. So he’s my big man. I told him I loved him, after the first time, in his car across the street in the orchard. The garage door was open and Dad’s car was there. I thought he would just let me out. He would stop kissing me and touching me and let me get my sweater back on and let me out. But he said he had something special to show me, because I was his little woman and I would feel how important I was to him, after. I knew he was talking about sex. I knew it would hurt, even though he said it wouldn’t. But I believed him, and it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. Not like the time I fell on my crotch on that log. He acted like I’d done something he didn’t think I could do, like I was some kind of girl wonder.

  “Shit!” said Jack. He yelled in frustration and remembered Grace was there. “What’s up, Punkin?”

  Grace shrugged, her hands pinned together between her drawn-up knees.

  Jack nodded. “I hear you,” he said. The redrawn screen waited. He resumed play.

  Linda arrived home an hour later. She called them to dinner an hour after that and at the end of a wordless twenty minutes they all went to sit in front of the T.V. set. After two hours, Grace went up to her room. Linda went to her room an hour later, and Jack’s car drove off a minute or two after Linda’s door closed. Grace lay balled up on the bed in her clothes until Jack came home a little after midnight. She felt a little better and fell asleep.

  Shane disappeared after Grace told him. She sleepwalked through the rest of the Christmas break, the joy of the season was a joke, a memory from a childish time that she would never know again. She did not tell Kelsey, who sat with Courtney on the bus, now; Ashley and Grace were left stranded. Grace sat with the morose girl at lunch, at the end of a long table occupied by three brainy girls. All five of them passed the lunch period mutely watching the vivacious kids at the other tables. Shane no longer came at the end of the day to pick up Grace; there was no more finding her at her locker and kissing her in plain sight of everyone, even the teachers.

  By the middle of March Linda noticed her daughter had become chubby, but not all over, as she had when she was nine. She could not shake the worry that something was wrong, so she took Grace to the doctor and got the news. She was sixteen weeks, but it was still doable. The abortion was performed three days later.

  They got home from the doctor’s office at four. Linda told Grace to go upstairs and lie down. “You don’t feel tired now, but your body needs to rest.”

  “Can I—” Grace began. She just wanted to sit with her mother. Linda was absorbed with scanning the mail: she was in household-running mode which Grace knew meant that she was irritable and unapproachable. She obeyed and went upstairs.

  Jack came home a few minutes later and asked Linda how it went.

  She finished the entry in her checkbook. “It went.” She laid down her pen. “Didn’t you ever see anyone?”

  “No! She was always already home when I got here. Or she called from Kelsey’s.”

  “She had to be doing it somewhere. You sure she wasn’t in her room?”

  “You think I wouldn’t hear?”

  “Maybe you were preoccupied?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean maybe you weren’t really here.”

  “Where? Where was I? Where was I, Linda? Where do you think I was?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. Okay? I’m here or I’m at the office. I work hard, Linda, case you hadn’t noticed. But, listen to me, of course you’ve noticed.” His change of tone brought her out of her snit. Her fearful curiosity fanned his cruel streak. “I’m such a good provider, aren’t I, Linda? Weren’t you lucky to snag me. Look at this.” He extended his arms, palms up, and pivoted around the room. “I bought us this nice house with all this nice shit, couple of vacations a year, summer at the lake. I work hard for us, don’t I, honey?

  “Stick it up your ass, Jack.” She closed the checkbook and opened the refrigerator door. There was no meat defrosted. She opened the freezer. No ground beef, even. “How could you not know? If you were here, you’d have seen them.”

  “And so, what?” He walked slowly toward her, his shoulders slumped forward. “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m saying,” Linda began calmly, “that you don’t care—” her pitch was rising to a scream— “that somebody’s been fucking your daughter!”

  He rushed at her.

  Jesus, what? Is he going to hit me? Linda put the refrigerator door between them.

  His eyes moved back and forth to her eyes as he thought. “And you’re the perfect mother, oh right, I forgot. I’m the lousy father, you have to be both parents for her.”

  “Yeah, well, when’s the last time you talked to her? I mean really talked, Jack, give and take, idea exchange?”

  “I could ask you the same thing. Whatever happened to going part-time like you were talking about—”

  “Don’t you blame this on me!” she screamed anew.

  “She needs her mother to talk to. But I forget, you have an image to maintain. And that takes money. Or actually, Goldstein’s takes the money. Who you’re dressing for beats the hell out of me. It sure as shit isn’t me.”

  “You think I’m extravagant? I’ll tell you extravagant! Who has to have a new computer every year? Who has to have a radar for the stupid goddamn boat for Christ’s sake!”

  “That was two years ago. That’s paid for.”

  “Yeah, well so is your daughter’s abortion. She’s fourteen years old!”

  “Fuck you, Linda!”

  “You’re such a grownup.” Linda went toward the stairs. “God, what an asshole,” she said softly, but Grace, sitting at the top of the stairs, heard her. Linda saw the girl there; she did not look forlorn, exactly, to Linda, just remote. And light. Grace looked so light to her, her skinny ankles and wrists, the narrow hips, the bony shoulders, and her fingers so long and translucent. Her kinky blonde-brindled hair floated around her face. Grace turned her eyes from the wall to her mother; Linda caught the desperation before the barrier came down and she saw only resignation. Linda knew it was because she was not allowed in; she did not know why, but she felt at fault for the mis
sing closeness. She pushed away the tears and went back into the kitchen. “Jack, this is not a policing problem.” He was not there. He was not in the family room. She heard his car start and she ran to the garage door.

  He was backing his car out of the garage. Linda lunged out the door and fell over the bottle of spring water left on the stairs, onto the concrete floor. Jack stopped the car and hurried to her. She was holding her ankle. “Jesus! Linda!” He helped her up. He put his arm around her waist; she found she had to put her arms around him. They took a step together, their bodies touching for the first time in over a year. They arrived at the stairs and found the ascent awkward. He picked her up like a bride and carried her up the steps and into the house.

  Grace stood in the kitchen and watched her father sit her mother down on the couch. She was crying. Jack murmured and caressed her face, as though the tears were stinging. Their embrace set Grace’s heart floating up to her eyes and she ran to them and fell to her knees and threw her arms around them both, like she used to do when she was a tiny girl and saw her parents kissing, insisting on being included.