Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  “I’d love to.”

  “Great, great. There’s one student in particular I’d like you to hear.” Michael was interested, he was intrigued with prodigies, they were rare. “She’s a soprano, a very light one, and, uh, well, to be honest with you, I’m not sure how to coach her.”

  “Because of her top register?”

  “Exactly. I realize she needs to use it, but she’s still so young, I don’t want to ruin anything, you know, unintentionally, while I’m trying to train her to use it.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Fourteen, probably. She’s a ninth grader.”

  Michael reassured the young teacher that he need not push her to see how high she could go. She was probably experimenting already. It was too soon to really develop that portion of her voice. That would come later, in her late teens. He should pretend she has an ordinary soprano range in the meantime and not push her.

  “You don’t think it’d be beneficial, to her, to teach her how to reach those high notes now?” persisted Perry.

  “Why? What is to gain? So you have a prodigy who can hit a high C. Big deal. If it hurts her, it’s of no value whatsoever.”

  “It’s really something, though, to hear her.”

  “I’d like to hear her. But there must still be plenty you can teach her?”

  Breath control, phrasing, not to mention the basics of good tone, were all things he could work on with her. “I’m giving her a short solo in the program.”

  “Good! I’ll look forward to it.” Michael asked again for date and time and wrote them down. He mentioned his own concert in December and Perry said he would look for the announcement in the paper, and then he thanked him for his time and left. Michael sat at his desk and studied the delicate flower pattern of the sheets. He remembered being just as eager to find and develop young talent when he had started at Kennemac, about the same age as Nordstrom. In the first two years he had learned the patience of teaching. One arrived at the goal by taking infinitely many small steps. There were no short cuts. He had forgotten that with Justina. But of course, she was not his student. He had thought of her as someone who could give him something he wanted, and therefore she should, now. Just like Nordstrom and his prodigy. He realized he had been so eager for love, that when he found its beginnings, he wanted it to bloom without further delay. It was right there in front of him, why should he have to wait? He took the sheets home with him that afternoon, after his four-thirty student, and washed them and put them in the dryer.

  Justina came over at six thirty with a backpack, which she stowed in his bedroom, and a grocery bag containing a couple of handmade throw pillows in a patchwork fabric with lace trim which she tossed on the bed after she helped Michael make it with the new sheets. The heavy, suffocating bedspread stayed in an impotent heap on the floor; she suggested he get it laundered. They went to dinner and a concert in Shanham. She thought of the freshly vinca-sprinkled bed and wanted to leave at intermission, but she was too embarrassed to suggest it to him. He was disappointed in the soloist, a classical guitarist from Quebec, and would have been happy to duck out at intermission except for the jitters that came upon him when he thought of returning to his apartment with her. They stayed for the second half, which was really quite good, a set of Spanish-inspired orchestral pieces, and he asked her if she wanted to go for dessert somewhere as they walked out to his car. She said no, she just wanted to go home, to bed, and he dropped his keys trying to find the ignition.

  “You want some brandy?” he asked as he flicked on the kitchen light.

  “No, thanks,” she said, going into the living room and laying her coat over the couch.

  He took off his jacket and put it over a chair in the kitchen, pulled off his tie and looped it over the neck of the jacket. He stood straightening the shoulders, picking off lint.

  She came in and put her hand on his back. “You all right?”

  Breathe in. And out. “I’m fine.” He turned to her. “I guess I’m just a little, you know—” He made a face of panic.

  She was surprised, he had been so cool the last time they did this. She wondered if she had seemed too aggressive, with the sheets and everything. How could she make him more comfortable? Should she take over? That would make it worse, wouldn’t it?

  “Me, too,” she said. “Hey, you want to watch T.V.? See what I’m missing?”

  He remembered she did not have a T.V. set and hoped she did not really prefer watching T.V. to making love to him. They went into the living room and looked for something interesting to watch. They looked at the news for a few minutes, then Justina flicked the remote at the commercial. She found the Spanish channel. “What’s this?”

  It was a soap opera; he told her what was going on. She liked seeing how the people dressed and groomed themselves; they seemed so shiny, their skin was so smooth, their hair so vibrant and their clothes closely tailored to their nicely-muscled, not thin, bodies. She did not want to burden him with so much translating and flicked again. She stopped on the comedy channel and they giggled at the actors dressed in drag.

  She wanted to kiss him, but she sensed it was up to him. She tried to signal her willingness by nestling close to him, folding her legs under her and resting her knees against his thigh, trying to laugh softly and not guffaw. At the commercial, she flicked quickly through the channels and then it occurred to her that it might be annoying to him. She gave him the remote. “Find something you like.”

  He took the device and flicked even more quickly, stopping on one of the music channels. A female soft rock artist sang a ballad. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  She told him the singer’s name. The song ended and was immediately followed by another female singer. Men surrounded her, caressing her as she sang and thrusted out her chest and gyrated her hips.

  “¡Ay-ay-ay-ay!” he gasped.

  “Yikes!” she concurred. “They let kids watch this?”

  He covered his eyes with one hand and changed the channel to one of the late night talk shows. The host listened as an elderly actor told a long story. He felt Justina looking at him. She’s looking very lovingly at me. I should just kiss her. Why don’t I just kiss her?

  “You better not kiss me,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  “I want to ask you something,” he said. His voice was husky with realizing what he was about to say. He squeezed her shoulder, trying to reassure her.

  She waited; she loved his intimate way of talking to her.

  “The last time we found ourselves in this, eh, position, you remember?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Then you remember we had a very, eh, unfortunate, morning after, do you agree?”

  “Yes, I do. Extremely unfortunate. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help remembering.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked away at the television; a glorified station wagon zoomed along an ocean shore highway, delivering new-car desire in viewers all over the country. He turned back to Justina. “Anyway, I was wondering if you happened to know, just, eh, off-handedly, what kind of morning we will have tomorrow. In your opinion.”

  She took the remote. “Let’s check out the weather channel.”

  He took the remote from her and turned off the T.V. set. “Justina,” he said, taking her hands and pulling her to face him, “are you going to still love me tomorrow?”

  He had only been pretending to be playful. He was not going to let her sleepwalk with him, as James had permitted her to. If she wanted him, she had to make sure he knew it.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “I’ve been confused, and selfish—” She could not keep herself from trembling. “But I have never played with you. I have always loved you, the best way I knew how, which was not very well, at first, I know. Oh, God—” She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he crooned, stroking her shoulders and arms.

  She threw her head back,
resolved to tell him, no matter how little her past behavior had supported her feeling. “I love you, more than I have ever loved anyone. You are the best person I have ever known and I want to be with you tomorrow and everyday, please believe me, and I don’t know why I’m crying.” She sniffed and tried to laugh at herself and he crooned some more words to her that she did not quite hear over her snuffling; maybe he was speaking in Spanish, she could not tell, he spoke so softly. He wiped her eyes with his handkerchief and kissed her cheek.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said, “I just—” Her blurted-out vow was what he had wanted to hear, he realized just at that moment. Why was he so impatient? “I just love you and I was feeling, uncertain. I’m sorry.”

  She took in a deep, calming breath. “You didn’t make me cry, you nimrod, so forget about it already.” She shook her shoulders and flung her arms in the air and roared; she pulled his head close and looked from one to the other of his eyes. He smiled, wondering what funny thing she was thinking. “Next week we won’t need them,” she said, “according to Doctor Papadoppadoppadoppadoppalos-Steinberg, but tonight we do and I don’t have any.”

  He tried to decode her ellipsis, and gave up. “What?”

  “The pill doesn’t kick in till next week, so, you got any troops?”

  “Yes, I do. When did you—”

  “Wednesday. I told them it was an emergency. A contraceptive emergency.”

  He kissed her cheek. “That was nice of you. They’re going to remember you, now.”

  “I’ve never been on it before.”

  “No?” He kissed her mouth.

  “I did have a dia—”

  “Don’t,” he said, looking at her for emphasis, “tell me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, ever.” He unzipped her dress in the back.

  She kissed him as he took the dress off her shoulders. “Shouldn’t we go upstairs?” she murmured.

  He helped take the dress off her arms. “In a minute.” He looked for a front closure to her bra, found it and released it. He spread the cups apart and looked at the two soft dollops the color of cream suspended almost weightless between her chest and their small, upturned unripe strawberry tips. “You have the most beautiful breasts in the world.” He kissed her and kissed her breasts.

  She made a soft hum of pleasure and reached for his shirt buttons, and together they unbuttoned it the rest of the way and he took it off.

  She moved her hands along the front of his chest, from the obtuse angle of the clavicles, across the furred pectorals and down either side of his creased abdomen, the football brown skin tough and insensitive-looking. She said, “I wonder—” he drew in a quick breath at her feather touch— “what you looked like when you were younger.”

  He kissed her neck. “You wish you had known me when I was a young man?”

  “Of course.” She kissed his ear softly. “But I bet you were not as beautiful you are now.”

  “You give good talk,” he said, kissing her shoulder. “Say something more.”

  She unbuckled his belt as he sucked in his belly to loosen it. She undid the clasp of his trousers and he leant back so she could unzip them. “Something tells me,” she said, sliding her fingers inside the waistband of his shorts, exploring the warm knob there and watching his face flinch in pleasure, “it’s time to go upstairs.”

  They did and they took off the rest of their clothes and made love on the soft field of new flowers and he apologized for not being able to hold back his climax a little longer for the sake of hers, but she knew he was good for more than one go and she persuaded him to delight in her again and he pleased her no end. When they finally lay quiet, she noticed that the sheets were still a little scratchy. She thought they would soften up, in time, and asked him how he liked them. He said they were very pretty and reminded him of home, and he wondered to himself what she would present him with next.

  “Do you still feel like a conquest?” he asked.

  “Only when I look at the windows,” she said, contemplating options for the drawn blinds.

  “Are you going to fix those, too?”

  She got out of bed, the light from the lamp dimpling her buttocks; he had not noticed the orange peel skin before. She rotated the wand on the blinds, letting in the parking lot light. “Can you see the moon, some nights?” she asked, peering out at the moonless sky.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She came back to bed and turned off the light and laid down tiredly. He pulled her close to him and felt the futility of trying to stop time in this moment, this one right here, when I have her in my arms like this, God, come on, you can do it, just this once. He kissed her hair, dulled by disarrangement and a day’s scalp oil. “Are you my girl?”

  “Mm-hm,” she murmured sleepily. He heard her breathing deepen and slow, and he neatened the covers over them. Crumpled bands of light lay in perfectly parallel wiggly lines across their blanket-covered feet. He had never noticed them before. He had always kept the blinds closed, he supposed, for privacy or out of laziness. She would probably close them tomorrow morning while they dressed, and open them when they were ready to leave the room. The light would come in through the leaves outside all day, pattering upon the walls and bed like fairy toddlers who have discovered a new, forbidden playroom, but they would not be there to notice it. She would want it that way. She would want to enter the room tomorrow night with light coming in from outside. He would not care, except that she would. A sudden happiness came into him, like an exploding bullet. It hurt, a little. She rolled away from him; he scooted up to her and fell right to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Relief

  It was just as mild as the brochure had said, highs in the mid-sixties. They stayed in a new high-rise condo building right on the beach. Their view let them see the ocean over the tops of the palm trees. Very nice ocean, very nice gray water with whitish caps; the beach was practically empty. Even the walls of their rooms were painted the color of warm sand, the trim white like shells. A low stimulus landscape inside and out, just what Justina’s over-worked nerves needed. The honeymooners lingered late in bed in the mornings, venturing out before lunchtime to see the sights. He took her sailing the first day; on the other days they were less energetic, and contented themselves with walking, in the nature preserve, along the beaches, from shop to shop in Harbor Town.

  She wanted souvenirs, perhaps some lovelies to take back to Pascale and Charles. He wandered out of the gift shop and stopped at the playground to watch the children. The kids scampered up and down the elaborate tree fort shaded by the huge old trees. How genteelly the children played, coached by their parents and grandparents. How well-dressed and -fed they were, innocent of the privilege by whose grace they were there. She joined him where he leaned at the railing and he pointed out to her the little guy toddling up and down the ramp, his tinkling laugh delighting his heart. He crooned, “Oh!” along with the parents when the little fellow stumbled and fell on his face. The father stood the baby up and he took off up the ramp again, the tears forgotten. Michael smiled his enchantment to Justina. He looked to her exactly as he had when Snow White’s prince had triumphed in his difficult aria. At that moment she was conscious, for the first time, that he wanted children. His own children. With her. She felt a slap of wind upon her forehead and a chill of panic, as though she had forgotten to report for her Ph.D. defense. Looking again at the playing children she felt overwhelmed and incompetent. He chose that moment to squeeze her waist, and she stopped feeling overwhelmed, anyway.

  Next morning she felt the need for invigoration and decided to go running on the beach. Michael was already up and out, probably to get a paper and some coffee and tea and rolls. She put on shorts and a tee shirt and looked out the living room window at the beach below. The sky was gray, again, but it was not raining. She should put on a sweatshirt, anyway. She thought she saw him down on the beach. Yes, that was his blue jacket with the whit
e blazes on the shoulders. He was stooped over, putting a log or a stick on the sand. What was he doing? He stood and looked up at the building. He pushed a stick with his foot and looked again at the building. He took a few steps back, looked at the building one last time, and walked toward it. Justina moved to her right along the wall-length window and looked out again. He had used sticks and logs to form gargantuan letters spelling “J+M 4 EVA” on the sand. She waited for him to come in and embraced him and thought she could do anything for him.

  “Here.” Michael brought in a pillow from the bedroom. Justina sat up and let him put it behind her. She settled back against it. “There we are,” he said. “How’s that?”

  “Fine.” She remembered to smile.

  “I’ll make you some tea, okay?”

  He stepped over the plastic bag of hospital souvenirs and went into the kitchen. The pink rim of the sitz bath bowl stuck out of the bag. She would do one later, what a pain. She picked up the remote and turned on the television and caught the end of one of the morning talk shows. A teen movie star was hustling her latest film. She was all white teeth and bright eyes and giggling between glowing moments of saturnine grace with the fiftyish buffoon host and his perky sidekick. I really need to go to my office, thought Justina. Maybe this afternoon.

  Michael brought in the mug of tea on a saucer. He put it on the coffee table and stood on his knees next to her and stirred it for her and brought it to her lips.

  She took the mug from him. “I can manage. Thanks.”

  He looked at her as though he expected her to cry out in pain at any moment. “Want me to bring you some books?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ll just vege out for a while.” He sat in the closest chair and watched her watch T.V. His attentiveness was driving her up the wall. “Why don’t you go in to school?” she said, trying not to sound exasperated.