Perfect Pitch

by Amy Lapwing

  “I know, let’s not talk about it anymore right now,” said Teresa.

  They ate in silence. Derek was dying for someone to pry his news out of him. He said, “Hey, guess what I found out yesterday?”

  Michael attempted a pleasant smile. Teresa said, “What?”

  “My blood type is A. Did you know that Mom?”

  “I think I did. How’d you find out? Did you give blood?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s good,” said Michael. “I like to give blood regularly.”

  “Oh, then you already know you’re type B,” said Derek.

  “I think so,” said Michael. “Yes, I think that’s right.”

  Derek kept his eyes on his plate. “That makes you AB, Mom.”

  She stopped smiling when she realized Derek should not know what Michael’s blood type was.

  “Except you’re not. Funny thing,” said Derek. He sat back and glanced at the others.

  Michael’s eyes were fixed on him, his head moving slightly to follow the movement of Derek’s body. “What’re you trying to say?” he said.

  “Well, here’s the deal. Mom’s type O. So, one of you isn’t my parent. My guess, Papá, is you’re the one that don’t fit.”

  Michael held his fork and knife over his plate, as though the confusion would be cleared up in a moment and he could resume eating. To Teresa he said, “Is this true?”

  Teresa considered lying. If he believed her, it would only be for a short while. “Yes,” she said.

  “He’s not my son?”

  “Let’s just finish dinner—”

  “He’s not my son? Teresa?” He looked at Derek, as if expecting to find some mark of proof that he had produced him, some pattern identical with some attribute of his, the hair, the skin, the eyes, the chin? He was a stranger.

  “Miguel,” she began. She looked at Derek, frowning a ‘get out of here’ message to him; he did not move. “Derek, please leave the room.”

  “Oh, I want to hear this,” he said. “You had me fooled too, Mom.”

  “Leave us alone!” said Michael. “It’s none of your business!”

  Derek responded to the threat in his voice and got up from the table and went out. Michael watched Teresa as she took up Derek’s plate and put it in the kitchen. He waited to see the lights of Derek’s car as it went down the drive.

  “You lied to me.”

  Teresa came back in from the kitchen, her shoulders rounded. “I’m sorry, Miguel—”

  “Why?” he barked. “Why lie to me, Teresa?”

  She sat back down. “He was on a bad road. I had to find someone to show him the right way.”

  ‘Someone.’ “How many turned you down, before you got lucky with me?” he said.

  “No, Miguel.” She sat at the table, on the edge of her chair. “I came to you because I thought you might help him, be like a mentor to him.”

  “I would have, Teresa, gladly.” There was no sense to it. Why had she done it? Did she just want him for herself, and Derek-his-son was the enticement?

  “When I saw you again, that day in your classroom,” she said, “you were suddenly the same young man I had known. I saw so much wasted potential in you. I knew you hated doing what you did, I knew I could help you do what you truly wanted.” Her look focused on the remote dream of greatness. A thrilling new tenor with everything, the sound, the looks, the charisma. And her at his side. “But Derek needed a father. I just thought it would be simpler, for him especially, if you were his father. You’re so alike, you might as well be father and son.”

  “Did you think I was his father, when he was born?”

  “I was already pregnant with him, when I saw you in New York.”

  “Jesus, Teresa!”

  “But whenever I looked at him, I thought of you. Especially during the bad times with Whit, I looked at my little boy and I saw you and I thought ‘he should be Miguel’s, he should not be Whit’s.’ I thought of him as yours, that way I could love him more. That’s why I named him Derek Miguel. Whit wanted Derek Whitman, but I said I didn’t like the sound of it, the next one could be Whitman, but not this one, not my Derek who looks so much like Miguel.”

  “His name isn’t Derek Miguel,” said Michael.

  She looked at him blankly.

  “He told me his second name is Whitman.”

  “No,” she laughed and shook her head.

  “He doesn’t know his own name?”

  “That’s just his birth certificate name. His real name is Derek Miguel. A Spanish name, for his Spanish father.”

  “What do you mean?” said Michael.

  “Let’s go sit down, aren’t you uncomfortable?”

  “Teresa, he is not my son, he doesn’t look like me, he doesn’t have my name!”

  “Of course he does!” she said, amused. “You want to see his baby pictures?” She went to the bookcase in the living room.

  Michael looked from the flowers sticking up out of the adobe house in the center of the table, pretty yellow and mauve mums, to the salt and pepper shakers, white porcelain with blue flowers, to the wadded up napkins, to the woven straw placemats. Everything looked in order. An orderly home with a loving mother and son. A son who likes to hit women. A mother who believes her son is not her husband’s. He turned and looked at her sitting on the couch, an album open on her knees. She looked at the photos she had probably memorized and saw what she wanted to see, a happy boy, a proud mother, a well-meaning but harmful father they had to keep away from, ah, well, it happens. But isn’t he a beautiful boy! She looked up, an inviting smile, a beckoning hand, “Come here!”

  He went to stand before her. “What do I sound like to you, when I sing?”

  “Like a man, a wonderful, virile man. Oh, it’s so thrilling to hear you.”

  “And what do you think of my top?”

  “Ringing! Wonderful squillo, better than Pavarotti’s.”

  He looked at his stockinged feet. “Teresa, I have been living with you for a week now.”

  “Yes, darling.” She was looking at pictures of Derek as a toddler.

  “Do you know I’m married?”

  “She’s much too young,” she said, turning the page, “for you.” She looked up at him, unmoved by his look of trepidation. “She’ll get over it. She would have left you if you hadn’t left her. She’s coming up on that restless age. Younger men are about to become irresistible to her.”

  “You are sleeping with a married man,” he reprised, “doesn’t that bother you?”

  She laid her hands on the book. “I love you, Miguel. I have always loved you. Even when I married Whit.” She shook her head and looked at a picture of Derek on a donkey. “I should have come looking for you a long time ago.”

  He held his hands on his hips and watched her smiling to the book. Pavarotti, you say? He had recorded himself this week. More like Pavarotti’s pet pig on that high B. Would she just smile when he told her, “Teresa, I’m going back to my wife.”

  She looked up in surprise. “Miguel, she will never take you back. Gringas don’t put up with it.”

  “I’m going to beg her. I’m going to tell her I will never see you again. And I won’t, Teresa. I’m going now.”

  She put the book aside and stood up.

  “He’s a grown man,” she said. “You don’t have to deal with him if you don’t want to.” She followed him upstairs.

  He opened up his suitcase on her bed and laid his shirts and slacks in it.

  “They’re waiting for you in San José,” she said. “They can’t wait to hear you, they’re already planning on featuring you in the winter season!”

  He got his underwear and socks from her dresser and stuffed them in. “No, Teresa, they are not. They have heard me, many times, no one has ever suggested I perform.” He hunted about in the hamper, pressing her underpants and bras and blouses against the side, to find his dirty clothes. “You never called them, did you? You never spoke to Zazdid.”

  S
he did not answer. He closed his suitcase and took it downstairs and put on his jacket. She followed, silent, trying not to provoke him, hoping he would see her hurt and stop.

  “I’m leaving now, forever, Teresa. I won’t make you wonder why, for thirty years. It’s not because you deceived me. It was a very bad thing you did, but the reason I’m leaving you is that I don’t love you. I love my wife, I love my life with her. Don’t ever try to find me again, I will not respond.” He pulled the door shut as he went out. The latch failed to catch and the door swung slowly inward. Teresa stood inside, watching him. He pulled the door to, hard, and felt the frame shake.

  Old and dusty it all looked, termite-eaten beneath it all, he would not be surprised. In need of demolition, its original beauty forever lost to natural decay. Even its ghost had long since departed the premises. He backed his old Buick down the drive, jouncing himself in the ruts. I am about to attempt the impossible.

  He had spent a solid week walking the rim of a tantalizing Hell. He drove now in the dark, trying to imagine the words that would cause her to forgive him. He had been crazy, he was cured now? He had sinned repeatedly, he had known what he was doing. And he had thought of leaving her forever. His own affections had been alien to him. He did not understand, now, how he could have loved the crazy woman. It was still more incomprehensible that he had ceased to love Justina. He would have to lie and tell her he never forgot he loved her, he simply wasn’t paying attention to the fact, for a few days. A week.

  He came down Longmeadow Road and felt the apple tree branches pointing long crooked fingers at him, a horde of wild-haired hags holding the book of morality. He turned in the driveway. The outside lights were dark, she was not expecting him. He opened the garage door and parked next to her car. Normal, all is back to normal. Normal, normal, normal, normal. He went up the walk and strained to see the burro in the darkness. He stepped off the walk and reached in the black where it should be. ¡Ay! There. Heartened, he went in the front door.

  The ground floor was lifeless. He went up the stairs, the bare boards creaking. There was light coming from the office.

  The computer’s screen was the only light in the room. Justina sat with her back to him, in a dark blue sweatshirt and brown leggings and white socks, a leg tucked up under her, little dirt-dusted toe showing. She looked at him over her shoulder, and turned back to the screen. “Guess you’ll be needing your tux.” She typed.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said.

  She paused in her typing.

  “O-kay,” she said, her voice rising on the ‘kay.’

  “I want to stay with you.”

  “No.”

  He went to stand behind her chair. “I was crazy.”

  She snorted.

  “I mean,” he amended, “I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t know why.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “Can’t I—?”

  “There is nothing, no possible words that’ll fix it.” She turned to look up at him. His look at her, with everything he had in it, all for her, that much was familiar. But his nose was too big, and his neck too loose. “You’re a shit, I can’t live with you anymore.” She turned back to her machine. “Get whatever you need and get out.”

  “Please!”

  She turned again and looked at him like he was another screen, her eyes flicking across his features. “It’s not my problem.”

  Was this a mask, to allow her to keep her composure? He wanted her to break down, he wanted them to break down together, she should curse him again and again, that’s what this moment needed.

  “I will do anything, please, Justina!

  “You chose her, you threw me away and you went to her. I was crap to you.”

  “No, no.”

  “I disgust you.”

  “No! I love you! You are my heart!”

  She took in a quick breath and turned to hide from him.

  “Well, I don’t love you.”

  He had not thought of that. That she would stop loving him. He was the same person, why didn’t she love him?

  “You’re angry with me.”

  “Don’t tell me how I feel!” She kept her eyes on her computer screen. “Don’t tell me how it feels to have you come home and get in bed with me and pretend I’m not there while you run over and over in your head how you just fucked her! You don’t know how that feels because I’ve never done that to you! I would never do that! I tried once, remember? I couldn’t do it. You will never know what that’s like! Now please get out of here, you make me sick to my stomach.” She went down the hall and into the bedroom and closed the door.

  He got back in his car and drove away, the tears running into his mouth and onto his collar. Wonderings of what it would be like to drive into a tree skittered across his grief. Would it hurt? It would be such a lot of trouble if it did not work. Would she nurse him back to health? Grudgingly, bitterly. Concentrate, hands on the wheel, eyes off the trees, think of something else, just survive. Oh, God, I’m alone again. I’ll always be alone. I used to worry that I was incapable of intimacy. Then I found I was. But I’m incapable of fidelity. I don’t deserve to be happy. Something wrong with me, all this time, ever since I met her. What if she had never come? Would I have been all right? Or would something else have turned up this flaw? Another woman?

  No, no other woman could have done this to me. How can she be so powerful? I let her. Why?

  Hope came when he thought of Charles. He would spend the night there and ask for his friend’s help. He turned east and went across town to the weathered shingle cape near the Merrifield line with all the bird-attracting small trees around it. He had not had to worship the god of wisdom that lived in Charles for some time. He had a standing order to go to Justina whenever he had a problem with her. Another commandment to be broken.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Delirio

  “I’m sorry, she can’t come to the phone. Actually, she doesn’t want to talk to you. Where do you get off calling her, anyway? You said you didn’t want anything to do with her. Where do you get off calling like this? You upset her, she doesn’t want to have to talk to you. It really angers me that you could treat someone this way. She really respected you, she looked up to you, she looked forward to her lessons with you. It was the only thing she had. You know, she’s had it pretty tough, but she’s a tough kid, she’s the kind of kid to make lemonade out of lemons. So where do you get off saying you reject her, huh? That really angers me, I’m really disappointed that an adult couldn’t behave more like an adult to a young person who looks up to him. I’m sorry, don’t call here anymore, please, okay? I’m sorry.” Linda hung up and felt better.

  On Thursday of that week the phone rang again and Grace took the call. Aaron wondered if she wanted to do anything that weekend. Grace said how about tonight? He would pick her up in an hour.

  In the guest room of Charles’ house, Michael threw another jacket onto the honey gold afghan spread atop the bed. He took a cream one from the closet and held it against his chest.

  “Unh!” Helena shook her head, her face pinched. “Too, I don’t know, nobody should ever wear such a jacket.”

  Michael hung it back up. He took out another, gray tweed.

  “Too professory.” She looked at the maybes on the bed. “Try the navy again.”

  He took the navy blue double-breasted jacket from the bed and put it on.

  “It’s nice, but—”

  “I wore this on our first date, I think. Yes, it was this one.”

  “That’s good. But, I don’t know, it makes you look, smug. Smug is not good.”

  He muttered, “Smug,” and hung up the navy jacket.

  “Try—” Helena looked from one to the other of the remaining candidates. Black, burgundy, gray herringbone. She looked up at Michael, who awaited her decision. “Oh my God!” Her eyes lit up. “What shirt you going to wear?”

  He looked at his chest. “White?”

  “Good.
And slacks?”

  “Depends on the jacket, doesn’t it?”

  “You got any black slacks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” She held up her palms to him. “Black slacks and white shirt.”

  He waited for the rest. “That’s all?”

  She sucked in her lips and tapped a hand on her breastbone. “You’ll look devastating.”

  “Devastating? That’s better than smug?”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I won’t resemble a waiter?”

  “Think Tom Jones.”

  “I can’t do Tom Jones.”

  “Don’t do him, just think him.”

  “I don’t know, Helena.”

  “Any jacket you wear is like a costume. You don’t need a costume. You just want her to look at your face. You want her to see your sincerity, your love, your passion. Am I right?”

  He squinted as he processed her advice. “No tie?”

  “Definitely no tie. Then you’ll look like a kid going to church.”

  “Maybe I should choose something more spiritual in the lyric.”

  “What? Like ‘The Impossible Dream?’” she guffawed. “No, you got two great songs. They’re very, oh my God, they’re thrilling. Beautiful. You’re going to get through to her, I’m positive. She’s going to fall apart, she’s going to beg you to take her in your arms, right there, right on the spot. You can relax and just sing what you feel, it’ll be easy. You’ll see.”

  “I wish I can rehearse one more time, with the band.”

  “No, listen, they’ll be sick of you if you bug them anymore. They know it, you know it, you’re ready. Just try to relax. Eat something.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to. Come on, you got four hours. Just a little something light. I’ll make you a sandwich, come on.” She went out of the room.

  He took the jackets off the bed and hung them up. He took a last look at himself in the mirror on the closet door. So much gray, and his chin doubled now when he opened wide, so disconcerting. He turned sideways and scrutinized his silhouette. Very slim. He had lost weight since this whole Teresa thing began. Would she like that? Had she thought him fat before? He didn’t think he was, but he hardly paid attention. She was always substituting the low fat foods, but maybe that was just for the cholesterol, his had been kind of high last two check-ups. She was still slim, still like a young girl. He was pretty sure he had aged, though, in the last five years. “Helena!” he called as he went downstairs. “What is the present for fifth anniversary?”