Counterpointe

by Ann Warner

  And not knowing which underscored his loneliness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Allégro

  A term applied to steps that are

  performed in a brisk and lively manner

  Thanksgiving at Hope House was a roaring success. Although there was no alcohol, the adults were only slightly more sober than the children, who were delirious and noisy. Several men brought wives or girlfriends, and Tyrese and Anthony brought their moms. But the biggest surprise was Vinnie, who showed up with a shy smile and a man who grinned every time he looked at her.

  After dinner in the largest of the classrooms, they all worked together to clean up. Then they moved the tables out of the way as three of the men pulled out battered instruments—a cornet, an alto sax, and a harmonica. A fourth man moved a small table holding pans and glasses into position to serve as the percussion section.

  The music they proceeded to play was happy and frolicking, with a strong beat that made it impossible for the children to sit still. Watching the little ones move with unconscious ease, Clare felt a familiar ache. Then the tempo changed and Anthony’s mom began to sing “Amazing Grace” in a high sweet voice. Others joined in until the room was full to bursting with sound. Clare clenched her hands as the voices swept over and through her.

  The last note faded into a moment of silence, before the stamping, whistling, and cheering urged the men into the next tune. When it started, Vinnie and her friend moved to the middle of the room and began to dance. Others joined them, pulling on the hands of those still sitting. In a panic, Clare slipped through the door into the hall, where she leaned against the wall, her eyes closed.

  “You okay?” John asked.

  She nodded without looking at him.

  He leaned on the wall next to her. “Your husband couldn’t make it today?”

  “It was too far to come.”

  “What? Into the ghetto, you mean?”

  “He’s in Peru. In the jungle. Searching for the next miracle drug.”

  That silenced John. She glanced over to find him frowning.

  “Does he know what you’re doing while he’s off in the jungle?”

  She shook her head.

  “You don’t want to worry him.”

  “It wouldn’t.”

  “Then he’s a fool.”

  “No. He’s not.” Clare was abruptly too exhausted to stand, even with the wall propping her up. She slid into a sitting position. After a moment, John sat beside her. Close but not touching.

  “Listen to them in there,” she said. “All that enthusiasm, in spite of their difficulties. It makes me feel, I don’t know...ungrateful, I suppose.”

  “Are you getting divorced, Clare?”

  The bald question took her breath away. It was a moment before she was able to answer. “Probably.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ll need to find a job that pays a salary.”

  “You might be able to stay here. That grant came through that’ll pay for another staff member.”

  “I’m going to leave Boston. Make a clean break.” It was the first time the idea had occurred to her, but it felt right.

  “You know where you’re going?”

  She pulled her knees up under her chin, and wrapped her arms around them. “Where would you go, John, if you needed a place to start over?”

  “I came to Boston.”

  She slid him a look. “From where?”

  “Hell.” He spoke without inflection, his gaze fixed, as hers had been, on the wall in front of them. His expression was the one he’d had when she asked him what his family thought about his working at Hope House.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?” His voice sounded weary, a reminder of her fatigue whenever she thought of Rob. “My wife killed herself.” John’s voice was flat and emotionless, but beneath the words was a thread of agony like a bassoon playing faintly under strings. “She was depressed. For a long time. Nothing I tried seemed to help.” He stopped speaking and, in spite of the thumping of the music in the room behind them, the hall seemed very quiet. “Funny. Rationally, I’ve accepted it wasn’t my fault, but it’s never made any sense emotionally. It felt like she did it to get away from me, and I didn’t try hard enough to stop her.”

  Not long ago, Clare had been depressed and nothing Rob did had helped.

  “This place saved my life,” John said.

  Hers as well.

  For a time, they sat together without speaking, then John sighed. “How about I call a cab to take you home?”

  While he went to call the cab, Clare continued to sit, listening to a foot-stomping “When the Saints Go Marching In” that was enough to wake the dead. The thought made her want to both laugh and cry.

  She hugged her knees and managed, after all, to do neither.

  After dialing her parents’ number, Clare stared out the window of the apartment at the lights reflected in the still surface of the pool in front of the Mother Church of the Christian Scientists. They shimmered slightly in the clear night air.

  She was calling her parents before the effects of John Apple’s story and her own admission about her marriage wore off—before denial kicked back in and made it impossible to own up to her deceit. Deceit, that made conversations with her mother like picking her way through a swamp, trying to avoid quicksand or sudden, deep pools.

  “Mom?”

  “Hi, honey. Happy Thanksgiving. I’m so glad you called. Did you and Rob have a good day?”

  The perfect opening to confess, but thinking about doing it made her feel as though she were standing on the ledge outside the apartment, ready to take the plunge into the Mother Church’s ice-cold reflecting pool.

  “Actually...I spent the day at Hope House. It was great fun. Good food. Music, lots of kids. But Rob wasn’t there. You see, he won’t be home until April.”

  “Oh. I must have misunderstood you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to know...to worry. Rob and I. I guess you’d call this a trial separation. It’s taken me awhile to...well, to admit it.”

  She made no attempt to fill the silence that followed.

  Finally, her mother cleared her throat and spoke slowly. “So, you’re saying, you and Rob—”

  “Are getting a divorce.” There. she’d done it. Said the damned word out loud.

  “Oh, dear. I am so, so sorry to hear that, Clare. I hate to think of you alone for Christmas. Why don’t you come home?”

  “I doubt I can get a reservation this late, but I’ll be fine, Mom. I’m used to it.” Even if the years spent dancing in The Nutcracker hadn’t accustomed her to being away from home for the holidays, it was better to be alone this year. Better than to be with people who loved her and would want to discuss and dissect her future before she’d made sense of her past. “There’s going to be another party at Hope House. I’ll be busier than if Rob were here.” Not completely true, but enough was to short-circuit feelings of guilt.

  “You will tell me what’s happening from now on, Clare. I want you to know you can talk to me.”

  “I know, Mom. Truly. I wasn’t admitting it to myself before. I love you.”

  “I love you too, sweetie, and remember I’m always here if you need me.”

  Shaking but dry-eyed, Clare hung up, less weighed down than she’d been in a long time, but sadder than she’d ever been in her life.

  Monday morning Clare answered the phone to find Rob’s sister on the line. “We missed you Thanksgiving,” Lynne said.

  “Yes, sorry—”

  “We need to have lunch sometime, to catch up.”

  Clare scrambled for a response. “I...ah. I.” But she couldn’t fight it indefinitely. After all, Lynne was family. At least for now. She licked lips gone dry. “I’d like that.”

  “Name a day,” Lynne said.

  “Thursday?”

  “Good. Is Locke-Ober’s okay?”

  “Fine. Sure
.”

  Clare arrived at the restaurant to find Lynne already there. They embraced, then Lynne stepped back, smiling. “Clare. You’re looking good.”

  “Not as good as you. You look wonderful.” Clare’s words were more than the polite social formula her sister-in-law had employed. Although Lynne was always perfectly groomed, today she looked especially lovely. Clare was suddenly sorry they weren’t closer, but that was for the best given she and Rob were getting a divorce.

  Divorce. It caught under her breastbone. She hadn’t let herself think the word before John said it but, since that conversation, it had been jumping into her mind at odd moments.

  The waiter came to take their drink order. When he left, Lynne opened her menu and peered at Clare over the top. “Did you have a nice Thanksgiving? Mother said you were joining friends?”

  “I did and it was nice.”

  “Good. Let’s see, I’m having a cup of clam chowder, the lobster club, and a salad.” Lynne snapped her menu closed and set it aside.

  “My, you are hungry.”

  Lynne raised her water glass and saluted Clare. “Well, I am eating for two now. Something you would have known if you’d joined us for Thanksgiving.”

  The meaning hit a beat behind the teasing words themselves. Clare sucked in a breath and said what she needed to. “Oh, Lynne, how wonderful. Superlative. Oh, I am so happy for you.” Good thing she was sitting, because the news brought with it an unanticipated grief. Something Lynne didn’t know, thank goodness, since Clare miscarried before she and Rob told his family about her pregnancy. “When is the baby due?”

  “May. Rob’s going to be the godfather, of course. We want you to be godmother.”

  Clare pulled in a breath, frantically searching for a graceful way out. “I’m honored you would ask, but I...can’t.”

  “But you and Rob. It’s perfect.”

  Clare shook her head, and Lynne’s glow dimmed into a worried frown.

  The waiter delivered their iced teas. “Are you ladies ready to order?”

  Clare had never been so glad to see a waiter in her life, although it was going to be impossible to eat the salad she ordered.

  The waiter left and Clare turned her attention back to Lynne. “So, have you picked out any names yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Clare cast about for something else to say.

  Lynne leaned toward her. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on with you and Rob.”

  Clare closed her eyes to shut out the worried expression on her sister-in-law’s face. “Nothing’s going on.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  If only she could will herself somewhere else. If only she wasn’t always hurting people. If only...the story of her life. “You need to ask Rob.”

  “Oh. I am so sorry.”

  “Yes. Me, too.” A relief in a way to have it even partially in the open. Holding together the pretense of happy families took an enormous amount of energy.

  Their food arrived and Clare and Lynne waited silently while they were served. Then Clare raised her glass of iced tea. “Could we forget the one thing, at least today? After all, we have something really wonderful to celebrate. I am so happy for you and Jim.”

  They both worked hard after that to keep the conversation on general topics.

  The jungle’s pleasures were simple ones. Brightly colored birds, butterflies, the occasional blue, green, or red poison arrow frog. The light at sunset slanting through the trees in golden bars, the silvery sheen of wet forest under a full moon.

  But it was a beauty accompanied by danger and discomfort. Insects of every type—ants, mosquitoes, wasps, chiggers, sand flies, cockroaches, ticks—potentially carrying malaria, yellow fever, leishmaniasis, dengue fever. Plants that, when touched, left rashes or oozing sores that healed slowly, if at all. Snakes whose venom killed quickly and painfully.

  “That’s the main reason the village compound is kept bare of plant growth. To eliminate hiding places for snakes,” Jolley said.

  “In spite of that,” Sam said, “many natives die from snake bites.”

  That explained why Jolley had insisted they bring protective footgear and long trousers, even though the heat and humidity made it tempting to wear less.

  “The fer-de-lance, for one, has a well-earned reputation as an ankle biter, striking first and perhaps repenting later when it gets whacked,” Sam said. “We’re also protecting ourselves from leeches and ticks.”

  Sam had them check themselves after every trip into the jungle. Occasionally, despite the barriers, they found hitchhikers that had managed to get through their clothing and onto their skin.

  Sam had brought a large carton full of paperbacks with her and Rob often noticed a faint glow from her hut when he awakened in the middle of the night.

  “You read a lot.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t need much sleep. Occupational hazard of surgeons.”

  “You finding any good ones?”

  She smiled. “Some very good ones. Help yourself any time you’d like.”

  “Nights might get pretty bright around here.”

  “If the insomnia is too bothersome, let me know. I can give you something.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate it, but I think I’ll try reading.”

  Later it hit him. He was using books to escape the same way Clare had.

  Deep in their wet, green world, the main source of information about the outside world came via Jolley’s calls to Jane. She always provided a summary of current events. Rob quickly discovered he didn’t miss the daily litany of awful things, and not hearing about them made them recede.

  The staccato rhythms of the city were here replaced by the peaceful rhythms of a slowly spinning world where day followed night followed day in roughly twelve-hour increments, and the only weather uncertainty was the timing of the daily rain showers. That rain came in degrees ranging from heavy damp to deluges that were breathtaking in their suddenness and ferocity. Being caught by one of those was like standing under a waterfall, and the heat and humidity that accompanied the rain wore them all down.

  “I’m feeling irritable tonight. Best if I take myself off,” Sam said, as she cleared her plate after eating dinner.

  Rob watched her walk away. “Does Jane do that?”

  “What?”

  “Tell you when she’s in a bad mood?”

  Jolley chuckled. “Well, usually it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Does it make you feel...responsible?”

  “Not unless I did something to deliberately provoke her. Why? What does Clare do?”

  “She doesn’t mention it, but it’s obvious.” Also obvious was how little he’d contributed to Clare’s happiness. He pushed thoughts of that world away. “I had no idea living so simply, not to mention uncomfortably, could be so restful.”

  Jolley got out his pipe and tamped tobacco into the bowl. “It’s why I love being in the field. I miss Jane like hell, but it recharges everything. Gives me a break from all the hassle. Reminds me what I love about science.”

  “You ever ask Jane to go along?” Although Rob couldn’t picture Jane giving up modern plumbing.

  “When we were first married she thought about it, but then we had kids right away, and by the time they left home, she preferred to stay home and indulge her bad habits—eating in bed, staying up late.” Jolley took a puff on his pipe, the single one he allowed himself after dinner. “Is something up with you and Clare, Rob?”

  Rob sucked in a quick breath, let it out slowly. “Didn’t work out.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear it.” Jolley continued to puff on his pipe in the dark with Rob sitting silently beside him.

  “Think I’ll call it a day,” Jolley said, standing and knocking out his pipe.

  That was the good thing about Jolley. He showed his concern but he didn’t force confidences. Still, his question would cause Rob a restless night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Demi-plié

 
; Half bend