Counterpointe

by Ann Warner

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you—your support, friendship this past year. They helped me a great deal.”

  At her awkward words, John’s movements slowed and finally stopped. He turned and stared at her.

  “When I came here, I was...lost. Anyway, I wanted to thank you, John Apple, for your friendship.”

  “I wish you well, Clare Eliason Chapin.” His voice was calm, his expression remote.

  She nodded at him, and he turned back to his painting.

  She left him to it, her heart hurting at the loss of the camaraderie they’d shared during some of her darkest times.

  On Saturday, Clare went to the Chestnut Hill Mall and bought a small television and a VCR. It took a breathtakingly short time to spend most of the money in her account. At home, she went through the videos, noting each dancer’s strengths and weaknesses, thinking about how best to help them fit into the program Justin had planned for next year. She finished late in the evening and sat back sipping a cup of tea, no longer thinking about the dancers, but about how Rob had reacted when she mentioned the ballet.

  Before her injury, he’d always attended her performances so he could drive her home. In those quiet midnight hours, they’d sat eating, talking, laughing. Rob helping her to relax so she could sleep. But he’d never truly enjoyed the ballet. She was certain of it. He’d endured it for her sake, and she’d neither acknowledged nor sufficiently valued his sacrifice.

  What a shallow person she’d been.

  On Monday, Clare returned from lunch to her office at Northeastern to find a gift bag on her desk. Her first thought was it must be from Justin, but when she peered inside she found the parrot hat Rob gave her so long ago in another life.

  “Those delivery guys are getting more professional all the time,” Gwen said, nodding at the bag.

  “What do you mean?” She reached for the envelope accompanying the hat.

  “This one was wearing a tie.”

  She opened the card, already knowing whose handwriting she would see.

  Rob Chapin requests the pleasure

  of Clare Eliason’s company at

  dinner, Saturday at seven

  “So who’s it from?”

  She stared at the card. Why was he using her maiden name? And why so formal? What did it mean?

  “Well, just ignore me, why don’t you.”

  Clare grimaced. Gwen, long-time receptionist and only fly-in-the-ointment of this particular temporary position. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

  “I said, who’s it from?”

  “Oh. A friend.”

  “Right, and my name’s Demi Moore.”

  Gwen could be right. Clare didn’t know if Rob was still her friend. If he was, wouldn’t he have come to the benefit?

  Thinking of the benefit, another memory surfaced. The man who came up to her at the reception and said he worked with Rob. His name was something with a D...Devin, Dover?

  She pulled out a copy of the Northeastern phone book and ran a finger down the column of D names. Devaney. That was it. Edward Devaney, Esquire, College of Law. He’d said something about Rob and Marge Velez, who’d claimed she was being paid by a philanthropist nobody ever heard of.

  Frowning, Clare went back to typing a manuscript she was determined to finish before she left to begin her position with Danse Classique.

  Saturday evening, Rob arrived at her apartment precisely at seven, punctual as always. She didn’t invite him in since she still had no furniture. Nor did she have anything to offer him to drink, except water. All nonessentials waiting until she was more solvent.

  “This seems to be a nice, quiet neighborhood,” Rob said as he helped her into the car.

  “It is, and it’s convenient to public transportation.”

  “That’s great. How are you enjoying working for Professor Molina? I’ve heard he can be a curmudgeon.”

  “Only to the students. He’s been very pleasant to me.” Enough already with the inane pleasantries. “You know, if we’d been this awkward our first date, there never would have been a second.”

  He blinked rapidly, then glanced at her. “Sorry. You’re right, but you see, what I was thinking...” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” She turned to look at him, or at least his profile.

  “I know you’re supposed to get only one chance to make a first impression, but I thought you and I...well, maybe we can try backing up. As if we’re at the beginning, getting to know each other. I know I’ve changed and I expect you have too.”

  She stared at him.

  “That probably sounds stupid. I guess it’s better if I just sign the papers and be done with it. Shame, though. To let those years go to waste.” He stopped speaking abruptly and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “You want us to pretend we’ve just met each other?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  The awkward suggestion was so...Rob-like. Clare began to smile, then straightened her lips. If he saw her smiling, he might think she was laughing at him, and maybe she was, a little. But mostly she was smiling in relief to know he wasn’t planning to end the evening by handing her the signed divorce papers, although that would be totally unlike him.

  Except. If she were to play along with his suggestion, she should keep an open mind about what he was like. He said he’d changed. It might be interesting to discover the particulars. “Okay, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “Good.”

  They didn’t talk as he drove into town, but the silence was a comfortable one. Rob parked the car on St. Botolph Street near Northeastern and walked her into a restaurant that was tiny, quiet, French, and one of her favorites.

  “So tell me, Rob Chapin,” she said after they were served glasses of wine. “What do you like best about being a professor?”

  As if to check her sincerity, he gave her a quick glance, then he leaned back, speaking thoughtfully. “Well, Miss Eliason, let’s see. The freedom, I guess. Aside from a few faculty and committee meetings and my classes, I pretty much set my own schedule. And as long as I have grant money, I can work on whatever scientific question intrigues me the most.”

  “So what scientific question intrigues you?” Sad to admit that although she’d been married to him, she knew only the surface aspects of what he did at work every day.

  “I’m studying plants used by native healers to see if they contain active compounds.”

  She tipped her head, motioning for him to continue, glad for the game.

  “Most people figure it’s only a coincidence when a payé, a medicine man that is, cures someone. That the patient was going to get better anyway. But I think payés are amazing ethnobotanists.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A person who understands plants and how to use them. It takes years to be a payé.”

  “So is that your goal. To become a payé?”

  He shook his head, and she realized she’d never before asked him what his dreams were.

  His expression turned pensive. “I just came back from Peru where I worked with a payé for six months. I barely scratched the surface of his knowledge of plants and healing rituals. He even used a few of them on me.”

  “Are you ready to order?” The waiter stood poised with a napkin over his arm, a pen and pad at the ready.

  “Give us a minute, will you,” Rob said.

  After they placed their orders, Clare picked up the thread of the conversation. “Why did you need the services of a payé?”

  “I had to have an emergency appendectomy in the jungle. The surgery was performed using modern methods, but then the healer performed a healing service, and he provided a poultice for my incision.”

  Once again, the thought of Rob having surgery in the jungle made her throat tight. He could have died so easily. Suddenly, she wanted to touch him, to reassure herself of his solidity. Instead, she circled the lip of her wine glass with a finger. “Do you think the healer helped?”

  Rob looked
thoughtfully at his own wine glass before taking a sip and setting it down. “The incision did heal more quickly than my surgeon expected.”

  “What was it like in the jungle?”

  “It was...completely different from any other place I’ve ever been. Instead of sirens and the hum of air conditioners, we had the screech of birds, the buzz of insects. The sheer magnitude of all that green, raucous, aggressive life. Overwhelming. Claustrophobic at times. And us in the middle of it. With no filters, no barriers. Our huts didn’t even have complete walls.”

  As Rob continued to talk, she sat back listening, trying to visualize what he was describing. Comparing it to what she’d read about the Amazon.

  “One day, I was down by the river at dawn. All of a sudden, the tops of the trees exploded into the sky as thousands of macaws took off. Blue, red, green. An enormous cloud of color. And my God, the sound. As if everyone in Boston was leaning on their horns. Then they were gone, and I could hear the river again.”

  They sat silently as the waiter came and placed salads in front of them. Clare waited until they were alone before she spoke past the lump in her throat. “Were you happy there?”

  “Happy? No. At first, I hated it. Then I made friends with the Machiguenga, the people we stayed with. The way they conducted their lives...it made me wonder how different our world would be if we lived more simply and chose the wise rather than the clever to lead us.”

  He stopped to take a bite of salad, chewed, swallowed, then continued. “I haven’t been happy for a long time, but I did find some satisfaction being there. There was interesting work to do and no phone calls to return, no mail to open, no meetings to attend, or news to watch.”

  No wife to worry about. But Rob was too kind to add that.

  “One of the Machiguenga men took me on as a project. He taught me to find paths through the jungle, to spot animals hidden in the shadows, to locate food and water. The peculiar thing is, it rains a great deal and there’s the river, but safe drinking water is always in short supply. One day, we’d been walking for several hours, and my water ran out. The man showed me this vine. He cut the end and the clearest, most delicious water was right there, like turning on a tap.”

  She could see it clearly. Living water coming out of the vine and Rob smiling at the native man and then taking a grateful drink. She wished she could have shared that with him.

  He stopped and took a sip of wine, before looking across at her. “What about you? Do you have a career?”

  “I’m finishing a temporary job typing a manuscript for an English professor. Next week, though, I’m starting a new job. One I’m very excited about.” She paused, then took the plunge, watching him closely. “I’m going to be the ballet master for Danse Classique.”

  He was bringing a bite of salad to his mouth, and the fork stopped in midair. His lips tightened. “Does that mean you’re a dancer?”

  She struggled to continue speaking. “Most ballet masters used to be dancers, which I was. A long time ago. I’m not anymore.”

  “How come?”

  She glanced at him, but saw nothing in his expression to indicate he was deliberately baiting her. “I was injured and was no longer able to dance. For a long time, I let it paralyze me. You know that phrase, ‘stop the world I want to get off’? That was me. Only I couldn’t get off.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t handle it well.”

  “You’re obviously better now, though?”

  “Once I finally got out of bed and started tutoring men and boys with real problems. Compared to what they face, my being unable to dance is a minor difficulty.”

  “Not to you.”

  “True, but I made it worse than it needed to be.”

  “You learned something from the experience, though.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  Their eyes met and her heart contracted. Rob had lines at the corners of his eyes she’d not noticed before and his temples were brushed with silver.

  The waiter placed their entrées in front of them, and they ate slowly, continuing to talk. Clare asked Rob to explain how he studied the plants the payé told them about. She listened carefully to his answers, then asked more questions, and although Rob’s work was complex, she could understand it when she made the effort to do so.

  What an odd suggestion on Rob’s part—to pretend they’d just met. It was working, though. Such a huge relief to let go of the past, for even one night.

  After dinner, Rob drove her home and walked her to the door. She unlocked it, then turned to thank him.

  “My sister and her husband own a boat. Would you like to go sailing with me?”

  “Yes. I would.”

  “Good. Are you free tomorrow?”

  She nodded.

  He set a time, leaned in and kissed her cheek, then turned and walked to his car. Bemused, she climbed the stairs to her bare apartment.

  Sunday dawned with clear skies, warm temperatures, and brisk breezes—perfect sailing weather. During the drive to the Cape and the loading of supplies aboard the yacht, Rob and Clare continued to play the getting-to-know-you game.

  When they cleared the harbor, Rob turned to her. “Would you like to steer?”

  She jumped up and took her place at the helm while he moved around the boat, turning cranks to extend the sails, then he came and stood beside her. After a moment, he pointed. “Try to keep us lined up with that spit of land.”

  She wondered if he’d deliberately echoed what he’d said and done the first time they’d gone sailing.

  Possibly.

  She was reminded of other sails with Rob. Days when the wind thrummed in the rigging and the sun turned the bow wave to crystal. After her injury, sailing had been the only activity that eased her heart. “I used to sail.” She watched him out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve missed it.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “The man who took me had to go away...to save himself.”

  His lips tightened. He balanced on the balls of his feet as the boat heeled from the swell. “Save himself from what?”

  “From me.”

  Rob’s eyes were invisible behind dark glasses, but his mouth was tight. For a time after that, neither of them spoke.

  When they returned to Falmouth in the late afternoon, Rob suggested driving to Provincetown for dinner, which was how they’d often ended such a day in the past.

  In the Provincetown café, Clare slid into the booth across from Rob, noticing how clear and calm the day on the water left his eyes. It had worked that way for her as well, leaving her with a pleasant lassitude, due in part, perhaps, to the game.

  But as relaxing as it was to leave the past behind, it had to be faced eventually.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Grand pas de deux - Coda

  Last movement of the grand dance for two

  “I believe I owe you one,” Clare said, after the waitress dropped off coffees and the dessert menu.

  He raised his eyebrows in question. “For what?”

  “Marge Velez.”

  Damn. His hands tightened on his cup. So the woman hadn’t kept her mouth shut. Or was Clare simply fishing for information?

  She stirred her coffee, looking at him. “I ran into Edward Devaney, and he said the most curious thing to me about telling you Marge Velez was the best.”

  She stopped speaking. He kept his head down, focused on his mug.

  “Why did you do it?” Clare’s voice was soft, but clearly she wasn’t going to buy any half-assed attempts to say he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  A mistake not to ask Devaney to keep quiet, but he never expected Clare and Devaney’s paths to cross. In honor of their new openness, he decided to tell her the simple truth. “I met a young boy in Peru. The son of the Machiguengan man who was teaching me about the jungle. One day, Tatito was attacked by a wild pig. His father was also injured. I had to carry the boy back to the village. He died in my arms.”

&
nbsp; Swamped by memory, he stopped to reorder his thoughts. “When you told me about Tyrese, it reminded me of what it was like not being able to save someone. I’m glad it worked out.”

  Clare laid a hand on his arm. “It was a wonderful thing to do.”

  “Please don’t say anything to anyone else.”

  “Why didn’t you want me to know?”