Counterpointe (25 page)

She sat still.

“I, uh, I disrespected you. Mr. Becker, he say I gots to apologize. I’m sorry.”

Clare waited for more, but the boy appeared to be finished. “I accept your apology, Tyrese.”

He wiggled in the seat before opening the book.

“Mr. Becker wants to see you when we’re done.”

“Oh. I already done seen Mr. Becker, ma’am. I don’t need to see him no more.”

“He won’t bite.”

“I surely think he might.”

She wanted to laugh, but she didn’t dare. Instead, she patted the boy on the arm. “I promise he won’t. Now, what are we working on today?”

“Hah!”

Rob jumped as a small boy pounced at him from behind a tree at the edge of the village. Like all Machiguengan children, he was beautiful. Thick black hair stuck straight out in spikes a rock star would envy to frame a face with smooth golden skin. Dark eyes danced with mischief.

Rob smiled. “
Buenas dias. Como se llama
?”

The boy giggled, his hands over his mouth.

“
Me llamo
Rob.” He pointed to his chest, then pointed at the boy. “What’s your name?”

The boy cocked his head as if considering, then danced off without speaking.

After that, the youngster shadowed Rob’s every move. Eventually, Rob learned his name was Tatito, and the two of them commenced a relationship, communicating with a mix of signs and words in Spanish, English, and the Machiguengan language.

“Were you ever as angry as Tyrese?” Clare asked Beck. She wanted to believe the sullenness was a defense mechanism, but it still wore her out.

“Tyrese getting to you, is he?”

She nodded.

“Why not say you through with him?” Beck said as he wiped down a section of counter.

“I guess I’m being stubborn.” She pulled up a stool and sat, resting her chin on her hands, facing Beck. “Do you think there’s any hope?”

He gave her a sharp look before turning away to rinse his wiping cloth. “When I sixteen, got my first job. Fast food joint, down by the ballpark. Didn’t know I was, how you say it? That thing where you can’t see letters and numbers good.”

“Dyslexic?” It was unclear what this had to do with Tyrese, but she settled in to listen.

“Yep.” He turned to dig a canister of flour out of the cupboard. “This one day, we got lines a mile long when this white woman pushes into my line, saying I didn’t give her enough change. Said I owed her six dollars and seventy-two cents but I only give her twentyseven cents. Didn’t even remember her. Figured she scamming me.” He continued pulling ingredients and implements out of the cupboards.

“The supervisor came over, heard what she saying. Told me give the woman her change. I did it. Figured that’s one smart woman. Just made six bucks for two minutes’ hassle time.” He stared at the items on the counter as if trying to decide what was missing, then turned to the cupboard and got out packages of yeast. “I go on working. Suddenly, same woman’s in my face again. Talking about change and how I shorted her. Made me mad as hell. She must think I’m an idiot, I don’t recognize her. Only turned out she ain’t complaining about me shorting her. She’s giving me back six dollars. Said, when she complained, I gave her too much change. You could have laid me out with a feather. Never even had no white woman look at me like I belong to the same species before that.”

He cracked eggs into a bowl and discarded the shells. Clare waited for the rest of the story, but he began to whisk the eggs into a froth without speaking.

“I don’t get it. What does it have to do with Tyrese?”

“Kindness confusing him. He mugged you, now you’re helping him. May take him awhile to sort that out.”

After learning Beck was dyslexic, Clare stopped by a nearby grade school and asked to speak to a reading teacher.

Sally Prentice, a bouncy redhead with freckles sprinkled across her nose, didn’t appear to be much older than her students, although she laughed when Clare said so. “I’ve been teaching fifteen years.”

“I need suggestions about how to help someone with dyslexia.”

“There are some studies suggesting dyslexia may be linked to difficulties in differentiating the sound of similar letters, like
D
and
B
.” Sally picked up a folder and handed Clare several sheets of paper from it. “Here are some exercises that may help.”

“The men I’m tutoring also struggle with writing.”

“I read recently about a program in a prison,” Sally said. “The prisoners were writing their memoirs and they said it was the only thing that made them feel human.” Sally paused and gave Clare a serious look that momentarily erased her gamin quality. “What you’re doing, Clare, it’s so important. Reading and writing can change lives.”

Clare wished it were that simple.

But then she did know how simply and quickly a life could change for the worse.

Tournant

Turning

Vinnie looked up with a smile as Clare hung her jacket on the coat hook in Vinnie’s office. “My, you’re getting bad as Appleseed, beautiful. You’re here all the time. Like you ain’t got any other life.”

Too true, although it wasn’t something Clare was comfortable admitting, despite her fondness for Vinnie, who brightened the dullest day with a mile-wide smile and her standard greeting of hey there, beautiful. Clare watched men, both fierce and mild, shuffle in embarrassed pleasure at Vinnie’s enthusiasm—an enthusiasm that was slowly easing Clare’s heart.

“Beck and I thank the Father every day for sending you and Appleseed to us. Good thing you two used to living on air, though.”

Clare shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“If you needed money, we’d lose you both.”

“All I’m good for is an entry-level job. As for John, I imagine it’s difficult for an ex-con to find work. I think you’re stuck with us.”

“Appleseed an ex-con? What makes you say that?”

“Ex-con, ex-addict. He’s too educated to be working as a janitor otherwise.”

Vinnie shook her head. “You think that, you don’t know nothing, beautiful. Appleseed’s the real deal. Not saying more, he wouldn’t like it, but he’s no ex-con.”

“I’m worried about Appleseed,” Beck said.

“Why is that?” It seemed to be Clare’s day for conversations about John Apple.

“He’s gone quiet on me. Like when he first come. Ain’t good.” Beck added a scoop of flour to the bowl.

“Hold it. How much did you just add?” She’d offered to write out Beck’s recipes and was watching him cook while she took notes.

“‘Bout a quarter cup, I reckon.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being quiet,” she said, noting the amount.

“Man a mess when he come. Thought he was through all that.”

“Do you know why?” She waited, but when Beck didn’t respond, she knew it would be hypocritical to push, given her reaction when John commented on her personal life.

Still, she couldn’t help being curious. The discomfort from her last conversation with John faded awhile ago. She just didn’t know how to let him know he was forgiven, especially since lately she’d seen him only in passing. So was he avoiding her? But she’d been avoiding him, after all.

“There,” Beck said. “When it gets like this, it’s time to jump in with both hands and squeeze it good.”

Maybe Appleseed was another of Beck’s projects. And did Beck realize she needed Hope House as much or more than Hope House needed her? Possibly. He and Vinnie seemed to have a talent for reading troubled hearts. With a start, she realized she’d lost track of Beck and his dough. She bent her head once again over her notes.

Beck set the bowl aside in a patch of sun with a damp cloth covering it. “Now, it rests and rises.”

Clare found John working on an electrical outlet in one of the classrooms. Standing in the doorway, gathering her courage, she stared at his back—narrow compared to Beck’s—and at his hair—pulled into a ponytail. Usually, she didn’t care for long hair on a man, but it suited John. It was his only oddity. With a haircut and dressed in a suit, he could be...what? Professor? Doctor? Lawyer? What
real deal
had Vinnie been referring to?

Not wanting to startle him while he worked with bare electrical wires, she knocked softly against the door frame. “Could I speak to you, John Apple?”

He twisted from his stooped position and lifted his eyebrows. “Why so formal?”

She walked into the room and perched on the end of a table near him. “It is your name, like Clare Eliason Chapin is my name.”

He stood, holding a screwdriver in one hand, and a new outlet in the other.

“I wanted to apologize,” Clare said. “The last time we spoke, I was rude. I’m sorry.”

“You were right. I had no business commenting on your personal life.”

“Friends try to help each other. Sometimes they make mistakes. Besides, it’s time I started facing up to who I am.” She walked to the window and looked at the backyard, bare now that autumn was well advanced. “I decided the psychologist Beck invited in was right. ‘You can’t change the past, but you do have to accept it.’ Wasn’t that what he said? And there I was, feeling superior to everyone in the room, when they at least had the courage to admit they needed help.” And what about the other thing the psychologist said?
Face your past. Look for the lessons in it. If there are amends to be made, make them. The worst thing that’s happened to you can have blessings attached. Look for them.

“You think it takes courage to ask for help?” John’s voice sounded strained.

“I know it has for me.”

“Are you asking me for help, Clare?”

“I know I have to do the hard part myself, but I’d like you to be my friend.”

She turned from the window and found John staring at the floor. He shook himself and gave her a crooked smile. “I could use a friend, too.”

“It’s a deal, then.”

He set the screwdriver down and took her hand in his. “Deal.”

Thinking about the conversation later, Clare realized what she’d said about having to work through the hard part herself wasn’t just words strung together. It was the truth. Progress. But she still hadn’t faced everything in her past. She still hadn’t examined why, after marrying Rob, she’d treated him so badly.