Counterpointe (30 page)

“You’ve got quite a fan there,” Sam said.

“He’s an amazing kid. I bet he’d make a hell of an engineer.” But more than teaching Tatito and seeing how rapidly he grasped new concepts, Rob enjoyed having the small boy around.

It might be as close as he would get to knowing what it felt like to be a father.

Elegé

A lament

After the holidays, Sally Prentice, the teacher who’d helped Clare with tutoring suggestions, called to make a coffee date. Clare met her in a café near Northeastern.

“You know how it is when they get carried away,” Sally said, concluding a story about her husband’s brief foray into woodworking that resulted in an oversupply of napkin holders she was still trying to dispose of. “Does your husband have any hobbies?”

“Being a professor seems to take all his time.”

“A ballerina and a professor. It’s an interesting combination. It must make for lively discussions at dinner.”

Clare shook her head. “Rob knows very little about the ballet and I know nothing about chemistry.” Although, in the beginning, they’d never had difficulty finding things to talk about.

“So, how did you meet?”

“At a ballet reception.”

“Well, he may not know much, but he must enjoy it if he’s attending receptions.”

But he didn’t enjoy it. He merely tolerated it for her sake. That insight had the clarity and sharp edges of broken glass.

“I have a favor to ask you,” Sally said. “We’re having a career day next Wednesday, and you know how little girls all go through the stage where they want to be ballerinas.”

Discomfort bloomed into full-blown agony.

“And I thought. That is...” Sally cocked her head and smiled tentatively. “I think it would be good for them to hear what it’s really like. That it’s not all about costumes and toe shoes and bright lights. The hard work behind the scenes...” Her voice trailed off, her expression uncertain.

Clare looked away, taking a deep breath. “Since the accident—”

“I put my foot in it, didn’t I?” Sally bit her lip. Then she smiled brightly. “I’m sorry. Forget it, okay? Hey, you haven’t updated me on Tyrese yet.”

Clare went along with the change in subject, but Sally’s career day request kept her company all the way home and continued poking at her through a sleepless night. In the morning, after her shower, she examined her reflection in the full-length mirror.

Although she’d gained some weight recently, she was still much too thin. She lifted her hands from her sides and clasped them in front of her, flexing her fingers. Then she moved her arms over her head, and her feet automatically shifted into position. She was no longer beautiful but she could see the elegance in the pose. She dropped her arms and let her shoulders slump. Another move she’d perfected for the dance.

But then, all of them were. Every move she made. The way she walked, held her body, moved her arms...all refined, then polished by hours of rehearsal for
Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, Nutcracker,
and a dozen other ballets. Even her facial expressions were studied, practiced, and then forgotten as it became second nature to be able to project happiness, sadness, anger, tragedy.

So, was that all there was to her...rehearsed movement, studied emotion?

No. It couldn’t be. Artists had to sacrifice for their art. She’d sacrificed her body, not her soul.

Or had she? And how did one answer such a question?

Shivering, she dressed quickly. Then she called Sally’s voice mail at the school and said she would do the career day.

“You were the star,” Sally told her afterward.

“You said it yourself. Every little girl goes through a ballerina stage.”

Sally shook her head. “No. More than that. You let them know how important it is to go after their dreams no matter what they are.”

Clare had been so nervous in the beginning, she didn’t remember what she’d said. As for dreams, did she have any?

“That bit with
Peter and the Wolf
was amazing, Clare. I loved the way you showed them that discipline and concentrated study were needed to understand a character before you can portray him or her on the stage.”

She had brought a recording of
Peter and the Wolf
and used two short passages to demonstrate how facial expression and body posture helped create a character.

She could have picked something from
The Nutcracker
or
Cinderella
, or another ballet, but she wasn’t yet ready for that. Baby steps.

“You have a real gift as a teacher, Clare.”

It was the second time someone had told her that. Still, she shrugged it off because it was too late to do anything about it. But the interaction with Sally’s class, the first time she’d played a piece of classical music since her injury, awakened a hunger in her.

Back at the apartment, she looked through Rob’s albums and found amongst the country music, Jimmy Buffett, and classical jazz, the scores of the ballets she’d danced during her year and a half as a principal with Danse Classique. He also had a recording of the one ballet she hadn’t danced.

She put
Swan Lake
on and sat listening to the ebb and flow of the music. What happened to her still hurt, although the pain had receded from active roar to dull ache, but her guilt over the pain she’d inflicted on Rob, rather than diminishing, had grown.

He was such a gentle man, one who’d always put her needs before his own. Something she’d neither sufficiently valued nor reciprocated.

And time was running out for making restitution.

By the beginning of February, that cruelest of months, there were times when Clare was walking to Hope House when she suddenly realized she’d covered several blocks without any memory of waiting for lights, crossing streets, encountering people. Clearly, she needed to make some decisions about her future before she wandered into traffic. And, actually, the first decision, whether to stay in Boston, was also the easiest one. She’d already said the words out loud, to John—that a new start called for a new place.

She would miss Beck, Vinnie, John, and Tyrese terribly, of course, but leaving felt like the right thing. Both for her sake and for Rob’s. But where to go and what to do once she got there were questions she still couldn’t answer. They represented the same dilemma she’d faced after her injury.

Then she’d made the mistake of taking the easy way out by marrying Rob. This time, she’d do things differently.

In early February, Rob talked one of the men into taking him to visit a nearby spontaneous clearing, after Jolley said such places were scientific enigmas. The Machiguenga believed them to be the work of supernatural beings and usually avoided them, but Javier was willing to show Rob the one nearest the village. Some of the smaller boys followed along.

Rob didn’t consider himself sensitive to atmosphere, but there was something about the clearing that made him uncomfortable, or maybe he was picking up on Javier’s discomfort or that of the boys, who stood in a silent cluster. As usual, the group included Javier’s son, Tatito, who stood, uncharacteristically solemn-eyed with the others, the giggles and happy talk that had been the pleasant music along the way stilled.

“One theory is that the flora growing there exudes a substance that’s toxic to other plants,” Jolley had said. “Or it may be the ants found in those particular plants destroy other types of plant life. If so, it’s an effective relationship for both the ant and the favored plant.”

Rob finished his examination of the scant vegetation and nodded to Javier that he was ready to go. The man looked relieved. The boys ran ahead, their laughter once again mingling with bird sounds and the far-off bellow of a howler monkey.

They were nearing the village when ahead of them a high-pitched animal squeal was followed by a scream of pain that was distinctly human. Rob tightened his grip on the machete he was carrying and ran behind Javier toward the sound.

The faint trail they’d been following widened into an open area caused by the loss of a large tree. A child was lying on the ground near the tree and standing over him was a wild pig, swinging its head, squealing. Several other peccaries milled around as if trying to decide what to do.

Javier charged the animal, his machete coming down in a swift chopping motion. The peccary stumbled, twisting its head as it ran past Javier straight at Rob. In desperation, Rob swung his machete in an upward motion, managing to slice the peccary’s throat and cutting the animal off in mid-screech.

In the sudden quiet, the tooth clicking of the other peccaries was audible. Rob lifted the bloody machete and, with a roar, charged past the fallen child toward the cluster of animals. They scrambled away, disappearing among the trees.

He turned back to Javier and found him bent over the injured boy, his own leg bleeding profusely. Rob jerked off his shirt to make a tourniquet for Javier’s leg. The other boys dropped out of the trees they’d climbed to get away from the animals.

Feeling a deep foreboding, Rob looked at the fallen child. Tatito. He felt for a pulse in the child’s neck, averting his eyes from the wound in Tatito’s abdomen. A pulse still beat, but it was fluttery and weak.

Rob lifted the boy into his arms, briefly meeting Javier’s anguished eyes as the other man struggled to stand. Rob turned and hurried toward the village, led by one of the boys. Behind him, he heard Javier speak to the remaining boys. Then he closed his mind to everything but getting Tatito to Sam as swiftly and carefully as possible.

His arms soon ached from their burden and his lungs burned with the effort to get enough oxygen. He walked rapidly, trying not to think about how much blood the child was losing. It dripped onto Rob’s arms, mingling with his own sweat. To add to his misery, flies attracted by the gore crawled on his arms and buzzed his face.

Sam, alerted by a boy who had run ahead, met Rob at the edge of the village clearing. “Here. Lay him on the table.”

She laid fingers on Tatito’s neck then slipped on her stethoscope and checked before putting her hand gently on Rob’s arm. “He’s gone.”

Rob pulled away from Sam and placed his own fingers on the spot where he’d felt that faint pulse before. Nothing. He shifted his fingers, trying another spot. Sam took his hand firmly in hers. Then Javier arrived, stumbling along, supported by two of the boys, the awful knowledge dawning in his eyes as he looked at Sam and Rob. He came and stood over Tatito, swaying, before he slipped to the ground, unconscious.

Sam knelt by Javier’s side. “Help me, Rob. You need to move Tatito.”

As if he were caught in the tangles of a nightmare, Rob moved the child to the ground and helped Sam lift Javier onto the table.

“Hand me my surgical kit.” She loosened the makeshift tourniquet on Javier’s leg as she spoke. Only the calm authority in her voice made it possible for Rob to respond.