Laura Furman - The O Henry Prize Stories 2005

The next morning Miguel appeared at my door, though it wasn’t the day for his lesson. He begged me to spend a few minutes with him. Since I was just leaving, I suggested that he walk with me to an appointment I had. I set a brisk pace and he jounced along at my side, fitfully grasping me by the arm as he spoke.

“Rosario talked to you-I know. Listen, the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt Roberto. I never thought there’d be consequences. I never thought he’d find out. If it had been me Roberto confronted with that bill, I’d have invented a story. But Rosario did what she did-which upset everything. I couldn’t let Roberto simply hang like that, not knowing who the father was. I was sure I could break it to him in a way so he’d feel-not excluded. I had this idea I could tell him the truth as if I were lying…”

He stepped off the curb and I yanked him back as a bicycle whizzed by. He didn’t seem to notice.

“I reached him at the office: ‘Can you come over, it's urgent.’ Ten minutes later, we were both standing in my alcove. It just popped out of me. ‘I’m the father.’ He glared: ‘Ah, so Rosario told you. Who are you trying to cover for?’ He started getting all worked up: ‘Don’t hide this from me!’ ‘I am the father.’ ‘You’re mocking me!’-and he stomped out. I called Rosario to tell her what had happened. She was angry: ‘Why didn’t you speak to me first? There was no reason for him to know.’”

We were at my destination. I reached out and thrummed on his shoulder a theme from the rondo he was studying. “Tomorrow at five.”

It was seventeen after the hour when an elated Miguel sailed in. “I’ve just left Roberto. Do you know what he did? He hugged me-hugged me!- and asked me to forgive him. He said: ‘With Rosario so attractive… even for you, Miguel. You needed to have a son, man! Besides-aren’t two fathers better than one?’ What a friend! I would give my life for him!”

“Your life, Miguel?”

“Yes!”

I had to handle Miguel sternly for several weeks to get him back in harness. Rosario settled down of her own accord. Roberto did not alter his demeanor, except to introduce a shade of punctilio into our relations, a heightened sense of his own dignity. A different tone crept into his remarks about Rosario and Miguel: not so much paternal as paternalistic, a benevolent grandfather speaking of slightly errant grandchildren. He had lost ground pianistically while away, and drove himself to catch up with Miguel. They kept on meeting regularly to critique each other, and we had a joint lesson monthly.

One of these took place at Roberto’s. I was struck by his warmth as a host. In a hundred gracious ways he had insinuated Miguel as an orna- ment of the household. A favorite armchair was reserved for him. He was encouraged to regard the kitchen as his own, and sometimes on the maid's day off he cooked dinner. When I got there that evening, Lilí was bawling over some grievance. Roberto, who was building a fire in the grate, let Miguel assuage her. Rosario, placidly ensconced on the sofa, suckled Tito.

At random intervals, I would ask my students to play something they had not practiced for many months, to ascertain whether it had stayed in their fingers. During one of his private lessons, I said to Roberto: “Let's hear that Schumann piece you were affected by.”

“I’ve forgotten it,” he snapped.

“Go ahead, give it a try. You may be surprised how much of it comes back.”

Reluctantly, he complied. He acquitted himself so well, one would almost have sworn he had been reviewing the score.

“Excellent.”

He scowled. “Never again!”

“Roberto-”

“Schumann. Bah! If he had such a happy hearth, why was he obsessed with death? Those dancing skeletons in Car-naval ? I see them every day around my house. Grimacing.” He mashed some keys cacophonously “Don’t mind me. I still haven’t recovered from the strain of that job.”

To disperse the gloom, I served tea with cakes and played him Mac-Dowell's Dance of the Gnomes.

“Ah,” said Roberto, “a piece with nothing but charm.”

It was as though I had unwittingly opened a drawer deep inside Roberto and glimpsed some venomous insect feeding on the darkness. Whatever that noxious energy may have been, he seemed to harbor it as a mortifying reminder of hazards to be shunned. He showed Miguel and Rosario the most exquisite consideration. They, in turn, deferred to him as the generous ruler of their garden.

Miguel was ambushed by the ferocity of his attachment to the baby. Tito's smiles and yawns, imperious appetites, budding quirks became his only topic. He buttonholed everyone he met to flaunt photos of his “godson.” To me, he chafed at the façade he had adopted: “Will I always have to talk to my boy through this mask?” When an earache set the child wailing in agony, Miguel couldn’t eat or sleep; he later confessed to me that the ordeal had brought him a guilty relief, since it supplied him a pretext to haunt the nursery at all hours, wring his hands, moan, and for once vent his feelings for Tito with fully licensed abandon.

I remember the coziness of the household throughout that wintry season: dense crystal vases spilled over with flowers that sunned in the blaze of the fireplace, and the vista of snowcapped peaks made the living room all the more snug. Rosario seemed burnished with well-being. Roberto, prospering in his business, bought for her any number of expensive outfits, which soon had their fronts stained with mothers milk. Rosario said that she was “addicted” to feeding the baby. One evening, as Tito gorged, Roberto poked Miguel in the ribs: “Don’t you wish you were him? When Rosario nursed Lilí, she was ravishing enough, but the boy stimulates a whole other set of glands in her. What a pity it would have been to miss this, eh? It sometimes seems to me that I was destined to have only a daughter, but that Fate had the good sense to change its mind.”

Rosario told me: “Before I married Roberto, I asked him: ‘What if I fall in love with someone else?’ He answered: ‘Just so you don’t stop loving me…’ ‘It's impossible for me to stop loving you,’ I said. And that's how it's turned out.

“There's something incestuous in me. Roberto excites me more as a brother. With Miguel, it's different. He's more of a son. What would it be like with a real son! That's what I’ve secretly dreamed of, ever since I began to desire men. Maybe that's why I had a boy.” She gave a quick smile: “It's not going to happen, though.” Suddenly earnest: “I’ll die soon.”

“Rosario!”

“Today I’m crazy.”

Weeks before Tito's first birthday, Roberto set about planning a party. He liked to ruminate the guest list out loud. A legion of relatives, colleagues, and neighbors had to be included, especially those with tots of their own. He petitioned Miguel for the names of his muchachos. “I’m in a bind,” Miguel told me. He managed to extricate himself by claiming that they were such a jealous bunch, to invite any of them would cause hostilities.

Roberto was determined that I too should attend. I had a conflicting engagement. “In that case,” he said, “you might help celebrate the occasion in another way. Would you, one evening, give us the Liszt sonata?”

Roberto and Miguel wore dinner jackets; Rosario, a hyacinth sheath. Candles shone; a tall vase on the Blüthner bristled with gladiolas. A few streamers, some stray specks of confetti, and a balloon lolling in an upper corner testified to the recent festivity.

As I entered, a small pink whirlwind darted at me and enfolded my legs.

“Lilí just wanted to welcome you,” Rosario explained.

“My mommy said I can’t stay.”