Starry-Eyed (11 page)

That Evelyn becoming a dental hygienist was somehow selling out to
the temptations of luxury was news to me. Then again, Niall's idea of luxury was paying the rent on time. And from my point of view, him begging me not to do it was reason enough to try. When I shocked us both by getting the scholarship, something went cold between us, and it hasn't warmed up since.

Would he act triumphant if I flunked out? I'd never forgive him if he did. And he'd never forgive me if I succeeded. Clearly, Niall and I were not going to get along again, ever.

But there was good news in all this, too: with my ample bust, I'd never be able to pull off one of those boxy, blue polyester jackets with the pockets full of dental floss. Losing a second daughter to the ritzy, champagne-swilling world of “rinse and spit” is one thing Niall will never have to worry about.

He'll just lose me to something else.

. . . . .

Saturday it rains like a punishment. As it turns out, on a day of good Irish weather like this, Central Park West is as gloomy and gray as even the low-rent parts of New York, with the added charm of wet horse poop piled in the streets from the carriage horses across the way. The thought occurs:
Perhaps I might step in some of that fine, fresh manure and track it into the Legendary Mythological apartment, and make like, oops
. But I'm rather fond of the boots I've got on, so nevermind.

The elevator is a cage with a man in it, and when he heaves open the black gate at Sabrina Krause's floor, we're already in the living room. The woman herself stands there, leaning on her cane, waiting. I have the urge to duck.

“Thank you, Dominic,” she says, not looking at me.

“My pleasure, Miss K.” He tips his hat. “No need to ring the bell. I'll be back in an hour.”

She shakes her head. “Thirty minutes today. Perhaps an hour next
week. We shall see.”

Next week! Kill me now. Mr. Scharf said nothing about next week.

Dominic gives me a pitying look, and pulls the door shut with a mighty
creak
. The cage goes shivering back down the way it came. I'm trapped.

“Good morning,” I say, just to break the ice.

“Umbrella in the bucket, please. And take off your boots.” She arranges herself on the piano bench and hangs the cane on the edge of the piano. I do as she says. My big toe with the chipped black polish pokes proudly out the hole in the front of my sock. Classy.

“So. You came.”

I smile sweetly.

“How is the voice? Still broken? Any more birthday parties?”

“I'm feeling much better, thanks.”

She tilts her head to one side. “So I hear. Let us begin.” She runs her fingers over the piano keyboard like she's stroking a long black and white cat, from head to tip of tail. I ready myself to sing, feet planted, back straight, chin down, belly loose. I'm here, after all. Might as well knock her socks off.

She pauses, takes her hands off the keys, and folds them in her lap.

“So, broken voice girl. Why do you sing?”

“Why?”

She nods.

“Well, people say I've a good voice.”

Her face doesn't change, but somehow she looks like she might vomit.

“I like to sing. It's fun,” I venture.

Her eyes bore twin holes in my forehead, and my brains spill out. “I love music,” I say, desperate. “I just love music, that's all. Even when I was a baby, I sang all day, that's what my mum says. Made up songs about the potty and so on.”

At that Sabrina Krause laughs once, short and sharp. Even her laugh is resonant, like a trumpet blast. “I would like to hear these potty songs
someday. So. You sing because you love music. I believe you. But why
should
you sing? Why should I? Why should anyone? Will it cure the sick? Will it feed the hungry? Will it end all wars?”

“No.”

She sizes me up. “Will it make you more beautiful than you are?”

I snort. “No!”

“You are wrong. Of course it will. All great singers are mesmerizing. The world falls at their feet. Singing makes us beautiful. What else does it do?”

“It makes me happy.” I remember Niall's friends at the pub, and their cheers. “It makes other people happy too.”

“And these ‘other people' you speak of—will it make them love you?”

I'm about to say no, because the question's so stupid. But what comes out is something else. “Maybe.” I think of Niall and that look of fake pride on his face. It used to be real, once. “Yes. It might.”

“Now you are telling the truth. Good.” She plays a few chords, melancholy ones. “You cannot take a real breath, a singer's breath”—she demonstrates, and her skinny body balloons like a blowfish on the dock—“and lie. A true singer's breath will only reveal the truth.”

Um, what?

“If you lie, you cannot sing. The note will die in the throat.” She makes a choking sound. Her hands float back to the keys. “Ready?”

I don't know if we're talking or singing or what anymore. I'm lost. “What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Breathe,” she says. “And tell the truth.”

. . . . .

We sing. Only scales, some sustained notes. Soft and loud, on different vowels. She's taking me for a test drive, kicking the tires. It's irritating, like being under a microscope. After a while, she asks, “How good a singer do you wish to be?”

“Better than I am now,” I say.

“You have a voice.” She says it more to herself than to me. “You could be a singer, if you work.”

“I'd like to be as famous as you are,” I blurt. The legendary, mythological Fiona Kilcommons, why not? I can aim for the moon as well as the next person.

“Famous!” She spits out the word. “Why?”

“It must make you feel special, doesn't it?”

A cloud suddenly covers the sun, except we're inside. “That is what you want singing to give you? This specialness?” She taps herself on the chest, and it makes a hollow sound. “This loneliness?”

“Yes.” Can't be any lonelier than a mum in Tampa and a father who's given up on me. And at least I'd be famous.

One penciled eyebrow lifts high on the face of Sabrina Krause. Her lips press closed into a thin red line.

“Come back next week, then.”

. . . . .

The next week, we start with warm-ups. Lip trills, up and down the scale. Placement exercises, to get the voice buzzing. Position of the tongue. Breath support. It's all the usual stuff, but Krause has her own way of listening to me, and correcting me. Like she can tell what I'm doing wrong before I do it. Soon I feel sound coming from spaces inside my head and body I didn't even know were there. I'm vibrating like a tuning fork, and it's making me light-headed. I wish I could sit down for a bit. But Krause is all business, intense, like we're going to run out of time. Which is dumb, because she doesn't have a student after me. I know this because last week I waited in the lobby for a full hour to see who else might show up. There was no one.

“Now, a song,” she says. “What do you have? Show me.”

I put my binder of music on the piano. She flips pages, flips, flips. Nothing pleases her.

“Sing this,” she says at last. She taps a long yellow fingernail against the page, once, twice. “
‘O mio babbino caro.'
”

Scharf is always trying to get me to sing this one too. He makes all the girls learn it. “It's a bit high for me,” I protest.

“It is not high at all. An A-flat.” She plays a run of notes. “You just vocalized to a C-sharp, and could have gone higher. A-flat is the cream of your voice, not even the top.”

“Still, it's not—”

“Tessitura.” She cuts me off. “You know what that is?”

“It's, like, your range. Where you're most comfortable singing.”

“You do not decide what your voice is. Your voice decides, and you obey. You cannot wish yourself other than what you are, Fiona. Remember that.” Her hands hover over the keys. “Now. ‘O
mio babbino caro
.' Tell me what the words mean.”

I try to think. “Oh,” I begin. Got the first word all right. “Oh, my beloved father.” I stop.

“Go on.”

I can't for some reason. “Sorry,” I say. “I just think it's too high.”

She looks at me. A staring contest ensues, like two alley cats across an open can of tuna fish. It goes on for at least a year.

I lose. My eyes drop to the carpet.

“
You
do not decide where your tessitura is,” she says, very stern. “Your voice decides. Whoever
gave
your voice decided, long ago. You can only sing in the voice you have.”

“Sorry,” I mumble. My face is hot. I don't know why I feel so—I don't know. Ashamed, I guess. That I can't even sing a stupid aria in front of this skinny old woman. What's the point?

“I will sing it for you, then,” she says.

And she does.

“
O mio babbino caro
,

mi piace, è bello bello . .
.”

I'm pretty much a puddle by the end. Her body is frail, but her voice comes out of someplace else. Like she opens her mouth and a river of music, of beauty, gushes of its own free will. Like she's not the one singing at all.

The notes soar and float, and the sound expands until the room can hardly contain it. I've never stood so close to singing like this. Who has? I can feel it in my body, too. It's almost too much to bear.
Dear God
, I wonder.
What would it feel like, to be able to make a noise like that
?

When she's done, the room lets the music go, reluctantly, I imagine. Now it's just the sound of her breathing, me breathing, the ticking of the clock.

“That was”—I almost said awesome—“that was beautiful,” I manage.

“Oh, my beloved father,” she says, her voice dreamy. “Lauretta begs her father to allow her to marry the man she loves. She wants him to give her his blessing. If he doesn't . . .”

“She'll throw herself off the Ponte Vecchio.” That part I remember. Bit of a drama queen, this girl Lauretta, but I've acted the fool over a boy a time or two myself, as poor Lily could tell you.

“Yes. She would rather die than be without love. Now you try.”

Me? Is she kidding? “But—but Miss Krause, I could never sing it as well as you.”

She shakes her head. “Forget me, forget everyone. You must sing it as you. In
your
voice. Now ask your father for his blessing. Ask him as if your life depends on it.”

I picture myself standing on that old bridge in Florence, tottering on the edge, ready to hurl myself into the rushing waters of the Arno. For some reason it works. The music swells and I make a sound like I've never made before. Big, open, sailing out of me like someone's pulling it out by a string. The feeling lasts, all the way to the end.

“
Babbo, pietà, pietà!

Babbo, pietà, pietà!
”

My voice is much bigger than I am, I realize.

“Not bad,” she says, and jots something in her calendar. “Not bad. Come back next week.”

. . . . .

Niall hears me singing in the shower this morning, I know he does, because he pounds on the door while I'm in the middle of the aria. I sound like an angel in there, to be honest.

“Fee!” he roars. “Will ya get out? It's the only bathroom we have, you know!”

I realize he's probably got to do something that can't wait. We've all been there, when it comes to needing the bathroom.

But would it have killed him to say something about the song?

. . . . .

It's my third trip to Central Park West in as many weeks, and I feel like a regular, but Miss Krause is not up to speed. She looks like crap, frankly. A skeleton in a Chanel suit. (Sure, I know what a Chanel suit is, doesn't everyone? Watch an Audrey Hepburn film, for Pete's sake.)

It's not much of a lesson today. She's tired or something. We stop after a bit, and she closes the piano and hobbles to her armchair. I figure we're done, and pick up my coat. I'm disappointed, really. I've been singing that aria all week. Mr. Scharf even gave me a thumbs-up at school when he heard me in the practice room.

“Don't go yet,” she says, leaning back in the chair. “Sing me a song you knew as a child. Not something you learned for school.”

“Not the potty songs?” I ask, alarmed.

She smiles. “No, not the potty songs. Sing . . . sing what you sang for your father. On his birthday.”

Really? At school they never want to hear my pub repertoire. That's all
a bit low rent for Scharf's taste.

“All right,” I say. “But I've no music.”