by Ted Michael
“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.”
“A cappella,” she says, and closes her eyes.
Not knowing what else to do, I sing. I do it quietly, though, in case she falls asleep.
“Oh, Danny boy,
The pipes, the pipes are calling . . .”
It’s a lovely tune, really. One forgets that. I think I did all right with it. Ended soft as a whisper.
Well, the old girl doesn’t say a word. I wait.
“Miss Krause, are you all right?”
Her eyes float open. “Why do you ask?”
I look at her face. Her skin seems papery to me. Thin, like a light could shine right through it.
“You look pale, is all. A bit yellow. You might take some vitamins, you know. My sister, Evelyn, swears by them.”
She looks at me. “Is your sister a doctor?”
“A dental hygienist,” I say.
At that, the world famous Sabr
ina Krause does something I’d never thought I’d live to see. She grins, and she opens that resonant cavern of a mouth, and she laughs, deep from the belly. And believe me, there is no laugh like the laugh of the greatest diva of the modern age. It is an opera, that laugh. A symphony of symphonies. The music of the spheres is in it.
“Danny boy,” she murmurs, after a bit. “That was lovely, Fiona.” One thin hand flutters upward, fragile and bent as an origami crane, and presses against her chest. “It came from your heart. I could tell.” She gives me a sly look. “I could never have sung it so well as you.”
That gets me too emotional to even say thank you, so I just stand there fumbling with my coat buttons. “Shall I come again Saturday?” I say at the door. She usually mentions it herself and jots it in her datebook, right there at the piano, but today her book is nowhere to be seen.
“Of course, Fiona.” Her eyes close once more. “Come Saturday. I would like that.”
. . . . .
Monday it’s in all the papers.
They’d found her Sunday morning, in bed, music playing on the radio, dead as stone. I figure it must have been that elevator guy Dominic who found her. He was probably delivering the newspaper or her morning caviar or something.
Amazing, how much there is to say about a person when she’s dead. The obituary goes on for pages. I read every word.
Her real name was Stanislava Kuskowski. Born a Polish Catholic, her parents were killed in the war for trying to hide their local priest from the Nazis (the obituary explains how the Nazis rounded up most of the Catholic priests in Poland and sent them to the concentration camps, which was a bit of history I didn’t know). Somehow she made her way alone to England as a teenager, when she was about my age I guess. She got a job as a dresser at the Royal Opera House in London. She changed her name and told people she was a runaway Slavic princess, or the disowned daughter of unimaginably wealthy parents, or whatever tale suited her on the day. She married one powerful man after another, each one lifting her to the next rung of her career. She didn’t become a legend; she made herself one. And she never, ever talked about that orphan girl from Poland, the dead parents, the terrible things she must have done just to survive. Hardly a soul on earth knew about her real past, just as no one knew about the cancer that had eaten her up for the last year.
“After a lifetime of accolades for her work on the operatic stage,” the newspaper says, “in the end, her greatest role was the one she played in life: the role of Sabrina Krause, illustrious diva.”
. . . . .
I go through them page by page, but there’s nothing in any of the newspapers about the services. I’m not a huge fan of churches, mind you, but I was raised never to miss a good funeral. It’s an Irish thing. I figure Dominic will know. That man knows everything, you can just tell. I take the bus uptown after school and lurk around the lobby of Miss Krause’s building until I find him.
The funeral mass is Saturday morning, he tells me, at St. Aloysius in midtown. He won’t be there, though; he has to work. And anyway, he’d already said his good-byes.
So Saturday morning I’m putting on a black dress, and not the kind you’d wear to a club. Niall and I pass each other in the hall. He notices.
“Where you goin’, love?”
“Funeral,” I mumble.
“Ah.” He wipes the shaving cream out of the crease of his mouth with a finger. Shaving on a Saturday? Man must have a date. “Ah. Whose?”
“My singing teacher,” I say, and I’m done. Crying like a kid, tears, snot, everything.
He stands there for a bit, taking it all in. Then he tries to hug, but I pull away. It’s just awkward.
“Right,” he says, looking at me. “Well. I’m coming with you, then.”
“No, you don’t have to.” But I can’t stop crying.
Ten minutes later he’s in his black suit, rolling the lint brush on his lapels with one hand, on the phone with Terry with the other. Canceling his date, I guess.
Well, he put on his suit, and I’m in no shape to go by myself, so what can I say? At least he can pay for the cab.
. . . . .
Somehow the secret must have leaked, because there’s a crowd in front of the church. No one is being let in, though.
“Maybe it’s already full inside,” I say, ready to give up. Niall ignores me and weaves his way through, determined, until he gets to the velvet ropes.
“We’ve come to pay our respects,” he says to the young man in the suit who’s barricading the doors.
“You and everyone else. We were told immediate family only. As per the wishes of the deceased.” The young man folds his arms. Niall grins.
“What part of Dublin are you from, lad?” The fellow startles, but Niall’s got him; he can tell a Dublin accent down to the block you grew up on. A little banter is exchanged, about possible mutual acquaintances in Ireland and here, too—sure, Niall knows his brother-in-law’s cousin in Woodlawn! She had the face of her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel tattooed on her own calf because she loved the dog so. More faithful than any man she’d ever known, she said! Soon they’re laughing and clapping each other on the back like brothers.
“And tell Father O’Rourke that Niall Kilcommons sends his regards, will you, John?” Niall says to his new best friend, as the fellow slips us past the ropes.
“Niall Kilcommons! Why didn’t you say so?”
. . . . .
Without pausing for thanks, Niall leads me into the dark chill of the church. I don’t want to barge in on her family’s private grief. I just want to have a peek from the back. And she did tell me to come on Saturday, didn’t she? I’m pretty sure she must have known what that meant, even if I didn’t at the time.
But the place is empty, save for the priest puttering in his priestly way up front, and a gleaming dark coffin laid out before the altar.
We slip into a pew in the rear of the nave. “Why isn’t anyone here?” I whisper.
Niall frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe she has no family living.”
“Then why say family only?”
Niall shakes his head. “People are mysterious, love. You can’t solve ’em like a riddle. You just take ’em and love ’em as they are, warts and all.”
I want to ask him what this means, but the priest is talking now. He mumbles his canned bits of funeral mass to an empty house. He talks too fast, like he has to get to his next gig. The organ brays out a few hymns, and that’s it as far as music is concerned.
“Well, this is a poor excuse for a funeral,” Niall says, a bit too loud. He stands up and gives the edge of his jacket a tug downward. Tugs once, sharp, at the end of each sleeve. I know this move.
“God, Niall. What are you doing?”
“Paying my respects, love, that’s all.”
“But you didn’t know her.”
He takes my chin in one hand and tips my face up, toward the light. “What I see in your eyes right now says something good about her. That’s all I need to know.”
A moment later the man is kneeling by the casket, lips moving. I find myself wondering what prayers Niall remembers, though I suppose you never forget those kinds of words, even if you haven’t been to church in a dog’s age.
All at once there’s music.
“Oh, Danny boy,
The pipes, the pipes are calling . . .”
It’s the sweetest Irish tenor you’ll hear this side of County Sligo. That’s right. Niall Kilcommons is serenading the corpse of Stanislava Kuskowski.
It’s a lovely voice, he has. Years of use and abuse have spared it, somehow. Niall’s voice is like that man in the famous story, where the fellow stays young forever while the portrait in his attic ages like all hell. The story’s by Oscar Wilde, which I only remember because he was Irish. I expect that somewhere in our apartment, crammed in the back of some closet, there’s a painting of my da’s voice that’d freeze your blood. He sounds like a boy when he sings, wild gray hairs and all.
Miss K
rause would have liked his voice, I think.
I sob a little, to hear him singing. Who wouldn’t? Niall looks back over his shoulder at me. Those eyebrows lift an invitation, and a hand slips out of that long black sleeve. A pale, long-fingered hand, graceful as a bird. Just open to me, waiting.
Well, what am I to do but join in?
. . . . .
Me and my da, we give her a proper send-off. Maybe we should’ve stopped at two, but we don’t. When I sing “O mio babbino caro,” he sheds a few tears himself. I nail the A-flat, too. Miss Krause would’ve given me a fist pump, if she’d heard it.
“Is that what they’re teaching you at school?” Niall says, a bit awestruck.
I shrug. “Miss Krause liked ‘Danny Boy’ the best. It’s . . .” I was going to say, it was the last thing I sang for her, but I can’t get the words out, I’m too choked up. Doesn’t matter. I let Niall hug me this time. After I dry up a bit, we go back to singing.
The organist is gone by now. He didn’t seem to mind us taking things over. Probably he went outside for a smoke.
“There’s nothing like making music in a church,” Da whispers to me at one point. “Your voice echoes all the way up to heaven.”
“Sure beats singing in the shower,” I agree, and slip my hand inside his. I’d forgotten how good we sound together.
ANECDOTE: SIERRA BOGGESS
I knew I liked performing from an early age. But there was one person in particular who helped me plant the seeds to become an artist. That woman was my high school drama teacher: Nancy Priest. As I recall my time with her, I want you to keep in mind some things: this was not a performing arts high school. This was not a private high school. This was not even a rich school. This all happened at an inner-city public high school in Denver, Colorado.
High school consists of some of the toughest years of growth a person can face. You are going through so many changes, discovering who you are, who your friends are, you are trying to figure out which college to go to, and what classes you have to take. Through all of this, it is so helpful to have someone guide you, and I swear if it weren’t for my four years of drama class with Mrs. Priest, I wouldn’t have even made it through! Her classes, her teaching, her being, gave me a reason for wanting to stay in school and solidified my passion for the theater.
