“So, Jayne.” Richard said at the end of the meal. He pushed his empty bowl toward the center of the table and wiped the edges of his mouth with a rose-colored cloth napkin. “Is this your first time to New York?”
She nodded. “I love it,” she said, embarrassed at once by her exaggerated enthusiasm. “Sorry. I’m sure I sound like a country bumpkin, but I do love it. I love the different kinds of people, the energy, the bigness of everything. It’s so much better than Branson.”
Richard looked confused.
“Missouri,” I said. “Hee Haw meets Las Vegas, if you will.”
“Ah,” he said, nodding. Bemusement spilled out of his eyes. “So they have shows in Branson?”
“Oh, yes,” Jayne said. “Lots of them. It’s mostly country and bluegrass, but they have some gospel, too.”
“Well, there you go,” Richard said with a gesture of finality. “I’m sure they’re looking for singers, wouldn’t you think? Sadie? Are you available?” He chided me with a boyish grin.
“Sure,” I said. I took a big gulp of iced tea, no lemon. “Why not? I’ll just travel from loser town to loser town, racking up professional derision and humiliation.”
Richard stopped swirling his glass of dessert wine. His eyebrows arched and he looked at Jayne’s face. I swallowed and turned to her. “Jayne,” I said, guilt oozing out of even that one solitary word. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said brightly. “You’re right.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, fumbling. “Maplewood is a wonderful place for … casseroles. And farm machinery. And soybeans.” I looked at Richard, who appeared to be enjoying watching me squirm. “Raising children!” I said triumphantly. “It’s a great place to raise kids, right?”
“Absolutely,” she said, flashing me a forced smile. She resumed poking at a cold lump of bok choy.
“It’s just that I hadn’t planned on being in Iowa at this point in my career,” I concluded feebly.
“Speaking of your career,” Richard said, “Judith told me she might be able to open up an appointment for you while you’re in the city.” He leaned forward in his chair with an air of conspiracy. “She told me she has some ideas for your return to New York in the summer.”
“Really?” I said, feeling my heart pound in my chest. “Like …?”
He shrugged, reveling in his superior position of One Who Knew Dirt. “Without going into specifics, I believe it has to do with a new recording contract, some sort of compilation with four other hot-to-trot classical singers, kind of a ‘Best of Puccini’ with hints of ‘American Idol’ thrown in for good measure. Solo numbers and ensemble pieces. And then,” he paused dramatically, “a ten-city domestic tour followed by a spring tour in Europe. They’re billing it ‘Pasione.’”
“What?” I jumped in my seat, high enough to make the water in our glasses slosh over the rims. “And she wants me? Why?”
Richard shook his head. “Sadie, has Iowa sucked all the confidence out of you?” He looked at Jayne. “No offense.”
“I can’t believe it.” I stared at the wall beyond Richard, lost in thought. “Avi hasn’t said a word.”
“What, and distract him from booking a bigger check with the same tour?” Richard sighed. “Darling, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but Avi’s been doing a masterful job agenting for Reneé, Kiri, and Cecilia, all of whom, like yourself, remember fondly the era of disco.” He gathered both my hands in his. “The plateau in your career is not now, nor has it ever been, an age issue. It’s an agent issue.”
An agent issue, I thought as I signed the check. Not an age issue, I thought as we meandered a few blocks together before taking separate cabs, Jayne and I back up to my apartment and Richard to a rehearsal in midtown. The precarious hope Richard offered was enough to make me feel dizzy.
“Jayne, again, I’m sorry for my comment about Maplewood.” Her uncharacteristic silence was unnerving.
“Don’t be,” she said, watching a man fly past us on a bike. “You’ve got a lot on your mind right now.”
I looked out my window as the streets of Manhattan paraded by, mulling over the images of a renewed career that pushed Jayne and Maplewood quietly to the periphery. Too soon to hope, too soon to hope, I told myself and could feel every wishful thought soar in blissful ignorance.
17
Spring Awakening
“Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmph.” I could hear Jayne’s moaning through the thin walls of the day spa. I looked up through my avocado and cucumber mask and saw Simone’s eyes widen. “It’s her first facial,” I said, closing my eyes and sighing. “First time to New York, first encounter with a homeless person, first cab ride. It’s been a weekend of firsts.”
“Ah,” Simone said. She massaged my temples and I did not moan, though I wanted to. “We get that reaction a lot, actually. Just not usually with such volume.”
For being such a little slip of a thing, Jayne had thrown herself into her New York adventure like a force three times her size. Other than the quiet cab ride the day before, she’d had an effusive, childlike reaction to every part of her trip. The coffee at Tasia’s felt like fireworks in her mouth, she’d said, and had taken long, luxuriant sips. The spring green of Central Park was the most vibrant she’d ever seen (clearly under the NYC influence by this point as the woman was from Iowa). The pasta at La Piazza had “changed her life.” I dared not let myself hope that was true, as returning to goulash was going to be a challenge. But the delight that she had in the mundane soon spread to her hostess as well. We’d decided on a trip to the spa as one final celebration before my rehearsal that evening and her flight out the following morning.
When we met up in the spa’s waiting area, I laughed out loud.
“That was incredible.” Her face shone with moisturizer and her eyelids were still relaxed into slits. “I can’t believe I’m thirty years old and I’ve never done that before. Why didn’t you tell me?” She sent me a sleepy, betrayed look.
I opened the door and held it for her. “It never came up.” I breathed in a decadent dose of spring air laced with only trace amounts of exhaust and sewage. It was a good day for oxygen in New York. “But where would a girl go, anyway, to get a facial in Maplewood?”
She shook her head mournfully. “Rhonda does hair and nails but she doesn’t do facials. I suppose I could call over to Landsmere, see if their salon does them.”
Landsmere, a hovel of two hundred, sat farther down the highway than Mac’s Roadhouse hangout. To be honest, I didn’t hold high hopes for a decent spa treatment to be had one mile before the outskirts of Chicago, which were a good four hours from Maplewood. But why dampen the perfection of a post-massage moment?
“Let’s stop for gelato on the way home, shall we?”
Jayne brightened. This would be the third of our visits to a gelateria close to my apartment. It would save me more than a few calories when Jayne’s plane took off on Sunday, though I was sure my endorphins would suffer as well.
“Mac called,” Jayne said when we’d settled at a table with our dessert. She licked at a spoonful of frutti di bosco, leaving a deep pink stain on her lips.
“Did he?” I watched Jayne’s face, searching for any knowledge of our late-night adventure the evening before we’d flown to New York.
She nodded. “Said everybody’s doing fine. In fact,” she said, gathering a small mountain of gelato onto her spoon, “I think those kids are going to lobby for me to leave more often. They’ve had pizza every night, waffles and ice cream for breakfast, and got to watch four movies in two days.” She shook her head. “Those men are useless.”
“So true,” I said, knowing full well the children would have been picked up by Children and Family Services had I been left in charge. “Did he say anything else?” I took a big bite of my limone.
“Let’s see.” She swirled her spoon around in thought. “Oh, yes, actually. He said to give you a message. It was really weird …” She scrunched her nose, s
earching for the words. “I think he said to tell you some woman named Danelle would like to talk to you about giving lessons.”
I suppressed a smile by filling my mouth with gelato.
Jayne shrugged. “Singing lessons, I guess, though I don’t know why she’d contact Mac about something like that.”
“How odd,” I said, feeling a sharp pang in my chest as I realized I missed him. Smart aleck, I thought, and knew he’d smiled into the phone when he’d relayed his message. Lessons, indeed.
“I’m really looking forward to sitting in on your rehearsal tonight.” Jayne folded her paper napkin into a neat square and tucked it into her empty dish. “Are you sure it’s all right?”
“Of course,” I said, sitting up straighter and smiling at her pixie face. “When one is the soloist, one can do whatever one wants.”
That promise proved to be more difficult to keep than I’d anticipated. Our rehearsal was not slated to be open to the public. Maurice, the conductor, and Julian, the artistic director at St. Bart’s, made a show of intense, whispered debate, rife with dramatic hand gestures and heated remarks. Finally, Julian relented and allowed Jayne to sit in the empty theater, after I promised she was merely a humble midwestern housewife unable to make the concert Thursday and not, in fact, a spy from Lincoln Center, lying in wait to plot his professional demise and financial failure. I rolled my eyes at Jayne, awash in fresh disbelief at the theatrics embedded in my career. Honestly, at times I couldn’t imagine how an even-keeled person like me survived in such an environment.
I sat off to the side of the stage while the orchestra warmed up. My rehearsal water was tepid, but I’d already had the stage manager change it twice. If the word lukewarm doesn’t register after two times, was there really hope for the third? After several minutes, Maurice tapped his baton on the edge of his music stand. “People,” he said, “we’ll start with the Handel, then the Mozart, and then the orchestral pieces. But first,” he said, turning to me with a flourish, “let us welcome the divine Sadie Maddox.”
I waved to the strings, the winds, the brass. Orchestral applause was a rare bird, all of it muted because it’s made with the players’ feet. Not even Sadie Maddox could make a violinist lay down her weapon and clap like a normal person. Maurice reached for my hand and kissed it. Even with the extra foot of height offered by the conductor’s podium, I towered over the little man. He dropped my hand abruptly and whacked his baton on the stand again.
“All right,” he said. “‘He Shall Feed His Flock.’”
Maurice and Julian had called about the program choices six months earlier. They’d billed the concert “Sacred and Sublime,” and had decided on a full program of sacred works. The two men had been particularly giddy about performing the Handel in March. They’d selected two arias from Messiah, the oratorio famous for its “Hallelujah” chorus. Julian insisted they were renegades to program selections from the piece any time other than November and December, and Maurice had agreed to their slap in the face of the traditional music establishment, assuming there was one of those in New York. This was the city that showcased nude interpretive dance, live jazz inside a giant aquarium, and accordion improv for octogenarians, and that was within the space of one weekend. I questioned the depth of their rebellion but was content to be hired.
The melody of the first aria lifted out of the violins. “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd,” I began, filling the space between me and Jayne, who sat in the center of the balcony. I could see her smiling and watching my face. “And He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.”
I needed to rehearse the transition again but Maurice continued undeterred to the modulation. “Come unto him,” I sang, “ye that are heavy laden and He will give you rest.” Jayne nodded slightly in time to the music, and I wondered if she were dreading her own return to the life of a heavy-laden farm wife. Never, I thought, could I do what she does. Better to resign myself to anonymity for the rest of my life than to live with three small children in the middle of a field. I could hear my tone becoming disengaged and unnecessarily dark as I considered it, so I regained my focus and finished the piece.
After chipping away at some less-than-inspired phrasing on the part of the orchestra, Maurice seemed satisfied for the moment and launched us into the more triumphant “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.” Though the piece was written for a high soprano, my upper range was more expansive than the average mezzo and, when in good voice, was able to soar on the high G-sharps. I would have much preferred to “soar” on high Gs and had said as much to Maurice and Julian. However, they’d been unwilling to perform the piece in anything but its original key and stuck with E major, a key that had never been my best.
My start was rocky. All the way through the first phrases of “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth,” my voice sounded sluggish. I couldn’t seem to move air through to the ends of phrases. Maurice was starting to send me snooty glances from his podium. I was ruminating on his bad shoes and on Julian’s rigidity with key changes when my eyes lit on Jayne’s face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them away, simply sat with hands clasped in her lap, eyes trained on me and washed in the music.
I could feel my heart begin to race. Turning my eyes away from Jayne, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. The last time someone had experienced such a physical reaction to my singing, I’d packed up and moved to a town that hadn’t heard of Kalamata olives. Things are finally looking up in my career, I found myself praying. Please don’t mess with me now.
We finished the piece, and Maurice told me pointedly that we had a few days before the dress rehearsal and that perhaps I’d acclimate to Eastern Standard Time by then. I smiled, trying my best not to feel like a schoolgirl given detention, and bid him and the orchestra farewell until Wednesday.
When Jayne met me in the lobby, she threw her arms around me and stayed there until there was no semblance of social propriety left. I gently pulled away. She brushed a tear from her cheek.
“I know too,” she said, her eyes intensely blue after crying.
“You do?” I said. What, exactly, does she know? I thought. About the John the Baptist moment? About my late-night two-stepping with Mac?
She nodded. “I do know my Redeemer liveth.” Her eyes filled with new tears. She took a deep breath and I became concerned she was readying herself to sing the piece herself.
“Jayne,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. Keep her calm, I thought. If Maurice wasn’t thrilled about her sitting in on the rehearsal, when he heard her chirping Handel from the lobby, he might use his baton as an impaling device.
Jayne followed me gamely as I led her through the narthex and down a small flight of stairs. We pushed open a set of heavy doors and were greeted with blinding March sunshine. I squinted into my Chanel purse, searching for my sunglasses case.
“Just look: the sun, the spring—all this rebirth practically begging me to stop and look.” Jayne swept her hand across the courtyard that bordered one side of the building. “Easter is just around the corner, and you know what?” I didn’t, but she rambled right along anyway. “Until I heard you singing today, I hadn’t given it a bit of thought.” She laughed ruefully. “The One who redeems me from a life of emptiness lives and I’ve been too busy to notice.” She stepped onto the bottom rung of a railing that encircled a small birch tree. Soon buds would pepper the brittle branches but now they stood shivering in the cool breeze. “He is risen!” Jayne shouted, balancing her weight on the railing and throwing one small hand into the air.
Have mercy, I thought, looking around the courtyard and hoping no one from the orchestra was en route for a smoke break.
“I said, ‘He is risen!’” Jayne nodded toward me.
“All right, all right,” I muttered, crowded suddenly with musty memories of Easter Sunday and uncomfortable, starched dresses. I knew what to d
o to shut her up. “He is risen indeed!” I said, finishing with a dramatic sigh. I could practically hear my mother applauding from her vantage point in glory.
“Amen!” Jayne trilled. She jumped down from her perch, her face triumphant and glowing even more luminously than after the white tea mask and exfoliating massage. She pulled me into a fierce embrace. “Thank you, Sadie, for reminding me of what and Who is most important.”
I patted her slowly on her back, feeling even in that gesture the surprising frailty of her frame. She clung to me and I felt tears sting my eyes. I blinked furiously, staring at a flock of wispy clouds that were parading like royalty across the baby blue sky. Redeemed from a life of emptiness, I thought, pushing back at the thought with what little reserve I had in that moment.
Jayne pulled away and tried with little success to hide her surprise at my red nose and smudged mascara. She pulled a tissue out of her purse and handed it to me without a word.
“Reminds me of Easter when I was a girl,” I said feebly before blowing my nose, never a dainty sound no matter how one tries.
Jayne nodded and allowed a small smile. “I know just how you feel,” she said. She looped her arm in mine and we started on a long walk, drinking in the light that follows winter.
18
Lonely Hearts
Jayne left for the airport the following morning with a poker face. I tried in vain to convince her to take a cab instead of the bus but she was feeling heady with enthusiasm for Gotham City, public transportation included, and could not be dissuaded.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, as if to a henpecking mother concerned about curfew violations. “I’m completely up on the M60 line.”
Kimberly Stuart Page 12
