Prima Donna: A Novel

by Megan Chance

  "As his partner?"

  "No. I scrubbed floors and shared his bed," I said, and my words held a bitterness I hadn't expected and didn't want her to hear. "The partnership came later."

  "You must've been some fuck." When I glanced sharply at her, she smiled knowingly and said, "Well, ain't you? No man makes a partner of a woman unless she's got her hands around his balls. Else why not just put you to work on the stage?"

  I felt a flicker of anger--too much, too quick, and with effort I suppressed it. This was no longer my old life, and Charlotte was only partly wrong. "It was just a saloon then. To make it a boxhouse was my idea."

  "How'd you come up with that?"

  "Johnny means to make the Palace a theater. This way is close enough that he forgets what he really wants."

  Charlotte frowned. "Why d'you want him to forget it? A theater sounds pretty good."

  I faltered. A careless answer on my part, a too perceptive question on hers. I searched for a plausible lie. "Because Johnny isn't thinking. Look around you. You think a real theater could make money here? With phrenologists a quarter a ticket? Or temperance and woman suffrage lectures? No acting troupe's been to Seattle in more than a year. They don't even come to Squire's."

  She snorted. "Squire's. Is it really an opera house?"

  "That's what the sign says."

  "Why the hell did they build it?"

  "I don't know," I said, trying not to remember how it had drawn me those first days, how I'd gone out of my way to walk by it, how I'd hoped each time to see a placard for an opera in its close-set windows, how I'd been both disappointed and relieved when there was nothing. Once I'd stood so long outside the dry goods store leasing its bottom floor that the clerk came out to ask me what I wanted.

  "I guess a city's always trying to be finer than it is," Charlotte said. "So you were the smart one. And Johnny listened to you. That ain't like a man."

  "He's not a fool. Don't ever make the mistake of thinking he is."

  "Believe me, I don't."

  "In any case, it worked. We make money, and Johnny gets to pretend he's an impresario, for what it's worth."

  "You regret it?"

  "What makes you ask that?"

  "You sounded angry."

  Henna dripped at my temple and I wiped it away impatiently. "Did I? Pardon me. What the hell do I have to be angry about? I run whores for a living. Isn't that every girl's dream?"

  "Some girls."

  "Well, it wasn't mine."

  "No? What was yours then?"

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. "I don't know. Something different."

  "At least you ain't spreading your legs for two dollars."

  My laugh was short and hard. I regretted it almost the next moment, because when I looked at her, she was staring at me as if I'd just given her some clue to a mystery she was trying to figure out. Nervously, I said, "So what about you, Charlotte? You mean to marry your way out like some of the other girls?"

  She snorted. "No."

  "You can't expect to work at the Palace forever?"

  Her mouth cracked in a smile. "Don't worry, Marguerite, you won't have to worry about a sixty-year-old whore."

  "That wasn't what I meant."

  "I don't think about the future. One day at a time is hard enough."

  That was something I understood.

  When it was time, she rinsed the henna from my hair and applied the black, and once the paste was in my hair and the air was filled with its mashed-pea smell, she rinsed her hands. But they were covered with the blue-gray stains I knew would not fade for days, working up the discoloring of her scar like a shadow growing with the passing of the hours. She went back to the bed to wait, curling up on the mattress, and within a few minutes she was asleep. I watched her there, breathing slowly and evenly, her arm crooked beneath her face, and thought about the things she'd said, the things I'd told her that I hadn't meant to say, and I wondered about her, who she was, what she thought of me. It was the first time in three years--or even before that, really--that I'd felt such curiosity about someone. I'd never asked a single question about Duncan's past, and what I knew of Johnny's was because he'd told me, not because I'd cared enough to know. The other girls in the Palace ... well, they were just whores I was meant to manage; I could hardly be bothered to remember their names.

  It had been a long time since I'd revealed something about myself to another person, and I didn't like it. I didn't like the essence of her, or the way it clung to me. I didn't like the way her breathing eased my loneliness.

  But neither did I want to dispel it.

  When the half hour was up, I rinsed the black henna from my hair and toweled it dry and then I quietly lifted the sill to pour the water out. She shifted and murmured in her sleep, and I went still until she settled again, looking out at the sky, growing paler now with the faint light of dawn.

  I put up my hair and then gently crawled into bed. She turned and eased close, in her sleep searching for warmth, pressing her chemise-covered legs against mine.

  MY DREAMS WERE tossed and vibrant, a closed gate, beyond its cast-iron rails a city I knew very well. I was shivering and cold, waiting, and I didn't want to be there; I was afraid. At first I was alone, and then my brother stood beside me, whispering: "It would be best if you ran, you know." And I meant to. I meant to run. But my feet were stuck fast, and then the gates began to open, and he was gone, and it was too late. Far too late--

  I woke with a gasp, clawing at the bedcovers in fear. It was a moment before I realized Charlotte was beside me, opening her eyes sleepily at my movement, frowning.

  "What's wrong?"

  "A bad dream," I said. I crawled over her, suddenly desperate to get out of bed. The light that shifted through the crack in the curtains was bright, and with unsteady hands I opened them. There was a good wind blowing through the treetops on the hills above the tideflats, breaking up the overcast so that the peak of Mount Rainier sat like an illusion in the sky, its foot still shrouded in clouds so it looked as if it were floating, rather like Wagner's Valhalla.

  I remembered the first time I'd seen it--not until weeks after my arrival here, when one day the perpetual gray had lifted and the Mountain had appeared so suddenly and huge that I was convinced I was seeing things. There it was, giant and snow covered, looming above the black treed hills to overlook Seattle, so large that it seemed the town was nestled in its hollows, as if one could walk through the forest and come upon its slopes after a short trek, though Duncan told me it was sixty miles away. The blue-gray of glaciers and shadowed crannies sculpted it; the sunset colored it blue and gold and pink. They called it Rainier in Seattle, though Duncan told me the Indians had another name for it--Tahoma--and that to them it was a god.

  The next day the rain came again, and it was gone, but now I knew it was there, veiled by clouds. I'd begun to think of the Mountain as a benevolent watcher, a good omen, though today even that could not soothe me. The dream had brought the edges back again. I was uneasy, uncomfortable in my skin, feeling the constant need to move about, as if I were running from that gate in my waking life too.

  Quickly I washed and dressed. I wanted out of this room and into the air, where the wind could blow me about, but as I went to the door Charlotte said, "Where are you going?"

  "Out," I said sharply.

  "D'you want some company?"

  I turned back to look at her. There was only one thing I knew that softened those edges, and even then it was only as temporary as Johnny had said it was. When I was in a mood like this it was better for everyone to keep distant.

  "No," I said bluntly, opening the door, stepping into the hallway. "I'll see you at the Palace."

  I closed the door firmly behind me, and the moment I did, I found myself regretting that I'd told her to stay. I forced myself to go down the stairs and out through the front door. She would discover soon enough the woman that the girls at the Palace had warned her of, and that was better. That was how it
should be.

  The air was cold and brisk; there was the sense of movement in it that suited my restlessness, the low clouds scudding across the sky, the creak of the ropes holding swaying signs, the smoke from the foundry and the mill blowing away in wisps instead of gathering to glower over everything. The Mountain's peak disappeared and appeared again; the branches of the firs and the cedars waved about like feathered arms; the already bent tops of the hemlocks bowed deeper. My skirt and my cloak tangled about my legs as I walked down the ramp and into the street, making my way toward the waterfront, where I hoped the distraction of the busy harbor might soothe me for a time. I wanted to see the water capping in the wind and the fattened sails of the schooners and the clippers, the plungers skirting the water like tiny seabirds before the steamer wheels.

  It was not far to Commercial Street, with its businesses more respectable than those farther down on the sawdust: the Gem Saloon and Schwabacher Brothers dry goods and two butch ers, the Miner's Supply and the three-storied, elegantly embellished Squire's Opera House with its overhanging balustrade. Today I could not bear even to look at it. I started down the street toward the wharf, where the mill spewed its black smoke into the air.

  I was halfway there when I heard someone calling my name. I looked over my shoulder to see her: Charlotte, running toward me, her hair still in its braid trailing out behind her.

  I stopped. She raced up to me, skidding to a stop, her boots sliding through the mud. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing hard.

  "What is it?" I asked. "What happened?"

  She bent over, pressing her hand to her stays to catch her breath, and motioned for me to wait a moment. Then she gasped, "I'm coming with you."

  I didn't know whether to feel warm or irritated; I felt a little of both. "Just leave me the hell alone."

  "Look, I thought ... you been a friend to me and I--"

  "I don't make friends with whores." The words were out of my mouth before I could call them back, that cruelty in me gaining hold, tainting everything, a meanness that matched the sharp edges inside of me.

  She stopped short.

  I kept walking. She would leave me alone now, as I'd warned her she should do. The next time--if there ever was a next time--she would listen to me.

  I reached the mill. On the wharf, men hurried about like ants, shouting to one another beyond the growing pile of sawdust that eventually would be spread on the tideflats. The whir of the saw was loud in my ears. I dodged off the boardwalk, turning onto the wharf. The tide was out. I jumped the three feet to the rocky beach below, sliding a little on rolling pebbles.

  The wind was cold and whipping, the water slapping upon the rocks, gray with the reflection of the sky. The trestles leading to the colliers crossed the shallow tideflats like black stitches; beyond, Elliott Bay was dotted with steamers whose smoke tangled and spread in the wind, schooners and the little private plungers speeding, dipping, and dodging across wakes, and everywhere canoes maneuvering across the choppy water with sinuous grace. I watched them, wondering where they were all going, and for a moment I let my own soul fly with them--I didn't care what the destination; only that it was away from here.

  It was a moment before she came up beside me, before I realized she had not gone after all.

  I stared at her with bewilderment and suspicion. "Didn't you hear me?"

  "I heard you just fine."

  "Then why are you still here?"

  "What was your nightmare about?" she asked.

  I looked out at the harbor. "Nothing. I don't remember."

  She was quiet, which was a blessing, but after a moment I relented, I said, "It's best if you keep your distance, Charlotte. I ... I can't always control it."

  "Control what?"

  "Just ... sometimes everything ..." I trailed off, shrugging in frustration, unable to explain how it felt, how the moods came, how when they did I honestly didn't care that I was hurting people, how my anger was all that mattered. I felt oddly exposed and shamed at it. I felt the heat move into my face, and I dipped my head, unable to look at her.

  She stood there beside me, close enough that her loosened hair whipped against my cheek in the wind. She didn't say anything more, and neither did I, but I felt some hardness within me soften and give way; I felt her solace like a whisper.

  From the Journal of Sabine Conrad

  SEPTEMBER 20, 1871--I am not with child. This morning I had my monthly visitor. Thank God

  * * *

  !!!

  But I have had a letter from Papa telling me I must leave the tour and come home, as he says I have shamed him and he is angry at both Barret and Gideon--they cannot watch me as well as his own eyes and I am obviously not the daughter he thought he had raised. He has sent train tickets for me and Barret, and says Gideon can of course make up his own mind what to do but that he must do a great deal of explaining if Papa is to allow him to see Willa again.

  There is a postscript from Willa berating me for being the cause of Papa's bad humor with Gideon, and telling me that I must convince him to come back with me and Barret because she is beginning to wonder if he loves her even a little bit. And she tells me again to remember my promise to her.

  Barret says we must go home, that he is worried for me and he thinks this life is not good for either of us. He says, "On tour it's too easy to forget what's right and wrong," and that I am forgetting who I am. I screamed at him that I knew perfectly well who I was, that I was no longer some immigrant's daughter, but Sabine Conrad, and that I didn't want to live without performing, and he said, "There's still the Volksstadt," as if it should be good enough for me when even he disdains it, and I wanted to hit him, I was so angry.

  Then he told me it was my own fault and now I must take the punishment and I said it had been his idea that I go after Paolo so he was equally to blame. He looked so guilty and tormented then that I felt horrible. He is my brother and I love him best and I don't like to fight with him. So I forgave him and went into his arms and told him now that Mrs. Follett is gone, we have a responsibility to stay because I am the tour's prima donna. Mr. Cone decided two weeks ago to cut the duets in favor of arias because the audiences so love me, and so I sing alone, without a tenor to partner me. It is clear the audiences come to see me, and if I were to leave, the whole company must disband, so there is much more than just me to think of.

  Barret is afraid to go against Papa so plainly, but I told him he was of his majority now and Papa cannot order him about like a child, and anyway we would be forgiven when Papa saw how much money the rest of the tour brings in. He could not disagree with that! He saw the sense in my argument finally, and so he has agreed to join Gideon and me in standing up to Papa.

  Gideon has said not to worry; that if I stood firm, Mr. Cone and Mr. Wilson would fight to keep me, though they don't know what they can do legally, because we are past the dates of the original contract, and Papa's agreement to extend the tour is only in a letter. But he tells me to have hope, and not to bend, and so it shall be.

  SEPTEMBER 22, 1871--Today terrible news! Gideon received word that his mother has died. In spite of my own worries, I was very sad for him, but he told me she had been ill and under a doctor's care for some months. This was very surprising to me, as he had said not a word about it, although I suppose there is no reason he should speak to me of it. I have never met his mother, though I know she was a seamstress at Stewart's and Willa had told me his mother had such high hopes for Gideon's music career, and that she was all he had because his father abandoned them when Gideon was born, so he did not know him at all.

  He is leaving us for a few days to attend to her funeral, and I am very jealous (though I have no right to be) that it will be Willa at his side, comforting him.

  That, along with everything else, has put me in a very bad temper.

  SEPTEMBER 27, 1871--It is settled--I am not going home!

  In the end it was not Mr. Cone or Mr. Wilson, nor Barret, who changed Papa's mind. It was
Gideon. While he was home for his mother's funeral, he visited Papa too and arranged everything.

  He was gone three days, and I thought of him every moment, and of Willa with him. I was at rehearsal with Mr. Cone and Mr. Wilson when he showed up at the theater, dusty still from the train and so grim that it squeezed my heart to look at him. He told them he'd spoken to Papa and that the tour could continue, and then he gave me the letter from Papa, which I burned, because I could not bear to read again the things Papa had written. How unfair he is in accusing me of being selfish and thoughtless and Barrett of being weak. And as for Willa--Gideon has broken things off with her. He told me so when I said that it was a pity his mother had not lived to see him and Willa wed, and he said that his mother had not been anticipating a wedding, and there was something about the way he said it that made me think she had not known anything of Willa at all, and then he told me everything was ended.