Strange Sweet Song

by Rule, Adi

  “I’d rather be Chip than Potato,” Sing said, laughing.

  Zhin tossed a pillow her way. “Too bad. You’re Potato.”

  Sing threw the pillow back, which upset Zhin’s popcorn bowl, and they both covered their mouths to stop their laughter from waking the other students on senior floor.

  “All right,” Zhin said. “You can be Sing, a star.”

  Sing sighed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be a star.”

  Zhin’s face relaxed into an expression Sing had never seen before, unguarded and young. “Sing,” Zhin said, only it sounded different now. It wasn’t quite sing; it was thin and strange and lovely. “It means ‘star’ in Chinese. Like in the sky. See? You just have to look at your name differently, that’s all.”

  Sing smiled. “Really? That’s pretty cool.” Star.

  “It’s not a perfect match. There are lots of words in Chinese that sound a bit like it. But that’s the one I’d think of first.”

  Not a command after all. Star. “Thanks, Zhin.”

  Zhin shrugged. “Well, it’s that or ‘gorilla.’” They laughed. Sing wanted to hold on to this Zhin, the one who disappeared as soon as other people were around.

  Now Sing lies alone in her shadowy room and thinks of stars. Not artificial stars, who shine only in comparison with lesser beings, who revel in their own glory like Barbara da Navelli. Like Zhin. No, Sing imagines the diamond scattering of real stars, burning cold and fierce across the infinite blackness, fixed and alone and complete.

  Sixty-three

  THE WOOLLY THEATER DOESN’T have special accommodations for principals. Sing arrives at the women’s dressing room well before call time, but even so, she is not alone.

  “Lori,” she says to the blond hair seated in front of the long lighted mirror.

  Lori turns around. “You surprised I’m here? Well, I always come two hours early. And yes, I’m still in. I’m in the chorus. Sorry.” She faces the mirror again, hair swishing.

  Jealous, Barbara da Navelli would say. No, would think.

  Sing doesn’t speak to Lori. She sits at the other end of the mirror and does her stage makeup. After a while, she leans back to make sure it reads from a distance. Sweet. Natural. It is only when she leans in close that the exaggerated darks and lights become clear—severe stripes of black and white, strange rounded reds and pinks. Up close, she looks like a monster.

  Other cast members start to arrive, chatting, staking out territory with their bags and coats, but none of them speak to Sing.

  The dress fits perfectly. She can’t even tell which pieces have had to be shortened or lengthened. She takes the carefully curled blond wig from its perch on a Styrofoam head and pulls it over her own hair, held in place with a cap. A few dark strands poke out from the shining gold. She shoves them back under. Perfect.

  And there she is, in the mirror. A beautiful girl in a ruffly white dress, golden ringlets cascading over her shoulders.

  Angelique.

  Sing studies her face—serious, haughty, commanding. She frowns. This isn’t the naïve shepherd girl she had anticipated. Where is the innocence? The radiance? All Sing sees are hard eyes and a shadowy, lined face. Barbara da Navelli.

  Maybe it’s a tragedy, Marta suggested.

  There, in the background of the reflection, over her shoulder—the busy dressing room and, beyond, the open door. That’s what’s wrong. The drab, dusty backstage, the asymmetrical shadows. And the faces. Lori.

  There is so much beyond the reflection of the beautiful girl. The mirror catches only the dress, the hair, the smile. But beyond is the world the mirror doesn’t see, the world the audience doesn’t see. Maybe Angelique could have lived in this mirror, but not in the world beyond.

  Singing Angelique doesn’t bring her to life. She should have known. For all her elaborate costumes, Barbara da Navelli was always Barbara da Navelli. Sing could never take Angelique back from her mother, because her mother never possessed her.

  Is that what she wanted? To take Angelique back? And then what?

  Sing feels her shoulders collapsing. Her heart grows heavier. It isn’t real.

  Now anger. You said playing a thing would make it true. She stares at her reflection, her mother staring back at her, eyes cold. “I can’t make it true,” she hisses. “And neither could you. The only true thing you ever did was die.”

  She puts a hand to the soft blond curls. They slip off easily, just two pins holding them on. Barbara da Navelli was wrong. Playing a thing doesn’t make it true. Not really. Not at all.

  Sing turns around. “Lori. I—”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t care.” Lori crosses her arms. “Whatever. Have a good show.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sing places the wig on the dressing table.

  Lori turns away, applying a final layer of mascara. She looks like a Barbie doll. “You don’t need to be sorry,” she says. “You won.”

  “It’s not a game.”

  Lori turns back now and smiles sadness in a way that makes Sing ache. “Yes. It is.”

  Sing unzips the white ruffly dress. She feels as though she is committing a terrible betrayal as it slides to the floor, but she is not sure who she’s betraying. “Then I quit,” she says.

  Her reflection is still haggard, but it’s her again. Barbara da Navelli is gone.

  Barbara da Navelli is gone.

  * * *

  “Carina, are you sure?”

  She can’t read her father’s face. He should be angry. He is angry, but there is something else there, too, which makes her less afraid. “I don’t think it’s right for me to sing today when I wasn’t cast. I know you spoke to Maestro Keppler.”

  Orchestra members filter into the cushy musicians’ lounge on the Woolly’s second floor. Some glance Sing’s way, but most talk or grab snacks from the buffet table. Ernesto da Navelli shrugs. “Yes, of course I spoke to him. He agreed with me.”

  “Well, he would agree with you. You’re a celebrity.”

  Her father frowns. “I do not use my status to tell people what to do.”

  Yes, you do. She doesn’t say it. Instead, “I appreciate what you and Maestro Keppler did for me. But I’m not singing today. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Forgive you?” He raises his voice enough to cause a few more glances to fall their way. “My dear, you are only hurting your own career!”

  She toys with the teardrop pearl around her neck and looks at the floor. Her father pats her shoulder; she can tell he has realized he went too far. “Sing, farfallina, this is your decision. And if you will not sing, I can’t make you.” He sighs. “But you would have been a lovely Angelique.”

  A great, dark pressure seems to seep out of her chest and dissipate into the busyness of the lounge. “I will be, someday,” she says.

  Sixty-four

  THE BRIGHT ADVERTISEMENT FOR the Autumn Festival seems more incongruous on this weathered old beast of a door than anywhere else on campus. Maybe this is why Sing has come to St. Augustine’s. It feels as separated from the loud, vibrant Woolly Theater as she does.

  She puts a hand to the edge of the advertisement. These posters have been staring at her for so long, it seems incredible they will be gone after today. True, they will only be replaced by the next big thing, but at least it won’t include a hundred Angeliques dotting the campus like painful subliminal messages.

  Because it is painful, she thinks, nudging open the heavy door, which gives a labored creak. The chill follows her into the dim, gaping hallway, but she pushes the door shut and the air quietens. She will not sing Angelique today, and maybe not ever. She will not be given the New Artist position at Fire Lake. This is as it should be, but—

  But.

  But she had thought, for a little while, that both of these things would happen. Had she not been given that hope, it wouldn’t matter. But to love something for a lifetime—even a small lifetime—to wish for something so passionately and then to have hope of it, only to have that hope take
n away again—that is the worst part.

  To wish for something. Her mind’s eye flickers to life, just for a pinprick of a moment.

  She shuffles down the empty hall. The president’s office door is ajar, but she knows he is at the performance with everyone else. Strangely, the sight of the door comforts her. Despite Dunhammond Conservatory’s formal air and spattering of draconian regulations, she has always found its doors unlocked. She runs a finger along the backs of the long wooden benches that line the wall. Afternoon sun diffuses through the stained glass, dappling the hall like a summer forest.

  The next door she passes is closed, and she realizes with a shiver that it leads to the late Maestro Keppler’s office, a guest space set up to accommodate him during his residency this semester. The last time I was in there, the Maestro was alive, she thinks. Now, he—

  She pauses. It was a strange thing to think. Although she imagines a shadowy room, silver-framed pictures, ornaments, she knows she has never been in the Maestro’s office.

  Her plans in coming to St. Augustine’s this afternoon were vague, a simple attempt to be somewhere everyone else wasn’t. But she starts down the hallway again with the idea of playing the beautiful grand piano in the concert hall. It is not forbidden for students to play it, but she has never dared. Her rudimentary skills would seem inadequate, even offensive, on such a fine instrument. Today, though, with the hall empty and echoing, maybe her playing will be good enough. Maybe her modest efforts will be better than silence.

  She has never really appreciated the beauty of the concert hall before. Sturdy stone columns flare into arches like the lotus pillars in Osiris and Seth. Winter light peeks with bright eyes through the tall, narrow windows at ground level and floats lazily near the small stained-glass panels just below the ceiling. The floor shines, warm orange wood.

  Her spirits rise as she takes in the room, and for a moment, she feels more at home than she ever has. But when she removes the dustcover and sits at the piano, sadness overtakes her. It is nothing she can explain, separate from the dull disappointment that has settled over her body since she left Angelique. Sharper, more urgent. Staring at the black and white keys, she feels as if she has just awoken from a vivid dream—the details are so close to the surface, but somehow utterly lost at the same time. Her reflection in the music rack offers no clues.

  She plays a little. A minuet, which she manages to butcher despite its simplicity. The notes echo off the high walls. After a while, she starts humming along. It really is amazing what a few months can do, she thinks, not of her clumsy fingers, but of the effortlessness with which she now calls forth her own voice. Professor Needleman is a good teacher, despite her stern exterior, and Sing knows Mr. Bernard’s acting classes were part of the reason dress rehearsal went well this week. Even Mrs. Bigelow and the crows have helped her become a deeper musician. And—

  She stops playing. And?

  Again, as when she thought of the forest earlier today, there seems to be a vagueness in her mind. She closes her eyes, willing the amorphous clouds of her memory to solidify into something real. Snatches of images. Where do they come from? Long hands. A gray T-shirt. And sounds—the Brahms intermezzo she has loved so much lately.

  That is one piece she will never have a hope of learning. But, giving up on the minuet, she starts to pick out Brahms’s melody. Three notes, six notes. The first four phrases. She tries to construct a spare bass line, which stumbles as it goes. Slowly, her bare-bones version begins to resemble the music in her mind.

  Nathan.

  She pulls her hands off the keyboard as though it has burned them.

  The vague cloud is Nathan. It is as if an explosion has torn through her mind—no, not as scattered as an explosion. A flower of memory, closed tightly, has burst open. She can picture him clearly now, his black hair and blacker eyes, his straight nose and sharp features, his hands. The way it felt when he kissed her.

  How could she have forgotten him? What happened? He was here last night; they hid from Maestro Keppler in the stairwell—was that a dream?

  Her hand finds the teardrop pearl around her neck. It is wrong; this is the necklace her mother sent for her tenth birthday, from Austria. But this pearl should have been put away, flung to the back of the little drawer in her bedside table. There should be a real tear in its place. Nathan’s wish.

  It comes back to her now, the roof, the cold, the gun, the black feathers swirling upward and away from her outstretched hands. All the lives extinguished last night—Tamino, the Maestro, Nathan. Did they ever exist? Or did she dream it all?

  She pushes back the piano bench and runs to the door, shoes squeaking. She has been in the Maestro’s office, and there was a photograph of Nathan in there. She saw it the day the Maestro summoned her. Would it still be there?

  The door is not locked. Unable to find a light switch, she stumbles to the little window and pulls open the curtains. The large desk is covered with papers, scores, and pictures. She snatches one silver frame after another, holding them to the light.

  Here. The photograph she remembers. She picks it up, and a jolt of disbelief snaps through her. The Maestro is there as before, looking reasonably happy, and next to him is the pianist Gloria Stewart. But Nathan isn’t there.

  She peers at the faded picture. Could his image have been erased? It’s possible. She puts a hand to her forehead. Could I have invented him?

  The cantankerous scrape of the outside door startles her. She replaces the photograph and hurries to the hallway. It’s probably not a good idea to be found snooping around a dead man’s office.

  President Martin is just coming in from the cold and leans against the door with a grimace. As it creaks shut, he looks up at Sing, who stands guiltily at the other end of the hallway.

  “Miss da Navelli?” His voice is strong and deep. “Are you all right?”

  “I was just playing the piano in the concert hall,” she says, answering the question she expected him to ask.

  He stamps the snow off his shoes. “Come into my office. Come on, hurry up. You’re not in trouble.”

  She follows him into the spacious office. Her instinct is to stand on the carpet in the embrace of the mahogany baby grand, but she joins him at his desk instead.

  He rummages around in the top drawer and pulls out a small plastic case and bottle. “Contact lenses are bothering me,” he says, popping out the lenses one at a time and shaking them off his fingers into the case. “Sit down.” He seats himself in the puffy leather chair behind the desk. Sing sits. He said she wasn’t in trouble, but she wonders.

  The president puts on large, gold-rimmed glasses. “I’ve only got a few minutes,” he says. “It’s intermission.”

  She doesn’t know what to say. He’s looking at her expectantly, but it was he who told her to come in here.

  The president taps his fingers. “I was expecting to see you onstage today, Miss da Navelli.”

  So that’s it. She finds her voice. “I’m sorry, sir. I … wasn’t.”

  “I see.” He raises his eyebrows. “Is everything all right?”

  She sees the concern in his lined face. No, she wants to say. Everything is not all right.

  She should tell him about her father’s conversation with Maestro Keppler, about how she stole Lori Pinkerton’s role and gave it back again. And how that doesn’t make her a better person. But instead, she finds herself saying, “Can I ask you something, sir?” On the wall opposite, a small clock with a pretty frosted glass cabinet chimes a tiny proclamation.

  “Certainly,” the president says.

  Still unsure whether this is a good idea, she asks, “Who lives in the tower? At Archer?”

  If he finds her question strange, he hides it. “That used to be the president’s quarters, until they renovated Hector in the twenties. No one lives there now. Sometimes we’ll have a gathering on the upper floor, but the rest is storage.” He shrugs. “It’s not off-limits, you know. You can have a look around if you’d li
ke.”

  I’m not crazy, she thinks, willing it to be true. There was a spiral staircase, a basket of laundry next to his bed, yellow light. Her memories are so vivid. “Do we have an Apprentice Daysmoor?”

  He leans back, frowning. “Daysmoor? No, we don’t. Daysmoor. There’s a Daysmoor School for Boys not far from here. Maestro Keppler is a graduate, I believe. Was, I should say.”

  “He’s tall,” she says, her voice starting to fail her. “Apprentice Daysmoor is tall, with black hair and long fingers, and he’s the best piano player DC’s ever seen.”

  “Miss da Navelli.” He rises, and she thinks he’s going to scold her, but he pats her shoulder. “It’s been a difficult start for you here, hasn’t it? I understand. We want our students to be excellent musicians, and we make you work for it. But you must take care of yourself.” He heads for the door. “Look, intermission is half over; I have to get back. But you can always come and talk to me, okay?”

  She nods.

  “Good,” he says. “Take your time. Play my piano if you want to.”

  She means to say thank you. He nods a farewell, but Sing can’t figure out if he wears a look of friendliness or pity. She leans forward onto the president’s large desk and sits for a moment, her head on her arms.

  Nathan smelled faintly of pine. You couldn’t tell the black of his pupils from the black around them. He played Liszt better than Ryan, probably better than Yvette Cordaro. Maybe better than Gloria Stewart.

  With new energy, she springs from the chair and rushes into the hallway. In no time she is sprinting across the bright quad toward Archer. As the wintry air pushes at her, she realizes she forgot her coat. But she keeps running.

  She doesn’t open the front doors. Instead, she veers right, crunching through the snow around to the back of the tower. The air is cold in the tower’s dark shadow, and the fire escape creaks as she runs up it.

  The stone balcony is covered with untouched snow, pristine and silent. It is deep here, having drifted off the roof, and her steps are awkward as she crosses. She presses her forehead to the glass door, blocking the bright sun with her hands so her eyes can adjust to the gloom beyond.