Strange Sweet Song (25 page)

He smiles coldly. “Tell me what you really think, Sing.”

It is the first time he has called her by her first name. She doesn’t like it. “What I really think? How about what Carnegie Hall thought when you tried to play there?”

His expression doesn’t change. “You’re attacking me for your own reasons.”

Sing snaps, “Why don’t you give me a censure, then? Give me two. Get me expelled.”

“I’m not doing you any favors. You want to use your name to get roles? Go ahead. You’re stuck with it now.” His face betrays no emotion.
It never does,
she thinks.
Never more than a flicker, an edge.

Fury bubbles up from her lungs. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? You said yourself you think my singing is garbage.” The words come faster now,
accelerando, appassionato.
“I can’t help it if my father wants me to get ahead. What’s it to you if I’m not a great singer? What’s it to you if one stupid school production of
Angelique
is horrible because I couldn’t do it?”

He raises his voice. “You want the truth? You say I don’t know you. You’re right. I
don’t
know you. How can anyone know you? Are you the egomaniac your mother was? Sometimes I think so. Or are you a pathetic little mouse, afraid of your own father, your own voice? Sometimes it seems like that.” Now he points at her, accusing. “And that’s what you’ve done to your singing—it’s constantly shifting between two extremes. Ninety-five percent of what comes out of your mouth
is
garbage.”

She freezes, clutching the score, its dry cover chafing her fingers. He closes his mouth and turns away. For a moment, all she can do is stare.

Because it’s true.

In the silence that follows, Sing’s hot anger dissipates into nothingness. She doesn’t say anything but slides the
Angelique
score off the stand and turns to the door.

Daysmoor is right.

“Where are you going?” His voice is cool again, detached. “You have a rehearsal.”

Sing turns. “Are you serious?”

“This is a required coaching session. If you skip it, I’ll have to report you to Maestro Keppler.”

She leans against the door, cold metal against her forehead.

“Miss da Navelli. We have a rehearsal to run.”

Her voice, when she finds it, is weak, and she doesn’t look at him. “We don’t have a rehearsal. Go ahead and tell the Maestro. Tell my father, too. The music world doesn’t need me if all I sing is garbage, anyway.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” She hears him sit at the piano. “You can do it.”

Something about his tone gives her pause. She remembers her first conversation with him, when she couldn’t understand why the Maestro had cast her.
Someone he respects assured him you could do it.

Could it have been Daysmoor?

She doesn’t know what to think anymore.

“Anyway,” he says softly, “I didn’t say
all
your singing was garbage. I said ninety-five percent of it.”

To her surprise, she laughs. She doesn’t know why his remark makes her laugh, even as it seems her entire world is melting into oblivion. She can’t help it.

When she looks up, she finds no malice in his eyes, only patience. “Well,” she says, “as long as five percent is okay, I guess.”

He is silent for a moment, then fixes her with that dark gaze. “That five percent … Sometimes, I think I see the real you. When you are listening—
really
listening. When you smile, always at someone else, of course. That five percent…” His gaze falls to the floor. “That five percent that
is
worth something,” he says softly, “is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”

Something in her gives a jolt at this. For the first time, but for just a brief moment, she thought she saw beyond those dull, black eyes to the feeling person within. And it is she who has made him feel something.

He extends his hand, and she looks at it for a moment in confusion before giving him the score.

“You know your sound is lacking something,” he says. “That’s why you’ve been parroting your mother’s hot arrogance, or the cold, technical perfection that gets drilled into hungry young musicians.”

She tries to see through his inscrutable stare, but a dullness at the edges of his eyes is keeping her out. There is something different about him as he speaks, though. A glint of wisdom beneath his hard face. And something else.

“What your sound is missing,” he says, “is you.”

Her shoulders slump. “I know. I try. I’ve never been good at acting.”

“Listen to me,” he says. “I’m not talking about acting. I’m talking about you.”

She feels a familiar frustration stinging her throat. “My father is the one who said I was ready for this. I never asked—”

Now he stands and places a hand on each of her shoulders. “Sing da Navelli, look at me.” She does, and something tingles her insides. “I’m not talking about your father. I’m talking about
you
.”

She starts shaking. “I know, okay? You don’t understand what it’s like. My mother—”

“I’m not talking about your mother, or your teachers, or your friends. I’m talking about
you
.”

“I get the point,” she snaps. “All right? But what am I supposed to do? I’ve been at this school for less than three months!”

He grasps her shoulders more tightly. “I’m not talking about President Martin, the Maestro, François Durand, or goddamn Lori Pinkerton!
I’m talking about you
.”

“Stop it!” She can’t control her hands, her ribs—why won’t they stop shuddering? She can’t look at him anymore and drops her head.

His voice softens. “You can’t even stand to hear that word, can you? I … you poor thing. No wonder you don’t know who you are.”

Without meaning to, she leans toward him, and he wraps his arms around her. His gray robes smell like the forest in winter.

“I never wanted to be Barbara da Navelli,” she says, her voice muffled. “But, somehow, it became my only option.”

“When did being Sing da Navelli stop being good enough?” he asks quietly.

“Sing da Navelli was never good enough,” she says. “Not since I was little. Not since those afternoons with my father’s record players. And definitely not since Barbara da Navelli died.”

“Sing…,” he says tentatively. “You need to allow yourself to be better than your mother.”

She straightens up, stepping away. “What?”

“Listen.” He seats himself at the piano. Then he starts to play.

Eyes unfocused, staring at the floor, Sing hears those five famous chords.

Only they are different now. Instead of heavy, clumsy steps toward the grave, they bubble up from the dark heart of a deep lake. They are Angelique’s ultimate anguish, knowing her prince will die in the forest. They are sung from the smallest, flattest, weakest, most shadowy place in the human heart.

They are the saddest sounds in the world.

Daysmoor has pushed up the sleeves of his robe and Sing sees his long, thin fingers. His eyes are open and calm, and he doesn’t rock back and forth like Ryan. He just plays. He has swept his black hair back from his face, mouth serious.

Sing swallows and takes a step into the curve of the piano.

“Stand up straight and breathe,” he says.

And she does.

“Quand il se trouvera…”

Daysmoor’s words come back to her:
Be a servant of the music, not your ego.
She understands now. She lets go of fear, of showmanship, of the magic party mask. She has nothing to lose, now.

From the first note, it is different. It is all going to be different.

“That’s better,” he says. “Keep reinventing the sound. Every second. Keep re-forming the vowel. Don’t let it decay.”

“—dans la forêt sombre…”
All the hundred little things she has to force herself to think about every time she sings just fall into place. Spine straightened, tongue relaxed, jaw loose, she lets everything drop away—the weight of years, the weight of self—

“More,” he says.

“—il comprendra ce que c’est que d’être seul.”

And the air. The air is amazing. Her ribs spread and stretch to let in what feels like every bit of air in the room, in the building, in the world.

“Legato,” he says.

She has never sung it so quietly or meant it so much. When her last pianissimo has faded, she turns to watch Daysmoor play the end. He wears the same serious, almost blank expression.

When it is over, he turns to her and says, “That was good.”

She can tell he means it.
That was good.
And she knows he is right.

He has been right all along.

The air that has been holding her up leaves her now, and she leans against the piano. Daysmoor stands, the sleeves of his robe falling once again over his hands. She looks up at him, face slack, eyes wide. To her surprise, his face lightens—he doesn’t smile, exactly, but he loses his seriousness just for a moment. “It’s Brahms that does that to me,” he says. “I suppose that’s enough for today.”

Fifty-two

S
ING’S DRESS ISN’T READY
for dress rehearsal.

It’s still being altered. She’s thicker than Lori, shorter. Lori is a swan. Sing is a duck.

She doesn’t use the women’s dressing room like everyone else; she doesn’t have a costume. So she sits backstage on a metal folding chair, ready for the cue that won’t come for at least half an hour. Other singers walk by, alone or in small groups, but no one speaks to her.

Marta flashes a weak smile as she passes but doesn’t make eye contact. Lori Pinkerton doesn’t show up.

I should be triumphant,
Sing tells herself. Or maybe it is Barbara da Navelli telling her.

Eventually, Ryan finds her. “Hey.” He pulls over another metal chair. His voice is flat, subdued. She looks at his round face. Without that mischievous smile, he doesn’t seem quite as handsome. “Look, Sing,” he says, “I screwed up.”

Why is Ryan the only person talking to her? Is all this about her stealing Lori Pinkerton’s role? Nobody even
likes
Lori Pinkerton.

Ryan stares at her, waiting for a response that doesn’t come. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You know what Zhin is like.”

How can he say her name like that, so easily? Zhin belongs to Sing and Fire Lake and last summer, not to Dunhammond Conservatory. And certainly not to Ryan.

“Hey.” He takes her hands in his. “I know everyone’s mad about this whole
Angelique
thing right now. But I believe in you. You deserve this role.”

She looks at him. The warmth of his fingers feels good. He smiles. “There you are,” he says. “I knew you were in there somewhere.”

“Everyone hates me,” she says.

“Who cares about them? You’re moving on to better things. You don’t need them, especially not Lori.”

Who do I need?
she wonders. Her father? Harland Griss? Ryan?

And who needs me?

Ryan pulls her fingers to his mouth. “Come back to me, Sing. I miss you.”

On the other side of the thick velvet curtain, the overture begins with a flourish. Sing rises. “You’d better get out to the house,” she says.

“But do you forgive me?” His voice is more urgent now. There is something new sparkling in his eyes; could it be panic? She remembers Lori’s confident declaration:
I’ll have him back as soon as Gloria Stewart is over.

Ryan pulls her to himself. The familiar scent of his cologne envelops her. “Forgive me, Sing. Please forgive me.”

“I’m on soon,” she says, breaking away. “You need to go. I’m sorry.”

*   *   *

Sing doesn’t know how many people have gathered for the dress rehearsal. The glaring stage lights make it impossible to see into the dark house. She steps onto the set’s second level, a faux stone balcony with narrow wooden steps leading down to the floor. The cast members already assembled onstage, farmers and merchants, look straight out of a fairy tale. Sing carries a prop pail of milk but wears her DC uniform, not the ruffly white gown that is still too long and slender for her.

What amazes her most about these first few minutes as Angelique is how well she knows the orchestral parts. Every time she has learned a role, she has become more than familiar with all the other facets of the opera—other characters’ story lines and music, the preludes and interludes, the music’s historical context, the designers’ visions. It is what professionals do. Her mother never sang a role she hadn’t studied for at least two years.

But this music is almost a part of her consciousness, like language. She knows the oboe part the way she knows her alphabet, effortlessly. She knows what the second horn is going to say before it says it. All of
Angelique
is a lush drawing she could produce entirely from memory, without even a thought.

This is how my father knows music,
she realizes.
Every piece he conducts.

But as she stands on the pretend balcony, a strangeness overtakes her. There is no Angelique now without her. Were she to shut her mouth and shut her eyes, the songs wouldn’t come. The orchestra would play naked, without its mistress.

Maestro Keppler conducts magnificently. His artistry and command rival those of any of the celebrities she has seen, even her father. He cues her clearly. She starts to sing. They communicate with each other across the stage and the bright light, professional to professional, and Angelique comes to life.

It is easier in performance, or near performance. She is not nervous anymore, and she doesn’t forget anything, not for a moment. The rehearsal is tiring, but her voice stays strong. She breathes. She stands up straight. She looks into Prince Elbert’s florid face and wonders how on earth she could ever have let him intimidate her. Only Marta breaks the spell, ever so slightly, when they share the spotlight. She is not as good an actress as Sing thought; quiet frost radiates from behind her elaborate Tree Maiden makeup.

But for the most part, Sing’s focus remains sharp. Even
“Quand il se trouvera”
goes well. It isn’t perfect, but it is enough. It will be enough, in two days, to impress Harland Griss.