Strange Sweet Song (33 page)

“I don’t think a snowball fight in the woods would be very safe.” Marta’s eyes are wide and her mouth curls into a slight frown. “You could get attacked by a bear.”

Jenny chews a potato. “Don’t bears, like, hibernate? Or something? When do they do that?”

“They stop hibernating if you hit them with snowballs.” Marta’s tone is so serious that Jenny and Sing laugh.

“Or if you call them!” Jenny says. “I’ve been working on my bear call with Professor Needleman—what do you think?
Figaro! Figarofigarofigaro, feee-gah-roh!
”

They laugh at Jenny’s poorly executed opera reference, even Jenny herself, who snorts.

A blond head pokes around the side of the booth. Pretty eyes glint charmingly, and pink-glossed lips coo, “You girls are having a good time over here.”

Sing freezes.

“Hey, Lori,” Marta says, sipping her water. “What’s up?”

“Just enjoying the day, looking forward to the Gloria Stewart finals tonight.” Lori looks pointedly at Sing. “I’ve got an easy afternoon.”

Lori’s party gets up to leave as Sing and Jenny sit in silence. Aaron slides out of the booth, followed by Carrie Stewart and—

“Ryan?” Sing doesn’t mean to say it. He turns around and for the briefest of moments looks more than a little uncomfortable. But it passes in a flash, and he smiles broadly.

“Hey, Sing. Hey, girls. Looking lovely today, I see.”

Marta blushes. Sing doesn’t know what to say.
Ryan, here with Lori? Were they eavesdropping? Did I say anything embarrassing?

“Oh, hi, guys!” Carrie says.

“We won’t keep you from your lunches.” Lori pulls on a cream-colored knitted hat. “I know you’ve got a big day. Especially you, Sing. Good luck with
Angelique.
”

Don’t take the bait.
Sing smiles as artificially as she can. “Thanks.”

Lori returns the fake smile. “Special father-daughter performance, I hear! Won’t that be fun.”

Ignore it.

“Even though, you know, it’s
this
role.” Lori pulls on a beige leather glove. “I’m sure no one will mind.”

Sing feels her jaw stiffen. She can’t ignore it. Not now. Not if it’s what everyone is thinking. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lori’s gaze hardens. Ryan pulls his jacket on. “We’d better go,” he says brightly. “You girls—”

Sing stands. “Do you have a problem with me, Lori?”

Lori raises her eyebrows, and for a second, it seems like she is going to feign innocence. But her pink smile disappears with a derisive huff, and she cocks her head. “It’s not
me
you need to worry about, da Navelli. I’m going to enjoy watching you crash and burn out there today in front of Harland Griss and everyone else.”

“That’s right, it
will
be me out there.” Sing can’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. Everyone around them is quiet. “Do you think you could sing it better?”

Lori pauses. When she speaks, all the coo in her voice has dried up. “It doesn’t matter. It was
my role.
”

She turns, and Sing lets her have the last word. The whole party is gone in a few short moments.

Jenny and Marta watch her as she sits down.

“Stop,” Jenny says, raising a hand. “We can analyze the last thirty seconds for the next two hours, I promise, but please can I order another soda before we begin? I have a feeling I’m going to need my strength.”

“I’m not analyzing anything,” Sing says. “Whatever.”

“Lori’s trying to undermine your confidence,” Marta says.

Jenny scrunches her napkin and puts it on her plate. “I don’t blame her. No offense.”

“Ryan was just having lunch with friends,” Marta says. She raises her ceramic bowl and tips the last drops of tomato soup into her mouth.

“Ryan can do what he wants,” Sing says. “It’s no big deal. Sheesh. I—” She can’t make herself finish the sentence:
I trust him.

Jenny smiles slyly. “What Ryan
wants
is you, Sing da Navelli. Much to the chagrin of the female population of DC. They’ll have to see if another Prince Charming appears out of the ether next year, I guess.”

“Not Prince Charming—Prince Elbert!” Marta says, and giggles.

“I prefer Prince Charming.” Sing swirls a French fry in the remains of the ketchup lake on her plate. Then she voices what seems to just have occurred to her, but as she speaks, she realizes it is what she has always known: “Prince Elbert doesn’t love Angelique for who she is. She’s a trophy to him. That’s the only thing wrong with the opera.”

Jenny just shrugs and says, “Men. Man opera. Written by men. Whatcha gonna do.”

Marta is staring at Sing, who can almost see the gears in her mind turning. “Maybe it’s not
wrong,
” she says, absently stroking the heavy silver pendant around her neck. “Maybe it’s just a tragedy. Only it doesn’t feel like a tragedy at first, because you forget about him.”

Sing frowns. “Forget about who?”

Marta blushes. “Angelique’s true love, of course. Silvain.”

Sixty-two

T
HE NIGHT ZHIN STAYED AT DC,
she and Sing laughed and ate microwave popcorn until two in the morning. And even though Zhin would betray her the next day, Sing can’t remember that night with anything but fondness.

She sat here
. Sing places her folded blanket at the end of her bed. Only it wasn’t here; it was in Zhin’s identical room on senior floor. Sing remembers her in her sea-green pajamas, cross-legged, a pillow wedged between her torso and the wall, both of them giggling as though they were ten instead of seventeen. Sing liked that Zhin.

She sits on her bed, reaches for one of the novels on her nightstand, and, instead of taking it, lets herself be drawn downward by the weight of her outstretched arm. Another hour before she has to be at the Woolly to sing Angelique. She closes her eyes.

“It was my role,”
Lori said. Zhin would have something to say about
that.
Something about a mistake that never should have been made, about Sing’s talent, about all those dime-a-dozen sopranos not worth her time. Maybe that was why Ryan had been drawn to Zhin. She made you feel you were worth great things.

Zhin wasn’t afraid to talk about things, either.
“Sometimes I hate my name,”
Sing told her that night as they sat with their popcorn bowls.
“It’s too heavy to drag around.”

“You shouldn’t be dragging it,” Zhin said. “You should be waving it like a flag. That’s what your mother did. She knew how to get ahead.” Then, surprisingly, Zhin leaned over and rubbed Sing’s shoulder. “And she wanted the best for you.”

“I’m not sure we have the same definition of ‘the best,’” Sing said, but she felt a little better.

“Music is the best,” Zhin said. “And she named you Sing.”

Sing stirred the kernels in the bottom of her bowl with her finger. “Yeah, but what if your parents had named you Play Violin? Even though you love playing violin, it’s a lot of pressure.”

Zhin snorted at this. “
My
parents would never have named me anything so interesting. We have rules, you know. We actually have our family tree written in a book that goes back a gazillion years, and there’s this poem in there about flowers or something, and every generation has its own character from the poem that has to go in everyone’s name. I’m going to name my kids Potato and Chip just to watch Grandma’s head explode.”

“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

T
HE 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.”