The Stars That Tremble (2 page)

Mike frowned and shook his head. He briefly looked very sad. There was a story there, for certain.

“Nah,” Mike said, “just me and Emma.” He put an arm around his daughter and hugged her close. He was not a small man—just above six feet, if Gio’s guess was correct, and he was on the bulkier side, though up close it looked like the bulk was mostly muscle—so little Emma’s head rested near his armpit.

The rhythmic clack of heels walking on the linoleum told Gio that Dacia was coming to fetch him. “I have a faculty meeting in twenty minutes, or I’d chat more,” Gio said to the McPhees. “It was wonderful to meet you, though, and I will see you in class.”

“Yes, definitely!” Emma said.

M
IKE
had been at this dad thing for fourteen years, and the one thing he’d figured out for sure was that parenting involved a lot of multitasking. Thus, the night after the audition, he was watching the Yankees game while also ironing Emma’s school uniform while also keeping an ear on her giddy phone conversations, because she apparently had to call half the planet to tell them she got into Giovanni Boca’s workshop.

Mike did some quick calculating. Four more days of school; then she got a long weekend off before starting the opera workshop. Maybe they could do something special that weekend.

He was still a little surprised that Emma had gotten into the opera workshop. Ms. Moretz had assured him that Emma had what it took, but Mike had tempered his expectations, not wanting to get Emma’s hopes up too high and risk disappointment. Turned out his fretting had been for nothing, thank goodness.

And that Giovanni Boca was a trip, wasn’t he? Really good-looking guy in a sleek Italian way, with silver-flecked black hair and a bit of a barrel chest. Mike reasoned he’d have to have a chest like that to produce the sounds he had. Emma had shown him a few online videos, and Boca had been even broader back when he sang, a good thirty pounds heavier than he looked now. The audio quality on those videos hadn’t been great, but the sound was still incredible, a voice unlike any Mike had heard before.

Emma had said Boca had lost his voice a few years ago. He had some kind of throat problem and they’d done surgery. Now he couldn’t sing anymore and his voice certainly had a raspy quality Mike hadn’t expected (though he’d had the slight Italian accent Mike
had
expected). Mike supposed that was why he was teaching.

Emma burst out of her bedroom. “Daddy? Are you working Monday?”

“Yep. Finishing up that Upper West Side job.”

“Can Isobel come over after school?”

“Sure, sweetie. You’re not going to have any school work this late in the year, are you?”

“No.” She rolled her eyes and lifted her phone to her ear. “Izzy? Dad says it’s okay.” She walked back into her room and started talking rapidly with her best friend.

Emma was a good kid. She hadn’t turned out the way Mike had thought she would. At first, he’d tried teaching her about his interests. He took her to baseball games and gave her lots of puzzles and blocks to play with. He wanted to encourage her to be athletic, but she’d always been small for her age and the bigger kids pushed her around. But then one day she’d started singing. So he revised his plan and decided he wanted her to be herself above everything. When she’d wanted to quit sports and take voice lessons instead, he’d agreed. The singing took him out of his comfort zone, into a world he didn’t know anything about, but he was willing to go there for Emma.

It had been tough to know what to do in those days. The single-dad thing was not what he’d signed on for. He’d been all of twenty-three years old when he’d let Evan talk him into adopting a baby. He’d always wanted a big family, so it hadn’t taken much work on Evan’s part, granted, plus they’d thought they’d have to wait years before an agency found them a child. Then this pregnant teenaged girl had picked Mike and Evan within weeks of their completing the paperwork.

But four years after that, Evan was dead and Mike was trying to figure out how to raise his sweet, beautiful, high-energy daughter on his own. His relationship with his own parents was dicey and none of his siblings had had kids at the time, so most of the time, he had to forego advice and just do what seemed right, what his instinct told him to do.

He was pretty sure he got it wrong a lot of the time, and yet Emma was becoming a smart, well-behaved teenager. He would have to beat the boys off with sticks once she started high school in the fall, but that was a mountain he’d climb when he got to it. In the meantime, she seemed happy to practice her singing and hang out with her girlfriends, and most of the time she did well in school. And now she’d been accepted to the best opera workshop for teenagers in the city. So he must have done something right.

She came back out of her bedroom, off the phone now, and threw herself on the sofa with a huff. “Who’s winning?” she asked.

“Yanks are up two, bottom of the fifth.”

She yawned and settled into the cushions. “What did you think of Giovanni Boca?”

“I think you’ve got your work cut out for you, kiddo. Ms. Moretz said he’s a hard-ass of a teacher.”

“He’s the best, though. One of his students from a couple of years ago is in a Met production this season. She’s one of the youngest actresses to get a starring role.”

“Wow.”

“I know. That could be me, Dad.”

“It could be, yeah. Or you could finish school.”

“Well, yeah, duh. I’m going to get into Juilliard.”

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “You haven’t even started high school. How can you be so sure?”

“I’m sure. Giovanni Boca’s workshop is my ticket.”

He chuckled, admiring her confidence. He’d wondered sometimes if he thought so much of her talent because he was her father, if having raised her had biased him. But now that others saw that magic in her too, he knew he hadn’t been mistaken. She could very well go to Juilliard and sing at the Met and tour Europe and all of those things.

“Plus, he’s kind of cute, don’t you think?” she asked, her expression a little dreamy.

Mike burst into laughter. “Yeah, sweetheart, I guess he is.”

G
IO
talked while he plugged his MP3 player into the speakers. “I had a voice coach when I was living in Milan who thought the best way to inspire his singers was to scare the living hell out of them. So now I will do that to you.”

Twelve teenagers sat rapt on the studio floor, staring at Gio. He found “Der Hölle Rache” in the list of songs. “This is June Anderson singing from
Die Zauberflöte
.” He hit play. “It is famously referred to as the Queen of the Night’s aria, although she sings another earlier in the opera that is nearly as good. Here, she is singing, ‘Hell’s vengeance boils my heart.’ She is not having such a good time, eh? And Mozart is about to put her through hell vocally too. Listen.”

It was clear from their expressions that a few of the girls knew this aria. Emma McPhee certainly did. The girls who didn’t blanched when the singer got to the run pattern between the verses.

“This,” Gio said when the aria finished, “is coloratura. Literally, it means coloring, but in the context of an opera, it means to add these vocal flourishes. They are beautiful but extraordinarily difficult to sing.” He smiled, trying not to freak the kids out too much. “That is, coloratura was often added to songs in the bel canto tradition. Can any of you think of other examples?”

About half the class was with it. Emma cited Rossini, the obvious example. Marie pulled out an obscure Mozart piece, which allowed Gio to freak the class out more by pointing out that this particular part was written for a castrato. Most of the boys winced at that. Greg knew “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted” from Handel’s
Messiah
was a coloratura tenor aria.

“Good,” Gio said. “Now I will blow your minds some more. This one is from
Nixon in China
.”

After playing a few more arias, he had the class stand and he ran through some vocal exercises, mostly scales and weird syllables and matching pitch to the piano. It was a good crop of students, no doubt about that. Still, he said, “The expectation is not for you to sing like June Anderson when you finish my class, particularly since you are all teenagers and your voices are still developing. But I want you to think about what you might do in the future, what you’re capable of. Maybe one of you will play the Queen of the Night at La Scala someday.”

He gave them homework, asking them to find their favorite aria in their own voice range, something they could aspire to. Then he warned them, “This session was easy. After today, I will put you through your paces. I will challenge you to sing things you never thought you could sing, and I will teach you technique and style and grace. We will read music and we will learn languages. It will not be as easy as this. Fair warning.” He put his hands on his hips and aimed a stern look at them. “All right. Class dismissed.”

The kids gathered up their things. A few of the parents filtered into the studio, including Mike McPhee, who grinned when he saw his daughter. The fanatical stage parents often picked up their kids, but it seemed weird for someone like Mike—today in beat-up jeans and a paint-splattered T-shirt—to pick up his daughter when she could just as easily get home by herself on the subway, like most of the kids in this city. Gio found Mike’s overprotective instinct a little curious.

So he approached. “Mr. McPhee. Nice to see you again.”

Mike smiled. “Yes.” He turned to his daughter. “How was class?”

“Good,” said Emma. “I’ll tell you about it on the way home.”

“Not all of the parents pick up their kids,” Gio said, trying tactfully to ask why Mike was there.

“I was working in the neighborhood. Figured I’d drop by so she didn’t have to take the bus alone.”

Gio couldn’t decide if the bright smile and the ratty clothes made him more or less attractive. After a split second, when Mike smiled again, Gio decided they added to Mike’s appeal. “What do you do?” he asked, gesturing at the paint splatters.

“Independent contractor. I’m remodeling a kitchen a few blocks from here. Well, not just me, I’ve got a team of guys who work for me. But, yeah, that’s what I’m working on right now.”

“Oh, okay,” Gio said, not sure how to respond. “I know very little about that sort of thing. Is it going well?”

“It is. We should finish ahead of schedule.” He smiled again, and
Dio
, but this man had a beautiful smile. “I don’t know much about opera except what Emma tells me, so I guess you and I don’t have a lot in common.”

“Oh, I left my water bottle by the drinking fountain,” Emma said. Then she dashed off.

That left Gio alone in the studio with Mike.

It was strange. Mike was not Gio’s type at all. All of Gio’s exes were dancers or artists or people who worked in the theater in some capacity, and yet here was this blue-collar guy who drew Gio’s attention like no one he’d seen in a long time.

It was wiser to keep one’s distance, Gio reasoned. Mike was handsome, but he was also the father of one of Gio’s students, something that seemed ethically problematic. Furthermore, Gio had no idea if his advances would be welcome or if that would be the sure way to destroy Mike’s jovial demeanor. Trying to keep the conversation going, he said, “For someone who doesn’t know much about opera, you are raising quite the young singer.”

“Thank you. She loves it. And she has a mind like a sponge, so she learned all about it on her own. I never wanted to force her into something she wasn’t interested in, you know? My parents were always trying to make me fit in this little box, and I hated that.”

“Whereas my mother sang opera at La Scala and I followed right behind her.”

Mike laughed. “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t say something offensive.”

“It’s quite all right.” Gio smiled. The truth was that he liked listening to Mike’s voice. Mike probably could be trained to sing baritone, and his voice had a rich quality to it, although that Brooklyn accent kept him from sounding like he belonged in Gio’s world.

Emma appeared in the door of the studio. “I’m ready to go, Daddy,” she said.

“Okay, kiddo. We’ll see you next time, Mr. Boca.”

There weren’t any other students around, so Gio leaned forward and said softly, “Please, call me Gio.”

“Gio?” Mike raised an eyebrow.

“Perhaps not in front of the other students.”

Mike glanced toward his daughter again. “I should go. Till next time!”

Gio watched him go, ruminating on how silly it was to develop a crush on the parent of one of his students. Except it wasn’t just silly, it was dangerous.

T
HE
thing of it was, Mike was really attracted to Gio.

It was a little strange to feel so strongly attracted to someone after a long time without dating much. Not that Mike didn’t appreciate a hot guy, just that he hadn’t really been looking, not after his last few relationships had fallen apart. In some ways, dating was easier now than it had been in the first years after Evan’s passing, but in some ways it was harder. He didn’t feel the same shame or guilt he used to, but it was hard to negotiate being a dad with dating. It wasn’t just time spent away from Emma; it was that every man he’d met was perplexed—or horrified, sometimes—by the fact that he had a daughter, and that tended to scare them off.