Читать книгу Performance Anxiety - Betsy Burke - Страница 13

Kurt stayed the night. I forced him to. This technical glitch in my sex life was already depressing me. There was no saying what I might have done if he had left me alone. I might have tried death by mascarpone, or the lemon vodka home-embalming kit.

I was restless all night, slipping in and out of half sleep then jolting awake to stare at Kurt’s motionless form and try to take in this new development. When I finally fell into real sleep, I dreamed that my bed had slid out the window and into the center of a snowy field. I was alone in it. Over the crest of a snowbank, I could hear the frantic sawing of violins, violas and cellos in a galloping rhythm, harmonies that were almost baroque but modern too. A figure appeared on the crest. It was a man. The first thing I noticed about him was his startling long black curly period wig, and as the rest of him appeared over the crest I could see he was dressed in full regalia, with a sumptuous, glittering, gold-and-black-brocade knee-length coat, huge lace cuffs, silk britches and shoes with a dainty heel. At first his face was blank but as he came closer it morphed between Kurt’s face and my father’s. The music seemed to be emanating from his fabulous coat.

The sounds then became visible, forming around the man into gold droplets that hung suspended on the air then floated downward like sparkling rain. I crawled off the bed and through the snow toward him and began to gather up the droplets. But I had no pockets, nowhere to put the droplets. I was wearing a nightgown, a simple white muslin nightgown of the type opera heroines wear during the mad scenes, for dementia arias. The man started to laugh. He roared and guffawed and slapped his thigh and I realized it was me he was laughing at. He wouldn’t stop and I began to whimper.

“Miranda. Miranda. Wake up. You’re dreaming.” Kurt shook me furiously.

I opened my eyes and rubbed them. I had a moment of disorientation then said, “God, Kurt, I think I just dreamed Lully.”

“You mean Lully the composer?”

I nodded. “Jean-Baptiste Lully. The Sun King’s court composer.”

“How very peculiar.”

“He was dressed in Louis XIV period costume, but it was more than a costume, they were his clothes. Beautiful strange music was coming out of his coat.”

“Too much cheese and crackers before bed, Miranda.”

I ignored him. “I think I wanted to yank the coat off him, too. I wanted to wear it myself. It was gorgeous. I’ve got to try to remember the music…” I faced Kurt. “He looked like you, you know. And my father. Alternately.”

“Good Lord. I certainly hope I’m not going to meet the same end as Lully.”

“What end?”

“Well, my love, the foolish chap punctured his foot while banging time with a conducting staff, during a performance of a piece celebrating Louis’ recovery from an illness. Lully wouldn’t have the injured toe cut off and so died of gangrene poisoning. Silly sod.”

“I think we better not analyze this one too deeply,” I said.

“No, let’s analyze something pleasant. Like your body.” Kurt wrapped himself around me and started all over again, hands and tongue working me over until I was reduced to an orgasmic mush. After he’d finished with me and I lay there unable to move, he said, “It’s all going to be just fine. Wait and see. And remember, it’s not going to be forever. Find a nice little gay friend to entertain you when we’re not together. That’s what Olivia always did.”

But from one last untouched cell of me, a shady all-knowing brain cell, a bubble of anger floated up. “I don’t know, Kurt. It’s all wrong,” I admitted.

“It will be fine. You really must learn to be patient, my love,” he soothed, and began to touch me again.

This time it was a competition to see who could make the other experience the most sensations. I did my very best but I think Kurt won. Again, I was paralyzed.

“Okay, okay, I surrender,” I whispered.

My entire body felt like sluggish liquid as I poured myself out of bed and fumbled with my dressing gown. In my head, the words it won’t be forever repeated themselves over and over. I looked back at Kurt. He was propped up on one elbow, admiring me, his face filled with happiness. How could I not believe somebody as gorgeous and talented and famous as that, somebody who adored me with all but one appendage?

At 9:05 the next morning, I was dressed and staring at myself in my full-length bedroom mirror. Pointy blue reptile cowgirl boots, La Perla tights with blue roses printed on a gray background, short jeans skirt and jacket, hair in a ponytail. Behind me, the bed, the IKEA bed I’d rushed out and bought because I couldn’t entertain Kurt on my old student-style foam-rubber floor mattress, was empty. The only trace of Kurt was the snowy battlefield of rumpled sheets.

It was important not to obsess about this new tic of his. Concentrate, I told myself, concentrate on Matilde.

I switched on the electric keyboard and sang a few soft scales, then moved on to some louder ones. When my voice was warmed up, I let loose with the kind of high notes that remind the neighbors in the surrounding square mile that there’s an opera singer in the zone. Just so they didn’t forget.

Sounds of ransacking from the kitchen made me stop singing. I hurried from the bedroom, increased speed down the hallway, skidding to a halt just in time to see it. Caroline had her head in the fridge. Her friend, Dan the Sasquatch, was sitting at the kitchen table. He was the hairiest individual I’d ever seen. He also had the habit of mooching around without a shirt. It was enough to put you off your food.

At my 1950s aluminum-sided raspberry Formica kitchen table, Dan the Sasquatch was smoking his strange little rollies. Caroline knew this was a nonsmoking apartment. I’d been adamant. But for some reason I couldn’t fathom, the Sasquatch was The One, right down to his dreadlocks. He was the man she’d break all the rules for.

He forever rolled those little cigarettes too loose. Tiny curls of tobacco sparked and leaped out of the lit end and landed on his furry chest. I had this fear that one morning, when Caroline wasn’t there, he’d catch fire and I’d have to put him out, throw water on him, stamp on him, or roll him in my favorite rug, ruining my one threadbare but lovely kilim. Or worse, that he’d burn my place down.

Not that it would have been a huge loss. Despite my craving for more luxurious conditions, all my furnishings were misfits given to me by friends on the move, or other singers off to other gigs on the other side of the country. I dreamed of a gorgeous home put together bit by bit with a sense of style and real money. But it was futile. If one of those big-city jobs came through—if I got the call from Toronto, or San Francisco or New York or London, or, the dream of all singers, La Scala in Milan—I could hardly say, “Sorry, I can’t come and do your season. I have antiques now.”

So most of my furnishings were classic. Classic inflatable plastic armchair. Classic stacked cardboard-box bookshelves brightened up with MACtac and ready to be closed and moved across the country at a moment’s notice.

From deep in the fridge came Caroline’s voice, intellectual and teasing. “Strawberries…mangoes…peppered chèvre…Brie…Camembert…stuffed artichokes…smoked salmon…caviar…well, aren’t we quite the little aristocrat.”

“I don’t think that my food choices are quite enough to qualify me for a noble title,” I laughed.

“Miranda. You’re not going to eat all that yourself? Or are you on a campaign to become one of those really fat sopranos? Don’t they say it improves the voice?”

“Nice if it were that easy,” I said. “I could eat my way to success.”

She continued, “Better hurry up and eat it or it’ll go bad.” She and the Sasquatch exchanged amused hungry glances.

“It’s for a party. I’m having some people over for dinner tonight.”

She turned to face me, crossed her arms and frowned. “Well. Thanks a lot for inviting me, Miranda. For telling me even. Very diplomatic.”

“Don’t be a grouch, Caroline. It was a last-minute thing. If you’re around, please join us. I just thought you’d be bored. You don’t really like my opera friends.”

“No, but I love the food they’re always stuffing their faces with.”

“You come, too, Dan,” I said reluctantly. Then I blurted out, “Just do me one small favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t touch anything until dinnertime. At least, let me get it all onto a plate, let my guests see it presented, cooked maybe even.”

Caroline made a face. “What do you think I am? Some kind of barbarian?”

“Yeah. A bolshie, punkophile, grunge-bucket, tree-hugging barbarian.”

Caroline grinned at me and then at the Sasquatch. “I think she’s got me pegged quite nicely, don’t you, Dan?”

The Sasquatch said nothing. He took a drag of his cigarette and blew out a huge plume of smoke. Our disapproval was mutual. He’d never really warmed to me, either.

But I knew they were pleased. They’d scored some free trough time and a party. Caroline and her friends were artists of the low-budget lifestyle. When they weren’t waving no-global placards outside an international summit, they were being “resourceful.” I’d watched her and the Sasquatch work their way through the lineup at the university cafeteria, swallowing food as they moved forward so that by the time they got to the cash register, they had one measly item each to pay for. She’d justified this method by stating that half of that food went into the garbage anyway, that it was all about manipulating market values. If something could be obtained for free or with a minor criminal infraction, she knew all about it.

Caroline wasn’t stupid, and although she gave the impression of ugliness, she wasn’t ugly either. But the way she dressed (lumberjack shirts, frayed jeans and army-surplus boots) was a big part of her personal statement, and the statement said, “Grotty underbelly rules,” which did not exactly enhance her feminine potential.

I still ribbed her about the day she answered my ad, the day she tricked me into thinking she’d be a nice dull dor-mouse of a roommate. It must have been the ugly tortoise-shell thick-lensed glasses (that she’s never worn since), her brown hair in a neat ponytail (now her hair is always wild or full of messy cornrows), the long boring black skirt, flat sensible shoes and heap of political science books. That’s what did it. I’d thought she was going to be a quiet, mature, proper little nerd, a career spinster, someone who had no life and spent all her time in the library preparing to win scholarships, so I’d never see her. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

Caroline said, “See you later then.”

I grabbed my knapsack. “Later,” I said, and left the apartment.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and as I walked I couldn’t help but take in the gold-leafed trees and deep shimmering October sky.

And then I had a moment of panic. If Kurt and Olivia actually divorced according to plan, maybe next year at this time my autumn would be a London autumn. A Kurt autumn. He was getting under my skin in all ways but one. Except for the first big heart-crusher of my life, I’d always had a high immunity to absent boyfriends, not giving them more than a few seconds of wistful reflection once they were out the door. It was a safety mechanism I’d worked hard at developing and now Kurt had shot it all to hell.

I sank into a daydream, the one where I ask myself, “What would woman X do in my situation? For example, if her man offered her the deluxe hot dog—mustard, ketchup, chili, bacon bits, sauerkraut, mayonnaise, cheese—with everything but the dog itself, would woman X accept those terms?”

Well, that’s what happens when you come from an illustrious cow town. You look around for mentors.

Such as Ellie Watson, the soprano from our production of Madama Butterfly, what would she do in my situation? It was a toughie. Since it was unlikely that Kurt would fall for someone like Ellie Watson, who had a gorgeous voice, and a pretty face really, but needed three airplane seats to be comfortable, but suppose, just suppose he had a thing for really big women and it had been somebody like Ellie and not me he had encountered in that broom closet two weeks ago.

Now, Ellie Watson didn’t take flack from anyone. She knew exactly what she wanted from life and she grabbed it. She was from Liverpool. She’d always had the great voice, the voice with the money notes, the good high Cs. All through her childhood, she’d honed her skills by singing for money in pubs and passing the hat. Then she’d moved on to local talent nights and kept on going until she was accepted into a famous English music school where she ate, drank and breathed opera.

Ellie was greedy, in the best sense of the word. When she took the stage, she really took it, making everybody else seem invisible. Well, almost everybody else. Peter Drake, the tenor who sang Pinkerton, was Ellie’s only obstacle. She didn’t like having to share the stage with another diva.

If Kurt had proposed to Ellie what he’d proposed to me, i.e. neutered sex, she would have said something like, “No actual shaggin’? ME BOLLOCKS!” and booted him out of her bed.

In the studio, Lance was going back over the takes we’d already done. He was wearing earphones and mouthing the words along with the characters on the screen. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and smiled. “It’s good, Miranda. Here, listen to yourself.” He placed the headset on my ears.

I listened for a few beats then said, “It’s not bad, is it?”

“C’mon, sweetheart, let’s bury Matilde. You warmed up?”

“Give me a minute,” I said, and began to pace, first humming then breaking into scales.

Lance leaned against the wall. He was studying me. I stopped and said, “What?”

“No…it’s nothing.” But he was still studying me.

Then I remembered Kurt’s advice from that morning. A nice little gay friend, somebody who could keep me company when he wasn’t there.

“Before I forget, Lance. I’m having some people over to my place tonight. Sort of a dinner party except I don’t have a big enough table, so it’s perch wherever you can. I know you’re probably too busy or I would have asked you earlier, but it would be really great if you could come. You have my address and my number. Come later if you like. For dessert.”

I’d always wanted to invite Lance to my parties but didn’t know whether they’d be his speed. I had no idea what his speed was. I’d never partied with him. I’d developed this weird intimacy with him in the darkness of the studio but I’d never seen him away from work. I wondered if he had a life away from work.

He nodded thoughtfully, then said, “C’mon, we’re running behind schedule.”

Matilde and her swineherd hurtled toward their demise, moaning, gasping, singing and generally porking their way around the rest of Paris until they were caught by the homely wife, hacked up and turned into quite a few kilos of nice link sausages and sold for a good price at the market.

When we’d finished, Lance reached out and rested his hand on my shoulder. His tone was serious. “I know, Miranda. It’s peculiar work. It’s not glorious and you want more limelight than this, and someday very soon you’re going to dump me cold so that you can become famous.”

Quicker than you know, I thought.

“But we’ve done a good job,” he said. “We’re close to finishing. I’ll let you know if we have to do some retakes.”

I tried never to telegraph my impatience, but Lance must have sensed it anyway, even in the darkness. In my early years in the city, the university years, I’d been so happy, so grateful to have those jobs that were somehow related to singing and got me a little closer to where I thought I should be going.

But that morning, I felt boxed in. I had the sensation of being in a cage, of suffering the same indignities as a captured parrot. Someone forced to learn words in another creature’s language, on the verge of forgetting the dreams and dialects that expressed life in the lush, raw, blazing freedom of the Amazonian jungle, now far away.

The Amazonian was the other Miranda in me. The wild, restless, unsatisfied one, age thirteen and obedient to no one, who heard Bach and Mozart and Brahms and Verdi and wondered how to unlock the secrets of that music, how to devour all the sounds in the universe, wrestle with them, make them hers, and then pour them back out to the world.

I took a quick run over to Mike’s for a double caffe latte refresher and to check my work schedule. I’d asked for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. Mike had said he’d try to talk another girl into working my shifts but he wasn’t sure he could manage it. The other girl was Belinda, his latest girlfriend. They’d been seeing each other for two months and the bloom of the romance was starting to fade. Belinda was sulking.

Mike had gone to the bank. And other than a customer, she was alone. She slapped the customer’s cappuccino down so hard that the liquid gave a little bounce and slopped out onto the saucer. The guy started to protest but she froze him with a look and walked away.

I was overdue for a short visit to Cold Shanks. Even though it was just a long bus ride away, my life had been so busy that I hadn’t been back since last Christmas.

I needed Belinda badly. I approached her cautiously. “Hi, Belinda,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Prick, prick, prick!”

“Excuse me. Did I miss something?”

I followed Belinda into the kitchen. She began unloading the dishwasher, crashing everything down as hard as possible. She was a redhead, ethereal and nervous, with short, lank, baby-fine hair. Normally, her skin was pale and transparent, but that day, it was bright pink with anger. “I just can’t believe him.”

“What’s he done?” I asked.

“Mr. Smooth, eh? It’s so nuts. Sooo nuts, I can’t believe I’m in the middle of all this.”

“So what’s he done?”

“Well. In the beginning it’s all wining, dining, flowers, jewelry…right?” She caught the gold chain that glittered across her collarbone and fingered it nervously.

“Yeah?”

“And you think, shit, maybe he’s the one, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And then he says, ‘Can you do me a little favor?’”

“Yeah?” I repeated.

“He asks me if I can give him a hand with his granny.” Belinda spat out “granny” as if it were an obscenity.

“Okay,” I said.

“His granny’s an invalid. Prick.”

“I’m not sure I see the problem, Belinda.”

“She lives in the big family home, the one Mike and his brothers and sisters grew up in, right?”

“Yeah?”

“With his mom and dad and one of his sisters who’s married. The sister lives there, too, with her husband and two kids, okay?”

“Yeah?”

“What he means by giving his granny a hand is that I have to spend the night there. On a roll-up cot in the same room. She can’t do most things for herself. He’s asking me to do night duty for an invalid. Help her to the bathroom, wash her, dress her, that kind of thing. I’ve done one week of it and I’m exhausted. As if I didn’t have enough to do. I thought I’d be sleeping with him, not his grandmother. That’s the whole night wasted.”

“Um, you might find this hard to believe, but it’s a test, Belinda. If you do that for his granny, he’s yours.”

Mike had scared off quite a few girlfriends this way.

“I’ll end up doing it for everyone else in his family, too. I just know it. You should hear them criticizing me, bossing me around. Isn’t it enough that I give a hand? But then they all tell me I’m doing it the wrong way. I can’t take it anymore. But that’s not even the worst part,” Belinda went on. A teardrop baubled up and rolled down her cheek. “The old bag doesn’t speak a word of English. She’s been here most of her adult life and she doesn’t speak English. The place is a total zoo.” She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeves.

“It just seems like it now, but you’ll get used to the way Mike’s family does things.”

“No…no. It’s not worth it. I love him but not enough for all that.”

“You’re too alone in all of this. You have no infrastructure. You need infrastructure.”

“Like how?”

“Well…like extra granny-sitters who have no emotional investment. Somebody who gets paid to do it. You need to wear Mike down, threaten him a little, make him realize that he hasn’t got much choice if he wants to keep you. He’s a typical Italian. His philosophy is to get the woman into the cave and then leave her there…to do all the dirty work. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”

Belinda was paying attention. “Yeah?”

“You’re washing dishes in Mike’s place. Don’t think it’ll change if you don’t stand up to him. Do the words family business mean anything to you? It means make all the families and their in-laws work like lackies for the greater good of the family, none of whom are having any fun because they’re all working too hard. Make sure you’ve got loads of reserves to step in and help you. And make Mike pay. He’s got the money. He’s been hoarding it since he was two years old.”

Belinda smiled then made pathetic orphan eyes and stared at me imploringly.

I backed up a step and held up my hands. “Oh, hey, wait a minute, Belinda. Don’t look at me like that. I can’t help you. I’m already working overtime.”

“It’s nights. You’re asleep most of the time. Granny takes a sleeping pill.”

I shook my head.

“Ah, c’mon, Miranda. I’m sure you could use the extra money. You’re not doing anything special with your nights, are you? You don’t have a boyfriend…”

“Hold on a second.”

“What? Now you have one?”

I backtracked quickly. “No.”

“I’ll talk to Mike, Miranda. He knows you. He’d never accept a stranger, but he’d accept you.”

She was right.

“It’ll be easy,” she gushed now. “I work your mornings here so you can go to Cold Shanks for a few days, then you do this for me when you get back.”

It was extortion, sort of, but I liked Belinda. And I was already picturing my plane zooming toward Ontario.

I knew a little something about Italian grannies.

During the summer between my second and third years of university, I went on a two-month work-study abroad program to Tuscany. I managed it all on the cheap, had the whole thing planned right down to the last nickel. I’d wanted to visit my father, but the pound was too expensive. Just setting foot in an English airport would have used up all my resources. And I had gigs to hurry back for.

I was primed for the romance of Florence from the minute I arrived. What I’d seen from the taxi window looked promising; medieval stone buildings, huge elegantly carved wooden doorways, outdoor cafés and restaurants with bright Cinzano umbrellas, quaint marketplaces, impossibly chic and gorgeous men. The foreign girls, tourists like me, were easy to spot. They all drifted gauzily around in loose pale cottons, looking arty, as if they’d just stepped off the set of A Room With a View. I quickly learned that Italian women wore tighter, darker clothes not just to look fashionable, but because the streets were narrow, and it was easy to clean the sides of sooty buildings with loose flowing skirts.

That first day, my taxi stopped in front of a large rundown palazzo just off Via de’ Bardi. I was ushered in by a Philippine servant and introduced to the Melandroni family, including all the in-laws and outlaws. Each time I thought I had a handle on how many of them lived under the same roof, a new one would pop up. My job for the next three months was to “accompany” the eldest family member, Baby Melandroni.

Baby was eighty-nine years old and a Bette Davis look-alike, with crimson lipstick oozing into the creases around her mouth. “Accompanying” meant following her every demented move, repairing her wardrobe, peeling her grapes, cleaning up her accidents and making sure she didn’t fall down any stairs. She insisted that I call her Contessa.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I was participating in a real-life version of The Twilight of the Gods. The Melandronis hated, tormented and plotted against each other at every available opportunity, but were scandalized when I naively suggested they might be happier if they didn’t all live in the same house.

I barely got near those gorgeous chic men that summer. I spent most of my time in the palazzo, at one window or another, sneaking peeks at the outside world. Although two of the Melandroni men lost their way during electrical storms and ended up in my bedroom, it was no consolation. They both looked like beagles and were unctuous and overeager, a product of too much noble inbreeding. Both times I had to defend myself by beaning them with the six-pound Italian-English dictionary I was trying so hard to absorb.

I was certain that all over Europe, inexperienced North American girls like me were submitting themselves to similar tortures. I had proof. Tina, for example, had chosen to do her work-study in Germany. I received a long, hysterical letter from her. It was written on toilet paper. She’d been locked into a supply closet while labor inspectors toured the hotel where she was illegally employed as a chambermaid.

It was not so much a work-study program as a ball-chain program.

The summer ended on a high note. I’d struggled the whole time to interpret Baby’s ravings and finally understood that she wanted nothing more than to escape. She was being held prisoner, she told me, by her very own family, and they had taken all her jewels from her and put them in the safe in the bank, and were taking all the rest of her money, stripping her of her wealth, not to mention the last shreds of her dignity. She wanted to dress up like the contessa she was and get back into society again.

So one Sunday after lunch, when all the other Melandronis were napping after having stuffed themselves at the big meal, I got her all dolled up. I packed my bags quickly and we snuck out of the palazzo. We took a taxi to Piazza della Signoria. I deposited Baby at a central table in Caffe Rivoire, ordered her a big dish of ice cream drowned in kirsch, and left. Just before catching my train for Pisa airport (a day ahead of schedule), I called the palazzo and told the servant where to pick up Baby. I spent nearly the last of my funds that night on a pensione in Pisa. What a luxury. It had been a completely frustrating experience, but at least it had been frustrating in a new language.