by A. G. Howard
Mom leaps into her open arms, shattering my hypothesis.
“Lottie,” she murmurs into the other woman’s swanlike neck. “It’s been too long.”
So this is Aunt Charlotte. I expected her to be draped in furs and jewels. What is it with the women in my family being housekeepers? Is it a curse they can’t escape, even after a run of fame and success? Still, she looks good for sixty. Maybe Ponce de León should’ve collected feather dusters instead of searching all over Florida for the secret to agelessness.
Giving my mother one last squeeze, the older woman’s eyes narrow to slivers beneath her lenses. “Rune?” she asks with a gritty voice, and they both turn to me. My aunt pushes the glasses atop the hanky covering her hair, jangling the chain that connects the earpieces. There’s the resemblance: the turned-up nose and soft hazel irises shadowed by short lashes. She favors my grandmother, but I see Dad there, too. Longing snaps inside of me as I imprint his image onto her.
“Yes,” Mom answers. “Grown a bit since her christening, hasn’t she?”
“She is exquisite.” The flavor of France spices my aunt’s English but doesn’t mask the tremor of emotion in her voice. “Looks so much like you at her age.”
Mom and Dad became high school sweethearts when he came from France to America as a foreign exchange student in the twelfth grade. A bitter irony, now that I’m treading his homeland during my senior year and he’s no longer in the world.
Aunt Charlotte steps closer, graceful and demure as any ballerina. The woman is oblivious to personal space. “You arrived sooner than expected. We did not anticipate you until later tonight.”
“We’re experienced shoppers.” Mom winks at me.
I teeter on the edge of the threshold, half in and half out, unable to bring myself to cross over like she already has.
“And did you find the drive suitable?” Aunt Charlotte aims the question in my direction. Her breath smells like canned pears and caramel, reminding me of Dad and how we preserved fruit together the last August before he died—something his mom did with him as he was growing up.
“Um, yeah. It was . . . nice. Roomy.” I can’t even say thank you for all she’s done before she whips off my cap, snatches the band out of my hair, and unwinds my braid. The ribbons flutter to the floor. Several droplets leftover from the rain drizzle from the door frame above, sinking cold into my scalp.
“She has his hair,” Aunt Charlotte says, and I can’t tell if she’s sad or happy as she crimps my curls in her fingers. I tighten my grip on my tote.
“Yes, she does,” Mom answers. “Thick and unruly, just like Leo’s.”
My teeth grind. You mean before he went bald. I’ve never understood why Charlotte stayed away when her only brother was dying. And I’m not sure I can forgive her, either.
My aunt wraps one of my curls around her thumb. I might as well be a doll seated deaf upon a shelf, with no personality or opinion. I snatch my cap back and tug it over my head, dragging my waves over my shoulder and away from her scrutiny.
“Ah-ha! She has your strie têtue, though.” Aunt Charlotte grins at my mom.
She hasn’t seen the half of my stubborn streak. Frowning, I pick up my ribbons and tuck them into my jacket pocket.
My aunt twirls my hairband on her finger and tosses back her head with a cackling laugh . . . a sound of pure madness. I bounce a gaze to Mom, who’s smiling like a goon, then back to our lunatic relative. Her laughter reverberates on a musical note, echoing in the huge foyer. Upon its final beat, another song comes to life—a muffled surge of instruments—somewhere on the third floor.
I recognize the tune. It’s the aria I heard in the elevator this morning.
No. Not that one. Anything but that.
I yank my cap over my ears in hopes to shut it out. “That song . . . ,” I whisper, wrestling the instinctual stretch in my vocal cords as they itch to release the suppressed melody.
Aunt Charlotte beams and pulls out her dust rag, waving it. “Ahh, oui. The school performs The Fiery Angel at year’s end. It is our goal to tackle controversial projects. Ones you won’t find performed in any high school in the States. The lesser roles have already been assigned to junior participants. Today a handful of senior hopefuls compete for Renata—the heroine. First-tier elimination tryouts always take place on the third floor, in the rehearsal halls. Final auditions will be in the theater the last Sunday of October, once we’ve reduced to a finite number of candidates for the main roles.”
My body tenses as I stare up toward the torrential rain of notes.
Aunt Charlotte narrows her eyes, watching me with thinly veiled suspicion. “This is her confession piece, of her encounters with Madiel, her guardian angel. You are familiar with Prokofiev’s opera?”
“Not so much.” And I don’t want to be. I’m dying to find some private place where I can exorcise my musical demons, but Aunt Charlotte has planted herself between me and the way in.
“Well, that shall change soon enough.” She’s still talking but I’m barely listening.
My gaze darts all around, seeking escape.
“You are to be schooled in vocal pedagogy,” she says. “And the history of opera. You will learn. Not soon enough for first-tier competition. Next semester, perhaps. Some of the lesser roles will open up. There are always one or two students who forfeit their parts—be it for grades or nerves. But I expect, in your future, you will have all the lead roles on Broadway. You are your father’s daughter . . . born for music.”
She exchanges a strange glance with Mom—maybe sadness, maybe dread. Or it could be my own dread I’m sensing, because she’s wrong.
I’m nothing like Dad. He was a savant, able to tease out lush, savory sounds that would melt the heart. Music was pleasure for him. He always said, of all the instruments, the violin most resembled the human voice for its ability to express depths of emotion. When played with passion, technique, and vision, the strings would weep words—a tonal persuasion so far-reaching, it could breach the heavens and bring a celestial choir to their knees.
He had already mastered the technique of “voicing” his pieces by the age of fourteen. When he met Mom at seventeen, he’d had his pick of symphonies anywhere in the world, but loving her became his magnum opus, and he chose to be a music professor at our little community college in Harmony, playing only for family and friends.
I shared his passion for music only long enough to know how desperately I miss it, now that singing brings pain and humiliation.
As if triggered by that thought, the aria’s mood changes upstairs—a kaleidoscopic shift of strings and winds. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up in response, the melody becoming an electrical pulse under my skin. Prisms of color erupt in my mind’s eye as a soloist joins the chaos. Her resonant, booming voice rages in indecipherable Russian against the instruments, teasing me to follow.
Spinning on my heel to retreat outside, I crash into the chauffeur’s brick chest. I’d forgotten he was waiting behind us, along with shopping bags and suitcases full of bedding, lamps, uniforms, pajamas, underclothes, and assorted toiletries. His downward stare shakes my already frazzled nerves. I wrinkle my nose at the stench of spray starch and body odor.
“Rune!” Mom yelps. “Apologize.”
I mumble, “Pardon, monsieur,” turn around again, and wind my scarf’s fringe between my fingers. My heart hammers my sternum. I’m trapped—a deer in a forest set to flame. Even the air feels thick, as if smoke surrounds me.
At last Aunt Charlotte moves aside with a fanciful turn of the dust rag, but the rest of her body language remains tense.
My boots pound the marble floor on my scramble past my mom. I stop in the middle of the room. My tote slides off my shoulder and I make no attempt to stop it as the enormity of the place steals my breath.
Three giant golden stairways intersect in the middle of a grand hall. The stairs split into columns, each winding like a snake’s skeleton to the other six flights where brass baluster
s enclose circular balconies. Murals of angels and cherubs catch my eye, along with bronze statues set out along the floor. Intricately detailed windows coax in the outside light. Everything glistens, as if made of diamonds. Artwork hangs from the many walls, and the corridors are lined with elegant carved doorways. Uncountable doorways.
The top three flights are sealed off, but that still leaves hundreds of rooms for the school’s use. Some are now the private suites that serve as dorms. Others are the lecture and rehearsal halls where I’ll be spending the majority of my days for classes.
The chauffer props our bags and suitcases against a marble wall. Aunt Charlotte gives him a tip and he leaves. The double doors slam shut and an echo carries from one end of the foyer to the other, channeling through my ribs and pushing the aria into my throat.
“What do you think, Rune? Isn’t it incredible?” Mom’s voice is reverent, as if we’re standing inside of a church or mausoleum. That last one could be right, considering I might die if I don’t purge the song soon. Mom and my aunt discuss the trip here. Chewing on the ends of my hair again, I hum under my breath . . . quiet enough that they won’t hear. But the urge to sing aloud escalates until my mouth waters.
On the far right, shimmery mirrors line the entire wall. Thankfully, the only reflections looking back are the three of us. If not for the opera taking place upstairs, I would guess the academy was abandoned.
Hope flutters in my chest. Everyone must be at the audition. If I lose control, the other performance will camouflage my voice.
“Are all of the instructors and students upstairs?” I manage to ask.
“Oui. Let us put away the baggage and unpack before the tryouts are fini. Would you like to see your accommodations?”
Standing by the wall of mirrors, I ignore the question. Close enough that my nose almost touches the glass, I study my reflection.
It’s happening . . . bright, gleaming flecks of green, my pupils dilating with each passing second. The color in my cheeks deepens, too, as if I’ve been slapped. I always wondered if Grandma was like Dad and could see all of the changes in me—the physical manifestation of music bubbling up inside. That would explain why she thought I was evil. It’s eerie, even to me. Almost as weird as the gardener’s glowing amber eyes.
The sensation of being watched skitters through my body, then there’s movement on the other side of the glass . . . a silhouette.
I blink and it’s gone.
Shuddering, I cup my palms over my cheeks to hide the color creeping over them. It’s just the music making me crazy.
“Rune,” my mom calls out from across the foyer. I watch my aunt’s reflection as she digs through the things the chauffer left. “Didn’t you hear your Aunt Charlotte? Take some of these bags. I don’t want to be up all night helping you unpack. My flight leaves early in the morning.”
Mom’s spending the night to help me get settled. But I don’t see how anything about this place could be settling. I don’t belong here. Being constantly around this music is going to kill any sanity I have left.
I jitter, itching all over to sing.
“Rune,” Mom’s voice again, this time with an edge to it. She knows. “Is it—”
“I just need a bathroom,” I interrupt, trying to ignore the musical inflection woven into the final word, or how I end it on the same operatic note as the voice upstairs.
“Bien sûr,” my aunt answers while struggling with the large pink bag that holds my uniforms. “There’s a salle de bains underneath the center stairwell. On the other side of the theater, just there.”
It doesn’t matter that she said under the stairwell; my feet don’t listen. The instruments have taken over—a bridge to the soloist’s climax. I don’t stand a chance against music that powerful.
In spite of Mom and Aunt Charlotte’s efforts to call me back, I’m at the top of the second flight of stairs and on the third floor before I even remember taking the first step. I drag my jacket off and drop it behind me.
The music crescendos and the soloist’s voice booms over it, not just in my ears, but in my own throat. My song escalates to match the other singer’s volume. I’m drawn to a room at the end of the curved balcony as if some entity has attached a ghostly cord to the notes in my throat, tugging each one out like rainbow-colored fish on a line—yet never releasing—pulling my spirit ever closer to the music that possesses me.
The door, slightly ajar, beckons. I shove it open at the climax, sustaining the melody—round and smooth through my stretching larynx. Tall windows line the circular room, alternating with mirrors. A burst of sunset filters through the clouds outside, bouncing apricot light from one reflection to the next. An audience of students and teachers is seated in wooden folding chairs in front of a small stage, nothing more than shadows in the sudden blur of brilliance.
The soloist goes silent. Even the instrumentalists stop. My legs stiffen and my spine is rigid. Every nerve in my body throbs. I’m pinned in place by lyrical thorns, just like the little girl in my poster at home, grasping for those wings so far out of reach, embracing the pain to find the release.
I’m all that’s left to carry the tune now, and I do . . . to the very end when the final note, high and full, bursts unrestrained from my throat. The chord reverberates over the silence like a ghostly wail—beautiful and tragic.
Red swirls in my periphery, and my legs give out. A guy leaps from his chair in the front row to catch me. Mortification creeps like poison through my blood as the trance falls away.
I slam my lashes shut, doing the only thing I can to save face. Slumped against my rescuer, I pretend to faint.
4
DEVIL’S TONGUES AND SKELETON KEYS
“Men hate the things they fear, and they fear those things they do not understand.”
Susan Kay, Phantom
I hold my eyes closed as I’m carried downstairs. The guy’s muscles strain with each step of our descent. His warm skin radiates a familiar spice: cinnamon and sage infused with male pheromones and body heat. My stomach contracts, an abnormal reaction that makes me nauseous. I fight the sensation along with the terrifying memory of the last time I let a guy get too close.
“Merçi, Monsieur Reynolds,” Aunt Charlotte mumbles to him. “Take her to chambre de cinq.” She moves somewhere behind us. “You told me of her stage fright. But this? Is extrême, no?” There’s a worried edge to her voice.
“She always goes weak in the knees, but she’s never passed out before.” Mom rubs my shin, comforting. “I think she was just too worked up over everything. She’s been researching the place . . . heard that it was tied to The Phantom of the Opera book. Then she thought she saw some masked guy outside. She doesn’t just have Leo’s hair, she has his superstitious nature. You know what it’s like to try to reason with someone in that state of mind.” Her voice is accusatory, and I wince inwardly. Not just because of the reference to Grandma’s crazed fingerprint on our lives, but because I hear a lot of footsteps behind us on the stairs. All I need is for the other students to know about my recent literary obsession.
But Mom’s not thinking about that. She’s at her wit’s end with my “superstitions.” She made financial sacrifices the past two years, pouring every spare dime into voice lessons for me. Even though she sought out teachers who played the violin, none of their instruments spoke to me like Dad’s. I couldn’t perform without becoming ill. Instead of helping, the weekly sessions of operatic techniques and daily three-hour practices seemed to have the adverse effect—pushing my urge to sing to a compulsion.
Mom squeezes my hand, asking me to wake up. Guilt butts against my conscience at the concern in her voice, but the guy’s tantalizing heartbeat next to my ear keeps me cocooned in my fake unconsciousness, for his good as much as my own.
I stay limp as I’m laid in a bed. In time, the guy’s dangerous warmth and spiced scent fades, replaced by a whiff of chicken soup that ignites a normal hunger.
There’s a scatter of movement all
around: bags rustling, footsteps shuffling, concerned whispers too soft to decipher. Only when the sounds fade do I dare peek through the strands of hair curtaining my eyes.
A lavender glow illuminates the windowless room. The ceiling stretches high, with dark wooden beams meeting at the epicenter. There’s a small closet in the corner, diagonal from where my bed is tucked inside an arched antechamber. On the outer wall overhead, wrought-iron drapery hooks wait to hold the beaded, ginger-colored curtains we bought earlier, to offer added privacy when I sleep. I wish they were already in place so I could hide.
Across the room are a full-length cheval mirror and another antechamber. A dark wooden staircase winds above to a platform with a matching rail, forming a mini-loft. There, a vanity desk and chair are arranged for homework or for making up my face and hair. Beneath the loft, in the snug space where the wall and platform meet, a baroque chaise lounge with a walnut frame and velvet upholstery curves to a sitting area. I shove my hair aside and try to make out the blurred silhouette reclining there.
“Mom?” I ask, my vocal cords stretched and tired.
“She went to the kitchen to fetch you some chamomile tea. Said it helps when you’re feeling poorly.”
I sit up under my covers, caught off guard by the thick Southern accent. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sunflower Summers. But you can call me Sunny. I was assigned as your peer advisor. To help get you oriented.”
“So, you’re a student?”
She makes a puffing sound. “Let me guess. You’re wondering why a hick like me is in a classy place like this.”
I stare at her shadowy form, searching for a way to assure her that wasn’t what I meant at all, but my tongue lies as stiff, dry, and hot in my mouth as the devil sunbathing in the desert.
“Look, I may be a country girl,” she continues, “but I can play a cello like I was born in the orchestra pit of the London Symphony. Ma says I have the mind of a progeny, and the tongue of a heck-o-billy. My uncle’s a oil tycoon. He made sure I was taught proper grammar before he’d pay for my tuition, but I sometimes slip off the wagon a smidge.”