Born to Sing, no. 1

by Donna Del Oro

  I took a deep breath and began walking forward, my thoughts tunneling, like the vision of canopied trees and overhanging boughs on the road in front of me. The shadows claimed us as we continued at a brisk walk.

  “The longer commute to Houston, I can handle that, D.J.,” I explained, trying to calm down, “It’d take me three-and-a-half hours instead of thirty minutes to get to the opera house. Okay, I can do it—drive to Austin, then fly to Houston. But what do I do when I’m in the middle of a run? I’d have to stay at our house in Kingwood for back-to-back performances.”

  He was walking abreast, nodding guardedly, keeping silent as I worked out the logistics. My analytical nature was trying to sort it all out. I was better at problem solving than he was, so he appeared to be waiting for my solutions.

  “Sara and Jamie could stay here at the ranch when you’re not traveling,” I suggested, “There’s the cook and housekeeping staff, plus the nanny. When you’re gone, D.J., I could bring Sara and Jamie with me to Kingwood. Nanny Maria would help and Vonnie’s making our Kingwood house her home base for now, so she could help, too, when she’s in town. It’ll disrupt Sara’s schooling and David’ll probably object to this arrangement. In fact, he may go to court and ask for full custody. He’s threatened that several times.”

  An ATV was barreling down the road in their direction and so they moved over to the side. The foreman, Antonio, tipped his hat as he passed by. They waved a cursory greeting, then ramped up their pace to a slow jog.

  Actually, put into words, the only problem was Sara’s schooling and David’s objection. But homeschooling could solve that if Sara’s father agreed. Heavens, what did single moms who didn’t have such a support network do, I wondered. At least money was never an issue. For working and middle-class families, paying for childcare was often difficult.

  There was another question on her mind. “Why, D.J.?”

  A look his way told me he was breathing more easily now. So was I, now that I’d gotten my second wind and my anger had dissipated. I was thinking more clearly now.

  “Why what, Evie?”

  “Why are you really giving up your career to take up ranching? I thought you hated ranching. Is it really for Big Jim’s sake and for Jamie’s inheritance? I thought you loved the opera, the music, your singing. Why give it all up at the peak of your career?”

  His arm shot out, his hand seizing my upper arm as he pulled me to a stop.

  “I’m not giving up anything, not yet. I’ve got to honor next year’s commitments—three opera bookings and another album. Maybe a concert or two, Nate says. I should do some concerts in Europe, he says, maybe one in Japan, to promote the album. But eventually, Evie, I’ll be phasing out the opera. I’ve made that decision.”

  His dark blue eyes searched my face boldly, both eager and wary for my reaction. I didn’t know what to think, so surprised was I. For years, I thought he loved singing opera as much as I did.

  “Is it because of Faust in Berlin? The failure of that run? I know you were disappointed but—”

  “Partly that…and I think I need to be home more, Evie. You need me to…be around. That depression of yours after Jamie’s birth scared the pants off me. And now you’re pregnant again…shit, Evie. I’m happy about the baby but…what if it happens again?”

  “I’m taking precautions…” I murmured uneasily, conceding his point. Postpartum depression was no shrugging-off matter. “Exercising every day is one of them.”

  “Jogging a coupla miles every day, Evie, isn’t going to prevent chemical imbalances in the brain or hormonal imbalances. It’ll help, sure…anyway, I want to be here for you. For the kids. They’ll love it here. We’ll get Sara her own pony, hire a driver to take her into Austin to school every day if we have to. Hire a private jet for you to travel to Houston when you have to. We’ll figure it out…”

  I blinked back the tears that were collecting behind my eyes. My throat felt raw and scratchy from the emotional strain of the past twelve hours. While my strong-minded husband was striving to be reasonable and conciliatory, all I could think of was SARA and ME being pushed and pulled to fit into the McKay family’s scheme of things. Yet, how could I deny D.J. and my son, Jamie, their legacy?

  What would happen if I downright refused to move to the Circle M? Would D.J. and I have to file a formal separation? Would D.J. divorce me on grounds of abandonment and sue for Jamie’s custody? No Texas judge would think my arguments reasonable enough to award me custody—nor would I even want to take it THAT FAR. Good God, I didn’t want to even ponder what the McKay legal machinery could do in a custody battle! Moreover, I wanted the Circle M legacy for my husband and my son…if it meant that much to D.J.

  We jogged another mile down the road in tense silence, following the turn as it took us by the northern pastures where most of the Black Angus cattle were grazing and lowing. In separate enclosures in the pasture to their left, stood big, hulking bulls, eyeing us as we jogged past. The pregnant cows would be ready to drop their calves in another two months. Older heifers would be separated out for auction. The whole cycle of life would begin again.

  That’s what ranch business was all about. Having been raised on a small farm with livestock, I felt none of the romance and glamour generally associated with ranch life. It wasn’t all riding out on your buckskin horse to survey all the land you owned. There was hard work, weather and financial worries—right now, they were in a four-month drought and having to import some of their hay. Big Jim had to have another deep well dug. Beef prices had gone down recently and profits, even for Angus beef, were slimmer. There were workmen’s compensation costs and tractors needing repairs. Vet bills up the hiney. Would my mercurial husband get tired of this ranching reality, too? Just like he’d grown tired, it sounded like, of the realities of the opera world?

  Time would tell, I supposed.

  Meanwhile, I had a decision to make.

  Give into D.J. or go our separate ways. He wasn’t saying it but it was implied.

  Dear God, no! I couldn’t bear to lose him…or my son.

  “What if…” I looked over at D.J.’s profile, sober and sad. His demeanor was proud but sagging a little with defeat, as though he expected me to reject him, the ranch, all that he and his family stood for. Clasping both my arms, he stopped me from continuing.

  “I don’t want to lose you, Evie. Not over this,” he said, a hitch in his voice.

  Our eyes locked together for a long moment. It was coming down to this, accept the McKay legacy and the sacrifice it entailed, or leave the family. Tears collected behind my eyes, made my nose run. Some spilled over and I used my long-sleeve tee to wipe my nose. One tear escaped D.J. and trickled down his cheek. He looked frightened and defeated.

  There it was. The turning point in our marriage.

  I knew then and there. Leaving D.J. would be like committing slow suicide. I was no more capable of that than I was capable of not singing. I couldn’t breathe without singing in my life. And I couldn’t sing without D.J. in my life. It was that simple.

  My survival instincts kicked in. My mind raced ahead.

  “What if I keep Sara in school in Kingwood…until June, til schools out. Then we move to the ranch before the baby’s due. When Sara gets back from her summer with her father, I’ll have her room all decorated. Jamie’ll have his room on one side of the nanny’s and the new baby’ll be on the other. I assume we’ll continue to have those rooms in the guest wing of the house. Then we can either arrange for Sara to go to one of the local schools or I’ll have found a school in Austin by then.”

  The transformation in D.J.’s expression was like night to day. He allowed himself a hint of a smile and stood taller, his shoulders dropping in relaxation. The despair in his face disappeared and he swiped his cheek with his knuckles.

  “And if Dad needs my help at the ranch before then? Which he will, I’m sure. Evie, I have to move here right away.”

  “Well, I’ll join you every weekend…after my
performances in Traviata are over. The last show’s in March.”

  Rehearsals began the day after New Year’s. The hustle and bustle of a new production wouldn’t end for ten weeks. I was singing my signature role of Violetta again, and the excitement of once again hearing and giving voice to Verdi’s sublime music filled every fiber of my body.

  “Ah yes, good ol’ Joe Green,” he said with a wry grin. That was his name for Giuseppe Verdi, the composer of La Traviata. “I’m coming to see you. I’ll bring Sara with me. She’s old enough to sit through an opera.”

  With no warning, D.J. yelled, “Yes! Hell, yes! We’ll make this work!” Abruptly, he pulled me over to him, using an oak tree alongside the road as a back-bracer. His arms encircled my waist as he pressed me against his hard belly and chest. He nuzzled my hair, temple, neck, making my heart skip trippingly, filling my insides with pleasurable heat.

  My heart was happy. I’d chosen life. I’d chosen US.

  “You mean that? This is just temporary until Sara’s school’s out in June?”

  I nodded, unsmiling. If he was going to gloat over this forced concession of mine, I wasn’t going to be thrilled.

  He didn’t, however, smart man that he was. Relief flooded his face instead.

  “God, Evie, I thought you were going to leave me.” He slanted his face and kissed my mouth with exuberant gratitude. “Your idea—it’s a good compromise. Thank you, oh God, Evie, thank you.”

  “It’s okay.” I smiled then, tentatively. It was more extortion than compromise, but I let it go. Wives and mothers made sacrifices all the time. It came with the territory.

  When he crushed me to him and said he loved me with all his heart, there was no doubt in my mind I’d made the right choice.

  * * * *

  Eva blinked unseeingly over the photograph, realizing now many years later how selfish she’d been then to feel so put upon by D.J.’s arrangement with his father. She’d grown to love the Circle M, as had Sara and Jamie and little Justin. The ranch proved to be a wonderful and private getaway for her and D.J. and the ranch’s business had given D.J. the necessary balance and pride he was longing for. Carrying on an important legacy was more vital to my husband than I’d thought. To him, that was worth more than all the operas ever written and performed in the world.

  Eva looked up as she heard the pilot over the intercom give instructions for landing. A brief stopover in Dallas to change planes, then on to Austin. With alacrity, she stowed the photo album into her carryon bag, checked for the hundredth time her ticket to Austin. She’d have forty minutes in Dallas to grab a bite to eat—no, she’d save dinner for her and D.J. in Austin. He’d want to take her out somewhere, maybe their favorite Italian restaurant, Domenico’s, near the UT campus. The college crowd still frequented the place, just as she and D.J. did during their senior year.

  No matter. In some ways, they were still college sweethearts. There was still that physical fire between the two of them that hadn’t extinguished with twenty years of marriage. Whenever she looked at her fifty year-old husband, her belly quivered a little, her heart gave a thump or two. His sapphire-blue eyes still had the power to entrance her. At fifty, his touch still made her insides melt into pools of desire.

  Good God, she couldn’t help it. Maybe what they had was abnormal—a long, enduring romance that began when they were college seniors! In their business, the opera and entertainment world, such a relationship was an anomaly. Then again, she knew many singers whose personal lives were happy, successful, and took precedence over all career concerns…

  When they weren’t wondering which one was going to be first to ask for a divorce, that is, they were sweethearts. They still doubted each other on occasion, their jealousies and selfishness simmering just below the surface as always. Still locked horns over whose career would be given center-stage, who would have to compromise the most, whose turn was it to supervise the kids…

  Eva shifted the back of her seat to landing position, then sat back and closed her eyes. With half her mind, she began to listen for the jet’s landing wheels to touch the tarmac. Part of her remained with that Christmas holiday.

  What a Christmas that was—Christmas of ‘93! The upshot of all those revelations: Matt came out of the closet to his brothers only, quit McKay Enterprises, Inc. and moved to California. He and his partner bought a house in Malibu and Matt continued to practice corporate law for a major film production company.

  Big Jim lasted eight more months and witnessed the baptism of Eva’s and D.J.’s second son, Justin Darren McKay before finally succumbing to his cancer two weeks later. A year later, the eldest son, Jim, discovered a cancerous tumor in his bladder, which was excised successfully and followed by a regimen of radiation and chemotherapy. By then, the McKay men had accepted the fact that, despite their privilege and wealth, they had their own Sword of Damocles, a genetic predisposition to various forms of cancer. Certainly, the early deaths of four generations of McKay men offered proof of this. But Lord, did those McKay men know how to cram a lot of living in their relatively short lives!

  Liz McKay moved permanently into a luxurious condo in Austin, continuing her philanthropic work and visiting the grandchildren. Eva suspected that despite the spatial Circle M mansion, the matriarch felt there was room for only one mistress of the manor. Thank God Eva had won out this time! In 2000 Liz McKay wanted D.J. and Eva to do another Merry Widow tour on behalf of the McKay Foundation’s tenth anniversary but neither one could fit the delightful and enduring operetta into their schedules. Instead, they took it to Broadway for a special, highly successful ten-week run.

  Now, Eva was anticipating the Christmas season of 2005. She gasped suddenly as the plane rocked a little with the touchdown. Saying a silent prayer of thanks as she always did whenever she flew and arrived somewhere safely, her thoughts immediately darted back to D.J. She transferred her cell phone from her purse to her jacket pocket, ready to call him as soon as she rode over to the terminal for the smaller, puddle-hopping jets.

  This time she prayed for another McKay male.

  Dear God, please give D.J. another Christmas.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Eva took the ground-level train from Terminal A to Terminal C, found a seat after first buying a Starbucks coffee drink. The flirtatious man from first-class had caught up with her in the jet way and asked her to join him at the VIP bar. She’d looked pointedly at his ring finger, bare but still sporting a tan free ring-line. Rather rudely, she declined and went her way.

  What was it about married men wanting a little action on the side? Didn’t they realize the damage that could be done with a casual flirtation run amuck? An affair followed by lies, hurt feelings, anger, even rage and bitterness? Even violent revenge? Good heavens, opera was replete with such stories—-look at I Pagliacci! Otello! Rigoletto!

  Sipping her drink, she paused to call D.J. on her cell phone. The jet to Austin was on time. She’d see him in less than two hours. Before clicking off, she noted the hint of emotion in his voice. A slight quaver quickly masked by his throat clearing.

  He DID love her! And the boys, of course. And Sara, even though she only called once a week from Cambridge University, where she was a sophomore. She always asked to speak to D.J., her stepfather, even if only for a few minutes. They were fond of each other, Eva knew. D.J.’d taught her how to ride her pony, Cielo, when she was seven. That pony had been the beginning of a real bond between them. Despite this, Sara had wanted to go live with her father, David Fogel, in London when she began high school. In part because she was able to attend a prep school which was a link to Cambridge and partly because her father was now divorced from his third wife and needed her company.

  Yet, Eva sometimes doubted D.J.’s devotion to her. Like that time on Broadway. They’d been contracted to step in and play the Phantom and Christine roles for a three-month run. Her first time in a Broadway production. Exciting. Frightening. Challenging in ways she never expected.

  Her mind t
raveled back in time. Five years ago…

  * * * *

  I was in the Green Room with D.J. in full Phantom costume. My skimpy ballerina costume, which I’d lost fifteen pounds to fit into, clung to my curves like a second skin. The corset kept digging into my ribs and under-breasts but I managed to ignore this trivial nuisance. It was annoying enough to be thirty-eight and playing an ingenue of eighteen. Certainly, the makeup and costumes helped…and the extra weight I’d lost for the role. I didn’t want the audience to lose the illusion of a young woman swept up into a dangerous relationship by the clever, diabolical Phantom.

  On closed-circuit TV, we could see the stage, on another one the maestro and part of the orchestra. The shot of the stage showed the very beginnings of the first act: An aged Raoul was in a wheelchair with his nurse, perusing the artifacts of the old

  Paris Opera House. In approximately three minutes, I would be needed backstage right.

  In full costume and makeup, D.J. was lounging back on the sofa, downing his one shot of whiskey, glancing back and forth between me and the TV’s. I was pacing in front of him, my subdued mood worrying him, I knew. I couldn’t help if I was missing my daughter to distraction. D.J. didn’t seem to understand that having the boys, Jamie and Justin, in New York City with us during our run was, though wonderful, not enough to fill the hole in my heart from my daughter’s absence.

  “So, Evie, during our weeklong break, while I take the boys back to the ranch, you fly over to London and see Sara.” He paused to adjust the white mask over his face while fidgeting with the face mike on the other side. He’d have to hook it up to his little battery-pack before going on stage, as would I with mine, which was tucked into the back of my corset.

  “Oh, D.J., I’d love that.”