by Kat Cameron
Monday is the first full rehearsal with orchestra. Zoe sits in a chair next to Rachel, waiting for Courtney, the makeup artist with green streaks in her short hair and a mermaid tattoo. Rachel pulls her long hair back into a bun and pushes in bobby pins.
“Have you decided whether to audition for next year?”
“Not yet.” Grant wants her to try some other career. Something practical. “I could ask Tim to leave,” he said. “I know he drives you crazy. But I can’t carry this place on my own, not with the taxes due in June. The utility bills doubled last year. If you found a better job, we could even fix up the kitchen.”
She has read that the Alberta Ballet Company dancers are paid around $15,000 a year. Not enough for a one-bedroom apartment, not with rents jumping over 10% in the last year to over a thousand a month. If she weren’t living with Grant, she’d be struggling.
She could follow the dream her entire life and never reach it. The dancers have one chance. If they aren’t good enough at twenty, they’ll never be good enough. But she could still be singing in the chorus at fifty. Is that what she wants?
Confutatis
Soldiers in fatigues circle the stage around the platform where Mozart conducts, the music gripping him with such power that he sways backwards, knees bent, almost falling, anchored to the ground yet always reaching for the notes that dance in his mind. The soldiers push the platform across the stage, transforming it into a bunker, a shelter from enemy fire.
“Tenors, you’re behind on the eighth bar entry. Again, from Confutatis maledictis.” The conductor hums a few notes. He knows the entire score in Latin in addition to the orchestration. This level of knowledge is beyond her.
Everyone knows who the future stars are. The golden boy. They all hear it in his voice. That something extra. In the MFA program, he landed all the plum roles: Papageno in The Magic Flute, the “Au Fond du Temple Saint” duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, the title role in Faust. The golden baritone. He will go far.
She waits until she’s back from rehearsal to tackle Steve. Grant is watching a movie with Tim, his downstairs tenant. Steve has spread the contents of his duffel bag over Grant’s recliner in the living room, jeans and shirts heaped on the seat, jacket tossed over the back. Zoe drags in a wooden chair from the kitchen. In passing, she notes the encrusted bowls piled in the sink, the splatters of spaghetti sauce on the stove, the empty milk carton on the counter. Steve hasn’t washed a dish in the three days he’s been here. Living in a house with two guys, Zoe is always resisting the urge to clean.
“So what are you doing here?”
“I need a break from Lindsay. She’s pregnant.”
“Steve.” Zoe sighs the name out, like the hiss of air out of a bicycle tire. “What are you going to do?”
“Dunno. It’s my kid. I think.”
“Are you sure?’
Steve flashes a smile at her, replete with the sly charm that still gets him women, even if he can’t hold a job. “Hey, that’s a guy’s line. Aren’t you supposed to be a feminist?”
Her brother’s life is a Puccini opera: characters blinded by passion doing the stupidest things, always optimistic even as life beats them down. She can map the next ten years, the flush of optimism after the child is born, backsliding, custody fights, missed child support payments, her mother trying to maintain contact because it might be her grandchild. Her mother says that Steve just needs time, he’ll grow up. Zoe gave up on him years ago.
“Grant’s a good guy. Better than that last loser.”
She can’t argue. But is it enough to be with a “good guy”?
“You know, you should visit Mom more this summer,” Steve says. “Make sure she’s okay. I don’t think she’s coping well.”
“Why me?” Zoe asks. “I’m in school, remember.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have a job or a lease. I can’t leave my apartment.”
“Well, maybe you should get back to that apartment. Anyway, I do have a job. Two jobs.” He always shuffles off any responsibility. He didn’t come to the hospital after their dad had a stroke; he didn’t stay after the funeral. Zoe helped their mother with all the arrangements: the funeral, the lawyer, the meeting with the insurance agent. She has driven back to Nelson twice since December, terrified by the icy roads in the Kicking Horse Pass. But Steve is right — their mother isn’t coping well. The last time Zoe was there, her mother spent the entire weekend in a bathrobe.
At three in the morning, there’s a loud thumping on the front door. Zoe gets up and puts on her track pants. Grant pulls a pillow over his head.
“Hey, little sister.” Steve leans against the railing on the front porch, his jacket open, his eyes bloodshot.
“Shh,” Zoe says, pulling him inside. “Grant’s asleep.” Actually, Grant is awake and furious. She helps Steve unlace his boots and guides him into the living room.
Steve falls onto the sofa. Zoe hovers for a minute, wondering if he is drunk enough to fall asleep immediately or if he’ll want to talk and be impossible to shut up. She doesn’t want Grant to come out and start yelling.
“Where were you?” she asks. She doesn’t really want to know. She doesn’t know what to say to Steve anymore. She doesn’t know who he is.
“Somewhere. I had to get out.”
“You can’t keep doing this. I have first dress rehearsal tomorrow. I need some sleep.”
Her brother covers his eyes with his right hand. He is crying. “I know I wasn’t there. I couldn’t go to the hospital. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Zoe sits down beside him. She wants to cry, but she can’t. She couldn’t cry at the hospital either, when her mother broke down. She could only sit there, holding her mother’s hand.
Steve stops crying after a few minutes. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. Zoe gets him a Kleenex, and then helps him take off his jacket. He lies down and she covers him with a blanket.
Back in the bedroom, she crawls into bed. Grant rolls over and pulls her close. “He leaves today,” he says. “I’ll check the bus schedules and drive him to the station. Does he have enough money for the ticket?”
Zoe says nothing. She’s shaken. Her brother didn’t cry at their father’s funeral either. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him cry.
She gives Grant her Wednesday night dress rehearsal pass. Their last chance to get everything right. The tenors still haven’t memorized the words for the Offertorium. In the Agnus Dei section, two dancers collided, ruining the intricate choreography.
She takes a deep breath, waiting for her cue. The male dancers wait offstage, the trio of death who will circle the trio of life. She loves watching this, the quick costume changes, the outlined muscles drenched with sweat, the brief moments when the mask of performance drops and the panting human beings emerge.
Domine Hostia
Three women dressed in white: a pregnant woman, a mother holding her baby, an old woman. Three demons in masks enter. The lead dancer in the trio displays the chiselled abs of a body builder. When he moves, she believes in possession. On stage, he becomes Death, his dark mask obscuring his features, moving with menace towards the young mother cradling her child. Death attacking life. Will the baby behave itself tonight? At the matinée dress rehearsal, he’d screamed when the devil swooped him offstage, held high above his head. The junior high students roared approval.
Grant meets her at the back door of the Jubilee afterwards. Rain is spitting down on the pavement and the air smells of wet dirt and fresh grass. To the northwest, storm clouds pile up in wet grey clumps. Grant has dressed up. Zoe had warned him that the Directors’ Circle members, big contributors to the opera, would be attending the wine and cheese reception.
She doesn’t get to see him in his dress pants and his midnight blue shirt very often. Most days he wears black jeans and a sweater to work. She runs her fingers up the soft cotton sleeves of his shirt, slipping a hand around the back of his neck, wishing Pria or one o
f the other snottier chorus members would come out and see him.
“What did you think?”
“I kept thinking of Amadeus. When Mozart is dying and Salieri keeps saying, ‘You go too fast, you go too fast.’ The food at the reception was great. Stuffed figs and pork shish kebabs. Plus wine. It’s too bad the chorus couldn’t go.”
“Did you see me?” She wants affirmation, approval.
“Yeah, second from the left in the upper box, next to that really large woman. It wasn’t a very flattering costume.”
She can’t believe that all he noticed is her costume. “We’re supposed to blend with the background. The dancers are the focus.” She doesn’t like who she is becoming with him. She doesn’t want to be this person, always worried about money, always feeling inadequate.
“This is what I love. You don’t understand.”
“I want you to do what makes you happy.”
She pulls back. “You say that and yet you complain all the time that I don’t have any money. Pay more rent, pay the taxes, get a better job. What do you really want? Do you want me to quit singing? Is that it?”
Looking at him, his face set in a stubborn frown, Zoe thinks, Will we be having the same fight in a year, in ten years, twenty? The uncertainty of her future terrifies her. She wants a coda, a sign that this is the ending, that everything will be resolved.
Lacrimosa
Mozart died on December 5, 1791. His widow, Constanze, asked Joseph von Eybler and then Franz Xaver Süssmayr to finish the music, but did it secretly so that she could collect the remaining portion of the commission. Süssmayr composed part of the music for the Lacrimosa section and added Sanctus, Beneditus and Agnes Dei.
The tax bill arrives on Friday. Zoe refuses to pay half. “It’s your house. If we split up, you’d have the house and I’d have nothing. I pay rent and half the utilities. Why should I pay more?”
“Great. I’m stuck with all the responsibility. Opera is so fucking impractical. What if I’d chosen a career with no future?”
“You didn’t have to fucking choose!”
She slams the door on her way out of the house. No future. He’d hit her sore spot. That’s what happens in a relationship — you let someone in close enough to hurt you.
Half an hour later, she is at the Starbucks on Whyte Avenue with Rachel. She orders a decaf latte with skim, feeling guilty because the drink costs five dollars. She can’t even order a coffee without considering the cost.
“He wants me to pay half the house taxes. It’s not my fucking house.”
“He is so controlling,” Rachel agrees.
“And not supportive at all. Do you know what he said after the dress rehearsal? He said, and I quote, ‘Do people really like this stuff?’”
But even as she is ranting, the familiar refrain of misunderstandings, Zoe thinks, He did come to the dress rehearsal. Does he have to like opera for the relationship to work?
Would she be happier with or without him? Should she even be asking this question?
“I don’t know what to do after next year,” she confesses. “I don’t even know if I want to stay in this shitty city. But he has a good job here.”
Zoe sips her coffee and the liquid hits her soft palate, scorching it. For the next week she has a coin-sized burn on the top of her mouth, a constant irritant, her tongue drawn to the bubbled blister of skin.
After the Saturday night performance, the chorus goes for drinks at the University Earls. Zoe gulps two quick glasses of red wine. Her performance high is ebbing and she wants to hold on to the excitement. She doesn’t want to go home. She hasn’t spoken to Grant since the fight the day before.
Earls is dimly lit, loud with conversation. Rachel is on the other side of the table, leaning towards James, all her attention centred on him. Her filmy red top brushes against his bare arm. Zoe watches the choreography of attraction, feeling apart from everything, in a bubble. The music of the Requiem echoes in her head: Confutatis, Benedictus. Deep baritones and the high counterpoint of the sopranos. The dancers in devil masks circling the women in white. The trio of death.
Zoe gets up and the world shifts. The bathrooms are downstairs, down a poorly lit set of stairs and around a corner, next to the kitchen. She walks carefully, holding on to the rail. The last thing she needs to do is twist her ankle.
She sits in the stall for several minutes, cradling her chin in her hands, her head spinning. No one will miss her.
As she opens the door, she sees her ex leaning up against the wall by the door, his arms crossed against his black leather jacket. He smiles but says nothing.
Zoe freezes. Does she go back into the stall? But that door offers no protection. She walks by him quickly, not stopping to wash her hands. As she passes, her ex reaches out and shoves her, hard, against the nearest sink. Her hip bashes against the porcelain. Zoe stumbles, catches her balance, grabs the handle of the door, and flings herself out into corridor.
She runs up the stairs. He won’t follow. He’s had his fun.
It isn’t until she sits down that she starts trembling. Her back is to the stairs; she won’t know when he leaves. Her bubble shattered, leaving her exposed.
She’d had a restraining order against him in Vancouver. When she moved to Edmonton, he followed her. There would never be an ending.
Communion
Mozart was buried in an unmarked grave. On December 10, 1791, the opening sections of the Requiem were performed at St Michael’s Church in a memorial for Mozart. The completed Requiem was delivered to Count Franz von Walsegg in 1792 with Mozart’s forged signature.
A week after the last performance, her mom phones.
“Steve’s been charged with a DUI. He lost his license and his truck has been impounded. Can you come home, just for a week or so?”
Grant doesn’t ask when she will be back. They avoid the topic. Zoe packs a suitcase and her laptop. She asks for a week off at work, even though she needs the money and tips from the summer hours to pay part of her fall tuition.
She hasn’t told Grant about the attack at Earls. What could he do? She has stopped confiding in him. With rehearsals, performances, and work at the restaurant, she has barely seen him in the last month. She once thought that everything would work out. Since her father’s death, she no longer believes that.
She leaves Thursday morning. The Trans-Canada through the Kicking Horse Pass is backed up with eighteen-wheelers and recreational vehicles. Smoke from a forest fire burning near Revelstoke fills the air, reducing visibility. Zoe’s eyes water in the orange haze, and she grips the steering wheel as transport trucks shoot by her.
When she arrives in Nelson, she sits in the car for a moment outside her parents’ house. Her mother’s house. Patchy overgrown grass and purple petunias spilling out of terracotta pots on the front steps. A few roof tiles are peeling back. The house looks abandoned, the curtains closed. Her parents moved here after her dad retired: twenty-six years in the military. He’d lived in the house for just two years.
Her mother seemed more focused than she been during the last visit. She makes coffee and sits down with Zoe at the kitchen table. When Zoe visited in April, her mother had wandered around the kitchen, unable to sit down for more than five minutes.
“So what happened?” Zoe asks.
Her mother launches into a convoluted explanation: Steve was helping a friend build a fence, they had a couple of beers (Zoe doubts it was a couple), and Steve took a half-finished beer when he left. He was pulled over for speeding and tossed the can in the back seat. The cops smelled the beer, charged him with drunk driving and open liquor, and impounded his truck. Now Steve has a court date on Monday in Kelowna and needs someone to drive him.
“Why can’t his girlfriend drive him to court?”
“Lindsay is eight months pregnant.”
Steve hadn’t told her that. He’d implied that the pregnancy was a new discovery.
The friend with the fence doesn’t seem to be offering a ride. Z
oe doesn’t ask why her mother can’t do it. Her mother always let her father do the driving. The car in the garage has probably only been driven as far as the grocery store and back in the last seven months.
There are people — her brother, her ex — who fuck up over and over and expect other people to solve the problems. And there are people — her father, Zoe — who pick up the pieces.
That night, she can’t sleep. An orange streetlight casts parallel lines through the blinds of the spare room. She has spent too many nights in this room in the last year, staring at the ceiling.
At one in the morning, she pulls out her cell phone and texts Grant.
I miss you.
Five minutes later, he texts back. I miss you too.
It’s a mess here. I miss my dad.
I’m sorry.
She didn’t know if he is sorry about her dad, sorry about the mess her brother has made, or sorry about their latest fight. It doesn’t matter.
I’ll be back on Wednesday, she texts. She’ll spend the weekend with her mother, cut the grass, and drive her brother to court. And then she will drive back. She didn’t make this mess, and she’s not cleaning it up.
How You Look at Things
WHEN RACHEL’S CELL PHONE RANG, she checked the number and mentally braced herself.
“Hi, Mom.”
“What did you do with your father’s golf clubs?”
“They’re probably in the basement closet, where you always store them.”
“They’re not there. You took them, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t take the golf clubs.” She had never played golf.
“You’re getting rid of my things. The cranberry glasses are missing. And your father’s hockey jacket.”
“You gave the hockey jacket to Uncle Ted after Dad died.”
“Why would I give away his jacket?”
Over the past two years, Rachel had noticed her mother’s frequent confusion. Missing words, forgetfulness, fits of anger. The doctor had diagnosed early-onset dementia. Possibly Korsakoff’s Syndrome.