Meeting Luciano

by Anna Esaki-Smith

  I headed down the hill past the Williamses, a black family with a pool and a shriveled bulldog, who lived diagonally from us; past two Chinese families with kids who lit firecrackers at night; past a couple from Chile who had painted their house both yellow and purple. Of the sixteen families on the small street, only the Herberts and the O’Briens were white.

  It was dusk, and the black trees mixed with the plum sky like drops of ink in a glass of water. I turned left at the end of our street and began up a steep hill, stretching the muscles in my calves with each step. Two cars rushed by. I walked quickly, on the left side of the road, arms pumping at my sides, although my energy began to lessen as I made my way up the incline, my anger giving way to anxiety.

  My initial impulse was to take the next train into the city and stay with Leilani, my freshman-year roommate. Then maybe I’d go visit Charlotte in Chicago. But what would I do in Chicago? And I wasn’t sure I could endure an inevitable “shape up or ship out” talk from my sister.

  A car honked from behind and pulled up slowly to my right side. I stared steadily ahead, recognizing the refrigerator yellow of my mother’s Volvo.

  “Come back,” Alex called out through the driver’s window. He drove uneasily, turning his head quickly toward me, and then back to the windshield. “Your mother really wants you home,” he added.

  “How do you know what my mother thinks?” I hissed. The hill had steepened considerably and the car jerked forward in little spurts.

  “It doesn’t take a genius to see that she’s lonely,” Alex said.

  Headlights appeared at the hill’s crest, and Alex pulled the Volvo over to let the car pass between us.

  “I’m not a bad guy,” he added, nearing me and almost nudging my hip with the car door.

  “You’re a bad driver,” I told him.

  Alex pulled away again to avoid a fallen branch lying in the street. “From your point of view, I can’t do anything right,” he added, veering toward me again as we reached the top of the hill.

  “I have high standards,” I said.

  “Listen. I’m just trying to do my job, and your mother is happy with me.”

  “You’re pushing her to do more than she needs to with the house.”

  “Me? She’s the one, pushing me to get the place ready for Luciano.”

  I stopped walking. The wind blew through the brittle leaves of a dead tree branch over my head.

  “Luciano?” I asked.

  Alex put the car into park and flicked on the hazards with relief. “He’s coming to visit,” he said.

  “Luciano Pavarotti is coming to see us?”

  Alex nodded. “Sometime soon. That’s why she’s in such a hurry to get the house done.”

  I walked around the front of the car and opened the front passenger door. “Home,” I ordered, sliding into the seat. I stared through the dark windshield.

  Alex grimaced while looking into the rearview mirror, then pulled a sloppy U-turn, leaving tracks on someone’s lawn.

  FOUR

  My mother was sitting in the kitchen with her back to the door, her feet propped up on a nearby chair. From the reflection in the window I could see that her face bore a completely empty expression, her eyes focused on the night’s blackness, her mouth compressed into a tight line. She always looked this way when deep in thought, her face a still pool, never revealing what lurked beneath. Her feet, however, were busy, one big toe trying valiantly to hook itself around the other.

  “So what’s this about Pavarotti?” I asked, feeling my cheeks flush.

  My mother turned in her chair and looked up at me. “That was a short trip,” she remarked.

  “Alex tells me Pavarotti’s coming over,” I said.

  “Oh! I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “It’s true?”

  “Yes. Indeed.” My mother laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. “I thought it would be nice for you to come home from work one day and see Luciano sitting here in my beautiful kitchen.”

  “Come on. Pavarotti?”

  “Yes, Pavarotti. Remember that evening when Mrs. Murata and I met Luciano in his dressing room?” My mother lowered her voice to a whisper. “While we were chatting he mentioned he was appearing at a charity performance in Purchase. I told him I lived close by.”

  She sighed deeply, her shoulders rising and falling with her breath. “He said he’d visit on the way back to New York City,” she added, her voice disappearing as she spoke until she simply mouthed the word city.

  “That’s it? Oh God, I thought you were serious,” I said, and started to laugh.

  “I am serious, he’s coming,” my mother replied, her voice full again, but slightly indignant. She blinked at me.

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Why shouldn’t he? He said he would. You weren’t there.”

  “Think about it. This is Pleasant Springs. Why would he come here?”

  “I can talk to Luciano about music,” my mother said. “Not everyone can offer that kind of knowledge.”

  “There are plenty of people he can talk to about music. I think Pavarotti was probably just being polite, making conversation.”

  My mother sniffed. “Luciano has more integrity than that,” she said.

  “What exactly did he say that night?”

  “If I recall correctly, he said ‘Madame Shimoda, I would love to come to your house and sing a duet.’”

  “You told him the story about your brother?”

  My mother nodded. “He seemed very touched by it. Mrs. Murata said his eyes were nearly filling with tears.”

  “And this renovation is because of him?”

  “The performance is in two months. For now, I’m just going to do the rooms he might see.” She closed her eyes and lifted her chin. “The kitchen and the living room. And of course, the bathroom.”

  I folded my hands in front of me, my arms and upper chest leaning on the table. “There’s a big difference between saying ‘would love to’ and ‘will,’” I said gently.

  My mother shook her head vigorously. “He’s coming, believe me. I could tell by the tone of his voice.”

  DESPITE HER BELIEF that the world’s most famous opera singer was coming to visit, my mother continued to act perfectly normally. I tried to spot subtle signs of some inner turmoil, or a secret smile that indicated this was all a joke between Alex and her, but there was neither. The morning after her confession, she began cleaning the bottom of the oven with cheerful vigor, scrubbing a solid puddle of burnt melted cheese with a bristly brush, her small hands encased in yellow rubber gloves.

  “I’m so excited about all this,” she said, pausing to spray more oven cleaner.

  I looked at her cautiously as I measured new shelf paper to lay in a cupboard. “I hope you’re not getting your hopes up too high.”

  “It’s too late! My hopes are sky-high!” my mother exclaimed, scrubbing enthusiastically until the cheese disintegrated into foamy flecks, which she scraped up into her palms and threw atop the garbage.

  “Isn’t that oven self-cleaning?” I asked.

  “So they say. But it’s such a small spot, and I have so much energy today!”

  After closing the oven door, my mother peeled off her rubber gloves and tossed them in the sink, then opened all the windows, letting in the green scent of cut grass.

  LATER THAT MORNING, I found her at the kitchen table, a stack of blank stationery in front of her, a fountain pen in her hand.

  She turned to me. “I’m writing him a letter,” she said. “In English or Italian, this is a problem.”

  “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “Do you think he’s able to easily read a letter in English?”

  “I’d think so. He must get a lot of his fan mail in English.”

  My mother snorted. “This is not a fan letter! This is a formal greeting. Perhaps I will write it in Italian. It will make him feel comfortable and at ease.”

  “Oh yeah? How easy is your Italian to r
ead?”

  She ignored me and started to write. “Non ho parole a esprimere il giubilo ch’io provo,” she said out loud. “Is that right?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  My mother chuckled. “Actually, I’m stealing a few words from Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore. You know the character of Nemorino, don’t you? I wonder if Pavarotti’ll notice.”

  “What are you writing?”

  “‘I cannot put into words the joy I feel,’” my mother said.

  “Isn’t that a little melodramatic?” I asked.

  “Perhaps I will quote Nemorino when he gets the elixir. ‘You fill my breast with so much joy!’ ‘Di tanta gioia già mi colmi il petto!’”

  She paused, opening a tin of biscotti. “I’m not so sure about the spelling, though. I wish Pierre were here,” she said, gnawing at the end of a cookie. “His Italian is so good.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Fortunately, I just ordered new stationery with my initials on the top. The paper is delicately outlined in gold. Do you like it?”

  “Where are you going to send it?”

  “To the Met, of course. I’m certain they’ll get the letter to him. I want Pavarotti to understand how I feel. I want him to know that il tuo viso ho sculto in petto. His image is engraved on my heart.

  “I need something to stimulate my brain,” she said, and got up to clear away a stack of old telephone books and mail from the counter. She lifted an espresso machine from the floor. “Would you like some?”

  “When did you get that?”

  “Last week. In Little Italy,” my mother said, pinging the heavy metal of the shiny machine with her fingernail. “Magnifico.”

  My mother plugged the machine in, pulled a bag of ground espresso out of the freezer. She carefully spooned some into the metal espresso scoop and filled the machine from a large plastic bottle of water whose label read Fiuggi.

  “How I love caffè,” she told me, hovering by the espresso machine, watching as a tiny, dark stream appeared and dribbled into her white cup.

  “This is the best kind. It has selezione elettronica dei grani di caffè difettosi,” she added.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Electronic detection of defective coffee beans,” she replied, gliding to the refrigerator to retrieve a small dish of slivered lemon peel. “It means they pick out the low-quality beans so only the best are left.”

  She brought the cup back to the table and bent over the coffee, inhaling deeply.

  “The Italians understand life,” she said, seating herself. She held a piece of peel with both hands over the cup and twisted it briskly, to no apparent effect. “They understand music, they understand food, they understand coffee. What more can there be?”

  She rubbed the peel briskly around the cup’s rim before taking a sip.

  “Gustosissimo,” she said, kissing her fingertips.

  THE SINGERS CAME armed with folders of sheet music and canvas tote bags filled with cassette tapes, boxes of throat lozenges, and packets of chamomile tea. Everyone kissed upon greeting, lips barely grazing cheeks. There was a heady, nervous energy in the air, as in a stable of race-horses.

  “This room looks like a war zone!” exclaimed Gisela, a lush, voluptuous woman in her early fifties, as she stepped over a roll of carpet that Alex had torn up. The floor’s surface was an uneven, sickly yellow. Our furniture was mostly piled in the dining room, obstructing light. The living room was dark, mottled, and vulnerable, as if ravaged by illness.

  “Oh, we’re fixing it up,” my mother replied cheerfully. “We’ve been quite busy here.”

  “You look happy, Hanako,” Gisela said, smiling gently. Her soft, white face still retained traces of the beauty from her youth: a full, pink mouth, arched eyebrows, and small, shell-like ears. She had studied at Juilliard and (so the story goes) was destined for fame and the Metropolitan Opera before a weakness for men and nightlife took a toll on her voice and reputation. She still sang in local productions, most recently as a slightly matronly Madame Butterfly, but teaching paid the bills. My mother had met the singers in a continuing-education class taught by Gisela at a nearby college.

  “Did anyone see Pavarotti in his new role?” Bernard asked, stirring sugar into his coffee with a spoon. He shook his head when I offered him some milk. “Dairy coats the vocal cords,” he murmured, pinching his Adam’s apple.

  Bernard was Italian, married to Inge, who was Swedish. He sang, she did not, but they both attended the group meetings. “In Andrea Chénier.” Bernard tapped the spoon on the cup’s edge. “He made a few mistakes but his voice was apparently formidable. At least according to the New York Times.”

  Gisela laughed, her throaty exhalation vibrating deep in her throat. “Formidable or not, that’s a man in crisis, I tell you. And I’ve known many a man in crisis.”

  “Speaking of men in crisis, I found a condom in my son’s jacket yesterday,” said Lynne, a single working mother who sang a lot of Billie Holiday. “He’s thirteen, for God’s sake.”

  As the conversation waned, Gisela walked to the front of the living room and positioned herself beside the card table my mother had put there. She inserted a cassette into a tape player and, after clearing her throat, pressed the play button with a manicured fingernail.

  The taped piano accompaniment wavered at first, as if warped by damp weather, but steadied as Gisela began to sing. Her voice was high, at times almost piercing, but its fullness was striking, filling every corner of the house with sound. She held the last note so fiercely, her eyes blazing, her palms turned upward and rising in the air as if asking us all to rise, that I imagined the glass windows would shatter.

  “Bravo!” yelled Bernard, clapping furiously.

  “Simply wonderful!” my mother exclaimed. “Wonderful.”

  Gisela bowed her head and curtsied slightly before walking back to her seat.

  Bernard shook his head. “The way you sing,” he said. “It’s a gift.”

  “A gift?” Gisela snapped her head toward Bernard, as if he had just insulted her. “Do you know why I sing like that?” she asked. “I sing like that because I have nothing else in my life. My voice is my life. Without it, I have nothing.”

  Her words echoed in the room, the air now thin and empty. Gisela blushed, but shook her carefully set hair and continued to speak. “I know the value of my voice. I exercise and treasure it, I pour everything I have into it. If you’re talking gifts, you’re talking about Pavarotti. He’s so talented, but always so distracted.”

  My mother was beaming. “I must tell you all something,” she whispered.

  The four heads swiveled in her direction.

  “Because you are all such good musical friends, I must tell you a secret,” my mother continued, smiling broadly. “Pavarotti is coming to my house.”

  “Here?” Gisela’s face flushed. “Pavarotti’s coming here?”

  My mother closed her eyes and nodded curtly. “After he performs at a charity concert at Purchase. I met him a few weeks ago, and he told me he’ll be coming by. That’s why I’m fixing the house.”

  Bernard’s mouth hung slightly open. He raised his coffee cup to his mouth but returned it to its saucer without taking a sip. “Are you two friends?” he asked.

  My mother shook her head. “Not at all,” she trilled quickly, her voice losing some of its strength.

  “And you’re certain he’s coming here?” Bernard asked, more softly.

  “Oh, yes. Of course. I have a good feeling about us. We may not be friends now, but we will become so, I am certain, before long.”

  There was an uneasy silence, and I watched the smile on my mother’s face grow strained.

  “Well, this calls for a group sing, in celebration,” Gisela suddenly declared, standing with her arms outstretched. She launched into “Libiamo, ne’ lieti calici,” the joyous drinking song from La traviata, and the rest of the singers immediately joined in, rising to their feet, exuberant, my mother’s high
voice the loudest of those filling the room.

  ONE HOT EVENING in Rome, my father drove for three hours, circling the same rotaries, repeating the same one-way streets, in search of a restaurant in the Fodor’s guide. While Charlotte, Pierre, and I groaned in the backseat of the tinny rented car, Pappa drove grimly on, occasionally consulting the map open on my mother’s lap. The sun set and the sky darkened. We drove and drove, pausing once for gas, but never asking for directions. As we raced up and down strange streets, my mother remained as committed as my father to finding La Trattoria Luna and eating a plate of their linguine alla vongole.

  Charlotte was the one who found the restaurant, pointing to a wooden crescent moon, no bigger than a large croissant, hanging over a street corner. The restaurant was on the second floor, and after driving for half an hour more looking for a place to park, we finally made our way up a flight of stairs, so hungry that it didn’t matter if the food was good or bad. My parents were both pleased at their conviction, spreading the starched cloth napkins on their laps with calm satisfaction, and they looked at the menus with an easy grace, as if they had just walked up the street and stumbled into the place.

  It was with this kind of perseverance that my parents tackled America. Pappa had been sent by a large Japanese company to sell shiny steel subway cars, silvery bullets resistant to graffiti. He plunged into his work, entertaining clients nearly every night of the week. He began to fill out his suits, not only because Western food packed meat onto his thin frame, but because his salary had doubled from what he had been making in Japan. After a rare dinner at home, he’d light a cigar and retreat to his den, happy to work some more.

  He struck pay dirt in the early 1980s, and slowly his cars began to replace the old ones in the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s lots. Meanwhile, my mother picked up English rapidly, chatting with the postman and bank teller, using every opportunity to learn a new word or utter a new phrase. She took great delight in saying “damn” or even “shit.” For a while, they seemed to be enjoying the new lives they had created in America, re-creating themselves in the process.