Ring of Truth

by Ciji Ware

  Veronica banished those thoughts. She pulled back. “I’ve made you a mess now, too.” She found a tissue in her handbag and dabbed ineffectually at his black sweater, stained not only with her tears but also a splotchy mess of mascara and stage makeup. “Thanks to me you don’t look ready for a cast party, either.”

  “Maybe you’d feel better if we did something quiet at my apartment, just the two of us.” Dominik eyed her steadily. “And then we wouldn’t have to say goodbye quite so soon.”

  Even without the pangs of lost romance, there were so many goodbyes in what they did. Nothing lasted. The curtain went down on relationships just the way it did on productions. And love them or hate them, you never knew when you would see these people again, these people you had worked with, sometimes lived with, for months. It might be the next opera or it might be never again in your life.

  Thinking about nothing lasting nearly launched Veronica on another crying jag. But she managed to stave it off. “I better just go. My flight to Italy is tonight and I don’t have much time to get ready. But I should go back inside to say my goodbyes.”

  “Let me at least drive you to the airport.”

  He wouldn’t take no for an answer, not that she fought him very hard. So it was that a few hours later she sat in Dominik’s rented car, showered and changed, passport and boarding pass in hand, luggage in his trunk, and mystery ring in her handbag. She wouldn’t examine that further until she was alone.

  “Thank you so much for driving me,” she told Dominik, wondering if there was any chance he was more considerate than she’d given him credit for.

  “No problem. I can practice the route for tomorrow. And maybe I’ll drive to Florence to see you,” he added.

  “You can’t do that! It’s too far.”

  “It’s less than a thousand kilometers from Budapest.”

  “That’s still a nine hour drive. At least.” She’d sung in enough operas in Europe to understand that.

  “What do they say in English? You’re worth it.”

  She had to laugh. “I bet you say that to all the sopranos.”

  “No! With you I really mean it.”

  He probably owned a lovely bridge she should consider buying, too. She hadn’t misjudged Dominik after all, Veronica decided. His seduction scheme had failed in San Francisco but clearly he was ready to give it another whirl in Tuscany.

  He spoke again. “You better be careful with your birth mother, Veronica.”

  She stiffened.

  He went on. “I mean, she writes you that she’s dying so you have to fly to Russia right away? It makes me think of those fake emails from Nigeria.”

  “It’s not like that at all.” Veronica heard the defiance in her tone. It was not for Dominik to say these things, a man who had never met her birth mother and never would. “It’s perfectly natural for her to want to meet the child she was forced to give away before she dies.”

  He waited a bit before he spoke again. And when he did, his tone was much milder. “What does she know about you?”

  By now, quite a bit. Veronica had been cagey in her early letters, as she’d been counseled. But her words flowed more freely with every letter she wrote. She’d sent photos, too. And once a CD recording of what she considered her best performance.

  Now Dominik’s little rented car was speeding south on the freeway. It wouldn’t be long before they reached the airport. “Does she know you’re an opera singer?” he pressed.

  “You and I both know that doesn’t mean I’m rich.”

  He laughed. “We know that, yes.”

  Many opera singers flirted with the poverty line. Not Dominik, because of his looks; and not Veronica, who was hardly a star but had been fortunate. She even made enough money to rent an apartment in the heart of San Francisco, though only because she shared it with two other women.

  Again Dominik laughed. “Does your birth mother know you’re not fat?”

  “That must mean I’m a failure as an opera singer. So she can’t want money.”

  Dominik dropped the topic after that, no doubt sensing she’d had enough. They chatted about trivialities as he drove the last few miles to the airport, where the international terminal was abuzz.

  The moment came to say goodbye. “You’ll be able to sleep on the flight,” he told her.

  She doubted that. Not after everything that had happened that day.

  Dominik made a move to embrace her but she outmaneuvered him and kissed both his cheeks in that European way. She watched him step back with disappointed eyes and bet he wouldn’t be making that nine-hour drive after all.

  As Veronica went in search of her check-in area, she thought again of the ring in her handbag. Judging from what the dark-haired woman had told her, it had something to do with Ireland. How ironic that the Florentine opera company had booked her to fly Aer Lingus to Dublin, of all bizarre routings, before they had her continue on to London and then Rome.

  It wasn’t because the Irish national airline was cheaper, Veronica decided, and opera companies always chose the cheapest routings for their Not Quite Stars. It was Fate sending her yet another sign.

  Chapter Two

  Veronica was still in U.S. airspace when she pulled the ring box out of her handbag, emboldened by the cheap but chilled chardonnay she’d procured during the happy visit of the beverage cart to her row in the boonies of coach class.

  She suspected the female passenger in the middle seat might have commented on the ring’s beauty if Veronica hadn’t come off as so neurotic. That’s the view your fellow travelers tend to take when you obsessively smother your hands with sanitizer. Then again, while a cold would be inconvenient for any traveler, for Veronica, who needed her throat and nasal passages in perfect working order, it would be catastrophic.

  The cabin lights dimmed. All around her people settled in to sleep. Veronica settled in with her thoughts, which careened tirelessly across her mind like so many crazed pinballs.

  She gazed at the ring, which apparently she was supposed to place on the fourth finger of her right hand with the crown facing out, as befit a wearer “whose heart was yet to be won”—at least according to the article she’d read online. A few minutes trolling the Web and already Veronica was well versed on the Claddagh—on an ordinary Claddagh, anyway. The diva in her doubted there was anything ordinary about the ring she was now examining. This ring was truly Diva Worthy. There was nothing ordinary about its heft, or its mesmerizing heart-shaped gemstone, or the singular way it had come into her possession.

  And while the love, friendship, and fidelity that were symbolized by the Claddagh were all well and good, what compelled Veronica’s mind were the phrases written on the aged slip of paper inside the box that held the ring.

  Be brave!—for the ring of truth will test you. Once on your finger, its power to speak endures but seven days. Listen and learn, lest you lose its wisdom and your heart’s desire...

  Seven days. One week. Long enough to do what her heart demanded.

  Veronica fixed her eyes on the ring’s tiny inscription. Know Thy Heart. “I already do,” she whispered.

  For ancient as the phrases on the ring and the note might be, to Veronica they might as well read: Catch the next flight to Moscow. At this moment she had one and only one heart’s desire, and that was to meet the woman who had given her life. She would have to be brave to accomplish that, because she would have to stand up to her director and conductor in Florence and make them understand.

  Veronica had no patience for the doubt in her mind. She shoved it aside like a piece of rotten fruit. No, she decided, this couldn’t be a scam. No mother could be so cynical that she would tell her daughter she was on her deathbed if it weren’t true. And no, it wasn’t too much to ask a child to drop everything to fly across one ocean and two continents to come to her dying mother’s side. Probably the diagnosis was sudden, or her mother had taken a sharp turn for the worse, or she had only now accepted what the doctors had been telling her fo
r months.

  Veronica didn’t know how she could live with herself if she didn’t honor this summons. How could she pass up the chance to see this woman’s face, to hear her voice and feel her touch? How could she forego the opportunity to ask the questions she’d for so long harbored in her heart? And what would it say about her if she put her operatic career above her dying birth mother?

  As Veronica’s jet shot eastward through the inky night sky, she had the odd sensation that indeed her life was about to change—as the dark-haired woman had warned her it might. Very slowly she lifted the ring from the box and slipped it on her finger. It emboldened her from that very first second, though maybe all women who wore magnificent rings believed they could achieve anything if only they tried.

  “Whatever I have to do, I will go to Moscow,” she murmured, and just as the last syllable left her lips the gemstone glowed with an odd milky opalescence, as if sealing her plan with its official approval.

  ***

  Eighteen hours, two layovers, one bus ride and one train journey later, Veronica arrived in Florence. It was evening. She made her way through rain-slick streets to the massive Palazzo Vecchio, the crenellated Romanesque palace with soaring clock tower that to this day served as the city hall, and behind which her guesthouse awaited. She dragged her body and her luggage up four dim flights of stairs to the room the opera company had rented for her.

  It was small, lovely, and spotless, with peach-colored walls, a hardwood floor, all white furniture, and diaphanous curtains behind which Florence throbbed. She had her own tiny bathroom and a kitchen she would share, quite possibly with another singer and certainly with two black cats, which greeted her with a level of enthusiasm one did not expect from felines. The proprietress had left her a note, a bottle of red wine, bread and soup, and a chocolate. That last immediately went down Veronica’s throat while the cats watched her with inscrutable eyes.

  Her clothes she tossed on the floor of her room but the ring went carefully back into its box. She placed it on the nightstand, ran a bath, ate and drank, and fell into bed. No urban cacophony four stories below her window would keep her from sleeping that night.

  She woke to leaden skies and a ball of dread in her stomach. It was one thing to ponder asking for time off before her rehearsals even started; it was quite another actually to do it. It didn’t help that indeed there was another singer in the adjoining bedroom. In a twist Machiavelli might have crafted, the singer turned out to be Veronica’s understudy. She had the nerve to be a strikingly attractive brunette at least five years Veronica’s junior.

  Even worse: She was Italian, just in from Bologna. That was fairly alarming for an American soprano who was about to tackle an Italian opera—Verdi’s Il Trovatore—in Italy in front of Italian audiences and critics.

  And to do so after a truncated rehearsal schedule, if Veronica had her way.

  The understudy opened her lovely mouth to loose her outrageously melodious speaking voice. “Hello, I am called Carina,” she cooed. Of course she had a pretty name, too, which meant “little darling.” “I will be so happy to hear your Leonora,” she added. “I am sure I will learn so much from your interpretation.”

  Suddenly Veronica wished she’d spent more of the journey reviewing her notes on the libretto.

  They spent some time gossiping about the staging, always a minefield in Il Trovatore because the plot was so complex. Of course Veronica’s character died in the end but it wouldn’t be her first time trying to hit the high notes from a supine position on the stage floor.

  She kept the conversation short because even though she wasn’t required at the opera house for hours, she was desperate to get there to make her case to the director and conductor. If she ignored the high price of the airline tickets, it would be possible to fly to Moscow that night, via Rome. Given the timing of the return flights, she would miss two days of rehearsals. She had hoped she might miss only one. She had so few to begin with.

  With the ring returned to her finger and a scarf bundled protectively about her throat, Veronica cut her way through chilly December streets to the opera house. Its exterior was surprisingly simple as these things go, all white stone fashioned in a neoclassical style. Inside Veronica found the usual magic.

  She made her way to the stage and walked onto the floorboards, her heels echoing in the emptiness. Somewhere her new colleagues were bustling about—she’d heard them as she wound her way through the backstage maze—but she didn’t have to deal with them yet. For now it was just her and the opera house.

  She moved downstage and stood perfectly still. Beyond the thick walls, the world and all its troubles were at bay. Inside it was only silence... and anticipation. Sometimes she thought this was what she lived for more than performing itself, this anticipating the performance, knowing it would soon transport her to the place she loved most, where she was giving voice to the music she adored and where she knew with all her soul that she was doing the thing she was born to do.

  It bemused her when people asked why she was an opera singer, as if it were something she had chosen to do. That didn’t even approach the truth. She didn’t choose opera. Opera chose her. Opera chose her as a channel through which it would flow. Once opera had taken her prisoner, which it had done while she was still a child, she was powerless to escape. She didn’t care that she didn’t create what she sang; she didn’t care that she was no more than a vessel for the music. She would do whatever the music asked her to do, to the best of her ability, for as long as she was able.

  Last year her friend Lizbeth had quit opera. She had married her boyfriend and gotten pregnant and quit. Veronica had been stunned. Though she never admitted it, privately Veronica judged Lizbeth a better soprano than she was herself. Lizbeth’s arpeggios were dazzling; her nuances could make Veronica weep.

  Yet Lizbeth had had enough of singing minor roles. One too many people had asked why she continued to slog along opera’s tortuous, uncertain path. Of course no one ever asked Renée Fleming or Kiri Te Kanawa that question. They were Divas with a capital D. They were stars, superstars, richly rewarded for their efforts.

  But what about those soloists who failed to become superstars? Who, like Veronica, spent their careers singing tiny roles in large productions or large roles in tiny productions? Who were best friends with the heartache but strangers to the glory? Traipsing from opera house to opera house, sleeping so many nights in strange beds, struggling to rub more than a few coins together, suffering the unspoken derision of everyone who believed they weren’t quite good enough to achieve stardom. Veronica had quietly despaired that a large role in a large production would ever be hers. For her, too, the magical age of thirty had come and gone. That was the age at which the voice “ripens”—or so everyone said.

  Well, Veronica was thirty-four. Her voice was as ripe as it was going to get.

  Yet some might say she had at last arrived, at least in a fashion. She had a principal role in a fairly large production. It wasn’t terribly high-profile but it just might prove to be the break she’d long been looking for.

  Which rendered the request she was about to make all the more foolhardy.

  Veronica heard heavy footfalls behind her in the wings. A male voice called out. “Can it be? Can it be my Leonora?”

  She turned to see her director, the almost-famous Rinaldo Nardovino. “Bellissima!” he cried, clapping his hands and beaming as he strode toward her. He wore his customary charcoal-colored turtleneck, his wild black hair blown back from his face as if he’d arrived at the theatre in a windstorm. He clasped Veronica’s arms and drew her close to kiss her flamboyantly on both cheeks.

  “Your flight was good?” he bellowed. “You sleep like a baby last night?”

  Rinaldo liked posing questions to which you could only answer yes.

  “You like how you are close to the Palazzo Vecchio? Is perfect location?”

  He allowed her only a few syllables for a response.

  “You are ready
to sing for me?” he finished, and without even pausing for a reply took Veronica’s arm to lead her backstage.

  She managed to forestall him. “Rinaldo, I have to talk to you about something. Is Julian here?” She half hoped the Austrian conductor wasn’t in the house. He had a reputation as the hot-tempered type.

  A look of concern creased Rinaldo’s face. “What is it, bella?”

  She tried not to worry that already she’d been downgraded from bellissima.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, “what it is you need from me.”

  Veronica twisted the ring on her finger and found she didn’t even need to take a deep breath to find the temerity to speak. “I need you to allow me to meet my mother for the very first time.”

  Rinaldo’s dark eyes flew open. It was a dramatic opening to be sure but Veronica bet that was the surest route to an opera director’s heart.

  She explained, embellishing with all the pathos she could summon. She made sure to remind Rinaldo that she had understudied Leonora for him just eighteen months before. She’d dazzled him, which was why he’d hired her for this production. Moreover, he was so confident she knew the role that he hadn’t even minded that she’d miss a week of rehearsals because she was finishing Don Giovanni in San Francisco. Still, it wasn’t until the end of her monologue that, with the return of some trepidation, she uttered the alarming words Moscow and fly tonight.

  That combination produced the reaction Veronica feared. Rinaldo reared back from her with an expression of such horror, you’d think she suggested that the company perform Il Trovatore in the nude or that he rewrite the ending so that instead of Leonora drinking the poison that leaves her stone cold dead as the curtain falls, she marches off-stage declaring she has a craving for pasta.

  “But is impossible!” he thundered. “The preview is Friday! Today is Monday!”

  “I will sing for you all day today. And tonight until I have to fly.”

  “But two days of rehearsals gone—”