Kimberly Stuart

by Act Two: A Novel in Perfect Pitch

  “Where’d you dig her up?” I hissed into Richard’s ear. “She’s a knockout, Richard, but aren’t you dabbling in the illegal?”

  Richard laughed heartily. His eyes were shining in a manner I took to reflect conquest. “This is only our third date, my dear. And I assure you she is of age.” He dropped to a stage whisper. “I checked her passport to make sure.”

  We entered the small room, lit by pillar candles lined up along mahogany shelves mounted high on the walls. More candles dotted the table. Richard turned to me, voice still lowered. “Check out the Fendi ad in Vogue this month. The model will look familiar to you now.” He flashed me the grin of a freshman boy who’d scored a prom date with the captain of the cheerleading squad.

  I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes. How, I wondered and not for the first time, did I end up with my closest friend a man who had no concept of dignity? I, the woman who still referred to a dog-eared copy of Emily Post on a semiregular basis?

  “Sadie, royalty sits at the head of the table,” Richard said loudly, pointing to the far end of the linen-covered rectangle. He made his way through the guests, greeting them and bossing them around. I sat and watched the filtering and seating of my group of well-wishers until all the seats were filled but the one directly to my right. I leaned over to Richard. Ama took a dainty sip of her iced water.

  “Who’s missing?” I asked, nodding toward the empty chair.

  “You’ll see.” He did some sort of neck dance that made me cringe. Though I was not known for an awareness of the club circuit, I felt certain that Richard should avoid doing any sort of movement like his neck dance if he wanted to hold on to a woman/girl like Ama.

  Our server brought out three ceviche platters and square plates of house-made tortilla wedges. I dipped into the ceviche veracruz and glanced at the people around the table. Mitch from St. Paul’s waved and kissed me through the air. Stefan from Juilliard called out, “Sadie, have you been eating your fill of ceviche out in the country?” I laughed along with him but was struck suddenly with a longing for Jayne’s pecan pie bars. They were indulgent, too sweet, and made with whole sticks of butter, everything a New York City personal trainer would exorcise. I adored them.

  Halfway through my second martini, I had a moment of painful self-awareness: The people sharing dinner with me, those who were there to well-wish me as I returned to Iowa, these people were not my friends. I enjoyed them, sure. They liked me well enough. But they didn’t know me. They wouldn’t bring me tuna fish hot dish if I was postpartum, as friends of the Hartleys had done for weeks after the births of their children. And they certainly wouldn’t go out of their way to fire up their pickup and bring me to work in the cold. I sighed, washed in a wave of loneliness.

  In a good faith effort to enjoy my own party, I struck up friendly banter with Lyle, an arts writer for the Times whom Richard and I had known for years. Lyle had become animated in our discussion of the financial state of American opera when I glimpsed a familiar face at the end of the table. A woman in her mid-fifties, spiky salt-and-pepper hair and clunky, artsy glasses waved briskly to Richard and headed our way.

  “… And that’s exactly why the conservatories themselves have to be more comprehensive in their curricula,” Lyle was saying in between shoveling hunks of ceviche from his plate into his mouth.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Lyle,” Richard said. He’d risen from the table and had an arm near the spiky haired woman but not on her. She stared at me until I felt compelled to stand as well.

  “Judith, it is a pleasure to introduce to you Sadie Maddox. This is long overdue,” Richard said. His eyes were unnaturally wide. I had never seen Richard intimidated by a woman but could get very used to watching a charade like this.

  “Judith Magnuson,” she said, offering a large, rough hand. I shook and smiled.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you, Judith. Richard raves about you.” I sat down slowly, willing myself not to bow down, clutch her feet, and beg her to make me one filthy rich mezzo-soprano. The woman certainly had the pedigree. I dared say even Avi would have developed a nervous tic had he known of my dinnermate that evening.

  Judith unraveled her napkin and tucked it around a generous midriff. She helped herself to a dollop of the appetizer. I tried not to stare at the fervor with which she went about her task. One fleck of tortilla chip flew up into her hair and trembled there as she chewed.

  We sat in silence for a moment. I glanced at Richard, who’d conveniently involved himself in deep conversation with Ama. She sat with a vacant and gorgeous stare as he pontificated on the neglected beauty of the harpsichord. I’d heard that speech and hoped it had gone through an inspired revision, for Ama’s sake.

  “You were magnificent Thursday night.” Judith didn’t look up when she spoke.

  I felt my heart pick up speed. “Thank you, Judith. I didn’t know you were there.” Which was best, I thought, as the idea of her presence made me nauseous with retroactive nerves.

  “That is to say,” she continued, looking up briefly to meet my eyes, “it wasn’t perfect. But perfect can be boring.”

  A compliment? An insult? How was one to respond? I wondered as Judith squeezed lime into her water and dropped the deflated rind into the glass. She continued before I’d formed a safe modus operandi.

  “Listen. Sadie.” She pushed her appetizer plate away and focused her gaze on me. “I know you’re here with your friends. I don’t know any of them and won’t impose on your party.”

  “Not at all,” I protested. “I’m so glad you’re here—”

  She held up her hand to silence me. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  I reined in my eyebrow from its rocket launch upward.

  “I’m here to tell you I think we’d be a good team. I’ve been agenting for twenty-five years. I know everyone in this business and people like me.” She said these last words with all the facial and vocal enthusiasm of Ted Koppel. “If you need references, I can put you in contact with Jessye Norman, Dawn Upshaw, Jubilant Sykes. You can try Placido, but he’s ridiculous about returning calls.”

  I tried not to salivate onto the tablecloth. This woman was my bridge to monumental, royalty-drenched, legend-making success. I worried that my heart was making visible and distracting leaping motions through the fabric of my new dress. “What a list of clients,” I said, wondering if I should ask Judith for her autograph.

  She nodded. “I’ve worked with the best and, if I may say so, I’ve gotten many of them the recognition they deserved. Now.” She sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. Her eyes narrowed as they studied my face. “My practice has usually been to sign with a client at the beginning of her career. You’ve already been around the block. How old are you?”

  Was this really crucial information? I thought. My face must have betrayed my wounded ego because Judith’s expression was wry. “Believe me, if we work together, I’ll end up knowing your dress size, the names of your ex-boyfriends, and the details of your monthly cycle. So ’fess up.”

  “I turned forty this year.”

  She nodded. “That can be an asset. Vocally you’ve hit your stride; personally you’re not rudderless like so many of the younger ones; physically, you know by now that breasts aren’t everything.”

  I sat up straight, willing them to be something at least.

  “I’m sure Richard let you in on the Pasione deal?”

  “He did.” This was it! This was it!

  “I can get you on that tour. But you’ll have to dump Feldman before we talk particulars.” She passed me her card and looked me in the eye. “Sadie, I think we can make each other a lot of money. Not that I need it.” She shrugged. “But it’s always nice to have more, am I right?” She smiled for the first time and revealed two rows of teeth that could have been shot in with a gun. I could recommend a great orthodontist as one way to spend some of her monetary excess.

  Her chair scraped on the tile floor as she pushed back from the table. �
�Think about what you want to do and where you want to be a year from now. And then give me a call.” She patted Richard on the shoulder, nodded once to me, and left the room.

  Richard hopped into Judith’s still-warm chair and assaulted me with questions before the spiky hair was out of view. “So? What did she say? Will she take you? Are you signing before you leave?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever said so little in a conversation,” I said, amazed at the way in which Judith had steamrolled our exchange. If she had that kind of sway over contract negotiations and fee schedules, the woman would be unstoppable.

  “I know.” Richard slumped slightly, his face taking on a look of befuddlement. “She’s a machine.”

  I burst into laughter and after a moment, Richard joined me. Ama looked on from her ethereal pedestal of model-ish thought and allowed a small smile before catching herself. Good thing, considering the risk of crow’s feet only two short decades off.

  Three servers, clad entirely in black, entered the room with steaming rounds of paella and lined them up like obedient Von Trapp children down the center of the table. Richard stood, glass of tempranillo raised. He looked at me and said, “A toast.”

  Glasses lifted, everyone turned toward our end of the table, hushed and waiting.

  “To Sadie Maddox, a woman of class, style, and infinite talent. We miss you, Sadie, we congratulate you on the new and wildly successful stage of your career that awaits you, and we look forward to your return to us from the culture vortex, the black hole, the great Midwest.”

  Hearty laughter sprinkled the table. I smiled as Richard kissed my cheek, lifted my glass to the group and said, “Salud!” That toast went down as smoothly as any I could remember.

  20

  Dangerous Promises

  Mac met me at the airport. He sat with his long legs crossed and an arm draped along the back of an adjoining chair in a waiting area where gated passengers emptied into the main airport. He stood slowly, ball cap in hand, and watched me walk to him.

  “Miss Sadie,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you, Mac Hartley.” I handed him my carry-on. “Are you the resident cab service here in Maplewood?”

  “For you, I am,” he said. He dropped my bag on a chair behind him and enveloped me in his arms. I buried my nose in his jacket and inhaled the scent of him, feeling my heart beat erratically for one sweet moment. I’d given myself many stern instructions over the previous week, all of them involving not letting myself get attached to men who had intimate knowledge of cows. We were an impossible pair, I’d said to myself. It would be hopeless, a dead end, unnecessary hurt in the making. I tried retrieving the force of this argument as my nose was pressed against his chest.

  “Well,” I said when he released me. “That’s much better than waiting for Ms. Ellsworth to show up with her clipboard.”

  He chuckled softly and lifted my carry-on. We walked toward baggage claim. “How was the big city?”

  I sighed. “Lovely. Busy, vibrant, full of good food and interesting people.”

  “Why, that sounds just like my hometown.” He smiled at me and it occurred to me he thought he was right.

  Two weeks later, I was fully back into the swing of Maplewood and my work at Moravia. Things at the Hartley home were revving up as spring was breaking and Cal was preoccupied with a large and risky purchase of sows. Jayne and I had lingered over tea several evenings after the kids went to bed and Cal had disappeared to tinker in the barn. We began by exulting in our New York adventure but soon drifted to stories of our childhoods, how we came to think what we did about men, God, and work. To my great surprise, I found Jayne to be a layered and thoughtful person, even with her abysmal turkey tetrazzini and questionable choice in jeans. We laughed quite a bit and I suspected we might even be friends.

  In addition to my work with students, I’d been roped into serving on a faculty committee convened to brainstorm ways to reach “a more ethnically and geographically diverse student population.” I had a few things to vent regarding this very topic so I’d welcomed the opportunity, though every Monday at seven when our meetings began, I questioned the depth of my altruism. Kent Johannsen served as cochair and was forever trying to embroil me in a discussion of how musical studies suffered neglect in the general college curriculum. I did my best to ignore his wild hinting for me to take up arms, unwilling to ally myself with a man who insisted on referring to his one summer waiting tables in New York as a tie that bound us together. “Of course, you know, Sadie,” he’d say, fingering his ribbed turtleneck. “New York is just like that.” He’d shrug and sigh happily, musing on how like that New York really was.

  Above all, it shocked me the amount of chatter those academic types could kick up, all of it articulate and well-spoken, but none of it resolving a darn thing. I spent much of the time checking the clock on the wall and wishing they provided something more interesting in the way of refreshments than weak coffee and stale doughnut holes. Get that spectacled, bearded man on the end a little lubed up on a friendly cosmo or two, I thought, and maybe his references to the postmodern ideal in higher education would get more interesting. I’d have to keep Kent sober and turtleneck-ed, but a cocktail theme might do us well to get through to the end of the year.

  My studio work spiraled into busyness as well. Several of my students were preparing senior or junior recitals, which was sapping much more of my time than I’d anticipated. Mallory, in particular, could have used more lesson time due to her abruptly intense work ethic to make her junior recital the heavy hitter of the season. I’d seen a shift in her attitude shortly after the pork chop incident. Though not quite warm, Mallory had begun speaking to me with courtesy. I suspected her new tolerance for me had more to do with my association with Mac than for my own winning nature. I myself was evidence that one could get distracted by nice teeth and infuriating charm. At any rate, Mallory was more with than against me, which was fortuitous with her recital less than a month away.

  “Spin, spin, spin,” I said over tied whole notes. Mallory finished the phrase and watched me for my reaction. “Better,” I said, nodding briskly. “Eons better than two weeks ago. Now we shoot for amazing.”

  She scribbled furiously on her score and in her notebook while I described the last few touches to make the piece shine. “You’re very close,” I concluded. “But you can’t let down for even a millisecond. If you do, the text falls, the line fades, and the audience is jerked out of the world you’ve created for them. Force them to stay with you in that world. Don’t let them tear their eyes off you.”

  She wrote in silence for a moment then looked up and smiled. “I’m hoping my dress will help with that.”

  “Mmm,” I said. “Do tell.”

  She laughed and described the dress with her hands while she talked. “Fitted bodice on the top, made of this great fabric—I’m not sure what it’s called—that’s gathered all around the bodice. The top is creamy white and then the bottom flares out into a ballroom skirt, chocolate brown to match my hair and eyes.” She finished shyly. “I found it at this little shop in Minneapolis over spring break.”

  “You’ll be radiant.” I smiled at the girl, washed in a vivid memory of how I felt in my first recital gown. A monstrous teal number with huge puffed sleeves so beloved in the eighties—it still hung at the back of my closet in homage to the formal beginning of my career.

  Mallory began gathering her things to go.

  I decided to take advantage of our fragile moment of camaraderie. “Are you expecting any special attendees to your recital? Parents? Boyfriend? Long lost cousin from Walla Walla?”

  Her eyes shone. “Actually, yes. My mother’s coming.”

  “That’s wonderful. Will she and your dad drive from Minneapolis?”

  She snorted. “Not unless she suffers a severe brain trauma beforehand and forgets how much she detests him.”

  “Oh,” I said, wincing. “I didn’t know
they were divorced.”

  “Since I was two,” she said, a hardness creeping into her tone. “She packed up and moved to LA in search of herself. Apparently, Dad and I were an unacceptably boring part of her treasure hunt.” She shuffled books and papers into a neat stack on top of the piano and busied herself loading her backpack.

  “I’m very sorry, Mallory,” I said. My breathing was shallow, perhaps to compensate for the deep breaths I felt the girl needed to take.

  “Don’t be,” she said briskly. “It was a long time ago and I’m over it.” She looked past me and out the window at budding trees in the quad. “She’s just a very selfish person who cares mostly about her career. She’s an actress, did I say that?” She pulled her gaze back to my face.

  I shook my head.

  “Right,” she said. “She did, in fact, have all her dreams come true.” Her voice betrayed all the irony that she felt. “Ever watch Under Oath on NBC?”

  “I have on occasion,” I said. In truth, I’d harbored a mild crush on the male lead, Donovan Rice, for most of my adult life.

  She nodded. “My mom plays Chelsea Middleton. The redhead with a power complex and commitment issues. And they say typecasting is a myth.” She looked up at me and the old, hard glint returned to her eyes. “But you’re the one who knows all about fame, right? What’s your take on what a successful career in the public eye can do to one’s family?” She smirked, folded her arms over her bag.

  I waited a moment before responding, hoping for the new Mallory to kick the old one out of my office.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. “Like I said, I’m over it. We’re all very civil with each other now that we’re adults. And she’s flying out for the recital. You know, making amends, showing her support for my interests, so on and so forth.”