Prima Donna

by Megan Chance

  JULY 16, 1876—Last night was my birthday. I am now twenty-two, which feels ancient as the sphinx, and New York is as hot as I imagine the desert in Egypt to be. Everything is sticky and humid, and the hotel is stifling but no less than the air outside. Everyone who is anyone has long since departed to Newport or the Continent, and I wish we were gone with them. At least to France. But Alain says he is not ready to return, and so we wait. Gideon and Alain wanted to take me out to celebrate my birthday, and though I was tired and irritated by the heat I agreed. We went to a beer garden that had a small area outside lit with lanterns, where we could hear the music and the air was cooler. We stayed until it was very late, and Alain had his arm about my shoulders. I knew Gideon was growing jealous and I thought I should make Alain stop. But so much depends on him that I didn’t like to anger him, and it was my birthday and I admit I liked the attention, and liked imagining what Gideon would do to me when we got home.

  Then we left. We tried to call a cab, but there were none to be had, and Alain and Gideon were so drunk and laughing so loudly and leaning on me as we walked that I suppose no driver wanted us anyway.

  But then … we passed a whore. I don’t remember much about her, except that she had dark hair. Alain asked her how much she cost, and she said it would be three dollars for him and another three for Gideon and extra if they wanted her together, and he said, “What about the three of us?” and she smiled and gave me a look that made me feel both aroused and sick, and suddenly I was imagining it—all of us in one bed tangled together—and Alain leaned close with his wolfish face and said, “Shall we buy her?” and I looked at Gideon. He was intrigued, I could tell, and for a moment I could not breathe, because I knew if he said yes that I would go along with them. I would do whatever he wished and I knew I would regret it later. I knew I would be sick and ashamed. But I also knew I would not say no.

  I don’t know what he would have said, because then Alain seemed to think better of it, and he laughed and turned back to the whore and said not tonight, and we walked on. And though he teased and flirted with me the rest of the way home, and I laughed with him, it was all pretense, because I was tense and afraid, and I didn’t know why.

  He kissed me good night and left us at the hotel door. Gideon and I went up to my room and neither of us said a word. It felt the way it does sometimes before we have a terrible fight, but I didn’t know what it would be about. I thought Gideon would say good night and leave me. But when I opened my door and stepped inside, he grabbed my arm and pushed the door closed so hard it slammed. Then he pressed me to the wall and kissed me as if he might devour me, and I did not know whether it was jealousy over Alain or the temptation of the whore that made him that way and I didn’t care. He took me so roughly my head banged against the wall and we were both very loud—it embarrasses me now to think of how careless we were; anyone passing in the hall might have heard. And then when it was over I whispered to him that I knew he’d wanted the whore, and he said no, that he had been pretending for Alain’s sake, and I wished I hadn’t brought it up. But I could not help myself. I asked him would he have done it if Alain hadn’t changed his mind, and he looked at me and asked if I would have and I said yes. I told him I would have if he’d wanted me to, and then suddenly I was crying.

  He was quiet and then he picked me up and carried me to the bed, and I wound my arms around his neck and buried my face in his chest and felt wretched, though there was no reason for it. We hadn’t bought the whore, and he was with me and nothing terrible had happened. He lay down beside me and pulled me into his arms and my love for him filled my chest until I couldn’t breathe and it was … like a torment. Not peaceful at all, but … uncomfortable, and this morning when I look at him asleep beside me, I am confused and afraid.

  AUGUST 3, 1876—Today I found Gideon and Alain lying about on Gideon’s bed in the middle of the day, and the whole room stinking of opium. They were both sweaty and disheveled and their pupils so tiny that they might have had only irises for eyes. I was so stunned to see Gideon this way—especially after what had happened to Barret—that I stood there unmoving.

  When he saw me he said to Alain, “Look how beautiful she is,” and Alain nodded and dragged on the pipe and agreed that I was an angel, and they both laughed as if it were the most clever thing ever said.

  I lost my temper and threw the water pitcher at them so water splashed everywhere and they had to scramble to avoid it. Gideon fell off the bed in his attempt to escape it, but he couldn’t, and his hair was soaking wet and dripping water to his shoulders and he tried to get up to grab me but he was too drunk on smoke to manage it, and he fell back again. Alain just laughed and laughed, though he was wet too, and I walked out and left them to each other.

  AUGUST 4, 1876—Gideon has apologized to me very prettily. He said it was a mistake, and that Alain had wanted it, and he had given in, though he knew better. He says he never meant to upset me. He says plans for Paris are moving forward. Alain has all but agreed we are to go.

  He drew me into his arms so that I lay upon his chest, and he stroked my hair and told me how Paris would be, how we would stay in some wonderful hotel off the Champs-Élysées, and how the crowds at the Theatre Italien would be on their feet begging me to sing encore after encore. “It will be as we always dreamed it, Bina,” he said. “Everything will be better when we’re there, I promise.” I could hear his heart beating, and it was like a song just for me, and I wish I could believe him.

  CHAPTER 17

  Seattle, Washington Territory—January 1882

  It was pouring, the wind blowing so the rain slapped onto the warped floor of the balcony and against Johnny’s window, sudden bursts of it that invaded my consciousness slowly until I was fully awake, and then I lay there, listening to the rough but beautiful song of the storm and feeling warm and snug in this bed, with Johnny asleep beside me.

  I glanced over at him. One arm was thrown over his eyes, his breathing deep and steady. I was growing used to being here again, and for the most part, I liked it, though I kept my own room at McGraw’s. Johnny had been asking me to give it up. “Why pay for it when you ain’t ever there?” and I understood what it meant to him. Proof of a commitment, the admission that I was here to stay.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t mean to make it. I did. My life had become settled in a way I’d never expected. I did my job at the Palace and slept with Johnny and lived under his protection. The idea of the theater circuit was taking hold—Johnny’s friend Tom had convinced a theater in Sacramento to join, and Johnny had brought in one in Vancouver. Blakely Davis’s money had bought a crimson curtain, currently on order from a shop in New York City, and a new stage. Workmen were adding gas footlights now. Charlotte and I had grown even closer in these last few months, and the choir at Trinity was my solace and my satisfaction. All in all, I was content, and if some days I felt restless, well … those days were fewer and farther between, and I knew that one day they would disappear. One day, I would learn to love this life the way I’d once loved the old one.

  But until then, I kept my room and told myself and Johnny I would let it go soon. Soon.

  I felt him stir beside me. He rolled over with a groan and kissed me and murmured, “Quite a storm out there.”

  “The perfect day for lying abed,” I told him.

  He laughed deep in his throat. “Now don’t that sound inviting. But we got auditions today.”

  “What does it matter? We take them all. Just say they’re hired and be done with it.”

  “We need the best ones on display tomorrow,” he said. “I’m still hoping to find one with talent.”

  I sighed. The owner of a theater in Portland was coming up to see what we’d done. Whether or not The Orpheus would join our circuit depended on his good opinion, and I was weary of it already. “Will you really need me there?”

  Johnny smiled. “I ain’t a fool, honey. After how you convinced Davis, I need you whispering in Portland’s ear. I’m betting he
won’t be able to resist you.”

  “You’re only saying that because I’m in bed with you.”

  “Ummm.” His hands came to my hips. “I’ll say whatever it takes to keep you here.”

  “Then say there won’t be auditions today. I can already predict how it will be: two mezzos and one soprano with a thready voice and all three of them flirting with you as if I wasn’t there.”

  “Jealous, honey?”

  I met his gaze, arching my shoulder a little, cocking my head flirtatiously, an unthinking habit. “Of course I am.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully.

  I felt the danger then, the fragility of what we’d made. He’d kept the promise he’d made me: he never asked any questions. Maybe because he didn’t want to test if I would keep my promise not to lie. I didn’t know myself if I could. I knew what it cost him to tell himself I was nothing and nobody, that I belonged to him alone.

  I wanted to tell him the truth. Some days it weighed so heavily upon me I couldn’t breathe. But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. Things were progressing quickly—too quickly for me, though the whores were still jockeying between the stage and the boxes, and there was still the little matter of Portland. But Johnny’s enthusiasm never waned; he would have given anything for a decent act to start off the new Palace in style, and Sabine Conrad would be irresistible to him, no matter what would be best for me. And so I was silent. For now. Someday, I would tell him.

  But not today. I ran my hand down his chest, tangling my fingers in the wiry golden curls there, smiling up at him, and said, “At least stay with me a little longer. It won’t hurt them to wait.”

  When I wrapped my arms around his neck, he rolled me onto my back and kissed me, and I felt the difference in the way he took me now, how the promises we’d made each other had gentled him. I missed the little cruelties he’d once inflicted upon me, but I was afraid to tell him I still wanted them. I was afraid to admit it to myself, because of what it meant—that despite my efforts and my promise to move on, it was taking longer than I’d hoped. And so I was gentle with him, and I held him close and whispered love words in his ear and told myself what was true: that I was happy, that this could be enough.

  I WAS UP with the dawn, as I always was on Sunday, no matter how late I’d got to bed the night before. I’d told Johnny months ago that I’d wanted to go to church again, and he’d looked at me suspiciously and said, “You ain’t turning Methodist on me, are you, honey?” and I’d laughed and said I’d turned away from God long enough and I didn’t see what harm a little praying could do. Though he’d been wary and watched me carefully for a few weeks, now that he’d seen I wasn’t taking up a temperance cause or insisting on prayers before bed, he’d come to terms with it. It was a safe enough lie, though I felt guilty about it—I didn’t believe Johnny would set foot in a church, and frankly it was a miracle that he hadn’t yet found out about the choir. I knew it couldn’t last, but I hoped to hide it from him as long as I could. Once the Palace was the theater he wanted, once real actors and singers took to that stage, the fact that I was a good enough singer to be part of a church choir wouldn’t interest him.

  This morning Johnny only muttered at me not to open the curtains before he turned over and went back to sleep, and I felt the familiar anticipation of singing come over me as I dressed and went to fetch Charlotte from McGraw’s. She was still sleeping, as always; I saw the struggle in her expression—the same struggle I saw every Sunday, the wish to go, the wish to stay. I knew it was because of Robert Marsdon. She never admitted it to me, and I don’t think she admitted it to herself. Hope was something new for Charlotte, and I was glad to think I was at least partly responsible for it.

  The air was moist with the promise of rain, and a cold wind raced up the streets from the Sound. Our cheeks were whipped red by the time we arrived. Carriages and wagons lined the street in front: the congregation hurried inside—the weather did not allow for friendly greetings in the muddy yard.

  Charlotte slipped into her regular place in one of the back pews, and I made my way to the vestibule, where most of the other choir members were already hanging their coats and cloaks, fastening the ragged robes over their clothes.

  Robert Marsdon’s head jerked up when I came in. He stepped up close to me and said in a low voice, “Might I have a word with you later?”

  I knew it was about Charlotte, and I said, “Yes, of course.” I’d suspected for weeks that he was gathering his courage to speak to me about her. But just then Mrs. Lapp and her daughters burst into the vestibule in a flurry of cold air, and Marsdon stepped away.

  I put on my robe with the others and we went to our seats at the front of the chapel. I never listened to the sermon, or at least not much. For me, the sermon was there only to fill the time before the music started. I stared at the back of Mr. Monroe’s head, barely restraining the urge to tap my foot in impatience. When we all rose to sing the first hymn, I burst out loudly and joyously over the beginning notes. Too much so. At Deborah Lapp’s sideways glance, I caught myself, pulling back. But even that was enough. I let the solace I’d always taken in singing sweep over me, surge through me, swelling with every note. I glanced toward the back to catch Charlotte’s eye.

  And saw him there.

  The shock of it made me falter; for a moment I lost the words and the tune. My mind would not believe it. Impossible. He could not be here. It was an illusion; it had to be. It could not be him.

  But of course it was.

  Miss Wright nudged me with her elbow, pointing hard at the place in her music where I was supposed to be, and with effort I called myself back. But now I was hardly aware of singing; a part of my mind knew the words and the tune, and that was the part that led me while the rest panicked.

  I told myself he had not recognized me. But I felt his stare, and I knew any hope that I’d gone unremarked and unrecognized was a vain and foolish one. He looked different; his hair was long, to his shoulders, but I would have known him anywhere, just as he must have known me. And I knew without a doubt that I was the reason he was here.

  The urge to run was almost unconquerable. I leaped through the possibilities for escape: how to get out of the church unseen, how far I could run before he caught me. Yet through it all was the knowledge that I would do none of those things. Because with my panic came relief, relief that it had happened at last, that the waiting I hadn’t realized I was doing was over.

  The song ended; we sat again, my view once more obscured by Miss Wright’s head, for which I was thankful. I did not think I could resist the urge to look at him again, to see, to be certain, though I was already.

  When next we rose, I did not think I could make a sound. But when I cast a quick glance, I saw he was no longer there—and that increased my panic. Where had he gone? Had I simply imagined him? I lost my place twice in the music; what peace I’d taken from it had completely disappeared, and I was trembling and bathed in sweat. I wanted nothing so much as to tear the robe off and run outside into the freezing air. It was all I could do to keep singing, to make it through the rest of the service, which seemed to last forever.

  When it was finally over, I was hardly aware of leaving the nave. Suddenly I was in the vestibule, buffeted by the others as they removed their robes and hung them on the hooks. It took me a moment to think of where I was and what I was supposed to be doing, and with clumsy hands I took off my own robe. Robert Marsdon was at my side, saying, “A word, Miss Olson?” and I nodded absently, going with him because I could not make my own thoughts coalesce, and he gave me something to concentrate on, something to follow. He led me to the door that opened onto a small side porch. I slunk back into the shadow of the narrow roof overhang, crossing my arms, trying to look interested when my mind was reeling in a hundred different directions, trying to think something other than Where was he? Why didn’t he show himself again?

  “I’m sorry to have to involve you in this, Miss Olson, but I see no other alternative.”

/>   Marsdon’s nervousness caught my attention, the dismay in his voice. For a moment, my apprehensions quieted in sudden interest, another dread. “Involve me in what?”

  He stepped closer, as if afraid we would be overheard, though the narrow yard between here and the privy was empty. In the back, the canvas that sheltered the part of the church being expanded for the pipe organ flapped in the breeze. I could hear voices fluttering from the front, good-byes, the laughter of children running through the yard, the jangle of reins and squeak of carriage wheels.

  “I am in despair,” Marsdon said quietly. “I would not ask you this, but I think you know her heart best.”

  My dread eased. This wasn’t about me at all. Of course it wasn’t. I’d known that. But in remembering it, I grew impatient. I was no longer interested. I did not want to listen to this, not now.

  As if he sensed my distraction, he took my arm, whispering ardently, “Miss Olson—Marguerite—you know how I feel. Could you be my advocate? Could you help me?”