by Holly Weiss
Gracie was afraid she was being too inquisitive, but it seemed that the opera star wanted to talk, so she asked, “Isn’t it a lot of pressure?”
“It is hard work, but I love to sing.” She stood up, closed her eyes and gave her head an imperceptible shake. “The rigors of performing, learning new roles and traveling are great, and they pay me well, but to do all of that and not lose my joy of singing—very challenging. I have to work at finding a balance.”
“How?” Gracie sat very still as Miss Ponselle paced from one side of the room to the other, stopping from time to time, quietly talking to herself.
“By singing meaningfully, hoping to touch another soul. The voice is a powerfully communicative instrument. God has given me an amazing gift and if I use it correctly, someone in the audience, perhaps just one, may be lifted above their everyday struggle and refreshed for a few moments. And when I truly listen to the music and allow it to move me, I am taken to a magical, blessed place where I find that my own soul has been replenished. This is what feeds me and keeps me centered as an artist and as a person.”
****
William quick-stepped to open the door, cupped his hand around his mouth and called, “Okay, boys, bring it in. Careful.” Giving his wife a snappy nod, he said, “You will love this, Margaret.”
Otto and Sid hauled in a six-foot-tall cherry filing cabinet with fifteen narrow drawers and set it against the wall. Speechless, Margaret stared at her husband. He nearly burst with excitement. Perspiration trickled down his temples.
“Look,” he said, pulling on several of the brass knobs. “I have taken the liberty of labeling each drawer alphabetically. I was so impressed by your attention to detail when you told me about the person that required four pillows, I bought you this. You can keep all of your notes concerning the guests’ preferences organized in these drawers.”
“Like these notes?” She testily pulled a paper from her desk and recited,
Mrs. Pennington:
Window to be shut at all times due to allergies.
Needs electric fan.
Prefers Room C with private bath and close proximity to dining room.
Housemaid should eliminate spider webs on regular basis.
Bellboy to be discreet concerning ice requests for foot baths.
4 bed pillows.
Prone to sunstroke.
1925 – 3 requests for doctor.
Dietary restrictions– made nauseous by milk.
So you feel I need further organization than my current system.”
“I thought it might help you, Margaret.”
“William, I know you meant well, but why should I replace one system I have perfected with another that you feel will work better?”
Gracie had heard every word through the open door as she ran toward the office. “Mrs. Woods, I went to check on Mrs. Pennington’s ice water and found her on the bed. She says she feels faint.”
Margaret sent her to the kitchen for ice and headed for Room C to tend to their guest, leaving William in her office scratching his head.
“I’m sorry I stayed so long with Miss Ponselle. I might have gotten to clean Mrs. Pennington’s room earlier and prevented her spell. I’ve never seen anyone with so many ailments,” Gracie said later as they left her propped up on pillows with the fan blowing around the room.
“You can’t be everywhere at all times, Gracie, although I know you try. Mrs. Pennington can’t help her problems. She prefers to swim in them because she doesn’t have the wherewithal to rise above them. The least we can do is to shower her with the attention she craves.”
****
“Delicious,” pronounced Miss Ponselle, wiping the corners of her mouth and dropping her napkin onto the dinner tray Gracie had brought. “Now, we talked about me all afternoon and it is time I heard you sing.”
“Here?” Gracie whispered, panic-stricken.
“As you said, the other guests are probably still in the dining room, so this may be the most privacy we have. You mentioned a song you wanted to sing for the staff talent show?”
“‘I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.’”
“Yes, let me hear it.”
Gracie ran her tongue around the inside of her bottom teeth, studied the floor and sucked a big breath through her nose. Then she fixed her eyes on a blank space on the wall and sang:
I’ll build a stairway to Paradise
With a new step every day.
I’m going to get there at any price.
Stand aside, I’m on my way….
“Good, good. You have a pretty voice. Now continue.”
She was sure she was a dismal failure, but Gracie desperately wanted to make a good impression and made herself keep singing. She actually started to relax until Miss Ponselle stopped her midstream.
“Tell me why you chose this song.”
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“You must like this song or you would not want to sing it. Why do you like it?”
“Well, it’s peppy so it’s fun to sing, and PT, the man who drove you, can play it really well…and I have these shoes…”
“Shoes. You mean when you sing about stepping you see yourself in these shoes?”
“Yes.” Gracie’s voice trailed off weakly.
“Excellent. Tomorrow you must wear the shoes and we will do this again. But now, I am tired. Would you bring me a fresh glass of water?” Miss Ponselle slipped into her dressing gown and added a dropper from a blue vial into the water. “Go, get some sleep. Tomorrow I will teach you more about singing.”
****
The three of them smiled sweetly as they filed past Mrs. Slagle out of the Evergreen Lodge and over to the laundry porch. “Back by eleven, girls,” she warned, scrutinizing them over her reading glasses while she wrote their names on her clipboard.
“I’m trying to remember the last time I was given a curfew…or called a girl.” Dorothy laughed. The laundry was shut down for the evening and the porch was quiet with a lovely breeze tinkling the wind chimes. “Imagine what Celeste Woodford would say if she knew we were eating Rosa Ponselle’s chocolates.”
Gracie passed around the box, waving off the gnats. “Rosa says the chocolate clogs her throat and that she’s too fat already.”
“That tiny thing?” Dorothy said, biting into a chocolate caramel.
Mae pushed the box away. “You two take what you want and I’ll eat what you don’t.”
“Oh, honestly, Mae, just take the one you want instead of always putting yourself last.” Gracie stuck the box in her face, “Here, choose and enjoy.”
“A funny thing happened though.” Mae and Dorothy leaned in with curiosity.
“She has a little blue bottle on her nightstand. She added a few drops from it to her water. Said it helped her sleep.”
“Probably laudanum.” Dorothy ticked her tongue. “Poor thing, she must be beside herself with pressure.” Mae gingerly lifted a chocolate out of the box and took a bite.
“What else did she say?”
“Well, she told me she had terrible stage fright, and then she asked me to sing.”
“How does she remember all those Italian words when she doesn’t speak the language?” Dorothy asked.
“I guess she’s memorized so many foreign words, she practically does speak the language. She’s really nice. She wants me to call her Rosa. And tomorrow, she wants me to wear my St. Louis heels when I sing.” Dorothy narrowed her eyes and elbowed Mae. “Don’t ask me,” Gracie continued, “she’s the famous singer. I’ll take whatever help she’ll give me. Maybe PT will finally jam with me if I take some voice lessons.”
“Oh my word, Gracie, I am so tired of hearing you moan about that man. You two obviously had a little spat. If you want him, go after him,” Dorothy said.
****
Gracie followed the finger in the oval mirror while Miss Ponselle pointed from her blonde bob down to her St. Louis heels. “Look at how the back of your knees are pushed back. You must unlo
ck them.” Gracie snapped her knees forward. “How you stand is a reflection of how you feel about yourself. These hunched shoulders tell me a great deal.” She gently, but firmly pulled Gracie’s shoulders back.
“Excuse me, Miss Rosa, but I was hoping we could get to the singing part of the lesson soon.”
“We will sing soon enough, but before that we must do something about your bearing. You are like a tightly wound ball of twine, afraid to let go. Now shake your arms out and pull your head up like this.” Miss Ponselle loosely swung her arms back and forth and seemed to grow two inches taller.
“No, no, not like that. Don’t tip your chin up, but rather pull up your carriage and your neck from the back of your head as if you were looking over an imaginary fence.” Gracie straightened the crook in her neck and raised the crown of her head. The mirror now reflected a confident looking woman.
“Now, breathe deeply and sing me the song while you look over the fence.”
The sound came out more naturally and it was easier to hit the high notes. Gracie let go and began to enjoy herself.
“Yes, much better. The sound is freer now.” She pointed to Gracie’s hands, which lay plastered to the front of her uniform skirt. “Tell me, what do those hands say?”
“They’re not saying anything. They’re just there.”
“Nonsense, they are saying ‘Here are my thighs.’ Very unladylike.”
Gracie nodded dumbly and acquiesced as her hands were moved around to the sides of her skirt. She walked around the room, singing, trying to keep her body positioned as her teacher instructed.
“Now it is time to envision your shoes. Does the little gold buckle glint in the light when you move? Listen to your heels clicking on the floor when you sing the line about a new step every day.”
Gracie closed her eyes, stepping and singing with increasing confidence. Gone was any memory of her heel catching in the stairs in front of Otto’s brother.
“Good. Now you are one with the song, not just singing the song. Practice this way when you work with the pianist you mentioned.”
****
On Thursday, PT drove them down into town. Miss Ponselle insisted on being let off at the Presbyterian Church first because she had much practicing to do for the concert. Gracie went in with her to make sure the lights were on and reminded Rev. Sturdy the opera singer would need privacy.
Once back in the car, she tried to make chit chat about her voice lesson, but PT was remote. He did agree to play for her at the talent show, but expressed no interest in being alone with her. When he dropped her at Mrs. Cunningham’s, he said nothing more than “Be back at five.”
Mrs. Cunningham chatted cheerfully during breakfast, but Gracie hardly heard a word. All morning she tried to work off her tension by cleaning out the refrigerator, washing down cupboards, and reorganizing the linen closet. When she broke a dish while washing up after lunch, Mrs. Cunningham called her into the living room, asking what was wrong. Relieved the old woman wanted to help, she confided in her about what had happened.
“Grace, it is wrongheaded of you to infer that he doesn’t care for you just because he hides. There must be something in his life holding him back from being with you. If you really care for PT, then you must give him time to work out his problems—if you care for him, that is.”
She did care for him, but the summer was short and she couldn’t wait. She was going to go after him.
****
Margaret seemed surprised when William offered to make the weekly deposit at the bank. “Let me lighten your load a bit. Peg can run the water activities for me this morning,” he explained.
William savored his drive alone to Laporte. Even though he thrived on his relationships with the Crestmont guests, he still needed an hour or so of solitude on Monday to recharge. Their bi-weekly row on the lake helped as well. Relaxation was hard for his wife, even on the water, but William slipped easily into the rest time away from their duties.
He found the challenge of running the inn, teaching at Westlawn, balancing family and community activities exhilarating. His brain constantly percolated new ideas like tennis courts, the Evergreen Lodge and elevating the profile of the concert series. Margaret was the cautious, deliberate one, working out the details, determined to keep her father’s dream alive. Together, they were the success of the Crestmont. The guests were content because Margaret attended so faithfully to their needs, but they relished William’s flair for articulating his delight in their company.
Vision and implementation were the skills his father-in-law, William Warner, had preached when he built the Crestmont. Before his dementia, he talked about the day Margaret and William would inherit the inn, ecstatic that as a team they embodied both. But it was to William the visionary, that Warner had charged, “If you’re not looking forward, you are moving backward.”
William worried constantly that Margaret was overburdened. He regretted that she perceived him as forgetful, but he simply did not feel gifted in dealing with nuts and bolts. She was so adept at keeping the administrative bits and pieces together, he hadn’t seen them drive her into the melancholy that frightened them so last autumn. He had never given up on his dream of the Eagles Mere Tennis Tournaments, but he didn’t want his idea to burden her. He did, however, need for her to agree. Surely she would if he presented her with a plan well-formulated from start to finish with appropriate funding. He would just have to manage the implementation himself.
Mr. Crittendon, a stooped man of about sixty with a ruddy face, ushered him into a green leather chair. The bank president coughed and folded his wrinkled hands on the desk.
“I am honored, sir,” William Woods began. “I assume your family founded this bank.”
“My grandfather moved here from Chicago in 1860 to establish The Crittendon Bank of Laporte. It has remained in our family ever since.”
“Marvelous. I, too, come from a family business. My wife and I inherited the Crestmont Inn from her father.”
Mr. Crittendon coughed again and William resisted the urge offer him his own handkerchief. “Yes, Mrs. Woods. Lovely woman. However, it is she who has always done business with us in the past. I don’t recall meeting you before.”
“A circumstance now rectified. Now, down to business. Shall we visit my account history? Let us examine my personal accounts as well as the Crestmont’s.”
Mr. Crittendon shuffled to the cabinets on the back wall. He returned, frowning as he thumbed through the file. “Yes, the Crestmont account lists you as co-owner with your wife. Please accept my apology, Mr. Woods. I’m listening.”
William knew in advance what the bank president would say. He carefully outlined his request, intent on proving himself.
Mr. Crittendon ran his index finger down the entries in their file, shaking his head. “I see that the Crestmont has never before asked the bank for a loan.”
“My good man, surely such a thing works in our favor. Do you mean that because we have never needed to borrow in the past that a loan for the Crestmont cannot be granted now?”
“Bank policy is that if credit is not established, credit may not be granted without a thorough review of the lendee’s accounts.”
“The lendee has been a valued customer of this bank for twenty-six years. The lendee is the owner of one of the most prestigious summer hotels in the northern Allegheny Mountains. The lendee’s accounts are right here on your desk. What further review is necessary?” William rose and walked decisively back and forth in front of Crittendon’s desk, his shoes clicking on the marble floor.
“I am not talking about tennis courts merely for recreational use at the Crestmont, Mr.Crittendon,” he said passionately. “I intend to run tennis tournaments second only to those in Forest Hills, New York. We will attract the best players from all over the country. People will flock here. Do you have any idea how much revenue that will create, not just for Eagles Mere, but for all of Sullivan County? If you examine my figures, you will see that the entire loan
will be paid off in two years.”
“You would have to put the Crestmont up as collateral against the loan.”
“The value of the Crestmont is out of the ballpark compared to the amount I am requesting. I have three guest cottages on the property. I offer them as collateral, with the understanding that we will continue to administer and maintain them, but all rental income be funneled directly to the bank if we default.”
“I shall have to discuss this with my other officers.”
“I find it incongruous that a man of your position would need to consult with his subordinates.”
Fifteen minutes later the papers were signed. Motoring home, William sang one of his favorite Fanny Crosby hymns, as the wind whipped through the car. The Eagles Mere Tennis Tournaments would be in place by next summer.
****
PT chatted with Miss Ponselle all the way back in the car. Gracie didn’t mind that he ignored her because she needed time to plan. When Rosa was settled back at the Crestmont, Gracie ran back to her dorm room and pulled out her notebook. At the top of the page she wrote:
Thursday, July 22
I get out now and don’t get hurt anymore.
I go after him, he comes around, and we are happy together.
I go after him and he says no.
He comes around, we have some happy times, then he hurts me again.
I do nothing, fret about what his problem is, and miss any love we might share.