by Ann Claycomb
“He’ll figure it out,” the girl assured me as she texted him. “George could make a dead body look alive with a couple of well-placed filters.”
George texted back and said he’d meet me at the theater the next morning at nine, but that was the only opening he had for the rest of the week, which meant I then had to get in touch with Tom and ask him to come to the theater instead of the coffee shop where we’d been planning to meet at nine-thirty. Tom apparently had to talk to me urgently. And although I knew that this could mean his costume didn’t match his eyes, I still felt a pang when I thought about the meeting. I didn’t have time for a casual coffee, which Tom knew perfectly well. I was half-afraid we would get together and he’d give me a lecture about how stressed out I was and half-afraid he really did have something serious to tell me. God forbid he drop out of the show.
I went from the theater to the costume department at the conservatory to check on the sea witches’ robes, which had accidentally been ordered in bright red, then ran to meet Robin and the Globe reporter for lunch.
“Headache?” Robin asked as soon as he saw me.
“Why?”
“You’re squinting. I know that squint. You’ve been working for too long and you’ve forgotten to eat. Order an appetizer now. We can order entrées when Lindsey gets here.”
“Yes, Dad,” I muttered, and Robin smacked me with his menu. The waitress laughed at us as she took my order for a cup of chowder, extra oyster crackers on the side.
“You better believe it,” Robin said when she’d gone. “Speaking of—how’s my other daughter doing?”
I fished some Advil out of my bag and gulped it down with water. “She’s doing great, I think. She’s singing so much that it’s sort of like she never really has a chance to crash, you know? So even when her feet hurt, she seems almost philosophical about it.”
“Kathleen?” Robin asked. “Are you sure you don’t have her mixed up with someone else?”
“I know. It’s remarkably drama-free at our place these days. I barely know what to do with myself.”
The waitress brought my soup and I crushed some crackers and sprinkled them on top. There it was again, the fear half-spoken by both of us, hidden in our assurances of how well Kathleen was doing. What would happen to her when the opera was over?
The chowder was hot. I swirled my spoon in it and then nearly tipped the cup over when a woman skidded to a stop at our table.
“Robin? Harriet? My gosh, I’m sorry I’m late! This is terrible. Have you been here long?”
“You’re not late, Lindsey,” Robin said. “Harry’s eating because I forced her to.” He stood up and pulled a chair out. The woman slid into it and smiled across the table at me.
“Harry. Sorry. I called you Harriet. I’m Lindsey Percival. Boston Globe.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. I shook her hand, which was larger than mine. She was tall, with short spiky blond hair and silver tassel earrings that brushed her shoulders. She was built like a swimmer: broad-shouldered, with visible muscles in her long arms and in her legs, which were bare despite the fact that it was March in Boston.
“So has Robin told you that we know each other?” Lindsey asked.
I glanced at Robin, who was smiling at his menu, shaking his head. “No.”
“My parents own Danny Boy’s,” she said. “It’s one of the bars where Robin used to play. I would bug him to let me sit on the piano bench with him, try to make him play my favorite songs. I babysat Kathleen a couple of times, didn’t I? I took her upstairs to our apartment and braided her hair. She’d come down with these crazy hairstyles, poor kid, but I thought it was awesome, like I had my own personal redheaded Barbie.”
Robin laughed. “And yet you cut all your own hair off.”
Lindsey ran a hand smugly over her choppy hair. “Got tired of washing it. I row crew,” she added to me. “Started in college and got hooked. Besides, I didn’t like doing my own hair, I liked doing other girls’ hair. And Kathleen never complained. She must have a high pain threshold.”
I carefully didn’t glance at Robin.
“So how’s she doing?” Lindsey asked. “I can’t believe how old she is—and how gorgeous! I saw the photo up on the Opera Boston site. Tell her I say hello and that I want the first interview after opening night.”
“I’ll tell her,” Robin said. He had that expression of private amusement on his face again. I wished he’d let me in on the joke. I also wished my headache would go away. Lindsey Percival’s eyes were shockingly blue, like some of the lights we’d been working with this morning.
We ordered our food and Lindsey brought out paper, pencil, and her iPad. She tested the microphone, turning the iPad on the table to angle it more toward us than herself. “Backup, just backup,” she murmured. “And to save me from figuring out my own spelling. I’m the world’s worst speller.”
She asked Robin about the development of the score, what the shift was like from orchestral and instrumental music to opera, why he thought audiences were so resistant to new operas, why this one would be different. Everyone asked these same questions. I ate my club sandwich, feeling my headache recede. I liked hearing Robin talk about the opera. His answers felt familiar by now, but not boring. I was frankly happy to have an excuse to just listen to something besides my own anxious litany of things that I hadn’t done yet, or things that could go wrong.
“Harry?”
Lindsey had her pencil poised. I’d missed a question directed at me.
“Sorry. Can you repeat that?”
“What was the experience of writing a libretto like?”
“Hard,” I said.
Lindsey laughed. “Can you be more specific?”
“It was like trying to do anything you’ve never done before and aren’t sure you’re any good at, only harder.” When she laughed again I realized that I was trying to make her laugh. I wasn’t sure why.
“So any ideas for the next one?” she asked.
I stared at her blankly. “The next what?”
“The next libretto,” Lindsey said. “Robin says this one is brilliant, the director of Opera Boston says it’s brilliant—”
I flushed. “He did not!”
Lindsey flipped through her pad. “No, you’re right,” she said. “He said the libretto was ‘tremendously exciting, clearly the work of a singer for singers. People are going to be really blown away.’”
I opened my mouth, closed it again. The next one? No one had asked me this question before. The previous interviews had focused far more on Robin, the known quantity. They’d asked me about the writing of The Little Mermaid libretto but not about whether I might write another one. And I certainly hadn’t had any effusive praise read back to me before.
“I haven’t really thought about anything past opening night,” I said, “since I’m also directing.”
“But would you like to do more work as a librettist?” Lindsey asked. “What would your dream project be?”
“Oh, Robin’s already doing that,” I said. “I love The Scarlet Letter. But then most of the things I’d love to see or sing in are probably texts already. They don’t need a librettist, just a kind of script doctor, someone to stitch things together.”
“And you did more than that with The Little Mermaid?”
“Yes, well, there’s very little actual dialogue in the story, so—yes, I guess I did a lot of writing.”
“A lot of writing,” Robin put in quietly. “And all of it, as I said, brilliant.”
Lindsey was giving me her jock’s grin again.
“I’ve stumped you,” she said. “I love it when I leave my interview subjects speechless.”
“I just haven’t thought about it.”
But now I was. And the disconcerting thing wasn’t that I suddenly found myself thinking about writing another libretto. It was how many ideas I had.
“I’d love to do more Andersen stories,” I said, “though I’m sure they’ve probably been done bef
ore, some of them. ‘The Snow Queen,’ ‘The Little Match Girl,’ ‘The Red Shoes.’” I looked at Robin. “Have all of those been done?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you couldn’t do them again, Harry, your own way.”
“But I’m not a composer. You’d have to do the music!”
“Now I’m going to sound like you,” Robin said. “Not until Mermaid is over. And The Scarlet Letter is done. Besides”—he raised an eyebrow—“I’m hardly the only composer in the world.”
“But—”
“Sooooo,” Lindsey cut in, “is now a good time to ask if you two enjoyed working together?”
Robin laughed. “It was a joy.”
“Tam Lin,” I said abruptly. They both stared at me. “As an opera,” I clarified.
Lindsey shook her head, making her earrings dance against her neck. “I don’t know that one.”
Robin looked thoughtful. I could practically hear him recalling the old ballad, evaluating it for dramatic potential, melodic possibilities. He nodded slowly. “I like it,” he said. We grinned at each other. Then he suddenly slapped his blazer pocket and extracted his phone. “It’s Jim Dolan. Excuse me. I’ll take this outside.”
I schooled my face out of what must have been an expression of panic. Whenever Robin’s phone or my phone rang, I still expected Kathleen on the other end, her voice constricted with pain.
“You all right?” Lindsey asked. She touched the back of my hand. “I can ask easier questions if you want. Let’s see, who’s your favorite composer? What role do you dream of playing? What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?”
Up close, the blue of her eyes was even more startling. She had a cleft in her chin. “I can’t even come up with an interesting flavor,” I said. “I like chocolate.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is that an Italian composer? I’ve never heard of him.”
I started to laugh and realized that she was still touching my hand, just with the tips of her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I honestly just don’t think of myself as a librettist. I mean, not the way Robin is a composer. I’m a singer, and a decent one, but not like Kathleen. And this opera, I was halfway through writing it before I realized I’d started, if you know what I mean.”
Lindsey raised her eyebrows. “That’s how most of the best writing happens, in my experience.”
“Maybe. But I’m not a writer. I mean, I wrote this opera, but I was doing it for Kathleen.”
I flushed when I said it—no one had asked about our relationship in any of the interviews and I hadn’t brought it up either. Of course, I realized, Lindsey hadn’t asked about it either.
“Ah,” she said after a moment. She withdrew her hand and sat back in her chair. “Well, at least my radar was working.” She pulled a rueful face and I flushed more. I hadn’t even realized until that moment that she was flirting with me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shrugged. “For what?” She took a sip of her iced tea. “How long have you been together?”
“Almost two years.”
Robin slid back into his seat at that moment. I gave him what must have been an inappropriately big smile, grateful for his presence.
“Speaking of contemporary operas—we were speaking of contemporary operas, weren’t we?” he asked. “Jim just saw Nixon in China while he was in China and had to call and tell me about it. Apparently, it was a rather surreal experience, but the singing was astonishing, he said.” Robin winked at me. “He also said to tell you and Kathleen both that he and Lorraine are excited about next weekend.”
“No nagging you about The Scarlet Letter?” I asked.
“We-ell,” Robin said, “he did mention something about not wanting to lose track of our other project.”
Lindsey was packing up her shoulder bag.
“I’ve got everything I need from you two,” she said. “Thank you. And, Robin, it was amazing to see you again. Mom and Dad are going to be so excited when I tell them I not only saw you, but interviewed you, that you’re a celebrity now.”
“Oh God,” Robin said. “Please don’t tell them that. If I ever want to just pop into Danny Boy’s for a drink, your dad will never let me live it down.”
Lindsey chuckled. “Never.” She turned to me and held out her hand.
“Harry, it was nice to meet you. Good luck with the opera, and good luck with any future operas,” she said. “Singing or writing.”
She swung her bag over her shoulder and left. She walked with a slight swagger that her heels exaggerated.
“What did I miss?” Robin asked. “Any more hard questions?”
I shook my head. “Thank God she didn’t know Tam Lin, though, or I don’t think she’d have let her ‘what’s next?’ query drop so easily.”
Robin chuckled. “Or thank Jim for the timing of his phone call. But you know, I was thinking while I was hanging up—Tam Lin is practically opera-ready. Another short one, like Mermaid is, only two acts, plenty of Celtic references in the music. And you’d have to have a tremendous duet between Janet and the Fairy Queen when she pulls him from the horse.”
“To sort of narrate what’s happening to Tam Lin,” I said. “Yes.”
“Soprano and contralto?” Robin wondered. “Which would be which?”
I frowned. “I don’t know. Soprano for the Queen, I think.”
We both nodded, and then our eyes met and Robin’s expression turned sheepish. I’m sure mine did too.
“Come on, Harry.” He laughed. “Let’s get out of here. We’re dangerous together.”
KATHLEEN COULDN’T DECIDE which delighted her more: that Robin and I wanted to write another opera or that her old babysitter had hit on me and I hadn’t noticed.
“I love it!” she said, twirling linguini around her fork. “I used to have a picture book of Tam Lin. There was a page for every transformation he undergoes, with Janet—though I think it was Jenny in this book—hanging on grimly in every one. What are they again? A bear, a swan, a snake . . .”
“Well, I think it’s a ‘serpent,’” I said, “which could be a sort of dragon, not a snake.”
“Oooh,” Kathleen said. “That is better. And then he turns into fire and she has to jump into the water to put it out. I remember that.” She paused, chewing. “I can’t imagine where I got that book,” she said. “I mean, I even remember Jenny being visibly pregnant and that’s not exactly a plot point for the picture book audience.”
“What about the end?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, how did your book end?”
“Oh. Well, the Fairy Queen rides off in a huff and then on the last page, across from ‘The End,’ there’s a picture of Tam Lin and Jenny holding their baby in the rose arbor he used to haunt when he was under his enchantment.”
“Ah,” I said. “It was a kid’s book, then, despite pregnant Jenny.”
“Why?” Kathleen asked. “How does the ballad end?”
“The Fairy Queen has the last word. She says something to him that sounds like she’s cursing him, but really all she does is remind him of everything he had in Faërie. He may have escaped from her, but now he’s mortal, not covered in fairy glamour, which could be a bit of a disappointment to both him and Jenny. Or Janet. Or whatever her name is.”
Kathleen shook her head. “How unromantic you are.” Then she poked me in the back of the hand with her fork. “I still think you should write it. When you mentioned the part about the Fairy Queen and her curse—imagine if you did it that way, if she did have the last word and the rest of the staging was just pantomime, just the two lovers picking themselves up out of the water and going home.” She shivered. “Gives me goose bumps, that does.”
“Can we just get through next weekend? Please?”
“If you insist. Now, tell me more about Lindsey—did she actually ask you out? In front of my dad?”
“No!”
“Did she play footsie under the table?” Kath
leen’s eyes were dancing. “Or put her hand on your knee?”
“Quit teasing me,” I snapped. I felt annoyed and wished I hadn’t even told her. I’d been so thrown off by the flirtation that I’d felt a need to confess it, but now I felt stupid.
“Harry—”
“Just because I don’t get hit on often enough to recognize it—”
Kathleen grabbed my hand hard enough to hurt. “Stop it. You don’t get hit on because everyone we know knows we’re together and also because you’re oblivious.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
She loosened her grip, enough so I could turn my hand in hers, but she didn’t let go. She tugged on my hand until she could hold it to her mouth, brushing my fingertips across her lips while she talked. There was tenderness, in her eyes and in her lips and in her hands, as she pulled me up from the table.
“It’s not a bad thing,” she whispered later, stringing kisses like a necklace across my throat. “I’m glad you’re oblivious.”
“What about you?” I whispered back.
She tilted her head to smile at me, her breasts pressed against mine.
“I’m not oblivious, Harry,” she said softly. “But I’m immune.”
“To flirtation?”
“To flirtation from anyone else,” she corrected, kissing me again. “Silly girl,” she murmured. “Stop worrying. Put your hands on me.”
I WOKE ABRUPTLY in the middle of the night and jerked up on one elbow, my heart pounding. Kathleen was lying curled into me and I’d had the impression that her eyes were open and she was staring at me. But her eyes were closed, her face white and set in the moonlight. Her breath smelled funny, or maybe her hair did. Not a bad smell, but odd, and strong. I leaned over her and breathed it in.
Seawater. More precisely, it was the smell of the cave where we’d encountered the witches. Cold, old, deep water, wet rock. I sat up fully and pulled my knees to my chest, shivering. I reached over and opened the drawer in my bedside table, pressed the latch on the knife case inside. As soon as it was open wide enough for me to see the knife inside I slapped it shut, closed the drawer, and lay back down. I made myself turn on my side toward Kathleen and put my hand on her hair, stroke it until I could convince myself that it wasn’t damp or sticky with saltwater. After a long time, the smell of the sea receded. Kathleen sighed and turned her back to me.