by Ann Claycomb
Robin made eye contact with Harry’s mother, realized he couldn’t remember her name.
“Are you enjoying it so far?” he asked.
“Oh yes!” She stood and flashed a shy smile.
“I could sit,” Robin protested.
“Oh no, I should stand up at least, stretch my legs, though the first act didn’t feel long at all.” She held out her hand. “I’m Jane, by the way. Harry promised she’d introduce us after the show but I’m sure we can manage.”
Robin took her hand. “And I’m Robin. It was good of you two to drive in. Harry was excited you were coming.”
Jane smiled again, looking absently around the theater. She didn’t obviously resemble Harry either, except for the way her smile changed her eyes and an unexpectedly girlish roundness to her face. She had light brown hair cut in a bob and wore thin gold-rimmed glasses and a blue silk shirt-dress that was at once elegant and no-nonsense.
“You teach, don’t you? At a college out in Worcester?”
“Yes, we both do,” Jane said. “Scott teaches history and I’m chair of women’s studies.”
“Ah,” Robin said, “so a librettist in the family isn’t too far off the mark.”
Jane frowned thoughtfully. “Well, no, I suppose not. And yet it’s still a shock, isn’t it? I mean, Kathleen—” She gestured toward the currently empty stage. “I don’t know opera well but I know she’s quite . . . exceptional. Isn’t that a shock to you?”
“It is. And Kathleen would be delighted to hear me admit it.”
“I mean to you as her parent especially,” Jane went on, almost as if he hadn’t spoken. “Or maybe it’s never been like that for you. You’re an artist yourself, so . . .
“Did you have that moment?” she asked. “That moment of realizing that the encouragement you’ve been used to giving them isn’t just not adequate, it’s actually misplaced? I remember feeling just utterly bewildered during Harry’s first recital. She didn’t start singing seriously until college, you know, so none of us had any idea, and we’re not exactly a musical family. I mean, we were far more likely to have NPR on, and to expect the children to listen to All Things Considered right along with us.”
Robin chuckled. “This explains a lot about Harry, actually.”
Jane laughed too. “Well, yes, she is ours, no doubt about it. But that first recital, you know, I realized only a little way into it that I’d been planning to say these dreadful things, pat things, about how wonderful she was, how lovely she sounded—and yet I had no idea how to respond to her actual singing. I felt, well . . .” She cast Robin a sly glance. “I felt at sea, if you’ll pardon the reference.
“And now tonight I feel that same way again. Just when I’d gotten used to her singing and learned—or sort of learned—how to respond to that, she writes an opera! I—” Her eyes glittered with tears. “It’s rather terrifying, don’t you think? I mean, how can you ever tell them how proud you are, how humbled that you made sure they brushed their teeth and did their homework and somehow they went from there to here?”
“I don’t know,” Robin said. “I think it has been easier for Kathleen and me, since it’s always been just the two of us and she grew up literally falling asleep in bars under my piano.”
Jane nodded, dashing at her eyes with her fingers under her glasses.
Robin felt that they understood one another perfectly, that they were the only two people responding to the opera in precisely this way, and each equally unable to express their response.
“I think you must have done far more for Harry than just make her brush her teeth at night,” he said. “She knows who she is, and she’d never have been able to just plunge in and write this libretto if she didn’t have that sureness. To change the source story the way she did—” He broke off. “Uh-oh. Was that a spoiler?”
But Jane’s reply was cut off by the dimming of the lights that signaled the end of intermission, and by Tae and the others returning to their seats.
Jane put her hand on Robin’s sleeve before he could turn away. “I didn’t read the program,” she murmured. “I wanted to be surprised as much as possible—though I do know the original story. But Harry’s always liked a happy ending.”
THE SECOND ACT opened at the wedding reception for the prince and princess. The prince asked the Little Mermaid to dance for him and his new bride and afterward, nearly fainting from the pain in her feet, she slipped out of the party and onto a balcony overlooking the sea. The reception went on in pantomime as Kathleen sank into a heap on the balcony and pillowed her head in her arms. Gradually the lights dimmed on the interior of the palace and came up in blue and green on the sea, where the mermaid’s sisters were rising to the surface to offer her the knife. Robin glanced at Tae’s tote bag, tucked under the seat in front of her. The knife case was just visible peeking out the top, while onstage the sisters forced Kathleen to take the prop knife. She staggered with it into the bedroom she had shared with the prince—now the bridal chamber—and stowed it in a chest at the foot of the bed. Then she slammed the lid and stood staring at the bed. “Someone has strewn flower petals on the sheets,” she sang. “They smell sweet but they are dying even now. The first time he took me upon the sand, no one scattered flowers where I lay.” And she reached down in a sudden fury and swept the petals from the bed, then fled back out to the balcony as the newlyweds entered the room.
The consummation of the marriage happened in near blackness, with the mermaid spot-lit, her rigid back to the room, her hands clenched on the railing of the balcony. The luxurious string melody that the mermaid had danced to during the reception sped up and grew discordant, then slowed and faded as the light came up on the couple, the bride asleep and the prince propped on one arm beside her.
“My bride,” he sang. “My virgin bride no longer. I wonder where my little one is. Dangling her feet in the sea again? I am hungry for her even now, even here, but tomorrow will be soon enough for her.” He kissed the princess on the cheek—a strangely chaste kiss, as though in taking her once he had quenched all his desire for her—and lay down to sleep.
The mermaid entered the chamber in silence. The drums that had underlaid the sea witches began to beat slowly and the percussion made intermittent shivering sounds as Kathleen walked slowly up to the bed and around it, bending over the sleepers. She stopped in front of the chest and opened it, then stumbled back. Robin flinched from the realism of the fall. Kathleen really looked as though her legs would barely support her.
She crawled back to the chest as the strings rose, an insistent, ugly sawing sound that resolved itself into a plaintive moan as it descended and the cellos took it up. She snatched out the knife and Robin lurched forward in his seat and grabbed Tae’s hand, both of them looking at her bag, where the knife box still winked at them.
Onstage, impossibly, Kathleen had the knife in her hand—the real knife, too small for a staged murder but gleaming somehow far more persuasively than the silver foil one had. That was why she’d fallen back so realistically, Robin thought. She’d opened the chest, expecting the prop knife.
It was too late to do anything. Where was Harry? In the wings, surely. She must see it, but what could she do? Rush on stage to stop it? Was she close enough, wherever she was?
Robin got to his feet and was hissed at from behind, stepped out of the row and then stood frozen in the aisle, feeling himself stupidly trapped in the audience—literally trapped, with no way to reach the stage save for vaulting the orchestra pit. Trapped, as well, in thrall to his own music, to the story he and Harry had insisted was true, the story that had the mermaid rising from her crouch at the foot of the bed to lunge at the prince and plunge the knife into his chest as blood arced out in a great wash of—
Red light. Staged blood. Red light and feathers from the deliberately torn pillow, Tom jerking on the bed in terrible rhythm as she stabbed him again and again, clear red light washing over the bed and over the mermaid’s dress, turning it purple as she sang,
clutching one of the bedposts for support. “His blood is cool as water on my legs, my feet—I had forgotten what it was not to feel pain like a blade, like a knife going through me. Now as it eases I can barely stand.”
She made for the balcony, calling to her sisters, “I have killed him! I have killed him!”
The mermaids rose again from the sea and caught her as she plunged—ungainly, ungraceful for Kathleen, a tumble over the railing of the balcony and roll across the rocks to the bare stage lit like water. Her sisters knelt around her as she raised herself up on her arms, her legs curled behind her so that in her long dress they could have indeed become a tail.
“I have killed him,” she sang, half-sobbing. “I have killed him!” She held the knife over her head before flinging it across the stage. It made no sound when it landed but skittered into the shadows behind the balcony. There was blood, real blood, running down the side of Kathleen’s neck.
“I tried to fly like a bird, my sisters,” the mermaid sang, “to walk on land, to love a faithless man. All impossible things. I am free now. Take me home.”
And the stage went black.
HARRY
Aria for Mezzo-Soprano and Duet with Soprano
Her face was what held me still in the wings. From where I stood I could see her face as she lunged at the bed with the knife raised and I couldn’t move, couldn’t rush out to stop her or bring her to her senses.
I’d known what had happened as soon as Kathleen had looked into the trunk, before she fell back from the sight of the knife. The expression on her face then was familiar—Kathleen in despair, and in terrible pain too, from the way she was moving to the bloodlessness of her lips beneath the lipstick. It seemed impossible that the opera could go on—that was my first thought. That was why I didn’t move to stop her at first. I thought that in the aftermath of the impossible happening, there must be a bubble of stillness.
There wasn’t, of course. The music urged her on even as I stood there, wondering how to get to her. But she was no longer Kathleen. Her lips were drawn back and her eyes were black and the cords stood out along her neck and the back of her upraised hand and even as she sprang forward her neck began to bleed. She didn’t seem to feel it, didn’t stop stabbing over and over, while Tom jerked up in response.
I couldn’t see his face, or Carianne’s, turned away from me in feigned sleep. I could only see hers. Tears poured down her cheeks and blood ran down the side of her neck and over her collarbone. She was not Kathleen. She was the mermaid. I don’t know how else to explain it. I couldn’t stop her because she wasn’t mine to stop, I suppose. Also, she was doing what she had to do, what I had made her do with my libretto, and because it was already written it was already done.
And of course, she wasn’t really stabbing Tom. The mermaid stabbed the prince, just like we’d rehearsed, while a red spotlight came up on the white bed and bathed it in the illusion of gore. Feathers from the pillow beside Tom’s head, which was overstuffed and designed to burst and spray feathers when she stabbed it, flew into the shafts of red light and came down red. The mermaid killed the prince and his blood washed over her feet. But Kathleen did not stab Tom. Even as I watched and saw the two things happening simultaneously—the stabbing and the not stabbing—I almost couldn’t believe it.
When she dropped her arm and began to sing, she was Kathleen—enough so that I was frightened for her. She seemed to be having trouble walking, more than I’d ever seen her have. She clutched at things as she made her way across the room. Then she half-fell over the balcony wall and I couldn’t see her anymore from where I stood. I could hear her triumphant final notes, but already I was wondering if she would need help standing for applause.
The stage went black and the audience erupted. I stepped back farther into the hallway and looked to see if Abby or anyone else was around to help me with Kathleen if need be. Then I heard crying and someone murmuring, “It’s okay. It’s okay, honey. Come on.” I turned back to the stage exit. Tom was helping Carianne offstage. She had her hands over her face.
“What happened? Carianne, are you all right?”
“Fuck you, Harry!” Tom snarled. He was shaking with rage, his face flushed with it under his makeup. “You promised, goddammit. You fucking promised.”
Carianne gasped. “I-I’m sorry. I don’t know why I freaked out. It’s just . . . there was a different knife than the one we rehearsed with and Kathleen was bleeding. I think she must have cut herself on it or something—and the look on her face . . .” She swiped at her cheeks. “Tom’s overreacting.”
“The fuck I am.”
“It was just so much more real than in rehearsal,” Carianne said. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get it together.” She noticed her hands and whimpered in distress at the sight of the makeup all over her fingers. “It’s going to get all over my dress!”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You do need to get it together, so you can go take a bow, because you were wonderful. Here.” I fished tissues from my pocket and dabbed the worst of the black smears off her face, then handed the tissues to her to clean her hands. I could feel Tom glaring at me and didn’t look at him. I felt close to tears myself.
“She would never—” I began.
He cut me off. “Do you have any idea what that was like out there? Any idea? I thought she was really going to fucking kill us.”
I met his gaze. His eyes were wild. “Jesus, Harry,” he said. “You got in—you got all of us in—so far over our heads.”
Carianne looked up from her hands. “What are you talking about, Tom?”
Neither Tom nor I answered her. Behind us the applause continued, interrupted by shouts of “Bravo.” Then Abby came tearing down the hall.
“Harry,” she said. “Come quick.” And to Tom and Carianne, she impatiently added, “Why aren’t you two on stage? Come on, all of you.”
She practically shoved us all onstage, where we made a less than dignified entrance through the empty bedroom and around the mock balcony where Tom and Carianne joined the rest of the cast. Robin had found a way onstage and picked Kathleen up, managing to bow with her in his arms, taking her bows for her while also clearly—to me anyway—trying to surreptitiously back them both out of the spotlights.
Tom’s arrival prompted a new surge in applause. He took Carianne’s hand and they took a bow together. Then Jim Dolan stepped forward and motioned for quiet. The audience stopped clapping to listen, while a techie handed Jim a mike. He thanked everyone for coming and said something about how when he’d agreed to release his favorite composer from his commitment to one opera to write another one with and for student singers, he hadn’t had high expectations. There was laughter and more applause. Someone thrust a bunch of roses into my arms and I clutched them as I threaded my way through the cast.
Kathleen was bleeding down both sides of her neck, rivulets streaming over already drying streaks. There was blood on Robin’s sleeve and the shoulder of his suit. And she was breathing in wrenching gasps, clutching Robin’s wrist and trying to pull herself up in his arms as if she wanted to expand her lungs to take in enough air.
“Kath,” I said. I dropped the flowers to free up my hands. “Kathleen, what do you need?”
She shook her head, but I couldn’t tell if that was because it was too hard to talk or she didn’t have an answer.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Robin murmured. He shouldered his way to the wings, then kept going, not toward the dressing rooms but down the hall toward the back door of the theater, which led to the lot where the singers and orchestra members parked.
“Robin! Where are you taking her?”
He swung around to wait for me. “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought at first the hospital—” Kathleen moaned and shook her head, practically clawing at him to get him to acknowledge her objection. “I know, darling,” he said gently. “Be still.”
The outside door opened and Tae stepped in. “I pulled the car around. Are you ready to go?”<
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“The hospital may be the only option, Kath,” I said. “You’re bleeding, you can’t breathe—”
“And can’t walk,” Robin said grimly. “She can’t even put weight on her legs.”
“Kathleen . . .” I tried to get her to look at me. I could tell her mouth was hurting too, from the way she was holding her jaw and the convulsive way she was swallowing in between those terrible breaths. “Sweetie, we just need to—”
But Kathleen suddenly pulled herself up again in Robin’s arms and with a visible effort made her throat work well enough to call out, “Tom!”
He’d been lurking just at the entrance to the hallway, his own triumphal spray of roses dangling half-forgotten at his side. Kathleen stretched out her hand and he came, his expression set. Then he got close enough to get a good look at her and his face crumpled. He cupped her cheek and kissed her.
“Tom, I’m sorry!” she whispered. “I didn’t—I promise that I didn’t—I could feel it happening and that I was her and you were him but I knew we were also ourselves. I swear that if I’d stopped feeling us both, I wouldn’t have kept going. I would have thrown the knife away, Tom.” She began to cry weakly, pressing her face into his hand. “I would have.”
“I know,” he said. “I know you would have. I just—I thought I’d get a little more warning about when it was time to believe before I had to.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and he shushed her. He slid his hand down from her cheek and then stopped, brushed her hair away, and peered closely at where her neck still bled.
“Have you seen this?” he asked Robin.
Robin shook his head. “I can’t put her down,” he said. “She can’t walk.”
“Well, that’s not surprising,” Tom said, “seeing as how she’s growing gills.”
SO INSTEAD OF going to the hospital, we went to the sea. Tom held the door for us while Tae ran ahead to unlock the car. I slid into the backseat and Robin ducked down and deposited Kathleen half in my lap. I had to support her upper body or she would have slid prone across the seat. Her long skirt was so tightly tangled around her lower body that I couldn’t see her legs. She was shuddering and twitching in pain, clutching the arm I had braced around her waist and making strangled sounds. I held her tight and sat as straight as I could, bracing my left arm against the door frame to make it easier to hold her head up. Tae threw the car into gear and took us out of the lot fast enough to throw me back against the seat.