Starry-Eyed (12 page)

“A cappella,” she says, and closes her eyes.

Not knowing what else to do, I sing. I do it quietly, though, in case she falls asleep.

“
Oh, Danny boy
,

The pipes, the pipes are calling . .
.”

It's a lovely tune, really. One forgets that. I think I did all right with it. Ended soft as a whisper.

Well, the old girl doesn't say a word. I wait.

“Miss Krause, are you all right?”

Her eyes float open. “Why do you ask?”

I look at her face. Her skin seems papery to me. Thin, like a light could shine right through it.

“You look pale, is all. A bit yellow. You might take some vitamins, you know. My sister, Evelyn, swears by them.”

She looks at me. “Is your sister a doctor?”

“A dental hygienist,” I say.

At that, the world famous Sabrina Krause does something I'd never thought I'd live to see. She grins, and she opens that resonant cavern of a mouth, and she laughs, deep from the belly. And believe me, there is no laugh like the laugh of the greatest diva of the modern age. It is an opera, that laugh. A symphony of symphonies. The music of the spheres is in it.

“Danny boy,” she murmurs, after a bit. “That was lovely, Fiona.” One thin hand flutters upward, fragile and bent as an origami crane, and presses against her chest. “It came from your heart. I could tell.” She gives me a sly look. “I could never have sung it so well as you.”

That gets me too emotional to even say thank you, so I just stand there fumbling with my coat buttons. “Shall I come again Saturday?” I say at the door. She usually mentions it herself and jots it in her datebook, right there
at the piano, but today her book is nowhere to be seen.

“Of course, Fiona.” Her eyes close once more. “Come Saturday. I would like that.”

. . . . .

Monday it's in all the papers.

They'd found her Sunday morning, in bed, music playing on the radio, dead as stone. I figure it must have been that elevator guy Dominic who found her. He was probably delivering the newspaper or her morning caviar or something.

Amazing, how much there is to say about a person when she's dead. The obituary goes on for pages. I read every word.

Her real name was Stanislava Kuskowski. Born a Polish Catholic, her parents were killed in the war for trying to hide their local priest from the Nazis (the obituary explains how the Nazis rounded up most of the Catholic priests in Poland and sent them to the concentration camps, which was a bit of history I didn't know). Somehow she made her way alone to England as a teenager, when she was about my age I guess. She got a job as a dresser at the Royal Opera House in London. She changed her name and told people she was a runaway Slavic princess, or the disowned daughter of unimaginably wealthy parents, or whatever tale suited her on the day. She married one powerful man after another, each one lifting her to the next rung of her career. She didn't become a legend; she made herself one. And she never, ever talked about that orphan girl from Poland, the dead parents, the terrible things she must have done just to survive. Hardly a soul on earth knew about her real past, just as no one knew about the cancer that had eaten her up for the last year.

“After a lifetime of accolades for her work on the operatic stage,” the newspaper says, “in the end, her greatest role was the one she played in life: the role of Sabrina Krause, illustrious diva.”

. . . . .

I go through them page by page, but there's nothing in any of the newspapers about the services. I'm not a huge fan of churches, mind you, but I was raised never to miss a good funeral. It's an Irish thing. I figure Dominic will know. That man knows everything, you can just tell. I take the bus uptown after school and lurk around the lobby of Miss Krause's building until I find him.

The funeral mass is Saturday morning, he tells me, at St. Aloysius in midtown. He won't be there, though; he has to work. And anyway, he'd already said his good-byes.

So Saturday morning I'm putting on a black dress, and not the kind you'd wear to a club. Niall and I pass each other in the hall. He notices.

“Where you goin', love?”

“Funeral,” I mumble.

“Ah.” He wipes the shaving cream out of the crease of his mouth with a finger. Shaving on a Saturday? Man must have a date. “Ah. Whose?”

“My singing teacher,” I say, and I'm done. Crying like a kid, tears, snot, everything.

He stands there for a bit, taking it all in. Then he tries to hug, but I pull away. It's just awkward.

“Right,” he says, looking at me. “Well. I'm coming with you, then.”

“No, you don't have to.” But I can't stop crying.

Ten minutes later he's in his black suit, rolling the lint brush on his lapels with one hand, on the phone with Terry with the other. Canceling his date, I guess.

Well, he put on his suit, and I'm in no shape to go by myself, so what can I say? At least he can pay for the cab.

. . . . .

Somehow the secret must have leaked, because there's a crowd in front of the church. No one is being let in, though.

“Maybe it's already full inside,” I say, ready to give up. Niall ignores me and weaves his way through, determined, until he gets to the velvet ropes.

“We've come to pay our respects,” he says to the young man in the suit who's barricading the doors.

“You and everyone else. We were told immediate family only. As per the wishes of the deceased.” The young man folds his arms. Niall grins.

“What part of Dublin are you from, lad?” The fellow startles, but Niall's got him; he can tell a Dublin accent down to the block you grew up on. A little banter is exchanged, about possible mutual acquaintances in Ireland and here, too—sure, Niall knows his brother-in-law's cousin in Woodlawn! She had the face of her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel tattooed on her own calf because she loved the dog so. More faithful than any man she'd ever known, she said! Soon they're laughing and clapping each other on the back like brothers.

“And tell Father O'Rourke that Niall Kilcommons sends his regards, will you, John?” Niall says to his new best friend, as the fellow slips us past the ropes.

“Niall Kilcommons! Why didn't you say so?”

. . . . .

Without pausing for thanks, Niall leads me into the dark chill of the church. I don't want to barge in on her family's private grief. I just want to have a peek from the back. And she did tell me to come on Saturday, didn't she? I'm pretty sure she must have known what that meant, even if I didn't at the time.

But the place is empty, save for the priest puttering in his priestly way up front, and a gleaming dark coffin laid out before the altar.

We slip into a pew in the rear of the nave. “Why isn't anyone here?” I whisper.

Niall frowns. “I don't know. Maybe she has no family living.”

“Then why say family only?”

Niall shakes his head. “People are mysterious, love. You can't solve 'em like a riddle. You just take 'em and love 'em as they are, warts and all.”

I want to ask him what this means, but the priest is talking now. He mumbles his canned bits of funeral mass to an empty house. He talks too fast, like he has to get to his next gig. The organ brays out a few hymns, and that's it as far as music is concerned.

“Well, this is a poor excuse for a funeral,” Niall says, a bit too loud. He stands up and gives the edge of his jacket a tug downward. Tugs once, sharp, at the end of each sleeve. I know this move.

“God, Niall. What are you doing?”

“Paying my respects, love, that's all.”

“But you didn't know her.”

He takes my chin in one hand and tips my face up, toward the light. “What I see in your eyes right now says something good about her. That's all I need to know.”

A moment later the man is kneeling by the casket, lips moving. I find myself wondering what prayers Niall remembers, though I suppose you never forget those kinds of words, even if you haven't been to church in a dog's age.

All at once there's music.

“
Oh, Danny boy
,

The pipes, the pipes are calling . .
.”

It's the sweetest Irish tenor you'll hear this side of County Sligo. That's right. Niall Kilcommons is serenading the corpse of Stanislava Kuskowski.

It's a lovely voice, he has. Years of use and abuse have spared it, somehow. Niall's voice is like that man in the famous story, where the fellow stays young forever while the portrait in his attic ages like all hell. The story's by Oscar Wilde, which I only remember because he was Irish.
I expect that somewhere in our apartment, crammed in the back of some closet, there's a painting of my da's voice that'd freeze your blood. He sounds like a boy when he sings, wild gray hairs and all.

Miss Krause would have liked his voice, I think.

I sob a little, to hear him singing. Who wouldn't? Niall looks back over his shoulder at me. Those eyebrows lift an invitation, and a hand slips out of that long black sleeve. A pale, long-fingered hand, graceful as a bird. Just open to me, waiting.

Well, what am I to do but join in?

. . . . .

Me and my da, we give her a proper send-off. Maybe we should've stopped at two, but we don't. When I sing “
O mio babbino caro
,” he sheds a few tears himself. I nail the A-flat, too. Miss Krause would've given me a fist pump, if she'd heard it.

“Is that what they're teaching you at school?” Niall says, a bit awestruck.

I shrug. “Miss Krause liked ‘Danny Boy' the best. It's . . .” I was going to say, it was the last thing I sang for her, but I can't get the words out, I'm too choked up. Doesn't matter. I let Niall hug me this time. After I dry up a bit, we go back to singing.

The organist is gone by now. He didn't seem to mind us taking things over. Probably he went outside for a smoke.

“There's nothing like making music in a church,” Da whispers to me at one point. “Your voice echoes all the way up to heaven.”

“Sure beats singing in the shower,” I agree, and slip my hand inside his. I'd forgotten how good we sound together.

ANECDOTE: SIERRA BOGGESS

I knew I liked performing from an early age. But there was one person in particular who helped me plant the seeds to become an artist. That woman was my high school drama teacher: Nancy Priest. As I recall my time with her, I want you to keep in mind some things: this was not a performing arts high school. This was not a private high school. This was not even a rich school. This all happened at an inner-city public high school in Denver, Colorado.

High school consists of some of the toughest years of growth a person can face. You are going through so many changes, discovering who you are, who your friends are, you are trying to figure out which college to go to, and what classes you have to take. Through all of this, it is so helpful to have someone guide you, and I swear if it weren't for my four years of drama class with Mrs. Priest, I wouldn't have even made it through! Her classes, her teaching, her being, gave me a reason for wanting to stay in school and solidified my passion for the theater.