Elizabeth Crane - The History of Great Things

Lucky.

Your career is progressing steadily. You have now played both Musetta and Mimi at New York City Opera, and have been invited to perform with several other orchestras and opera companies, mostly around the Midwest: Cincinnati, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee. You receive standing ovations wherever you go, reviews never less than stellar. (“Her coloratura in ‘Sempre libera’ compares with Sutherland,” “A compelling and magnetic Tosca, with a dark weight to even her highest notes.” One review took note of your flawless phrasing, but you knew it wasn’t flawless at all the night they’d come. You’d done it much better in dress, but even that hadn’t been perfect. They should have just given you a bad review. “Her phrasing was good, but not without flaws, like her very self.”) By anyone else’s standards, this might be considered a successful career, but for you it’s not enough. Your dreams are bigger. The Metropolitan Opera is right across the plaza from City Opera, yet it seems inexplicably far away. You’ve auditioned there to polite nods, unreadable smiles, limp handshakes, and little feedback from your manager. He tries to reassure you by saying that they went with that mediocre So-and-so , again, but this doesn’t help, both because of the mediocrity and because So-and-so is the same bitch who stole the last job from you. At this point, a polite nod for you is the equivalent of a blazingly bad review, whether or not that’s true, so you simply work harder. There’s always room to improve, though it frankly enrages you that you aren’t being recognized. You double down with Carolina, an extra lesson per week that isn’t in your budget — but even Carolina reminds you of the importance of rest. Equal measures, my darling, equal measures! She says Practice as usual but no more, take sleep, take lovers.

You remember what Peggy said, too. You ask if she has any friends to fix you up with. She invites you to an art opening. You’ve been to museums, but never to a gallery opening — so exciting! You envision handsome art collectors in tailor-made suits, men with penthouse apartments on Fifth Avenue. You once saw Jackie O on the street; you could look just as chic as her with an oil magnate on your arm. You pick out a black cocktail dress, simple but sophisticated. Pearls? No pearls. The gold circle pin mother gave you? That’s not it either. A printed scarf, black and white silk, with a tiny bit of red. You knot it around your neck, move the bow to the side. Perfect. You meet Peggy at her place; she’s wearing faded bell-bottom jeans, a loose white top, a long necklace with some kind of a crystal pendant at the end, long, straight blond hair parted in the middle. Maybe you got the date wrong? Not the date, just the outfit , Peggy says with a warm smile. She pulls you inside, opens up her closet, rifles through, grabs a pair of flared white jeans, a bright yellow crocheted top with bell sleeves, leaves the scarf. But it doesn’t match! you say. Peggy laughs, says Matching is overrated , looks at you again. Getting there, but not quite right. Peggy takes a brush to your hair, flips the ends up at the bottom. It’s still a bit too done for where she’s taking you, but it’ll do. You look in the mirror, heartbeat speeding up. You’ve always considered yourself fashion-conscious; why doesn’t this feel quite like you? You feel exposed, though you’re basically as covered as ever, in these loose-fitting clothes that aren’t yours, but Peggy has the solution for that, of course: one hit off a joint and you’ll be good to go.

You giggle together on the subway downtown. There’s a Miss Subways card above your head — real New York glamour. You left the house looking like that, but that seems like ten years ago now. An hour later you hardly know who you are anymore, you’ve said the word “fuck” out loud, twice, and it felt good, you feel like you’re in a book about a carefree single gal in New York on a string of innocuous big-city adventures. The buzz from the marijuana is gone by the time you get there, but you have a sort of natural buzz now. You get off the train in a part of town you’ve never been to before, is it the East Village? You’re not sure, but people are out and about, people of just about every variety but the ones you left uptown, scruffy, dirty, drunk, on drugs, young, old, black, white, Spanish, Chinese and what have you, guys with ponytails! — criminals, you’re sure, they must be, so you’re glad you’re with Peggy, who’s holding your hand. Peggy whisks you into what seems like a randomly chosen storefront, the window of which is filled with what looks like a big heap of trash, stuff you’d see in a junk pile, rusted things, old newspapers, broken toy parts, empty milk containers, and bottles of Wild Irish Rose. You take your eyes off the trash pile before you’re quite done figuring it out, to see a room full of people, practically body to body, drinking things, smoking things, laughing, dancing — they dance at gallery openings? — and across the room, on the far wall, a hole, a large, raw-edged circular hole that leads directly outside; a woman in a mini dress is standing in it, moving to the music, smoking. You have never seen, could never have imagined, a scene like this, do not know what you’re doing here. Peggy kisses several people on the cheek, makes introductions, at one point hugs a slouchy beanpole of woman with the stringiest, greasiest hair you’ve ever seen; did her parents not tell her to stand up straight, take a bath?; stringy-haired woman walks away, Peggy says That’s Patti Smith, she’s amazing, you guys would totally groove on each other ; you nod, that’s the first and last time you’ll hear that name, and you and Patti will do no further grooving. You can barely manage the intensity of the grooving happening as it is.

Deeper into the crush of people in the gallery, Peggy introduces you to the “artist.” You have absolutely no idea what to say, you aren’t even yet sure where the art is, or what the art is, though your gut tells you that “beautiful”—about the only word in your art lexicon — isn’t right. Everything is better when he kisses your hand, and he takes you away from Peggy and out through the hole in the back of the room. You sit together on a pile of bricks in the empty lot behind the building, and you tell him you’re embarrassed to say you don’t get it, this isn’t the kind of art you saw in Europe ten years ago, and he laughs, says I find your honesty and your figure delightful , and he happily explains what’s happening in contemporary art right now, and it’s fascinating, what he has to say about it, though you’re not at all convinced yet that what is happening here is in any way art. But this man could be Marcello Mastroianni’s double: thick, wavy dark hair, intense brown eyes that never leave your gaze. He doesn’t ask you too many questions, and right now that’s just fine. He takes you for a walk down the street. Should he be leaving his own show? He waves it off. They don’t need me. They’ll still be there at dawn. He takes you to a café, buys you espressos, tells you more about himself and his art and his life, takes you in a taxi back to his massive loft in yet another part of downtown you’ve never seen, lays you down on his bed, and does things to you in the first five minutes that make the entire evening suddenly seem like foreplay (things neither Fred nor you knew were things), and he’s only getting started.

Your starring Broadway debut is a musical based on a movie based on a comic book about a shy accountant by day, crime-fighter by night. The dress rehearsals go well, but this is not just a supporting part in a tour, it’s a whole different thing, and you break out in hives the day before opening night. Fortunately, the makeup crew has seen this before and they can make it so the audience won’t notice a single mark, even if it leaves you feeling like you’re wearing a flesh-colored ski mask. Every night, it feels like a realistic possibility that you’ll throw up before you walk out onto the stage, or possibly once you’re center stage, as the curtains are coming up. You wonder if your mom ever felt like this. You wonder if you’ll make it through the run. The reviews call you “a natural” and “a captivating new talent,” but it’s the one that uses the phrase “slightly stiff” that will stick with you forever, even though the complete sentence is “Although Ms. Crane is slightly stiff on the stage, hers is a talent that hasn’t been seen since Streisand debuted.” Again: you are compared to your childhood idol, favorably, but for weeks afterward, still wounded, you introduce yourself to new people by saying Hi, I’m Elizabeth Crane, I’m slightly stiff , sparking more confusion than laughter, and thank god, after the sixth time, Nina says You have to stop saying that . Further, your efforts to remedy your slight stiffness only compound the problem. Your consciousness of a single charge of stiffness only makes you stiffer. The show is looking like it could be a hit, you’ve got an extension in your contract if it does, but in the dressing room you consider going back to waiting tables. That wasn’t so bad, was it? It didn’t make you want to throw up. Why did you ever think you wanted to do this? Oh, right, because when the sound comes out of you, when you get it just right, it’s like it’s not even you, it belongs to a power greater than yourself, which is an enjoyable feeling, given your ongoing doubt about such things, and that part of it is good and reassuring, though it lasts only as long as the sound itself. For you, the applause is nice only on an intellectual level. It would suck if there were none, and you assume it’s genuine, but it isn’t a thing that keeps you going. In between sounds, you sometimes aren’t sure what it is that keeps you going. But you’ve had it in your head since we went to see Godspell when you were in third grade; you played that record until it was practically transparent and sang those songs over and over at full volume whether the record was playing or not. (Subject matter of said musical probably not relevant, unless you want to spend time discussing coincidences and/or serendipity and/or fate, though it’s fairly clear, given your equal enthusiasm, at that age, for the musicals Funny Girl, West Side Story, Oklahoma! , and Hair , that your responses were strictly melody-based.)