Elizabeth Crane - The History of Great Things

A few more years pass with the dullard collective while you continue your studies, performing when jobs arise. Carolina arranges an audition for you with an agent from a more powerful outfit. You had not expected dissatisfaction with your career so soon, have not wanted to complain about it, but in confiding to Carolina she agrees that you have made great vocal progress and that she has someone for you to meet. She mentions nothing about how handsome — not to mention young — he is, and you’re glad she doesn’t. You prepare for the audition as though you’ll be meeting yet another closeted fifty-year-old music rep, and so when Victor Silvestri, a handsome, affable twenty-eight-year-old comes in, your eyes brighten just a little. His brighten a lot. You sing “Una voce poco fa” to which he responds with laughter, bold, jubilant laughter — he can’t stop looking at Carolina, who knows him and knows what it means, but for you this is a first. The closeted types tend to nod and smile, if you’re lucky. (You come to believe that you could have a dozen octaves and the voice of a seraph but what you’re sure these guys want is a tenor fresh out of college willing to carry their umbrellas and make themselves available for any darker whims. This is a belief you will hold until your last days, and your future husband will not disabuse you of it.) You’re pretty sure he isn’t laughing at how bad you were, but it’s an unusual response to say the least. He says he can have a contract ready for you tomorrow and would you like to sign it over dinner? Some quick math: eager + agent + Italian + handsome = everything you’re looking for, all in one.

You have a sense that the black cocktail dress you almost wore to the weird gallery opening might work for this one, and you’re right. He’s wearing his suit and tie from work. He picks you up at home, greets you with a kiss on both cheeks, takes you to dinner at Abruzzi, a dimly lit place on West Fifty-Sixth Street where he’s friendly with the owner, the kind of joint with old-man waiters who’ve been there forever. Tony, the owner, himself from Abruzzi, asks if you’d like some tomatoes and basil from his garden, it’s that kind of place (or it is for Victor). Tony doesn’t wait for an answer— Vito, slice up some of the tomatoes with basil, a little olive oil, a little mozzarella for Signor Silvestri. Vito brings this out in about ninety seconds, and it is the most delicious-tasting tomato ever. Tony says he has a Fantastic vitello, how does that sound? and you nod, even though you don’t know what vitello is, Victor says Terrific , and you close your menus and Tony says Enjoy your evening with la bella donna. La bella donna! You know what that means. That could be your diva name. Victor opens the conversation by saying Let’s get business out of the way first. He leans in, changes the tone of his voice. You’re a tremendous talent. You have something special. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re a knockout. I have big plans for your career. We’ll put together a huge promotional packet; I’ve got a great photographer for new head shots. I also represent several conductors who will go ape-shit for you. And I can have you on the road before the end of the year. This is more than you could have hoped for and you say so. Good , he says. Business done. Now tell me everything about you. So you tell him you married young, got divorced, have a nine-year-old daughter, beautiful, bright, and well behaved, news of which doesn’t cause him to flinch one small bit even though he’s not yet thirty and only weeks ago moved into his first apartment. When he asks why your marriage didn’t work out, you try not to say anything bad about Fred on the first date, so he says Something must have been wrong with that guy to let you go . You learn that his family is from the Bronx, Typical Italians, a little nutso, but good to the core , lots of musicians in the family, grew up with classical in the house always. You tell him you grew up with Benny Goodman. He’s good too , he says, and the next thing you know he’s asking if you’d ever want to get married again, you tell him you think so, he asks what June looks like for you. You giggle. It’s way too soon, but you can kind of see it.

By the end of your first week together, Victor stops asking you to marry him and simply tells you instead.

By the end of your first month together, he’s broken the lease on his midtown bachelor pad that he never really lived in and moved into our apartment on West End Avenue.

By the end of your second month together, you say yes, by the end of your third month he’s going to parent-teacher meetings with you, you’ve had three high-decibel arguments, and by the end of your fifth month together, you are married.

It takes a while to figure out why, of all your suitors, this one. It may be nothing more than his timing. You’ve been in New York for the better part of five years, which is about three years beyond your original timeline for becoming a world-renowned opera star and meeting a good man. He’s handsome, sure. He knows music; you have things to talk about. He wants to help your career, that’s a huge plus, but that’s not the whole of it. He’s not the first to fall madly in love with you, not the first to propose, and he’s not a whole bunch of other things too. He’s not uncertain, about anything, and to your mind that is possibly his greatest asset. You are certain of few things, and rely heavily on the certainty of others. And he is as certain of you as he’s ever been of anything, which is good, because that is the thing about which you are least certain, and you hope to god his certainty about you will make up the difference. And as much as anything, he’s not Fred.

New York has been, at times, exciting beyond your ability to handle it. You’ve also barely made your rent more than a few times, even though your rent is still about as cheap as it gets. You don’t mind pinching pennies, but you’re growing tired of store-brand everything, and there’s not always time to let down the hems on Betsy’s dresses when she grows two inches in a week — it would be nice, once in a while, to send them to a tailor. And let’s face it: you’re thirty-four. It’s 1971 and you’re thirty-four — almost thirty-five — and that’s not ancient but this is a weird era for you. It doesn’t feel like yours. It’s confusing. War protests, race riots, moon landings? Women’s lib? It doesn’t seem bad in theory, you might never have made it out of Iowa without it, but still. If you’d been born even ten years earlier, you might have gotten stuck with a Fred for your entire life, but all of this — hippies and free love (you live only two hours from Woodstock, but hear little of it) — you did your best to try on a version of that, only to find that wasn’t you either. Love is never free. Not to mention that there’s all kinds of holy hell happening around the world that you don’t understand the half of and couldn’t handle if you did. There’s plenty of holy hell happening inside your own head. You want some stability. You had thought you might be a star by now and you aren’t. You hope that Victor will help turn that around; in opera, you’re not over the hill yet at all — look at Sutherland, Tebaldi, Price — and you know, you know , that you are better than ever and could be better still. But you have doubts on top of doubts, about your career prospects, about yourself as a human fit for the world, epic, wide-ranging doubts — and this new man has not a one. This is something you can only marginally comprehend, that a person could be so utterly doubtless, but Victor Silvestri is a man who knows what he knows. He knows music, he knows talent, he knows what he loves (you, in absurd amounts, to the point where he sees your flaws as assets), he knows what’s right and what’s wrong without doubt, ever, and though you have been known to state many and varied and sometimes even conflicting opinions as though you have no doubt, really, you don’t know anything without doubt, and you suppose that it would be nice — more than nice, a relief — to have someone in the house whose doubt couldn’t blow down the entire building with one heavy sigh. And you do like him; he’s sexy, he’s steady, he’s a good father figure, he takes care of you, and you know now that you are a person who likes being taken care of. Who needs being taken care of. “Taken care of” here meaning being there with an unassailable point of view and a steady paycheck, and perhaps even just being around for those times when pouring out a bowl of cereal for your kid before school is more than you can manage by yourself.