Anger (2 page)

“We'll have to do something about that,” Ned said. “I'm on the Board, you know.” He took a slim agenda out of his pocket and made a note. “I don't know that I want to meet her, but I'm certainly interested in hearing her sing again. You know, Ernesta, this kind of special gift, a little more than a talent, does not make its appearance every day. I am greatly in your debt.”

“And I in yours for an elegant luncheon, dear Ned.”

As they said goodbye on Newbury Street she told Ned she thought she would pay a little call on his mother.

Ned looked at his watch. “You'd better wait till tea time, she's lying down now until precisely four.”

Chapter II

At thirty-four Anna knew that time was running out, and for any performer it is now or never. How she envied writers and painters who could always comfort themselves that the future would justify their long patience in the dark!

“Mamma,” she cried out one day as she and her mother were taking a walk along the Fenway, “I feel as though I were under a stone in a graveyard, trying to push it up and shout, ‘Listen! I'm here! I exist!'”

“Not so loud, Anna … that man just ahead of us turned around.”

“What if he did? Is it a crime to wish to exist?”

“You don't want to be conspicuous, darling. It is not becoming.”

“You sound like father. He was always trying to stop life from happening, wasn't he? He was always putting a damper on fire. It scared him almost to death. How did you ever live with him?” But already the moment of anger had passed and Anna slipped an arm through her mother's, and added more gently, “I'm sorry. I know he was great in his way, but it's not my way.”

And so for a little while they walked along together and found the ducks waiting for Teresa to take a bag of bread crumbs out of her big handbag, and soon they were laughing as the greedy flock gathered and fought among themselves.

“Look at that poor one who never gets a chance. Let me throw him something,” Anna said. “Quick, Mammal”

“Here, impatience!”

But the duck was frustrated again, swimming madly toward the piece of bread, only to be pushed aside by some stronger fellow.

“Damn it, I won't give up!” Anna said, but found the last piece of bread had been taken.

“I guess you'll have to … for once.” So they sat down on a bench and rejoiced together in the balmy air, and the bright leaves of the willow over their heads.

“Oh, Mamma, what would I do without you?” Anna sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I can't just sing for you and for myself, sing for the sake of the music itself. Ambition is a curse.”

“I know, but if you have a gift … and you know, Anna, you do have an exceptional voice … you want it to be used. Isn't that part of what ambition is all about? And without ambition who would work as hard as you do? I just wish you didn't have to take it so hard.”

They sat for a few moments in silence.

“I feel driven all the time,” Anna said then. “There is never any peace. Except when I'm singing.”

“Peace?” Teresa smiled.

“Don't tease me … besides it's almost time for my lesson. We must get back. You know, Mamma, about peace. Most of the time I feel like a swan muddling about on land, heavy and no use to anyone, and then when I am singing I become a swan who has glided into a pond and swims, in its element, free …”

“Yes, and afterwards, the depression, the letdown,” her mother said, as they walked on toward the stand where Anna would take a taxi to her lesson.

Anna realized it had been an unusual moment between them. They were not always able to talk as intimately as they did that morning. There were days when Anna was simply not there, absorbed in thoughts of her own. There were days when she felt as pent up as a wild animal in a cage, pacing about the apartment, days when the slightest frustration brought on a storm. So it had been since she was a child, “like a bolt of loose electricity” her father used to say. “You have to learn control.”

Well, she had learned it, Anna thought, lifting her chin. Every one of her teachers had praised her control of her instrument. But control of herself? Anna wondered sometimes whether she would ever learn that. Punishment had never helped. That was her father's way, to tame the wild child by making her go to bed for the day, for instance. And what happened? She closed herself off against him. She used the punishment as some kind of battle, threw herself with fury into an act of defiance like painting a dragon on the wall!

For nearly a year Ned found himself on the periphery of the life of a prima donna, unable to get inside it. After a concert there were always flowers, other men's flowers as well as his own. Anna was away a great deal for concerts in Philadelphia or Cincinnati or Chicago. And when she was in Boston she was working hard on whatever music she would be singing soon.

She accepted the homage of the people who came to the Green Room, was merry, responsive, and charming, immensely charming, and she knew it. But if she was conscious of Ned as a person in his own right, he was not aware of it.

And for some time his invitations to dinner or a concert were refused on the grounds of her work. He had got quite accustomed to opening the envelope in her bold hand and reading, “Dear Mr. Fraser, I wish I could, but I am horribly tied up and obsessed by work these days. I'm truly sorry. The freesias are still delicious. Thank you again.”

Ned tore up these notes and buried himself in the bank. But he could not get her out of his mind. Was she really as indifferent as she seemed? Had she for instance any idea who he was? And how could he make himself known? It seemed absurd that it was necessary. And it did not help that Ernesta, in whom he confided, was clearly delighted. “You've met your match, old Ned,” she said.

“She doesn't even know who I am,” he said miserably. “We're not even antagonists, Ernesta. I don't exist.”

But Anna, amused and a little touched by the persistence of this unknown admirer, did discover through a chance remark at a dinner party in Louisburg Square who Ned Fraser was.

“Good heavens,” she murmured, twisting a wine glass in her hand, “he seems so diffident, and,” with a gentle laugh, “quite ordinary.”

The gentleman on her left, who had not interested her until then, chuckled, and gave her an appraising glance. “You know him?”

“Oh, he sends flowers and comes to the Green Room … I don't
know
him. I just see him out of the corner of my eye on these occasions,” she said, so offhandedly that her companion was silenced. But Anna came back to the subject when the dessert was being passed.

“Scrumptious,” she said, serving herself to a large portion of a fluffy whipped cream and strawberry and chocolate creation. And then she asked Mr. Thornton to tell her what Ned Fraser was really like.

“He's reserved … people in his position can't afford not to be. A good fellow, though. We belong to the same club. He's affable enough, but he knows damn well who he is even though you, dear lady, do not. Anyone in the banking community would give a lot to know what goes on in that head.”

“Is there nothing, then, but financial reports in that head?” Anna asked. She had in the last few moments withdrawn. She realized that she had been a little intrigued by Ned Fraser after all. But now she admonished herself to keep him at a distance. We live in different worlds, too different. We could never really be friends. For Anna, for all her temperament, for all her narcissism, was a realist, and had few illusions. She admired honesty in others and tried to be honest with herself.

“There must be something else if Ned sends you flowers,” Mr. Thornton teased. “Perhaps you had better cultivate him and discover for yourself.”

“No,” Anna said, “I don't like the rich,” and swallowed the last of her wine.

Mr. Thornton was clearly startled, for people usually don't say such things in the company they were in. He laughed, “Why not?”

“They take so much for granted, for one thing. And somehow or other they cannot escape arrogance … at least in my humble opinion.”

“Aren't we all arrogant about one thing or another? You appear to be quite arrogant in taking Ned Fraser's flowers for granted.”

“Touché!” And for the first time Anna gave Mr. Thornton her full attention. “But … but, you see, I have earned the applause, and the consideration, earned it a rather hard way. The flowers are thanks for something given.”

“You don't see them then as asking for your attention … as hoping for a response?” Anna shook her head. She felt herself blushing. As usual she had gone too far, been too blunt, and aroused antagonism.

Mr. Thornton took in this embarassment. “As for Ned, I can tell you he works frightfully hard.”

“I don't doubt that.” Anna frowned, wondering whether to go on explaining herself or to let it drop. But Mr. Thornton was clearly interested and she was about to speak when her neighbor on the right, whom she realized suddenly she had neglected, interrupted.

“What's all this about hard work?”

Dr. Springer, Anna remembered, was a brain surgeon at Massachusetts General. He was very alert, compact, with thin nervous hands which she had admired when they were introduced. “As far as I can see we are all work-aholics these days, and it's a very bad thing.”

“Why?” Anna asked. “I can't imagine not working … work is my joy. It's what I'm all about. When I can't sing I'll commit suicide.” She felt harassed and close to tears.

“Come now, if you lost your voice you'd still go on living, beautiful and alive as you are.”

“I don't know that I would,” Anna said. “What would you do if you lost your hands, beautiful and alive as they are?”

“I'd—I was going to say I'd devote myself to gardening, but without hands, you've got me.”

“You see.”

“Retirement does not necessarily mean becoming a cripple,” he said a little testily.

“I just can't imagine life without singing—but you'd be amazed how long singers manage to go on. Lotte Lehmann had a whole new career teaching master classes until she was seventy or more! Of course she was the greatest …” Anna turned now to include Thornton, “All this began about money, strangely enough.”

“Money and talent. Do they ever go together?” Dr. Springer asked with a teasing smile.

“Of course—why not?”

“You're changing your tune, Anna Lindstrom,” Mr. Thornton said.

“No I'm not. A talent is no shelter. You can't take refuge in it. There is no safety in a talent because the more recognized and applauded you are, the greater the risk. It doesn't matter whether you inherited millions or didn't. Don't you see?”

“There is, however, less urgency for the rich and perhaps a greater fear of failure,” Dr. Springer said. “Without the necessity to earn, there is no immediate spur. It is easy, and perhaps far more pleasant, to settle for being an amateur, for not facing the competition. But do you still feel insecure, Miss Lindstrom? Your position, I should think, is unassailable. You seem so perfectly in control when one has the pleasure of hearing you in concert Do you still feel unsafe as you suggest?”

“Unsafe? I'm terrified!”

“Come now, I don't believe you for a minute,” Mr. Thornton said.

Anna turned back to the surgeon, “What nobody understands is that an artist, a performer has to prove herself over and over again. No one stands over you when you are operating and writes a review the next day pointing out that you fumbled, do they? In professional life outside the arts there are no critics in on every move you make. But we are targets. We are judged every time we open our mouths, sometimes by ignoramuses at that, and the public takes any critic's word as gospel truth. Of course I'm anxious. Of course I feel insecure. What performer doesn't?”

But just as things were getting interesting their hostess summoned them into the drawing room, its French windows opening to a balcony and the intimacy of Louisburg Square, and Anna, taking advantage of the spring evening, pushed one open and slipped through. At that moment she had a sudden desire to sing, to open her throat and launch into an aria. As always when she went out into society, she felt like a fish out of water. Either the conversation was trivial or if not, she plunged in too passionately, was too committed, too intense. Once more Anna's one wish was to escape.

Sensing someone at her back, she turned and greeted her host. “It's so lovely,” she said, “the little square, the street lamps. I had to taste the air … What a marvelous place to live!”

“It used to be,” Ambrose Upton said. “But the Hill is a disaster these days, dangerous at night. I used to walk everywhere, and often late at night, to smoke a cigar. Alice hates cigars. Now I can't do that.” He led her gently back into the drawing room then, and Alice summoned her over to the sofa to sit beside her and poured her a demitasse.

“We are thrilled that you could come,” she said. “Have you enjoyed yourself? You certainly charmed the gentlemen with whom you talked at the dinner table. Didn't she?” she added as Dr. Springer came to get his cup refilled.

“Didn't she what?” he smiled across at Anna.

“Charm you, of course.”

Everyone was kind, but as usual Anna felt somehow like a household pet, something one patted and cajoled but who would never belong. Every society becomes a secret society to the outsider, she was thinking. But the truth was she was uncomfortable in any society, just as her father had been.

After Anna had left, early, with the excuse that she could not afford late nights—she was singing in Rochester three days later—Dr. Springer talked with Alice Upton about her.

“She's an interesting woman,” he said. “There is something innocent about her, innocent and violent. She seems quite unspoiled so far. I expect she is on the brink of real fame and God knows what will happen to her then!”