Ghost Country (50 page)

T
HE SECOND WEEK
in December Luisa Montcrief gave a recital at the Northwestern University campus in suburban Chicago. She had wanted to burst forth in full splendor in Berlin or London, but the big opera houses and concert halls of the world weren’t ready to take a chance on her recovery. The rehabilitation experts in Philadelphia and Luisa’s agent, Leo, both advised her to start with recitals in small venues.

Her glory would return as soon as people heard her, Leo said: Luisa’s voice had never sounded so rich as it did now. Leo hadn’t wanted to waste his time on the train ride to Philadelphia to hear her sing at the rehabilitation institute, but when she finished he could hardly contain himself. What miracle had transpired, that her years of alcohol poisoning had left her with a voice so rare you might go a lifetime without hearing its equal? She had been a lustrous soprano in the past, but in comparison to her sound today, her voice of ten years ago was thin and amateurish.

She also quelled his doubts about her drinking: she was the same self-absorbed, temperamental diva she’d always been, but in a rare burst of honesty told him she knew she’d almost destroyed
herself with drink. She even apologized for anything unpleasant she might have said to him while drunk.

Leo returned to New York and bullied Northwestern into adding her to their winter concert schedule. He called not only the New York critics but those in Hamburg and London and told them they would regret it forever if they were late in climbing onto Luisa Montcrief’s comeback wagon.

On a day when the wind was whipping waves over the boulders onto Lake Shore Drive, Luisa arrived at the Ritz. In addition to Leo, her entourage included her old accompanist, a new dresser, and her personal trainer. The diva kept her throat tightly wrapped against the cold. She refused to leave her suite until it was time to climb into her limousine the next afternoon. She did, however, ask Leo to dispatch tickets to her niece, to Mara, and to Jacqui and Nanette.

Luisa and Leo had chosen the program carefully: the centerpiece was to be Mozart’s “L’amerò, sarò costante,” Around it they added a series of shorter heder and arias that all had as their theme the idea of song itself. The concert ended with Grieg’s brief “Ein Schwan,” in which a dying swan bursts into such extraordinary song that the singer wonders if she was hearing a phantom, not a living bird. Leo thought the Grieg too somber for the concert’s conclusion, but Luisa insisted on it.

Sitting in the front of the recital hall with Jacqui and Nanette, Mara was amazed by the change in the diva. In their months on the streets, Luisa had been so emaciated that she walked with difficulty. Since leaving Chicago she had gained weight. Skin and hair both shone with health; when she entered the stage in her flame-colored gown, she walked with impressive assurance.

By the end of the concert, Mara had forgotten all she knew of last summer’s querulous drunk. The audience was on its feet roaring acknowledgment, but Mara sat weeping, unable to move. The beauty of that voice, taking her to heaven, what could she ever do with her life that could compare with Mozart’s music, or Luisa’s singing of it?

Luisa had invited Mara to join her at a small post-concert party in the recital hall. Mara stayed briefly to congratulate Luisa, but the diva, sipping herbal tea, was so besieged by critics that she had time for only the most perfunctory greeting. Becca Minsky, her eyes glowing, could hover near her aunt, soaking up the plaudits, but Mara didn’t want to be on the fringe of Luisa’s triumph, as she was on the fringe now of Hector and Harriet’s life together.

The next morning Mara walked south along the lakefront to the little spit of land where she had sometimes camped with Starr. The wind biting her face during the four-mile trek matched the bleakness of her mood.

As she wandered through the prairie grass, she came on the remains of her old sleeping bag. She had abandoned it that August night she fled from Grandfather’s security patrol and had forgotten about it. The blue fabric was faded and torn and most of the lining had spilled out; no one would get any warmth from it again. She tossed the remnant into the wind and watched it cartwheel down the shore.

The tall grasses, brown in the winter, rustled in a comforting way. Mara knelt within them, scattering the small birds who nested there, and stared unseeing at the water.

Starr had changed her life by allowing her to stop hating herself. Mara thought at first that meant all decisions would flow easily to her, that she would know what to do next, or even more, that she would be given some wondrous gift like Luisa’s that would move her hearers to tears.

She saw now that the journey was not to be so easy. She could not will the world around her into one where the homeless had shelter, or grandfathers spoke only words of loving praise to their wards. She would still have days of despondency. She still sometimes wanted to be cruel to Harriet. Her own healing was not a completed thing, but something she would have to struggle every day to maintain.

Perhaps she needed to return to school, as Grandfather had always insisted. That would be funny, to be doing in the end what
he had demanded of her. She still yearned for a great gift, like Luisa’s, or a strong vocation, like Hector’s or Harriet’s, but she would not find that by lingering in the house in Rogers Park with her sister. Tomorrow morning, no, this very afternoon, she would go to the library and choose a college that might help her on her way.

She sat awhile longer among the grasses, letting the winter wind blow through her hair, enjoying the peace that came from reaching a decision. She sat still for so long that the sparrows gathered again, cheeping loudly as they pecked among the plants for food. Their cries grew so shrill that Mara looked around, to see who was approaching.

A swan that had strayed from the lagoons into the open lake swam to shore and moved toward her through the brown grass. When it came on her it stopped, and cocked its head to examine her. Mara stared into the flat black eye and thought she saw herself reflected back, sweet, not bitter, with strong wings of her own poised for flight.

The swan fluffed out its feathers and took to the air, scattering the sparrows. The sands were empty. Mara got to her feet and slowly started home.