Wessingham Awaits (Book 1, Music) (3 page)

Henry
:

Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

Lizzie:

His life seconds numbering.

Henry:

Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

My mother’s jaw resembled an open drawer.  Dr. Talmage dropped the remnants of the violin that he had gathered thus far. Follensbee too, dazed and befuddled, stood upright, relaxing his shoulders, searching the ceiling, then me, unable to comprehend this crystalline and melodious voice, perfectly tuned, emanating from, what, a mere child? Sensing safety, Henry emerged from beneath the piano and took his place by my side. 

Lizzie
:

It stopped. Short. Never to go again

When the old . . . man . . . died.

Henry:

In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,

Many hours had he spent while a boy.

In childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know,

And to share both his grief and his joy.

For it struck twenty-four when he entered the door,

With a blooming and beautiful bride.

But it stopped. Short. Never to go again

When the old . . . man . . . died.  

Ninety years without slumbering.

Lizzie:

Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

Henry:

His life seconds numbering.

Lizzie:

Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

Adding to the collective consternation, Henry, too, had a voice beyond the range of his years. Dr. Talmage put his hand over his heart and lowered himself onto the couch only to have his feet slip out from under him at the last moment, landing him with a bounce. Helen revisited her favorite issue, this time with an interrogative: “Lizzie’s not retarded?”  

Henry
:

It stopped. Short. Never to go again

When the old . . . man . . . died.

I do not recall exactly how we knew who would sing which verse, but our understanding seemed to originate from mutual respect. Singing was fun: My turn, your turn. I suppose we were simply sharing—that is, until Henry engineered a way for us to sing simultaneously.

Lizzie:

My grandfather said that of those he could hire

Not a servant so faithful he found.

For it wasted no time and had but one desire,

At the close of each week to be wound.

And it kept in its place not a frown on its face,

And its hands never hung by its side.

But it stopped.  Short.  Never to go again

When the old . . . man . . . died.

Ninety years without slumbering.

Henry
:

Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

Lizzie
:

His life seconds numbering.

Henry:

Tick, tock, tick, tock. . .

Lizzie (melody), Henry (harmony)
:

It stopped. Short. Never to go again

When the old . . . man . . . died.

It rang an alarm in the dead of the night,

An alarm that for years had been dumb.

And we know that his spirit was pluming for flight,

That his hour of departure had come—

The Duchess hurled herself toward me and clasped my shoulders. “Do you delight in making a fool of me?” She shook me. “Do you!
Pretending
that you’re dumb?
Pretending
you haven’t an inkling! Say something!” But I refused and she slapped me.  “
Where
and
when
have you been singing with this, this
boy
?” Again, she assaulted my face, whereby Follensbee announced there had been “no rehearsals” to his knowledge.  “
Why
, Lizzie?” the Duchess pleaded. “Don’t you love your mother? What did I do to deserve such
cruelty
?”

Once more, I failed to respond, and again she raised her hand against me. Only this time, Henry, all of six years old, came to my rescue and nearly toppled her to the floor.

Follensbee, having none of it, lifted and dangled Henry by the arm, wielding his cane.  Inadvertently Henry’s wrist, not his rump, received the blows.

“Please!” Dr. Talmage said. “Please do not manhandle those children. Not in my house. They’re here to study music. If you wish to discipline them for doing so, don’t bring them back. I can’t bear to watch it.” He took a moment to calm himself. “If you’ll excuse me, I trust you can show yourselves to the door.” He gently shut the piano cover and ascended the stairs.

Henry massaged his wrist. “I hate violins,” he said.

It was our first duet.

6

He demolished two more instruments before Follensbee relented and called on the Duchess with his fateful proposal. Seeing that I had not uttered a word since “Grandfather’s Clock,” they agreed that it would be in their best interest if Henry and I, “as a couple,” undertook voice instruction with Dr. Talmage.  Otherwise, they reasoned, with such stubbornness, Henry might cease to study music altogether, and I, similarly, might never find occasion to sing, or, for that matter, speak. We began our joint lesson during Henry’s normal time slot, and to the extent that we received encouragement for our abilities, Helen was proportionately discouraged, hastening her to relinquish any musical ambitions along with her time slot, thereby providing Henry and me with consecutive hours of instruction. We progressed even more rapidly once Dr. Talmage asked us to join his children’s choir of St. John’s Episcopal Church, though neither of us, at present, were members. Soon we had inadvertently cast ourselves to the forefront of the group as well as the rapturous applause of audiences, performing such memorable duets as “
Panis Angelicus,” “Dulcis Christe,”
and “
Gaudent in Coelis
.” Churches and civic groups booked seasons in advance to have us sing Schubert’s “
Ave Maria
.” Then we began performing alongside adults in Dr. Talmage’s “Oratorio Choir,” which should have been a “Requiem Choir” since we had undertaken several Masses for the Dead before rehearsing Handel’s
Messiah
.  I remarked how nice it was to finally sing in English. “I know what it’s about,” unlike the Latin.  Henceforth, in fifteen-minute intervals before and after voice lessons, during breaks and meals, Henry taught me the vocabulary of antiquity, conjugations and tenses, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, seemingly arbitrary phrases such as “
Urbs antiqua fuit”
(There was an ancient city), “
Audentes fortuna iuvat”
(Fortune favors the bold), and
“Omnia vincit amor”
(Love conquers all). It never once occurred to me that little boys do not speak dead languages fluently.

The night that we first sang solos in the “
Credo,”
“
Gloria,”
and
“Benedictus”
of Mozart’s
Coronation Mass
, there was an old, dapper gentleman in the audience who offered his card and an invitation, on the behalf of the President of the United States, to sing at the White House the following spring. The Duchess, as you might imagine, nearly drowned in tears of joy; Dr. Talmage, for all his surprise, talked as if we had landed on the springboard, not pinnacle, of our careers; and yet Follensbee resisted the limelight, expressing reservations, delaying our acceptance until he discussed the matter with Henry’s parents, whom we had yet to meet, mind you, even after nearly seven years of singing.

“They dislike attention,” Follensbee said. 

Flabbergasted, the Duchess threatened to extinguish our shared lessons should not the Godwin’s accommodate the President’s request.  Furthermore, given Henry’s now heroic devotion to our friendship, it was well understood that he would refuse to study music without me.  We were either a duet or nothing, and the Godwins, though removed, must surely consider such consequences in any decision. As it was, they gave their blessings and Dr. Talmage, not to exclude the Duchess, met with the White House social liaison in Washington to discern the tastes of the President and First Lady, who, as it turned out, preferred the operatic pantheon to sacred music. While Mozart was perfectly acceptable, Mrs. Cleveland, in all her youth and beauty, particularly loved the operas of Verdi and Bizet. And so it was. We had three months and five days to master a thirty-minute program. The world would be watching.

7

Rehearsals were daily now, and given Dr. Talmage’s selections for, what he termed, “The Presidential Program,” we turned our studies from Latin to French, German, and Italian, all of which Henry, incidentally, also spoke fluently. “How do you know how to speak so many languages?” I asked.

“I have a tutor.”

“How does your tutor speak so many languages?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it.” He then changed the subject and pressed me to translate and contextualize songs from our new repertoire, shouting out phrases such as “
Au fond du temple saint!
” to which I countered “‘At the back of the holy temple’ from
The Pearl Fishers,
Georges Bizet.”

“
Sous le dome epais
!”

“‘Under the thick dome’ from
Lakme
. Delibes.”

Indeed, Dr. Talmage had chosen some of Europe’s most beloved operatic duets, a few of which he transposed to make more suitable for our young voices. “We should also give each of you at least one ‘signature’ solo,” he said. “A piece that you can sing better than anyone else.” After many trials and much deliberation, Henry adopted “
La donna e mobile”
from
Rigolleto
, whilst I was tasked with the nearly insurmountable “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s
The Magic Flute
. “Hup hup, my dear,” Dr. Talmage said. You’re far more talented than you realize.” I hoped he was right, but unfortunately, he was not, not quite. Nor did we realize it until it was too late.

On the eve of our trip to Washington, I felt the intersection of fear and loneliness, like shears, closing in on my vocal cords, threatening to cut me off from the world. These were the same shears that had muted me as a young child, clipped me from contention with Helen. Only now, at the age of nearly twelve, they seemed to sever, in addition to my vocal cords, an even more vital area, making me, quite literally, bleed. I did not know what was wrong with me, nor when the bleeding would start nor stop, but after soiling several undergarments, I was certain I was dying.

Call it superstition, but I felt that I had been allotted a finite amount of joy in life. As happy as I had been with Henry, as bright as our future once seemed, I now viewed my gift of song as a sparked tender box—small and flashy, full of heat and light, yet ultimately unable to sustain itself, destined to burn up and out in an instant.

“Lizzie!” Dr. Talmage jarred the piano keys. “You’re not concentrating!”

As a rule of thumb, a soloist should not perform a work in public until she can do so privately at least three consecutive times. Very early in our rehearsal, much to my surprise, I carried off “The Queen of the Night” twice without error, a feat that brought my mother to the height of her expectations. “They’ll worship you in Milan!” But when I started to bleed, I was so distracted that I failed to perform.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Dr. Talmage said. “Just stop. We’ll try again on the train tomorrow.”

8

For our trip to Washington, we were provided with two luxury Pullman Palace cars, one doubling as a dining room and parlor, the other, complete with upright piano, serving as a rehearsal room. At present, we sat at the dinner table, all except the Duchess who was fondling a bloody handkerchief. “Why me?” Our meal had grown stale due to her diatribes and tantrums, her high blood pressure and subsequent nosebleed, all side effects from my relapse into silence, the closing of the shears.