Kimberly Stuart Read online

  He walked away, leaving me to wallow in a stack of glossy brochures with photographs of people with bad hair. So things were worse than I’d feared. Not only was I getting old, losing audiences, and selling fewer CDs, I was a prime candidate for midwest living.

  Merry blasted Christmas.

  2

  West Nineties

  Later that afternoon, I dragged my tired feet back uptown after five hours of shopping and errand running. The wind had picked up to the point of being ridiculous, and I found it impossible to be pleasant. When I reached Jasmine, my neighborhood Indian restaurant, I gritted my teeth and pulled the door open against a gust of arctic air. The door slammed behind me, letting loose a peal from a cluster of tiny bells hanging above.

  Atreya, the gentleman who ran Jasmine with his wife, Pakshi, hustled from the back of the restaurant. His face lit up when he saw me. “Miss Sadie, welcome. You look, ehm, rather cold. Would you like some tea?” His brow creased in worry to see my face unchanged from its horror of the outside.

  “Atreya,” I said, “rest assured I am trying to smile at you. My face is still thawing.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, leading me by the elbow to sit down at a nearby table. “Pakshi is finishing your order. Please, sit and relax. Please.”

  I nodded. “Here,” I said. I rummaged through my purse and extracted the nearest credit card. “Twenty percent gratuity.”

  “Thank you, Miss Sadie,” Atreya said, and left me for the cash register.

  After twenty years of living in New York, one would think I’d have been better acclimated to harsh winters. One would be wrong. The wind, the sleet, the snow, the cold—I had nothing redemptive to say about any of it. At least in other parts of the country winter had a purpose. Didn’t farmers, for instance, want things to freeze? Something about the death of all living things, circle of life, Elton John, and such. But what, exactly, were we presuming to water in New York City? Concrete? Steel? One good sprinkler system would take care of the whole of Central Park, our only formidable green space. Harsh winters were nothing but archaic in the urban jungle and yet they continued to visit with all their ferocity and bad manners. And so by mid-December each year, I became an embittered woman who could not be cheered even by good cashmere.

  “Miss Sadie,” Atreya said when he returned carrying a large paper bag. “You will find the naan still hot from the oven and extra slices of lemon for the chicken tikka masala.”

  “You indulge me, Atreya,” I said, feeling steam rise to my face from an opening in the top of the bag. “You tell Pakshi that she makes the best Indian food in all of Manhattan.”

  Atreya grinned and patted my gloved hand. “I will tell her, thank you. Take care in this weather, Miss Sadie.” He peered into my face. “It is not for the weak-hearted.”

  “That, my friend, is the problem,” I said and closed my eyes to prepare for reentry to the tundra.

  My apartment building was only a block and a half away, but I cursed the distance anyway. Should have called for delivery, I thought as Bach’s Fugue in C Minor began to play deep within the pocket of my wool coat. My pace slowed to a shuffle, and I tried to extract the phone without dropping my dinner. Just before voice mail swooped in to rescue my caller from a tiresome fourth ring, I flipped open the phone and yelled, “Hello?”

  “Have mercy, woman, must you shout?”

  “Richard,” I said. “We’re having gale-force winds. Can you hear me?”

  “Darling, all of Long Island can hear you.”

  “I’m almost home,” I said, crossing the street during a yellow light and ignoring the honking horns that accompanied my passage. Civility was dead.

  “Why are you out if the weather is so miserable? Doesn’t sound like you,” Richard said. He would know, as he used to be my husband, long, long ago, when George the First and Barbara had just moved into the White House, and Richard and I were mere children.

  “Richard, hold on one moment,” I said and pulled the phone away from my ear. “Thank you, Tom,” I said to the champion doorman who’d spotted my labored approach and had come to give me a hand.

  “You’re welcome, Ms. Maddox,” Tom said, taking the bag of food and giving me his arm. His eyes were deep brown and framed in a quilt of dark curled lashes. Tom was new in the building and couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. He treated me like I was his cherished mother. Mathematically possible, perhaps, but I tried not to dwell on it.

  “Call me Sadie,” I said when we’d reached the foyer and the door closed behind us. “How many times must we go over this, Tom?”

  “I’m a slow study, Ms. Maddox,” Tom said, his impossibly white teeth exposed by a charmer of a smile. “Should I help you upstairs?”

  I took the bag from him. “Of course not,” I said, one eyebrow raised. “I may have just had a milestone birthday, Tommy, but I am still mobile. You’re welcome to tag along, though, if you’re in the mood for Jasmine.”

  “I’ve eaten, thank you.” His eyes shone. I wondered if he treated all his female residents to the same schoolboy grin or he granted it now because we were drawing near to the Christmas tipping season.

  He held the elevator door for me and I slipped in. “Enjoy your evening,” he said.

  “You too,” I said, and we smiled at each other as the door closed.

  I was still smiling as the elevator passed the third floor and I heard squawking from my open phone. “Richard?” I said, but I was too late and the call dropped into a wireless abyss.

  I stepped out onto the twelfth floor and opened 1218, my one-bedroom flat with views of the Hudson. Richard and I rented this place together fifteen years ago, heady with a new marriage and his first substantial paycheck. At final count, though, Richard and I were married for only six months. Enough to horrify our parents, throw a few dishes at each other, and realize we’d made a serious mistake. No children to suffer, not even a dog, and the marriage was over. Call it premonition or good sense, but I’d even kept the gift receipt for our toaster.

  I hung my coat on an exquisite brushed-platinum coat rack that stood at attention in the foyer, a gift from a wealthy opera patron during my first run of La Traviata. Not yet five o’clock and my home was filled with the hurried lavender of descending dusk. I reached to turn on floor lamps on the way to my bedroom, where I dropped my load of packages on the wrought-iron queen bed. If the tikka hadn’t been waiting for me, I would have considered accepting the polite invitation from my down comforter and taking an early evening nap.

  Bach again. I hurried back to the foyer and retrieved my phone before it vibrated off the entry table.

  “Richard.”

  “You have lousy phone etiquette.”

  “I’m sorry. I lost reception in the elevator.”

  “Actually, I think you checked out on me sometime around this comment.” Richard cleared his throat and willed his voice to a high falsetto. “‘Oh, Tommy dear, do call me Sadie.’”

  “What a horrible impersonation.”

  “Tom a real dish, then?”

  I scooped a pile of steaming basmati onto a plate and drenched the rice with Pakshi’s magic. “I have shoes older than Tom.” My first bite was glorious. I closed my eyes in gratitude for women who’d done as their mothers told them and learned to cook.

  Richard cackled into the phone, very much disturbing my bliss. “You most certainly do not, Sadie Maddox. I’ve seen your closet. I divorced you over your closet.”

  I sprinkled drops of lemon juice onto my dinner. “Richard, I know truthfulness is a stretch for you, but let’s give it a whirl. Are you trying to imply that, after all these years you (a) are jealous of another man in my life, (b) have become circumspect about our divorce, and/or (c) think I am the only one with a clothes issue?”

  He laughed and I smiled. “Touché, my dear, touché. Tell me how you are.”

  The teapot I’d put on to a high boil started a wild crescendo. I poured myself a cup and sat down to my dinner once more. “
I met with Avi today. Turns out Sadie Maddox is a has-been.”

  “Pshaw,” Richard said. I could imagine his eyes rolling toward his salt-and-pepper hairline. “Fire him. He charges too much anyway. Call Judith. I’ve been telling you this for years.”

  I met Richard when we were both students at the conservatory, he a doctoral student in orchestral conducting and I beginning my undergrad studies in vocal performance. Richard was everything my sweet Lutheran mother had warned me against: charming, flirtatious, professionally driven, and perpetually single. Our brief marriage cured none of these ills.

  “Avi is not the problem, Richard. I am the problem. Or maybe society as a whole. Mature women in our culture are not valued, at least not for their entertainment quotient.” I patted my mouth with a napkin. “Too many nubile young things, dewy fresh and trembling from their Met debuts.”

  Richard let out something of a whinny. The drama quotient between the two of us was no small part of our demise. “For shame, Sadie Maddox! Do not give in to them! Think of Meryl! Think of Helen Mirren! Renée Fleming, for God’s sake. She’s certainly no spring chicken.”

  “Well,” I said and tossed back the rest of my tea. I slammed the cup down on my granite countertop. “Apparently the world of performing arts has its quota of older women and the quota has been reached.”

  “I don’t believe it for a minute.”

  “Ahem,” I said. “Are you saying your own proclivity for the younger among us has experienced some sort of evolution?” Richard, though a man with many strengths, never got over his weakness for perk. Now in his early fifties, his last girlfriend was named Muffy, a sculpted and bronzed personal trainer who was “really into” older men.

  “I am currently single, though I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  I sighed. “Avi thinks I should move to Iowa.” I heard something drop and Richard cursed. “Richard? Are you all right?”

  “Bloody … Dreadful thing … Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was merely startled by your last comment, which I surely fabricated in my twisted, aging mind. Tell me you didn’t say Iowa.”

  “I did.” I rose from my chair at the breakfast bar. My kitchen was small but functional. Its most promising feature was that it opened up to the main living space and shared the view offered by a picture window on the south wall. I leaned against the counter and stared at the confetti of lights spreading across the darkened city. “Teaching voice at Moravia College in Maplewood.” I recited the info I’d gleaned from my quick read in Tasia’s. “Apparently the school itself is very well regarded. Liberal arts, small student-faculty ratio, respectable numbers of Fulbrights and Rhodes. And the music program isn’t bad, either.”

  Richard snorted. “Never heard of it.”

  “And so you assume it’s worthless.” I poured another cup of tea and moved toward the couch. “Don’t you think that’s a bit egocentric?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why so defensive? Are you actually considering doing this?”

  “No, of course not.” I deflated into the couch cushions. Italian black leather, by the way. “Maybe. No. I’m just tired and feeling unwanted in New York.”

  “The place can be savage, that’s true.” Despite endless ribbing from his colleagues and friends, Richard had sold his Manhattan flat ten years prior and had moved to a sprawling house on Long Island. He still whined about the commute for his conducting gigs and the lack of good eating outside of the city but claimed the fresh air (on Long Island?) did him good. Barbecue tools in hand, he remained planted in his three-bedroom Cape Cod. “Listen, darling, we’ve all been sapped by a bad day in the city. But Sadie, dear, you love New York and New York loves you. Maybe she needs a reminder but I can’t imagine the best thing to do is to up and leave. To godforsaken Iowa, no less.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” I pulled off my knee-high brown suede boots and winced. Ever one to choose beauty over comfort, I remained willing to pay the price, physical and financial, for stunning footwear. “But if not teaching in Iowa, what, exactly is an out-of-work, past-prime opera singer to do?”

  A click on the phone line interrupted Richard’s response. “Sadie, honey,” he said. His tone had changed to … giddy? “I need to take this call. Can I call you back?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I thought you said you were single.”

  “Precisely why I need to take this call.”

  I heard the smile in his voice and had to laugh, happy for the thousandth time that I’d kept the toaster receipt. “Go. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “Don’t make any decisions tonight,” he said and clicked over to Bunny or Tiffani or Lola the showgirl.

  I folded my phone shut and stretched out my tired limbs on the sofa. My eyes drifted closed and I didn’t open them again until dawn.

  3

  Holy Night

  I was what you might call an accidental Christian. My parents, East Coast transplants from a small town in North Dakota, were brought up with the fear of God, tornados, and Martin Luther. They passed these convictions on to their only child, a girl with more interest in performing one-act operettas in the church basement for the ruffians who stole the communion bread than singing in a secluded choir loft, behind the congregation and out of sight of potential admirers. To my parents’ consternation, I disavowed church attendance from the day I left their home until Mother and Dad were both old and gray. My mother in particular seemed to find great comfort in my “coming around” when I started singing for pay in an imposing and well-attended Episcopal church in Manhattan just before she died. I think Mother thought I’d returned to the fold when, in fact, I was merely adding more shoe money to my monthly income.

  The Church universal had its share of dirty laundry. Followers of Jesus toted around some cultural baggage—the Crusades, the Inquisition, the televangelists, and that was just for starters. Despite those prickly thorns—so awkward in ecumenical settings—Christmas Eve resurfaced each December as one time when I was happy to be Christian. For one thing, the music had no parallel. Even the most calloused of souls had to feel something when Handel proclaimed the child born and celebrated with a chorus of hallelujahs. “Silent Night,” though sacrificed on the altar of popular music every year, remained the world’s perfect lullaby. And “Joy to the World” offered endless possibilities for decorative soprano descants. Richard wrote several for me that I’d performed for everyone from the Unitarians (“let all [not just men] their songs employ”) to a gig a few years ago with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir (add percussion, clapping, and an ocean of swaying).

  At St. Mark’s Episcopal on the Upper East Side, the Christmas mood was subdued. The sanctuary opened its arms to a legion of good-looking people in furs and precision haircuts. The smell of old money mingled sweetly with fresh-cut pine branches, trucked in from somewhere upstate. Decorative bunches woven with holly filled the space and brought to mind Bing, Nat, and Perry. For that evening’s service, the organist and I had whipped up “O Holy Night” as a nod to a heavy tither who’d made her request known to the senior pastor. I’d warned Mavis, the organist, in no uncertain terms, that though I would perform the piece, neither she nor the philanthropist should expect any Celine Dion–inspired yelping. Mavis hadn’t been able to hide her disappointment, but I stood my ground and we rehearsed the number accordingly.

  I sat near the pulpit, resplendent in a cabernet-colored raw silk dress that hugged my figure in the bodice and then dropped into a lusciously full skirt. I had my father’s height but was also grateful for my mother’s contributions, most notably her shapely legs. Also gifted to me were Father’s blue eyes, Mother’s black hair. Father’s impatience with imperfection, Mother’s distrust of the government. Throw in my own original neuroses, and the result was one heck of a genetic cocktail.

  My position facing the congregation allowed for optimum appraisal of those in attendance. I saw Lily MacIntosh, cohost of ABS’s America This Morning. Having met Lily on several occasions, I could report her to be
an unabashedly cold person after eleven in the morning. The mayor and his family arrived early, though I’d not yet seen Mr. and Mrs. Mayor interact. He stood at the narthex entrance, surrounded by a bevy of bodyguards, while she and their three pale and sullen children huddled together in a row near the front. Poor Mrs. Mayor. Even with the makeover team’s intervention after her husband was sworn in, after the shellacked Jackie O. coiffure, crisp tweeds, and a softer shade of lipstick, the mayor’s wife never seemed to look like she’d signed up for the job. She sat with an arm around one of her urchins, her expression more appropriate for Maundy Thursday than Christmas Eve.

  Mavis launched into a contemplative and dissonant prelude of “We Three Kings.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Two minutes, Sadie.” Reverend Stephens smiled down at me before moving to take a seat on the other side of the pulpit. I watched him adjust the microphone on his skin-colored headset and then fiddle with the small control box attached underneath his vestments. The Reverend was about my age, well-regarded by his flock, and a good storyteller. His sermons entertained enough to keep my attention but were harmless enough to keep from offending his notoriously prickly congregation.

  Nevertheless, should I ever find the need for a pastor type in times of need, I knew I’d never call on him. A few years back, I’d run into Stephens coming out of a five-star with his wife, both of them dressed to the hilt and the Reverend making a point to show me the new Tiffany bracelet he’d just given Mrs. Stephens for an anniversary gift. Call me a traditionalist, and perhaps I was out of the loop as far as trends among those of the cloth, but I liked my clergy to look a bit more monastic. Fine if they lost the hood and rope belt—but Tiffany’s?

  Mavis’s “We Three Kings” ended in an unresolved chord and she nodded at Stephens to begin.