Performance Anxiety. Betsy Burke

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      And Lyle, my mother’s second husband, had chimed in, “If ya gotta go ’n see him, Miranda, ya gotta go. But hang on to your wallet. And just remember, we’re here for you, eh? If ya wanna talk about it afterward.”

      I’d wanted to fly off to England as soon as the call had ended, but I was nineteen at the time and already at university. I had no extra money and no extra time. But I knew that the day would come when the reunion with my father would become a reality.

      We finished the Special and hauled the equipment down to the company car. There, I took off my Adidas and put my Doc Martens on. I badly wished I could have had a shower first and rinsed off all The Bachelor’s dust. But I was on a tight schedule. Betty was nice enough to give me a lift down to the theater. She wasn’t supposed to take the company car anywhere except to cleaning jobs, but she didn’t care. Nobody, not even Cora, ever argued with Betty.

      I ate the last of Grace’s sandwiches in the car. It was Brie, speck and pickled artichokes on seven-grain bread. I looked forward to the day when I became rich and famous and would either pay for Grace to come and cook for me, or I could adopt her.

      Can you do that? Adopt special spinster angels? Grace’s sandwiches homed in on oral pleasure centers I never knew I had.

      Betty dropped me off right at the stage door.

      I checked off my name and descended into the beige bowels of the theater. Fatigue stopped me in the doorway to the women’s chorus dressing room.

      And then I had one of those moments. One of those insightful moments that make you so happy your skin tingles. You’ve arrived in your world. The one they nearly didn’t let you into, the one where it’s a privilege to sweat under hot lights in a costume that already reeks of another soprano, have your toes stepped on by hefty mezzos and your eardrums split by tenors who refuse to stop singing directly into the side of your head.

      At the mirror next to mine, Tina, who was a mezzo like me, was applying her geisha face. I sat down.

      Tina said, “Miranda. Finally. I thought you were going to be late. That stage manager would make a good prison warden. She doesn’t bend an inch on check-ins.”

      Three red circles around your name for being late and you risked being kicked out of the chorus.

      “I had four minutes to go,” I said.

      “That’s cutting it pretty fine,” said Tina.

      “You going to stand in the wings tonight?” When a singer was fabulous, like our lead soprano, Ellie Watson, that’s what we did. Stood in the wings and studied her, hoping some of her magic would get into our bloodstreams.

      Tina nodded. “Our Madame Butterball’s pretty amazing, eh? That Ellie’s got another one of your paint-peeling voices. Too bad she doesn’t have the look. How much do you think she weighs?”

      “More than bathroom scales register,” I replied.

      “Yeah, she doesn’t need a dresser, she needs an upholsterer. But I’m not just standing back there to listen to her. I’m going to gape at Kurt. I’m shoving myself under the maestro’s nose so he’ll notice me. I wouldn’t mind studying under him any day. Under him. Over him. Any position he wants. That man is quality grade-A prime cut. He can beat my time with his baton whenever he likes.”

      Against all of Kurt’s warning, I whispered into Tina’s ear, “You’re too late. He’s mine.”

      She whipped around to look straight at me. Her voice dropped about a thousand decibels. “Kurt Hancock? What do you mean, he’s yours?”

      “I mean we’re good friends. More than friends.”

      We were huddled over our makeup tables while having this whispered conversation. The dressing room was too quiet and letting the other gossip-starved dames in on the latest developments in my life would be like throwing fat juicy sailors into shark-infested waters—instant death.

      “Get your face on, Miranda, and hurry up about it,” Tina ordered. “I gotta have a word with you.” She was as tall as me but she had an angular face and piercing, intimidating, black eyes. When she gave me orders, I obeyed.

      I smeared on the white for my geisha face, then drew in the tiny pinched lips and the eyebrows. We always left our wigs until last. They were heavy and itchy. It had been a bit of a catfight when it came to the director giving out these geisha roles. There was a whale-size middle-aged singer who thought that she should get first pick of everything because of seniority. What did she think this was? An office job? This was showbiz. And showbiz, as everyone knows, is the biggest dictatorship in the world. In the end, the geisha parts went to the youngest, thinnest girls in the chorus. Tina and me and six others.

      When I finally had my costume and makeup on, Tina dragged me down the hallway and upstairs into a quiet corner of the vast area backstage.

      “Okay. So what’s this ‘friends’ stuff?”

      “Like I said, Kurt and I are very good friends.”

      “In the biblical sense, right? You mean you’re screwing him?”

      “Sort of,” I mumbled.

      “What do you mean, sort of?”

      “We haven’t actually gotten down to exchanging bodily fluids.”

      “You’re kidding. What does it take to get down to it?”

      “The mood’s got to be right but maybe tonight. He’s coming over after. I’d really like it to happen before the party because if he comes to the party with other people, he probably won’t stay after. You know, appearances and all that.”

      “Why?” asked Tina.

      “He doesn’t want anybody to know about us because he’s not officially divorced yet.”

      “First of all, I have to say, Miranda Lyme, are you out of your gourd? You’re fucking the conductor…and he’s married.”

      “Separated.”

      She said to the air, “Kurt Hancock, I don’t know what you’re up to with my friend Miranda, but you’ve disillusioned me. I am so disappointed. I thought you were better than that. Yet another married man screwing around.”

      “Well, not really, not exactly, not yet anyway…”

      “Okay, and another thing. You’re nearly fucking the conductor and you don’t tell me? Some friend you are, Miranda Lyme.”

      “It’s complicated. It’s not what it sounds like. And I would have told you as soon as it became a fait accompli. But it hasn’t yet.”

      “You better get moving. Only two more performances left and then closing night and he’s outa here. Back to…where is it he lives? Paris?”

      “London. But he’s got engagements in the States first.”

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