The year of the Lucy

Mirelle whirled away from the mirror and hung the gown on her closet door. She went down to the kitchen to make brownies for dessert, iced brownies. She must remember to check if she had enough Coke for Roman to use as reward or threat.

I'm just unused to sheer dress fabrics, Mirelle told herself as she tried to wrap her coat more firmly around her and shut out the chill wind. If I make my muscles relax, they won't shiver. She forced her shoulders down and took a deep breath.

Another breeze found a minute opening and streaked up her backbone. She hopped around the corner, peering anxiously up and down the street for Sylvia. It was twenty past eight.

The nagging suspicion that somehow or other Sylvia was not going to join her grew stronger. But Sylvia had said she'd come, Mirelle insisted to herself, firmly, loyally. At twenty-five past the hour, Mirelle gave up all pretense and marched to the box office.

"My name is Martin. Was there any message left for me?"

She received a frown from the pear-shaped man in the box office as he peered at her over his glasses, pursing his lips in disapproval. He glanced over his shoulder at the plump man checking figures on an adding machine. "Any calls for a Mrs. Martin?"

"Martin? Martin? Yeah, a Mrs. Eshazy called. She ain't coming." The plump party returned to his column of figures.

Mirelle was given a quelling stare. "No refunds, lady." She turned quickly away to cover her disappointment. Hurriedly she fumbled for the tickets in her evening purse. Took one and handed it to the bored doorman. She went through the routine of being passed from usher to usher, and down the aisle to her row, nervously stepping over feet and muttering apologies until she reached her seat and could settle herself, and hopefully her emotions. What could have happened to Sylvia? And how was she to get home now? Why had Sylvia let her down? And why was the non-appearance so distressing?

The house lights dimmed and Jamie appeared, holding back one section of the curtains to allow the soloist to make an entrance. Then he followed her to stage center. Mirelle swallowed nervously and slid down a little in her seat. She righted herself, annoyed by seeing him so professionally aloof, so sure of himself. He was suddenly in a perspective that alienated him from her previous knowledge of him. He was a stranger in the complex and glamorous world of the performing artist: no longer the amusing stranger, the sick acquaintance, or Margaret's garrulous father.

The applause which had greeted the soprano's entrance died down as she gracefully acknowledged it and took her place in the curve of the grand piano. The concert spot narrowed, framing her in an island of light which spilled over onto Jamie's head and shoulders. Mirelle caught her breath as she fancied that Jamie looked for her, directly at her in the audience. To be sure, he must know her relative position from the numbers of the tickets he had given her, but that he wanted to make sure she had used them gave her a deep and unexpected satisfaction. He had seated himself now, and Mirelle realized that he had brought no music with him. Her respect for him, professionally, rose higher.

The audience quieted: the hall was completely dark. The soprano, her full figure elegantly gowned in rich garnet red, nodded to her accompanist and the chords of the first song filled the darkness.

Wide-eyed with shock, Mirelle gripped the arms of her seat. The notes of the Handel aria were so sweetly familiar: with this beautiful song Mary LeBoyne had opened the last concert which Mirelle heard her mother sing. Madame Nealy's voice compounded the anguish by having much the same timbre. Mirelle closed her eyes. She could see so clearly her mother's figure, standing on the makeshift stage in that awful little auditorium. The air had been cloying with the smell of the burnt, the burning, and antiseptic. The previous night's bombing had been heavy in the area and the stink of it was everywhere. Mirelle, about to be sent off to America for the duration, had accompanied her mother as a special treat. Self-conscious in her school gabardine, desperately shy, she had sat at the back of a hall filled with convalescent servicemen. She had been convinced, even then, that this was the last time she'd hear her mother sing.

The Mirelle of 1940 knew exactly why she was being sent to America: she was becoming too much of an embarrassment to Edward Barthan-More. And that afternoon, Mary Margaret LeBoyne had told Mirelle the circumstances of her birth, in a halting, embarrassed voice, flushing with the memory of humiliations at the hands of her vindictive husband. Half weeping, Mary Margaret had begged her daughter's forgiveness for the ignominies and slights which the child had suffered at her stepfather's hands. She apologized for being so selfish as to keep Mirelle by her when the girl might have had a happier childhood in some foster home where her irregular birth was no stigma to social acceptance. Embarrassed by her mother's anguish, Mirelle had fought the intense relief she had felt at knowing that she really wasn't the daughter of the cold autocratic vicious man whom she had come to hate for the many petty acts he was fond of committing against anyone subordinate to, or dependent on him. She had suffered agonies of mind because she was 'supposed to love her father' and couldn't. And she had hated him most because of the way he had treated her mother. To go to America to live with her mother's best friend, Mary Murphy, was no exile to Mirelle. It was paradise. And she knew, in her sudden maturity, that Edward Barthan-More would never give his wife permission to go to America once the war was over, to see her daughter. Her mother knew it, too, from the way she had clung to Mirelle that afternoon.