The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [12]
Gina and Bea sat down on the couch to admire the new baby. John came in with diapers, extra blankets, and formula, which he put on the coffee table in order to marvel at the baby’s tiny fingers, which he held gently with his own. “So … Maria?” he asked as he moved his palm over her fuzzy head—she already had more hair than he did, he joked—and looked at his wife with eager eyes. Gina had become infatuated with the name Maria at the dentist’s a few months earlier—not long after they started the adoption process—when she’d seen an old Time magazine with “Soprano Callas” on the cover, and she had proposed the name the second they received confirmation from the nuns. Even now she could remember reading about the “fat, lonely girl” who returned to Manhattan as “queen of the world’s opera.” Gina had stared at the cover for the better part of an hour, hypnotized by the glamorous dress, the Spanish-medallion earrings, and the unforgettable eyes, tawny and Mediterranean like her own and with quite a bit more shadow than she was used to wearing, but which she had subsequently started to mimic on her Saturday nights out with John.
She glanced up at her husband. “You still like it, right?”
“Yeah, sure.” John nodded at his wife and—since his mother-in-law had left for the kitchen—allowed his hand to travel up her neck to a sensitive spot behind her ear, which made her laugh. Although he had initially preferred Mary—after his Irish grandmother—he knew it had been smart to give in, because Gina’s smile made all the grief and hassle of the past two years seem worth it. He felt a familiar desire—there just the way it was supposed to be, nothing forced or scheduled about it—which also made him happy.
…
SO CHRISTENED—AND OFFICIALLY baptized the following weekend by Father Gregory—Maria Sheehan began life unremarkably except for the strength of her cries. “This one has four lungs, not two,” Bea noted one day with a mix of admiration and fatigue when Gina got home from work.
“She’s going to be an opera singer,” Gina replied.
“On verra.” Bea shrugged as she lighted a cigarette. “On verra.”
Gina had not been interested in opera growing up—it was too “old-world,” like her parents—but lately she could not get enough of it. Not long after seeing the Callas article, she bought an LP of arias and was shocked by how what had once struck her as so old-fashioned now seemed so vibrant and sensual, as if the music were caressing her. She and her mother had listened with tears running down their faces as they remembered Gina’s father, who liked to play Caruso while he canned vegetables in the basement of their old house. Hearing her mother sing along—somehow she knew all the words—reminded Gina of being young, when her skin used to tingle and itch because she craved something before actually getting it—on a birthday or Christmas—so that, for a few hours, she experienced a numb bliss that made her feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
Six months later, it was Bea who made another important discovery, on one of Gina’s workdays. Maria would not stop wailing, and all of the usual remedies—feeding, burping, changing her diaper, walking her, or setting her in front of the television—were fruitless until Bea plunked the screaming baby into her crib and went back to the living room to drown her out with a Callas record. As soon as the music came on, Maria stopped crying, only to resume with full force twenty minutes later, when the first