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By Root 385 0

how beautiful it would be on the turnpike, a comment not acknowledged by Maria, whose morning stupor prevented her from thinking about anything except whether the stupid snow might stop her from getting to New York City. Gina sighed, remembering her daughter before they had grown so distant. Her baby was about to leave for New York, and it seemed like only yesterday that they were dancing together in front of the hi-fi, Maria perched on top of her shoes with her thin arms wrapped around the backs of her legs, Bea hollering out from the kitchen to turn it up, prego! Gina reminded herself that Maria was a teenager, and at least she wasn’t running around with some long-haired boy doing who-knew-what like those kids she saw hanging around the shops on Castle Shannon Boulevard. Nor did she forget that this was exactly what she had always wanted for her daughter, from the second she saw the picture of Callas—God rest—almost two decades earlier, and though she could feel the old, familiar emptiness, she tried to console herself with the thought—in fact, she had just read an article about this while waiting in line at the grocery store—that this angry insolence was a cultural phenomenon, that mothers everywhere were letting go of their teenage daughters with the expectation that one day soon they would all come home.

MARIA AND KATHY drove east under a looming sky that extended into the curving climbs through the Appalachians of central Pennsylvania. Maria began to feel better as they descended from the mountains and passed Harrisburg, and by the time she caught her first glimpse of the World Trade Center from Route 80 and then the entire skyline, glimmering in the last speck of sunlight like a long diamond necklace, her spirits were flying. After they crossed the George Washington Bridge and made their way down the West Side Highway, she expressed surprise that New York City was so close to such a big river, something she had never really considered, though it was perfectly obvious from a map. “It’s like New York has everything Pittsburgh has,” she exclaimed, “except ten times bigger!”

“Just remember,” Kathy noted, “that goes for singers, too.”

After checking in at the hotel—the Callaghan, across from Lincoln Center—Maria happily agreed to Kathy’s suggestion to opt out of the hotel’s dining room in favor of an exploration of the neighborhood. On Broadway, Maria was enthralled by the parade of business suits, dresses, tracksuits, platform shoes—even in winter—and shearling coats. Everyone, it seemed, had a “look”—some combination of fear, aggression, and street couture—unlike anything she had known in Pittsburgh, which made her worry about her lack of the same, and how she would have to go about changing that unfortunate condition. She was struck by how the many different shops on Seventy-second Street—shoes, a butcher, a diner, buttons, beds, televisions—had no intrinsic order but still seemed to fit together like the ingredients of one of Bea’s leftover stews. She enviously watched a woman perhaps a few years older than she was hurry into a dry cleaner’s, pick up some garments, and rush back out onto the street, which was filled with the honking of countless yellow cabs swerving through traffic. She inhaled the smell of pizza from a nearby parlor and laughed at a fat, old man waving his hands in the face of a teenager with a large Afro who appeared somehow to have offended him. Kathy pointed out different buildings, some with flat, modern façades, others dripping with the carved monsters and deformed gargoyles that seemed at first to leer at Maria but then with a wink to tell her, no, she was one of them.

THE NEXT MORNING they went to Juilliard, where at the appointed time, Maria took an elevator upstairs and followed signs through several long hallways to another waiting area filled with her fellow young prospects, who sat in a collective cloud of body odor and perfume. At some point her name was called and she stepped into the room, where she felt like a speck looking up at the faces of Mt. Rushmore until she recognized