The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [76]
“That’s true.”
Anna knew she was not reaching Maria and tried a different tack. “When I think of your voice, it’s a little painful for me, and not just because of what happened, or because I think you’re beautiful and talented, but because it reminds me of when I was your age—or perhaps a bit older—and trying to come to terms with what it means to have this; except for me, it wasn’t so much a talent or a skill as a secret language, a way to describe the world that made it seem wonderful and the rest of my life dull and drab by comparison. But after I lost my parents, life became painful for me, and I really struggled for a few years. I could barely sing—my voice felt lost to me. Do you understand this?”
“I’m not sure,” Maria said, but there was a trembling, hesitant quality to her response that Anna found encouraging, since it seemed to reflect the churning of real thoughts.
“We’re born with a gift,” Anna continued, “and for a while it seems magical and gives us great pleasure, but there comes a time when it no longer satisfies us, except unlike a toy or a dress it’s not something we can just outgrow, because it’s part of us, and when you first begin to understand this, it can feel like a curse, so that you regret having been given the gift in the first place. If your voice feels different because of what happened to your parents, that’s natural—it’s part of growing up. And though you can never go back, you have the option of really learning how to use it in a way that will still bring you—and countless others—a lot of joy. Because—trust me—most people don’t have it, but it’s through us that they find at least a little piece of it in themselves.”
For a long time there was no sound, until Anna heard the raspy choke of tears. “I wanted it so much,” Maria sobbed, “but I just don’t know if I can anymore.”
“It’s okay,” Anna reassured her and listened until Maria had stopped. “I’m here.”
“How?” Maria asked miserably, and Anna resisted an impulse to cry, as much with empathy as with relief at having broken through.
“First I want you to send in the letter,” Anna said with hope and encouragement, knowing that Maria only needed to grasp the life preserver in front of her. She outlined a plan to bring Maria to New York after graduation; she would get her a part-time job and an apartment—with a roommate, another incoming singer—before classes began in the fall. “I’ll be here whenever you need to talk,” she added quietly, almost wistfully, as though speaking to a younger version of herself.
MARIA HUNG UP and felt stunned, but in a very different way than she had a few months earlier. She looked down expecting to see fragments of whatever it was she had been encased in exploding around her on the floor and then went into the bedroom, where her grandmother was lying on her bed, rosary beads in hand, her wrinkled cheeks wet from tears. “You spoke to the frau?” she asked. “She is vraiment not so bad for a German, mia bella. I hope—”
“I’m going,” Maria said as she retrieved the Juilliard letter from under a stack of books, the exact place she had put it a month earlier, when it arrived. She sat down next to Bea and showed it to her. “This summer—she’s helping me. I start school in the fall.”
“Dieu merci,” Bea responded and kissed both of Maria’s cheeks before she insisted upon kneeling next to the bed and saying a prayer of thanks.
As Maria watched her grandmother, she felt a familiar exasperation but was thankful that it was not marked by the same ambivalence that had so recently clouded her thoughts. As she listened to her grandmother’s incantations, and remembered how much as a child she had loved praying with Bea, like two performers before an audience of God, she realized that what she felt was something entirely new, a combination of exasperation, ambivalence, nostalgia, and even a certain detachment, as if these were all different hues of paint on a single canvas, which she had the sense to step back from