April 8, 1906
Nine days, sixteen hours, fifty minutes before the earthquake
“You remembered how to pronounce my name,” George Serrano remarked around a half-smoked cigarette when Gemma greeted him for their practice session. “Even a proper flip on the ‘r.’”
“It’s not so hard to properly roll a Spanish ‘r,’” Gemma said. “I’ve studied Italian, French, German—”
“How well can you speak any of those?” the pianist asked, moving a pile of scores off the music stand. His rehearsal room where she’d first found him practicing backstage at the Grand Opera House looked like the den of a musical pack rat: pages of sheet music scattered like snowflakes, half-finished cups of cold coffee everywhere, discarded opera props (Papageno’s birdcage and Susanna’s wedding garland, if Gemma wasn’t mistaken) lying around like old friends.
“Oh, I’m as multilingual as any opera singer. My conversation is extremely limited if it comes to anything useful like how to order a meal in a bistro or ask where the train station is, but I can sigh, die, or cry at the drop of a hat, Mr. Serrano.”
“Muere mañana, practica hoy,” he said, exhaling a stream of smoke. “What do you want to rehearse? And call me George,” he added.
“Do you prefer Jorge?” Giving that the proper Spanish roll as well.
“I came to San Francisco at nineteen, and most Americans couldn’t pronounce it. I’m used to George by now.” His eyes crinkled. “What are you rehearsing, Miss Garland?”
“Gemma, please. And I’m performing tomorrow at a house on Hyde Street in Nob Hill . . .” No time to waste: Gemma had been consumed since Friday night with her octagon house afternoon concert. She’d spent all yesterday going over scores, drawing up song lists and tearing them up, running vocalises—she wasn’t missing this chance to impress the high-society cream of San Francisco, not to mention the musical directors of at least two grand theaters. “I’m working up some old standards, no time to polish anything new, but of course I’ll need a proper accompanist. I’ll pay twice your fee for the short notice.”
He stubbed out his cigarette in an old rhinestone-spangled goblet that looked like, Gemma thought, the love-potion cup in Act I of Tristan und Isolde. “Done.”
They were knocking Strauss’s “My Dear Marquis” together in no time. “I’ll sing it in English for a nice lively start,” Gemma said, pushing back her sweat-damp hair. She’d jogged all the way to the opera house, nearly three miles, collecting stares the whole way—even in San Francisco, streets jammed with drunken sailors and Chinese errand boys, it was surely rare to see a woman in a shirtwaist and a home-shortened skating skirt running (well, running with no one after her), face scarlet as she counted six lampposts . . . seven lampposts . . . But even if she looked a fright, she’d arrived warm and perspiring with her voice positively tingling to sing.
“Not sure I’ve ever played for a soprano who took that whole last phrase in one go like that,” George commented after they’d finished the first run-through. “You’ve got lungs like an elephant.”
“I’d like to see an elephant tackle a Mozart concert aria. Do you have the music to ‘Vorrei spiegarvi’? I thought I’d go to that after the Strauss . . .”
“Bit long for a short concert. Have you got ‘Non curo l’affetto’ under your belt?” George asked briskly, and Gemma sighed in relief. Rehearsal pianists were a mixed bag: you might land a worn-out cynic who yawned his way through every phrase or a complete incompetent with no idea how to partner a voice. But George played beautifully: sensitive phrasing, knew how to follow, elasticized his beats when she breathed. “I’m no conservatory brat,” he said, laughing when she asked where he’d studied. “A few good teachers here and there, but I learned to play on out-of-tune pianos in Buenos Aires bars when I was a kid. How are you finishing your program off? I have a feeling you could burn a barn down with ‘Martern aller Arten.’”
“I can, but not for this crowd,” Gemma decided. “It’s not a seated concert, so I’d better leave them tapping their toes. I thought the drinking song from Traviata—I’ll sing it solo rather than a duet. Release them into their champagne humming.”
George nodded, already launching into the big swinging 3/8 chords. He wasn’t a large man—burly rather than tall, shirttail hanging out—but he had the biggest, broadest hands Gemma had ever seen. He could stretch an eleventh on the keyboard without even seeming to try. “Perfect for choking someone on a dark night,” he said when she commented as much, throttling an imaginary throat with his left hand as his right covered both parts on the piano, and Gemma was laughing so hard she missed her entrance. Rehearsal really could be fun—how much she’d missed that.
“Can I take you to lunch?” George asked as they finished. “A plate of sand dabs at the Oyster Grotto goes down a treat after a long rehearsal.”
“No, thank you.” He had a warm admiration in his grin that Gemma thought best to nip in the bud. No romances with theater men for now; ill-timed love affairs were the Achilles’ heel of sopranos everywhere, and she had no intention of being derailed when such a good opportunity had dropped into her lap. “I have too much to do before tomorrow’s recital.”
“Crudele,” he said, plinking some tragic chords. “You sopranos are cruel.”
“Hard as nails.” Gemma grinned. If she practiced that just as she practiced her vocalises, it might even become true.
They were just wrapping up their session, Gemma rummaging in her sealskin handbag for her coin purse to pay him, when she felt the first pulses of another impending migraine. Oh no, not now, she thought, but since when did her body care when it let her down?
“Is something wrong?” George was running through the introduction to one of her arias, handily adapting the long orchestral lead-in to a tidy three-bar entrance more suitable for a recital.
“Not at all,” she managed to say, pushing a handful of coins over. “Meet me tomorrow at my boardinghouse on Taylor Street? Mr. Thornton is sending a carriage to collect me; we can ride over together”—and she dashed out, cramming her old straw hat back onto her head. Let this not be one of those migraines that came on like an express freight crashing through every barrier in a matter of minutes . . .
“Package arrived here for you, Miss Garland,” the front-house manager called out as she rushed past. “You really shouldn’t be using the opera house for your personal correspondence.”
Gemma thrust the brown paper parcel under her arm and headed back toward Taylor Street without stopping, neck already throbbing. The whole ordeal always began with pulses at the neck and base of her skull, which would gradually move higher. Things would start vibrating with their own light, sounds would take on an extra resonance in her ears, her stomach would begin rolling with nausea. That stage could last for a good hour, her vision narrowing as the pain moved up her neck and settled in like a cat kneading a cushion in front of a cozy fire. Flexing its claws, curling deeper, until it was well and firmly expanded through the left side of her head and ready to squat there for the next three hours at least. Just let me get home, Gemma prayed.
“Miss Garland,” Gemma’s landlady called out as she stumbled into the Taylor Street house—the woman was handing a packet of mail over to Alice Eastwood, but she straightened eagerly as Gemma passed the sitting room. “Could I beg you to join us in the parlor this evening for a little musicale? I do like gathering my ladies round the piano for a bit of song! Do you know ‘Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home’? Or ‘Break the News to Mother’?”
“No,” Gemma said shortly. “I’m preparing this evening for my concert tomorrow.”
“Will it get a mention in the Call?” Alice asked, interested. “I always take the Call with my morning tea. Right now it’s all articles on that Pinkerton detective who went missing. I’d much rather read about musical concerts—”
“It will be a private concert. No press write-ups.” The pain was moving fast up from Gemma’s neck now. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to press my performance dress.”
She tried to move toward the stairs, but Mrs. Browning patted her arm. “Maybe you can grace us with a song some night after your concert, then? I can’t tell you how much pleasure it would bring us all—”
“But what’s it going to bring me, Mrs. Browning?” Gemma snapped, feeling the throbs of pain all the way to the tips of her ears now. “Maybe a reduction in rent?” and she finally managed to escape upstairs, ducking Alice Eastwood’s startled glance.
Vee-vay-vah-vo-vooohhh, Toscanini sang as Gemma staggered into her room, imitating her daily warm-up.
“Oh, shut up,” she told him, opening the cage. He took off like a small green bullet, fluttering around the room twice before finally landing on top of the mirror. Gemma held her hand up with a coaxing chirp, but he ignored her, grooming under his wing with a flip of green tail feathers. “I do wish budgies cuddled more.” Gemma sighed, plucking out her hairpins. She couldn’t stand the slightest pressure on her scalp when the migraine really sank in, and it was sinking in fast now. Pulling the window shade down, she curled up on the bed and finally took a look at the square paper-wrapped parcel she’d hoisted all the way up the hill from the opera house. The handwriting on the label wasn’t one she recognized . . . Gemma hesitated, massaging the back of her neck, then tore off the brown paper.
A painting maybe a foot square, unframed, heavy drawing paper mounted on stiff cardboard. A Chinese boy and a Chinese girl standing side by side, drawn in vivid watercolors, with a wallpapering of Chinese symbols and shapes behind them. Nellie’s work—not only did Gemma recognize the style, it was Nellie’s sigil on the bottom, the little mark she used to sign all her paintings. Turning the drawing over, Gemma saw an envelope taped to the back and her heart squeezed at the sight of it. Finally, a letter from Nellie—she hadn’t really let herself dwell on just how hurt she’d been feeling at the way her oldest friend had left her in the lurch, but she could feel the hurt now as it eased. She was smiling as she broke the seal.
Welcome to San Francisco, Gemma! Who knows where you’re living now you’ve arrived, but I knew you’d head to the opera house first thing. Sorry I can’t be there in person to greet you—well, I’m not really sorry, because I got a chance to go sketch mountain scenery in Colorado, and I just had to jump at it. You understand—or you would, if you could see the views here! Anyway, I thought you’d like this sketch, the last one I did before grabbing the train out of town. Must dash!
Gemma looked at the typed letters on creamy, expensive paper, feeling her smile leak slowly away. “I’m doing very well, thanks ever so much for asking, Nell,” she muttered, cramming the little painting back into its paper wrappings. That was all she was going to get, after being abandoned in a strange city by her oldest friend? A sketch and an offhand I’m not really sorry?
Pain bisected her temples like an iron wire, pushing Nellie’s careless callousness away in its spiked wake, and Gemma pressed the heels of her hands against her head as if she could hold it together. She really should start sponging the faille dress she’d planned to wear to the octagon house tomorrow—it had been badly crushed in her trunk; she’d have to press out every single pleat, and who knew how long the migraine would lay her out once it really settled in. But her eyes were suddenly swimming, and her stomach wouldn’t stop roiling, and it was all she could do to wring out a cloth in the washbasin and drape it over her face as she huddled on the bed. “It’s just headaches,” she remembered one doctor telling her in bracing tones. “We all get headaches, Miss Garland, so do try to buck up!”
I’m so tired, Gemma thought, squeezing her eyes closed under the wet cloth, of bucking up. Wasn’t it hard enough to be a woman alone, trying to make a career in a hard business and a harder world, without this? Without a sleeping beast living inside her own head, who might at any moment wake and sink its fangs into her brain?
Don’t be self-pitying, a savage little voice scolded inside. It’s not all about the migraines. That’s not the only reason you’re still singing in the chorus at thirty-two.
“Stop,” she mumbled, listening to Toscanini twitter on top of her mirror. Her vision was narrowing now; she could feel it even behind her sealed eyelids: if she opened them it would be like staring through a tunnel, blurry and sparkly at the same time, with a flare of pain if she tried to focus on anything directly rather than looking at it sideways. “Stop.”
The truth is, if you weren’t such a trusting little ninny—
“Stop—”
You wouldn’t be in such a pickle, would you?
“I was ill—”
You were stupid.
Ill and stupid, Gemma supposed. Her old theater agent, the one who had plucked her out of a cattle-call audition at twenty and gotten her into the chorus of a second-rate production of La Bohème . . . I don’t like him, Nellie had declared. He’s oilier than a roast duck. But Gemma had laughed that off. He’d never made indecent advances (and how rare was that, after she’d had her bottom pinched all over New York trying to find representation?); he kept her working; he sent her to doctor after doctor to try to get the migraines under control—of course Gemma had stayed with him. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable when he suggested she add him to her financial accounts. She was so careful with her money, he pointed out; what if a migraine laid her out for days and she wasn’t able to get her rent paid or a doctor summoned? He could do those things for her. And she’d built up a modest nest egg over the years, so determined not to be the diva who bought mink stoles and French champagne but never saved for the future. No, Gemma had been determined to be smart. Always thinking of that home she wanted to have someday: the piano, the terrace, the garden.
She wondered dully now what her agent had bought with her nest egg, when he scooped it all. He’d certainly timed it well: a particularly bad attack that had laid her up for nearly four days at the beginning of a New York Nozze di Figaro. It should have been her first Countess, a role that suited her to her fingertips, a lavish production, her first real chance at Dressing Room A. Instead her understudy went on, and four days later when Gemma managed to stagger upright, she found she’d not only been fired from the company, but her bank accounts were empty. Empty to the last penny.
It’s not your fault, she tried to tell herself, it’s not your fault. But wasn’t it? The migraines, those were not her fault. Trusting the wrong man, though—that was a tale as old as time. Stupid Sally Gunderson, who would never cheat anyone, and had been so very easy to cheat. She had made herself sound more courageous, talking to Mr. Thornton over glasses of claret that tasted like rubies, than she really was—the orphan who had become a diva, despite her brave battle against bad health. That sounded so much better than a story about a dim, trusting farm girl who got conned.
Stop wallowing, she told herself. You aren’t exactly in a gutter. You dusted yourself off and got the chorus job before the month was out, didn’t you? You’re still working for the Met, for God’s sake. You’re in a brand-new city, getting a brand-new start. Isn’t that the American dream?
The nausea was moving in, now. Gemma sat up, vomited competently into the chamber pot under the bed, and lay back down again. The pain had settled in now, purring, flexing—it wouldn’t shift for hours. She turned carefully onto her back, even that gentle motion throbbing through her skull like a railroad spike. “Why couldn’t you be here, Nell?” she whispered into the darkened room. “You promised you’d be here for me. You said we’d fix everything.” She hadn’t been able to write Nellie about losing all her savings—she’d hoped to confess that over a flask of brandy, in one of their old late-night heart-to-hearts. Nellie would get furious on her behalf, would stride up and down vowing bloody revenge, would make her laugh and then swear to her that none of it mattered, that Gemma would make her fortune twice over here in San Francisco.
But Nellie wasn’t here. She was in Colorado of all places, and Gemma was left lying in a darkened room with no one but a budgie for company. Alone in a new city, on a new coast, no opera company yet, no comforting routine of rehearsals and performances, no familiar cafés for postpractice coffees and familiar restaurants for late postcurtain suppers. Alone—except, she was supposed to have Nellie.
I really need you. She’d written as much in her last letter, right after she’d been fired and swindled, underlining the words for emphasis . . . and her oldest friend had sauntered off to Colorado without a backward glance.
You don’t need her, Gemma told herself, forcing her eyes open to stare into the blurring, sparkling, painful dark. Forcing herself to be hard, to be practical, to never be called nice again. Because friends let you down, even the oldest of friends; men let you down; colleagues let you down. But her voice hadn’t, not yet, and she had a chance to let it shine tomorrow, so as soon as she could stand without vomiting—as soon as she could move without wanting to dig her eyes out with a soup spoon—she had better heat up the irons and press all the wrinkles out of her biscuit-colored faille.