Vancouver, British Columbia, November 2, 1969
After the opening performance of The Tender Land, there was a reception in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Felicity was eager to unleash two weeks’ worth of nervous energy. Although she knew the music, she had lived with the tension of learning new blocking and getting to know castmates she had never worked with, all far more experienced than she was, and none of them particularly welcoming. She knew that her performance at the dress rehearsal had been lacklustre; she was exhausted and frustrated. She sensed her big opportunity slipping away, and that had galvanized her. At her first entrance on opening night, she had stepped onto the stage and commanded it. She had channelled all her insecurities into the character. Laurie was insecure too. She felt small. She felt scared. Felicity stood in the spotlight and trembled for the audience to see.
At intermission, the tenor who played Martin, her love interest, nodded at her and said, “Nice singing.” It was the first compliment she had received; the first sign that anyone in the cast felt anything other than resentment that this upstart had replaced their beloved Jane Masters. She was so grateful for those two words, and yet she couldn’t allow the slights to pass; the lunches and coffee breaks she had spent alone. Allowing hurt like this to make its home with her had sent her into Brian’s arms, and he had taken advantage of her vulnerability and devastated her life. She would never allow that to happen again. The only possible response to the cruelty of others was to put up defences so tall and strong that no one would try to scale them.
“Of course it was,” she said, and walked past the tenor.
For the reception, she wore one of Aunt Rose’s dresses, as suggested by Jack. She had already slimmed down a bit with all the anxiety of rehearsals, but her size no longer bothered her. Opera singers were supposed to be big, and she was a real opera singer now. The dress was burgundy and dotted with sparkling beads, and Aunt Rose had also given her a fur stole to wear with it.
The tenor was standing by the bar, and as she passed, he said her name.
“What?” she replied, intentionally rude.
“You really did sing well today,” he said. His face was red, and he held another beer as he swayed on his feet.
“You said that already.” She turned to go.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t be like that, okay?”
“Be like what?”
“Like you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” Felicity said. “I just don’t think we have much to say to one another.” This man reminded her of Brian; not with his looks, for Brian was far more attractive, but with his indignant air. Like Brian, he would spend his life having things handed to him and still manage to portray himself as the aggrieved one.
“Your performance,” he said. “I’m curious. Where did that come from? I mean, you’re young, you haven’t lived yet, you don’t have children. So is your character, but you gave her so much wisdom and strength. It has to come from somewhere.”
“I have a child,” Felicity said, and it was the first time she had thought of Mara in days. As soon as she had stepped on the plane to Vancouver, a string loosened at the bottom of her heart, allowing it to float upwards. No more bottles, no more soiled diapers, no more quiet cries, all of it behind her. She would not look back.
“Oh,” the tenor said. “You’re married already?”
“No,” Felicity said. “I’m not.”
He took a step backwards. She had only invoked Mara to repel him, but now that it had worked, she felt the lash of rejection.
“Your people do like to do that, don’t they?” the tenor said.
“Do what?”
“Have children without a man around.”
“My daughter’s father is white,” said Felicity. Let the blame for bad behaviour be placed where it is deserved.
“Yes, but you are not,” said the tenor.
As if she wasn’t aware of that. Never for a second did anyone let her forget that she was not white. She looked around the party, at all the pale faces, all the pink hands gripping their glasses, the wispy white hair combed over peach domed heads, the blond hair contrasting with the black clothing most people wore. After the wandelprobe, when the cast rehearsed with the full set for the first time, the director had asked Felicity to stay after everyone else was dismissed. “Your skin,” he said. “It looks washed-out on stage. It looks sickly.” He turned to the lighting designer. “Can’t you do something?”
Felicity looked down at her hand, bleached to a jaundiced shade in the intensity of the beam in which she stood.
“We’re losing the shape of her face too,” the lighting designer said. He had Felicity move in and out of the spotlight as he swore and conferred with the director and flashed blasts of different coloured lamps at her until her eyes and her head began to ache. “I’m going to have to take all the yellows out of the designs,” he said. “Make a different plot for you.”
The director asked accusingly, “How much overtime will that be?”
Felicity was tired, and hungry. She stood in a pool of brightness watching her hand change colour and feeling her forehead throb. She felt as exposed as when the head of wardrobe had not bothered to conceal her dismay at how much bigger Felicity was than Jane Masters, how the costumes would have to be let out, how many corsets and girdles would have to be purchased to try to press Felicity’s flesh back into a girlish shape.
It should all have been humiliating. It was all humiliating. And yet, when the orchestra started to play, when the blend of strings, woodwinds, and brass rose up to the lip of the stage, when she felt herself breathing in tandem with the motions of the conductor, all of them — conductor, singers, and instruments — one symbiotic being, it raised a wave of emotion in Felicity so strong that for a moment, she could not move. She forgot the blocking she had paced into her muscle memory late at night in her hotel room. And then it all rushed back. She sang, she acted, she was Laurie, and the applause came and came and came. There was no other world for her, not one other thing that mattered. There was no race, no skin colour, no baby, no men, there had never been any love as great as the one created on the stage. There was no room for any other feeling.
This was the life Felicity wanted. She had to do this, again and again, or she did not want to exist. It was that simple. As she took her curtain call, she sent a wish out into the cheering crowd. Please, she thought, give me more chances to do this. Let me do this for my whole life, this and nothing else.
Doing this again meant not making enemies unnecessarily, so she smiled at the flushed-faced tenor while she tried to figure out a way to extricate herself from the conversation. It was the director who saved her. “Miss Alexander!” he swooped in. “That was a remarkable performance. Remarkable.”
“Thank you.” Felicity opened her eyes wide and cocked her head. “I loved working with you.” Hire me again, she chanted to herself.
“I wonder, do you sing traditional repertoire as well?” the director asked. “Mozart, bel canto?”
“I do. I covered a lot of the standard repertoire at the Royal Opera House.”
“The Royal Opera House!” The director put out his hand and touched her shoulder, just for a microsecond. A flash of energy. “I must have missed that you’ve worked there.”
“I was a young artist,” said Felicity.
“I see,” said the director. “Now, I can’t promise, but I believe that there’s a small company in Toronto looking for someone for a concert version of I Puritani. I think you’d be perfect. I can put you in touch, if you’d like?”
Felicity had manifested her future, and now it was coming to pass. She placed her palm on the same arm with which the director had touched her. “I would like that,” she said. “Very much.”