If she were a boy we would be in love, but it’s better this way. We can tell each other everything. She wanted to know all about home but I made her guess. She guessed that I came from parents I call “Mother and Dad,” that I had “equestrian” lessons, that “Mumsy” is a “frosty blonde” with arch blue eyes and impeccable taste in porcelain and that “Fathah” is a judge from “old money”. I played her own game right back at her and didn’t tell her if she was right or wrong. I’ll let her think she’s smart for now. Then I’ll show her my family photo. AND she thinks I have an accent! She said, “Where you from, girl?” And I said, “There you go again, sometimes you have an accent and sometimes you don’t, how come?” And she said, “I asked you first.” I said, “Cape Breton Island.” And she said, “‘C’Bre’n Ireland’?” I said, “I don’t talk like that.” She said, “That’s exactly how you talk.”
“Cape Breton is in Canada, not Ireland, what do they teach you in school here?”
She said, “Useful stuff like how anyone can grow up to be president.”
I said, “Don’t you know anything about Canada?”
“Freeze your ass off, right?”
I never know when she’s fooling but I do know now that she likes to get me riled. What a pair! I told her I’d been to Club Mecca and she was speechless. I love it when I can hit her with a zinger and she stops looking like there’s nothing new under the sun. I asked her to come with me next time because I can’t go alone. She said she couldn’t do that to her mother. I asked her how her mother was ever going to find out if neither of us told her. She answered after a moment, “My mother knows a lot of people.”
So I told her about Sweet Jessie Hogan and her Harlem Rhythm Hounds. Rose listened while I described the size of the Sweet’s voice. How can a voice that big be so agile, how can it groan gravel, then fly up and outdance the band? Not to mention her costumes — look out, Aida. But best of all, the dancing. The cake-walk is tame compared to what goes on there. It’s not for the faint of foot. Rose looked at me as though she were seeing me for the first time and said, “You’re not exactly a good girl, are you?”
I felt myself blush, I was actually a bit annoyed. “I haven’t thought about whether or not loving all kinds of music and loving to dance means I’m bad.”
She said, “I’m sorry. What I mean is … you’ve got moxie. You know. Guts. You make me feel like a coward.”
I was struck dumb because I can’t imagine Rose being afraid of anything.
“Then come with me,” I said. But she just shrugged. “What can your mother do to you?”
She wouldn’t answer me, she just said, “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me. Let me understand.”
She clammed up and looked down. Her profile under the fedora. Three dark pyramids. “Tell me, Rose. Please.”
She looked away and I thought, oh no, I’ve done it again. But the next instant she said in an icy voice, “The fact is, I’m not terribly interested in Darktown music.” Then she turned to me with a polite smile, “But if you’d like to come to the symphony with me, I have tickets for Thursday evening.”
I didn’t want to upset the apple-cart again so I said, “Oh thenk you. I’d be uttehly delighted, rally I would.” At which she grinned.
She doesn’t have a boyfriend, I asked. I told her a bit about David. She asked me if I was in love with him and I said, “At times I thought I was. But now I know I wasn’t.”
“How do you know that?”
I couldn’t look at her, but I did say the truth. “Because if he came back right now, I wouldn’t leave this fire escape to go meet him.” My face started to prickle because I didn’t feel like that came out right, and I could feel Rose watching me, ready to hate me all over again, so I pressed on, “I’m a lot happier to have a friend.” I finally looked at her but she turned her eyes forward and nodded. “Me too.” I was so relieved. Thank God I didn’t do anything really foolish the other day in the park. Thank God I only mortified myself in front of you, Diary.
Tues — 20 — Symphony divinely dull. Schumann. People stared at Rose. I’m beginning to understand why her normal expression is so forbidding. She has concert tickets but lives in a three-room apartment. Built like an Ethopian queen with a dimple and a Roman nose. Draped in a flowered dress from 1905 fit for little girls and old ladies. La Mystère de la Rose.
Wed. — I’m not ashamed of my mother.
Thurs. — Stayed in bed today.
Fri. — I have no friends. I have only colleagues. The Kaiser is right. I suppose most people would run home about now but what is there to run to? It’s the capital of nowhere. Only Daddy is there and when I’m rich and famous I’ll sail him first class to all my performances. I feel so lethargic. I can’t even muster any ambition. It all seems dead and flat. Yes, I will work hard and get to all those places. I can see it stretching out, straight through to the triumphant end. I hate it when I can see through to the end of something. All that’s left is the plodding to get there. Knowing too much is a kind of death. I pray that I don’t know everything. That’s my religious faith: to believe I really don’t know. But it’s so hard sometimes. And in my religion, the only mortal sin is boredom.
Sat. — My feelings about Rose that I wrote down seem like a dream. They happened to someone else in some other country.
Sun — Nothing ever happens.
mon — Ditto.
tues. — Ibid.
fri. — plus ça change
Saturday, August 31, 1918
Dear Diary,
I don’t know where to begin. I have to get it all down now while it’s fresh, I’m here under my tree in Central Park and we have all afternoon till supper-time. I’ll have to go back a few days because despite all that whining about nothing happening, I realize now that tons was happening and it was all leading up to what I have to tell you which is EVERYTHING.
But first things first: I’m working up Carmen. The Kaiser “objected strenuously” but gave in, for what choice does he have after all? He still snipes that I’m being “perverse” working against my “natural freshness and youth” — “My God, Miss Piper, you are an ingénue, Carmen is a whore.” Thinks the idea that I’m a mezzo is professional suicide, “witches and bitches, dahling,” he says, but I refuse to get stuck anywhere. I don’t intend to be Gilda for ever. Not when I’m a wizened thirty-two, and I certainly don’t intend to take my final curtain a moment before I absolutely have to. Mezzos live longer. I’ll sing Carmen and I’ll sell Tosca. And there will not be a single pair of trousers left unsung. Kaiser doesn’t know whether he is witnessing my first divinely inspired diva fit, or me falling on my face. Neither do I, but at least I’m no longer bored! He does see the wisdom in showing Gatti-Casazza the extreme outposts of my range, however, not just vertically but dramatically. Because that’s where it really counts. It’s not enough to have the most beautiful voice. If I have to sing ugly to put the feeling of a scene across, I’ll do that. Opera isn’t supposed to be “pretty”. Women stabbing themselves and everyone else half the time isn’t pretty, it’s wild, it’s passionate and gruesome and beautiful and you can’t tell me that such women don’t snarl as much as they sing. And that’s not counting the comic roles, which are even more grotesque. But I digress….