Almost a Diva

Linda stared at the wedding invitation on her writing desk, reading and re-reading to make sure her mind wasn't playing tricks on her. 

You are invited to the karaoke wedding of Carlotta and David, save the date! July 23rd...

There was a picture of her daughter beaming under a disco-ball with a microphone in her hand, David's arm around her waist. Carlotta had smile lines around her dark eyes, thick curly hair, strong arms. She had inherited so many of the features from Linda's side of the family. She had her father's easy-going, guileless smile, though--a smile that spoke of a life that wasn't overwhelmed by tragedy. Linda hoped, for the thousandth time, that this meant her daughter had grown up happy. That she had spared Carlotta something, all those years ago.

Linda hadn't expected to be invited to her daughter's wedding, not in a million years. They had barely spoken to each other in the past decade. There had been long, heartfelt letters, where she had done her best to explain herself, but eventually Carlotta had stopped writing back. 

Linda walked out of her home office in a daze and washed her hands in the kitchen sink--once, twice, three times--an anxious habit that she had developed in her 20s, the first time she was hospitalized. Trigvy came in from the office and saw her standing there, washing and washing. 

"Is something on your mind?" He said, gently nudging her towards the sunny table under the kitchen's wide window. Linda handed him the wedding invitation and then watched his face--when she was spiraling, she could often ground herself in his reactions to things. She caught the look of surprise, and then... pain? In his eyes. But he quickly replaced both with a grin.

"A karaoke wedding? Is that an American thing?” He joked. 

“No it's more of a ‘my goofy family’ thing,” she said. Linda’s brother Benj had started a karaoke business, and she had heard from Benj over the years that Carlotta was a wonderful singer. Apparently she sang Aretha Franklin's "I Will Survive" at nearly every holiday gathering since she was six. How did a six year old come upon a song like that? Linda was sure she had Benj to thank for that, offering his long-suffering niece a rage anthem to remember her mom by. 

Linda knew Benj and Carlotta had become close over the years. She'd had so many mixed feelings about that--her brother had the same issues as her, with schizophrenia and multiple dramatic hospitalizations. But he had no kids himself, no one who had directly depended on him to keep it together, to be a good role model, to be able to love them unconditionally and put them first at all times. It was easier for him to have a relationship with Carlotta. 

Linda had never done karaoke in her life. Honestly, the idea mortified her. When she was first hospitalized, she had been a year into her Vocal Arts degree at Julliard. She had soaringly high dreams, then--she knew she was going to be a famous opera singer. But she never made it back to Julliard. She met Roland, and they married, and had Carlotta... in any event, the idea of standing in front of her daughter on a stage in some auditorium, cheap microphone in hand that would make her sound like a completely untrained amateur, reading lyrics off of a screen... if there was a God, this is exactly how he would punish her. And if her daughter did Aretha Franklin again, "kept thinking I could never live without you by my side..." well that would be it. Linda would just die right there on the spot. She would decidedly not survive. 

"Do we have to go?" Linda said, looking up from her chapped hands into Trigvy's kind face. Linda had met Trigvy in Minneapolis when she was working as a night club singer. She had been flying high in a manic phase, just weeks after she had left Carlotta and Roland in Chicago. She remembered that sultry act she did on stage and shuddered, the way she fed off of the audience, inflating to Cleopatra proportions in her deluded mind. When she had finally been stabilized on her meds, she vowed she would not sing for an audience again. Did karaoke count? 

"Yeah, I think we do have to go, darlin’.” 

~☆~

Carlotta picked at the taffeta on her vintage wedding gown. She had just married the love of her life, and they were now in a rented limo headed towards the event hall where her guests would drink from an open bar and sing as many rounds of karaoke as they could stand until 2am. Uncle Benj would be running the show, a thought that warmed Carlotta. He had really made something of his karaoke business, in spite of all of the obstacles in his life. When he had asked to plan her wedding she had been pretty apprehensive, but he had done a great job, even if almost all of the choices he made were safe and cliche. If she had planned it herself, she probably would have thrown a destination wedding on a Thai Island with a guest list of ten or fifteen, and everyone would have eaten a psychedelic mushroom when she said “I do.” But then Benj and David’s grandparents wouldn’t have been there. 

She had seen her mother amongst the guests when she walked down the aisle, side by side with the strange Norwegian man who imitated an American southern dialect and wore cowboy boots. She knew they had fallen in love soon after her mother left, at a time when her mom was definitely unmedicated. At first, she’d hated him for this, certain there must be something wrong with him if he was picking up unhinged women at seedy night clubs. But Benj had kept her mostly up-to-date on the big events in her mother’s life, and after twenty-five years and so many different episodes and new medications, Trigvy and her were still together. That had to count for something. 

Her mother was still stunning, wearing an emerald green dress that hugged her curvy figure, her done-up hair thick and dyed dark with a few escaped curls framing her heart-shaped face. Carlotta figured she was lucky to have inherited even a fraction of her mother's good looks, and even luckier to have avoided inheriting some of her other traits. 

She had asked David if it was a mistake to invite her mom to the wedding. He had taken a long, diplomatic pause before saying, "didn't you mention you'd like to know her better?" Because any mention of Linda was potentially volatile territory. They had fought on their third date when David had naively asked, “so why don’t you ever talk about your mother?” But since then Carlotta had become better and burying those explosive feelings. She would be lying, though, if she said thoughts of her mother hadn’t been racing through her mind as she stood in front of David, waiting for the Rabbi to finish. Even though she was thirty now, she still had nightmares about losing her mind, about packing a bag in the middle of the night and leaving her whole life behind. That was probably why she hadn’t married David sooner; she needed to be sure. 

Now she was staring out the window of the limo, thinking of her mother again. 

“What if she does something crazy? She’s so unpredictable,” Carlotta muttered, though she instantly felt guilty for saying it. 

David squeezed her hand. He didn’t need to ask who. 

“If she does, I'll pick you up like the hulk and run you out of the building to the nearest bar, and we'll finish the party by ourselves.” She turned towards him and planted a huge kiss on his cheek. He moved and caught her lips with his, and they made out like teenagers until the limo pulled in front of The Westin hotel. 

“We better kick off the singing,” David said, leading her into the grand room with its moody night-club lighting. 

“Let me guess—I should ask your uncle to cue up ‘I Will Survive’?” 

“God, no!” Carlotta yelled, surprising herself. “I can’t sing that in front of my mother.”

He thought about it for a moment and visibly cringed.

“Desperado? As a duet?” He offered. She nodded. They were really great at singing together, she knew it almost wasn’t fair to her guests that they would have to follow her act. But what was a wedding if not an opportunity to showcase an idyllic, ridiculously happy union? 

~☆~

“Deeeeesperado! Why don’t you come to your senses…” Carlotta and David sang, their voices in harmony. Linda watched in stunned silence as her daughter sang with a voice so like her own had been. Replace the bizarre 80’s-style off-white wedding dress with an equally bizarre, 80’s-style evening gown and that could have been her up there, in her night-club singing days, wooing her audience with a voice that had a hard-won edge of pain to it. Her heart hurt and her head started to swim a little. Benj approached her, carrying a glass of water and a small, white notecard with a pen clipped to it. He handed her the water and placed the notecard on the table.

“Have you had a chance to look at the song book, yet?” He asked. Her eyes grew wide.

“I can’t sing here, Benj. Carlotta doesn’t want that.” 

“I think she does,” he said. Benj gave her a sad look, not bothering to hide the hefty weight of the chasm between mother and daughter. He was not subtle. She knew she would cry if she looked at his face much longer, so she flipped open the song book instead. She found herself in the Dolly Parton section, her finger running down the page until she saw the song she was looking for—one that would have showcased her opera-singing lungs twenty years ago. She wrote her musical selection on the notecard and handed it to Benj. 

“Bold choice!” He said. 

Linda scoffed. “As a young girl, I was training at--“ 

“Julliard, yeah yeah, I know,” he finished, winking at her as he stood. He took the card back to his karaoke DJ booth by the stage.

Linda smoothed out her silky dress and sipped her water, trying to moisten her throat. She worked her jaw a little and did some quiet vocal exercises to warm herself up. Her heart was racing. Trigvy came back from the bar where he had been hanging back to give her and her brother some space to talk. Now he pulled his chair next to hers. 

“She sounds a lot like you. I had to do a double-take to make sure I hadn’t stepped into a time-machine,” he said. He put a hand on her back and must have felt the thump-thump of her heart.

“Hey, Benj did not buy cheap microphones. Don’t worry, you’ll sound fantastic!” he said, with an upbeat enthusiasm that she had never once seen in someone born in the United States. She looked up at him gratefully, focusing on that calm, self-assured face. He was her safe place. When he said it was going to be okay, she did her best to believe him. 

“Lets welcome to the stage, Linda!” She heard her brother calling. She stood up, willing her legs to carry her, and then, willing her arm to reach for the microphone. She was grateful for the bright stage lights that made it hard for her to see the people sitting in the audience. When the recorded music started, a little tinny and strange when she had been accustomed to a live band, her nerves gave way to the practiced persona she had developed for the stage.

“If I should stay, well I would only be in your way…” she crooned. She could hear it immediately—she sounded good. Her voice was resonant, powerful. It was as if, in the lines of the song, she could hear her heart shaking off its cobwebs. But she could hear another thing, too. She had made a huge mistake. This had been her audition song to Julliard, before she’d had Carlotta. Now it was a little too on the nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said into the microphone, scanning the crowd for her daughter. “Carlotta? I’m sorry, I know this song choice was in poor taste. I’ll just go, happy wedding dear.” Benj paused the music. 

“Just sing!” She heard Carlotta yell. And then the other guests chimed in, until there was a chant going—“Sing! Sing! Sing!”

On the final note of “I will always love you,” she took a bow. And for the first time in over a decade, she received a standing ovation—from David’s family, from their friends, from her ex-husband Roland who had quietly avoided her all night, even from the hotel staff… and from her daughter. But she didn’t feel the hot buzz of invincibility, of power, that she had as a newly minted night-club singer. She felt wobbly, stormy—like she had opened a door to things she wasn’t supposed to let herself feel, and now she couldn’t close it again.What if it was too much? What if she lost herself to it? 

“I need some air,” she said to Trigvy once off-stage, pulling her shawl over her shoulders and rushing outdoors to the large balcony. It was night time now, and the sky was surprisingly clear, the stars bright. She took in a huge breath of summer air and sighed it out heavily. 

“Mom?” Linda hadn’t noticed the glass door opening behind her. Carlotta came towards her, her wedding dress softly swishing on the marble floor of the balcony.

“Oh don’t worry about me, I’m fine. You go have fun with your guests, I’ll be right back in,” Linda said. The last thing she wanted to do was make a scene.

“No, its okay. I wanted to talk to you for a bit. If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Linda said, trying to hide her eagerness. She didn’t want to put the weight of her hope on her daughter right now. 

“That song. That was… pretty dramatic,” Carlotta said, laughing.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t think…” 

“Don’t be sorry, I understood the sentiment. And honestly, it was very you,” she said, with at least a hint of affection in her voice. Linda laughed gruffly.

“I guess you’re probably right,” she said. 

There was a long, heavy pause between them. Linda could feel Carlotta building up the courage to speak, and she fought the urge to fill the silence between them with talk of the weather, the wedding reception, the state of public transit in Chicago. Instead, she breathed deeply, and she waited. 

“Mom… there is something I need to say to you. And now doesn’t feel like the right time, but I have to say it anyway.”

She paused again, so Linda said, “Its okay. Go ahead.”

Carlotta breathed a moment like she was psyching herself up.

“You really messed me up,” she said with surprising volume. Linda sucked in a breath, but said nothing. Carlotta continued. 

“I never knew if it was worth trying to heal things, because you never fought for me. You stayed away. Until your letters, I didn't know if you were even aware of what you had put me through... if you could even understand it."

Linda looked up at the stars, avoiding the urge to be distracted by the vastness of the cosmos, by the probability of life in other galaxies, by the weird ads that promised to let rich people go on space cruises. She owed it to her daughter to give her a real, no-bullshit response. Even if it meant Carlotta would never speak to her again. 

“The truth is, I’ll never understand it. Never.” Linda said. 

“I can't make sense of the way my own life betrayed me. My own mind, my own heart. Sometimes I have very clear moments, and it hurts so much I want to die. Other times I'm a little dulled by my medication, and that's a mercy. I live from distraction to distraction, and I’ve never been able to decide if I did the right thing. If you need closure, I hate to say it but I'll disappoint you again. I can be sorry, but I can't make it make sense. Not any of it.” 

There was another long pause before Carlotta said quietly, “I don’t want closure.” 

Linda turned to her daughter, the hope filtering into her voice unbidden. “Then what do you want?” She asked.

Carlotta took a few beats and then said, with an exaggeratedly casual heir, “why don’t you stay in town for a few days? We’ll go to a few karaoke bars, you can tell everyone about Julliard before you sing so they know you’re not really supposed to be there." Linda laughed.

“Fine,” she said. “If it's what you want, I’ll go to every karaoke bar in this whole damn city.” 

“Good,” Carlotta said, wrapping an arm around Linda’s shoulder. “Now let's get back inside. Trigvy is probably trying to talk to my dad and we both know that will be awkward.”

“Let's save them from themselves,” Linda agreed. They walked back in together.