The Wonder Singer. George Rabasa

      Unbridled Books

       Denver, Colorado

      Copyright © 2008

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Rabasa, George, 1941–

       The wonder singer / by George Rabasa.

       p. cm.

       ISBN 978-1-932961-56-0 (alk. paper)

       1. Sopranos (Singers)—Fiction. 2. Autobiographical memory—Fiction.

       3. Ghostwriters—Fiction. I. Title.

       PS3568.A213W66 2008

       813’ .54—dc22

      2008017194

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Book Design by SH · CV

      First Printing

       For Juanita, always

       THE WONDER SINGER

       OH, THE SECRETS SHE TOOK WITH HER.

      There are moments when the order of life collapses in midbreath, when a missed heartbeat brings on an earthquake. At such a moment, this story takes an unexpected turn.

      Perla, the day nurse, calls out from the Señora’s bath, “Oye, Lockwood!” Her shout, cracking with anxiety, cuts through the morning stillness.

      Mark Lockwood sets down a mug hard on the kitchen counter, wincing as hot coffee splashes the back of his hand.

      “Lockwood!”

      He hurries across the living room to Señora Casals’ bedroom. Perla stands at the bathroom door, her easy familiarity with him turning grave, as if at the click of a switch.

      A moment later the nurse and the writer are staring down into the sunken marble tub where Mercè Casals, the legendary soprano, floats motionless. She is a sight, so fleshy and pale, blubberous and opalescent, buoyant in her fragrant bath, green eyes open and staring up out of the water as if at a precise point on the ceiling. A question seizes Lockwood’s mind: What did she think the moment before dying that would cause her to open her eyes in wonder and turn the corners of her mouth in what is distinctly, even as her features are settling into death, a smile?

      He reaches reflexively for the notebook tucked into the hip pocket of his khakis. For months he has been writing down the insights and telling details that will help his task as ghostwriter of the Señora’s autobiography. “She loved a long bath. It was the perfect way to start her day.” He scribbles down the thought as he speaks.

      In the dim light, in the steamy warm air, in the scent of the orchids and the ferns and the snaking tendrils of ivy and clematis and jasmine, Lockwood hears himself think: My diva is dead.

      Perla was usually in the bathroom only long enough to help the Señora out of the water and into a plush robe. Now, past any options that would have resolved a medical crisis, she sits on a brass chair, ready in her crisp white uniform to take on her professional role. “I always envied the Señora’s bathing in such a lovely space. And now, an appropriately sensuous end to her life.”

      Lockwood gazes down at the tub where Mercè Casals lies undisturbed. Her thin dyed-red hair, undulating in the slight motion of the water, is a halo around her head. “Somehow it’s not as bad a sight as I imagined.”

      Perla looks at him curiously. “You’ve never seen a dead body before. A muertito?”

      “How can you tell?”

      “Everybody has the same impression. ‘My, she looks peaceful, like she’s sleeping.’”

      Lockwood agrees. “Serene, I would say.”

      “I’ve seen maybe a hundred dead people,” Perla says. “I’ve seen them when they’re going, I’ve seen them when they’ve gone, and I’ve seen them when they’re just a collection of parts. But this is the first time I’ve seen the Señora naked. She wouldn’t have liked that, the two of us gawking.”

      “You’re her nurse. It’s a professional thing.”

      “You’re her writer. Is that professional?”

      “It won’t be easy to find another famous lady in need of an autobiography.” He sighs unhappily. “What now?”

      “We look for work.”

      “No, I mean after someone dies, and they’re found, what happens next?”

      “I call her doctor. There’s paperwork. Approximate time of death. Probably between seven and eight. Tuesday, October 14, 1999. Too bad. She had been looking forward to celebrating the turn of the millennium. It meant a lot to her to live to the year 2000.”

      “She had a sense of her place in history.”

      “You will go on with the book, right?”

      Lockwood shrugs. “I’ll call her agent,” he says. “He’s also my agent. Kill two birds.”

      “Dumb choice of words, for a writer.”

      Lockwood tries not to stare at the submerged body. “She wouldn’t want us to send her away yet. I feel her spirit needs the company.”

      “She died in her favorite room.”

      The bathroom is a jeweled grotto, with only a faint glow from lights recessed into the ceiling, so that the tiles gleam like gems and reflect each other in mirrors and polished gold fixtures and black marble bases under the basin and the tub, where air jets and a spigot sculpted into a brass dolphin are aimed to whirl and spray and burble on all the right places from aching vertebrae to the elusive hot button. Sconces on brass pedestals burn sage and myrrh. To drive away devils. To attract male angels with golden curls, pearly teeth, fleshy earlobes, small penises. From hidden speakers would come the voice of Mercè Casals as Floria Tosca, as Norma, as Violetta, always the Señora listening to herself. The remembered songs took her breath away and made her heart pound.

      Lockwood can hear her still: Ah! she might have exclaimed to herself. How I held that B-flat in “Vissi d’arte.” It was as if God was breathing through me and the note would resound for all eternity.

      Did I die of natural causes? Lockwood thinks she might ask at the end of her memoir. He asks Perla.

      “Whatever makes you die is a natural cause,” Perla says briskly.

      He dips his fingers into the still tepid water and brushes a stray wisp from the Señora’s forehead. “I think she died of her years weighing heavily, each like a stone upon her chest, as she tried to feel a little lighter by floating in her tub.”

      “Nobody dies of things like that.” Perla is suddenly authoritative. “Too much bacon fat clogging the veins and causing a heart stoppage. As natural as death by Nembutal or Absolut or China White.”

      Lockwood shrugs; hard science is not about to cancel imagination. “Oh, the secrets