Moment Magnitude

The Endless Pool of Tears

The Endless Pool of Tears.

That may not be a direct quote, but it's at least close to a line I read in Mary Edwards (I wanted to write Ellen, that must be a Catholic upbringing hangover, unwelcome) Wertsch's book, Military Brats, a book my father gave me (fraught) that I used in therapy some fifteen years ago. Among other things - but that's a whole big-ass episode in my life about which I may address or not.

But that endless pool. While my violent, controlling, rage-aholic father, who started out as military, somewhere getting scooped up into covert activity under the aegis of National Security (NSA today), wrecking havoc on my childhood - and my Irish twin brother's (although I expect he is still less likely to admit as much) prevailed upon me to become adult before experiencing my own childhood, here I fucking am.

I've been clean for a long while. It used to be that I would break down in these uncontrollable periods of tears, sobbing racks, animal howls, torrents of tears, most often thudding my head again the steering wheel of my car, after a night out with friends, one drink too many, in the back of my mind grateful that no cop car caught me, parked, and free to let loose all the pent-up pain, rage, and fear in a flood of salt water.

It happened tonight. And I let it. I was present in my pain. I allowed all those tentacles of tangled pain wrap right around the firmament of my psyche.

All I could think of was my sister, when she was maybe three or four years old. I was pushing her on a swing. We were living in Germany. I think I remember that she wanted to go higher - something about which my mother warned me - but my little sister was never very fond of me (preferring my brother), and I wanted to please her. I think. I pushed harder.

(What the fuck is that weird feeling I get in my hands when I write that, godammit?)

I pushed her higher.

And she fell. On her face, Her bottom teeth almost perforated the place right below her bottom lip. Panicked, I picked her up, I know she was crying, screaming, and hauled her back to our house. I don't remember much after that. I I'm sure my mother took her to the dispensary, where she was stitched up, injected with penicillin or tetanus or something, and that was that.

To this day, I feel culpable. There's no getting around it.

My sister is dead.

Every so often, these sharp images come at me, so fearsome. That endless pool of tears wells up to the point where I can barely see through the windshield of the car as I drive home.

These days, I am less inchoate. These days, I say "I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry..."

Not that it makes one lick of difference.

I get out of the car, eyes swollen, and I look up at the crystal clear night, the stars so clear out here in the country. I can see all the way back in time, universes ago.

I know that it's just a roll of the dice. This consciousness, this fucking self-awareness, in all its glory, in all its agonizing responsibility, drives home the intrinsic thing: There is no god.

But it's hard.   

Alchemical

A week before my period, I get emotional. I still do.

I used to think that one ovary was the angry ovary, throw-knives angry. My temper would trigger fast, the heat would rise up my neck, and I would struggle to "stay - in - control."

The other ovary would be weepy. I would cry at almost nothing, at Hallmark Cards television ads. Pathetic.

The angry ovary is on hiatus. Anymore, I get the weepies. I cry at the drop of a hat. It happens mostly when I am by myself (preferably) watching gooey television, any romantic film on cable or Masterpiece Theater, renditions of anything Austen, Bronte, Copperfield, or James.

I'll watch such weepies on purpose. I like the way it feels. It reminds me how hard it is to be in love, of the endless yearning and hopefulness.

"I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul."

Right. My big brain knows that obsessive love doesn't work. The couple of times I was the object of obsession, it felt like a vise encircled my neck, and that it was tightened to the point of suffocation. I was good at running away.

Except for the handful of times when I obsessed. Right after a breakup. It's as if I went into shock, my brain slowed, and I did irrational things.

Even today, when I recall some stupid behavior, I blush from embarrassment. And then I chuckle. I've learned how to forgive myself, and I've learned how to keep those nutty impulses in check. They never last anyhow, and for all I know, they might be healing.

Comedy equals tragedy plus time.

Sometimes, one other feeling lingers. The feeling of waiting, of the belief that the real thing will someday come along and grab me by the shirt.

In truth, I've had some of those shirt-grabbing moments.

I thought I would describe a handful, but one in particular is doing its every-few-months lap around my memory. (Except for another one, a funny guy I knew turned up at my apartment while I was painting...picked up a brush and helped me finish. Okay, there are others.)

They tend to be Erasers.

The one I remember happened maybe ten years ago. I was finishing a mid-summer ecological science conference in Snowbird, Utah. A scientist himself (geologist), he had just returned from lengthy field research project in the high deserts of western China. And he popped into Utah for a long weekend. We had a history by then of a couple of days here and there around the country. We lived on opposite ends of the country, in so many ways, yet we managed to get together now and then.

Push pins in a map of the United States: Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, D.C., New Mexico, Utah...

We hiked up a Snowbird mountain together. We started at 8000 feet above sea level, summitted at over 11,000 feet, took the ski tram down, and wound up in the middle of a belly dancer festival on the Snowbird resort grounds.

Never mind the belly dancers (Mormons?).

I remember I had the time of my life, not so much for our easy and funny conversation, but more for his way of always making me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered.

I also recall that he had an altimeter and thermometer in his wristwatch. Plus, he could describe the geological history of the montane region just east of the Salt Lake basin. It was as if he was reciting Shakespeare's sonnets to me.

The last time I saw him was maybe five years ago. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend. We all met for dinner. At one point in the conversation, I remember he still had that twinkle, and if we had been by ourselves, something else would have happened.

In that, our desires and energies were well-matched.

We talk every now and then - usually when he is on a long drive somewhere in the great Southwest, heading to another research trench-digging site. He always has a good story.

Or a sad one. A few years back, he had his heart broken for what sounded like the first time. It took the piss out of him, and it took time too. (I broke my own a couple of years later - as hard as I ever have, only for me, it took less time that time.)

He could be married now. 

But whenever I recall our times, I smile. I have no regrets.

Someday, maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe a roll of the dice will present another such person, who "poof" will be there before me, and grab me by the shirt.

Only maybe I will see him, and pay more attention.   

Snow Falls, Evaporates

Some three-plus weeks ago, I attended a memorial service in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The complete story can be found here and here.

The untimely and unnatural death of Mary Dean Buckley was remembered by friends and family in the town of Rumson.

I knew Mary. She was the sister of a fellow I dated back in the early-mid 1980s (that is a whole other story). I did not know her well, but I recall clearly that she was real and true, loving, present, self-effacing, and I expect, a very good person. I'm sure she had her foibles, tics that her family forebore and forgave. I didn't know her well enough to see any of them. She should not have died. She was forty-seven, and she left behind a husband and four sons.

Her funeral was held last November.

The follow-up service was held on a cold, gray weekday, in a white, clapboard Catholic church, situated just across the Navesink River from the barrier spit of land called Sea Bright. I arrived after the service had begun, and took a seat in one of the rear-most rows.

I was oddly relieved that after so many years, I have forgotten whole chunks of the Catholic mass. I sat and watched the faithful.

I surveyed the backs of heads, trying to identify people that I am sure I had not seen in twenty years. I recognized Mary's husband, Matt, his thick head of hair still thick and full, but now completely silver.

Other faces felt familiar, and I caught the eye of some, but further recognition failed. When the service ended, everyone filed out, paying respects to the family. I spotted Mary's parents, both of whom I knew. And I waited until everyone filed out before me.

When Mary's mother held out her hand, and I said, "It's Holly. Holly Hodder," she exclaimed and hugged me.

Times like those strip away the years, and I am a young woman all over again, wanting so much to make a good impression.

In the next second, however, I returned to the present, to the person I am, to the person I like being, and I am happy just to offer condolence, physical touch, a smile, and a memory.

Mary's parents hosted a luncheon at their home, and I made a wrong turn or two, as I drove the three or so miles further inland from the ocean. The high school from which I graduated is probably not more than two miles further, and would, no doubt, result in at least one more wrong turn, if I had been motivated to find it. I was not.

I reintroduced myself, or was reintroduced to people I had not seen in the intervening twenty years. In short order, I discovered that I had not seen these people since the actual day that Mary and Matt were married - their wedding day, in the summer of 1985.

I stood in the family dining room when something hit me. Mary and Matt's wedding day was memorable to me, more for the day afterward. Mary's brother and I were broken up by then, only a few weeks earlier, and I was still in pain. I was fragile.

(Funny, I still devolve into a state of fragility after heartbreak, but now I know that it doesn't last quite so long, and I manage to survive, in spite of myself, time after time.)

But that evening, after the bride and groom had departed, I was hanging on by an emotional thread, at the reception pounding gin-and-tonics, when I was offered lines. Yes, lines of coke. I was no stranger to the drug, having withstood college in the late 1970s, and more than my fair share of nights at Studio, Xenon, and Mudd Club, among others. So I said yes.

And that was the last time I ever used cocaine. A watershed.

That hangover is still memorable, for its pain and duration. My whole body felt as though a tractor had rolled back and forth over it. My mother - I crashed at her apartment - either didn't comprehend, or didn't ask, and I did not return to the land of the cogent or ambulatory for forty-eight hours.

And once I did, I knew that was it. I was done, with so many things, the ex-boyfriend, the drug. I kid around today, and say that I could be surrounded by mountains of the stuff, and I would not indulge. I've had opportunities since, albeit rare, and I stay away, steer clear.

I suppose we're calmer these days. The people who attended that service, those I assume are close to my own age, now seem settled, somewhat fleshier around the mid-sections, conservatively-attired, with upscale but low-key jewelry. They drive solid and safe automobiles. They talked about their families, their children. A couple of fellows told genuinely funny stories.

And yet, I felt apart. I don't live in a pristine family-oriented community. Indeed, I have little in common with married people, raising teenagers.

I could sense the city in the back of mind: "Get back up here already!"

One fellow called me "Holly-lama." That was funny.

Another fellow, one who caught my eye at the church, when we were reintroduced at the luncheon, I asked if we had met before. He responded that he did not think so.

Hmmm. It came to me afterward, after I made my farewells, and drove back to the beach to conjure memories of summers past.

The one and only time I took a hit of Ecstasy was on a date with a guy who (I think?) resembled that fellow. I cannot remember his name. Maybe his family name was an English tradesperson-name, like Farmer or Carpenter. Maybe not. He was from Rumson, and he drank too much, way too much. I think that same guy might have turned up at Mary and Matt's wedding reception - held at a big, semi-private beach club in Sea Bright (Matt told me the place has long since burned to the ground).

When he saw me, he stumbled so slightly, and either reached for or pointed at me, and said, "I'm gonna take that girl home and drill her."

The last two words sounded like "driller," rhyming with "killer." Some things you don't remember, some things you just don't forget.

I know that, even with too many cocktails and my sinuses throbbing, I got out of there, and drove straight to my mother's place.

Funny how the memories of such events are buried, most of the time. I hadn't thought of that night in years, and yet there I was, driving to the surfer beach in North End, like I did when I skipped school, eager to sit my butt on the sand and watch the boys.

The beach is built-up in places now, new condominium complexes, enormous townhouses that abut the sea wall - sure to be destroyed in the next whopper of a hurricane.

It was time to leave the summers behind and return north.

As I drove through the toll gate onto the Garden State Parkway (whoever invented EZ-Pass needs to be canonized), snow flurries blew down and all around me. I was home inside of seventy minutes flat. 

Convergence

      

When I walked into his house, I could see clear through the wall of windows to the water. And even though it is full-on summer, the first thing that popped into my head was. "This place must be beautiful in winter."

I had no cogent idea why I said that. But spending last weekend in that wonderful place, I kept thinking, someone could write a book here, someone could use this place as a setting for a story.

I half expected Daisy and Tom Buchanan to pull up on a polished wood sailboat, just across from East Egg, probably Great Neck in reality, just in time for cocktails. "Darling, wouldn't you just kill to have some of that iced gin?"

In truth, I never spent time on the Long Island Sound, much less the Connecticut side. And yet here I was, and I adored every blissful second.

One hundred years from now, when the sea-level rises at least one hundred feet, at least one hundred feet, this house and this place will be gone. Boy-oh-boy, am I happy I was there, if only for a weekend.

I took a walk the second day, about a mile out, along the water's edge, east and north. The beach here is not like that which faces the wild wind and waves of the Atlantic. There is sand, to be sure, but the Sound is one giant mollusk bed, a never-ending food supply for the tens of gulls overhead, the beach is scrambled by all kinds of shells. At least four different kinds of clams, oysters, mussels, and more. Most of the shells are broken, in shards. They are like broken glass, they cut tender flesh, flip-flops are essential.

I could make out a lighthouse off, close to shore.

And I had watched as the tide covered and revealed the same curving spit of land that arced its way, but never reached that light house. I made for the spit. As I climbed up over the rock jetty, I realized that the spit was almost nothing but shells. Crunch. I suspected that the tide was turning, and the water was racing back to fill the shoreline, but I kept going.

The water, I knew, was very warm, and shallow. If I did get caught, I knew I could splash my way back. I nearly made it to the end, when I stopped. The waves, though tiny, were indeed bringing the water back up and over the spit. The gulls were swooping overhead, dropping mollusks, cracking them open for the food inside. A few more squatted in front of me.

When I stopped, and paused, I could feel, as much as I heard and saw, the waves hitting both sides, not more than two feet wide now. The waves beat in even, simultaneous strikes. And it felt to me as if the air around me compressed so slightly each time they hit, in unison, from either side. When I focused out to the vanishing end point, it was as though the power of the water was so enormous, but so controlled, in these little, lilting laps.

Harmonics.

It felt like physics.

Oh That Feeling

I read once, somewhere, maybe it was James Clavell, that Japanese experience the pain and ecstasy of love in their lower stomachs. I imagine it's deep in the intestines, the Japanese call it the hara.

We Westerners claim we feel love in the heart. Heartache. Heartbreak.

I read somewhere in the last couple of months that behavioral biologists or neuroscientists or some combination, studied the human response to heartbreak. Whether it happens in the hara or the heart, I don't know, but I recall that the data found that heartbreak symptoms are similar to some kinds of stresses, anxieties, or depression disorders, or some admixture of all these brain, chemically-associated diagnoses. Some of these included heart palpitations, cold sweats, and sleeping disorders. Sounds like symptoms of withdrawal.

I know where I feel it, and it's not in the heart or the stomach, although the latter takes a beating when I experience "heartbreak." I've learned that a therapeutic hit or three of a certain controlled substance - although in those quantities no longer illegal in downtown Denver - ameliorate the agita and nausea caused by the stress of heartbreak, like balm on the wound of addiction, easier than morphine. It helps me keep my appetite.

No, I feel it in my upper arms. A trigger point, it must be, where the muscles of the biceps attach to the rotator cuffs or the cap of the shoulders. It feels like sudden, acute muscle fatigue, as if I pushed the muscles past the anaerobic threshold - straight to failure. My arms fall, weakened, to my sides. Like I cannot move them.

The first time I remember this happening was when I was thirty-one years old. I was in a double-whammy problematic relationship. We worked for the same company, and we lived a two-hour plane ride apart.

Once, after we had a rendezvous in South Carolina, a vacation-weekend, except it was always vacation and it was always passionate, his plane left hours before before mine. I remember standing outside, in the airport parking lot, trying to determine which plane was his. And as that jet ascended quick, northwestward, I felt this queer pain in my upper arms, both of them. I was almost paralyzed. Tears started to well, but I short-circuited them somehow, gulped them back or something. That short choke, that catch that makes the back of your throat feel dry. For a second.

I remember it happened again, years later with one of the Erasers. We were at at the tag-end of a geophysics conference in Boston. He left before me, and I waited before I stared out from a high-floor hotel window toward Logan Airport, imagining that I could pick out his plane, this one heading due west, then southwest.

I am amazed that the same feeling happened when I watch the silliest of movies. It happened in the last couple of weeks. The Wedding Date? Ridiculous. The recent, semi-necessary remake of Pride and Prejudice - oh good lord.

The good thing, I have to believe, is that I can still experience the feeling, weak arms and all, even at a remove, vicarious, a sense memory.

Longtime Companions

Yesterday, I had breakfast with one of my dearest friends from our university days.

Some seventeen or more years ago, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Our lives took different paths, but in many ways we remain similar, in worldview, and for me, that's one of the things that counts. For example, we may not be in touch for years, but when we do reconnect, the years strip away, and it seems as though we pick up our conversation from where it left off.

The last time, I was in San Francisco on business. She had driven in from across the Golden Gate for a meeting, and we had coffee. I don't remember how many years ago that was. I don't want to. It doesn't matter.

She was in town now, because her eldest daughter is touring colleges "back east," from Connecticut to Philadelphia - and New York City, right in the choicest middle. Natch.

When her younger daughter starts college - most likely "back east," my college friend may move back to the city. And I would like that.

--------------------------------------------------

This evening, I walked home from a meeting with a longtime friend and literary agent. We met at the Noho Star, not half a block from her offices. We caught up, discussed our respective cats' nine lives and deaths. She gave me sound advice, reiterating what other NYC-based, woman literary agents have recommended of late: Write the first draft of your novel.

Aha, first mention here, now. The novel. In pieces: thirty percent written, plus a thirty-page plot outline, plus synopses for books two and three, plus a film treatment. That and a MetroCard will put me on the Subway, even with all the goodwill I have established in the book business. Gotta get it right. Roger that. Will do.

The whole story sits in my head. I need to make the time to go back, change some stuff, and write the thing.

--------------------------------------------------

Last week was derailed in many ways owing to a shocking and sad piece of news. Liz Maguire. I got the call last Monday morning. The words were simple. "Liz Maguire died."

"Liz Maguire? Our Liz Maguire? Of Basic Books? Dead? What?"

I hadn't had my usual four cups of coffee.

"Yes. Last weekend. I wanted you to hear it before you read it in the trades."

"But how?" My mind reeled. Liz - my age, maybe six months older, that was all.

"Ovarian cancer. She was diagnosed ten weeks ago."

Ten fucking weeks. That sentence hung in the air over my head. Like a plasma, I thought I could touch it, poke it, and it would reform like Jell-O.

I was cashed. I needed time. To be quiet, to let my thoughts roam, to remember my former colleague, the conversations in her office, her dry, quick wit, how our eyebrows rose in tandem over ridiculous corporate politics. She had glorious, thick, red hair, and an amazing laugh. This did not make sense. But the facts were immutable.

I couldn't muster the courage to attend the wake.

The next day, the funeral was at one of those hulking Catholic churches on the northern reach of Park Avenue. Two famous authors gave eulogies, one heartfelt and memoir-like, the other an exhortation. Salt stained my face. I saw many former colleagues, two favorite ex-bosses, in the sunlight, outside, after. Bagpipes.

It was too much. When I returned home, I collapsed mid-afternoon and slept. That night I got good and silly. My way of honoring the Irish. The New York Girl.   

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This week and a Frenchtuesday(s) later, I was chatting with the very gorgeous Frenchman from the previous week, when Jean Phillipe approached. I introduced the two of them, but not before they both arched back, yelled something inchoate, and embraced. Turns out they've known each other for over thirteen years - each unaware that the other resides in New York. Astonishing. Jean Phillipe brought me to the coven, the lair of Frenchtuesdays for the first time some nineteen months ago. And now, I re-introduced him to an old friend. Voila.

Linden Boulevard

This is one of three tree(s) that grows in the front of my building.

I am pretty good at rocks. I can usually make a first-pass guess as to whether a rock is of igneous, metamorphic, or sandstone origin. But even the best petrologist knows that it is, at best, a guess. Sometimes they need to examine a slice of rock (yes, a slice - they call it "thin section") under a high-powered microscope to analyze the grain structure. And even that does not provide an absolute answer all the time. Sometimes they have to go deeper and determine the chemical make-up, the structure of the molecules that make up a sample to determine what kind of rock it is. Maybe they use centrifuges or something, I'm not sure (but I could find out).

I think that's cool. Meanwhile, I am comfortable with a first-pass guess.

I know far less about flora. Plant life? Forget it. I know the differences among roses, tulips, and carnations. Honeysuckle - because you can smell it. I know obvious characteristics. Conifers versus deciduous, but little else. Strictly 101-level.

Like those trees outside my building, the ones we planted some ten years ago. I picked a leaf off a low-hanging branch, and did a few minutes of research. It appears to be more linden-like than pear-like.

And I kind of like that. The linden part. One reason is that I remember my mother telling me she grew up somewhere near a Linden Boulevard. And a Pitkin Avenue.

I did a search on those two street names, came up with an on-line map, and sure enough, those two streets run from East New York, Brooklyn into Queens, and dead-end somewhere near Ozone Park. As my mom tells it, she grew up in East New York. And I know the family, at a later point, populated itself among a collection of blocks in Richmond Hill and Ozone Park. Close to Kennedy Airport, or as my grandfather called it, "Idlewild."

First Hint

For a minute there, over the weekend, when the ambient temperature spiked to over eighty degrees Fahrenheit, I felt summer. I felt it in advance, summer is not yet slated to arrive. Something about the way the breeze felt on my skin, the way the rising mercury created that distinct warm scent.

The late afternoon rays of the sun have grown longer, a lower slant of orange that bounces off the walls of windows, turning the west-facing city facades orange, then pink-orange, before the evening descends.

The sun appeared to set, or rather, the last light faded, around a quarter to eight. At the apex of summer, the light lasts until half past nine. We have about an hour and half more per day before we reach that point.

Instead of dashing over to the almost hermetically-sealed gym, I took a walk. I didn't run, like I often do when the weather turns warmer, but I took the same route.

And I took off my glasses, so that when I relaxed my focus, relaxed my eyes in general, I could avoid the sharp edges of people's faces. I am more farsighted than ever, and my vision has grown blurred. Still, I can make out the walk/don't walk icons at the intersections, so I doubt I'm at physical risk. 

The clouds collected in clumps over the buildings as I walked into the sunlight.

I walked west on to the river, where the clouds thinned over the horizon. That light beckons me to the west. Before I moved to Colorado those few years, I often felt lured by that light. It felt as if a string was tugging me all the way to the West Coast. I didn't make it quite west enough. Boulder ain't Santa Monica. I need to get back out to visit Los Angeles again. It's been too long. And I've been saying that to myself too often, lately.

I turned south along the piers, the new riverfront strip of park, past the 14th Street terminus, past the Christopher Street piers. Funny, it seemed as though there were more families than the horde of gay boys. Maybe the latter are out in Fire Island or Cherry Grove, celebrating this first hint-of-summer weekend.

At some point before the big Houston Street pier-parking garage, I dodged left, back into the city and to wind my way through the lower extremity of the West Village, before turning north on Seventh Avenue toward home.

When I looked down the streets to my left, the light was very low on the New Jersey horizon. To my right, the buildings were no longer on fire. In that forty-five minutes, they reflected darker hues in the dusk, punctuated in spots by the streetlights, people sitting at one outdoor cafe after another - all the way up Seventh Avenue South, back through Chelsea, to the eventual right turn onto my home street.

Are the trees we planted in front of my building pears or lindens?

Pear       Linden

I forget. I think pear.

My camera was tucked into my sweatshirt pocket. I forgot to take a single shot.

I Hear a Voice

Except for the rare karaoke party, I don't sing in public. When I do - and I can pretty much nail Burt Bacharach's Walk On By - someone will comment, "I didn't know you could sing."

One extreme response came after I did my karaoke standard at the Raccoon Lodge at a girlfriend's bachelorette party. I was about to call it a night, when I summoned the courage, grabbed the mike and went for it. I bid the bride-to-be goodnight, and made for the door, but not before a strange little man followed me and insisted that it was the best rendition of Walk On By he had ever heard. Right. I said thank you and jumped into a cab.

I am not an in-the-shower singer. I am a driving-in-the car-alone singer. Given my recent crush-obsession, I played the film soundtrack to The Phantom of the Opera during the drive last weekend to the Hamptons. And I sang along with it, almost the whole thing, almost the whole way. Soft or bombastic, I was in my own hermetically-sealed world. I could offend no one. But I was surprised that I could still hit, well, most of the notes.

I remembered a moment in my life, when I was a freshman in Saint John Villa Academy High School for Girls, in music class, with forty or so other girls. In a Gothic-styled building on a Staten Island hill overlooking the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the music teacher ran us run through a series of popular songs of the day.

Mrs. Sparago was as intimidating as any of the old-world nuns in starched habits. Her hair was upswept into a lacquered french twist, her eyebrows were stenciled into two perfect arcs, she wore strict tailored suits, and when she spoke, she aspirated her vowels. In an imperious tone, she explained that she would conduct try-outs for the school's chorus, the pinnacle of the school's social hierarchy. The standards were demanding. Only the best voices would be considered. Every girl wanted to be in chorus.

It was known that Mrs. Sparago was training a a senior for her audition at Juilliard. Her name was Annie, and she was the queen-bee of the student body.

Two years earlier, when we lived in Germany, I performed in the elementary school's shows. My teacher, Mr. Russo, had given me rudimentary training. I was eleven or twelve then. I was aware that I could sing - I sang in Father Forrester's choir, Latin for Mass, Christmas carols for the holidays. That Department of Defense base in Bavaria, Catholic, church singing, choir training.

I sat midway to the back of the long classroom. Mrs Sparago sat ramrod straight in front of her grand piano. Most of my classmates had last names like Magarino, DiStefano, Pasadino, Tedesco. Catholic girls. We sang. Circa 1973, she cued a pop tune that today makes me cringe, If, by the band called Bread. I was fourteen years old and I loved that song. I sang my heart out, forgetting where I was, forgetting the classroom, the other girls, everything. The song ends on one high note that stretches more than a measure.

When it ended, there was a curious silence in the room. It was as if we had all held our breaths, and then exhaled. But not before Mrs. Sparago stood and raised a hand to silence us.

"I hear a voice." Her voice reverberated throughout the room. Some of my classmates glanced in my direction, but I said nothing.

"No one? Well girls, we shall sing it again." She sat at the piano, and we sang. But she stopped less than halfway through, stood, and repeated, "I hear a voice."

"Who is it?" She sounded angry.

One of the girls ventured, "I think it's Laura," and pointed to a girl sitting next to me. Laura and I looked at each other. I know my eyes widened behind my glasses, I was nervous.

"Laura," Mrs. Sparago commanded. "Come here. Come to the front of the class."

I think all of our stomachs dropped for Laura. We shared her fear. At the front of the room, Mrs. Sparago had her sing the song again, by herself. Laura sang two lines, before Mrs. Sparago stopped.

"Thank you," she said. "You have a lovely voice, Laura. And I hope you try out for chorus." And then she looked back at the class, stern.

"There is another voice. Now who is it?"

Laura sat back down next to me. We sat so still, all we could hear were faint street noises.

"It's Holly." Another of my classmates turned and pointed to me. "It's Holly."

"Holly? Come to the front."

I remember my heart pounded. Before that day, none of my schoolmates knew that I sang.

"Holly?" Mrs. Sparago asked. Her voice was softer. Maybe she sensed my reluctance.

She sat at the piano, cued the start, and I sang. The whole song. I cracked a little on the last note.

"I'm sorry. I couldn't hold it." I thought I was finished, that I had failed. Time stopped.

"I want you to sing the last phrase again. Insert a catch-breath here. And you will be able to hold the note."

I looked over her shoulder at the sheet music. She pointed where I should pause and breathe.

She had me run through the phrase not once, but twice.

"That's it. Yes, that's it."

She stood. "You will try out for chorus." It was a command.

She turned to the rest of the class. The bell rang and we were dismissed.

"Holly. Wait," she said. The rest of the girls went ahead of me. "You have a gift. Once you are in chorus, I will train you. Privately."

My parents were reluctant to let me join chorus, but I did. I trained, and I can still hear her instructions, "From your diaphragm, Holly, I want to hear the note from off the top of your head. The top of your head!" I performed a solo in the Christmas gala, the first time a freshman was allowed to do so.

Not a month later, my family moved to Monmouth County, where they enrolled me at Monmouth Regional High School. I trained and performed in the school's musicals, but it was never as special as Mrs. Sparago's lessons. I wonder still if I could have been her next protege. 

A tiny tickle in the back of my mind. An almost insignificant what if.

Fairy Tale

Let's just say that I was at a restaurant/lounge in the Meat Packing District this week. A celebration for the place's second year in business - no mean feat in this town. Free champagne and finger foods.

Let's say too that the Lieutenant Commander invited me, and that a handful of us gathered among the throng, Prima Downhill for one. In fact, Prima Downhill explained, when I noticed that several sets of identical twins in identical outfits were working the party, that her good friends (yes: identical twins) at Twinsworld had cast them all for this second-year anniversary. A "two" theme.

And as long as I'm listing possibilities, set-ups, let's say that the Lieutenant Commander knows that I am cash strapped right now. I'm maintaining that it's a temporary thing. But strapped is strapped.

And then this.

Suppose I was on my sixth or seventh flute of champagne, the last two poured from cans. Since when does champagne come in cans? This was Sophia - the brand of champagne - from none other than the Coppola vineyard. Yes, that Coppola. Francis Ford. The Godfather(s). Sophia. Lost In Translation.

My social studies teacher at St. Patrick's, the Catholic grammar school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Michael Coppola, Mr. Coppola, he said he was related to Francis Ford. First cousins, I think. It was 1971, and I remember one of my classmates telling me about how Mr. Coppola's cousin was making this big movie, in which a big wedding scene was being shot in Staten Island. She said her half sister or something was going to star in it, play the role of the bride. That would have been Talia Shire.

We pronounced Mr. Coppola's name with the accent on the second syllable, a long "o." Mr. Coppola. Pure Brooklyn. Not the way Francis Ford pronounces his name.

But I digress.

Let's say that I went up a step toward the bar, to get another champagne (can or not), and when I turned and looked behind me, I lost the Lieutenant Commander in the crowd. I waited a moment, and he stood up. It appeared that he had bent down - and indeed he had. He came over to me and showed me something he found on the floor.

For argument's sake, let's say that he held in his hand a small plastic sleeve or envelope, the kind that looks as though a string or ribbon should be attached to it, like a press pass, or conventioneer's identification badge. Except that this is one was filled with money, folded greenbacks.

Perhaps I said something like, "What is that? Where did you find that?"

And I looked back to where he had been standing, expecting to see a frantic-faced person. I saw nothing but happy revelers, grooving to the ubiquitous beats of the music the deejay was mixing.

And perhaps the Lieutenant Commander explained that he asked the people standing around the spot on the floor where he found the plastic sleeve - if it belonged to anyone. And no one said a word.

At which point, let's imagine, he peeled several of the bills out of the sleeve, and stuffed them into my pocket.

"No," I started. "This is mad. Surely someone has lost this."

"Holly, I checked." He repeated what happened. "I held it up and shouted to the people surrounding me if anyone had lost this. And no one came forward. No one."

And he peeled out one more bill and stuffed it into my pocket with the others.

"I know you need it. Take it."

"Thank you," I asked and stated at the same time.

We each left not long afterward, he before me. When I got into a cab home, I reached into my pocket and counted five fifty-dollar bills. $250. And I thought, if I found $250 every night of the week, I could live. I could cover my expenses. I could live the way I do. And be okay.

And then I thought of Striptellectual. Maybe she earns an average of $250 each night she dances. And that's good.

Let's just say. Perhaps. Supposing. Maybe.