The audience applauded wildly, and “Tosca” swooped low in her final curtsy. Down came the curtain. Still channeling Puccini’s ecstatic paean to art, Rayna’s round, shining face beamed at the other singers as everyone hustled to their designated dressing rooms.
Rayna a.k.a. Tosca sat in front of the mirror removing her makeup and wondered who she would discover underneath. With an experienced hand she wiped a cotton pad that had been soaking in baby oil over the greasepaint on her cheeks and forehead. She was faintly singing the final strains of the encore she had chosen, the aria Vissi d’arte.
The cotton pad turned the color of roasted cashews, as the foundation mingled with rosy tinges of blush and melted away. The flesh beneath had the color and consistency of old marshmallows. But Rayna didn’t care; she was too caught up in the aria sung by Madame Tosca as she meditates on her fate, the life of her beloved, and why God has seemingly abandoned her.
“Hey! Keep it down, willya?” The knocking came from the partition next to her.
“Aw, go back to Philistine!” she yelled. And stifled a laugh as she tossed the pad in the dustbin.
She daubed two cotton balls gently around her eyes, stroking very lightly outward, picking up most of the kohl drawn in a perimeter around her reddened eyes that reflected the dozen bulbs of her vanity table. The mascara dislodged in crumbs and specks, making her eyelashes look like spiny things that lived in tidal pools. Blink-blink-blink, her vision cleared.
Swabbing her eyelids, she removed the glittery paste, a bluish shade meant to accentuate her eyes, which were weary but faintly amused. Proud, even. No business like show business, she thought. We did it again.
She used fresh swabs to trace her eyebrows, removing the dark-chocolate color thickly traced above her bony eye socket. Whose heavy hand had wielded the makeup pencil today? Exhausted from the extra-long rehearsal, Rayna could scarcely remember a thing past the 6 PM dress-up call, when she had stumbled in and thrown herself at the mercy of the make-up artist on duty. Marcia? Cyndi? Well, whoever it was knew her stuff; Tosca had wowed the audience again in both sound and form.
With a special moisturizing pouffe Rayna blotted her reddened lips. Cherries on Snow. Rayna tried to recall the last time she’d eaten cherries. Why would anyone serve them on snow? Her stomach growled; she wanted Bacon on Toast.
She lifted her hands and detached the dangling earring from each perfectly sculpted ear. Faux gold, faux rubies, vrai perspiration.
Next she opened her mouth wide, grabbed hold of the upper molars and removed her teeth, hearing the small pop as the suction broke and the dentures came loose. She set them down, primrose pink and ivory, in a clear glass with a fizzing tablet. Her tongue swept around the denuded gums, a probing eel.
Removal of the dentures caused her cheeks to sink inwards, and the skin to become flaccid. In a certain light, she thought she looked like Great-aunt Vo, the one who must not be talked about. In another light, she resembled Grams, the matriarch. Mighty Grams, who raised ten children including Ma, and railed against the corruption of the flesh. If only Grams had given opera half a chance; Rayna was sure she would have found beauty in Tosca’s lines, how she lived and died for art.
Humming to herself now, she stared frankly at the face that had taken shape in the mirror. No more Tosca the tragic heroine. No more toast of the town. Just an unadorned, barefaced, toothless crone.
Ah well. She chuckled softly to herself. Such is the magic of opera.
She wriggled her face and moved toward the light until Grams disappeared … and Great-aunt Vo appeared.
Ah, that was better. She sighed. Someday she would travel to the motherland and find out what had happened to Vo. And there were other ancestors, entire family sagas peopled with trolls and goblins and elves and crones.
She thumped her chest. Now she was Rayna the Reykjavik Raider. She gave a long, low, wild Whoooop!
… and listened for a protest from the neighboring room. Nothing. They must’ve gone home.
She, too, would head home. After a nice hot shower, maybe pour a drink. Not Carlsberg, in fact not beer at all; beer was considered unpatriotic because Denmark was big on beer and Iceland had fought for independence. No, she would have a wee tumbler of brennivin, the burning wine.
Who knows, she might call up an old beau just to talk opera. They would talk a little, maybe sing to each other a little and she would listen to him breathe heavily in remembered pleasure.
Short fiction by V.J. Hamilton has been published in The Amsterdam Quarterly, The First Line, and The Hong Kong Review, among others. She won the EVENT Speculative Fiction prize. She lives and works in Toronto, where she saw her first opera.
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