I avoided joining anyone’s garage band, even though I was constantly invited to do so, and by some of the best-looking boys in our school, too. My interest wasn’t in their kind of music. I was heavily into pop songs, big-band tunes, and show tunes. Besides using Barbra Streisand as my touchstone, I wanted to be on my own like Jewel, Mariah Carey, or Sarah McLachlan, who were popular at the time. I was convinced that was my future.
But I suppose the person who influenced me the most and did the most to encourage me to pursue a singing career was my secondary-school music teacher, Mr. Wollard. He had been teaching for over twenty years and told me that I was the best singer he had ever had during all that time. Unlike most teachers his age, he kept up with what was happening in the current music scene and convinced me I had the voice for it, not that I needed a great deal of convincing.
“You could definitely be the next Streisand,” he said when I told him she was my idol.
From when I was fourteen years old until now, I brought home his compliments gift wrapped in confidence and joy and often revealed them at dinner. Most of the time my father ignored them or muttered something like “The man should be careful blowing up a young girl’s image of herself.” In the early days, never anticipating that I would take the big leap defiantly, my mother would remind him how beautifully I sang and how so many people had complimented them both about it.
“Don’t say you aren’t proud of her, Arthur. I see the joy in your face when you hear the praise.”
He’d grunt reluctant agreement about that but made sure to point out that I didn’t have real competition, thus, deliberately or otherwise, belittling my achievements.
“You can give her a head full of air. It’s not like she’s singing in London on the West End,” he would say, and then turn to me and wave that thick right forefinger. “And one in ten thousand, if that many, makes a living doing it. You mind your grades and think about finding a decent way of earning a living like your sister wants to do.”
Julia had already determined she would be an elementary-school teacher, which our father approved of so enthusiastically in my presence that there could have been bugles and a marching band accompanying him. At dinner he would raise his arms and look toward the ceiling as if the answer to the question he was about to bellow was scrolled across it.
“Why should I have one daughter with her feet solidly on the ground and another who is flighty? It’s beyond me. I didn’t bring one up differently from the other.”
“I’m not flighty, Daddy,” I protested. “I’m very serious about the singing profession.”
“Profession,” he said disdainfully, and shook his head. He looked at me with a softer expression, catching me off guard. “You’re a pretty girl, Emma, and you do well in school. Don’t go chasing pipe dreams. The world is not a friendly place to those who don’t have a solid footing. Remember that. You rarely get a decent second chance in this life.”
I knew he wanted me wrapped like a fish in brown paper, his responsibility as a father done and off his list of worries. If I did anything that particularly annoyed him, he would rant, claiming that sometimes he believed children were rained down upon us “like stinging hail.” However, the more he fought the idea of my pursuing a singing career, the more I clung to it, and not simply out of spite, either. I was that confident in myself.
I never told anyone in my family that Mr. Wollard had a friend in New York, Donald Manning, who managed a restaurant in Manhattan and who had offered to help find me a place to stay and a job at the restaurant so I could support my efforts. I knew if I had mentioned it, my father would have made some formal charge against Mr. Wollard and maybe even have caused him to be sacked.
The day after my eighteenth birthday, I called Donald Manning. I had saved up enough money to get to New York and set myself up for a while. It had always been my intention to do it immediately after secondary school; otherwise, I might lose my nerve. He put me in touch with Mr. Leo Abbot, the landlord of the apartments that were walking distance from the restaurant he managed. After I had spoken to him, I sent him a cashier’s check for the first month’s rent and deposit. All he had available was a two-bedroom, which was more expensive. The initial payments took up half my savings, but he said I should have no problem finding a roommate to share the expenses.
“New York is always burstin’ with young ladies lookin’ to hitch themselves to a star,” he said.
I didn’t like the way he had said that. I didn’t want to be part of a generic pack of lemmings running headlong over some cliff of fantasies. I knew it was going to be hard, very hard, and I would swim in a lake of disappointments. Eventually, I might drown in rejection, but I decided to do it anyway. Was that courage or blind stupidity?
“The apartment is furnished and has a passable set of dishware, pots and pans, and silverware,” Leo had told me. There was a pause, and he added, “Not real silver, you understand.”
When I announced it all at dinner the night before I was to leave, my parents and my sister were astounded and upset that I had done all this planning and arranging so quickly without their knowledge. I had hoped that they would be proud and impressed that I had taken care of so many details on my own. I had tried to be businesslike, explaining the costs for travel, the rent, and what I could make in my temporary side job. I even had a liabilities-and-assets statement for my father to peruse. However, when my father saw it, he crunched it in his fist and slammed his other hand on the table so hard the dishware and silverware bounced. He stabbed his right forefinger at me, forbidding me to follow through.
“Get that deposit back, cash in those plane tickets, and quickly. I didn’t raise a daughter, give her good room and board, clothe her, and get her educated to have her turn into a cock-up and embarrass this good family name.”
He spun on Mummy, still pointing his finger like the barrel of a pistol.
“I told you, Agnes Lee Moorhead, that permitting her to sing in those pubs before a crowd of worthless and wasteful lumps who don’t know a do re mi when they hear it would come to no good. They blew her full of herself. She’s just another impressionable young girl someone is going to exploit.”
“You can’t say she hasn’t got a beautiful voice. You’ve heard her in church and in school, Arthur,” Mummy said softly, light tears starting to swim in her eyes. “And you’ve heard how much she was admired. Maybe, if she continued to sing here in the pubs and—”
“Because she sang in church and school? That’s cause to waste young years, not to mention the real money she could be earning in a useful position? It will come to no good, and I won’t be part of it or have it be part of my family here or anywhere. I forbid it,” he said, then left the table, which was very unlike him, for he wouldn’t stomach anyone wasting his food. He told us his father used to make him eat for breakfast whatever he had left over at dinner.
Mummy turned to me, her face as crimson as it would be if she had stood too close to a fire. “You’ll have to reconsider, Emma. Maybe wait until he’s warmed to the idea.”
“He’ll never warm to it,” I said, looking after him as if there was smoke in his wake. “He wants me stuck in some bank-teller job or something and then have a brood of children to mind. Just because he buried every dream he has ever had doesn’t mean I bury mine. I’m eighteen and in charge of my future now. I’ve got to pack,” I said defiantly, and, like him, rose and left the table.