By her own admission, Melanie Winter came from nothing. She grew up in the Langfield Homes in one of the poorest parts of Buffalo—“Buffa-low, baby, about as low as you can go.” Her father worked double shifts at the Trico plant, making windshield wipers until he dropped dead of a heart attack when Melanie was ten.
Her mother went out to work driving a bus, leaving Melanie and her sister in the care of their seamstress grandmother. Money was scarce. Discipline was strict. (“Fly swatter, baby, right on the back of the calf—you don’t want to feel it twice.”) The Winter girls were raised on tough love and pride. And music.
“Music saved me,” Melanie said, her hand stroking the keys of the baby grand. Erik leaned on the piano’s lid, chin in hands, listening. They had been talking for half an hour now. “Church choir first. Then Gramma bartered sewing for piano lessons. Recitals, school plays and shows, they saved me.”
Her mother didn’t live to see Melanie graduate from high school and go to the Eastman School of Music on a full scholarship. Her grandmother died shortly after, leaving her life savings to her granddaughters. Melanie’s sister took her money and ran, heading west to Chicago. Melanie, on her own in Rochester, hoarded her nest egg and took nearly eight years to earn her degree while working, keeping both soul and body alive. She gave piano lessons, voice lessons, and supplemented with any other kind of work she could find. She wasn’t too proud to sling hash. Wherever a community theater struggled, or whenever a school play was in need of help, she was there.
Now thirty-two, this position in Brockport’s theater department was her crowning achievement. But like Erik, she was feeling a bit of a fraud. “You know what I mean? How in the hell did I pull this off, and how soon are they going to find out I don’t have a clue how to teach at a university level?”
Erik, just past twenty-seven, knew exactly what she meant. He told her first about his own dubious means of getting the job, his own fears of being exposed as an interloper, and then went on to describe the fall semester and its accomplishments. “You definitely feel like a freshman again,” he said. “You keep looking around for the guy in charge and realizing it’s you. But you know more than you think you do. And if you don’t know it, you make it up.”
“Make it up. Sounds like a plan. I’ll just act like I know what the hell I’m doing. And it’s theater,” Melanie said, shrugging. “We’re in the business of making it up.”
Erik smiled, his eyes sweeping over her smooth, high forehead and her slanting cheekbones. She reminded him of Aisha Johnson, the Powaqqatsi queen, gunned down at age twenty. Something was stirring in him, an interest he hadn’t felt in months. Or years? A yearning to touch the energy of someone’s mind. A desire to step out of the dark and into the light of another human.
“Word on the street is they want to do Oklahoma! for the spring main stage production,” Melanie said. “To do Oklahoma! as my maiden voyage? You know how much vocal work that’s going to take? I think I’m going to be sick.”
“If I can build a set for Noises Off out of the gate, you can do Oklahoma! And you won’t do it alone.”
She smiled. “Well, I know I’ll like having Miles Kelly in the orchestra pit. And I think I’ll like knowing you’re around to talk me off a ledge.”
Him of all people, talking someone off a ledge. Erik had to smile back. With some reluctance, he took his elbows off the piano lid and straightened up. “I have to go get some stuff done. But it was really nice talking to you.”
“I enjoyed it too. I’m going to just sit and play a while. Will it bother you while you’re working?”