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There are still moments of piercing sadness. Such as when one of Beverly's recordings is on the phonograph, and Muffy puts her fingertips to the speaker to "feel" the sound. Or when Beverly grows uncharacteristically abstracted, her voice trailing off, the brightness fading from her face. Then, as those around her know, she is probably thinking ahead to one of the monthly visits she and Peter make to Bucky (whenever she travels she wears two ring watches, one set to local time, the other to eastern time, so that she can think what Bucky is doing at any given hour). But such moments are over quickly, because Beverly shakes them off firmly: there is work to be done.
Loyalty to Past and Future
Work indeed is something of an escape from those moments, and this may be one reason why Beverly drives herself so unremittingly in her career. For her, performing is not only a fulfillment of her aspirations to artistic excellence, not only an outlet for her avidly competitive desire to come out on top, but also a balm. Tito Capobianco has always been struck by the way she actually seems to yearn for the stage. Mama knows why. "When Beverly gets onstage," she says, "all her worries are behind her."
Göran Gentele, who will succeed Rudolf Bing next year as general manager of the Met, recently took Beverly to lunch to discuss the possibility of her singing with the Met in the seasons ahead. It must be a tempting offer for someone who may not have all that many years of singing left. But, says Beverly, "I'll be delighted to be a guest at the Metropolitan, but just that, just a guest."
She is fiercely loyal to the New York City Opera, as she is to all the people who gave her support when she needed it. Two years ago, Beverly was approached with flattering offers by a top-ranking New York manager—the same manager who, a decade earlier, had kept her cooling her heels in his outer office for 2½ hours before telling her he could not use her. Now Beverly cut him off with one clean stroke. "I'm not interested in working with anybody." she said, "who keeps a singer waiting 2½ hours."
Loyalty is a cardinal virtue with Beverly. Nowhere does she show it more strongly than with her family, particularly with Mama. When she made her debut at La Scala, long a dream of hers and Mama's, she wrote a postcard home that said: "We made it, Mom. You and I." There, in seven words, is the whole story of their remarkable bond.
All of Beverly's recent experience—her return to work, her resumption of life—amounts to amounts to a kind of loyalty not only to her future but also to her past. She disavows nothing and rejects nothing, despite the pain it may have brought. That, after all, is Beverly's way of keeping faith with Bubbles. "You know, there's a big difference between being a happy woman and a cheerful woman," she explains. "A happy woman doesn't have any cares at all. A cheerful woman might have loads of cares, but she goes on in spite of it all. Happy I'll never be, but I'm as cheerful as I can be."