Voice Lessons

At forty, I hired a vocal coach. My husband had taken up a new friend—he swore it was platonic, her name unimportant. Upfront, she warned me her rate for adults was higher than for children— a grown-up's capacity for change isn't great, throat muscles less pliable, even though they usually want it more. This isn't a story of overcoming diaphragmatic disadvantages of mature voices in training, just its cost. I had one lesson wherein she informed me the price of admission for her attention to my voice— to get near the neighborhood of up to par— was double the original estimate. It came with a guarantee of no promises. She wasn't a magician, she said. To make me passable at karaoke bars would be an extra ten a session. It was cheap, actually, easy quitting those lessons— quitting my husband. I never wanted to be a pop star, only to feel a knowing in my bones that someone could still hear me.