Oh Yes, She’s the Great Pretender

In my mind I am Alicia Lamour, the recluse chanteuse.

I saunter up to the piano and slowly peel my elbow-length white gloves. A rhinestone bracelet dangles from my wrist. My white fox wrap (fake! fake animal fur!) falls to the floor. And in my simple black velvet strapless gown I begin to play “Satin Doll.”

Then, switcherooty, I am Patti Page singing “Tennessee Waltz.” Segue into Billie Holiday singing, “I Cover the Waterfront,” into Barbra Streisand singing the slowest, saddest “Happy Days Are Here Again” you ever heard. Then I am Linda Ronstadt singing “Blue Bayou” in that opera-singer-with-gallstones voice.

In the real world, the unjust world, I am a woman in a sweat shirt who can’t carry a tune. But in the musical world where dreams come true I am Tina Turner in two feet of skirt and 10 feet of legs singing “River Deep, Mountain High.”

My kids scream out, “Oh no, Mom, puh-leeze, don’t sing.” My husband forces them to leave the room so the performance can continue. He has learned through time that a medley beats an ugly female mood swing any day.

I have always loved to sing and play the piano. Unfortunately, it’s my curse to have been given a pretty bad voice, a tone-deaf ear and no sense of rhythm. But play and sing I must because, hey Jude, it’s the only thing that will make things better.

As a child insomniac, I would wait until everyone was asleep and then at midnight take out my Hit Parader magazines and sing “Mocking Bird Hill” or “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d Have Baked a Cake” or “Till I Waltz Again With You” or “The Man in the Raincoat” or “The Wheel of Fortune” until the wee small hours of the morning. My bedroom, my pleasant land of counterpane, became the Club Trocadero where ladies with gardenia corsages and men with thin sterling cigarette cases ate chili con carne and sipped sparkling champagne.

Later, after I took piano lessons, I discovered that when my parents were fighting, music was my only friend. I would sit there banging the ivories until they stopped. I really believed my music had charms.

This was confirmed when I worked as a volunteer at the free clinic in the ‘60s. Maybe I couldn’t bring down the house with my skills but I could bring down an acid freakout like nobody’s business. I’d just relax and let my fingers do the dancing.

And still today when I’m sad if I can just get to that piano I can save my soul. Sometimes I really am Janis singing, “Take a Little Piece of My Heart,” and sometimes I’m Frank singing “It Never Entered My Mind,” and sometimes I’m Frankie Lymon singing, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” so sweetly and happily that you’d swear the whole world was 14 years old.

But somehow I am never ever Little Richard. No matter how hard I try imagination has its limits.

Certain songs I never liked on the radio, like “Wichita Lineman,” can sound good to me as performed by Alicia Lamour. While others that I loved, like “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” stink because I’ll never be Marvin Gaye. And just because I can’t do Jim Morrison, “Come On Baby Light My Fire” comes out like “In the Good Old Summertime.”

The strange thing is that I can’t play around other people at all unless they are blood relatives or are O.D.-ing on drugs. Every once in a while, when I’m really wailing, I’ll think: If my friends could see me now. But the few times I tried to sing for others it’s been a disaster.

When I learned that my mailman, George C. George, had been a musical comedy star in his youth, I tried to give him a song and dance for Christmas. As he approached my porch, I came out singing and tap dancing, “It’s Mr. George C. George (clap) the mailman . . . bringing me (clap) letters, and maybe (clap) presents, and maybe some (clap) money. . . . .”

He literally ran away as if he had been attacked by a yelping dog.