The Promise (22 page)

‘No one will say that about you, Miss Ogden.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Because I won’t have talk going around. And Frank T. and Wiley’ll bring the peas and eggs and suchlike, fish and all, that won’t change: nobody’s going to starve.’ She ran the palms of her hands along the sides of her apron, then did it again. ‘Let’s just leave it at that.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll tell Andre on Sunday. Not a minute before. I won’t have a fuss made.’

‘I understand. We don’t want him upset.’ He would be upset, though. He was attached to her, but as difficult as the parting would be, I felt a great sense of relief. This house was too small for Nan and me. Soon I’d be free of her judgmental glances and her knowing tone of voice. Just as she would be free of me.

She picked up the cutting board and brushed the diced onion into a skillet.

‘Andre will miss you,’ I said. ‘We all will.’

‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

‘And so we won’t.’ Some things, I understood, could not bear the weight of words.

As soon as Nan left for the day with her brothers, I put on my sun hat. In the parlor, I opened the door to the attic. Hot air rushed out in waves, and at the top of the staircase, thin slivers of light pierced the darkness.

I hurried up the narrow stairs, the air becoming denser with each step. Support beams held up the roof, and in the gloom it took a few moments before I saw the trunks that were near a side wall between two rafters. I opened one of them, slid my hand into the side pocket and found the black crystal earrings. Struggling to breathe in the dense air, my corset compressing my lungs, I put them in my skirt pocket and closed the trunk. I left the attic, then the house, taking the front veranda steps.

‘Where you going?’

I started. It was Andre. He was under the house on his hands and knees holding his spade.

‘I’m taking a walk.’

‘Now? In the middle of the day? Can I come?’

‘No.’ My tone was sharp. I gathered myself. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes. When I return, we’ll play the upright before I start dinner.’

‘“Mary Had a Little Lamb”?’

‘Yes.’

He grinned, and before he could say more, I was on the path that led to the sand hills. Should Oscar happen to see me, I would tell him that I’d had a sudden desire to see the beach. The dog with the bushy tail, Bear, came with me and although I told him to go back, he was undeterred and stayed close. The path was muddy from Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s rain and it was a mistake to have worn my better shoes but I would not turn back.

At the hills, a wispy layer of sand covered the planked road, and in places, hoof prints and the narrow tracks of the wagon wheels were visible. I followed the road, winding through the hills. When I was sure that I couldn’t be seen from the house or from the barn, I stopped and took the black crystal earrings out from my skirt pocket.

Each dropped earring had three linked beads and their facets caught the light just as they had when Edward gave them to me two years ago. He had come to Philadelphia, and we were dining in a small restaurant located on a side street off of Delancey Place. ‘Happy birthday, my dear,’ he’d said as I opened the box. My birthday had been the previous month but I smiled as though it didn’t matter. Our liaison had begun a year before, and I had quickly learned to make excuses and allowances for the three- or four-month gaps between visits. I pushed Edward’s family from my thoughts and convinced myself that the whims of his business dealings with the Pennsylvania Railroad dictated his trips.

Should we happen to encounter someone he knew, I was introduced as his cousin. ‘Friends since we were children,’ he’d say. In public, we walked with a respectable distance between us as cousins would do. I maintained this same façade with my friends and said little about Edward. The earrings, though, were something that I could touch, a reminder, along with his weekly letters, that he cared deeply for me and that I was never far from his thoughts.

In the restaurant, I held them to the light. The facets sparkled with shades of pink, lavender, and blue. ‘They’re exquisite,’ I said to Edward across from me at the small table.

‘They are, aren’t they?’ he said. He laid his hand flat on the white linen tablecloth and inched it across the table until it met mine. ‘They’re from Austria,’ he said. He caressed my fingers for a moment, a promise of what would happen later that evening when we were alone. Then, with a quick glance around the room, he withdrew his hand.

On the sand hill road, the wind gusted and my skirt wrapped around my legs. Bear ran on ahead and disappeared from my sight. I couldn’t throw the earrings into the surf. They might wash ashore along with the splintered trees torn from river banks and the bottles thrown from ships. I imagined them weeks from today, months even, shining in the sand, drawing attention and someone – Oscar, Andre, Nan, or the Ogden men – finding them.

I got down onto my knees. The planks were warped and uneven, and in some places along the sides, small drifts of sand had formed while in others the wind had scooped out deep hollows. The surface planks were held fast, I saw, nailed to two perpendicular boards below.

I pushed one earring, then the other, through a space between two planks. They fell onto the sand beneath the road. This was the one place where I could bury them and not leave deep footprints in the hills or signs of digging. Here, they would stay covered. The sand might shift, but the road would not.

I rocked back onto my heels. Bear had returned. His brown fur was spiky with water. He looked at me, panting, his head cocked. I got up and followed the road toward the beach. I wanted to be able to tell Oscar at least part of the truth should he ask what I had been doing. Ahead of me, the dog shot off, chasing seagulls near the tide line. At the end of the road, I stopped.

Without Oscar or Andre, the beach was a lonely place, eerie in its vastness with not a soul in sight. ‘Bear,’ I called, but he didn’t hear me. He kept running, scattering the birds.

The tide was high and washed closer to the hills than I had seen before. ‘It was the gulf,’ Oscar had told me on Tuesday night as we lay together, my hand on his chest. ‘How it was never the same.’ Unexpected tears filled my eyes. Oscar shoveling coal outside my window as I practiced the piano, his decision to leave Dayton, his letters, the tides pulling him to Galveston, the death of his wife, my liaison, my desperation, all these things had brought me to this place and to him. To change one was to change it all.

Past the breakers five pelicans sat on the water, bobbing on soft swells, their wings folded and their long beaks pointed down as though they were resting. Up the beach, the dog was a distant figure. ‘Bear,’ I called, blotting my tears with my fingertips.

Oscar will not discover the truth about my past, I told myself. No one will write to him; I will never breathe a word about it.

‘I’m leaving,’ I called out to Bear. He raised his head, and all at once he started to lope toward me, ignoring the birds, sure of his way.

I turned around and there, on the other side of the sand hills, were three rooftops. Andre was waiting for me, I thought. I had promised him a lesson. I began to walk, the light layer of sand crunching beneath my shoes, the earrings lost beneath the road.

A few minutes before five o’clock, I sent Andre to wash for dinner. ‘Your face, too,’ I told him. ‘There’s a bit of dirt on your cheek.’ Then, I left the house, went beneath the veranda, and took out a penny from my pocket. It was dull and its rim was flattened in one place as though it were old. I tossed it close to where Andre had been digging. It landed with a soft plop. Treasure, I thought. For him to find someday.

After that, I met Oscar on the path between the house and the barn, and told him Nan had given notice and Sunday was her last day.

‘This Sunday?’ he said. ‘Why? What happened?’

‘Nothing. Or at least nothing that I’m aware of. It surprised me, too.’

‘And she didn’t say why?’

‘It seems she wants a change.’

‘A change? That’s what she said? She’s not one for such.’

‘She didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘But she’s part of this family. All of the Ogdens are. Have been since I bought the dairy.’ He paused. ‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘Oscar, she wants to leave. She was quite emphatic about that. Perhaps you should let her.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Things are different now, I see that. But we can hardly do without her. Nan knows her way around here. No, there’s something more to this. Likely it’s that foolish notion she has about a curse.’

‘A curse?’

‘That’s what she calls it. Thinks she’s bad luck for the men that care about her, two of them dying just before she was to marry them.’

‘Oh, Oscar.’

‘Could be she sees herself as a curse to Andre. I don’t know. She’s superstitious. Some of the people down in these parts have peculiar notions. Nan’s given up the idea of ever marrying.’

‘She’s told you this?’

‘Not me, Bernadette.’

I flinched. Misery crossed his face; he couldn’t meet my eyes. Even at the cemetery, her name had not been said. But now it was as though he had given life to her, the woman with whom he had lived, who had borne his son, and who had died carrying his next child.

I was the second wife and always would be. Oscar and Bernadette had shared a life; they had shared confidences. Perhaps Bernadette would have told him the truth about Nan. Perhaps she would have told him that Nan’s need to leave had nothing to do with a curse but everything to do with her feelings for Oscar. At the pavilion last Saturday evening, a mix of pain and longing showed in Nan’s eyes each time she looked at him. I had seen, too, how she’d held on to his hand when he thanked her for playing the violin. She’d bowed her head when he left to speak to the other musicians and for a moment, I thought she was crying. Then, she raised her head and our eyes met. Although I was on the other side of the pavilion, I felt her resentment. Nan cared for Oscar, but he had chosen a woman very different than she. That was an insult that cut to the quick.

I didn’t say this to Oscar. I would not expose Nan in such a way.

I took his hand. ‘Talk to her,’ I said. ‘But, Oscar, you left home and I have done the same.’ I paused. ‘You and I, we both know what it means to have a fresh start.’

He rubbed his thumb along the back of my hand.

I said, ‘If she wants to leave, let her.’

He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my palm.

That evening, while Oscar was in the barn finishing his work, I played Schumann’s ‘Reverie’, wanting its tenderness to send Andre to sleep. Just minutes ago, I had put him to bed and when I said goodnight, he told me that I smelled good. For an instant, I hadn’t known where I was, the crucifix over the bed and the photograph of Oscar and Bernadette blurring and falling away. The purity of Andre’s few words had astonished me. This was why women smiled at the mention of their children’s names, I thought. Mothers carried the memories of sweet words spoken from the heart.

Years ago, Mr Brand, my piano teacher, pounded on his chest and told me to reach into my heart and feel the music. Now I played Chopin’s ‘Raindrop Prelude’ for Oscar, believing he could hear it in the barn. The notes began as the soft tapping of a rain shower, innocent but with a hint of passion that grew, gathered, and rose until it was a storm of passion. The music thundered, a crescendo, then diminished as the notes returned to a soft tap but with the passion still an undercurrent. By the time I played the last chords, Oscar was in the doorway.

Later, the bedroom in darkness and the two of us content, Oscar told me he wanted to have our picture made. ‘We’ll go to Harper’s on Market Street,’ he said. ‘We should have done it last week, you looking so pretty in that blue suit of yours. And the hat with all the feathers. We’ll go Saturday.’

He didn’t mention the earrings that I had worn. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed them on our wedding day. ‘A photograph,’ I said. ‘I’d like that very much.’ I ran my finger along his cheek and over the stubble of his beard. ‘But not in this heat, I couldn’t bear that wool suit. Let’s wait. As soon as the weather cools, why don’t we go then?’

‘That’ll be the middle of October. Won’t hardly count as a wedding picture.’

‘Mr Williams,’ I said, ‘a woman is a bride for longer than a day.’

He laughed, an easy rumble that started in his chest. The sound of it filled me with pleasure. Happiness. Not derived from playing with my ensemble, or from tickets to the theatre, nor from dining at a fine hotel. But from this: being with Oscar and making plans for the future.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Storm Warning

Oscar, he tried talking me out of making a change. He went on about how the house could hardly get along without me, how nobody cooked like me, and that Andre would miss me sorely. That was this morning, Friday. He’d left the barn and got to the house not more than a handful of minutes after Wiley and Frank T. had dropped me off at the steps. I didn’t even have the stove lit, only the kerosene lamps. It was like he’d been waiting for me with his arguments all laid out ahead of time. Likely he had been, Mrs Williams telling him my news. He asked me to come out on the veranda and that was where we did our talking. I said I needed a change, but he didn’t listen to none of that. ‘Nan,’ he said. ‘Is it your wages? Is that it?’

That made me head for the door. Them questions were an insult and I had breakfast to cook. He took hold of my arm, stopping me. ‘Didn’t mean it that way,’ he said. ‘I’m just looking for some kind of reason.’

Well, I thought. If he couldn’t see how him and Mrs Williams mooning for each other during the light of day was enough to turn a person’s belly, then he was just going to have to stay in the dark. If he couldn’t figure out that water and oil, meaning me and her, didn’t mix, he was just going to have to stumble along in ignorance. But the hardest thing for me to take was Andre, his little face lighting up as big as a bonfire every time she threw him the bittiest nod of affection.

I said to Oscar, ‘A person needs a change once in a while, and that’s me at this particular time. Now let’s leave it at that, there’s not another word to say.’ I made a point of looking at his hand on my arm. He let go, and when he did, a wave of sadness came over me. As wrong as it was, I wanted him to hold on to me. I wanted him to tell me he’d be the one to miss me most. There was even a part of me that wanted him to tell me he’d married the wrong woman.