The Promise (18 page)

Loving Wife to Oscar
and
Devoted Mother to Andre.
Bernadette was from Louisiana, Nan had told me. A Frenchy. That had made me think of Longfellow’s poem about the exiles from Canada. My high-school classmates and I had thought the story about Evangeline and her lost groom was romantic. We thought the exiles were brave and noble. Nan called them swamp people.

Bernadette’s mother lived on Post Office Street. ‘There’s a stretch of it that ain’t proper, let’s just leave it at that,’ Nan had said, her gray eyes hard with disgust. As she spoke of Bernadette’s mother, I’d felt ill. Five days ago when I arrived, swaggering sailors gathered on the corners of downtown Galveston. At the wharves, dockworkers wet with perspiration hoisted cargo from the ships. Although such things were not spoken of in polite society, it was common knowledge that there were houses of entertainment for such men.

Bernadette’s origins were sordid and shameful, and it had stunned me to think that I followed in the footsteps of such a woman. Then I remembered. I was in no position to have qualms about such things.

B. April 5, 1874.
She was younger than me by four years. Andre traced the eight over and over, humming to himself. Oscar studied the sky, his head tilted back so he could see past the brim of his hat.

In the photograph in Andre’s room, Bernadette wore a white dress and a small floral headpiece with a short veil. Her hand was on Oscar’s shoulder. Her hair was dark and looked to be unruly. A few curly strands had fallen around her face. She had the figure of a young girl and taken feature by feature, she was ordinary. Her nose was too thin, and her chin was pointed. There was a softness, though, in her eyes, and the corners of her lips were slightly turned up, and this made her pretty.

Andre, standing on the foundation of his mother’s stone, teetered on the edge, then jumped. His knees dipped as he stumbled on the uneven ground. ‘Steady,’ Oscar said, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Andre looked up at him and grinned.

‘Son, is there anything you want to tell your mama, while we’re here?’

Andre squinted and twisted his mouth as he considered. I waited, sure that he would say something about my arrival. He said, ‘There was a dance, and Miss Nan played the fiddle.’

‘Your mother will be glad to hear that.’

‘And everybody came.’

Last night, before we arrived at the pavilion, Oscar told me that his neighbors were good people, hard-working people, and I understood that he was defending them. He expected me to dislike them and to hold myself above them. The women’s thin faces were etched with weariness, and their hands were large from the years of housework. Most wore their hair parted in the center and pulled back into tight buns. The men were longhipped, bowlegged, and weathered brown. They loosened their neckties, and some of them took off their collars. Nan’s father was tall and angular with curly gray hair and sunken cheeks. Her mother, a thin gray-haired woman whose back was stooped, clung to me as she recounted details about the neighbors that were meant to impress but only made me feel all the more displaced. ‘Loretta Ellis here has nothing but boys,’ Mrs Ogden said. ‘Eight of them.’ Mrs Ellis smiled with pride. Mrs Ogden said, ‘Come meet Bessie Gerloff. Her kin were some of the first here. They came when Texas was part of Mexico.’

The men and women ate at separate tables with the children’s table near the women’s. The ten nuns sat apart, their faces made narrow by their white headpieces that covered the sides of their faces and their foreheads.

‘Your purple-hull peas are mighty pleasing,’ Mrs Ogden said to Mrs Irvin, who sat across from us.

‘It’s the bacon fat,’ Mrs Irvin said, waving off a swarm of flies around her plate. Deep lines ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth. She said, ‘I had some extra, and don’t it do something nice for peas?’

‘Surely does,’ Mrs Ogden said.

Mrs Irvin picked up one of the shrimp from her plate and pointed it at Mrs Ogden. ‘This batch is extra good. You boiled it just right.’

‘Why, thank you,’ Mrs Ogden said. ‘Though I weren’t overly happy with the seasoning, thought the cloves didn’t stand up and do what they should.’ She looked at my plate. I didn’t have any shrimp, only potato salad, corn pone, and Mrs Irvin’s peas that were slick with grease. She said, ‘Mrs Williams, is all your kin up there in Ioway?’

It took me a moment to decipher her accent. ‘I’m from Ohio,’ I said. ‘Not Iowa. But yes. My mother and her husband, my aunts and uncles, they’re all in Dayton.’

‘What about your brothers and sisters? Whereabouts might they be?’

‘I’m an only child.’

‘Oh, your poor mother,’ someone said. At that, Mrs Anderson, the woman on my right, made a disapproving click with her tongue. She said, ‘Your Mr Williams is one fine man; we think the world of him.’

‘Good Lord, yes.’ This came from the woman directly across from Mrs Anderson. I believed her name was Mrs Calloum. She was younger than the others, and her brown hair was swept up into a pompadour. She said, ‘When Everett was laid up a few years back with a broke leg, and me with those two babies of ours, Mr Williams was forever coming by and helping out. He told Everett how it’d give him a mighty pleasure to patch that little hole up there on the barn roof. Had him a few spare minutes with not a thing to do.’

‘Ain’t that just like him,’ Mrs Anderson said. ‘One time he brought milk when our cow was poorly. Said how those gals of his were in a spry mood, giving more than usual and I’d be doing him a kindness by relieving him of the extra.’

‘Always lending a hand,’ Mrs Ogden said. ‘And doing it like you’d done him a favor, letting him help out and all.’

‘You’ve got yourself a good one,’ Mrs Calloum said to me.

I said something, agreeing, my smile feeling lopsided. The conversation turned to quilts, the women’s voices floating around me. Across the pavilion and at the men’s table, Oscar talked, waving his fork as he did, grinning.
Have you forgotten your Dayton friends,
I had written in one of my letters to him.
Whatever is it like to live on an island in Texas?
I inquired in another. I spent hours composing those letters. I tried to strike the right tone, wanting my curiosity about Galveston to show my interest. I had phrased my questions so that he was compelled to respond.

Oscar had seen through that. He had sensed my desperation. He might think that I’d been abandoned at the altar. Or that I was fearful of living the rest of my life as a spinster.
My Son is in need of a Mother,
Oscar had written.
I am in need of a Wife.
His marriage proposal was designed to make me think I was doing him a favor by accepting.

Across the way, the men boomed with laughter as though someone had told a joke. Oscar leaned forward, his attention on someone farther down the table.

Around me, the women talked about okra, something I’d never heard of. ‘Fresh from the garden, cut into thin pieces, and cooked with ’maters and rice,’ Mrs Irvin said. ‘That’s the only way Henry’ll eat okra.’ I nodded, but it was difficult to breathe and my skin had turned clammy. On the other side of the table, Mrs Calloum peered at me.

I gathered myself. ‘The air’s a bit close,’ I said. ‘So damp and heavy.’ I picked up my drinking glass, a canning jar. Its thick lip bumped up against my front teeth. The suddenness of our marriage must have shocked these women. I had appeared from nowhere. I imagined the gossip traveling along the hard-packed beach road, the wind carrying the whispers. The details would be provided by Nan Ogden. First, there had been the removal of Bernadette’s clothes from the wardrobe and then the delivery of the upright. Next was my arrival on Wednesday. We married on Thursday and were at Oscar’s home by Friday noon. ‘She don’t know how to cook, and she didn’t bang on the outhouse door before going in,’ I imagined Nan telling her mother.

Worse things had been said about me.

I held my head high when the neighbors called Oscar and me to the dance floor. However I came to be his wife, regardless of the distance between us, I was here, he and I standing before the neighbors as though museum pieces on display. From somewhere I heard an off-note squeak. A man laughed and I saw Nan Ogden with her violin. I was surprised; she hadn’t said a word that day about the dance. Our eyes met. I expected to see sullen resentment on her face but instead, she acknowledged me with a nod. I returned her acknowledgment. She took a deep breath and in that moment, I understood that she was nervous to play before so many. She drew her bow across the strings. Oscar took my hand and put his other hand on my back.

His touch was a spark of electricity. He felt it too; I saw the sudden shock of it in his eyes. My cheeks flushed. The neighbors were watching. I put my hand on his shoulder. Fixed in position, he stood as though suddenly paralyzed, his gaze skipping from me to the people who surrounded us, Nan’s waltz going on without us. ‘One, two, three,’ I whispered to help him find the rhythm. ‘One, two, three.’ Oscar didn’t move. He was shy, I thought. And unaccustomed to being the center of attention. I kept counting, nodding on the downbeat, and then he counted with me, his lips forming the words. All at once we lurched, stumbling more than dancing, the awkwardness between us showing.

I gave his hand a quick squeeze of reassurance. His steps began to smooth out and so did mine. He smiled with relief, and then we were dancing, circling the pavilion, everyone and everything around us a blur, the kerosene lamps flashes of light.

The dance, the music, drew us together.

We waltzed, the breeze and the whooshing of the surf all part of the music, our nerves slipping away. I smiled and as I did, a lightness came over me as though I were suddenly free of the past.

This lightness stayed with me when our waltz ended and I danced with the men, one after the other, their faces slick from the heat as they shuffled me around the pavilion, the music and the steps unfamiliar. It held me when the crowd whooped and clapped for the two nuns who jigged, the tune too loud and too fast. As long as there was music, even unrefined music, I was light, and there were only the violins, the mandolin, and Oscar. The music filled our silence, neither of us needing to be careful, neither of us measuring each word or watching every step. We danced, together and with others, our eyes meeting, smiling.

Then the last waltz ended and in the silence, Oscar turned cautious. He stepped back and dropped my hand as though he thought his good fortune had run its course, and I would splinter at any moment.

Now, at the foot of his first wife’s grave, Oscar crouched and pulled up a spiky weed with his bare hand, the soil tearing. Andre fingered the daisies in the vase and rubbed a petal between his thumb and forefinger. He pulled the petal loose and put it into his pocket.

Straightening, Oscar said, ‘That it, son? Ready to go?’

‘I’m hungry,’ Andre said.

‘Me too,’ Oscar said. He glanced at me. I nodded. He said, ‘Time to find us some shade.’

We took the wagon to the beach and found that shade in the base of the tall sand hills, a mile or so from the cemetery. Among the sea grass and flowers, Oscar unfurled the red wool blanket that Andre used for his naps. It rippled in the wind and I caught the opposite end. Andre pounced onto it to keep it from blowing away.

We sat on the blanket, Andre between Oscar and I. Oscar filled our jars with the bottled mineral water that he had brought while I passed out the boiled eggs and the fried ham sandwiches I’d wrapped in dish towels. Earlier, when I had returned to the house with the flowers, Nan was gone. Oscar told me that she worked a short day on Sundays. ‘But it isn’t like her to leave without saying so,’ he’d said. ‘Or without making our picnic. Looks like you’ll have to fix it.’

I hadn’t known what to do with fried ham. ‘Sandwiches,’ Oscar said. ‘That’s mainly what Nan packs. That and boiled eggs. Cookies if there’re any left.’ I made our lunch, clumsy and unsure, burning my fingers on the skillet and spilling hot grease onto the kitchen floor.

I unwrapped one of the sandwiches I had made and battled the dish towel to keep it from blowing away as I spread it out on my lap. To the east, the bathhouses were distant shapes in the haze. The gulf water was streaked with green, and at the horizon, the sky curved down and blended into the water. Close to the tide line, a few buggies passed by going in both directions, the drivers steering the horses around the driftwood. An older man ambled near the surf with his head down. He wore his trousers rolled mid-calf and carried a small bucket. A collector of seashells, I thought.

Oscar said the Catholic prayer – ‘Bless us, o Lord, and these Thy gifts’ – the words now familiar. The seating arrangements were not. The sand under the blanket was lumpy, and my corset cut into my skin beneath my arms. I sat with my legs bent at my knees and angled toward my side, my skirt tucked in. Barefoot, Oscar and Andre were cross-legged with their dish towels bunched under their feet. Oscar’s sleeves were rolled to his elbows, his jacket, vest, and collar in a small pile by the edge of the blanket.

Andre held up his sandwich and squinted at it as though it were an exotic creature from the bottom of the sea.

‘This looks funny,’ he said. He poked his finger into the middle of the bread. It left a deep dent. ‘This here is all mushy and Miss Nan, she don’t cut off the crusts.’

‘She
doesn’t
cut off the crusts,’ I said.

‘I know. This looks funny.’

‘Indeed,’ I said.

‘Son,’ Oscar said, ‘eat your food.’

‘But it’s all mushy,’ Andre said. ‘Miss Nan pats it dry. She puts the ham on a towel and pats it.’