The Promise (2 page)

I kept my mouth shut. The neighbors didn’t know. They weren’t there on the day Bernadette died like I was. I’d been washing her parlor windows, keeping the house up like she would, when Mama came out of the bedroom. ‘Nan,’ she’d said, ‘Bernadette wants to see you.’

It took everything I had to walk down the hall and into the bedroom. The room had a bad sour smell, Sister Camillus and Oscar sat on either side of the bed, and I hardly knew Bernadette. She laid on her side, slick with feverish sweat and pasty-colored. Her lips were cracked and bloody. She was nothing but skin and bones other than her belly, swelled with the baby she was expecting come Christmas. Oscar got up so I could take his place.

I took Bernadette’s hand. It was burning hot and her black eyes glittered. ‘I’m here,’ I said, pressing her hand to my cheek. Across from me, Sister Camillus’ brown eyes bored into mine. She didn’t like me, plain as day. Bernadette licked her lips. Then she came right out and told me to look after Andre.

‘Now you stop that talk,’ I told her. ‘Ain’t nothing all that wrong with you. Just a little fever, that’s all.’

Bernadette shook her head. She knew different. The priest had been there that morning. ‘Nan,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘Bernadette,’ Sister Camillus said. ‘Dear.’

‘Forgive me, Sister.’ She swallowed hard like her throat wasn’t working right. She said, ‘Please. Nan.’

‘You’re going to get better,’ I said. ‘I just know it.’ But Oscar, standing beside me, likely couldn’t take it no more. ‘Promise,’ he said to me, that word coming out hard. ‘Say you will,’ he said. So I did, squeezing out the words, tears in my voice.

I thought about my promise when we left the chapel. Most of the neighbors went on home – chores were calling – but some of us lined up our buggies and wagons, one after the other, and went up the island to the cemetery in the city. We traveled along the beach road, the tide being low and the sand by the water’s edge packed down hard. To our right, the gulf sparkled like cut glass in the afternoon sun. Me, Mama, and Daddy were crowded up in the buggy while my brothers, Frank T. and Wiley, followed behind us in the wagon. The surf was a soft roar, and we didn’t say nothing, sadness likely wearing us all down.

The sand crunched under the buggy wheels, and up in the sky, long strings of pelicans floated on currents of air, their wings spread wide. Oscar was partial to pelicans and liked to count them. I hoped that he saw them as he rode with Sister Camillus on the buckboard of the wagon that carried Bernadette. Andre wasn’t with them. He’d been left behind at St. Mary’s; could be somebody thought he’d had enough. When we got to the cemetery and the priest found more to say before Bernadette was lowered into the grave, I hoped Oscar thought about pelicans, all light and airy up in the sky. Maybe they’d make him remember who Bernadette had been before she took sick.

It’d be easy for him to let the nuns keep Andre. It’d be easy for him to send Andre to his kin up in Ohio. That was where Oscar was from. Most men would do one or the other: a man couldn’t raise a child alone. Most would forget the promise I’d made, me not being kin. But when the priest finally ran out of prayers, when it was all over, the gravediggers waiting under the tree for us to leave, Oscar came over to me.

‘I’m bringing Andre home,’ he said. ‘Later today.’

‘He’ll be purely glad,’ I said.

The next morning, well before dawn, I let myself into the dark house and took up caring for Andre.

CHAPTER ONE

Dayton, Ohio

January 1900

Gossip. Breathless whispers. Circles of women in parlors perched on the edges of settees, the pointed gray tips of their shoes showing from beneath their dark skirts, their wide-brimmed hats casting shadows. Teacups in hand, they leaned close to one another. This was how I imagined them.

‘Did you hear?’ they must have said.

‘No. What?’

‘Catherine Wainwright was seen with Edward Davis. In Columbus. At the theater.’

‘Together? So far from home? Just the two of them?’

‘Her hand was on his arm.’

I pictured the women gasping, drawing back, stunned to silence. It was January in Dayton, Ohio. Flames leapt in parlor fireplaces, the burning wood cracked and popped, startling the women. In my mind’s eye, I saw them glance at their wedding bands, thinking of their husbands and then thinking of me, Catherine Wainwright.

‘But Edward Davis’ wife?’ someone surely said. ‘Does she know?’

‘The doctor had to be called.’

The women fluttered their hands. They had drawn close again, the circle tightening.

‘Poor Alma Davis,’ they must have said. ‘She’s so very frail.’

‘And the children, those two sweet little girls.’

Whispers swirled, rushing from house to house. My mother came to the Algonquin Hotel where I lived on the fourth floor, her face covered with a black veil. As soon as she stepped into my sitting room, she raised her hand and slapped me. ‘Your cousin’s husband,’ she said. ‘How could you?’

My cheek stinging, I kept my gaze fixed on her dark blue hat, its ostrich feathers seeming to quiver with outrage.

She said, ‘Do you know what this is doing to the family? Your uncle is furious. This is his daughter’s life you’re destroying. As if she hasn’t suffered enough. And my husband, the shame is unbearable. No doubt his clients know and as for the clerks, well, one knows how those people can gossip. The humiliation, Catherine. Look at me. Do you know what you have done to your cousin? To me?’

There was nothing to say to that. My mother said, ‘Do something. Now.’

Darling Edward,
I wrote.
I must see you.

The surge of gossip condemned me. The women, some of whom had been childhood friends, stopped speaking to me. They were the leading citizens; their fathers and husbands were Dayton’s innovators. Their families owned and managed the paper mills, the factories, and the foundries. They were the producers of fine stationery, computing scales, and sewing machines. At the milliner’s, these women lifted their chins and looked past me. At the dressmaker’s, they turned away, lips pressed tight. Although my father had been a designer of bridges, I had not been part of this circle of women for years. I had moved from Dayton when I was eighteen and returned only a year ago. I had not married; I was a pianist and practiced for hours on end. On those occasions when I did join the circles of women for tea or for discussions about literature, I had little to add when conversation turned to domestic matters and to the rearing of children. Now I had given the women of Dayton cause to rise up against me. In mid-January, the first note arrived in my mailbox at the hotel.

More notes followed, each one nearly verbatim to the first. The women were not cordial and they showed little regret. No one smiled at me or had a kind word. No one asked for my version of the truth. Instead, behind my back, they whispered, and I did not have to be with them to hear what they said.

‘This is what happens when a woman goes to college.’

‘And never marries.’

‘And works for a living.’

‘And lives in a hotel.’

January became February. The clouds were gray and low, and the snow was ankle deep. My income dwindled with each canceled performance and lesson, the undercurrent of gossip shattering my life. The family, even distant cousins, all sided with Edward’s wife. I stopped attending services at First Presbyterian, and invitations to family occasions ceased. In my sitting room, I turned on every incandescent lamp and tried to read my favorite novels, but the stories that once enthralled now unnerved me. Alone and with time on my hands, I imagined the whispers, rushing and lapping.

‘Did you hear?’

‘No. What?’

‘Catherine Wainwright has been throwing herself at Edward Davis for years. Since Alma first became ill.’

‘But she was living in Pennsylvania when that happened to poor Alma. In Pittsburgh, wasn’t it?’

‘Philadelphia, I believe. Edward Davis traveled there for business, but that wasn’t enough, not for Catherine Wainwright. He’s the reason she moved back to Dayton.’

Dearest,
I wrote to Edward, bills collecting on my desk.
Together we can weather this. But I must see you.

I dined alone at the hotel dining room. There, crystal chandeliers cast flickering spectrums of blue, yellow, and red onto my white linen tablecloth. Only a few of the residents – elderly widowers and bachelors – acknowledged me with smiles and brief greetings. I was just as restrained: two of the men had slipped notes under my door, their suggestions shocking me. The waiters in their black wool suits and long white aprons ignored me. I was the last to be served, and my meals arrived cold.
It seems there has been an oversight,
the hotel manager wrote at the bottom of my hotel bill.
We have yet to receive payment for the past month.

I refused to take my meals in my sitting room. I refused to hide. My friendship with Edward was not ugly and vile. We were companions; we enjoyed one another’s company. Divorce was out of the question; I had silenced Edward every time he considered it. His wife had suffered a paralyzing stroke minutes after the birth of their second child, and she could not be abandoned.

Now, our secret exposed, I was shunned and forced to dole out my savings, draining the last of my inheritance from my father. I paid bits and pieces of the bills that came from the hotel, the dressmaker, and the milliner. I took walks as though the wind that blew from the river was not cold and brittle. I passed the churches on Third Street and the shops on Main. Wearing my navy wool coat trimmed in fur, my hands in a muffler, I stepped around thin patches of ice, the bare elm trees stark against the gray sky. On First, Wilkinson, and Perry Streets I felt the women watching from their parlor windows. Let them see me, I thought, my shoulders back and my bearing rigid. Through my years as a pianist I had learned never to show dismay at mistakes, never to wince, never to frown, but to continue on as if nothing had happened.

On the first of March, I went to my mother and asked for a loan.

‘Marriage,’ she said, her eyes hard with disapproval. The etched lines around her lips deepened. ‘Do as I had to.’

I heard the accusation in her voice. I was an only child and my father had doted on me. He was proud of my career. Prior to my return to Dayton, I was a pianist with an all-woman ensemble in Philadelphia and on occasion, he sent generous gifts of money to supplement my income. When he died from a weak heart four years ago, my inheritance, small as it was, angered my mother. She considered that money to be hers, not mine. Two years later, her money dwindling, she remarried.

Now, as she wrote a bank check to cover one month’s expenses, she said, ‘You’re twenty-nine, soon to be thirty. You should have married years ago. You should have children by now. You should have a husband to look after you.’ She held out the check, and all at once, her voice softened. ‘Catherine, please. Find someone to marry. For your sake. Do it quickly.’

I wrote to the other two women in my ensemble telling them that I missed them and the music.
If you need a pianist, I can be there within the week.
They had been furious when I left a year ago. Now, they did not respond.

My thoughts in turmoil, I was unable to sleep, and my complexion turned sallow. I searched through my storage trunks and sorted old correspondence. I wrote letters to former suitors and to friends who lived in the East.
Such good times we had,
I penned in letter after letter.
It would be lovely to see you again.
Every day, I waited for the mail.
I am married
, former suitors wrote.
A visit would be nice,
friends wrote.
But the children keep me so busy these days.

I considered the elderly sagging widowers and the whiskery rotund bachelors who lived at the hotel. Marriage to any one of them would be the final humiliation and the very idea of it repulsed me.

I wrote to Edward.

His response came five days later.
Catherine. This is impossible. Find a new life for yourself. Go abroad, see the grand concert halls in Europe.

Stung, I told myself that these could not be Edward’s words. Someone had dictated his response. He was caught in a maze of gossip as was I. His hands were tied, he could not see me, not now. The gossip would fade; it was a matter of time. I understood that we could not continue our friendship; I knew it was over. All I wanted was one final hour with Edward to say goodbye. And then what? I thought, but could not answer.

I kept to my practice schedule as if all were well and as though I had upcoming engagements. I played mid-mornings and early afternoons on the Sohmer baby grand in the empty ballroom at the hotel. My fingers, though, were clumsy and awkward. Even Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin had deserted me.

In the bottom of one of my trunks, I found eleven letters from Oscar Williams, someone whom I had known since I was a child. He was a few years older than I, and his father had delivered coal to our furnace in the basement. After school and during the summers, Oscar worked with his father, the two of them driving through the alleys of Dayton, their wagon piled high with coal. ‘I like how you play the piano,’ Oscar told me once, ducking with shyness. He had stopped me on the lawn at Central High School as I was leaving with a few of my classmates. Oscar was tall and lanky, and his eyes were a deep green. My friends teased me and called him the coal man’s son but I was flattered by his compliment and by the admiration in his voice. There was something else, too. In spite of his shyness, he was direct and without guile, qualities that set him apart from most of the boys who escorted me home from school or who signed my dance cards at cotillions.