The Promise (3 page)

Several months after Oscar had stopped me on the lawn, I realized that I hadn’t seen him at school. I made roundabout inquiries. Oscar’s father’s cough had worsened and he’d died from a lung disease. Oscar was now the coal man and supported his mother and his younger sister and two brothers. During the spring of 1887, though, he found the time to attend my public recital. Just as I had walked out onto the stage at Music Hall, I saw Oscar slip into the back row. After, he waited for me in the lobby. ‘Listening to you takes me someplace else,’ he said. ‘Someplace new.’

The coal man, I reminded myself. He was charming in an unpolished way, but he was not like the young men with whom I kept company. His suit was too small. His white shirt, although clean and pressed, was worn at the cuffs. Coal dust was ground into the skin around his nails.

The summer of 1888, between finishing high school and starting at the music conservatory, I caught glimpses of Oscar at the Saturday evening concerts held at Lakeside Park. He was often alone, while I was usually with other young women, my former classmates from Central High. Alma, my cousin who would marry Edward a few years later, was one of these friends. Oscar would tip his hat to me and I’d nod, my smile faint as my friends teased. ‘Unrequited love,’ they said about him. ‘He’s always admired you. But …’ That one word was enough to dismiss Oscar Williams. We came from homes with pillared entrances and tall arched windows. Our fathers wore starched collars and their shoes were polished to a high gleam. Oscar was not one of us.

That September, I received a letter from him, surprising me.

I had not intended to respond. In five days, I was to leave for Oberlin College in northern Ohio, but out of politeness I wrote him a brief note.

Our correspondence continued for several years with months of silence between letters. I graduated from college and joined the ensemble in Philadelphia. Oscar left Amarillo, moved to Galveston –
There is Water on all Sides,
he wrote – and found work on a dairy farm. Eventually he bought the dairy and when that happened, he proposed marriage. That was six years ago, and my response had ended our correspondence. Now, in a fit of panic and unable to sleep, I wrote to him.

April, and more bills. I sought distraction and several times a week, I found myself at the public library. There, I wandered the stacks of books or sat in the reading room with a book on my lap. One morning, I rode the trolley that Edward took to his office at Barney & Smith Railcar Works on Keowee Street. I sat in the middle of the trolley car, surrounded by men in business suits, my chin up but my heart turning at the sight of Edward as he boarded, so handsome in his dark blue pinstripe suit, his mustache freshly trimmed. When he saw me, shock, then fear flashed across his face. For a moment, I believed he was going to turn around and get off the trolley but there were people behind him boarding. Without looking again at me, he walked down the aisle and sat somewhere behind me.

I considered moving to Cincinnati or to Columbus. I could place notices in the newspapers seeking pupils who wanted to study the piano. Mothers would invite me to their homes and interview me in their parlors as we sipped tea served in bone china. ‘Why did you leave Dayton?’ each one would say. ‘And what about your references? My husband insists, you understand.’ Their smiles would be sweet as if references were not important to them.

A letter came from Oscar Williams. His penmanship was precise even if his grammar was not.

A dairy farmer. A widower with a child. Someone I had not seen in years. I set Oscar’s letter aside. Morning after morning during April, I rode the trolley, the oaks and elms along the avenues budding and leafing as the air turned mild. Edward came to expect me, searching for me when he boarded. Our eyes would meet for the briefest of moments but that was enough. Tomorrow, I thought. He’ll speak to me tomorrow. But every morning, he looked away.

I reread the letter from Oscar Williams. Six years ago, his marriage proposal had shocked me. Surely he understood that I had maintained the correspondence out of kindness. I had a career. My ensemble played in concert halls and in the homes of Philadelphia’s leading citizens.

Now, he was the only person whose letter was not cold or indifferent. I pushed aside the unpaid bills on my desk and composed my next note.

His response came three weeks later. It was brief but filled with details about his dairy farm.
The Barn sits on a Raised up bed of Oyster Shells and dirt. It can rain hard here. It is big enough for Five more Cows.
Then,
My boy’s name is Andre.

By the end of May the note from the hotel manager carried a different tone. I was four months in arrears. If I did not settle my account immediately, I was to vacate my rooms by the end of June.

I responded to Oscar’s letter and expressed interest in his barn and in his son. I sorted through my jewelry and sold two necklaces and a pair of earrings to a jeweler whose speculating glances further humiliated me. I considered asking my mother for another loan but that would call for begging. It would mean she could dictate what I must do and whom I must marry. I considered again moving to Cincinnati or to Columbus but my courage had slipped. As unforgiving as Dayton was, I could not imagine being alone in an unfamiliar city, my money almost gone. I made arrangements to move to a boarding house where I would share a room with another woman. I wrote again to Oscar.
Whatever is it like to live on an island in Texas?

Near the end of June, I received the letter I had been waiting for and yet dreading.

I held the letter, trying to put together the images of a farmhouse, a small child, and a life of rituals far removed from my own. I tried to put shape to Oscar, but with the arrival of his offer his image had blurred, reminding me how little I knew him.

I reread Edward’s correspondence, touching his cursive script with my forefinger, tracing each letter on the linen stationery.
I enjoyed our conversation,
he had written two months after we’d met during the Christmas season of 1895. His penmanship was slanted, the
j
and
i
not dotted, but the
t
crossed with a brief dash.
I will be in Philadelphia next month,
he’d written in April of 1897, his wife a confirmed invalid by then.
Perhaps you might accompany me to the art museum there.
Three years ago, that invitation both shocked and thrilled me. Now, I saw his words as his wife might. He had pursued me. Surely, if I reminded him of those letters, he would be willing to provide for me.

The silk drapes at my sitting-room window rustled in the mild summer breeze. Below, the street was busy. Several buggies passed by, and on the sidewalks, women wearing feathered hats carried shopping baskets. At the opposite corner, two men in business suits and derbies stood talking. All of them were going about their day, occupied with their lives, their worries and problems perhaps nibbling at their thoughts as they searched for solutions.

Blackmail. I had fallen to that. Edward would despise me. Just as I would despise myself.

I read Oscar’s letter again. He offered escape from my debts, from my mother’s rejection, and from certain poverty. He offered escape from myself.

The next morning, I sat at the baby grand in the empty hotel ballroom, the keyboard covered. My face was drawn and my eyes ached from lack of sleep. I had sent my answer in yesterday’s late afternoon post.
Yes, Mr Williams,
I responded.
I will marry you.

CHAPTER TWO

Galveston, Texas

The wind gusted. The train rocked. Sea spray splattered the windows. I gripped the armrests of my seat as we skimmed above choppy white-capped waves. I had understood that Galveston was an island but until now, I had not realized just how unattached it was to the rest of Texas.

The train’s ventilation system had stopped and the car was stuffy and warm. The woman who sat across from me opened her silk fan, unfolding a painted picture of snow-covered mountains. ‘We’re crossing West Bay,’ she said to me as she waved her fan before her round, glistening face. Her words were drawn long with a Southern accent. ‘Our bridges are the longest in the world. Three miles if they’re an inch.’

My father had designed bridges and if this were one of his, I would have faith in its piers and bracings. Instead, I kept my gaze on my lap, unable to look at the other rickety wood train trestles that ran parallel to us, the waves breaking against their thin wood piers.

‘Smelling salts,’ the woman said. ‘That’s what I suggest if this is your first crossing.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

The train shimmied. Low murmurs filled the car, the passengers reassuring one another. My seat was second class, and I rode with my back to the front of the car. The woman facing me swayed. The man on the other side of the aisle held himself still as if his least movement might tip the train. Feeling ill, I closed my eyes.

I had left Dayton three days ago with Oscar Williams’ last letter in my cloth purse. He had not referred to the wedding nor had he mentioned where I would stay. Instead, there were details of train schedules and railroad routes. The journey from Dayton to Galveston called for changing trains in St. Louis, Little Rock, and Houston. In each station, I was surrounded by strangers while I spent long hours sitting on benches waiting to make my connections. After eight months of being shunned, I was disconcerted by the suddenness of being in such close quarters with so many people. I held a novel open on my lap but the words ran together, and I couldn’t recall the sentences I had just read. On board, the trip was a series of frequent stops and delays at small-town depots. Beyond the exchange of brief pleasantries with my fellow passengers, I kept to myself and watched the blur of farmlands, the river crossings, and woods that existed along the railroad tracks. Each mile traveled took me farther west and then south from Dayton. Each one brought me closer to a life so different from what I knew.

I opened my eyes. We were still crossing the bay – three miles, I thought – and now a crowd of steamships, tugboats, and schooners had come into view.

‘The last time I crossed the bay, it was storming,’ the woman across from me said. She wore a wedding band and her fingers were plump. ‘Gracious, that was quite the adventure. But today, we have blue skies and as for this breeze, why it’s little more than a puff.’

‘How fortunate,’ I said. I imagined the train tumbling off of the trestle, the car sinking and filling with water. The window, streaked with grimy water, was locked closed. I’d have to unfasten the locks and pull the window down. I might escape, but I didn’t know how to swim. Even if I did, my heavy plum-colored skirt would wrap and drag around my legs.

‘Nearly there,’ the woman said, putting on her gloves.

The train floated above small islands of tall rippling grass and low dense bushes. We crossed over shallow reedy marshes where long-necked white birds stood motionless. The train sloped down. We bumped off of the trestle and onto land held firm by the occasional grove of listing short bushy trees.