The Promise Read Free Page A

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.
    March 18, 1900
    My dear,
    You and I have spoken often of touring the art museum in Cincinnati, and I long to see it now. It would be so lovely to meet you there. We would arrive, of course, on separate trains.
    Yours,
    Catherine
    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