Finding Ever After

by Pepper Basham

  Thomas was all too pleased to oblige. After all, one of the chapters in his dustily boring book spoke to the singular musical effect of a woman who could charm and beguile prospective investors. Esther could make Thomas look more charming than he actually was at upstate soirees. (To be fair, so could a rabid squirrel).

  Esther loved music, naturally… but not at the expense of a buffoon of a fiancé. Yet she had no choice but to entwine her destiny with his. She had one living parent, a dwindling dowry and the prospect of safety in a grand estate.

  Her father and Thomas were allowing her one last dream before she was packed off under a blanket of stuffy nuptials in just over a month’s time. To show off to his Bostonian friends, Thomas insisted she perform a recital selection of her favorite pieces. Esther’s imagination peeled back the russet curtain and her nose smelled the tang of snuffed footlights.

  “But I’ll need an accompanist.” Esther said, stripping the buoyant excitement from her voice, accepting the second rate smattering of stars as she prepared to bid farewell to her dream of being a concert performer forever.

  “I know, my dear.” Thomas said. “Your father and I are inviting half of the city as well as a few colleagues from Newhaven and Montreal. We will find you the finest accompanist.”

  “And a rehearsal pianist and space, Thomas.” Her mind whirled with preparations. “I can go to the store at the Berklee Conservatory for my sheet music. But, I will need a qualified pianist.”

  “Qualified.” Thomas rose from the settee where his closeness stiffened her shoulders and collar and tickled her nostrils with liberal cologne. He poured several lengths of brandy and studied her “I bet there are different levels of qualified.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And it is just a rehearsal.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “I think that Mrs. Mayweather…she does all of those charitable bazaars with that church in the North End…and her husband helped me find my Cadillac, you know. She might be able to find me someone at a fraction of the price.”

  Esther clamped her mouth shut. When he wasn’t going on about Von Witterhorn, Thomas was reeling about the amount of money he had. Everyone who stood within a mile of him was privy to his investments and sums. He just, apparently, did not have the money to lavish on a pianist for her.

  “I want to perform well, Thomas.”

  “You will, my darling.” Thomas tilted her chin up to him at an awkward angle and smothered her lips with his mouth. She tried to lick the brandy taste away as he disengaged, wondering why the sensations she read of in her favorite novels were more akin to a wet fish flopping on shore at the meeting of her fiance’s lips with her own.

  “Thank you.”

  “We will find a situation perfect suitable.”

  “Perfect.”

  Perfect. It would be the last perfect moment of her life before she tucked her dreams of love and music, kisses and chess into a hope chest and settled for a third-rate fairytale.

  2

  “I hope you don’t smudge my piano.” Mrs. Mayweather said, surveying Nic as he draped halfway over the sleek grand model.

  “Vibrations.” Nic explained, ear lowered to the frame, hearing peaked for the slightest reverberation of the strings. “This is a beautiful piano.” Nic backed up and grabbed a satchel containing a large pianomaker’s brace, tuning fork, hammer and a pair of pliers. He first set a soft square of silk over the bench before arranging his tools out as gingerly as a surgeon preparing an operation.

  Nic set to quick work affixing one end of the brace to a treble pin. He was careful to crank slowly so that the hum was little more than a whisper or thought. Mrs. Mayweather was impressed.

  “You are quite gentle with the instrument. Quite professional.” She inched over to inspect his work. Nic kept his long fingers agile as he strummed and tightened, stopping only to flick his index finger over the middle C key.

  “It is a beautiful piano.” Nic repeated. There was something about exposing a piano’s secrets: lifting the frame and seeing the anatomy inside in all of its carefully wired craftsmanship that moved him. How could something that looked so mechanically precise with strings and pins emote such a surprising sound?

  Nic flexed a finger over the same key then spanned his fingers into a casual chord. He stood up. Mrs. Mayweather was closer than he assumed given his intense study of the piano so he excused himself and deftly worked around her, tweaking a treble string until it hummed to perfect pitch.

  Mrs. Mayweather inspected a tuning fork, perplexed at the long German-sounding name inscribed on its left prong. “Quite the name.”

  “It’s memorable. And it’s a good tool.” He put the device to work and listened for the slight reverberation on a high pitch. Tightened. Tweaked. Maneuvered. Moments later, he was back on the bench, tools carefully aligned on the silk square, hands over the keyboard.

  “Father Francisco says you play.” Mrs. Mayweather had retreated, clearly happy with the sound Nic’s clear notes had made.

  Nic ran a scale, pressed his foot to the pedal, allowed a slight, haunting vibrato to linger in the drawing room before removing his fingers from the keys. He smiled at her. “I enjoy playing, yes.”

  “Play me something.” Mrs. Mayweather flounced her skirt beneath her as she settled into a wing-backed chair upholstered with a bird pattern that made him think of the Common in Spring.

  Nic fanned out his fingers and inhaled. He couldn’t play on such a beautiful instrument with anything but reverence, so he closed his eyes and gently began the first wistful notes of the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata. Mrs. Mayweather was enraptured.

  Nic flourished the piece slowly, happy that each somber note displayed how well he had tuned the keys under his fingerpads.

  Finally, he finished.

  “Yes. You will do, Mr. Ricci. You will do very nicely.”

  “I will do what, Mrs. Mayweather?”

  Mrs. Mayweather clapped her hands together. “Let’s just say I love an opportunity to play Fairy Godmother. And I have quite the opportunity for you.”

  “So, in short, you are sending me to a dustbin?” Esther fumed. “I thought you wanted this recital to be the most magnificent piece of amateur musicianship the Boston set has ever seen.”

  “Surely I wouldn’t use all of that hyperbole.” Thomas swished the brandy in his glass.

  “It was a direct quote from you, Thomas!”

  Thomas stroked the skin through the lace shrouding Esther’s forearm. “Not a dustbin, my love. An opportunity to save money by having you rehearse in a prudent and practical manner. Get this little dream out of your system while saving for your trousseau.”

  Esther enjoyed a few bits and bobs as much as the next woman. But, the antiquated idea of a trousseau was the furthest thing from her mind. She would splurge, barter, pawn for the ability to have one night to live her dream. To stand under the flush of footlights and interpret every song she held close to her heart. She asked Thomas when they were first betrothed about the musical opportunities available when they moved upstate.

  “I will buy you a beautiful grand piano and you can sing to your heart’s content. And, of course, there can be concerts. In New York. In Washington.” He promised her what he inevitably thought was the moon in these instances and Esther convinced herself it would be enough. It would be perfect and she would be happy.

  “And you found me a rehearsal pianist?” she asked after Thomas told her about the small studio in the North End. He even provided a few photographs that had inspired Esther’s initial proclamation of dust bin.

  “Mrs. Mayweather has found someone. Fellow doesn’t have a lot of references but apparently played quite well while he tuned her piano. That should be sufficient enough for your purposes.”

  “A piano tuner is not a rehearsal pianist, Thomas. The only thing in common with the two occupations is the instrument.”

  Thomas didn’t hear her. “And you must take Widow Barclay, m
y dear. I cannot have you alone with a man. He’s some wretched gutter snipe she knows through a priest. So he’ll be of a sort to be sure.” Thomas didn’t elaborate on what sort. “But I would rather not sink money into this. You’ll be magnificent. You already know how to sing.”

  “Is Widow Barclay amenable?” She knew the Widow as a friend to her mother who had emigrated to America after the death of her husband and appeared at holidays as certainly as unpacked decorative ornament. Esther was a little surprised she would offer to be companion for this purpose. Maybe Thomas offered to pay her well. Perhaps better than the pianist.

  “She said she will bring her knitting.”

  “Well, then.” Esther’s voice strangled with sarcasm. “As long as she has her knitting.”

  3

  It turned out Mrs. Mayweather’s act of fairy godmothering was a stint as a rehearsal pianist for a young heiress giving a concert at a fashionable address on Tremont Street. When Nic protested that he wasn’t trained in this line of work, she said his playing was all he needed to commend him and handed him a list of the songs the young woman wanted to sing. Nic looked them over with a nod. They were somewhat tricky at times, but pretty standard and he didn’t have to perform them with her on the grand night, just help her practice for the next several weeks.

  “Her name is Esther Hunnisett.” Mrs. Mayweather explained. “She is soon to be married to Thomas Weatherton.”

  Nic whistled lowly. “That Weatherton?” The Weatherton name seemed to be on half of the barges and skiffs tugging in and out of the wharfs rimming the North End.

  “The very one.”

  “With all due respect, are you sure there isn’t a more qualified…” But Nic never got to the end of the sentence as Mrs. Mayweather pressed an address in his hand and then turned and left with a wave in lieu of a goodbye.

  So, before the appointed hour at a communal space just beyond the enterprise and bustle of Hanover Street, Nic tugged at his vest and fixed his collar and hoped he was appropriately attired for a woman affiliated with the Weatherton fortune. He tried his best to tune the ancient and rickety instrument into some level of submission, but failed. If Father Francisco didn’t hold confession at this very hour, he would have asked to borrow the piano in the rectory for the purpose. Surely a young, well-bred woman attached to such a magnanimous fortune deserved more than a few clunky keys.

  When she arrived, she did so with shoulders erect and a polite smile. Miss Esther Hunnisett was pretty. She wore pearl baubles at her ears and draped over her ivory collarbone. Her sumptuous blonde hair was swept into an up-do that must have weighed quite a bit given texture and length he surmised even in its fashionable constraint.

  Behind her, a sweet-faced and somewhat matronly woman was in tow, head down and hands folded over a small hand bag.

  “Mr. Ricci?” Miss Hunnisett asked

  Nic liked her voice: it was a throaty alto and boded well for the timbre of her singing.

  Nic didn’t know whether he should take her hand in a firm shake or accept a few dangled fingers as he had once seen in a movie featuring a Queen. He settled for ducking his head in a slight nod.

  “How do you do, Miss Hunnisett?”

  “I am very well. I hope you don’t mind that my chaperone is with me.”

  Nic didn’t know a lot about fancy rich girls; but he thought the world had chugged a little far ahead for chaperones. “Of course not.” He took the chaperone’s offered hand. “Nic Ricci.”

  “I am Widow Barclay.”

  Widow Barclay trundled off to a chair in the corner that expelled a cloud of dust as she lowered her rounded figure into it. She took out knitting needles and a bundle of yarn and set to busy work clacking with the precision of a metronome.

  Nic turned back to Esther. Mrs. Mayweather had not listened to his reservations, but maybe she would.

  “Pardon me, Miss Hunnisett. You are a fine lady with a chaperone. And I am … don’t get me wrong, I am a more than proficient pianist. I am not saying that to boast, rather to assure you. But I am certain a lady of your situation could well afford a rehearsal studio and a much more qualified pianist.”

  Esther Hunnisett studied him a moment. “You don’t speak how I thought you would.”

  Nic kept a defensive tone from creeping into his voice. “I was born in America, Miss Hunnisett. I am more American than you are.” Her consonants were crisp British. “In this very city, no less.”

  “I do beg your pardon.” Esther leaned in to him a little, lowered her voice from the seemingly dozy Widow Barclay. “My fiancé, who has all of the charm and diplomacy of a sunken swan boat in the Public Garden, assured me you were little more than an uncouth guttersnipe and thus perfect because he promised me this little lark but is unwilling to spend more than a pittance on this musical interlude of mine.” She raised a gloved hand to the drab interface of the warehouse-like hovel. “Which very much explains our residence in this Versailles look-a-like.” She raised an eyebrow in irony before she looked at the dreary walls and over the slightly slumped Widow Barclay and then back at him. She shrugged. “So if neither of us perishes from a deathly opposition to the dust and windowless nature of this prison, perhaps we can fill it with music.”

  Nic blinked his surprise. He liked her. She was clearly waiting for him to respond, a challenge sparkling her eyes.

  “Not quite a guttersnipe, Miss Hunnisett. I make my living as a high school math teacher in the North End. I was educated thanks to a kind priest who thought that I could make something of myself. I was studying to pursue post graduate studies when my father was injured in the molasses factory disaster.”

  Miss Hunnisett’s sharp eyes dulled with sympathy. “I am truly sorry about that. What a devastating waste.”

  “He is still alive and that is all that matters.” Nic moved toward the piano and pulled out the three legged stool from under the keyboard. This place seemed to house old furniture sentenced to slow, abandoned death. He lowered his tall frame and banged his knee cap on the side of the board with the movement.

  “Off to a running start.” he said against a hint of a smile. Esther stepped to the opposite side of the upright piano.

  “I have one chance at this.” She explained. “I will be spirited upstate after our wedding to some useless estate where the only audience will be the monthly assembly of the glorious daughters of the revolution and acres of sheep and cows. So, we have to go all in, Mr. Ricci.”

  Nic smiled. “I vow I will do my utmost to be worthy of this momentous occasion. The contract mentioned you would be selecting your own pieces? Mrs. Mayweather showed them to me.”

  Esther nodded. “I have the music with me. I have copies so that you can have your own.”

  “Thank you.” He accepted the folder and opened an array of Bizet, Schubert, Verdi and Puccini. And then, Mozart. Nic smiled.

  “Mozart.”

  Esther grinned. “There is part of me that thinks Mozart was just out to torture poor, unsuspecting female vocalists. But, there is such calculated passion, too.”

  Nic shifted so quickly to make eye contact he thought he might topple the stool over. “Calculated passion?”

  “He clearly wants to rein it in just a bit. It’s clever of him. Puccini is all over the place. Mozart wants us to color it in a little. He gives us the lines and I think he expects us to embroider them. It’s like… it’s like this…” She leaned a little over the piano in what Nic could only assume was an affront to every last finishing school directive she might ever have been given. “We have all the pieces… the chess pieces…on the board and they’re all lined up but we have to move them. We make the decision even though everything is all there for us. The general rules. It won’t ever look the same twice.” She stopped. “You’re staring at me, Mr. Ricci. Did I say something that… I am sorry. Blame Mozart for the fact that I get carried away.”

  “I quite enjoy playing chess, Miss Hunnisett. And I often connected those two things-- the composer and the g
ame-- and I had never heard another human soul on the planet express the same sentiment.”

  Suddenly the attractive lady who stepped in like a comet from a far galaxy, was a little further down to earth. And ever more attractive than she had been when he had first clapped eyes on her. Now, the drab walls just made her brown eyes light and the dangling bulb from the cobwebbed boards above them off set the slant of her cheek bone and her lips which had been pert and pretty in their dusky rose were now a perfect cupid’s bow. The more she talked, the more affinity he felt with what she said, the more she became the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life.

  She gracefully lifted her chin and took in Widow Barclay a few feet beyond the piano and evidently quite comfortable in the threadbare wing backed chair. For her knitting was in a clump on the floor and the widow was dozing. “Clearly the Widow Barclay is not as attached to Mozart as we are.”

  Nic pumped the pedal with his scuffed Sunday best shoe and creaked it into submission. Then he ran a rusty major scale with his right hand, the poorly tuned piano clanging to some kind of life.

  “You’ll just have to sound beautiful and muffle the sound of this tin can.” He said in response to her wrinkled nose. “I hope she can sleep through anything.”

  “It’s dreadful.”

  He held up a piece of music. “It’s Mozart.”