by Megan Chance
“You’re not amusing,” I said. “We should have gone somewhere else.”
“I offered my room.”
“Not there.”
“Afraid I’ll seduce you again?”
“Keep your voice down. You’re provoking. I’m nearly ready to change my mind about all this.”
“You’re the one who’s provoking,” he said, leaning across the table, his eyes flashing. “It’s waiting for what you want that you can hardly bear. You wanted to sing that music so badly you were shaking. You wanted me just as much. You still do.”
I jerked back, rising from my chair so quickly it fell over. The crack of it on the floor was like a shot in the small room. I felt the sudden silence, the curious glances.
Gideon gave me a smug look. Beneath his breath, he said, “If they didn’t notice us before, they do now.”
Tommy stepped from the kitchen. “You all right, Miss Olson?”
I glanced around, smiling weakly. “Yes. My … my skirt caught—”
Gideon rose and came around the table, righting the chair. “Sit down,” he said quietly.
I did, though I was trembling now. Gideon went back to his seat. Tommy brought out our breakfast and my coffee, and I looked down at the ham, swimming in grease, and the potatoes which were shining with it, and thought I might be sick.
“Eat.” Gideon pointed to my plate with his knife. “You’ve lost all your color.”
I pushed the plate away. “I can’t.”
“A few bites, Bina. Please. I won’t provoke you any more.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
He sliced into his ham. “What I can promise is that you’ll be more impossible than you already are if you don’t eat something. I remember that well enough.”
“I think I would vomit if I ate just now.”
“You will if you don’t,” he pointed out. Then he looked at me and sighed. “Some potatoes. Please.”
Obediently, I picked up my fork. I took one bite. Despite their greasy coating, the potatoes were good, crispy and salty, and the moment I ate one my hunger returned. I felt him watching me for a moment, solicitous as a mother hen, and grimly I kept eating, and finally he looked to his own meal, and I relaxed. I was halfway through the ham when he spoke again.
“We’ll need a piano.”
I looked up, a forkful of ham poised at my mouth. “Oh. Yes, of course.”
“There’s one at your boxhouse.”
“No,” I said quickly. “Not there.”
“Why not?”
“If we’re to do this, I want it kept secret.”
“Afraid Langford will discover how you’ve been lying to him?”
I looked at him in stunned surprise.
He put down his fork and pushed away his empty plate. “What does he know? Anything?”
Mutely, I shook my head.
“You want it to stay that way?”
“Gideon, please. You can’t—”
“Then find me another piano,” he said.
“There—there’s one at the church.”
“Could you persuade them to let us use it?”
“Persuade them?” I asked sharply. “How do you mean?”
“I meant only that you should ask them, Sabine. Just ask them.”
I felt foolish then, too sensitive, and I bent my head to cover my embarrassment and picked up my coffee. “I will.”
WHEN I LEFT him, I went not to the Palace, but to Trinity Church. Mr. Anderson was kind and understanding when I asked if I could use the piano for a few hours each day, and when I requested that he keep it secret, he assumed I was planning a surprise for Charlotte, and I didn’t disabuse him. The piano had been moved to a storage room to keep it safe from the construction in the nave, but I assured Mr. Anderson I would not be inconvenienced, and his pleasure over my desire to use it rang in my ears as I left the church and made my way back to the Lava Beds. The lie I’d told him was equally loud. But through it all was the anticipation I’d been afraid of, that fierce, unrelenting joy.
CHAPTER 22
That night, I saw each time Charlotte meant to search me out, and I deliberately disappeared. I kissed Johnny when he told me that Kerwin had decided to join the circuit, and pretended nothing had changed. I felt guilty for both those things, but all I could think of was the next morning, and when it finally came, as cold and bright as the day before, I forgot everything in my rush to the New Brunswick.
The reflection of the sun glowed through the lobby windows, bouncing off the spittoons and catching upon the floorboards. I hurried past the man at the desk before he had time to ask if he could help me. When I was at number ten, I rapped impatiently at the door.
It opened almost immediately, as if he’d been waiting. The sun was too bright behind him where it came in through the window, turning the smoke rising from his abandoned cigarette into a glowing fog so it looked as if he stood in a hazy box of light. He wore only an undervest of wool flannel and trousers that hung low upon his hips—too large now, with how thin he was. His feet were bare, and there was the shine of sweat on his skin.
Too sharply, I said, “Get dressed. We’ve the piano now if we want it, and I only have a few hours before I’ll be missed.”
“Come in. I need only a moment.”
I stepped inside, and he closed the door, and deliberately I stayed there beside it, not allowing myself to look at him as he caught up a shirt from the chair and shrugged into it. The bed was unmade—best not to look there—and there was music spread on the desk—definitely not there either, and finally I looked down at the floor and tapped my foot impatiently.
True to his word, he was ready quickly. He gathered up the music and tied the folio shut, shoving it beneath his arm, taking up his cigarette. When we were outside again, I breathed deeply in relief.
He didn’t miss it. His glance was amused. “Almost too enticing for you, Bina?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said stiffly.
“Who knows what would have happened if I’d taken another five minutes? I confess I was tempted to find out.”
“I’ll practice with you, but that’s all.”
He gave me a sideways glance as he drew on his cigarette. “Is that so?”
I was flustered, ill at ease. “I can’t leave everything just because you’ve found me.”
“Ah, that’s right. You have a new life now.”
“Yes.”
He threw his cigarette to the ground. “Sabine Conrad, singing in a church choir. Christ, it staggers the imagination. Your brother would never believe you’ve chosen to throw it all away.”
We crossed the throat. A wagon was overturned, feathers everywhere, chickens squawking about, pecking disorientedly at the mud while other drovers, stopped completely by the mess, hurled obscenities at the driver.
I stepped around a tottering chicken. “Barret would be glad. He hated the life we lived.”
“No,” Gideon said. “He loved the life we lived. It was me he hated.”
“I always wondered what you did to him. You were the closest of friends once.”
“Hmmm.” The folio of music slipped a little beneath his arm, and he shoved it back. “How old were you when we first went on tour?”
“Sixteen. As if you didn’t know quite well.”
“Sixteen, and sent off with two young men to watch over you—one of whom wasn’t even a relative—with hardly a backward glance.”
“You were family. You were my sister’s fiancé.”
“I’d never made her an offer.”
“Everyone assumed you would. It had been two years.”
“She perhaps made more of it than it was. I was hardly faithful to her, and she knew it.”
“But it served your purposes well enough to make the rest of us think you were,” I said acidly. “You’re not so honest as you pretend.”
“That’s true,” he admitted. “I wasn’t honest. But I saw a fortune in you. The same fortu
ne your family saw.”
“I don’t think they viewed it quite the same way. They wanted the best for me.”
“How was the best for you sending you across the country with only me and your ne’er-do-well brother to tend to you?”
I stopped dead on the boardwalk, heedless of the people who bumped into me and then cursed at the obstacle I made. “Are you saying my family cared nothing for what happened to me?”
Gideon took my arm, propelling me steadily forward. “Of course not. But they sent you unprepared into a world you had no knowledge of, and then they disliked what you did to survive it, though they liked the money well enough. They were hypocrites. Barret was the worst of them.”
I stared at him uncomprehendingly.
Impatiently, he said, “He wanted you to be a prima donna. He had to want it. But he saw what was happening between us, and he knew what I would do about it. He hated me for the influence I had on you. And he was unprepared for what you were.”
“For what I was?”
“A woman who knew how to get what she wanted,” he said—and there was a pride in his voice that surprised me. “And one who had the ambition and talent to go along with her will. Barret was no match for you.”
“The way you make him sound … Barret loved me.”
“Yes. But he would have preferred you to be a safe, biddable sister.” He threw me a thin smile. “And as I’ve been trying to tell you, you’re far from biddable.”
We were both breathing hard, climbing the steep grade of Jefferson Street. The cold seared my lungs, and my corset pinched. I saw the ugly bell tower of the church ahead and found myself both wishing to be there and wanting a little more time. The things he’d said confused me; I had questions I could barely articulate, a sense that he was opening wide something that had been shut tight.
Then there was no more time. We were there. We paused outside to catch our breath.
Gideon hoisted the folio higher beneath his arm and looked appraisingly at the clapboard building. Then he looked at me and smiled. “Well then, enough of the past. Shall we begin the future?”
We went inside. The church was empty of those in contemplation, no doubt because of the noise of construction, which was a constant cacophony of hammering and sawing and the shouting back and forth of workmen to one another.
I led Gideon to Mr. Anderson’s office. The door was open, but the choirmaster was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s the piano?” Gideon asked.
“In some storage room,” I said. “Though I don’t know where—”
Just then, Mr. Anderson rounded the corner. He was carrying music, and when he saw us standing there, he burst into a smile. “Miss Olson! And this must be the friend you spoke of.”
“Gideon Price,” I said, introducing them quickly.
As they shook hands, Mr. Anderson said, “Is that music you’re holding?”
“We hadn’t decided which selections to use,” Gideon said. “It seemed best to bring it all.”
“To find the song that will best serve is one of my most difficult tasks,” Mr. Anderson said. “I’ve some music as well, if you care to look through it. In my office. My observation is that Miss Rainey seems to prefer the more joyful melodies.”
“Miss Rainey?” Gideon looked at me in question.
“Charlotte, of course,” I said, then, quickly, to Mr. Anderson, “I think I’ve only ever referred to her by her Christian name. I never think of her as Miss Rainey.”
“Such good friends are rare indeed,” Mr. Anderson said with a smile. “Well, I won’t delay you. Please, follow me and I’ll show you the storeroom.” He turned to lead us down the hallway, and then turned to go down some narrow stairs I had never before seen. “As I told Miss Olson, you must forgive us the disarray. With the building going on … the best place for the piano was here. In fact, it’s the only place there’s room.”
At the bottom of the stairs was a dark space that held a broken pew, a coatrack, several crates. It smelled of dust and mold. Mr. Anderson led us to a door on the far side. It was dark as pitch inside, and I heard him scrabble about, and then the strike of a match, and he was illuminated. As he adjusted the flame of the oil lamp, the room came into view: shelves stacked with hymnals and Bibles, crates holding candles, incense burners, and boxes of incense, so the room smelled of dust and dampness and fragrance, of old paper and oil. In the middle of it sat the piano, and all around it were crates holding other things that had been put here to save them from the builders.
Mr. Anderson looked apologetic. “You see.”
“It will do nicely,” Gideon said. He set the folio on top of the piano and smiled. “We could wish for nothing better.”
I looked about in dismay. It was not that the room was terribly small, but it was full, and that made it closer than I liked. Though the room was enough removed from the rest of the church that it afforded us the privacy to keep a secret, it was that very privacy I dreaded as well.
But I thanked Mr. Anderson for the privilege.
“If nothing else, it’s quiet,” he said. “You won’t hear the construction down here, and it’s loud enough up there that no one will hear you either. Your surprise should remain one.”
Then he was gone, closing the door behind him, closing us in. I heard his footsteps beyond on the stairs, the thud of the upper door—not so much as a sound, but as a vibration.
Gideon asked, “Who’s Charlotte?”
“A friend of mine. I had to tell him something.”
“Does she know anything about you?”
“If you mean about my past, then no. She knows I sing in the choir. She works at the Palace. She’s one of the per formers.”
“A whore?”
“Well, yes. But she’s who suggested the choir. She comes every Sunday to watch.”
“Are you close?”
I glanced at him sharply. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I find it curious. You’ve never had much to do with other women.”
“I suppose it helps that she’s neither trying to upstage me nor sleeping with my manager.”
“You mean attempting to sleep with your manager.” He turned to the piano, going around it to flip up the lid, trying the keys. “It’s in tune,” he said in surprise.
“It should be. It was in the nave until the organ came.”
He sat on the bench, running his fingers over the keys, elegant and easy, the same run he did before every practice. How well I remembered it. How often I’d watched those fingers, mesmerized by them, by the memory of how they felt against my skin….
I turned away to stare at the shelves, the boxes of incense, trying to contain emotions that seemed suddenly too raw.
He finished with a flourish. “Come. Shall we see how much damage needs to be undone?”
It was a relief, and there was an anticipation too that made me go quickly to stand on the other side of the piano, settling my hands upon the top, feeling the vibration of the notes as he took me through the warm-ups. For weeks now, months, I’d done things Mr. Anderson’s way, but I fell into Gideon’s routine as if there had been nothing in the interim. I knew exactly which warm-ups he wanted, how he would lead me through them, and my body responded with the habit of years; without thinking, it knew his voice and the sound of his fingers upon the keys, the exact press, the pause, the way I must breathe, and the last months, the last years, fell away. I was Gideon’s again, and I knew with a soft dismay that no matter what other teachers I’d had or would have, his was the imprint that mattered—I was poured into the mold he’d set. I was helpless to resist his commands, I was anxious to please him. He spoke shortly, pointedly:
“Sustain that.”
“Rounder please.”
“Less breathiness.”
Over and over again, for half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour, each comment accompanied by a nod of satisfaction or a frown. I found myself taking more pleasure than I should at his nod, trying to impress him—short-li
ved, that, because he snapped, “Don’t strain. You’ll ruin everything. You’re weeks away from that note.”
“I can hit it in the choir.”
“You can mark it there, you mean, when no one wants you singing with your full strength. You won’t be marking it when you’re singing the Queen of the Night.”
“I hate singing the Queen. I won’t sing her again.”
“When I have you back, there will be no bothering with anything but the premiere parts. No one wants to see you sing Pamina. You’ll be singing the Queen.”
“If I decide I even want to perform again.”
“As you say,” he said, though there was a gleam in his eyes when he said it, and I knew he was only humoring me.
It made me angry. “And if I do decide to go back, I’ll decide what I sing.”
“Some things never change.”
“What does that mean?”
“Only that here’s what’s familiar—arguing with you about the difference between what’s best and what you want.”
“You always won those arguments, just as you won everything.”
“Did I? How is it then, that you ended up singing Tannhäuser?”
“What was wrong with that? I love Tannhäuser.“
“Wagner’s what’s wrong with it. If you recall, you were unavailable for anything else for two months after.”
“People loved it.”
“It wasn’t your best,” he said. “You’re a coloratura soprano, Sabine, which you know very well. Let others throw their voices at Wagner. You haven’t the stamina.”
I was stung. “You always said that. It wasn’t true.”
“Indeed not. I suppose giving up the Peace Jubilee concert the next month had nothing to do with wearing yourself out night after night with Elisabeth.”
I went silent, remembering. Coming back to the hotel each night hardly able to speak, exhausted beyond bearing. I remembered him arguing with me about cutting short my contract. My insistence that I not, and then two months of forced inactivity, restlessness, tempers while I recovered. He’d been solicitous, hovering, concerned even through his anger.
