The Piano Teacher

Chapter 3

Charlotte didn't want her hope to sweep her head into the clouds too quickly. She had already taken one of Doctor Baker's iron pills with a dry mouth; she was so eager. Of course, it produced no immediate effect. She was sure the pills would help her eventually, but what if they didn't?

Relax, she told herself. There's no point in moping before anything bad happens yet.

But she still couldn't shake the usual fears that sat front and center in her mind. As her uncle stopped the buckboard outside the Oleson's Mercantile, Charlotte's mind relentlessly tormented her with the imagery of the worst period of her life. Those thoughts bombarded her, even when she was in a better mood than she was this morning.

She remembered the evening she fainted, in her fine evening dress, off the shoulder, with her mother's pearls heavy at her collarbone. For most others, fainting might not be anything of mention, but for her, the way it happened, was the thorn in the heart of her reputation, her dignity.

She remembered the lights flickering at the base of the stage where she performed in the theater, bathed in golden light.

The cool feeling of the ivory keys, positively immaculate, with the piano's body as shiny as spilled oil.

The audience of hundreds of perfectly dressed men and women all watched her, excited to hear her exquisite music. The beads of sweat she tried to conceal on her feverish skin.

And then the terrible clamminess, the numbness in her fingers that struck her just as she was in the middle of Liszt's Étude No. 6.

Just when her fingers had to move the fastest, they went limp, pressing all the wrong keys. Stumbling across those keys felt like a sin, to ruin such music at the prime moment.

She could feel herself slipping into the dark, yet still hearing the growing murmurs in the audience, judging her.

And then it was all gone. The piano, the audience, herself.

Everything went red. Hot. Suffocating. Then, the hard thud on the floor.

She hadn't awoken for two weeks. Though she had been unconscious, she felt that she might die, or that she was already dead. Though family members swarmed around her day in and day out, she couldn't hear their whispers, their chatter.

All she could hear was laughter, laughter that echoed to her from the concert auditorium's crowd in the dark.

And Étude No. 6.

The crescendo, the one she never got to play. The one she felt would burst from her fingers and her heart if she never got the chance to play it for someone, to show someone that she could do it and do it well.

But everything was ruined now anyway. She had not only humiliated herself in public but her father, too. She doubted he would ever let her perform again, and she doubted she would let herself do so either.

And yet, the constant reminder of humiliation was not the only reason she wanted to stay hidden, though it was a significant one. Another reason, one that she only realized upon waking from her fever, spurred her misanthropic behavior more intensely than anything else.

"Come on, Charlie," said Samuel, offering his hand up to her from where he stood on the ground.

His voice shook her out of her terrible thoughts, and she smiled nervously, pulling her bonnet tightly around her head. Her gaze followed up the stairs at the front of the mercantile, and the quaint little store still managed to strike her with fear.

What if I ever faint again? In front of everyone? This town is so much smaller than the city. Everyone will remember me more clearly, who I am. They'll remember me as the girl who dropped like an idiotic stone and nothing more. Nothing more.