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A Steinway Won’t Buy Back My Hands
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Seven years after I divorced Wyatt Simmons, I ran into him at a piano showroom. I was there to buy my daughter an upright for her practice room. The sales associate left me halfway through a question and hurried over to greet him. “Mr. Simmons. Another piano for your wife? She’s a lucky woman.” I’d seen restaurant owners walk away from full tables to greet Wyatt’s father. The Simmons name still got people moving. Wyatt looked past the associate and saw me. “Let her pick one, too,” he said. “Put it on my account.” “I’ve already picked one.” I nodded toward the upright my daughter had tried earlier that week. She’d played the same four bars three times before she let me take her home. Wyatt took a black card from his wallet and pressed it into my palm. “You always wanted a Steinway, Mildred. You could spend the rest of your life scrubbing floors and still never afford one.” He folded my fingers over the card. “It’s been seven years. You can stop being stubborn with me.” For a moment, I couldn’t think what to say. He’d decided I cleaned floors for a living without even asking what I was doing there. I set his card on the counter and asked the associate how soon they could deliver the upright. I already had a Steinway at home. This piano was for my daughter. As for Wyatt, I’d stopped wanting him years ago.
Chapters (4)
Chapter 1
Seven years after I divorced Wyatt Simmons, I ran into him at a piano showroom. I was there to buy my daughter an upright for her practice room.
The sales associate left me halfway through a question and hurried over to greet him.
“Mr. Simmons. Another piano for your wife? She’s a lucky woman.”
I’d seen restaurant owners walk away from full tables to greet Wyatt’s father. The Simmons name still got people moving.
Wyatt looked past the associate and saw me.
“Let her pick one, too,” he said. “Put it on my account.”
“I’ve already picked one.” I nodded toward the upright my daughter had tried earlier that week. She’d played the same four bars three times before she let me take her home.
Wyatt took a black card from his wallet and pressed it into my palm.
“You always wanted a Steinway, Mildred. You could spend the rest of your life scrubbing floors and still never afford one.” He folded my fingers over the card. “It’s been seven years. You can stop being stubborn with me.”
For a moment, I couldn’t think what to say. He’d decided I cleaned floors for a living without even asking what I was doing there.
I set his card on the counter and asked the associate how soon they could deliver the upright.
I already had a Steinway at home. This piano was for my daughter.
As for Wyatt, I’d stopped wanting him years ago.
……
“This isn’t about being stubborn, Wyatt.”
While the associate checked the delivery schedule, I filled in the address on the order slip. “I’ll take the upright we discussed. Please send it here.”
Wyatt took the slip before the associate could reach for it.
“Harmony Academy?”
He read the address twice. The Simmons family name was on a plaque in the academy’s lobby. His father had paid for the recital hall back when he wanted a few respectable people in Riverton to start returning his calls.
“I know the headmaster,” Wyatt said. “I’ll tell him to send somebody else on these errands. You’ve got enough to do keeping the place clean.”
He stopped. The rims of his eyes had gone red.
“Mildred, if things got this bad, why didn’t you come to me?”
I caught my reflection in the polished side of a grand piano. I’d thrown on an old blue overshirt that morning. The cuffs had faded almost white. It could pass for a uniform if you’d already decided what I did for a living.
“I’m buying the piano myself,” I said. “Leave the headmaster out of it.”
I took back the slip, paid at the counter, and tucked the receipt into my bag. My daughter had won first place at the National Youth Piano Competition that afternoon. She was waiting for me to come home and cut the cake we’d bought before we knew how she’d placed.
Outside, the wind cut straight through my shirt. Autumn had come early to Riverton. I pulled on my gloves and texted Morris to tell him I was ready.
Wyatt caught up with me near the end of the showroom’s covered walkway. He was breathing hard. He shoved a folded purchase order into my open bag.
“I had them cancel your order. They’re sending the Steinway instead.”
I took out the paper. My delivery address was still there. So was my name. The only signature at the bottom was his.
“You remember what you used to tell me?” he said. “You wanted to give a concert on a Steinway of your own. I remember, Mildred. I remember all of it.”
His fingers shook when he reached for my arm. I stepped back.
“Let me give you the piano,” he said. “Maybe then you can stop hating me.”
I set the order on the low wall beside us and took off my gloves, one finger at a time.
Wyatt looked down. The scars ran across every finger. Some of the skin had drawn tight enough that I couldn’t straighten my fingers all the way, even after years of trying.
He fell silent. He’d seen what happened to my hands. He knew I’d never play a concert again.
Eight years earlier, I’d gone into the National Piano Competition as the favorite. I’d written the pieces for the final myself. Wyatt knew where I kept the scores because he’d listened to me play through them at home, sometimes long after midnight.
The day before the final, he took them and gave them to Vera Swanson.
Vera was his protégée. The Simmons family paid for her lessons and made sure she got on the right recital programs. Wyatt wanted a win that would get her noticed outside Riverton. He’d decided my music could get her one.
I went to get the scores back. I’d just put both hands on the table to gather them when Vera picked up the kettle. Wyatt was close enough to stop her.
He let her pour the boiling water over my hands.
For a second, all I could hear was the kettle hitting the table. Then I looked down. The skin across my fingers had started to blister.
Vera took a step back. Wyatt moved between us.
“Mildred Fox, it’s one competition,” he said. “Did you really have to come here and fight her over it?”
At the hospital, he held the door open for the nurse while she brought in a tray of dressings. He waited until she left before he spoke.
“You want a title? I’ll get you into another competition next year.”
I looked at my hands. Both were wrapped so thickly I couldn’t see where one finger ended and the next began.
“This time,” he said, “you step aside for Vera.”
I cried until my throat hurt. Sometime before dawn, I worked the edge of a bloodstained bandage loose with my teeth. I needed to see what she’d done to my hands.
Chapter 2
After they sent me home from the hospital, I sat down at the piano and tried to play a piece I’d known since I was six. I got four bars in before my fingers stopped doing what I asked. I tried again. By then, there was blood on the keys.
I missed the final. Vera played my compositions under her own name and won. When I said they were mine, people accused me of stealing them from her. Someone posted a clip of her performance next to a photo of me leaving the hospital. The caption said I’d hurt myself to get out of competing.
I went to Vera’s apartment to make her tell the truth.
Wyatt had paid for the apartment. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and followed a familiar voice to the bedroom. Wyatt’s shirt was hanging over the back of a chair.
He and Vera were naked in the bed.
Wyatt pulled her against him and yanked the sheet up over her shoulder. Then he looked at me.
“Mildred, if you still want to be Mrs. Simmons, get the hell out.”
I’d been married to a man who used to stop whatever he was doing when he heard me sit down at the piano. I kept looking for that man in the face of the one telling me to leave.
Then I started yelling. I don’t remember half of what I said. I remember starting a livestream with my bandaged thumb and pointing the camera at myself. I told anybody who would listen that I’d written those pieces. I named them. I told them which one I’d started the winter before, when the heat went out and I had to wear my coat at the piano.
I thought if I said it where enough people could hear, Vera would have to give me back my music. Some part of me still thought I could get my husband back, too.
By then, Vera had pulled on Wyatt’s shirt. She stayed out of frame, close enough for me to hear her crying.
“Wyatt, I’m not afraid of her,” she said. “Remember what you call me? Your brave little lamb. I love you. I want to be with you.”
She started toward me. Wyatt held out an arm to stop her.
“If Mildred lets you go, I’ll get down on my knees right here and tell them the pieces are hers.”
Wyatt took the phone out of my hand and ended the stream.
That night, Wyatt called a press conference at Simmons Group. He sat beneath the company logo. The reporters in the front row were the ones his family invited to every charity event. They let him tell his version without interruption.
“My wife took Vera Swanson’s compositions before the competition,” he said. “I found out in time to return them.”
I watched him say it on my phone. The bandage on my thumb was coming loose again.
“Mildred doesn’t play the piano. I indulged her. I paid for awards she hadn’t earned, and she came to believe she was a pianist. The story about Vera and me is another fabrication. Vera’s a hardworking young woman who deserves to be judged on her talent.”
His office passed out copies of what it claimed was a psychiatric evaluation. My name was at the top. I’d never met the doctor who’d supposedly examined me.
By morning, everyone knew Vera Swanson. Booking agents wanted her. Reporters wanted to know how she’d managed to perform with all that pressure on her. I stopped answering my phone.
Over the following months, I stopped opening the curtains, too. On my birthday, I went out onto the third-floor balcony. The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital with Wyatt beside the bed.
He had divorce papers in his hand.
“Mildred,” he said, “do you have any idea how terrifying you are?”
I looked at the envelope. He’d already put a pen inside.
I signed.
Now, seven years after the divorce, Wyatt was standing outside a showroom trying to buy me the piano he knew I’d never play in concert.
I picked up the purchase order from the wall and handed it back to him. Then I called the showroom.
“Deliver the upright I paid for,” I told the associate. “The address is on my original order. If anyone changes it again without my approval, I’ll file a formal complaint.”
The associate started to explain that Mr. Simmons had told him we were family.
“He isn’t authorized to change my order,” I said. “Please put that in the notes.” The associate confirmed he’d reinstate the original delivery.
I hung up. Wyatt reached for my arm, and I moved out of reach.
“Mr. Simmons,” I said, looking past him, “does your wife know you’re out here buying pianos for other women?”
He turned.
Vera was crossing the lot with a cup of milk tea in one hand. She’d once waited for Wyatt to introduce her. Now people stepped out of her way. She’d had years to get used to being Mrs. Simmons.
She still wore the same perfume. The wind carried it ahead of her, and I sneezed before she reached us.
Wyatt shrugged off his jacket and dropped it over my shoulders.
“You always get sick when the weather turns,” he said. “Do you need me to take you to the hospital?”
I caught the jacket by the collar, ready to hand it back.
Vera stepped between us before I could.
Chapter 3
Vera slipped her arm through mine as if we’d once been close.
“Mildred! It really is you. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
She smiled at me, then looked down at Wyatt’s jacket on my shoulders. Her fingers tightened around my arm.
“I never expected to see you at a showroom like this,” she said. “If you ever need anything, call Wyatt. My husband has a soft spot for old friends. I’m sure he’d be happy to help.”
She lingered over the words my husband.
“We ran into each other, Vera,” Wyatt said. “Leave it alone.”
“Oh, honey. She practically taught me how to play.” Vera let go of my arm and kissed him on the cheek. “If she’s having a hard time, what’s wrong with helping? You told me you’d back me no matter what.”
She was watching me when she said it.
I took off Wyatt’s jacket and held it out. Vera tucked her drink against her side and took the jacket with her free hand. “I’m doing fine,” I said.
Her eyes went to my faded blue overshirt, the same one Wyatt had taken for a cleaner’s uniform.
“My mother bought it for my birthday,” I said. “I’ve never wanted to throw it away.”
Wyatt looked at the cuffs. Something in his face changed.
The day I fell from the balcony had been my birthday.
He’d gone with Vera to a television taping arranged through one of the Simmons Group’s sponsors. When her blood sugar dropped during rehearsal, he sent the driver and both housekeepers ahead with food and clothes. He knew I’d barely been getting out of bed. He told me he’d be back after the taping.
My mother came over because I hadn’t answered her birthday call. She found me below the balcony. I remember opening my eyes long enough to see tissue paper scattered on the ground. She’d torn open my present and draped the overshirt over me while we waited for the ambulance.
“Open your eyes, baby. Look what Mama got you.”
She kept rubbing my shoulder through the fabric. I could hear her crying every time she stopped talking.
“I told you not to marry Wyatt Simmons,” she said. Then she bent so close I could feel her breath against my cheek. “But you still have me. Come on, Mildred. You’re all I have.”
After I signed the divorce papers, she said she was going to see Wyatt herself. She wanted him to look her in the eye and explain why he’d brought those papers to my hospital bed.
She was hit by a car after she left the house. She never came back.
Vera had Wyatt’s jacket folded over her arm when he finally spoke.
“She meant well, Mildred.” He took a breath. “Where are you working these days? If you’re looking for something, I can find you a place at Simmons Group.”
“I teach piano.”
He looked up.
“One of my students at Harmony Academy won the National Youth Piano Competition today.”
I’d had to learn to hold a pencil again before I could mark up a score. Once I could do that, I could sit beside a student and show her where a phrase went wrong, even if my fingers couldn’t play it through.
Now I got lesson requests from all over the world. I turned down most of them. My best student was the girl waiting for me to come home and cut her cake.
The upright was for her private lessons at the academy. I wanted her to have a piano there that she could practice on whenever the room was free.
Wyatt glanced down at the delivery address on his order. His shoulders eased a little.
Vera’s smile slipped.
“Well, congratulations, Mildred. A youth competition is a lovely start.” She paused to smooth Wyatt’s jacket over her arm. “Of course, it doesn’t carry quite the same weight as the national competitions we entered back then.”
“Oh, I’m sure you remember yours,” I said. “You won it playing music I wrote.”
Vera went still. Then she turned to Wyatt. Her eyes were already filling.
“Honey,” she said, “after all these years, she still thinks I stole her music.”
Chapter 4
“You think I’m wrong?” I asked Vera. “Then tell me which part of that music you wrote.”
She stared at me. Her free hand found Wyatt’s and squeezed it.
Wyatt looked down at their hands. “Mildred’s right about the music,” he said. “Keep your mouth shut, Vera.”
Eight years ago, he’d called a press conference to tell the country I couldn’t play the piano. Now he could admit whose music it was, out here with nobody to hear him but the two women who already knew.
Vera let go of his hand. For a second, I could see how angry she was. Then she laughed and leaned into him.
“I was only teasing. Honey, we haven’t seen Mildred in years. Maybe we ran into her for a reason.” She kissed his cheek. “Come on. Let me do something nice for her.”
Wyatt looked at me. “She’s thought about you over the years, Mildred. She’s told me more than once how much she looked up to you.”
I wondered which one of them had thought of me the last time Vera played one of my pieces.
“I’m judging a new televised piano competition called Rhythm,” Vera said. “I could get you on as a contestant. You wouldn’t even have to audition.”
She glanced down at the gloves I was pulling back on.
“And I’d be on the panel, so you’d have somebody looking out for you.”
I laughed. She’d seen my hands at their worst. She knew what she was asking me to do in front of a live audience.
My husband had created Rhythm for me. The producers had announced a guest judge with an international reputation. At my request, they were keeping the name quiet until the first taping.
It was my name they were holding back.
Morris Dickerson pulled up at the curb.
“No, thank you,” I told Vera. I smoothed the sleeve where she’d had her hand. “And the next time we see each other, you can keep walking.”
“Wait. Where do you live now?” She caught my arm again. “Wyatt can drive you.”
I pulled free and went straight to Morris’s car. He got out and opened the rear door for me.
Behind me, Vera said, “Honey, I think she’s married. Look, her husband came to pick her up.”
She paused long enough for Wyatt to get a good look at Morris.
“He’s a little older. I’m sure he treats her well enough, though.”
Wyatt pulled his arm out of hers. I was already in the car when he reached us and caught the edge of the door.
“Mildred Fox. Is this your husband?”
Morris looked at me. I gave him a small shake of my head, and he stepped back.
“This is what you call doing fine?” Wyatt said. “Marrying a man like him? You used to be too proud to settle for anybody.”
He hadn’t asked a single question before deciding I cleaned floors at Harmony Academy. Now he’d gone ahead and picked out my husband, too.
“He’s not good enough for you,” Wyatt went on. “Divorce him. If it’s money you need, tell me how much. I’ll wire it.”
I reached for the inside handle. Two of my fingers wouldn’t close around it.
“If you really think you owe me something, Wyatt, give me back my hands.”
He loosened his grip. I caught the door with my other hand.
“Mildred,” Vera called. “If you’d listened to my husband when he tried to help you back then, you wouldn’t have ended up like this.”
“Vera. Enough.”
I shut the door and told Morris to drive.
Lily Abbott’s name flashed on the screen. “Mommy, are you home yet? I have a surprise for you!”
She was the one who’d won first place. I looked out the window so Morris wouldn’t catch me tearing up in the mirror.
“I’m almost there, sweetheart. Give me a few more minutes.”
Morris stopped in the forecourt inside the gate. Another car pulled in behind us before the gate finished closing. I recognized Wyatt’s headlights as I stepped out.
They’d followed us all the way home.
Vera got out first, but waited for Wyatt so she could take his arm.
“It was my idea to come,” she said. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She looked past me at the house. The lights were on in the front rooms.
“Are you giving a piano lesson here at this hour?” She tilted her head. “I suppose with that plagiarism story following you around, you can’t be too particular about who hires you.”
Wyatt had gone quiet. He knew whose driveway he was standing in.
“This is Mr. James’s home,” Vera said. “You do know who he is, don’t you?”
Of course I did. James Group owned freight terminals and warehouses well beyond Riverton. Most of the region’s importers needed something from it sooner or later. So did the crews moving cargo that never made it onto a manifest. I’d heard Wyatt call men twice his age by their first names. He always said Mr. James.
“If he finds out you’ve lied about your qualifications, Wyatt and I won’t be able to smooth it over,” Vera said. “You’d be better off telling him the truth before somebody else does.”
My phone rang again. Lily.
“Mommy! I saw you from the window. Why are you still outside? It’s all ready!”
“I’m coming in, sweetheart.”
When I lowered the phone, Wyatt was staring at me.
“Was that your daughter?” he asked. “Mildred, you have a child?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer. The front door opened, and Lily came tearing down the steps in her slippers. She ran straight past Wyatt and wrapped both arms around my leg.
“Mommy! You have to come inside right now. If I keep it a secret any longer, I’m gonna burst!”
