Helen Keller in Love

by Kristin Cashore

  “Then you must be armed. May I frisk you?”

  “Only if I can frisk you back.”

  “But we’re not comrades, we’re not a couple.”

  “No.”

  “Not in love.”

  “Definitely not that.”

  “We’re … interested parties.”

  “What are we, lawyers?” I laughed again.

  “Lawyers?” Peter’s voice turned rough under my fingers. “They commit about as much high crime as bankers, in my book. We’re definitely not lawyers. But we are adults. Two consenting adults.”

  I bit my lip so I wouldn’t say more. I’d gone too far. What was I consenting to? I understood Peter didn’t see the complexities of my personal life. He could never really take on the responsibility of caring for me.

  “Maybe there are no words for it,” I lied, smoothing Peter’s hair. “But whatever we tell them, at least we’re in this together.”

  “Right.” He pulled me toward the cabin. “Come inside.”

  “Lead on.”

  Something was wrong inside that cabin. I can tell people’s moods by their hands: a shy hand gives off a tentative feel; a bold, brash person’s hand vibrates with fervor. And the liar? The liar’s hand shifts and trembles while the liar’s words say yes, but the hand says, “Don’t listen to me.” I trust what people say with their hands. People control their faces, they don’t want to show their emotions to the world. But their hands? I’ll say this. They give a person away.

  I trusted Peter’s hands. I trusted them on me.

  But I also trusted how they shook, ever so slightly, that day.

  He leaned me against the warm wooden wall and said he wasn’t afraid: with his hands on me he said we would tell Annie and Mother that we were a couple, that he’d stay on as my private secretary, their wishes be damned. But his hands had the soft, marshy feel of someone wanting to flee.

  It was his hands that told me what to do next.

  “Can you be quiet?” Peter backed me up against the cabin’s wooden wall where every summer I’d hung my bathing suit on the third peg. Far off, I could feel the thrum of a motorboat crossing the pond.

  “Can I be quiet?” I laughed back. I wanted Peter to undo the seedlike buttons of my silk dress. But he reached behind me to grab my bathing suit.

  “Why don’t you take off this pretty dress, and put this on? It’s about time I got that swim you promised me.”

  “I never break a promise.” My flirtation was working.

  “I can only swim in circles,” I said, as we headed out into the warm air and across the sand to the pond. “Mostly I just hold on to the raft.”

  “So hang on to the raft. It’ll save me from having to watch you. I’ve got to work on my tan.”

  “To look good for me?”

  “If I have to look after you, I might as well look good for you.” The pond waters sent waves of cool air toward us.

  “Keep an eye on me,” I said.

  The waters of King’s Pond shivered up my bare legs. Peter’s scent—muskrat, hot rain, and tar—stayed with me when I waded deeper into the pond water. The sun on my arms was weaker; noon had passed. My skin adjusted to the shock of cold water. I sensed Peter’s strong strokes behind me and said, “I thought you couldn’t swim.”

  “You really thought I would sink like a stone? When I’m built like this?” he made a muscle with one arm and placed my hand there.

  “You lied.”

  “I keep some things to myself.” He splashed water on me, and I laughed.

  I squished the pond’s swampy silt beneath my feet.

  “Let’s move,” he said. “Race you to the raft.”

  “It’s ten feet out.”

  “So? Hold tight to my shoulders.” He kicked water up furiously. “I won’t let you go.”

  Peter’s wit, scent of water, smoke, and fury took me in. He dissolved me. We immersed ourselves in the water, and my flickering awareness that he had lied washed away. The realization that he said he couldn’t swim so he wouldn’t have to carry me faded in the pleasure of being surrounded by him. His hands reached for me as the water swirled. “If you think I get lost on land …” I gripped his hands tightly.

  “Don’t talk.”

  I felt him guide me to the raft several feet out from shore. “Come on.” He moved my hands till they gripped the ladder. “Up you go.” I willed myself up onto the warm wooden dock and Peter, sopping wet beside me, said, “Hear the birds?”

  “We have loons around here. They’re eerie.” I was relieved to have climbed out of the water.

  “They’re crazy birds.” He unbuttoned the top button on my suit.

  “Yes, crazy, crazy birds.”

  Call me desperate, afraid that Annie and Mother would stop me from having him close by. But I not only let him unbutton the top button, I undid the next two myself. I had to be courageous—to take advantage of this moment before Annie came down to the water. I led Peter closer to me. I quickly took off the shoulder straps of my suit before he could guess my next move. That was my way to keep one step ahead of him, to keep him following me.

  “Let me help you with that.” Peter eases my black, knee-length bathing suit away from my shoulders. He tugs the damp, rubbery straps. The sun turns me warm, breadlike.

  I feel the sharp intake of his breath.

  “You are a miracle.” He traces his fingers across my bare collarbone.

  The water ripples under the rolling dock. I feel Peter staring at one thing only. Me.

  That moment on the dock Peter did the strangest thing. He put my hands behind my back and held my wrists tight so I couldn’t resist. “Kiss me, Helen.”

  I leaned into him.

  I felt him touch my mouth with his fingers. Then he took my hands from behind my back and led my fingers to the warm center of his chest. I felt his heart beat beneath my fingertips.

  “Kiss me there.” He dipped my head.

  And I did.

  The skin of his bare chest deliciously cold, his scent of scotch and night risky, outside the law.

  “How was that?” I asked.

  “A-plus.” He raised me up slowly, his hands on my bare shoulders. “I love a girl who takes direction.”

  “I’m nothing if not compliant,” I lied again. I wasn’t compliant at all. I had wanted him near me. He had been afraid. But now I knew by the steadiness in his hands that his resistance had slowly faded. His fear was gone.

  Suddenly Peter untangled his arms from mine. “Come on, lady, let’s swim. Act like nothing’s up.” He slid me off the dock. “Annie’s coming through the woods.”

  The sand felt suddenly slippery beneath my feet. I struggled to stay steady but Peter grabbed me, guided me to shore. This time his hands told me he was mine.

  Chapter Eleven

  Blindisms—the rocking, the hair twirling, the things that identify us as blind, I tried to keep those things from Peter. Years ago, Annie trained them out of me. When I was seven years old and had just learned language, I wanted so much to talk that when Annie wasn’t around I spelled to myself. All day and night, my fingers moving so I could talk, talk. Annie said it looked strange, and to stop me she tied my hands behind my back to “cure” me, to spare me the humiliation of being different. But she didn’t want me to be totally normal. I could look like other women, I just couldn’t have the pleasure women had with men.

  So the moment Peter guided me to shore, the sand gritty under my feet, I suppressed my shame when Annie marched up to me and said, “Helen, stop twirling your hair!” Her scent was heavy with camphor and cough drops. I stopped the twirling, but I did take Peter’s hand. I was about to betray her.

  “We’ve got news,” Peter said as we both dripped water, standing before Annie.

  “Like hell you do.” Annie stepped between us. “I’m the one with news. And it’s for Helen’s ears only, if you don’t mind, Mr. Fagan. Now if you’ll excuse us?”

  “Anything you say to me you can also say to
Peter.” To my surprise, I blurted this out before thinking.

  “Foolish girl. This is critical. Get rid of him, now.”

  I did not move. For years Annie had claimed emergencies: When John fled the house after their marriage broke up she kept me up nights, weeping on my shoulder in a way that was heartbreaking, and then stopping only to lean heavily on me and saying, “Well, Helen, at least we have your story to tell.” Then, in the months after he left she became so hopeless that some nights she ran off and couldn’t be found. Early mornings she’d return, the emergency passed. Only later would I learn that she’d spent the night curled up like a child under our rowboat. She would return distant, unmoved.

  How could I turn her away?

  “Give me a minute,” I said to Peter.

  “Take your time. I’ll be in the house. I’m not going far.”

  I stood in place as the sand gave off the whuff, whuff of Peter’s footsteps fading away.

  Annie approached me at the shore. “Years of practice, Helen, and you’re alone for two minutes and you do this? Pull these straps up—damn you!”

  When I struggled into my bathing suit—the suit weighted by water—I felt her cool shadow over me. But when I came out from behind Annie into the warm sunlight she said, “Don’t tell me you were working down here at the beach?”

  “Working, chatting …” I betrayed Annie again.

  “This is no time for socializing.” She led me over to a wooden bench. “Sit down.” Her palm shook. “Listen.” The coolness of shade made me lift my head as I sat on the rickety bench.

  “What?”

  Annie snapped back, “Not now, Helen. Don’t act up with me right now. It appears you’re too busy with Peter. You’ve ignored me twice already, so why should you listen now?”

  But just before Annie stalked off she said, “Sorry to have interrupted. It’s nothing, really. Just urgent news.”

  My nostrils quivered with the scent—pond water, salt, brine—that told me Annie was gone.

  I sensed Annie’s footsteps over the pine needles. She did not tell me her news. Instead, she walked off as she often did. I tried to follow her—clumsily, rapidly, I tried to make my way into the woods.

  Ahead of me her footsteps, ca-runch, ca-scratch, on the gravel path, in her finely heeled shoes—because even outside she was well dressed. Wait, what is it? I wanted to say, but could not. The chill scent of moss and decay rose from the forest floor but I could not find the path. I stood, lost and unable to catch up with Annie.

  But the desire to be with me won out; even from the wood’s edge I sensed her return, her resentment rising like steam. As she came closer I sensed her twin desires: to be free of me, and to be even closer, forever.

  “Come on.” Annie led me to a small clearing where the sun fell directly on my skin. She lay down on the blunted grass and pulled me down, but when I reached across the grass, Annie was too far away to touch.

  My breath came shallowly; Annie stiffened further. In desperation I reached out to touch her rough linen dress, and my finger found one ragged hole at the waist.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  But Annie ignored me. Finally she said, “It’s Peter. It drives me crazy to have him in the house. He doesn’t clean up after himself, he leaves the dirty dishes in the sink, making more work for me.”

  “Then I’ll do the dishes.”

  “That would make things even worse.” Annie stood to go back to the house.

  I reached for her hand. “Peter will be watching out for me from the back porch.”

  “My nemesis,” Annie said.

  “Your nemesis? You hardly know him.”

  “How right you are. I haven’t spent every minute of the day with him, mooning over him. I haven’t disobeyed my teacher, the one who raised me, in order to be with him. You are so right, Helen. I don’t know him, and I am sorry to say at this moment I don’t even know you. But I do know one thing. I know men.”

  “You knew John.” The minute I said it I knew it was a mistake. Since he’d left we rarely said his name.

  “You’re right. I knew John. I knew him so well that even though I married him, and he befriended you, he walked out after draining us of as much money as he could get.”

  “Is that what’s wrong? Has John contacted you? Does he want to give the marriage another chance?”

  “No,” Annie said, tracing her hand in mine. “You forget. He’s not a giver. He’s a taker. That’s all.”

  “That’s not true. He typed my manuscripts all night when I couldn’t. He taught me about Socialism, when everyone else thought I had no right to think or write about anything but blindness. He opened up the world to me.”

  “He opened up our bank account. He drank our profits, took your money, Helen, to go to Europe for four months while you and I dragged our sorry selves across the country giving yet more talks. And he left us. He’s gone. Staying in a rattletrap room in Boston that he set on fire that last time we visited—too drunk to put out his lighted cigarette. And we’re still paying his expenses, my dear girl. Wake up. John was no good. This one”—she gestured toward the house where Peter stood—“won’t be any good either. Helen, wake up.”

  Who was it that woke me up to desire? John Albert Macy, Annie’s husband. It started the day of my Radcliffe graduation in 1904 at the Tremont Temple in Boston. The old century creaked behind us. I heard it. I was a woman now. “Stay still,” Annie tapped into my palm. She sat dressed in black beside me. All ninety-seven girls waiting for our new lives to begin. I stood on stage inhaling dust, chalk, and theater grease. And just before I walked out to get my diploma I felt the strange, haunting echo of new things to come.

  John Albert Macy sat in the front row, watching. He had married Annie the year before, and become part of our lives. Lived with us in our seventeen-room farmhouse. Built me a stone wall so I could walk freely in the woods. Strung a wire across the trees so I could daily walk free—free! As far as I’d ever gone on my own.

  Nights he stayed in his study writing his new book. I stayed up late, too, typing fresh pages of my autobiography, then tearing pages out of the typewriter to show him. When we were finished for the night, exhausted, I would go upstairs, put on my nightgown, and get into bed. Under the covers I felt his tread move past my room, a man-tread, heavy, thick, so it ran up the floorboards to my bed where I lay awake. The floorboards suddenly still between our two bedrooms.

  I pictured him taking off his shirt, his arms smooth as blended butter. He’d reach for Annie. Under the sheets I stretched my hands over my breasts, my thighs, the darkness suddenly brilliant around my body.

  Did I love him? I loved his sexual awakening of me. He was Annie’s husband, he never touched me in any inappropriate way, but in the morning he smelled of fir trees, brine, and green apples after making love with Annie at night.

  “Helen.” Annie shook my shoulder once more as we came out of the woods. “Let’s get a move on. We’ve got to get dinner, then there’s laundry, and letters to do, too.” The stack of chores was so high that in my imagination it reached the roof of my house.

  “All right,” I said. “But just tell me. Is Peter still there, in the doorway?”

  “Helen.” For once Annie felt kind, tender, almost. “Sweetheart. Let’s face it. The last time I looked that old saying still stood.”

  If I had been able to hear, I would have covered my ears. As it was, I tried to withdraw my hand, but Annie grabbed it right back.

  “John’s the one who found Peter. And you know that old saying, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”

  For one of the few times in our years together, I formed a fist so that she couldn’t tell me more.

  “Helen.” She opened my hand. “Don’t make this harder on me than it already is. I didn’t come down here to fight about Peter. I came to tell you my own news.”

  Then she began to cough so roughly it seemed to break open the air. Her muscles contracted under my hand as I ru
bbed her back, trying to make the cough stop. She bent over, almost double, and when she finally stood up I said, “It’s not just a cough.”

  “Worst case, tuberculosis. You know. The White Death.”

  The White Death. Annie had lost a lot of weight, and in my fever over Peter I hadn’t noticed. I knew only that tubercular patients were kept, often, in isolation from their families to avoid the spread of infection, their eyes burning, their faces flushed, then pallid, so pallid, as they wasted away. Their bodies empty caves where the skin faded to the whitest of white, as if they were angels, rather than the pale face of death.

  Her hand in mine was a hollowed-out shell. I traced her face with my fingers until she shook me off.

  “It could be just a bad cough. But we have to prepare for the worst. Now zip your lip. Not a word of this to Peter—or anyone else.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” As Annie and I stood next to the house, her hand in mine, it must have been hard to tell which one of us was blind. Annie was so afraid that her sleeve caught the wire John had strung up for me: she stumbled and I caught her, led her through the twilight as if my care alone would bring her home.

  We walked up to the porch. Peter took Annie’s arm and helped us up the steps, took Annie to her room, then came back to me.

  “Don’t take this wrong,” Peter said. “But who’s handicapped? You? Or her?”

  Both, I thought. Much more than you know.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tuberculosis, the White Death, I thought as I made my way from my second floor bedroom to Annie’s at the far end of the hall the next day. The morning sun fell on me. A series of rounded thumps told me the wash was banging against the house from the clothesline where I’d hung it that morning, my fingers fumbling in the basket Annie had set out full of damp dresses, thick wooden clothespins, and instructions to be a little more careful than usual: we wouldn’t want Peter seeing our underthings. Those were to drip dry inside the bathroom off the kitchen, away from his prying eyes. But I was not thinking about daily chores. As I pushed open the door to Annie’s room I was thinking about tuberculosis.