Helen Keller in Love

by Kristin Cashore

  “John’s parting gift. He went on a bender one night before he left and came home so late he didn’t see—or couldn’t see—the front porch. Banged the car up good, and left Annie to repair it.”

  “Well, she never did. That car looks like it belongs in a used car lot.”

  “Annie says she’ll never fix it. That it’s a good reminder to stay away from men.”

  Peter laughed. “Well, that’s a warning you’re clearly not going to heed.”

  “You said it.”

  Annie and I never spoke of the most pressing reason she stayed away from men. But the truth is Annie damaged the car. I can never forget that night last summer, ten years into Annie’s marriage to John, when she finally realized that she and John would never have a child. Annie was too old, or too sick. Who knows? But she couldn’t conceive, wouldn’t. Year by year her face a blank, disappearing thing.

  So John started an affair. He took a lover. The radiant, stimulating Myla, a deaf-mute sculptress, mouth like a lotus, Annie told me. It was the night Annie drove into Boston and, finding John and Myla together in bed, then drove home to Wrentham so blind with rage that she took the turn around the drive too fast, and I found her in the wrecked car. All night she spelled her sorrows into my hand.

  “Never trust a man,” she said over and over.

  The air smelled of mint, fading rose impatiens, and the damp soil Annie kept in pots on our front porch. I felt her step out of the car, her footsteps harsh on the asphalt. But even then, Peter didn’t rush. Instead, he lit a cigarette. He inhaled slowly, breezily, and then, as if reading my mind, he said, “I know about the affair, Helen. John parades this woman Myla around the newsroom six days a week.” He paused, his hands queerly tense. I felt the ting-ting-ting of the cigarette being tapped into the ashtray by the divan. “I want you to know that—”

  “That what?”

  “That I know Myla’s pregnant. With John’s child.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “You are my business, Helen. And what concerns you concerns me. Do you think I don’t know that you and Annie still send John money, even when you know another woman is having his child?”

  “He’s still Annie’s husband.” I suddenly couldn’t wait for her to walk up the steps, to be by my side.

  “Helen, I want you to know that if you ever—”

  “Ever?” His hand touched my belly.

  “If you?” he said.

  He pulled his hand away. So I said the words he was afraid to say.

  “Are you asking me what I’d do if I got pregnant? Why, Mr. Fagan, we haven’t even—how do you say it?—fully consummated our affair.” I laughed, smiling so broadly I felt the room around me widen, grow softer.

  “Helen, do you want to have a child? In your life, I mean?”

  “Do you?” I said right back.

  The room smelled of forest trees, damp rain.

  I wish I had let him answer. But I felt an odd, watery feeling in my veins. As if whatever he was about to say would be too much to bear. So I rushed ahead. Covered his fear with my words. I couldn’t help it. I was in love. “I already have a child. Aren’t you ten years younger than me?” We laughed at the same time, and the watery feeling disappeared.

  I knew what I wanted then: I wanted to marry him, to have a child. There were so many obstacles to overcome: Annie, my mother, and, if I had listened, Peter himself. The truth is he tried to tell me. I just wouldn’t hear.

  “It looks like our day just got even better. Annie’s getting out of the driver’s side. But she must have … Helen, is your mother by any chance a tall, slightly stooped woman with enough luggage for a year?”

  “My mother?”

  “Yup. That must be her. She’s got broad shoulders, like you. And by the set of her jaw she’s got that Keller fighting spirit. Now I’m really doomed.”

  “She’s not due here till tomorrow.” I laughed. “Stop joking with me.”

  “Joke’s on you, blondie.”

  Sunlight from the open window fell on my arms, my face. I moved even farther away from Peter. “Do you think she saw us?”

  Peter still exuded warmth, cloves. “If I’m not mistaken, Mrs. Kate Keller is straightening up, stretching after a three-day train ride. But if she finds me in the house with you, that’s a disaster.”

  He quickly led me down the cool hallway to my study and straight to my desk. He guided my hand to the Bolshevik flag on the wall. “Shall we take this down? Before she comes in?” he said with a laugh.

  “She doesn’t exactly share my Socialist views.”

  “You mean she’s not a firebrand? Not a hothead, like you?”

  “She’s a southerner, born and bred. When I donated money to the NAACP she hardly left the house: it scandalized her southern neighbors so much I had to apologize in print.” But never once, in all my years, had she let me be close to a man.

  Through my feet I felt Annie and Mother move onto the front porch. “Any minute they’ll call me.” I stood up, ready to go downstairs. But first I had to tell Peter the truth. Not the large truth—that I sensed that day his fear of having children—but a smaller one.

  “I guess I mixed up the days,” I said. “I thought Mother was getting here tomorrow. I guess you now know the truth.”

  “What have I missed?”

  “That I’m deaf, blind, and—”

  “Helen. Don’t say you’re dumb. You’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met. You’re the woman I’d marry, if I could.”

  People fool themselves all the time. I fooled myself then, as his footsteps moved across the wooden floor. Foolish, foolish me. So thrilled, dizzied, really, that he said he wanted to marry me that I ignored the last three words: if I could.

  I didn’t ask.

  He didn’t say.

  Chapter Fifteen

  One thing I never told anyone was that I had learned to put other people’s lives before my own as a survival skill. One thing I never knew about myself was how quickly I would turn against Annie and my mother once Peter offered me a way out, a life of my own.

  I was haunted by my own status. That was my problem. I learned language at the age of seven but that wasn’t enough to help others when they were in despair. So I took enormous care, starting when I was still only nine, never to stay still, rarely to save things just for myself. When I went to the Perkins School for the Blind as a child I had a double handicap, but I bought presents for all the little blind girls. I made myself indispensable, because without sight or hearing I needed a way to bind others to me. But there was a price.

  So by the age of thirty-seven I was giving my royalties to blinded German soldiers, as well as supporting John. I was writing letters to newspapers against the war. Yet I wanted to escape from the existence I’d created, to merge myself with Peter. I turned my back on Annie and my mother. How eagerly, how recklessly, I let go of my obligations to them, and to myself.

  So as Annie fumbled to open the front door downstairs, I resisted the impulse to run to her. I stayed by Peter, instead.

  “May as well look as if we’re working. That will impress your mother and Annie.” Peter tore open a letter from a Mr. Lyon in France.

  “You know the way to their hearts.”

  “I know the way to yours.” He fingered the buttons on my blouse.

  I laughed and pushed him away.

  “Listen,” he said, reading. “Le Monde has published an article lambasting your gift of royalties to blinded German soldiers. A Mr. Lyon protests that you took pity on them. He writes, ‘Don’t the blinded French deserve Miss Keller’s help more?’”

  “If any of my books were published in France, I would immediately give the royalties to the French blinded,” I dictated to Peter, and he tapped out my response on my Remington typewriter.

  The steady thrum of the typewriter was punctuated by a rounded thump. Annie had dropped her bag on the hall floor just inside the front door to rustle through the mail. A second thump told me
Mother had dropped her luggage by the door, too, and in the rush of incoming air I smelled the brisk, almost acrid scent of a storm.

  “I’ve got to go down.” I turned to leave the room.

  “Stay here.” Peter, cigarette in hand, leaned closer to the window. His voice under my fingers was joking, but it was also tight, as if he expected me to prove my loyalty to him.

  “I haven’t seen my mother in two years.”

  “But once she and the feisty Miss Sullivan come inside you won’t see much of me, I’m sure.”

  I felt weary, and could not answer.

  I have always been forced to choose sides. First, when I was seven and groped from place to place, without an I am, Annie forced my mother to let Annie and me live alone together in the small house next door. We drove for blocks in my father’s wagon, then returned to the house next door so I would not know my mother was near. All night I cried, stormed. I wanted to go home. But Annie demanded allegiance. And in two days I was hers.

  At age sixteen at the Cambridge School for Young Ladies I was forced to choose between my mother and Annie. I chose Annie. And I blossomed. I believed Mother would always be there when I needed her, and I also knew that I had to move forward, had to make my own way. But in my dreams at night the image of my mother grew smaller and smaller as I grew larger, riper in the world.

  So I waited for Peter. I waited for him to let me go to my mother, to Annie downstairs. I waited for him to let me go so I wouldn’t have to choose again, take sides, leave someone desperate, helpless, alone.

  As if sensing my weariness Peter said, “Helen? Why not just come in here?”

  He led me behind the screen in the corner of my study and patted an old chair. “Sit, rest. They’ll think we went out for a walk.”

  “And we’ll get a little more time alone.”

  “You’re a mind reader. Let those two hens settle down.”

  “They’re not hens,” I said.

  “Well they’re going to peck at you for being alone with me.”

  “I’ll peck on you.” I stood close to him behind the screen.

  “Promises, promises.” He opened my blouse. “When we’re done here you can saunter downstairs all fresh and perky, and I’ll come down later. Like we’ve been apart all day.”

  “You’re a master planner.”

  “I could be a spy.”

  “Maybe you are.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  It was a perfect escape, if only for a while. We stood glued together behind the Chinese screen propped in the corner of my study. I couldn’t have been happier. I felt the tread of Annie’s footsteps on the stairs. Peter and I stood stock still. Finally the door opened, I smelled the scent of Annie’s hair, then the door closed and her footsteps faded away. Within moments I inhaled the scent of car exhaust and asked Peter, “Is Annie leaving?” He spelled back that Annie was furious: she had yelled that there were no groceries, she was going shopping, and Mother was going to nap in her room. I noticed that Peter tried to seem easygoing, relaxed, but there was something tentative in his hands. I wanted to keep him by my side, so I did the only thing I knew how to do when situations got tense.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’m itching to get out of this house. We’ve been here for days since our Chautauqua trip. I like to keep moving. How soon till that speech in Boston?”

  “It’s in …” He slid his fingers over my back, then down to the desk to grab the letter. “Five days.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “That’s when Annie’s test results come in.”

  “She’ll be fine. And then we’ll have three things to celebrate.”

  “Three?”

  “Annie’s health, your rousing speech, and …”

  “And?”

  “And the fact that you’ve agreed to marry me.”

  “Marry you? You haven’t asked me properly.”

  “I’ve seen you with your top off, missy. Don’t talk to me about proper.”

  I smiled, waiting for him to go on.

  “Am I to get down on one knee? To beg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “I want you to beg.”

  “Beast. You want me to prostrate myself before you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Your wish is my command.” He lowered himself to the floor and said, “Thank God I have this.”

  “A ring?”

  “Better. One exquisitely sharp fingernail.” He scratched the back of my bare calf and then pressed hard on the inside of my bare thigh.

  “Do you say yes?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Helen, let’s marry. Let’s run away.”

  I couldn’t move.

  “I’m begging,” he said, his breath warm on my thigh, his hand inside my skirt.

  I called his name. My voice, which I hardly ever used in front of him, was ragged, but I couldn’t help myself. Yes.

  As I pulled him toward me his curly hair, rough in my hands, smelled of teak, a kind of far-off tree. My senses told me that even as he proposed, fear pitched through him. He knew I was not like other women. Every day, in recurring, relentless ways, he would have to care for me. Strangely, I was not afraid. We would marry, run away. So when I felt him pull away from me I reached for him.

  His skin was slightly slippery. He pulled hard at my hands and said, “You’ll marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll let me deal with your mother and Annie?”

  “Yes.”

  Why didn’t I realize that Peter acted strong but was really frightened? It wasn’t clear to me then, when I put aside my loyalty to Annie, to my mother, even to myself, that Peter was what Annie called a paper fighter. A person who fought in print, through words, but when real people were involved, he would dissolve. I couldn’t see it at that moment. I didn’t want to see it.

  There are so many ways to be blind.

  We celebrated our engagement that afternoon. “Shhhh,” Peter said as he led me down the back stairs, past my mother, who napped in the first-floor bedroom, her rose perfume filling the air. “Let’s go outside.” With a shudder of the back door we were free: out and running across the bumpy grass to the edge of the yard.

  “What do you want to do?” he said.

  “How about you teach me to drive?” I laughed. “If I’m to be your wife, I’ll need to be at least your equal, maybe more.”

  “For now let’s try a bike.” Peter laughed. “Let’s ride the tandem bike.” Peter yanked my hair loose from its pins. “Come on.” We dragged the heavy bicycle out of the garden shed, pulled on gloves, and off we flew over the bumpy New England roads, my hair flying as we pedaled up hills and down dales.

  What seemed like an hour later we reached a field, where he dropped the bicycle on the grass with a chunky thonk that I felt in my legs. We were sweating.

  “I’m no athlete,” he said. “That’s probably the last time we do that.”

  “I’ll drive next time,” I laughed. “Put me up front. I can steer like a madwoman.”

  “I’ll bet you’re a menace behind the wheel.” He trapped my wrists above my head so I couldn’t move.

  Then he put some wildflowers in my hands.

  “Your favorites, missy.”

  The buttercups’ rounded flower heads were dense with something that burst straight from the earth’s center.

  Then he opened my mouth and slid in a yellow bit of flower.

  “Are you hungry?” he said.

  I remembered how, when I was young, I pounded the table, craving meats, sweets, anything to put in my speechless mouth. I had the same feeling with Peter. Some new hunger flooded me.

  “Starving,” I said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By a slight quiver in my nostrils I could sense a storm’s approach. A flood of earth odors washes through me when a storm closes in. So I was not surprised when rain started to fall later that afternoon as Peter and I paused on the back lawn, cricket
s shirring open the hot air. Peter lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. “Time to face the music.” He nodded toward the house.

  “You know I can’t hear music.” I laughed.

  “Excuse me for forgetting your handicap. But you’re lucky you can’t hear Annie stomping around inside.”

  We both paused on the back steps.

  “Do you think I can’t tell how angry she is?” The staccato of Annie’s footsteps crisscrossing the kitchen sent splinters through the floorboards of the porch.

  “You want to face her alone? I’ll come with you.” Peter came up the steps.

  “No. She’d tear you apart. I’d better go first.”

  “Helen,” he said. “You act so strong. It’s not a sign of weakness to ask for my help. I’m here when you need me.”

  The smoke from his cigarette smelled bitter.

  It’s strange to me now, how as I walked through the downpour of warm rain and into the house my acute senses felt nothing to fear at all. The truth is that when I moved into the house to meet Mother and Annie I felt stronger, more alive, than either of them had ever been. The sweet scent of corn, the bitter tang of radishes, the warm scent of bread told me Annie was back with the groceries. She thumped and banged cabinet doors open in the kitchen as she unpacked the bags, and when I felt my way into the room Annie was so annoyed at seeing me that she slammed the French doors.

  She herded me into the stuffy kitchen, where she drew the curtains against the rain. “Don’t make me ask, Helen. Just spit it out. Where have you been?”

  “I’ll help with the groceries.” I tried to pry a bulky bag from her arms.

  “Stop.” She dropped the bag to the counter. “Stop trying to distract me. Just tell me the truth.”

  “The truth is I’m worried about you. How was your test?”