“Nothing.” I kept my hand in a fist.
“Good. Fight me. I love a good tussle.” He leaned me against the wall by the bookshelves.
“Stop it.” I pushed him away.
“Yes, tell me to stop.” He put his mouth to my neck. “Say, ‘Peter, stop,’ and I’ll say—”
“You’ll say you’re sorry.”
“Sorry?” He lifted his head. “The only thing I’m sorry about is this damned corset of yours,” he laughed, trying to loosen the waist of my skirt.
“You have plenty to be sorry for. Deceiving me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Read it to me.” I handed him the letter. “I want to hear it from you.”
“Oh.” Peter paused. His hands shook.
“Yes?”
“Oh.” Peter laughed. “Did Annie show this to you?”
“Of course she did. She, at least, wants to protect me.”
“She wants to keep you in a gilded cage, is what she wants.”
“Who is she? This Miss Dorothy Eagan?”
“She’s not important now.”
“But she must have been. Tell me.”
“The truth? She’s nothing like you. I met her at a charity ball, her father knew mine.”
“And you loved her?”
“No, Helen. I thought I did.”
“But you made love to her?”
“Helen, please let’s not talk about the past.”
I didn’t speak for a long time. “Leave me alone. I need time to think,” I said. Smoke from Peter’s cigarette filled the air as he left the room. I can tell you that I sat at my desk and pulled open the drawer. I took out my cloth journal written when I was seven years old. In it I had recorded:
Tuscumbia, Alabama
Annie’s gone away.
She left me with Mother.
My doll won’t stop crying.
I hit her with a stick.
How painful it is for me to lose someone. But I never told Annie I missed her. Too painful it was, to let in desire. So Peter had loved someone before he met me. So what? I tried to push the doubts away.
“Helen.” Peter came in and took my hand. “That’s over. This is now. And we have a date with destiny.”
“A date with what?”
“The day we go to Boston City Hall, dummy. To get a marriage license.”
“Don’t call me dummy.” I almost laughed. “I’m a bit sensitive about that.”
“Helen.” He pulled me close. “For a woman who can’t speak, you sure have an awful lot to say.”
I’m ashamed that I didn’t ask the questions that rose in my mind then. I regret that I did not say, “Did you want to marry her?” Why didn’t I ask? Not because I was afraid that other women would fall for Peter because he was so handsome, funny, and smart. No, I was afraid that if he could leave one woman so suddenly, why couldn’t he leave me?
Peter stood beside me, his whole body shaking a bit, radiating a kind of queer heat. I rubbed his shirt cuff, the fabric so worn. “Peter, I’m not saying you don’t care for me …”
“Care for you? You’re a miracle to me.”
“A miracle, yes.”
“Someone who showed me a life I had never thought of before.”
“Yes.”
“Someone who showed me I could live in a way I didn’t think possible.”
“Yes.”
“Helen. I should have told you. But—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
He kissed me and took away my breath.
“Helen, pack your bags tonight. The rally in Boston is in three days. We have to be ready.” He traced along my neck with his thumb. “Annie and your mother will be expecting me to pick you up after breakfast. We’ll drive to the train station and take the eight forty-five to Boston.”
“What about the marriage license?”
“Right after the rally, my pet. Try to get some rest tonight.”
“I won’t be able to.”
“Well, you’d better, because you’ll need your beauty sleep.” He slid his thumb into the opening of my blouse.
I know Annie is not a saint. Nor is Peter. Nor am I. I need them. Without Annie or Peter I don’t have a home to call my own. But I know this: with Peter engulfing me I feel so strong I can suddenly see the sky.
Chapter Twenty-four
I once wrote that my blindness never made me sad. But I was not telling the whole truth. After Peter left that night I felt sadness pitch and fall through me. If Annie hadn’t shown me that letter, Peter wouldn’t have told me about Dorothy. What else was he hiding? I was so dependent on others, so vulnerable, that I was more aware of my blindness than ever.
Still, I craved Peter. I didn’t care who I hurt, or what I refused to see. I only wanted him, so I didn’t say a word when he found me in the backyard the next day.
“Where’s Annie? Your mother?” Peter turned around as if inspecting the yard. “Lurking in the shrubs to spy on us?”
“They’re in Boston. John’s baby is due any day now, and Annie will be damned—her words, not mine—if he and Myla bring that baby back to the apartment Annie and John used to share. She won’t allow them to use what’s hers, so Annie’s there right now dragging out her maple bureau, taking away her kitchen chairs. She’s even pulling the telephone out of the wall.”
“She’s a force of nature.” Peter laughed. “She’ll probably scour the linoleum off the floor.”
“With her bare hands.”
“Hell hath no wrath.” Peter took my hand. “By the way, I wrote to Dorothy. It’s off now.”
“For good?”
“Forever.”
I inhaled the chill air and pulled my jacket around me.
Peter tapped out a cigarette. “One more thing,” he said. “This apartment of John’s. Do you and Annie still pay the rent?”
I didn’t answer.
“Helen? You can’t pay for your own house.”
“Annie won’t let John have her books, pots, and pans. She’s even taking the pillows off the couches.”
“That’ll show him.”
“Peter.”
“Yup. Annie’s really taking a stand. Her husband has a child, and she still—”
“Loves him.”
“She’s too loyal.”
“People are, sometimes.”
Peter’s deception was still on my mind. My image of him as a courageous, honest man had started to fray. But I was determined to seal off that knowledge. Of all people, I knew how one must hide parts of oneself to succeed in the world.
Peter’s coat gave off the woody scent of the neighbor’s fire, where they burned their fall leaves. He fiddled with the buttons on my jacket. I wanted him to kiss me, to slip his hand inside my jacket, but I held back.
“Hey,” Peter said. “Those two gals are out of town and we’re alone.”
“No. Ian, the boy who mows the lawn, he’s out in the garden shed, fixing the mower. Mother and Annie would never leave me here alone.”
“Then let’s make a run for it.”
“A run for what?”
“That meadow behind the house. No one will see us there.” He tugged at my sleeve. “Hurry, Helen. And once you’re warmed up you’ll need to loosen those tight clothes.”
“Yes, sir.” I let him lead me under a thicket of trees.
“Come on, lazybones.” Peter led me into the meadow. Pine needles crunched under my shoes, and the cool scent of mint rose from the garden beyond the pines. Under a tree, Peter slowly pulled at the silk bow of my blouse.
“Too bad this knot is so tight. I’m afraid I’ll have to use my teeth.”
“What a shame.”
“I might have to tear it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I raised my neck to him. “Let me help.”
“Ah, good girl,” he said. “I love a woman who takes the lead.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. But I also like a woman who submits.
Like this.” He clasped my wrists behind my back, and I couldn’t move my hands.
He held them high above my head, and I remembered when I was a small child and had just learned language—hundreds of new words a day—and constantly “talked” to myself by spelling words into my own hands. Annie, upset that I’d seem blind to others, told me to stop. For her lesson I would pay a heavy price.
“Hey.” Peter dropped my hands. “What’s this?”
I felt the ground with the toe of my shoe. “Croquet hoop.”
“All these years you’ve been out in this meadow playing what? Croquet?”
“You bet. On good days I dominate the field.”
“My athlete.” He turned. “I love a woman with energy.” I felt him reach down and tug something out of the grass. A metallic scent, mixed with old wood. “This old mallet.” He pressed the wood against my arm. “It has the initials HK on it.”
“It’s mine. I know how to use the mallet.”
“Something tells me you’re excellent at it.”
“I know how to play, all right.”
Far off a lawnmower’s vibrations chut-chutted.
“But you always play it straight. Helen Keller never keeps secrets.” He made me lean over, guiding the mallet in my hands.
“I hide things all the time. You wouldn’t believe the secrets I keep.” As he shook the mallet beside me, I tried to cover my nervousness.
“Well, Helen.” He traced the mallet up the back of my calf. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“Besides the obvious? Like I can’t get dressed in the morning: someone needs to choose my clothes, and help me.”
“Sign me up for that,” Peter laughed.
“Oh, and I have no idea how to fix this crumbling house—”
“I’ll be too busy dressing and undressing you to worry about that.”
“I think that about wraps it up—oh—except that Mother will kick and scream once we’re married, and Annie will insist on living with us.”
“Annie, live with us?”
“She’ll want to.”
Peter pressed the mallet closer to my back. “The list grows.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have any real worries,” he said. “Except that … I may not be up to the task.”
“I’m quite a task.”
“Are you ever.”
I know people’s jobs by their scent. I can tell where a person has been when he passes me in a room. As a stranger walks by, if his clothes give off an ink scent, I know he’s come from a print shop. The flint smell of iron means factory worker, a flour scent trails the baker; ivy, iris, and mulch rise from the hands of a gardener. And the man who’s worried? His hands give off the tinny scent of fear.
“I can still take care of you.”
“I’ll take care of you right back.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“With my Andrew Carnegie money. I told you—didn’t I?—he sends me an annual pension—not a lot, about five thousand dollars a year—so I can use part of it to hire another secretary, and you can write, do your work.”
“Wait, what? You take money from Andrew Carnegie? Helen, you’re a Socialist. He’s a robber baron. Have you thought about that?”
“As a matter of fact I have.”
“Well, you can’t take money from him. His money comes from exploiting the poor. Steelworkers were shot by Pinkerton guards while on strike at one of his plants.” Peter rapped the croquet mallet on the ground and I felt a thunk.
“So you can’t take money from him, and you sure can’t offer it to me, either.”
“Watch me,” I said.
I am made of contradictions. But I won’t apologize. I seem independent, an ardent Socialist, yet my Radcliffe education, my house, my daily needs are paid for in part by a fund contributed to by America’s great capitalists: Carnegie, and Spaulding the Sugar King.
Andrew Carnegie for years had offered me an annual pension as support. In 1910 Annie and I were short of money; the roof on the Wrentham house was loose in spots; the gutters were full; leaves covered the yard. We couldn’t afford household help for the chores. Then my friend Sarah Fuller visited: upon seeing the state of my home she wrote to her friend Andrew Carnegie, pleading that I should not live in such disarray because of who I was and all I gave to the world. Carnegie offered to give me a pension for life.
I turned him down. I wanted to make it on my own. And I was a Socialist. Taking money from the richest man in America wouldn’t do.
But Carnegie replied that he hoped someday I would accept his offer, and a few years later he invited Annie and me to his New York City apartment. In the library the leathery scent of his books and the heavy rug beneath us muffled all vibrations as, over tea, he repeated his offer.
“Helen,” he said, as Annie translated into my palm, “even a Socialist needs the proper shelter.” But I still refused.
“I’m a modern woman. I can make my own wage, and my own way.” I accepted his tea, his meals, but not a cent of his money.
“If you don’t take the money I’ll take you over one knee and spank you,” Carnegie said.
I just laughed.
But not long after, Annie and I were in freezing Bath, Maine, on a lecture tour. When I awoke on the hotel’s third floor and felt my way to Annie’s bed, she was burning with fever; within hours she was unconscious. Her hair was soaked with sweat under my fingers. I couldn’t find my way to the desk clerk, I couldn’t use the phone, I couldn’t cry out to get a doctor. The room grew tighter around me, until it was without air.
A few days later Annie had recovered enough to get help for herself. We returned to Boston, but Annie was still sick and weak. I wrote to Andrew Carnegie.
His check arrived every month after that. I’ll never turn it down again.
“Helen? Who’s hiding things now?” Peter tapped my shoulder. He smoothed my hair, and then tugged it, hard.
“Ouch.” I pulled back. “That hurts.”
“So does hearing my future wife wants to support me.”
“Annie depends on me. I can’t just think of myself, of you and me.”
“Helen,” he said. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re a deaf-blind woman who bears the weight of supporting yourself and Annie, and now you want to help me?”
He traced my face with his fingers. “Look at me. Twenty-nine years old and two nickels in the bank, overeducated and underemployed. A real loafer, I seem.”
“But you have hopes and dreams.”
“Don’t we all. The best one is to marry you.”
That was the moment I felt real intimacy between us. He put down the mallet, and when he kissed me, it was salty, tart, as if we both knew the burden of crossing, and recrossing, into different worlds.
Woods, trees, air, brine.
He was mine.
Chapter Twenty-five
The scent of pine needles, damp wood, and acorns filled the air as Peter led me to the cabana high above the pond later that afternoon. “Right this way, mademoiselle.” He pried open the door and led me across the sloping floor. The warm day made the cabana musty, and heat seeped through the closed windows. Peter took my hands; they felt tense but I felt utterly calm. I had wanted him for months. The last time we came to the pond I lured him in but I wasn’t ready; this time I wouldn’t let him go.
“If being an activist doesn’t work out, you may have a future as an actress.”
“You mean the way I got your attention the last time we were at the pond?”
“Yup.”
I reached up and pulled down from a wooden peg the sleek, black satin bathing suit I had worn that day. “Remember this?”
“Do I.” He laughed back. “The very suit you lowered that day at the pond.”
“You mean the straps.”
“Good enough for me. I have eyes, and you’re a gorgeous woman. Do you think I haven’t imagined the rest?”
“One can o
nly hope.”
“I believe that is the moment I began to fall in love with you.”
“Flatterer.”
“I prefer intellectual. First I was taken by your mind.”
“Love me for something else.”
He lowered me to the bench in the corner and yanked off my jacket, pulling me to him.
“Wait.” I got up, felt my way to the cabana door, and closed it tight.
Suddenly I was desperate for him. He was behind me, his hands on my waist, his thighs taut against the backs of my legs. He pulled off my blouse, his hands warm on my corset. The afternoon heat rose to the windows and seeped in. Then he took my hands and raised them above my head.
With one hand on my hip and the other on my corset, he began to move me back and forth. He slid his hand down my hip to my thigh and raised my skirt. I felt his belt buckle press into my back.
“You’re my captive.”
“For how long?”
“An hour at least.” With great leisure he stroked my bare thigh.
“Or longer.”
Tick, rick, tick. I felt him unbuckle his belt. And while my skirt was still between us he pressed hard into my hips.
He yanked up my skirt so that I felt the hem on the backs of my thighs. Still, the coarse fabric stayed between us. But I felt in waves. With my hands holding the doorjamb I felt him pummel me. “Do you like that?” he spelled to me.
“Yes.”
“How about this?” With one knee, he pressed open my thighs.
“Turn around,” he said.
Now my back was against the door.
He reached inside my corset, his breath like bitterroot leaves. “Do you want me to take your corset off?”
“Please.”
He lowered himself and pulled open the corset laces. Then I felt his tongue on my breast. He reached up and held my bare shoulders, and I arched my back. Nothing had prepared me for this. “I can’t …”
“Quiet.” He pressed his hand over my mouth. “We’re not done here.”
He grabbed my hands and held my wrists together. I squirmed, but he had my wrists over my head.
He found my palm. “Give in,” he spelled.
“Never.”
“Give.”
“Give what?”
“Everything.”
Helen Keller in Love Page 12