What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  “You could hire a companion. You’ve promised her that already.”

  “She’s fine without one. I don’t see the need.”

  “Then why the promise, Chev?”

  He put his hands lightly on her shoulders as she dusted powder over her face and décolletage, speckling his fingers. “Don’t tell me how to manage her, Julia. You know better.”

  She shook herself from his hands. “Then don’t ask my advice.”

  “Would you go—would you consider making the trip to London?”

  “You are in a funny mood,” his wife said. “Here, help button me up. You, me, and Laura crossing the Atlantic? At least one of us would go overboard in the first week.”

  “She’s not that bad.”

  “I didn’t say she was. My dear, you have disparaged the girl to the entire world. Don’t look to me for any help at this point.”

  “You were never any help with Laura.” There, her dress was buttoned all the way up, thank God, so he’d be spared that distraction in an argument.

  “And you are never any help with your own children, probably because they are not idiots.”

  “Are you ill, Julia? Your color is as high as your temper.”

  She faced him, and her eyes met his fully for the first time. “I’m going to Rome, Chev, to spend the season with Louisa and her husband. And I’m taking the children. You should go to London with Laura, if you’d like.”

  She swept out of the room before he had time to formulate a response, and he was left with nothing but the sweet scent of her powder. He raised two fingers to his nose and inhaled deeply. He looked around the room. He felt utterly lost, a very unusual state for Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.

  Dash it, someone had told Laura about the Transcript’s proposal. He figured it must have been Dorothea Dix on last week’s usual prying, doting visit. Laura refused to say who told her, but whoever it was, they’d read her the entire editorial.

  “Priceless art,” Laura told him first thing. “Me.”

  If so, she had been his canvas, and God knows, at the moment he regretted his brushstrokes, both broad and narrow. Ah, what respite it would be to deal with one of Vermeer’s pale beauties rather than some scowling oddity from Mr. Bosch!

  “Why not go?” she asked, and when he didn’t answer, she wrote it again and again until he swept her hand away.

  “Much trouble,” was all he could think.

  “You love London. See Boz and others.”

  And they would see her, that was the problem; they’d see how he’d failed with her, how charmless she’d become as a woman, how opinionated and singular in the very worst way for a lady.

  “Busy here.”

  “Julia Rome.”

  How the devil did she know that already? Did everyone know? He’d only told Jeannette and Charlie. Wonder who Julia had announced her grand intentions to. Bragging, no doubt.

  “Paper says I’m best of America.”

  At the moment, she wasn’t even best of Perkins, as far as he was concerned. “Vanity a sin,” he wrote.

  “I don’t say. Paper say.”

  “Silly idea.”

  She slammed both hands on his desk. “I want to go.”

  He’d had enough. “Then go.”

  She stood still, thinking. “No Wight. Can’t go alone.”

  “Then find someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “Not proud of me anymore,” she wrote slowly. “I’m deranged, with small brain.”

  She had never mentioned the Annual Report, but he should have known someone would have gotten to her; after all, both Wight and the Bridgmans had been furious.

  “Not small…different than I thought.”

  “My bumps?”

  Chev felt himself struggling for an explanation that would make sense to both of them. “Tried to make you something you’re not.” There, that was the truth.

  She remained standing, a rigid column before him. “A disappointment.”

  “No—” Why was he still so soft on her whenever her hand was in his?

  “I knew that,” she said, her fingers surprisingly cool on his own. “Knew when you sent me away.”

  “But you’re back,” he said helplessly.

  “My brain’s fine,” she said. “My heart also. But you―”

  He waited for her to finish. How often he’d judged her, privately and publicly, and now she was finally ready to render a judgment on her maker. But after a few seconds, she simply removed her hand and left the room. To her credit, she did not collide with any of the furniture. Chev realized his hand was still out, palm open. What had she been going to say? At least she hadn’t tapped something unintelligible across his forehead like the last time they’d fallen out. Eph-phatha? He still didn’t know what that meant, or if it were something she’d made up in the boil of the moment to confound him. Maybe it was a curse. He groaned. He was feeling cursed, indeed. All the women turning against him, when they all used to be so tangled in his beard he could scarcely breathe.

  Chev wrote a brief letter to the editor of the Transcript, thanking him for such an excellent and complimentary suggestion, but explaining that a trip of such duration would not betoken well for Laura’s present health. Or for his own.

  Chapter 19

  Laura, 1851

  A new girl,” Jeannette writes. “Kate O’Boyle.”

  An Irish. I am surprised Doctor is taking another one; we already have half a dozen, and they are wild as cats. And she’s hardly a girl: her hand is nearly one and a quarter the length of mine, and the fingertips as callused as any I’ve ever had from a female. Too much pressure with the thumb—who doesn’t know how to shake hands? I withdraw but not before I’m scraped by a ragged nail. Jeannette pats my shoulder to calm me; if this one is an actual idiot, she should have warned me first. I believe she sometimes thinks it funny to spring them on me. What she sees might be comical; what I feel, however, is not.

  “Not blind,” Jeannette says. “Orphan. Helps Cook.”

  “Girl’s hands disgrace,” I tell her.

  “Had more than her share.”

  Oh, we get shares, do we? Then I own the entire Institution, thank you.

  The girl is standing far too close; her heat is overwhelming. I back away, but Jeannette pushes me toward her again.

  “Don’t take yourself so serious,” she says. What does she expect? I’ve no teacher of my own—not that I need one, though Doctor had promised me a companion if I came back from the dead—and I spend half my days helping with ignorant and disrespectful blind girls. I hate it when Doctor leaves Jeannette in charge.

  She tries one more time. “Friend for you. Schooled.”

  How grateful I should be that they’ve found me a new friend, fresh from the almshouse, from rolling around with the destitute and the insane. I hope they scrubbed her down.

  I feel her lowering herself, her hand in mine. Ah, she curtsies. All right then. I curtsy in return, and Jeannette takes her away, satisfied I am behaving.

  The sun is full out today, so after I help with the maths, I perch on the stone bench by the stable to write.

  My darling Wightie,

  I was so thrilled to hear you had your baby. Thomas is a lovely name, though of course I did want you to have a girl so you could call her Laura, as you’d promised. Can you blame me?

  I must admit to you now that I had doubts if you had made a good match in Mr. Bond. I didn’t think you truly loved him and wanted to go to the islands. But you said that when two people really love each other, God gives them a baby, and so now I know that your joy is real and complete. I am filled with happiness for your family.

  I wish that I could be there on the beach to play foots with Thomas, as I play with Julia’s latest…

  Someone’s leaning over me—what, trying to read my letter? I shield the page and then reach backward, snagging a rope of hair. What a strong braid! I can’t get more than a fingernail between the plaits. I don
’t know this hair. Down it I go, two hands’ worth tight as a paintbrush, to the tiny band holding the ends. Who wears no ribbons at all? But then, oh, the surprise at the end of the plait: a good two inches of curls that coil around my finger. How difficult it must be to force those curls into submission. I tug hard and down comes the head attached. I turn the letter over and raise my other hand to the face, employing the braid like a pulley.

  The chin juts a bit; mine does too, but this one more. The bottom lip yields to my fingertips, but it is ridged and cracked. Generally, only men have such lips, like Doctor after a long ride in the wind. Before I can scale the cheeks, the person takes advantage of my lax grip and jerks away. I frisk the space on both sides, but she is gone—not just a few inches out of my range, playing a game, I pray, the way so many students have mocked me. I pretend to be occupied with my letter, and then ha! I lunge from the bench, wheeling around in a wide circle. Nothing but air. The ladder of hair is gone. I settle in again with my page, dozing in and out. Climb the rope; pound on the door of that dry, closed mouth; peel away the flakes of skin until all is smooth and wet, like mine.

  Today is horses, my favorite. To think, all those years ago riding Asa’s shoulders that I would one day sit so proud on a mount of my own. I am not allowed a gallop or even a slow trot unattended, though, and I am never given the reins by myself; someone is always at the end of those reins, pulling me along the path they have chosen for me. From the saddle, there is no way to communicate my wishes except through noises, but these are never heeded unless I continue with great force.

  “Why does it matter where you’re going?” Doctor once asked me, so angered by my noises that he’d stopped and pulled me off the horse. “You don’t know the difference.” But I do: toward the sea we race the fastest, and the wind slaps my face and pricks at my nose; toward the forest, branches scratch my arms, leaves nest in my hair, and warmth becomes coolness; through the gardens, we move slow as a waltz as the horse is guided between bushes and flower beds; and out the gates and on to Boston, we fly, and then heel, waiting for others to pass in the street, and the jarring of the hooves on the cobblestones hurts my head.

  I am tasked with helping the new girls, so I won’t be riding. A shame with the late August breeze so brisk, as real as rough hands at my back. Doctor believes in breaking students in fast, going straight to the exercise most of them have never tried, helpless as they are. Visitors can scarce believe it, all the blind children rushing about the yard, and when they see the gymnasium they are amazed—sightless little ones swinging from the bars! But it is the horses and fresh air that are Doctor’s genius; for me in particular nothing provides more sensate variety than the weather, the act of simply being out of doors. The air inside the house rarely moves and changes, but outside I am constantly delighted by even the slightest shifts in wind or the angle of the sun or shade.

  I brought two sugar cubes in my pocket for my favorite horse, Wightie. I’m told he is almost pure white with one small black spot on his head and so this name is particularly apt, though I would’ve named him after Sarah Wight anyway. He is a wonderful beast, even if he is male. That was a grave disappointment. Wightie’s mane is tangled, and I give it a good, hard brushing. He recognizes me as always and nuzzles my neck.

  Here is my girl—Jeannette tells me it’s Kate, Cook’s assistant. Better her than a clinging, frightened child, I guess. But why is she so special that she gets lessons when she should be cooking us lunch?

  “Learned finger spelling,” Jeannette says. “To talk with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Lonely, blinds too young.” Jeannette puts the girl’s hand in mine. “Try her.”

  “How old?” I spell out with excruciating slowness.

  “17,” she writes back, much quicker than most new to the signing.

  She’s only four years younger then; none of the rest of the girls are more than thirteen now. Even Tessy finally left; her family took her to New York for glass eyes, and voilà! a husband soon appeared. Apparently, artificial eyes are just the ticket to a normal life, though Doctor still claims I would never get shut of the discomfort. “There are different measures of discomfort,” I told him, and I should bear a Job’s load for blue and shining eyes to greet my public. They all leave, except for me.

  “Like horse?” I ask her.

  “Big,” she writes. “Ugly.”

  Ugly? I might not be able to see Wightie, but I can tell an ugly horse when I feel one, and Wightie is magnificent.

  “Wightie beautiful.”

  Kate spells “Whitie” into my hand.

  “Wightie,” I write again.

  “White,” she raps emphatically. “And ugly.”

  “Not color. Named for teacher.” I punch each letter so I don’t have to do it again.

  “Here?”

  I start on “The Sandwich Islands,” but of course she would not have heard of them. “Far away.”

  “Sad?”

  What cheek. “Pet.” I take the girl’s hand but she pulls back. I remember my months of fear; horses are enormous, the largest creatures I have met, yet the gentlest. Do I share this information with her? She’s probably angry at being paired with me; with anyone else she wouldn’t have to finger spell—she could speak. Maybe she is speaking. I feel her turning away, kicking grass. I don’t blame her. I take both hands firmly in mine.

  “Here one year before I rode.”

  “Fall?”

  “Never.”

  “Fell bad.” Kate hooks her right thumb into my palm. The second joint crooks oddly, the knuckle humped. I bend her other thumb and rub the tough pads against my soft ones.

  “Pet Wightie together.” And we do, first her hand over mine, and then mine over hers until she stops trembling. What a thing to hold a girl’s hand bigger than mine and yet it still trembles.

  “Smooth,” she writes, and I allow her to stroke by herself.

  “Left Ireland famine?” I ask.

  “Born here.”

  She’s not boat Irish then. That’s good. I’ve been told the English and the Irish have funny accents, but they don’t translate with the finger language. “Now the nose,” I say as we move to Wightie’s front.

  “Bites.”

  “Won’t.”

  I reach into my pocket for one of the sugar cubes I was saving to feed Wightie myself, and give it to Kate. I lift her hand toward the horse’s mouth until Wightie’s breath is warm on us, but still the girl resists.

  For two more weeks Kate stays afraid, stubborn, and sulky. Finally, I tell her, “He will love you,” and it’s that simple: for this affection, she puts herself in harm’s way. She tenses, and then a giggle shakes her as Wightie snuffles the sugar. Kate’s hair tickles my nose. This is the hair—it was her in the yard, looking over my shoulder, teasing me with her braid. Today it is unplaited, and I slide one finger into the mass. When she doesn’t recoil, very slowly my whole hand enters, fingers first, an inch at a time, until it is suspended in that soft forest.

  She doesn’t move away from me, though she doesn’t move toward me either. I can tell from the thrust of her shoulder that she is stroking Wightie’s mane. My hand in Kate’s mane, hers in Wightie’s; nothing has prepared me for the perfection of this moment. I am careful not to pull, though I want to, and am ready to bury my whole face―the tip of my nose already in, my lower lip so close a tendril vibrates in my sharp exhale―when my arm is grabbed and wrenched away. My fingers tangle in Kate’s hair, and she twists against me.

  Jeannette has made me hurt the girl. She grips my forearm and shakes it free of all that beauty. We are separated, and when I put my hands out in front of me, there is nothing but briny wind against my palms.

  By the last week of September, Kate is riding. I ask Jeannette if I can mount with her, but she says that two ladies sidesaddle is begging for an accident. One of us could ride the way men do, I suggest, but she swears Doctor won’t allow it. He seems much more ill-tempered with Julia away in Rome
than he does even when she’s here. Jeannette lets me lead Wightie on the beach with Kate astride, but I know she watches. Of course, I don’t have the true independence of the lead, but it’s nice to pretend. These twice weekly lessons are our only time together, and when she is atop the horse, I can’t have her hand for talking. Cook drives her from dawn until past teatime, and she is so exhausted that she goes straight upstairs. I feel bad that she must share a room with three blind girls. Last year, Doctor moved me into a cottage of my own at the back of the main house.

  Today when she jumped off Wightie, she said, “Read poem about you.”

  “Which?”

  “You’re angel.”

  “In the cage.”

  “Famous,” she says.

  I’m one of the most famous women in the world, but I decide to be modest. “Doctor’s famous,” I tell her.

  “Famous for you.”

  “Not like before. And young ones don’t like me.”

  “Blinds,” she says. “What do you expect?”

  Lydia Sigourney and all the best poets have written poems about me, except for Doctor’s wife. Julia writes hundreds of poems, yet here I’ve sat for years, right in front of her, apparently the ideal helpless Muse, but nary a word from her stingy pen. She did try to get me the eyes, though. “Julia has red hair like you,” I tell Kate. She can’t believe that I guessed her own color correctly, but the truth is most red locks have a certain memorable coarseness that gives them away. Her eyes, however, I guess wrong. Blue, I thought, but she says green, my favorite.

  Kate is allowed to ride on her own now, and I am left with the children. For weeks I meet her only in passing, with time to write only the simplest greetings. Then yesterday outside the stable, she grabbed my hand and held it.

  “Tonight. Your cottage.”

  “No visitors allowed nights.”

  “Yes.” She slapped my palm. “Bring treat. To thank for teaching.” She patted my arm and ran off to make supper for us all.

  I have straightened everything in my one room and swept the floor three times. I comb it inch by inch on my hands and knees to make sure I haven’t missed anything, but then my hands get dirty again. I crank the music box on the table by the bed and stay close to the door so I won’t miss the vibration of her knock.