What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  “No biting,” she says.

  “Don’t like it?” I like it. The kissing and touching are wonderful, but those are only the soft beginnings of any real feeling. The truest pleasures lie in all that the teeth and nails and fingers can accomplish, especially after a few sips of whiskey.

  Kate sits up. “You mark me,” she says, bringing my fingers up to the side of her neck and shoulders. “Bruises.”

  “That’s bad?” I ask. I’ve been told I had bruises on sore spots when I’ve hurt myself.

  “Colors on the skin. Hide with shawl.”

  “What colors?”

  “Blue, black, violet. Fade to yellow or green.”

  “So beautiful.” I pat her neck, but all I feel is the slightest of welts on one spot, nothing of texture. How I’d love to see the colors I’ve given her. Maybe when I become more proficient, I can employ the bruises to write upon her body: first wrapping an L around one nipple, and then imprisoning the other within the B. What will I engrave on the high roundness of her stomach? Maybe I will stamp my entire name all over her, covering the soft meat of her thighs and buttocks with my letters. I don’t know if she’d enjoy this, but I would. She is certainly more gentle than I am; perhaps most people are.

  “Next time,” I tell her, “only green to match my shade.” I scissor my legs between hers, chasing joy.

  In the dining room at meals, I am careful to act as if nothing is different; it isn’t that hard because the food is far too bland to reach the threshold my sense requires. Sometimes I think I detect a belt of salt, or even pepper, in my meat or soup, and I wonder if Kate has found a way to deliver a special dish to me. When I ask, she only laughs. She thinks that now my taste has begun developing, it will continue, though it might take years, she says. I’m not sure if I’m getting any better at it, but I trust her experience. No one, not even Doctor, has ever given me so much. Maybe one day I will even be able to smell her. “If I could smell only one thing in the world,” I tell her, “it would be you.”

  “Not flowers?”

  “No.”

  “Not ocean?”

  “No.”

  “Not Doctor?”

  “Only you.” She says some parts don’t smell good, like feet and bottoms, but I know it would all be delicious to me.

  Tonight she has brought me not food, but a book, The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes. She borrowed it from one of the teachers, but promised we’ll only use it late at night and she’ll return it by morning so no one will notice. I am excited because I read that most myths have to do with transformations; these are the things I dream about. Kate flips through the pages and summarizes the stories for me. I’m not sure she can really read that fast or if she’s making some of it up. Either way, I love it: a nymph turned into a tree, a god into a swan, a woman into a spider. She tells me about Semele and Zeus, Psyche and Cupid, tales of mortals blind to their heavenly lovers who come to them in darkness. Would I explode into flames or be changed into showers of gold if Kate were ever revealed to me in all her glory? Would that I could be transformed by the piercing of an arrow or the lightning of a god. Most of the metamorphoses seem to be for the worst; however, if I could be given one hundred eyes like Argos or roam the earth as a seeing, hearing, tasting cow like Io, that wouldn’t be so bad. My God is not keen on metamorphoses, though, except, of course, Christ’s transfiguration, and so it appears predetermined that I should stay trapped in this diminished form. On days when I am feeling particularly wise, I think of myself as Athena, shot straight from Doctor’s forehead like a cannonball. And Julia of course is the jealous Hera, Kate the magnificent Aphrodite. The goddess of love comes to the bed of the blind seer, and mortal and immortal are joined, however briefly.

  I lie awake waiting for the slight shudder of the door. My door has no lock, though I have asked a dozen times. Doctor claimed it is more likely that I would be a danger to myself locked inside than that anyone might come to harm me. “Privacy?” I asked, and he said, “Never wanted to be alone before, even when you should.”

  I know he is remembering the years when I crawled into Tessy’s bed, or sometimes another girl’s, only to be discovered and reprimanded, or worse, gloved. All I wanted was to curl myself around them, to kiss their hair and maybe the backs of their necks. A rule I made: no rubbing, the way I did in my own bed. I liked touching Tessy’s skin and Wightie’s cheeks, but I did not wait and hunger, coil and uncoil, in anticipation as I do for Kate. Maybe it’s because Kate returns my longing, while I see now that the others only suffered my caresses out of kindness.

  The damp rushes into the room, and I know she is here. She doesn’t sit on the bed yet, but raps her knuckles lightly against my lips as if asking for permission to enter. I open, and she places something small and wet upon my tongue. It fills my mouth with a not unpleasant tang.

  “Strong, wonderful,” she writes.

  “Want to spit.”

  “Italian! Garlic!”

  “Doctor went to Italy. Doesn’t eat.”

  “Cook at Tewksbury Italian.”

  “Friend?”

  “Taught me everything.”

  I wonder if she got the garlic from this Italian. She won’t tell me where she gets the things Cook doesn’t stock. I suppose she has her ways, probably some useful tricks learned from the hard life of an orphan.

  After a moment, she says, “Stop. Breath smells.”

  I pull the bulb from my mouth. “Made me smell bad?”

  She kisses me. “Now we’re same.”

  She touches my eyeshade, and I try not to flinch.

  “Off,” she writes. “I want to see you.”

  Only one person has seen me uncovered since my childhood besides Doctor: Sarah Wight, and that was an accident. But then again no one’s ever seen the rest of me the way Kate has.

  “No light,” I tell her. She leans over me to douse the lamp, though I realize I won’t know if she’s really extinguished it or not. I sit astride her and slowly untie the ribbons from my shade, letting it fall onto her stomach. Her hands reach for my face, but I grab her arms and push them down over her head. With my green ribbons I tie her wrists together. The air feels likes cool breath on my face. I trace the empty sockets of my eyes and begin to move.

  I wake in the night with our hands entwined and write softly upon hers: “Will get glass eyes for you.” I think she is asleep because her hand is still for a long while, but then she writes, “No. Windows to soul open.” It is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me, and I will try to think of my defect in this new and unexpected way. It will be hard, though, no matter how much she loves me.

  I am surprised after lunch when Jeannette tells me that Doctor wants to see me in his office right away. I am even more surprised that I do not rush to him as I always have. I let him wait for almost an hour while I stroll around the back by the stable, hoping to find Kate, but she’s probably still washing up. No doubt I have food on my dress, as I usually do after lunch, but I don’t change it when I stop in at my cottage before going to see Doctor. I splash cold water on my face, and that’s it.

  “You must be very busy, L,” he writes instead of greeting me properly.

  “Women are busy,” I write. “Children are not.”

  “True,” he says as he helps me into a chair. “Looking like a lady. Plumper. Eating well?”

  “I can taste.” I hadn’t planned to tell him, but there it is. “Taste food.”

  “What?” His touch is rough.

  “God,” I say. “God gave me taste.”

  “God,” he says. “Very generous of God so late.”

  “Serious.”

  “Taste everything now? Eggs, pies—”

  “Only strong. Vinegar. Garlic.”

  “We don’t even have garlic. Ridiculous.”

  “You haven’t tried,” I tell him. “Here, gruel, toast, boiled meat.”

  “I begged you to eat. Almost starved at home, and now you say I don’t feed you well?
Ungrateful girl.”

  He is right. He let me come back because he thought I might die, even if he put me in a cottage instead of letting me back in the house. How far I’ve come from starving! Why can’t he share in my joy? I thought he would be leaping for the chandeliers.

  “Not ungrateful,” I write. “Happy.”

  The floor trembles as he paces. Finally, he stops.

  “All right. A test.”

  A test? Doctor must always test everything: my word, my happiness; the health in my cheeks is worth nothing to him without science. Without documentation. For years, I sat in this room, early evenings after supper, letting him quiz me for hours just to have the chance to stroke his beard.

  “As you wish,” I write and stand to go.

  “Down,” he says. “Called you because of problem with new girl. Cook’s helper.”

  I squeeze the chair’s cushion until my fingers begin to go numb.

  “Know her?”

  I nod. I don’t want him to speak her name.

  “Irish, but clever. Thought I’d done the right thing.”

  I think of the friction of skin on skin. There is nothing else like it in this world, not even close. Regardless of what happens, he has done the right thing.

  “She’s been in your cottage?”

  “No,” I write. Then, “Maybe. Don’t remember.” It’s all right if she’s been spotted coming in or out; I’ll say I was helping her with lessons.

  “Jeannette caught her with your music box behind stable. Tried to bury in hay.”

  I don’t understand. “You gave me that box.”

  “Kate says you gave it to her.”

  “You talked?”

  “This morning.”

  “She sat in this chair?” Was her bottom, marked with the prints of my fingers, pressed into these cushions as she answered all your questions? Was she frightened?

  “Don’t remember which blessed chair. You didn’t give. She stole.”

  I imagine Kate squatting in the hay, humming, holding the box in her lap. Such pleasure she takes in its three tunes, especially “Johnnie My Boy.”

  “Should’ve checked bumps on her head more carefully when we checked for lice.”

  I want to scream. My darling’s head is even more perfect than Doctor’s.

  “I gave,” I write. “I forgot.”

  “Thought you loved it.”

  “Can’t hear music, can I?”

  He puts the box into my hands. “You begged for this,” he says. “Twelfth birthday. Your initials carved into its bottom.”

  I trace the delicate cuts in the wood. “Still there.”

  “Girl did nothing wrong?” he asks. “Sure?”

  “Nothing.” I rise. “Much reading to do.”

  He bends to kiss my hand. The stiff hairs of his mustache bristle my knuckles, and I wonder if Julia misses the feel of it against her breasts.

  I lie on the bed with the music box on my chest. Each time it finishes its cycle, I wind it again. Twenty-seven times and still she hasn’t come. I must have fallen asleep because suddenly the box is being lifted. I grab for her wrist.

  “Stealing again?”

  She scoots onto the bed. “Would give it back.” She’s certainly very calm for a criminal. Probably not the first time she’s nicked something.

  “Why?”

  “When I’m not with you, it reminds me.”

  I don’t know if I believe her. Kate raises my hand to her cheek, and I feel the tears there. “If I give it, you’ll get caught again.” Slowly, I crank the music box and nestle it between her thighs.

  After a moment, she stands and the rough cloth of her work dress falls against my stockinged feet.

  “Bruise me anywhere,” she writes.

  And so I do.

  Kate comes tonight, but only to tell me that she can’t stay, not even for half an hour.

  “Three miles’ walk to Saint Malachy’s before breakfast.”

  “Just talk to God in your head.” He is my closest friend besides Kate.

  “Need help from saints.”

  “Saints stupid. God right here,” I tell her, holding out my arms.

  Why would anyone communicate with the Lord through a third person when they could have direct access? It was like choosing to be blind and deaf, and relying on somebody else to carry your news back and forth. Talking to a saint or even Mother Mary when you can speak to God directly―what a waste. What do these Catholics think they’re doing?

  She folds my hands into my lap. “My God not here.”

  “Talk about me?”

  “Confess everything.”

  “But only wrongs. I am not a wrong.”

  “I’m full up with sin,” she writes, trailing the last word onto my wrist. I start to reply, but she won’t have it; instead she pushes my palms together in the attitude of prayer. She sweeps her curls across my face, back and forth, back and forth, the way I like it. She tries to stand, but I snare a ringlet between my fingers. She pulls away, and I know I’m hurting her, but still I hold on until she bends down and kisses me on the cheek, gently adjusts my shade. I let the hair uncoil from my finger, one ring at a time, and then she is gone.

  Kate hasn’t come to me for two nights, and so I try to sneak into the kitchen after breakfast. Cook takes me by the arm and walks me back out immediately.

  “Where’s your girl?” I write.

  “Irish gone,” she spells and then brushes me away. I force myself to put one foot in front of the other until I reach my cottage. I pull the pillowcase stuffed with her hair from beneath the bed, and bury my face in it.

  Generally, I stay clear of the gossip of the schoolgirls. I used to love it, but now that I am the eldest by far, it is beneath me to indulge their silly stories. But today at lunch, I do not close my hands, and they peck at me like chickens. I know, just as I know that the mash I’m eating is not going to stay down, that these dirty, little fingers will spell out “Kate.”

  “A baby!” one girl writes, and in my other palm crashes the news that they threw her out in the street.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Doctor,” taps one, and another adds, “Jeannette and Cook.” They write many things about my beloved that I can’t bear to repeat, even if they are mere opinions, not facts. The only thing that sticks is that we’re having a baby.

  Two weeks have passed, and I keep my hands away from the gossip about Kate. I am sure she is the subject of much ridiculous speculation, given the nature of servants and blind girls, but words tossed into the air, even if they reach heaven, cannot hurt us. She is out there, out in the life of Boston, just beyond the glowing circle of my world here at Perkins. Her belly grows fatter, our baby grows bigger, and they’re both strong as cows. I understand why the Lord in His wisdom gave the baby to Kate instead of to me; certainly nature has ill-equipped me for motherhood. I think it takes about a year for babies, but the child will arrive with curling hair and my blue eyes, and Kate will bring her to see me. She will test me to see if I recognize the girl right away. As soon as I touch her, I will know that she is ours. I can wait for this day. I smile as I dust and clean and help the young ones with their reading and maths. It’s only a matter of time. I am so glad she took the music box and also the white straw bonnet with the lilacs. She wants to keep me with her always.

  Chapter 23

  Chev, 1852

  Julia was back. He’d known it wouldn’t take long after his letter; within two weeks of receiving it, she’d booked her westward passage across the Atlantic, macaroni and lawyer be damned. He was ecstatic to see his children, and yes, ecstatic to see her too. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until he gazed again upon that lovely face, that radiant oval he preferred above all others—still—and the fact that it did not betray any trace of sulkiness or resentment made her homecoming all the more perfect. That first night, once she’d gotten the children down, she shyly invited him into her bedroom, and he knew that his threat had won him back everythi
ng. At least for now. First, she told him the most important thing: she would agree to publish the book anonymously. It was, after all, not her own glory that she sought, but only to celebrate the inspiration of both God and her muse, Poetry. He reveled in the warmth of her embrace and took his rightful place beside her, on top of her, behind her, once again. As the weeks went by and she allowed him virtually unfettered access to the delights of her chamber, he found himself hoping that she would not get with child particularly soon, because although he’d wished for another, he wished for the continued sweetness of her company even more.

  Two months passed in relative bliss. She worked on the edits of her book almost daily and took excellent care of the children, with help, of course. She had never really cooked or enjoyed any of the domestic duties except hostessing, but he forgave her that now. She was once again his true mate. She was so overtaken with passion one night that she broke down and cried in his arms as they lay in bed, and he comforted her like a babe, finding that he enjoyed her at her most vulnerable, those hot tears upon his neck. Then it happened again, a couple of nights later, a veritable flood, and this time he asked the cause, to which she murmured only that her nerves were bothering her. She had always been high-strung, so this was no great surprise. But then he came upon her at her desk, her head bent low over her pages, weeping as if her heart were broken. He was a doctor; he should have guessed it already! She was in the family way again; apparently, nothing could stop his hot-blooded course to fatherhood. He tiptoed out and left her to her womanly tides. She would soon be fat and happy again, he knew it.

  But the crying and dark moods continued, and so he finally asked, and she said no, there was no child, nor did she want there to be one. Yet still she kept him in her bed, though he now found it more difficult to perform if she was weeping. And the little hiccups after the sobs, which at first he’d found endearing, now vexed him no end, each little pop a reminder that there was something he did not know. He woke several nights to see her standing at the window, hands upon the sill as if about to jump, her narrow shoulders shaking from behind.