What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  “Afraid will knock over brain,” Laura said. Well, that would be a fine mess. He certainly didn’t want that, so he relented and walked out with her. She still had a bit of pull on his reins, though he’d never admit it, not to her, and least of all to Julia. Laura was in an ambling mood as they strolled arm in arm toward the docks, but Chev got right to it and asked whatever was so urgent that she should call him away from his letters for the Sanitary Commission. The military hospitals were counting forthwith on the report.

  She rambled a bit about her sister Mary’s death, and that he didn’t want to hear.

  “Still think of Sammy?” she asked.

  “What a ridiculous question,” he told her. She made one more try to bind them with overgeneral ties of grief, and he cut her dead. His boy was the one subject that still could not be broached, though it had been over a year. Chev felt as if he were strangling every time he heard his son’s name, and he didn’t have faith that this knot of sorrow would ever go away. He was also positive, at the rate it was going, that he and Julia would have no more children. Queen Victoria had recently ushered in the age of anesthesia for childbirth, having taken to chloroform with her last birth, so what was left for Julia to be afraid of? If Chev were a woman, he’d have birthed a dozen by now.

  “Addison fighting for rebs,” Laura said. Jeannette had told Chev this bit of news, and it was shocking. Laura’s brother had grown up in New Hampshire, gone to medical school at Dartmouth, and yet had changed his stripes just because he happened to marry a belle from Savannah? More proof that there was something terribly amiss with the whole family. What a story that boy’s bumps must tell.

  “Awful,” he told her. “But don’t pray for rebs.”

  “No. Finished Uncle Tom. Now I understand.”

  “You’ll speak out?”

  She nodded emphatically.

  Hallelujah. Julia was right; he should have raised the book as soon as it was published. But before he could congratulate himself, Laura wrote, “But John Brown still wrong.”

  This was what she’d dragged him out to talk about? “Enough. What is urgent?”

  She noodled in his hand and lifted her face toward the sky as if she were examining the cumulus clouds forming on the horizon. It was going to rain soon, and Chev was losing patience. He pecked hard at her palm with his middle finger.

  Finally she turned toward him. “Have row with God.”

  As he’d predicted, this was the fruit of her taking in the Bible before she was ready. Chev had long ago washed his hands of this wreck; he couldn’t be held responsible for the damage done by her overweening appetite for religion. She, and the proselytizers who had hounded her, must bear the grave consequences.

  “You argue with Him?” she asked.

  “No,” he told her, which she surely knew was a lie, since he argued with practically everyone.

  “Unitarians don’t talk to God enough.”

  The girl—the girl he had made, no less—was going to preach to him? He took her by the shoulders and he wanted to shake her, but he didn’t. “What is wrong with you?” Of course, the truest answer was “almost everything,” but then they both knew that.

  “Change to Baptist,” she wrote.

  He dropped her hand and moved away. She had the power to rock him still. How could it have come to this? All his work invested for her to dunk her head in a stream and come up a wet and wild Calvinist. He saw the distress on her face deepen as she stepped forward tentatively over the cobblestones, reaching into the air in front of her. She snagged the billowing sleeve of a passing lady, but Chev did not help her. Instead, he walked a few yards away and watched. She wheeled around slowly with both arms outstretched like antennae. She looked like an imbecile, one of the idiots Miss Dix swooned over. She was an idiot, as far as he was concerned. People strolling by gave a wide berth to the crazy, spinning woman on the walkway. He read the panic in her face; she knew she was too far away from the Institution to find her way back. She was asking herself: Could she depend safely on a stranger to escort her? How could he just leave me? Doctor has never left me. She was gasping for air, trying not to cry. She made her sound for him, softly at first, then as a full-throated howl: “OCKA! OCKA!” She was counting on his being embarrassed enough to come back for her. After all, most people recognized Laura Bridgman, and wouldn’t that make a fine tabloid headline? She let loose again, louder still: “OCKA!” Oh, for pity’s sake, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her, though he’d like to teach her a lesson about who she could actually depend on. Not a Baptist God, that’s for certain. And so his hand covered her mouth, the other clamped hard on her arm, and he jerked her around in the direction of the Institution.

  When they were safe inside the door, she doubled over, panting, and almost fell. Theatricals worthy of Charlotte Cushman. He caught her, but not gently, and jabbed into the sweating valley of her palm: “You are a disappointment to God and to me. Do what you will. I am done with you.” He expected her to collapse, to kneel, to beg, but now she stood up straight. Ah, but she reached for his hand to ask forgiveness.

  Her fingers trembled but still she wrote, “My God and I not done with you.”

  Chev had never been more grateful that Laura couldn’t see his face because his jaw had actually dropped. Who was this woman? He took the steps two at a time to his office and slammed the door, pressing himself into the wood as if to fuse it with his backbone. He was shaking, and he didn’t know if it was with anger or something else. He prayed for strength, the strength to truly be done with her. He could not let these wretched women rule him, or God help him.

  Would that he could go to Sumner’s comfortable, old flat in the Back Bay, but his man was now ensconced in the capital, having returned to the Senate, and giving his florid and ill-received speeches as heartily as ever. He still had some troubles with his spine from Brooks’s beating, but not enough to stop him from courting. Yes, courting! Dear Charlie had finally been bitten, and the teeth belonged to one Mrs. Alice Mason Hooper, a socially connected war widow. Chev had yet to meet her, but he couldn’t quite imagine the shape, caliber, and qualities of a woman who could genuinely inspire his friend’s affections. He’d always pushed for marriage, and yet here his own was currently an exquisite pain, while Sumner seemed poised on the very lip of happiness. How strangely the tides and times change for every man.

  Chapter 30

  Laura, 1864

  The breeze from the pines dries the sweat trickling down my back as we walk to the river, but by the time we are on the bank, I am growing sticky again. It seems ridiculous to be wearing a corset and petticoat, much less the heavy ceremonial robes, but Mama insisted I shine in my full respectable ladyhood for this occasion. She has made me a new white muslin dress with satin trimmings. Of course, I helped; no one can thread a needle quick as I can. I can thread even the finest needle by placing the twisted thread and the eye on the very tip of my tongue. Every day at Perkins I stop by the girls’ afternoon sewing class and thread their needles for them. Wonder would anything get made there without me.

  This is the most important day of my life, the most important choice I have ever made, and I have never been so nervous. I have been over and over all the instructions with Pastor Herrick (Pastor Hyland has gone off to fight the rebels), and he has found me sound of spirit and ready for baptism and membership into the Hanover Baptist Church, the church at which my grandfather and my uncle also preached. I am being born again into my faith and the faith of my family. It is all right that none of the Howes, whom I’ve always considered my other family, are here to support me. I respect their religious choices, and yet they refuse to respect mine, as if I am not capable, spiritually or emotionally, of choosing the best vehicle to transport me heavenward. But how I do wish Doctor was here to behold me at my bravest moment—would he not be proud of his little dove in spite of himself?—and my dearest Wightie, who has helped in ushering me toward this day. And if Kate and Laura could watch, then my blessings would
be complete.

  Mama holds my right arm, Papa my left. I am so thrilled I am finally doing something that makes Papa happy, though he has postponed the ceremony twice, fearing that Doctor would not allow me to return to Perkins if I went through with it. But now he is at peace also with my decision and has not even brought up the fact that I’m still no closer to speaking than a donkey. I know my darling Mary is here, holding court with the other angels above the trees as they wait to applaud me. But it is not for them I come; it is for Jesus Christ, to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I know that this has already happened in my heart, but the baptism will serve to mark the victory for all. I am still frightened of the water, of having my whole head held under, no matter how many times I have tried to meditate on the moment of immersion. There is nothing left but to do it.

  As Mama helps me off with my robe and slippers, I realize that all gathered will probably see the cuts I made last night in remembrance of the nails hammered into my Lord, the greatest sacrifice I have ever given of my body. I knew better than to mark my hands, so I only carved my feet and one a bit deeper in my left side, where the Roman soldier pierced Him with a sword. That one I have covered with a plaster so that the blood won’t leak through my dress, but I had forgotten about taking off my shoes. Doubtless I have alarmed them all, but this is no time for an explanation. All I have time to tap into Mama’s hand is “No worry” before Reverend Herrick takes me from Papa like a bride, and the ground changes beneath my feet, tiny wet pebbles wobbling between my toes. The river’s first lick is icy and I shudder, but I will not turn back. The freezing water slides up my ankles, then soaks my hem, as we walk slowly forward in absolute faith and trust. When the river is up to my waist, we stop, and I try to imagine what we look like to the parishioners and family on the shore: a woman in white, no longer young, a green ribbon tied over her eyes, her brown hair parted in the middle and bunned low, and a tall man with a crooked nose dressed all in black, hat still on, as he places his long-fingered hand on her head, blessing her in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then I am going down and time stops.

  At first, all is dark, as I am accustomed, but then a cool blue light rushes in, and I see the water undulating around my outstretched hands, the brown reeds below bobbing between my bare calves, my skirts aswirl. My hands and feet glow, pearlescent wonders in the new and moving universe. I cannot breathe, but I can see! A fish―what I recognize as a fish from the shape―small and iridescently scaled, swims up to me, close to my chest. Is this the Holy Spirit entering? No, it swims away, tail flashing. I want to stay down here where all life suddenly exists and I am fully part of it, but then I feel the reverend’s hands tugging me upward. I resist, bending my knees toward the bottom, my arms thrashing against his. But he is stronger than I am, and I am pulled up, up, up toward the surface of the water, the light ribboned through it as I rise. Just as I reach the luminescent crown, just as my face is fully bathed in the light, I explode from the river, and all is black again. I gasp, fighting for my breath, and look down, but again meet blackness. I shake my head out like a dog and reach for my shade. Still there. It was never off when I was under, so how could I see? Was this vision the Lord’s gift to me for just that one moment, plunged into His natural world, His sign that I have done the right thing and that I am now one with Him? I will never know.

  We wade through the water, and it leaves me, inch by inch, until my toes are again on the rocks. I am shivering violently, and Mama takes me in her arms, and then the pastor and his wife. Papa leans in and gives me a little pat. Mama covers me with a shawl so the crowd won’t see my wet dress stuck to me. Would any find it alluring? How can I have such sinful thoughts after my baptism! As we climb up the bank toward the carriage, I think of the flat, dark eyes of the fish, so close I could’ve poked them out. If He was going to grant me a brief miracle, then instead of the blasted fish, I would rather have seen the sun and sky or my mother’s face, or more than anything, my own. God is a strange and mysterious master, and I no doubt am a strange and mysterious servant, but from this day forward I am His. I am forever changed, by my own choice, and I wonder if He is too.

  Chapter 31

  Laura, 1865

  Doctor buys us all Ribbons for Victory for forty cents each. I pin mine to the side of my spoon bonnet, and then we are out the door into the April wind, a procession among processions. I will save my ribbon to give Laura on her next visit; I pray that she and Kate are able to celebrate within their circumstances. So many people we can barely move through the streets, so we hold hands with Doctor at the fore and Jeannette at the rear. We stop so that we can touch the decorations on a shop’s windows, and I reach as high as I can until I feel the tip of the flag hung over the awning. Jeannette says that the Stars and Stripes are flying everywhere. Lee has surrendered at last, and though my Addison was on the losing side, he has written that he is safe and on his way back home. Gloria in excelsis Deo. Everyone is laughing and crying, and I am as caught up in the revelry and high hopes as anyone, though I still feel shame at my refusal to speak out against slavery until the eleventh hour. I have tried to right myself, but it is wearing to fight against the extreme conditions that have bent my nature. Forgive me, Lord, for allowing myself this pitiful loophole to a sane and useful personhood.

  Tonight all the students are invited to join with the Howes in a celebration banquet. The best of Boston are in attendance: five of the Secret Six; Sumner, unfortunately; the Horace Manns; the Peabody sisters, who are said to still be among the greatest beauties of the metropolis; and one who gives my heart pause—Julia’s dear friend, Mr. Edwin Booth, the actor. I have met him before, and he brought my hand to his lips and kissed me with the very mouth that is said to give the greatest glory to Shakespeare. I have read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, the only two plays that the Perkins press has printed, and stand in awe that Mr. Booth has played the title roles in both. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. I hope that this sentiment includes me, especially in the presence of one so exalted. Tonight in the parlor he kisses my hand again, and I ask Doctor if I may sit beside him, but he says no, that I would take up all his attention. Few men tempt me, but the idea—and maybe it is only an idea—of this man manifesting the depth of love and tragedy stirs something in me, though, of course, I will never know the power of his actual performance. Doctor is right; if I were to sit beside him, I don’t think I could stop touching him. He is said to be very handsome, one of the few who can compete with Doctor, so that I would like to get my fingers on him. And tonight I am wearing my new boots in the latest style, with one made for the left foot and a different one for the right. I’ve only ever worn straights before.

  Even all the blind girls are given half glasses of champagne; it has been over ten years since my adventuring with drink. The memory of the first time is relived almost daily. I wonder what Mr. Shakespeare would have made of the story of me and Kate. It is a tragedy, after all, but also a tale that blossoms with beauty, a rose with the thorns twisted into my flesh. Champagne is very different from wine and whiskey. I taste nothing, but still enjoy the fizzing on my tongue and the way it lifts my spirits even higher on this hallowed eve, something I would not have thought possible. We toast to the Union, to President Lincoln, to God’s wisdom and bounty. In excelsis Deo. I am surprised with all the blinds that no one breaks a glass. Luck and happiness reign, and it is one of the loveliest evenings of my life.

  How can the world be so transformed in only five days? President Lincoln has been shot in his box at the theater by John Wilkes Booth. We are doubly in shock, because not only is our savior dead on the heels of victory, but it is our dear Mr. Booth’s brother who has performed the unspeakable deed. As soon as we get the news, Julia rushes out to see her friend, but returns in tears. Mr. Edwin had already fled to New York. He is said to be in agony, as he loved the President as much as any of us. Mr. Booth and his brother, now there is a tangled web worthy of Shakespeare. Doctor says that througho
ut the city, the bright decorations of victory have been draped over with mourning cloth. We all change into our black crepe. The war took so many lives already; why did God feel the need to take this one most holy? Yes, John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger, but it is always God’s decision. In the last years, He has taken Mary, Asa, little Sammy, and now President Lincoln. Every time I think I have regained my trust in His wisdom, He destroys it. I pray that this lapse of faith will pass, and yet it is the one I’m praying to who has betrayed me. Betrayed us all.

  Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson pays a call today; there is still much visiting in the aftermath of the assassination. Everyone seeks the company of friends more so than usual, as we are stuck together in our grief. He is always much beloved here, though he and Doctor no longer seem close. His hand in mine is very firm, but gentle, as it has always been since he took the time to learn finger spelling to converse with me. I feel him taking stock in that one touch and yet, in the pause before he begins to write, he allows me to take stock of him as well. Most do not intuit well enough to give me those few needed seconds. From this, I know he respects me as an equal. The patronizing tap I know so well, close at home from Julia, as well as the impatient, indelicate, disrespectful pecks of one like Sumner. And best of all, he lets me twirl the waxed ends of his handlebar mustache. It is almost as long as my hand!

  I ask if he is going to Washington to see the President laid out, but he says he does not want to talk about that. “Today a surprise for you.”

  He often brings me little treats, and once even a maple fudge so rich that I thought I could taste its sweetness, just barely. That alone has made me inordinately grateful to him.

  “New friend reminds me of you.”

  “How?” There are so few who are anything like me that I am instantly intrigued, though skeptical.