Helen Keller in Love (10 page)

“Helen.” For once Annie felt kind, tender, almost. “Sweetheart. Let’s face it. The last time I looked that old saying still stood.”

If I
had been able to hear, I would have covered my ears. As it was, I tried to withdraw my hand, but Annie grabbed it right back.

“John’s the one who found Peter. And you know that old saying, ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”

For one of the few times in our years together, I formed a fist so that she couldn’t tell me more.

“Helen.” She opened my hand. “Don’t make this harder on me than it already is. I didn’t come down here to fight about Peter. I came to tell you my own news.”

Then she began to cough so roughly it seemed to break open the air. Her muscles contracted under my hand as I rubbed her back, trying to make the cough stop. She bent over, almost double, and when she finally stood up I said, “It’s not just a cough.”

“Worst case, tuberculosis. You know. The White Death.”

The White Death. Annie had lost a lot of weight, and in my fever over Peter I hadn’t noticed. I knew only that tubercular patients were kept, often, in isolation from their families to avoid the spread of infection, their eyes burning, their faces flushed, then pallid, so pallid, as they wasted away. Their bodies empty caves where the skin faded to the whitest of white, as if they were angels, rather than the pale face of death.

Her hand in mine was a hollowed-out shell. I traced her face with my fingers until she shook me off.

“It could be just a bad cough. But we have to prepare for the worst. Now zip your lip. Not a word of this to Peter—or anyone else.”

“Yes, ma’am.” As Annie and I stood next to the house, her hand in mine, it must have been hard to tell which one of us was blind. Annie was so afraid that her sleeve caught the wire John had strung up for me: she stumbled and I caught her, led her through the twilight as if my care alone would bring her home.

We
walked up to the porch. Peter took Annie’s arm and helped us up the steps, took Annie to her room, then came back to me.

“Don’t take this wrong,” Peter said. “But who’s handicapped? You? Or her?”

Both,
I thought. Much more than you know.

Chapter Twelve

T
uberculosis, the White Death
, I thought as I made my way from my second floor bedroom to Annie’s at the far end of the hall the next day. The morning sun fell on me. A series of rounded thumps told me the wash was banging against the house from the clothesline where I’d hung it that morning, my fingers fumbling in the basket Annie had set out full of damp dresses, thick wooden clothespins, and instructions to be a little more careful than usual: we wouldn’t want Peter seeing our underthings. Those were to drip dry inside the bathroom off the kitchen, away from his prying eyes. But I was not thinking about daily chores. As I pushed open the door to Annie’s room I was thinking about tuberculosis.

Trucks rumbled past outside as I walked to her room. Inside, the scent of sulfur, quinine, and bitters led me to Annie’s bed.
H-e-l-e-n
, Annie nervously spelled into my palm as I stood by her bed. A metallic scent rose from her sweating skin; a migraine pierced her temples.

Outside, wind drove past the pine trees to the road, flowed down East Main Street, and rattled into town.

“You’re going to be all right, aren’t you?”

“Do I look all right?” Annie’s voice under my fingers was dry sand.

Her cough filled the room with its vibrations. Suddenly a rush of cool air. Annie spelled into my hand, “It’s Dr. Webb. It’s about time he showed up; I called him hours ago.” Dr. Webb strode into the room and leaned over Annie’s bed. I put my fingers, gingerly, to his mouth and throat and read his words: his voice felt reedy when, after a few moments, he told Annie, “You’ll go to St. Joseph’s today for a test.”

I felt
the
ca-rip
of paper as he handed his orders to Annie.

Is Annie going to die?
I thought.

“This is very dangerous,” Dr. Webb said. “You may not under any circumstances expose others. And if you have it, you’ll go to a sanatorium—”

“No. I know about these ‘rest cures.’ If you’re lucky you come back in a year.”

“If you’re lucky you come back. Today. Get the test. It takes weeks to process, so don’t delay.”

“All right, just to show you that you’re wrong.”

Even in sickness Annie was defiant. I loved her for that.

After Dr. Webb left, Annie and I sat together. Time slid by. Finally she said, “This is perfect. I’m sick, my eyesight is going, and now I have to drive to Boston for a TB test. The luck of the Irish, all right.”

I followed her as she opened her closet door and started to dress.

“I’ll come with you.”

“Helen, no.” She patted her hair, and picked up her purse. When I leaned in to kiss her good-bye the onion scent of her breath made me draw back in fear.

“Who will take care of me while you’re gone?”

Annie ignored me. She picked up the phone on her bureau and began to dial. I felt the
chut-chut-chut
of the metal disk turning beneath her fingers. “If tuberculosis doesn’t kill me this will.”

“What will?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m calling Peter. I can’t leave you here alone, but having him here is no picnic either.”

Annie taught me the words for colors I could not see. Pink, Annie said when I was a seven-year-old on a rampage for new words, is like “a soft Southern breeze.” Yellow is “like the sun. It means life is rich in promise.” But I can find no color to describe the day I realized Annie might be sent away from me. Her hand in mine as she prepared to leave the room didn’t feel pink or white or even green, as she’d once told me green was “warm and friendly as a new leaf.” No. Her hands gave off the white of death. A husky, graspable thing.

“Don’t go,” I had said. “Stay.”

I felt like a cut-down forest tree, rootless.

Annie was slipping away. I began to feel panic. I write this to explain the contradiction in my thoughts. I wanted to stay by Annie and I wanted to bind Peter to me more closely. Maybe because I was desperate. Yes, I was desperate for Peter.

“Cheer up,” Annie had said. “The worst is yet to come.” Then she kissed me on both cheeks. The thrum of a cab’s engine moved through me. Annie closed the front door, then Peter opened it.

He came in.

Chapter Thirteen

A
t times when I trace the pieces of my patchwork quilt I feel their lightness rather than the weight, as if something new is about to reveal itself. The moment Peter stepped over the threshold I knew things would change in ways I could not have predicted.

“Tell me you don’t need me around here.” Peter draped his tobacco-scented leather bag over a broken wicker chair in my study, pulled out my desk chair with a scrape, and sat down. The farmhouse filled with cool fall air.

“She looks like she saw a ghost.” Peter laughed about seeing Annie rush down the steps to the car and race off.

“Maybe she has.” The possibility that Annie had TB filled me with panic. “The doctor was just here. She’s very sick. She’s gone to Boston today for a test …”

“Hallelujah,” he said. “Not about Annie being sick, but about having a full day alone with you. Looks like we’ve been given a reprieve.”

“A reprieve? Annie may have TB.” I steadied myself.

“TB? Big article about it in today’s
Globe
. Apparently it runs in families,” Peter spelled into my palm. “Ralph Waldo Emerson had it, his wife died of it. Henry David Thoreau died of it at forty-four. Did you know it’s an epidemic in twenty-two states?”

“Peter, if Annie has it, she’ll …”

“What? Leave you? Helen, you and Annie exaggerate. Make things worse, or bigger, than they really are.” His hand in mine felt heavy, and we sat without saying a word.

Had I
exaggerated? Suddenly a strange thought seemed to float in the air. Was I exaggerating who Peter was? His shirt cuffs were frayed in my fingers. He was a bohemian. Did he want a steady job? How long would he be my private secretary? He traveled from place to place not really landing anywhere. I got the sense that he loved ideas more than people. Was he attracted to the idea of me? I had the strange sensation the answer was yes. But I pushed the thought away. If Annie was sick, I’d need Peter to take care of me.

“You two get carried away by things,” Peter repeated. “Annie’s gone to get a test, she’ll be back tonight. I guarantee she’ll be bossing you around again by tomorrow morning. And when the results show up in the mail in what, two weeks? I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. But I can tell you what should happen.”

“What?” I breathed clean air.

“You should let me take care of you. Well, as much as any mere human can.” He lightly pinched my waist.

“You’re right. Maybe it’s nothing.”

“I didn’t say it’s nothing. TB is serious—I’m not denying that. But you and Annie do jump to conclusions. Then you work yourselves into a frenzy based on what? Speculation, not facts.”

“Are you chastising me?”

“I’m saying you need a good journalist. We follow facts, keep things straight.”

Suddenly I felt very tired.

“I’ll take care of you.”

“Are you proposing?” I said.

“I’m proposing that I’ll take care of you.”

“Then I accept.”

To Peter
I always said what he needed to hear. I didn’t tell him that fear sliced me like a knife, thinking he’d leave, and with Annie sick I’d have no one near. To myself I told the truth. I didn’t set out to attract his desire. But once it was within my reach I knew I would not let go.

Peter pulled out my desk chair and led me to it. “Have a seat, lady. Let’s get to work. Isn’t that why you pay me the big bucks?”

“You’re a tyrant.” I sat at my oak desk, my fingers tracing the familiar white mantel just above it.

“Yes, but I’m your tyrant,” Peter laughed. “And don’t you forget it.”

“How could I, with you reminding me every minute of the day?”

“Quiet, missy.” He put a silver tray with a stack of letters beside me.
Ca-riiiip
. He opened the first envelope, and a limpid scent of onion, musty tenement rooms rose from the page.

“London, England,” Peter read: “September 1916.”

I felt
a slight movement of air as Peter dropped the letter. Then he said: “Germany fights England, blockades it for months, keeps out even medicines, and this boy goes blind. For what?”