Helen Keller in Love (14 page)

“To stay home, to take care of herself.”

“Mother. You know we have to work.” I stopped.

There was a long pause.

“Yes, the Keller trust fund didn’t exactly work out, did it?”

I felt the narrow wedding band on her finger. Mother never spoke of the sweltering Alabama summers when she took Annie and me with her and Father to our retreat house high in the mountains. That house surrounded by pine forests, the tinny scent of red fox, and the dark-cave scent of bear. Annie, Mother, and I sat on the veranda, hungry because there was so little to eat in the house, while my father stalked the woods hunting with his friends. One day he plunked up the veranda steps to pack his bag and return to Tuscumbia, leaving us three in the woods with no money and no way home.

When I wrote
about this in one of my books Mother said I brought the family shame.

Now I spoke up and told the truth. I wanted a changed life. I was not afraid. The dining room air shook ever so slightly with Annie’s cough as she rattled the plates in the kitchen.

“All the work’s taken a toll on Annie.”

“Mother, you can’t think that our travels made her sick.”

“I have never been able to tell you what to do.” Mother laughed. “But if Annie had stayed home more …” She was too well bred to mention John’s abandonment of Annie. I felt her turn slightly toward the head of the table where John always sat.

“Mother, that’s over.”

“Well, from what Annie tells me there’s another man in the house.”

I said nothing.

“A single man. Am I right, Helen? Or formally single. Annie tells me he’s engaged.”

“Right.”

“But you’re not.” Mother waited for an answer. “Helen? But you’re not.”

“I’m—”

“You’re a single woman,” Mother went on. “So I trust while Annie’s been ill you have not spent time alone with Mr. Fagan.”

“Mother, he’s my secretary.”

“As long as Annie was with you that’s fine. But from now on I’ll be in the room with you two whenever you do your … letters.”

A headache began to throb behind my temples. To be fair, my mother never imagined the grief she would have after I became deaf and blind before my second birthday. How could she have known what to do? She was the spoiled daughter of a wealthy Memphis family, and when I couldn’t see or hear, some of her relatives demanded that she send me to the Alabama Asylum for the Insane and Infirm. She refused. She found me Annie, fought with my father to send me to school, and for all that I loved her, loved her beyond myself. And for the second time in my life I would bring her unbearable
grief.

“I trust you behaved yourself.”

“You have my word.” I withdrew my hand and picked up my teacup, its porcelain so thin.

Chapter Eighteen

U
nlike Annie, who was partially blind from the age of seven until she was sixteen, my mother never learned the shape of the earth by touching an orange, as Annie taught me to do, never walked past a factory so filled with heat that she thought, as I did at age seven, that the sun had fallen to the earth; she never felt her way down an alley, fearful of getting lost.

No, blindness was foreign to my mother—for that I am grateful.

But I never said this: I traveled the world, I rallied crowds of thousands outside factories on behalf of workers’ rights in New York, Boston, and Chicago, found my way down streets in Berlin, Paris, and Rome, places where my mother never ventured.

Imagine my pride—and my sorrow: I had vast stretches of loneliness and fear, but still I was freer than my mother, who lived mostly alone.

I had to lie to her about my engagement to Peter. I didn’t have the will to confide in her when I had a new life to live—my own.

Annie came in, and the slight shaking of the table told me she was tapping her shoe against the floor. Mother and I sat side by side, and after Annie passed us platters of pot roast, scented with rosemary, and biscuits, she sat down and handed me a letter.

“Helen, did you write this letter lambasting the French?” Annie spelled to me.

“Where did you find that?” I said.

“In
your study. Now did you write it or not?”

“Yes.” I kept my hand in Annie’s. I felt her lean toward Mother to tell her what I’d done. I held my breath, waiting for Mother’s response.

“Perfect, Helen,” Annie spelled to me. “Your mother wants to know if
I
put you up to this.”

I said nothing.

“It was that Fagan, Kate,” Annie spelled to Mother, and to me. She then passed a bowl of peas. “I left Helen alone with him for one day and she goes and acts like a traitor.”

“Mr. Fagan put you up to this?” Mother took the bowl from me, her fingers smooth in mine. “When exactly did this happen?”

“Yesterday. When Annie was at the doctor’s. Peter whipped out my response on the typewriter. That’s his job, Mother.” I tried to ease the tension in her touch.

Mother turned from me to face Annie.

“You left Helen alone with this man?”

“He’s not important,” Annie said. “We have more important things to worry about.”

“Helen.” Mother took my arm. “How did this happen? With this Mr. Fagan? Wasn’t Annie supposed to
watch
you?”

Annie, never one to avoid a fight, sprang up to defend herself. Almost choking on her cough, she said, “
Watch
Helen? Kate, in case you haven’t noticed, this is the same Helen who punched out my front tooth when she was seven years old. You want me to
watch
her twenty-four hours a day?”

“Annie, if I’m not mistaken, it is your job to keep Helen away from this—or any—man.”

“How am I to do that,” Annie snapped, “when I may have to move six hundred miles away?”

With a final bang of the door she was gone.

Mother pushed back her chair and rose to her full height. “Bring Mr. Fagan downstairs.”

I rapped three times hard on the floor for Peter, in our signal.

“But first
I have one more objection.”

“Yes?” I stood.

“
F-a-g-a-n
. What kind of name is that?”

“Mother, please.”

“Where is his
family
from?”

“Ireland. They’re Catholics.”

“Helen, you keep up with the news. Surely you’ve read about the trouble Irish Catholics are causing these days. They don’t hold down jobs. They’ve rioted in New York. Think of your family, Helen. First you defended the Negroes in that letter to the newspaper—”

“That was fifteen years ago.”

“And they still haven’t forgotten about it in Montgomery. Every time your sister, Mildred, has her card club over, someone says you disgraced the Keller family. Now these people.”

I said nothing.

“They’re immigrants first, American second.”

“He’s a U.S. citizen.”

“And whose side will he be on when the United States enters this war?”

“He’ll be on
my
side.”

I have never told my mother I know the sorrow I brought her. I have never let go of the burden of causing her grief. “We had a few brief months of happiness,” she often said to me about the times before I became blind and deaf. But I want more happiness. My life is not shrouded in grief. I want to live with Peter, have a family of my own.

She would never allow it.

But I was reckless. I did not care. I felt Peter’s footsteps as he strode into the dining room, kicked a tasseled ottoman in the corner, and then stood by my side.

“Have you met my private secretary?” I asked Mother.

“I haven’t met you but I’ve heard about you.”

It was
suddenly hard to swallow in the warm room.

“I enjoy working for Helen.”

“As long as it’s only work.”

“I do what Helen asks me to do, ma’am.”

“You work for the Keller family.” My mother stood straighter. I felt the rustle of her floor-length silk dress. “With Annie sick you’ll report to me.”

I forced myself to stay still. I imagined my mother disappearing, fastening her cloak, climbing up the steps to the train headed for Alabama.

“You coming, Helen?” Peter’s hand gripped mine.

I let him begin to lead me out of the room; his fingers were so tense.

Why couldn’t I have Mother, Annie, Peter,
and
my own life? Because my responsibility was to be loyal to those who helped me—without them I had no world. I stopped before we reached the door.

“Helen. Your mother wants me to leave. But I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon to help you write your speech for the rally. Meet me in your study at twelve thirty. Will you?”

Peter’s footsteps moved away. First they gave off a birdlike scratch. Then they grew stronger, heavier with a
crack-snap-crack
. He walked out like a newly determined man.

Chapter Nineteen

I
’ve always longed to fit in. In my autobiography I wrote that being deaf and blind was like being trapped on a gray, silent island. Far off there was a distant land where people talked, laughed. But I was alone, only able to reach them by tossing out a long lifeline, so desperate to be among the living. I dressed up, learned to read and write, rode horses, learned Latin, French, and Greek, and was the first deaf-blind person ever to graduate from Radcliffe College, cum laude, at that.

But the more I tried to be like everyone else, the more a frightening space opened up between me and the people I loved. It was always there, that chasm. So I followed Peter onto the porch, and when he slipped his warm hand into mine I was not alone—I was with a man who drew me into the world instead of keeping it at bay. I eagerly let Peter lead me away from the house, where Mother paced the dining room floor and Annie tossed in bed.

“You didn’t tell me the Kellers celebrated Fourth of July late.” He leaned against a maple tree at the yard’s edge.

“The fireworks?” I had to laugh, thinking about Mother’s outburst.

“You got it, missy. But the show’s over.”

Suddenly I wanted one thing only, to run away with him.

“Please pardon my rudeness last night,” Mother said. “I had a long trip.” The noon sun warmed the living room the next day. Mother and I faced Peter as he came into the house.

I felt Peter shuffle his feet.

“So if
you’ll oblige, I’d like to take you both to the Devon House for lunch.” Mother took my arm and swept me alongside her out the front door. Peter followed, just as the heavy maple panels shuddered behind us with a
whap
.

“Peter can drive. I assume he is your chauffeur, too?”

Peter snatched the keys from her hand, and as soon as we climbed into the car he gunned the engine to life. We whizzed up the road, past the murky, mossy water of the lake. Finally Peter pulled the car into the Devon House parking lot.

“Annie usually takes us here the day after I arrive,” Mother said to Peter, who spelled it into my hand. “But with Annie sick, well, traditions must be kept up, isn’t that right, Helen?”

“I’m for new traditions.”

“Fine. As long as I’m in the room when they take place.” Mother walked ahead.

I followed her, with one hand on the railing, up to the restaurant’s front door. Peter grabbed my elbow, and as he guided me over the step to the lobby I wobbled a bit.

“Thank God I’m steady on my feet,” Peter said.

“You?” I said right back. “Between the two of us, mister, I’m the stable one.” I laughed, but I had no idea how right I would be.

Peter led me into the dining room. I smelled the bleached linen tablecloths, felt the dragging of chairs. With my feet I sensed the vibration of musical instruments, a trumpet and drums. “Is there a band?” I asked.

“Yup. Can’t wait to do the fox trot with you.” Peter swung my hand and followed Mother right past the dance floor to a cool section of the dining room, and we sat at a table for three.

“Looks like the bandleader’s going to make an announcement,” Mother said. “He’s dedicating the first song to the men, women, and children in Britain suffering under the German blockade as starvation sets in.”

Peter
grabbed my hands under the table.

“I’m hungry, too. For you.”

“Where are your antiwar sentiments? Shame on you.”

“Oh, I have sentiments, all right.” Just then Peter scraped back his chair and stood up.