Helen Keller in Love (17 page)

“To bid him good-bye.”

“Don’t …” Whatever the letter said, I didn’t want to know. But Annie spelled rapidly into my hand:

Annie and I sat together, her hand firm but nervous in mine.

“So he really loves someone else,” Annie spelled.

Fire, a roiling thing in me.

“Your time with him is almost over.”

“It’s not.” Deception comes to everyone sometimes. If I could deceive Annie and my own mother, there must be a reason why Peter would deceive me about another woman.

“What’s the date on the letter?”

“Helen, I’m sorry. He’s a charlatan. All men are. You have to face facts.”

“Tell me the date. It may have been written before he met me.”

“What?”

“He can’t be involved with her. He’s—”

“You should have believed me when I told you what John reported about him.”

“Oh, Annie. You know John’s a liar.”

“True.” Annie pulled back, and I felt her hands cool as she held mine, her whole self assessing me. “He was, is, a liar. But this letter, Helen, is incontrovertible proof.”

“It proves nothing.”

Annie smoothed my hair.

“Helen,” Annie spelled softly. “He’s an opportunist. I asked him to clean out some of your old correspondence files last week; he pulled out a stack of letters from Mark Twain and said, ‘Did they correspond a lot?’ I told him Twain had loved you like a daughter until the day he died. Helen, remember having tea with him in New York? He even left whiskey for you in your room when we visited him at his Connecticut house, saying everyone needed a friend in the night.”

“Yes.” Something
was wrong. But I didn’t want Annie, or even myself, to know what it was. I nudged the bedroom floorboard with my shoe.

“So the look in Peter’s eyes when he heard how close you were to Twain, well, I could just
see
him imagining himself flitting around with all the other people you know. Mark my words. He wants so much to be famous he’ll stick to you like glue.” She snapped her fingers so hard I felt the
snap
deep in my hand.

“You don’t know that.”

“Helen. If you could have seen him, you’d agree.”

I felt a bit of fear. Could I really know Peter without seeing? A blind man once said he didn’t want sight. He wanted longer arms. Arms so long that if he wanted to understand the moon, he would simply reach up and touch it: he would rather
feel
the moon than see it. So no, I didn’t need to see Peter: the hot skin of his neck, his mouth on mine, said all I needed to know.

“People aren’t always what they seem,” I said.

“Want to bet?” Annie spelled back, her hand still holding Dorothy Eagan’s letter. I steadied myself in my chair.

“At least you’ll be rid of him,” Annie said a few minutes later. I sat so still in the chair. The air near her bed seemed dense. “Read me the date on the letter,” I said. “A date will tell me if it is recent or not.” Annie did not move.

Another thing no one tells you about being blind is the utter dependency, the way I have to cajole, plead, persuade those around me to do the simplest things, like read me the date because I can’t do it myself. If Annie refuses, how can I know if Peter’s been deceiving me? It’s hard to believe how many of my desires I’ve had to bury, because they didn’t fit the whim of someone else. But it’s like I’ve caught a fever. I want to run away with Peter, and my hands shake uncontrollably.

“The date
,” I repeated.

“It’s too light to see.”

“Your vision is not the best,” I tried to joke.

Annie coughed. “So true.”

“It could be an old letter.”

“And I could be President Wilson,” Annie said.

My deepest regret? How easily I would have excused him for anything. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there are so many, many ways to be blind.

Chapter Twenty-three

A
merica’s First Lady of Courage. That’s how I am known, for my relentless fight for the deaf and blind. It’s true that I’ve crisscrossed the country tirelessly, that I’ve raised more money than anyone else, that I demand the same rights as anyone in the hearing and sighted world. But I can’t claim to be the First Lady of Courage. It took all the courage I had to walk away from Annie and find my way down the hall, alone.

So I don’t remember the vibration of Peter’s footsteps, but he followed me into my study. I sat at my desk, my hands tracing the letter Annie showed me. Panic filled me, but I was determined to show Peter that I was strong. I won’t let anyone take my dignity, especially him. I hid the letter behind my back.

“What do you have there?” He laughed, pulling my hand toward him.

“Nothing.” I kept my hand in a fist.

“Good. Fight me. I love a good tussle.” He leaned me against the wall by the bookshelves.

“Stop it.” I pushed him away.

“Yes, tell me to stop.” He put his mouth to my neck. “Say, ‘Peter, stop,’ and I’ll say—”

“You’ll say you’re sorry.”

“Sorry?” He lifted his head. “The only thing I’m sorry about is this damned corset of yours,” he laughed, trying to loosen the waist of my skirt.

“You have
plenty to be sorry for. Deceiving me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Read it to me.” I handed him the letter. “I want to hear it from you.”

“Oh.” Peter paused. His hands shook.

“Yes?”

“Oh.” Peter laughed. “Did Annie show this to you?”

“Of course she did. She, at least, wants to protect me.”

“She wants to keep you in a gilded cage, is what she wants.”

“Who is she? This Miss Dorothy Eagan?”

“She’s not important now.”

“But she must have been. Tell me.”

“The truth? She’s nothing like you. I met her at a charity ball, her father knew mine.”

“And you loved her?”

“No, Helen. I thought I did.”

“But you made love to her?”

“Helen, please let’s not talk about the past.”

I didn’t speak for a long time. “Leave me alone. I need time to think,” I said. Smoke from Peter’s cigarette filled the air as he left the room. I can tell you that I sat at my desk and pulled open the drawer. I took out my cloth journal written when I was seven years old. In it I had recorded:

How painful it is for me to lose someone. But I never told Annie I missed her. Too painful it was, to let in desire. So Peter had loved someone before he met me. So what? I tried to push the doubts away.

“Helen.” Peter
came in and took my hand. “That’s over. This is now. And we have a date with destiny.”

“A date with what?”

“The day we go to Boston City Hall, dummy. To get a marriage license.”

“Don’t call me dummy.” I almost laughed. “I’m a bit sensitive about that.”

“Helen.” He pulled me close. “For a woman who can’t speak, you sure have an awful lot to say.”

I’m ashamed that I didn’t ask the questions that rose in my mind then. I regret that I did not say, “Did you want to marry
her
?” Why didn’t I ask? Not because I was afraid that other women would fall for Peter because he was so handsome, funny, and smart. No, I was afraid that if he could leave one woman so suddenly, why couldn’t he leave me?

Peter stood beside me, his whole body shaking a bit, radiating a kind of queer heat. I rubbed his shirt cuff, the fabric so worn. “Peter, I’m not saying you don’t care for me …”

“Care for you? You’re a miracle to me.”

“A miracle, yes.”

“Someone who showed me a life I had never thought of before.”

“Yes.”

“Someone who showed me I could live in a way I didn’t think possible.”

“Yes.”

“Helen. I should have told you. But—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

He kissed me and took away my breath.

“Helen, pack your bags tonight. The rally in Boston is in three days. We have to
be ready.” He traced along my neck with his thumb. “Annie and your mother will be expecting me to pick you up after breakfast. We’ll drive to the train station and take the eight forty-five to Boston.”

“What about the marriage license?”

“Right after the rally, my pet. Try to get some rest tonight.”

“I won’t be able to.”

“Well, you’d better, because you’ll need your beauty sleep.” He slid his thumb into the opening of my blouse.

I know Annie is not a saint. Nor is Peter. Nor am I. I need them. Without Annie or Peter I don’t have a home to call my own. But I know this: with Peter engulfing me I feel so strong I can suddenly see the sky.

Chapter Twenty-four

I
once wrote that my blindness never made me sad. But I was not telling the whole truth. After Peter left that night I felt sadness pitch and fall through me. If Annie hadn’t shown me that letter, Peter wouldn’t have told me about Dorothy. What else was he hiding? I was so dependent on others, so vulnerable, that I was more aware of my blindness than ever.

Still, I craved Peter. I didn’t care who I hurt, or what I refused to see. I only wanted him, so I didn’t say a word when he found me in the backyard the next day.

“Where’s Annie? Your mother?” Peter turned around as if inspecting the yard. “Lurking in the shrubs to spy on us?”

“They’re in Boston. John’s baby is due any day now, and Annie will be damned—her words, not mine—if he and Myla bring that baby back to the apartment Annie and John used to share. She won’t allow them to use what’s hers, so Annie’s there right now dragging out her maple bureau, taking away her kitchen chairs. She’s even pulling the telephone out of the wall.”

“She’s a force of nature.” Peter laughed. “She’ll probably scour the linoleum off the floor.”

“With her bare hands.”

“Hell hath no wrath.” Peter took my hand. “By the way, I wrote to Dorothy. It’s off now.”

“For good?”

“Forever.”

I inhaled
the chill air and pulled my jacket around me.

Peter tapped out a cigarette. “One more thing,” he said. “This apartment of John’s. Do you and Annie still pay the rent?”

I didn’t answer.

“Helen? You can’t pay for your own house.”

“Annie won’t let John have her books, pots, and pans. She’s even taking the pillows off the couches.”

“That’ll show him.”

“Peter.”

“Yup. Annie’s really taking a stand. Her husband has a child, and she still—”

“Loves him.”

“She’s too loyal.”

“People are, sometimes.”

Peter’s deception was still on my mind. My image of him as a courageous, honest man had started to fray. But I was determined to seal off that knowledge. Of all people, I knew how one must hide parts of oneself to succeed in the world.

Peter’s coat gave off the woody scent of the neighbor’s fire, where they burned their fall leaves. He fiddled with the buttons on my jacket. I wanted him to kiss me, to slip his hand inside my jacket, but I held back.

“Hey,” Peter said. “Those two gals are out of town and we’re alone.”

“No. Ian, the boy who mows the lawn, he’s out in the garden shed, fixing the mower. Mother and Annie would never leave me here alone.”

“Then let’s make a run for it.”

“A run for what?”

“That meadow behind the house. No one will see us there.” He tugged at my sleeve. “Hurry, Helen. And once you’re warmed up you’ll need to loosen those tight clothes.”

“Yes,
sir.” I let him lead me under a thicket of trees.

“Come on, lazybones.” Peter led me into the meadow. Pine needles crunched under my shoes, and the cool scent of mint rose from the garden beyond the pines. Under a tree, Peter slowly pulled at the silk bow of my blouse.