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“Then you must be armed. May I frisk you?”
“Only if I can frisk you back.”
“But we’re not comrades, we’re not a couple.”
“No.”
“Not in love.”
“Definitely not that.”
“We’re … interested parties.”
“What are we, lawyers?” I laughed again.
“Lawyers?” Peter’s voice turned rough under my fingers. “They commit about as much high crime as bankers, in my book. We’re definitely not lawyers. But we are adults. Two consenting adults.”
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t say more. I’d gone too far. What was I consenting to? I understood Peter didn’t see the complexities of my personal life. He could never really take on the responsibility of caring for me.
“Maybe there are no words for it,” I lied, smoothing Peter’s hair. “But whatever we tell them, at least we’re in this together.”
“Right.” He pulled me toward the cabin. “Come inside.”
“Lead on.”
Something was wrong inside that cabin. I can tell people’s moods by their hands: a shy hand gives off a tentative feel; a bold, brash person’s hand vibrates with fervor. And the liar? The liar’s hand shifts and trembles while the liar’s words say yes, but the hand says, “Don’t listen to me.” I trust what people say with their hands. People control their faces, they don’t want to show their emotions to the world. But their hands? I’ll say this. They give a person away.
I trusted Peter’s hands. I trusted them on me.
But I also trusted how they shook, ever so slightly, that day.
He leaned me against the warm wooden wall and said he wasn’t afraid: with his hands on me he said we would tell Annie and Mother that we were a couple, that he’d stay on as my private secretary, their wishes be damned. But his hands had the soft, marshy feel of someone wanting to flee.
It was his hands that told me what to do next.
“Can you be quiet?” Peter backed me up against the cabin’s wooden wall where every summer I’d hung my bathing suit on the third peg. Far off, I could feel the thrum of a motorboat crossing the pond.
“Can I be quiet?” I laughed back. I wanted Peter to undo the seedlike buttons of my silk dress. But he reached behind me to grab my bathing suit.
“Why don’t you take off this pretty dress, and put this on? It’s about time I got that swim you promised me.”
“I never break a promise.” My flirtation was working.
“I can only swim in circles,” I said, as we headed out into the warm air and across the sand to the pond. “Mostly I just hold on to the raft.”
“So hang on to the raft. It’ll save me from having to watch you. I’ve got to work on my tan.”
“To look good for me?”
“If I have to look after you, I might as well look good for you.” The pond waters sent waves of cool air toward us.
“Keep an eye on me,” I said.
The waters of King’s Pond shivered up my bare legs. Peter’s scent—muskrat, hot rain, and tar—stayed with me when I waded deeper into the pond water. The sun on my arms was weaker; noon had passed. My skin adjusted to the shock of cold water. I sensed Peter’s strong strokes behind me and said, “I thought you couldn’t swim.”
“You really thought I would sink like a stone? When I’m built like this?” he made a muscle with one arm and placed my hand there.
“You lied.”
“I keep some things to myself.” He splashed water on me, and I laughed.
I squished the pond’s swampy silt beneath my feet.
“Let’s move,” he said. “Race you to the raft.”
“It’s ten feet out.”
“So? Hold tight to my shoulders.” He kicked water up furiously. “I won’t let you go.”
Peter’s wit, scent of water, smoke, and fury took me in. He dissolved me. We immersed ourselves in the water, and my flickering awareness that he had lied washed away. The realization that he said he couldn’t swim so he wouldn’t have to carry me faded in the pleasure of being surrounded by him. His hands reached for me as the water swirled. “If you think I get lost on land …” I gripped his hands tightly.
“Don’t talk.”
I felt him guide me to the raft several feet out from shore. “Come on.” He moved my hands till they gripped the ladder. “Up you go.” I willed myself up onto the warm wooden dock and Peter, sopping wet beside me, said, “Hear the birds?”
“We have loons around here. They’re eerie.” I was relieved to have climbed out of the water.
“They’re crazy birds.” He unbuttoned the top button on my suit.
“Yes, crazy, crazy birds.”
Call me desperate, afraid that Annie and Mother would stop me from having him close by. But I not only let him unbutton the top button, I undid the next two myself. I had to be courageous—to take advantage of this moment before Annie came down to the water. I led Peter closer to me. I quickly took off the shoulder straps of my suit before he could guess my next move. That was my way to keep one step ahead of him, to keep him following me.
“Let me help you with that.” Peter eases my black, knee-length bathing suit away from my shoulders. He tugs the damp, rubbery straps. The sun turns me warm, breadlike.
I feel the sharp intake of his breath.
“You are a miracle.” He traces his fingers across my bare collarbone.
The water ripples under the rolling dock. I feel Peter staring at one thing only. Me.
That moment on the dock Peter did the strangest thing. He put my hands behind my back and held my wrists tight so I couldn’t resist. “Kiss me, Helen.”
I leaned into him.
I felt him touch my mouth with his fingers. Then he took my hands from behind my back and led my fingers to the warm center of his chest. I felt his heart beat beneath my fingertips.
“Kiss me there.” He dipped my head.
And I did.
The skin of his bare chest deliciously cold, his scent of scotch and night risky, outside the law.
“How was that?” I asked.
“A-plus.” He raised me up slowly, his hands on my bare shoulders. “I love a girl who takes direction.”
“I’m nothing if not compliant,” I lied again. I wasn’t compliant at all. I had wanted him near me. He had been afraid. But now I knew by the steadiness in his hands that his resistance had slowly faded. His fear was gone.
Suddenly Peter untangled his arms from mine. “Come on, lady, let’s swim. Act like nothing’s up.” He slid me off the dock. “Annie’s coming through the woods.”
The sand felt suddenly slippery beneath my feet. I struggled to stay steady but Peter grabbed me, guided me to shore. This time his hands told me he was mine.
Chapter Eleven
Blindisms—the rocking, the hair twirling, the things that identify us as blind, I tried to keep those things from Peter. Years ago, Annie trained them out of me. When I was seven years old and had just learned language, I wanted so much to talk that when Annie wasn’t around I spelled to myself. All day and night, my fingers moving so I could talk, talk. Annie said it looked strange, and to stop me she tied my hands behind my back to “cure” me, to spare me the humiliation of being different. But she didn’t want me to be totally normal. I could look like other women, I just couldn’t have the pleasure women had with men.
So the moment Peter guided me to shore, the sand gritty under my feet, I suppressed my shame when Annie marched up to me and said, “Helen, stop twirling your hair!” Her scent was heavy with camphor and cough drops. I stopped the twirling, but I did take Peter’s hand. I was about to betray her.
“We’ve got news,” Peter said as we both dripped water, standing before Annie.
