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But this time Peter was the silent one.
So I moved closer. I put my mouth to his ear and slowly moved my lips across his skin. Then, carefully, I spelled I l-o-v-e y-o-u into his hand.
He put his mouth to my neck, and with his fingertips in my palm wrote, “Yes, I love you, too.” I could hardly hide my pleasure. I instinctively wanted to cry.
Whatever Annie, or even Mother, said, I knew Peter was not an opportunist. He was vulnerable, like me. Because he was a hostage to my fame. Once we were married, people would stare at him, I knew. Whisper about our relationship. Constantly wonder if Peter had taken advantage of me. But they can stare all they like. He knew that and still had reached out to me, across my void, and filled me with pure joy.
Moments passed. Then Peter touched me again. “I’ll tell you more when we get to the sleeper car.”
I couldn’t wait.
“Helen, in the meantime, check your mailbox in the next few days. The license will be here in two, three days at most.”
“We’ll leave before Mother can …”
“Get you under her wing.”
“I can’t just leave her.”
“You can. Do you want her to take you down to Montgomery for the holidays? Let me guess.” He leaned back and ran his hand through my hair. “First there’s the annual pre-Thanksgiving afternoon where you gals get fussed over by the local women’s club, who come in carting tea and little biscuits the size of a child’s fist …”
“How did you know?” I laughed. “Then Mildred’s card party will visit, and on Thanksgiving we’ll get up early to see the men before they tramp outside to hunt, coming back close to supper, when the turkey’s dried out and we’ve been alone by the fire for five hours.”
“Okay. Is an early wedding to me looking better?”
“Come with me.” I took his hand.
“Charmed, I’m sure.”
I stood up, a surge of desire moving through me. He’d bribed McGlennan; he loved me; we could leave in a few days, marry, run away. I wanted to get to the sleeper car, fast.
Peter closed the compartment door so it made a solid thunk. He turned me around and eagerly pulled my hips toward him. With my hands pressed on the door, I felt his thighs against the backs of my legs. I arched my back as he lifted my skirt. As I raised my hands further up the door, Peter turned me around and put his mouth on my neck.
I began to unbutton my blouse.
“I can see I’m going to have to teach you some manners, miss.” Then he led me toward the bed and pounced beside me like a cat. He had my hands above my head. “Gentlemen first.” He peeled off my blouse.
I lay back.
“Wait, I’ve got a treat.” I felt Peter move away.
The train was speeding down the tracks.
“Merry early Christmas.” He leaped back onto the bed.
“Christmas isn’t for six weeks.”
“Well excuse me, Miss Pious. But still, I’ve brought you something.”
“What is it?”
“This.” Peter helped my hands trace the bottle of oil, then stretched out next to me on the bed. He took off my blouse, then poured the oil on my skin; it pooled there slightly between my breasts and he massaged me, then he pulled my knees apart. My skirt fell to the floor and I felt the heavy, warm press of his hips, as his whole self came in.
Time passed. We tossed together like a world without end, until we both slept; the train swayed over a bridge. I felt Peter tense. “We’ve missed our stop, my dear. We’re goners,” he said.
“Oh my.”
“We’re so far past Wrentham I’ll bet you can almost smell the swampy banks of Cape Cod. When we get to the end of the line we’ll turn around and go back home.”
“Mother’s going to kill me.”
“You’ll die of happiness first.”
Again, I raised my hips to him.
Chapter Thirty-one
The night air turned chilly around us when we finally stumbled off the train in Wrentham two hours late. Peter led me to his car, and as we bumped over East Main Street the floorboards felt cold beneath my feet. I knew by the fragrance of the pines, willows, and water that we were nearing my house when I felt the car lurch suddenly to the right.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing the mirror. You need to freshen up.”
“You’re joking?”
“Helen, my dear, you’re a mess. A gorgeous mess. Your hair’s all tangled and your blouse looks like it’s not buttoned right.”
“No. You’re kidding about my using the mirror, right?”
At times Peter seemed to forget about my disability. Hopeful, preoccupied, he didn’t fuss over me. He didn’t think, as Annie and Mother did, What does Helen need next?—and that freed me. But I worried that he was deceiving himself. His vision of us was too easy. We’d secretly marry in Boston. I imagined fall’s chill air, the scent of turning leaves. But how would he get me there? Where would we go after that? How would the two of us make a real life? I rubbed my hands together in my lap, trying to push the thought away.
“Oh. Sorry about that remark.” Peter slowed the car, and as we sat together by the side of the road he softly brushed back my hair, and then unbuttoned and rebuttoned my blouse. “Will this be part of my regular job description?” He rubbed my smudged lipstick off with his thumb.
“Absolutely. But don’t expect any extra pay.”
“If this is work,” he leaned toward me, “it’s work I really, really like.” He slid his hand inside my blouse.
“Drive the car.” I slapped his hand away. “Mother’s expecting us. We’re already hours late.”
“Your wish is my command.” Peter steered the big car back onto the road.
I’ve never seen my face. As we bumped up the driveway, I remembered a woman who visited me in my Wrentham house once during a party. She wrote that she saw me standing in my living room, a mirror behind me, and speculated that I was incomplete, unwhole, because I’d never seen myself reflected in a mirror’s gaze.
Without a mirror to guide me, she wrote, I twitched and turned, alert to every vibration. I was strange, even startling, with my muscular neck, a pretty beaded ribbon, like a flapper’s, round my forehead, but with a lurching, moving body that pieced together the world around me in the strangest of ways.
What she didn’t realize is that Mother—and Annie—were my mirrors. They reflected my self back to me: it was through them, their reactions, their words in my palm, that I made myself whole. How could I go into my new life with Peter without that?
“I want to tell Mother,” I said.
“And I want to be King of England, but that’s not going to happen, either.” Peter stopped the car. “Of course you wish you could talk to her, you don’t want to betray her, okay. I know. But Helen, it’s just two more days. As soon as we’re married we’ll write her a letter, invite her to …”
“To what?”
“To acknowledge that her dear, saintlike daughter has started a new chapter.”
“Peter, I can’t betray her.”
“Helen. You already have.”
As Peter led me out of the car, and then up the front steps, I yearned to go to Mother and say I am in love, I crave this man, he has taken off my mask, set me free. “I’m not clearheaded like you. She’s my mother. I need her to approve.”
“Listen, Helen.” We stopped by the front door. “Not a word. There’s no need to tell your mother why we’re late, or where we’ve been. You’ve got a family made of iron, they’re so strong, and if you breathe one word about our afternoon she’ll see through your mask and whisk you away from me.”
“But I …” My hand was on the front door.
“Take a deep breath, Miss Keller. Remember that book you wrote, at twenty-two?”
“The Story of My Life?”
“Yep. Well, that was the prelude. You’re thirty-seven now and about to elope with me in two days.”
“I’m ready.”
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sp; But there was a smaller, more pressing problem. We stood there, Peter touching my coat collar. “The house is ablaze with lights,” he said. “That can only mean that Mama Keller is on the prowl, waiting for her innocent Helen.”
“And we’re so late.”
“Not late enough, in my opinion.”
“Peter, stop. If Mother asks why we’re late, it’s because we were meeting with my publisher. I told her I would be doing that today.”
“She may not buy it, being that it’s Saturday, but stick to your story.”
“How do you know so much about lying?”
“Don’t call it lying. I prefer the term ‘multiple truths.’” He pushed me inside, and when he left me I walked into the house, the memory of his hands warm on my skin.
The living room air smelled damp, full of fall’s chill, heavy with the rains of the last few days. Mother took my hand. “Careful. My trunk’s by the ottoman.” She guided me around it, my left foot grazing the leather corner. “Yours is by the sofa.” She led me past the coffee table to a chair by the fireplace. Heat rose toward me from the fire, and the scent of maple came to me as I sat down. It was a relief, an escape from my worries, to sit by the hearth with Mother. She would attend to every detail of my needs. But she was suffocating, too.
“Why all the packing?” I asked.
Mother passed me a cup of tea and spelled, “You seem to have forgotten that we’re taking the boat to Alabama soon. Did you think your clothes would pack themselves?”
My heart thumped wildly. I wiped beads of perspiration from my brow.
