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“By the way, what kept you and Mr. Fagan?”
“I saw my publisher.”
“He must have been very keen on your new book.” Her fingers tightened.
“Yes.”
“He’s a hard-working man, to be in the office so late on Saturdays.”
“You have no idea how hard he works.”
“He wasn’t there.” Mother’s fingers tapped mine. “Your so-called publisher.”
“How do you know?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t call the office when you were out so late?”
I swallowed hard. “You called?”
“Correct. No one answered.”
I said nothing.
“Why on earth did you lie to me?”
I pushed around the biscuits Mother had put on my plate, tapped my fingers restlessly on the table.
“You know I dislike clichés, Helen.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“But there’s one that seems quite apt right now.”
“Is it about playing with fire?” I tapped my teaspoon against my cup.
“Yes, and how easily one can get burned,” Mother said.
I tapped the teaspoon against my cup.
My mother still saw me as a vulnerable child. Yes, at age five, two years before Annie came, I stood by the living room fireplace in Alabama, searching with my hands for the fire’s warmth. Cold, I was so cold, and inched closer to the flames. Then heat, exploding, terrible, searing heat on my arms, my chest, and then Vinny the maid’s strong arms around me, pulling me back. My dress had caught some embers, and Vinny wrapped me in a blanket to smother the flames. For nights afterward I dreamed of smoke, my whole body peeling away.
“I’m … sorry, Mother.”
“This isn’t about being sorry, Helen. It’s about being irresponsible, about getting hurt. It’s about putting yourself—and me, even Annie, in danger. Do you think we aren’t looking out for you? Helen? Are you listening to me? Do you remember our last visit to Montgomery?”
“If I don’t, I know you’ll remind me.”
“Annie gone, you were alone in Mildred’s guest room. At thirty-two years old you slept soundly even when the heating duct under your bed caught fire.”
“Mother, I was fine.”
“You were lucky. There was no one there to warn you of the danger, and when you finally woke you were covered with ash.”
“I didn’t smell the fire.”
“You didn’t, that’s right.” Mother pulled away.
I took my hand from Mother’s. With her shoulder leaning against mine, we sat together in front of the fireplace. She was determined that I admit my vulnerability, but I was having none of it. Finally she said, “No matter what, we’re leaving for Alabama in two days.” I just smiled, and for the next hour Mother and I immersed ourselves in packing our suitcases.
She was determined to take me to Montgomery, and I was equally sure that before two or three days had passed Peter would sweep me off to Boston City Hall. Just before I went to bed Mother said, “Annie wants to see you. You’d better get up early. Helen, I know you don’t want her to go, but you must face her. She needs you. After all these years she thinks …”
“Thinks what?”
“That without John, without you … she’s no one.”
I couldn’t tell Mother that Annie’s desire to always be with me depended on my life shrinking. I wanted to run.
When I walked down the hallway the next morning, the fragrance of coffee from the kitchen filled the air, but the closer I came to Annie’s room, the more I inhaled scents of camphor and cough drops, cloyingly sweet. Outside her door my feet felt heavy. I couldn’t do it, knowing that in two days she’d be gone, and I might never see her again. But as I walked into her room and the door thumped shut behind me, I remembered that I was now Helen-and-Peter. I might be having a child, I was a loved woman, I knew the roll and pitch of a man’s body, the feel of his racing breath while he held me.
Annie pulled me toward her bed. “Helen, remember this?” She patted her down pillow. We’d stood high above Niagara Falls, all its tons of water churning, pounding below us, and as we stood there Alexander Graham Bell had put a pillow in my arms so I could feel the vibrations of the crashing water even more strongly.
But here in Annie’s room there was a different kind of vibration: the slow, slight shattering of air from her cough told me she soon would be gone. So I was startled when she said, “Well, it’s official. There’s a new mother in the room.”
“What?”
“A new mother. John’s had a baby, I’m married to John, so even though he’ll never let me see the child—not that I want to—I’m a stepmother.”
“Annie,” I said.
“Do you know what she does?”
Who? The baby?”
“No. Myla. The mother. She’s a sculptress.”
“I know. Peter told me.”
“Peter? You’ve been talking to Peter about this?”
“He was there, Annie. John asked him … the night of the birth.”
Annie stood still. “Did John … ask for me?”
“I’m sure he did,” I said. “And I’m sure he will again, once things have calmed down.” I felt Annie rubbing her eyes. She and I both knew the truth: John would probably never ask for her again. He had stopped loving Annie long ago, and was furious with her for not agreeing to a divorce. I curled her hand in mine and touched her nails bitten to the quick. Suddenly I felt sorry for her, Annie who never knew the possibility of having her own child.
“I don’t like myself,” Annie said.
“Please, don’t.”
“Do you remember what John said about me? That I never fully acquiesced to the marriage? That I was too busy with you to ever be a real wife?”
“Annie, don’t do this.”
“He said you were Helen Keller Inc., and I was your chief cook and bottle washer. John was your errand boy, and we revolved around you instead of each other …”
“You loved John, and you loved me.”
“I did terrible things. I took his damned furniture. Even the baby carriage.”
I imagined her heart beating at her throat.
“Listen, Annie. You gave John everything. You even gave him money from our bank account when he needed ‘rest’ and went to Europe for four months—four months, Annie …”
“Right.” Annie lay back. “While
you and I tramped across the country, belting out your story from every sorry stage from here to Timbuktu. Did he think I liked doing that? While he was downing Chianti and sleeping till noon in Rome?”
“I understand your rage.”
“Do you want to know the worst thing?”
“Not really.”
“Good. Because I’m going to tell you anyway.” Annie sat up. Bad news energized her, made her more alive. “Now I realize the truth: Myla was with him on that trip. John, my John, that ingrate I devoted my life to, was having a love affair behind my back.”
I bit my lip.
“I was busy with you—you needed me, damn it—and he was off in Rome seducing Miss Myla …”
“Annie, you’re upset. This will only make it worse.”
“Make it worse? It helps to know what a bastard he was. Why else would he deceive me?”
“He wasn’t all bad. He was—”
“He was a professional deceiver. Look at these.” She pulled out a box, its cardboard rough under my hands. “All these postcards.” The scent of musty paper filled the room. She put one of the cards in my hand. “This one, it says, ‘Annie, Rome is the perfect place for me. Feeling better already. Ciao, John.’”
Inside, Annie had a spring coil, a bit of metal, sharp-edged, that kept people at bay. At that moment I was afraid she would find out about Peter and me: it was only a matter of time until she knew of our affair. But I had the terrible feeling that if she did find out, she’d never, ever let me go.
“Annie”—I rubbed my fingers over the worn postcards—“he left you because he needed you, and you were so devoted to me.”
Annie didn’t see John as a lover. Not when they first met. No, John came to us when I was a sophomore in college. I had a contract to write The Story of My Life, but I couldn’t organize my words. Sheets of the manuscript were piled high on my desk, and as my deadline approached, Annie decided I needed help. She found John Macy, a young, snappy Harvard instructor of English. During the day he organized my manuscript, in the evenings he took Annie out into the warm Cambridge night and brought her back so energized she paced the halls till all hours. Ten years younger than she, he was a rabble-rouser, a poet, and a persistent lover: he asked her to marry him four times before she said yes. The three of us laughed when, the week their engagement was announced, a Boston newspaper carried the headline “Helen Keller, ALMOST Wed.”
