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When they married, we three lived in Wrentham, where John helped me pin up the big red Bolshevik flag in my bedroom. He made my life a red flag—bold, outspoken, alive.
I knew the rumors: that John had married Annie because he secretly loved me. Yes, his hand flooded mine with warmth when he spelled Shakespeare to me the days Annie’s eyes hurt her too much to read. Yes, we dazzled each other: nights sitting up late, reading John’s Socialist newspaper The Call, where Margaret Sanger listed her demands for birth control to be made legal. I believed him when he said anything was possible for women. We plotted a move to Schenectady, New York, where he’d be the Socialist mayor and I’d be in charge of helping the poor, and we’d drive to Lowell as strikers flooded the streets, thirty thousand strong. Life coursed through me in those years.
The truth is, I thought of him as my brother. Annie was his lover, his wife.
Yet it was because of Annie’s dedication to me that she never fully gave herself to him.
“Don’t blame yourself, Helen. Who’s here now? You and me. It seems I made the right choice. At least, when I come back—if I come back—I’ll have a purpose. Helen, we’ll go on tour again. The audiences will listen. Because at least we’ll still have your story to tell.”
We were stitched together, the room a small pocket, with little air.
All night I sat beside Annie, wiping the sweat from her forehead, holding a cup of water to her lips when she coughed. With my hands on hers I remembered when I was seven and Annie was my teacher. She was twenty-one and slept beside me in my small bed, and between us every night I placed my doll, Nancy. One morning I woke up and there was only an empty space where my doll should have been. I patted my way across the bed and my hands came upon Annie. She was rocking Nancy, combing her hair. When I reached for the doll, Annie pulled it away.
She played with my dolls many nights, for years.
So I did the only thing I could this night. As she slept, I held Annie in my arms like a child.
Chapter Thirty-two
It was out of my control, what happened next. Over lunch Mother handed me a letter, but she didn’t tell me what it said. “This is no way for you to ring in the New Year,” she spelled. I felt the clink of her fork against her plate. It was all I could do to sit still, delicately slicing roast beef, dabbing my mouth with a napkin. It was twenty-four hours away from my wedding day. I could hardly eat, so I was glad for the distraction of the letter.
“What is it, Mother? Read it, please.”
“No. You’re not going.” I felt a wave of air as she pulled the letter away. “You’ll be in Alabama with me, anyway. This goes right in the trash.” She scraped her chair as she moved away from the table, but I followed her to the kitchen.
“Annie would never, ever, keep something from me. If the letter has my name on it, it’s mine. You must read it to me. It’s not up to you to decide what I can and cannot see,” I spelled into her hand.
No betrayal is greater to me. When another person decides what I should know I bristle with anger. No one is going to tell me how I should perceive the world. I felt Annie’s footsteps approaching. “What’s going on here?” Annie rapped me on the wrist.
“Mother won’t let me read my own mail. I told her she has no choice.”
“Helen, don’t talk to your mother that way.” Then Annie spelled to Mother and me, “Kate, please give me the letter. After all these years I can handle Helen.”
I waited while she read. Then Annie said, “Congratulations, Helen. You’re invited to speak at Carnegie Hall on New Year’s Day. I’m sure all of Manhattan will be there. These antiwar people can’t think of anyone better to rouse the crowds against Wilson’s war than you, my dear. Too bad you can’t go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, how will you get there, Helen? I’ll be coughing up blood in Puerto Rico and you’ll be eating mincemeat pie at Mildred’s in Alabama. I doubt your mother is going to haul you up to New York, and you can’t go alone. Face it, Helen, our days as rabble-rousers and independent women are over.”
“That’s what you think.”
I stood up.
The vibrations of Peter knocking on the front door made me turn from Mother and Annie. Knowing it was he, they both left the room. Alone, I couldn’t wait to tell Peter. The money we’d get from the talk in New York might help me keep the farmhouse, if only for a few months; I was sure he’d be thrilled to accompany me to speak out against the United States entering the war with Germany. Yes, he would be my translator on the great stage of Carnegie Hall, my voice, my life.
When he rapidly crossed the dining room to me, I gave him the letter. He read it, and pushed it away.
“That’s nothing. Look at this.” He pulled out an envelope and put it in my hands.
“Is this …”
“The marriage license, yes. It came this morning. Let’s get Annie’s trunks moved to the front hall and then we’ll plan our escape. Helen, dear, let’s leave this afternoon. We can be in Boston by two, and be wed by three.”
“This afternoon? Peter, Annie’s still here. You know I can’t …”
“Can’t what?”
“Leave before she’s gone.”
“Helen, the longer we stay here, the more likely it is that your mother and Annie will find out, and then we’ll never leave at all.”
“I’m here until Annie goes. And that’s the end of that.”
“Yes, boss.” Peter withdrew his hand from mine.
I had been special too long. Yes, I was dependent in painful, even excruciating ways, but because of my dependency too many people gave me what I wanted, acquiesced to me, so I got used to having my way. Now I wish I had slipped out the front door with him, and sped to Boston.
I wish I had fled that very instant.
Peter’s footsteps faded as he crossed the dining room. I followed him down the hallway, patted my way past Annie’s trunks by the front door, and turned to the pantry, where Peter’s scent of cigarettes and pine rose from the walls. I crossed the linoleum floor to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Now that Annie’s shipping out, my job description has expanded.”
“You got a raise?”
“No. I got her most-hated job, taking out the trash.” The slight clank of the trash bin’s metal lid told me he’d opened it. “Hold your nose, Miss Smell-Sensitive.” I felt a thump as Peter deposited the bin by the back door. “Wait a minute.” He paused while tying it up. “What’s this?”
“What?”
Peter pulled a book from the trash and put it in my hands. “Most Cherished Baby Names. Annie must have filched it from John’s apartment the night she stole their baby stuff.”
“When she got home she must have thrown it in the trash.”
Peter paused. “You know what else she brought back from John’s? A false sense of what it means to have a child: it’s not all cooing and nights around a warm fire.”
“You’re an expert on fatherhood?”
“I’ve seen John. The man’s rail thin, smoking nonstop, and happy, yes, I’ll give him that, but do you think he’ll write anything good for the Herald now that he’s got that kid crying for food day and night? Give Myla two months, a year at most. She’ll have John hawking carpets at Filene’s department store, his bald spot shining under the lights.”
“That’s not true.”
“Just you watch. By the time the kid’s first birthday rolls around John’s name will have faded from the newspaper world faster than you can say papa.”
“So all fathers suffer the same fate? They lose their dreams?”
“Luckily I’ll never find out. It’s just you and me. Here’s to Margaret Sanger and birth control.” He pressed me against the back door, his hands suddenly tangled in my hair, his hips pressed into mine.
“Peter, we’re in my house. Mother and Annie are right upstairs.”
“It’s high time you said good-bye to them and, oh, to this house, too.”
“This house?”
“Looks like you’re going to get a pretty penny for this shack of yours.” Peter traced my palm with his fingers. “Annie’s found a buyer. With the money we’ll get a smaller place. Not a cracker box, Helen, but two bedrooms.”
“Two?”
“Yes. Ours.” He traced my face and pressed me hard against the door. I held my breath. “And a shared study. We both have work to do.”
I took a deep breath. I knew I’d have to share my secret sooner rather than later. I couldn’t put it off. I’d tell him when we got to his house; I’d tell him that evening, regardless of what he might say. But as we moved down the back steps Peter still held the book in his hands. The slight movement of air told me he was flipping through the pages, and then he stopped. “Helen,” he said, “is it true that your name means ‘light’?”
“Read more closely. It means ‘brilliant light.’”
“What your mother must have thought when you went blind.”
“Why, Mr. Fagan, are you developing a soft spot for my mother?”
