“You bet. On good days I dominate the field.”
“My athlete.” He turned. “I love a woman with energy.” I felt him reach down and tug something out of the grass. A metallic scent, mixed with old wood. “This old mallet.” He pressed the wood against my arm. “It has the initials HK on it.”
“It’s mine. I know how to use the mallet.”
“Something tells me you’re excellent at it.”
“I know how to play, all right.”
Far off a lawnmower’s vibrations chut-chutted.
“But you always play it straight. Helen Keller never keeps secrets.” He made me lean over, guiding the mallet in my hands.
“I hide things all the time. You wouldn’t believe the secrets I keep.” As he shook the mallet beside me, I tried to cover my nervousness.
“Well, Helen.” He traced the mallet up the back of my calf. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“Besides the obvious? Like I can’t get dressed in the morning: someone needs to choose my clothes, and help me.”
“Sign me up for that,” Peter laughed.
“Oh, and I have no idea how to fix this crumbling house—”
“I’ll be too busy dressing and undressing you to worry about that.”
“I think that about wraps it up—oh—except that Mother will kick and scream once we’re married, and Annie will insist on living with us.”
“Annie, live with us?”
“She’ll want to.”
Peter pressed the mallet closer to my back. “The list grows.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have any real worries,” he said. “Except that … I may not be up to the task.”
“I’m quite a task.”
“Are you ever.”
I know people’s jobs by their scent. I can tell where a person has been when he passes me in a room. As a stranger walks by, if his clothes give off an ink scent, I know he’s come from a print shop. The flint smell of iron means factory worker, a flour scent trails the baker; ivy, iris, and mulch rise from the hands of a gardener. And the man who’s worried? His hands give off the tinny scent of fear.
“I can still take care of you.”
“I’ll take care of you right back.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“With my Andrew Carnegie money. I told you—didn’t I?—he sends me an annual pension—not a lot, about five thousand dollars a year—so I can use part of it to hire another secretary, and you can write, do your work.”
“Wait, what? You take money from Andrew Carnegie? Helen, you’re a Socialist. He’s a robber baron. Have you thought about that?”
“As a matter of fact I have.”
“Well, you can’t take money from him. His money comes from exploiting the poor. Steelworkers were shot by Pinkerton guards while on strike at one of his plants.” Peter rapped the croquet mallet on the ground and I felt a thunk.
“So you can’t take money from him, and you sure can’t offer it to me, either.”
“Watch me,” I said.
I am made of contradictions. But I won’t apologize. I seem independent, an ardent Socialist, yet my Radcliffe education, my house, my daily needs are paid for in part by a fund contributed to by America’s great capitalists: Carnegie, and Spaulding the Sugar King.
Andrew Carnegie for years had offered me an annual pension as support. In 1910 Annie and I were short of money; the roof on the Wrentham house was loose in spots; the gutters were full; leaves covered the yard. We couldn’t afford household help for the chores. Then my friend Sarah Fuller visited: upon seeing the state of my home she wrote to her friend Andrew Carnegie, pleading that I should not live in such disarray because of who I was and all I gave to the world. Carnegie offered to give me a pension for life.
I turned him down. I wanted to make it on my own. And I was a Socialist. Taking money from the richest man in America wouldn’t do.
But Carnegie replied that he hoped someday I would accept his offer, and a few years later he invited Annie and me to his New York City apartment. In the library the leathery scent of his books and the heavy rug beneath us muffled all vibrations as, over tea, he repeated his offer.
“Helen,” he said, as Annie translated into my palm, “even a Socialist needs the proper shelter.” But I still refused.
“I’m a modern woman. I can make my own wage, and my own way.” I accepted his tea, his meals, but not a cent of his money.
“If you don’t take the money I’ll take you over one knee and spank you,” Carnegie said.
I just laughed.
But not long after, Annie and I were in freezing Bath, Maine, on a lecture tour. When I awoke on the hotel’s third floor and felt my way to Annie’s bed, she was burning with fever; within hours she was unconscious. Her hair was soaked with sweat under my fingers. I couldn’t find my way to the desk clerk, I couldn’t use the phone, I couldn’t cry out to get a doctor. The room grew tighter around me, until it was without air.
A few days later Annie had recovered enough to get help for herself. We returned to Boston, but Annie was still sick and weak. I wrote to Andrew Carnegie.
His check arrived every month after that. I’ll never turn it down again.
“Helen? Who’s hiding things now?” Peter tapped my shoulder. He smoothed my hair, and then tugged it, hard.
“Ouch.” I pulled back. “That hurts.”
“So does hearing my future wife wants to support me.”
“Annie depends on me. I can’t just think of myself, of you and me.”
“Helen,” he said. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re a deaf-blind woman who bears the weight of supporting yourself and Annie, and now you want to help me?”
He traced my face with his fingers. “Look at me. Twenty-nine years old and two nickels in the bank, overeducated and underemployed. A real loafer, I seem.”
“But you have hopes and dreams.”
“Don’t we all. The best one is to marry you.”
That was the moment I felt real intimacy between us. He put down the mallet, and when he kissed me, it was salty, tart, as if we both knew the burden of crossing, and recrossing, into different worlds.
Woods, trees, air, brine.
He was mine.
Chapter Twenty-five
The scent of pine needles, damp wood, and acorns filled the air as Peter led me to the cabana high above the pond later that afternoon. “Right this way, mademoiselle.” He pried open the door and led me across the sloping floor. The warm day made the cabana musty, and heat seeped through the closed windows. Peter took my hands; they felt tense but I felt utterly calm. I had wanted him for months. The last time we came to the pond I lured him in but I wasn’t ready; this time I wouldn’t let him go.
“If being an activist doesn’t work out, you may have a future as an actress.”
“You mean the way I got your attention the last time we were at the pond?”
“Yup.”
I reached up and pulled down from a wooden peg the sleek, black satin bathing suit I had worn that day. “Remember this?”
“Do I.” He laughed back. “The very suit you lowered that day at the pond.”
“You mean the straps.”
“Good enough for me. I have eyes, and you’re a gorgeous woman. Do you think I haven’t imagined the rest?”
“One can o
nly hope.”
“I believe that is the moment I began to fall in love with you.”
“Flatterer.”
“I prefer intellectual. First I was taken by your mind.”
“Love me for something else.”
He lowered me to the bench in the corner and yanked off my jacket, pulling me to him.
“Wait.” I got up, felt my way to the cabana door, and closed it tight.
Suddenly I was desperate for him. He was behind me, his hands on my waist, his thighs taut against the backs of my legs. He pulled off my blouse, his hands warm on my corset. The afternoon heat rose to the windows and seeped in. Then he took my hands and raised them above my head.
With one hand on my hip and the other on my corset, he began to move me back and forth. He slid his hand down my hip to my thigh and raised my skirt. I felt his belt buckle press into my back.
“You’re my captive.”
“For how long?”
“An hour at least.” With great leisure he stroked my bare thigh.
“Or longer.”
Tick, rick, tick. I felt him unbuckle his belt. And while my skirt was still between us he pressed hard into my hips.
He yanked up my skirt so that I felt the hem on the backs of my thighs. Still, the coarse fabric stayed between us. But I felt in waves. With my hands holding the doorjamb I felt him pummel me. “Do you like that?” he spelled to me.
“Yes.”
“How about this?” With one knee, he pressed open my thighs.
“Turn around,” he said.
Now my back was against the door.
He reached inside my corset, his breath like bitterroot leaves. “Do you want me to take your corset off?”
“Please.”
He lowered himself and pulled open the corset laces. Then I felt his tongue on my breast. He reached up and held my bare shoulders, and I arched my back. Nothing had prepared me for this. “I can’t …”
“Quiet.” He pressed his hand over my mouth. “We’re not done here.”
He grabbed my hands and held my wrists together. I squirmed, but he had my wrists over my head.
He found my palm. “Give in,” he spelled.
“Never.”
“Give.”
“Give what?”
“Everything.”