Helen Keller in Love by Kristin Cashore Read Free Book Online Page A

cold air as he steadied me by the open cab door. Annie slept fitfully in the front seat. I hoped she wouldn’t wake up just yet. I didn’t want her to detect what I was feeling. I wasn’t his idol. I was just Helen. I would follow wherever he led.

    Allmy life I’ve wanted to fit in. I was the first blind deaf-mute to go to Radcliffe College. I thought I’d make friends with the other girls, but they avoided me in the hallways. They didn’t know the manual fingerspelling language, and I couldn’t speak to them. They gave me a puppy I named Phizz, and nights when the girls were sledding in Boston’s cold with their boyfriends, I sated my hunger for company with Annie, both of us unsure if we’d ever fit in.
    Only one of my professors bothered to learn fingerspelling, and since most of my books weren’t available in Braille, Annie had to spell their contents into my hand for hours each day. During classes she sat by my side and spelled the lectures word by word to me.
    On those hot summer nights, when the other girls were out past curfew, Annie slept in her room in our apartment on Boston’s Newbury Street. And I pushed away my copies of Cicero in Latin, and Molière in French, and pulled out the romance novel
The Last Days of Pompeii
. I ran my fingers over the Braille pages about the blind slave girl, hips undulating in the garden, while men picked flowers from her basket. As I read, branches scraped my window. In the night’s heat I felt strangely excited.
    But Annie came into my room and pounced on me: “Caught, discovered, trapped!” She pulled the novel away. If I read books like that, she said, she would not utter one word to me for an entire twenty-four hours. Without Annie spelling into my hand in the Radcliffe classroom, isolation would surround me. I slid the book away.
    Annie needed me to stay childlike.
    But Peter treated me like a woman.
    “Right this way, madam.” He led me deeper into Appleton’s station. Annie followed, her scent like sour rain. As we moved toward our waiting train, he said the walls above the ticket counter were peppered with posters supporting the war in Europe.
    “Don’t get carried away,” Annie spelled as she walked by my side. “Most of the loafers in here are just reading their newspapers, checking their watches, waiting for trains. They don’t care about the war at all. You two can talk antiwar propaganda when we get on the train. As for me, I’m going straight to bed.”
    The trees outside the train station sent sparks of pine scent into the air as Peter led me and Annie up the metal steps, while he repeated the conductor’s shout: “Last caa
aaall
for Pullman train one seventy-five to Boston.” I felt the metal door slam shut. Peter installed Annie in a sleeper car in front of us, and led me to the club car.
    The train whistle shirred the air as our car moved down the track.
    As I slid into a leather seat by the window, Peter passed a packet of letters to me. I felt his hand as he plied open a bulging envelope. “Your latest bills, I think.”
    “Let’s get through these as quick as we can.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “And then it’s time for lunch and a drink.”
    “Yes, boss.” He covered my fingers with his. “The sooner we finish these the better.”
Roof repair:
$1,750.00
Payment thirty days overdue
Painting:
$900.00
Payment due immediately
Taxes:
$1,400.00
Unpaid. Penalty due
    “Helen.” He took my hand. “You and Annie run a bit of an unsteady ship.”
    The train rocked so unevenly that I held the table’s edge. “You’ve been with us one full week already, and you’re just realizing that?”
    “Well, I am a quick study.” He steadied me with his hand.
    I breathed easier. “I’m suddenly thirsty.” The passageway thudded with the tread of other passengers lining up at the far end of the car for lunch. “Will you get us some drinks?” I could smell the coffee, the tang of whiskey sours in the club car. “And some