together without anything to say.
I leaned back in my seat and breathed in the hot air, the singed ash from the train, the acres of barley, wheat, and corn fields as we passed. And I daydreamed that Peter peeled back my dress. I arched up to him and we tossed and rolled together in a world without end. Through the night, the train-fast night.
Chapter Nine
I n that way Peter brought alive cravings in me, like an empty mouth. To be with someone who didn’t idolize me. Who saw me as a grown woman who wanted a life of her own, instead. But I didn’t know about the cravings I brought alive in him. Some were for fame. Others for some kind of power. All were contradictions. None of them really were clear. I told Peter none of this.
Instead I betrayed my loyalty to Annie—I should have been by her side in her sleeping car; she was so sick. But no. I followed Peter, eagerly, into the club car just to sit by him that first day on the train, and the next day, and the next. I stayed by his side all the way home to Boston, then out to Wrentham, where we installed Annie in her second-floor bedroom, then we went outside, to be alone in the night air. The hot-tar scent of the street and the smoky traces of a nearby barbecue wafted toward me on the breeze. I slid my fingers into Peter’s open palm when he said, “Massachusetts has a hurricane season?”
“We never have hurricanes here.” I paused, smiling at what I knew would come next.
“Not by the looks of this place.” I felt him move his head back and forth, taking in the disheveled state of my house. “What on earth happened here?”
Through the windows opening onto the porch, I knew he saw the living room lit by a lamp. There, two ragged chairs that felt like oats, rough to the touch, faced each other in front of the enormous fireplace, a rickety table between, a Braille Monopoly game, newspapers, old books scattered across other tables and the floor, and wisps of dog hair from my Great Dane, Thora, clung to the ragged braided rug. “John used to help us keep things up. But it’s hard now that he’s gone.”
Petersaid nothing at first, at the mention of John. Annie’s husband, a ne’er-do-well who walked out on her two years ago, was Peter’s boss at the
Boston Herald
. An odd tension made him close his hand into a fist. “I know he’s your boss,” I said. “I’m not criticizing. But when he and Annie were married and he lived here, he did the odd jobs—built bookcases, put in the screens for summer. He even stretched a wire a half-mile long across the stone wall in the woods so I could walk alone. But now that he’s gone, well …” I faltered.
“I hardly know the man.” Peter stretched his fingers and traced my palm. “Besides, he
was
my boss. You’re the boss now. In fact I’m taking the train into Boston tonight to pack up my apartment. Annie rented me a house nearby so I can be at your beck and call from now on.”
“And don’t you forget it.” I was so relieved and excited that he would be near that I didn’t even mind if he noticed the living room ceiling: after a storm, while Annie and I were away on a lecture tour last year, great patches of water leaked over two-thirds of the ceiling, leaving it a sodden, dark, tea-colored brown. She had fingerspelled the disaster into my hand.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Peter said. “It’s you and Annie, traveling the country to paltry audiences this year, as far as I can see, yet you’ve got this house, and me, and if I’m not mistaken there’s a servant inside lighting the lamps and primping himself, eager to see you the minute we walk in.”
“And?” I was ready to be more honest than I should have been. “You want to know how I manage this? How a deaf, blind woman in 1916 can afford her own house?”
“Somethinglike that, yes.” He smelled of clover and fresh-cut grass. I would have said anything.
“This house cost me my life,” I said.
“What?”
“You know.”
I leaned back in my seat and breathed in the hot air, the singed ash from the train, the acres of barley, wheat, and corn fields as we passed. And I daydreamed that Peter peeled back my dress. I arched up to him and we tossed and rolled together in a world without end. Through the night, the train-fast night.
Chapter Nine
I n that way Peter brought alive cravings in me, like an empty mouth. To be with someone who didn’t idolize me. Who saw me as a grown woman who wanted a life of her own, instead. But I didn’t know about the cravings I brought alive in him. Some were for fame. Others for some kind of power. All were contradictions. None of them really were clear. I told Peter none of this.
Instead I betrayed my loyalty to Annie—I should have been by her side in her sleeping car; she was so sick. But no. I followed Peter, eagerly, into the club car just to sit by him that first day on the train, and the next day, and the next. I stayed by his side all the way home to Boston, then out to Wrentham, where we installed Annie in her second-floor bedroom, then we went outside, to be alone in the night air. The hot-tar scent of the street and the smoky traces of a nearby barbecue wafted toward me on the breeze. I slid my fingers into Peter’s open palm when he said, “Massachusetts has a hurricane season?”
“We never have hurricanes here.” I paused, smiling at what I knew would come next.
“Not by the looks of this place.” I felt him move his head back and forth, taking in the disheveled state of my house. “What on earth happened here?”
Through the windows opening onto the porch, I knew he saw the living room lit by a lamp. There, two ragged chairs that felt like oats, rough to the touch, faced each other in front of the enormous fireplace, a rickety table between, a Braille Monopoly game, newspapers, old books scattered across other tables and the floor, and wisps of dog hair from my Great Dane, Thora, clung to the ragged braided rug. “John used to help us keep things up. But it’s hard now that he’s gone.”
Petersaid nothing at first, at the mention of John. Annie’s husband, a ne’er-do-well who walked out on her two years ago, was Peter’s boss at the
Boston Herald
. An odd tension made him close his hand into a fist. “I know he’s your boss,” I said. “I’m not criticizing. But when he and Annie were married and he lived here, he did the odd jobs—built bookcases, put in the screens for summer. He even stretched a wire a half-mile long across the stone wall in the woods so I could walk alone. But now that he’s gone, well …” I faltered.
“I hardly know the man.” Peter stretched his fingers and traced my palm. “Besides, he
was
my boss. You’re the boss now. In fact I’m taking the train into Boston tonight to pack up my apartment. Annie rented me a house nearby so I can be at your beck and call from now on.”
“And don’t you forget it.” I was so relieved and excited that he would be near that I didn’t even mind if he noticed the living room ceiling: after a storm, while Annie and I were away on a lecture tour last year, great patches of water leaked over two-thirds of the ceiling, leaving it a sodden, dark, tea-colored brown. She had fingerspelled the disaster into my hand.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Peter said. “It’s you and Annie, traveling the country to paltry audiences this year, as far as I can see, yet you’ve got this house, and me, and if I’m not mistaken there’s a servant inside lighting the lamps and primping himself, eager to see you the minute we walk in.”
“And?” I was ready to be more honest than I should have been. “You want to know how I manage this? How a deaf, blind woman in 1916 can afford her own house?”
“Somethinglike that, yes.” He smelled of clover and fresh-cut grass. I would have said anything.
“This house cost me my life,” I said.
“What?”
“You know.”
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