Twain's End (3 page)

The horse settled in with a last jangle of bells against its muscular haunches. The King's coachman, Giuseppe, hopped down and folded back the hood of the sleigh to reveal three passengers huddled under a shaggy buffalo robe. He helped out the first of them, a willowy young woman who was pretty in a fleshy-cheeked Germanic way, with chestnut locks curling from under the vast drooping brim of her hat. She waited on the shoveled flagstones, stiffly alert, her eyes as pale blue and empty as medicine-bottle glass. A squat woman in a tight coat stepped down next, followed by an athletic gentleman wearing round wire glasses. When he took his place next to the younger woman, she brightened.

The King drawled over his shoulder to Isabel, “Look, Helen smells me. She knows everyone by their scent.”

Miss Keller broke from the others and, with quick careful steps, ran to The King and threw her arms around his neck. Her voice was curiously hollow when she spoke.

“Mark.”

Isabel suppressed a sigh as The King kissed her on both cheeks. She wished people would not call him Mark, not even Helen Keller. Mark Twain was not a real person. The person they were addressing was Samuel Clemens. But The King never corrected anyone on this. Instead, something inside him seemed to shift when he heard it, as if the mortal Sam Clemens were stepping aside for his slow-moving doppelgänger, Twain.

Miss Keller let go of The King, then felt his hair. “You still have it.”

“My mane? Thank the Lord. I'd be like Samson without it—weak as a hatchling.”

“No, I mean your halo.”

He held Miss Keller at arm's length to inspect her beaming face, then reeled her back in slowly. “And they say this girl is blind.” He kissed her on the temple, then reached out to the other woman. “Miss Sullivan—excuse me, Mrs. Macy. If Helen is the Eighth Wonder of the World, then her genius of a teacher is the Ninth. Glad to see you again, dear.”

Mrs. Macy trundled forward with a flap of coat hem, her round face growing florid. Short-necked, stout, and tense, Anne Sullivan Macy was the very opposite of the ever popular languid and lithe Gibson Girl. She almost quivered with barely suppressed anxiety, which seemed to center in her finely cut pursed lips. Yet at The King's greeting, her face unclenched, giving her the doe-eyed smile of a dreamy child. Isabel thought how beautiful she must have been when she was young.

Her companion leaned in front of her, thrusting forward his large chin as he offered his hand to The King. “John Macy, at your service.” When The King switched gears to accept the handshake, Mrs. Macy's smile dissolved, returning her to her frumpy state.

“Good to finally meet you, Macy. You've got a nice little harem here.”

An uncomfortable snort served as Mr. Macy's laugh. “It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. I'm your great admirer.”

“Tell me that at the end of your visit.”

Another snort. “This is quite a spectacular place,” Mr. Macy said, looking around. He had a nice mouth, Isabel noticed, with firm expressive lips, white teeth, and that Ivy League jaw. One sleek brow insisted upon arching over his wire spectacles and into his sheaf of hair, making him appear both skeptical and bemused. Isabel had met Miss Keller and Mrs. Macy last year when they'd come to dinner at The King's house in New York, but not Mr. Macy. He was not what she expected of Mrs. Macy's spouse. She'd imagined a kindly, thickening gentleman with a gold dental bridge that flashed when he smiled.
She found herself wondering if Miss Keller knew how attractive her teacher's husband was.

“You like it?” The King reached into his wool suit coat, the same white as his nimbus of hair, and pulled out a cigar. “It's my Tuscan villa, here on American soil. I expect to go pick grapes at any minute, or find Michelangelo's cradle in the attic.”

Mr. Macy's beautiful jaw hardly moved when he spoke. Perhaps it was limited by its weight. “I can see how authentic a villa it is. Although the snow does hamper the effect.”

A shadow of displeasure passed over The King's brow.

“The Tuscans only
wish
they had snow to make their villas look this beautiful,” Mr. Macy added quickly.

The King considered him a moment, then nodded, the diplomatic crisis averted. “The only detail missing from this setup is a foul-tempered donkey to chase down my guests.” He spread out his arm and then waggled his fingers, beckoning Isabel, now exhaling, from behind him.

“This young lady,” he said as she stepped forward, “oversaw the building of this pile—she and my daughter Clara. Forgive her for not including the donkey. One tried to kill her when she accompanied my wife to Italy as a social secretary. She has no love for asses anymore.”

“I never did,” Isabel said. In spite of The King's smile at her joke—he rarely laughed, the world's leading humorist rarely laughed—the burn flamed up behind her breastbone. When could they stop pretending that Clara would ever lift a finger to please her father and that Isabel was just his secretary? He didn't have to marry Isabel. She'd seen too many marriages that were nothing more than legal contracts, having little to do with love and respect. She didn't need that. She just wanted his acknowledgment of their mutual devotion. She just wanted him to claim her.

She introduced herself, reminding Mrs. Macy and Miss Keller that they had met, to which Mrs. Macy responded that of course they remembered her, she had spoken so enthusiastically about her recent
trip to Bermuda with Mr. Clemens, to which Miss Keller added in her cavernous voice, “Yes, you stayed at the Princess Hotel with Mark.” She smiled as if proud of having remembered this detail.

Mrs. Macy's plump hand lay still in Miss Keller's palm during the brief, embarrassed silence. The King twitched his unlit cigar. Her smile unchanged, as if she were unaware of the others' discomfort, Miss Keller then offered her own hand for Isabel to shake, putting it uncannily close to where a sighted person would have known to place it. As Isabel took it, she wondered if Miss Keller could smell her as she had smelled The King. With a start, she wondered what her own scent was.

“I grew up on a farm,” Miss Keller said. “We didn't have donkeys, but we did have a goat named Sal that insisted on butting me. I braced myself as soon as I smelled her coming.”

“Mere butting would have been child's play for Miss Lyon's Italian donkey,” The King said in his unhurried way. “He had murder on his mind. I'm just glad he didn't get his hooves on her. Death by Ass would be a shameful way to go.”

As Mrs. Macy spelled Mr. Clemens's quip into her student's hand, Isabel glanced at her King. It was when she had lain in bed, bruised and shaken from the attack by the frenzied animal that The King had first spoken of his feelings for her. He had touched her hair and told her haltingly how much he'd come to depend on her—how much he and his daughters had come to depend on her—now that his wife's illness kept her locked away from him. When he spoke of the donkey now, did he not recall this scene?

“I think Helen is in danger of succumbing to Death by Ass,” said Mr. Macy, “when people snap their fingers in front of her face or clap next to her ear to see if she notices.”

Miss Keller laughed after Mrs. Macy signed his words into her hand. “Or when they ask me if I can see colors.”

Mr. Macy laughed affectionately. “As if red felt differently than blue.”

“
Often someone will quiz me, asking what color his or her coat is. If I guess wrong—”

“She tells him,” said Mr. Macy, finishing her thought, “ ‘If you knew, why did you ask me?' ”

The two laughed as Mrs. Macy spelled their conversation. Isabel noticed Mrs. Macy watching her husband, her eyes intense under the slivers of her brows, even as her fingers flew. Mrs. Macy, Isabel suspected, knew exactly how handsome her husband was.

“You'd better stay on your toes, Helen,” said The King. “There are a lot of goddamn asses running loose in this world.”

Mr. Macy spoke louder, as if to cover for The King's profanity. “Actually, I myself nearly succumbed to Death by Horse once. Helen had taken it in her mind to get a stallion for our farm in Wrentham. She thought she'd make a pet of him, feeding him apples and dubbing him Whitefoot for his one white sock. Well, the first time I put our dear Whitefoot in harness, he threw me from the wagon and proceeded to bash the vehicle to bits against the stone wall surrounding our property.”

Miss Keller, who'd been following the conversation from Mrs. Macy's fingertips, exclaimed, “I loved that horse! I hated to sell him. We didn't give him enough time to adjust.”

The King was patting Helen's arm in amused sympathy when Mrs. Macy said flatly, “The horse was shot for killing a cabman. It was not the kind creature Helen likes to think it was.”

Her husband stared at her, his errant brow edging higher above his glasses.

Isabel said briskly, “It's much too cold to be out here. Won't you please come in?”

• • •

Soon Miss Keller and Mrs. Macy were cradled in a roll-arm sofa before the fire, the former swanlike in her shirtwaist with its high lace collar, the latter, doughlike, her head cleft like a Parker House roll by
the severe part in her hair. Mr. Macy perched near them on a plump velvet chair, flicking his nails with nervousness. Across from him, Isabel readied to preside at the tea table while The King, as usual, puffed on his cigar and prowled.

Horace brought in the tea things.

Miss Keller sniffed. “Orange pekoe, isn't it?”

Horace looked up from where he was setting down the tray. Red lakes spread across his cheeks until his understanding of her unusual speech sank in. “Yes, ma'am, it is.”

She nodded happily when Mrs. Macy spelled his answer to her. “And that's strawberry jam with the toast.”

“You're just showing off,” said The King, “making the rest of us look weak with our poor noses. You ought to hire yourself out for crime cases, Helen—the police would love you, although their bloodhounds would be jealous. Miss Lyon, will you dole out the tea?”

Isabel gripped the silver teapot. The King's words had triggered the sound of baying bloodhounds in her mind, sailing her back to the night of the burglary. Alerted by thumps downstairs, and then by the sound of a door closing, Isabel had stumbled from his bed and gone to the window, only to see the burglars on the back lawn, bashing open the doors of the locked sideboard that they had dragged outside. She'd seen the glint of the silver teapot as one of the thugs held it up to the moonlight: the very teapot now in her hand.

His cigar smoldering between his fingers, The King pulled a straight-back chair close to the sofa and Miss Keller, then took the hand in which Mrs. Macy was not busy spelling words.

Miss Keller turned toward him. “Hello, Mark,” she said in her mechanical voice.

Isabel sighed.
His name is Sam.

He put Miss Keller's hand on his face. “Read me so Mrs. Macy can take her tea. I tend to do all the talking in a room, anyway.”

“Mrs. Macy,” Isabel said, “would you like to sit next to me? The fire is especially warm here.”

Mrs. Macy reluctantly moved away from her charge, her chained
magnifying lens bouncing on the shelf of her bosom. Soon Isabel had distributed the refreshments and The King was dominating the room in Mark Twain fashion, his shadow terrifying the others on the wall. He once told Isabel, after giving a dinner for eighteen worthies from New York in his former Fifth Avenue home, that he felt a good host should monopolize the conversation so his guests could be free to enjoy their meal. Mark Twain should entertain so they could relax. She had wondered then how the real Sam Clemens bore up to the burden that Mr. Twain so frequently imposed upon him, and had turned to him to ask. But he had shut his eyes as if to nap, his beautiful head sinking into his pillow, the subject closed.

“I want to congratulate you again on your recent book,” The King was now telling Miss Keller. “I had Miss Lyon read
The World I Live In
to me from cover to cover. I only fell asleep in the middle of it twice.”

Miss Keller smiled as she took his meaning from his lips through her fingers. “Considering that it was one hundred ninety-five pages—”

“One hundred ninety-five pages with only four pictures,” The King interjected. “Miss Lyon flashed them at me to keep me awake. I dozed through Kipling's
Just So Stories,
and he had over a dozen pictures. Now I know why he called his stories ‘Just So.' But I think he forgot the second ‘so.' ”

Isabel shook her head, knowing how much The King admired Mr. Kipling. The two kept up a lively correspondence, for which she penned The King's letters. She could hear the affection in her King's voice when she took his dictation for them, even as he made the evilest cracks. It often seemed that the more Mark Twain loved people, the harder he was on them, as if any real affection must be made into a joke.

“I wanted to call my book
Sense and Sensibility,
” said Miss Keller, “but that title was already taken. It didn't seem like a smart way to go after fighting that charge of plagiarism.”

“Now, there's a group I'd like to introduce to Miss Lyon's donkey! Shame on those jealous old bullies, tormenting a twelve-year-old girl
who obviously had not copied a single word. To a man, I'd say they were no better than a barnyard jackass, but that wrongs the jackass.”

Miss Keller laughed as Mrs. Macy continued to stare at her husband, who was straining at the edge of his chair as if that might get him closer to Miss Keller and The King. “I'll always appreciate how you came to my rescue, Mark,” Miss Keller said. “How I laughed in spite of my tears when you called the plagiarism committee a ‘bunch of dull pirates.' ”

Dull and hoary pirates,
thought Isabel as The King turned away his face to suck on his cigar. Who were
disciplining and purifying a kitten.
She had taken that letter from dictation, too. Although it had been six years ago, she remembered The King delivering those lines to her. He had smiled impishly at her, like a boy trying to amuse, even though Clara had sat across the room glowering at them, waiting for her father's attention. Isabel had felt self-conscious then, during the first year of her employment, when Mr. Clemens had put her before his family. In time she had come to expect his attention whenever he was near, and to suffer greatly when he gave it to someone else.