What Is Visible: A Novel (22 page)

S
he comes to me almost every evening, especially now that I need her comfort more than ever after the news about Asa. She tells the blinds in her room that Cook is making her work nights to prepare for breakfast, so they pity her, and she steals back to her bed while it is still dark. No one guesses our delirious secret life. Some days Kate swears she is so tired that she’s put carrots in the porridge, cream into the roast. When she can’t come, I am in agony. It’s icy out, so we’re not riding the horses. The only chance I have to see her is the kitchen, but every time Cook catches me and rushes me out. I save the weekly cup of milk Cook gives me to bathe my hands and surprise Kate with it, rubbing the liquid into each crack and crevice of her palms, soaking her fingers in my special bowl until the calluses begin to soften.

Tonight, she brings bread sopped in something. The taste is not pleasant—it actually makes me wince―but it is, after all, a taste. Vinegar, the only truly sour thing she could find. “The next time will be honey,” she says, so pure she swears I will understand sweetness.

“Don’t tell anyone you taste yet,” she writes.

I agree, though I have already mentioned it in letters to both Sarah and Julia. I am bursting to tell Doctor. He will be so proud, so excited! Kate lets me brush her hair, and tomorrow when she is gone, I will collect the coiling strands from the floor and add them to the store in my pillowcase. She tells me how she went to town to see the exhibition of Julia Pastrana, billed as “the World’s Ugliest Woman” because she is covered head to toe with thick black hair. I think she would feel very nice, but Kate says I wouldn’t think so if I could see her.

I pull the shimmy over her head and find her nipples. Her breasts are more than twice the size of my little bumps and seem to have grown even larger under my ministrations. But it is not the pillows that move me; it is the hard stiffness of her nipples in my mouth, the way they change as I suck and her moans shake against me. But now she smacks me lightly on the shoulder, and then again. I raise my head, lost.

“No biting,” she says.

“Don’t like it?” I like it. The kissing and touching are wonderful, but those are only the soft beginnings of any
real
feeling. The truest pleasures lie in all that the teeth and nails and fingers can accomplish, especially after a few sips of whiskey.

Kate sits up. “You mark me,” she says, bringing my fingers up to the side of her neck and shoulders. “Bruises.”

“That’s bad?” I ask. I’ve been told I had bruises on sore spots when I’ve hurt myself.

“Colors on the skin. Hide with shawl.”

“What colors?”

“Blue, black, violet. Fade to yellow or green.”

“So beautiful.” I pat her neck, but all I feel is the slightest of welts on one spot, nothing of texture. How I’d love to see the colors I’ve given her. Maybe when I become more proficient, I can employ the bruises to write upon her body: first wrapping an
L
around one nipple, and then imprisoning the other within the
B
. What will I engrave on the high roundness of her stomach? Maybe I will stamp my entire name all over her, covering the soft meat of her thighs and buttocks with my letters. I don’t know if she’d enjoy this, but I would. She is certainly more gentle than I am; perhaps most people are.

“Next time,” I tell her, “only green to match my shade.” I scissor my legs between hers, chasing joy.

In the dining room at meals, I am careful to act as if nothing is different; it isn’t that hard because the food is far too bland to reach the threshold my sense requires. Sometimes I think I detect a belt of salt, or even pepper, in my meat or soup, and I wonder if Kate has found a way to deliver a special dish to me. When I ask, she only laughs. She thinks that now my taste has begun developing, it will continue, though it might take years, she says. I’m not sure if I’m getting any better at it, but I trust her experience. No one, not even Doctor, has ever given me so much. Maybe one day I will even be able to smell her. “If I could smell only one thing in the world,” I tell her, “it would be you.”

“Not flowers?”

“No.”

“Not ocean?”

“No.”

“Not Doctor?”

“Only you.” She says some parts don’t smell good, like feet and bottoms, but I know it would all be delicious to me.

Tonight she has brought me not food, but a book,
The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes
. She borrowed it from one of the teachers, but promised we’ll only use it late at night and she’ll return it by morning so no one will notice. I am excited because I read that most myths have to do with transformations; these are the things I dream about. Kate flips through the pages and summarizes the stories for me. I’m not sure she can really read that fast or if she’s making some of it up. Either way, I love it: a nymph turned into a tree, a god into a swan, a woman into a spider. She tells me about Semele and Zeus, Psyche and Cupid, tales of mortals blind to their heavenly lovers who come to them in darkness. Would I explode into flames or be changed into showers of gold if Kate were ever revealed to me in all her glory? Would that I could be transformed by the piercing of an arrow or the lightning of a god. Most of the metamorphoses seem to be for the worst; however, if I could be given one hundred eyes like Argos or roam the earth as a seeing, hearing, tasting cow like Io, that wouldn’t be so bad. My God is not keen on metamorphoses, though, except, of course, Christ’s transfiguration, and so it appears predetermined that I should stay trapped in this diminished form. On days when I am feeling particularly wise, I think of myself as Athena, shot straight from Doctor’s forehead like a cannonball. And Julia of course is the jealous Hera, Kate the magnificent Aphrodite. The goddess of love comes to the bed of the blind seer, and mortal and immortal are joined, however briefly.

I lie awake waiting for the slight shudder of the door. My door has no lock, though I have asked a dozen times. Doctor claimed it is more likely that I would be a danger to myself locked
inside
than that anyone might come to harm me. “Privacy?” I asked, and he said, “Never wanted to be alone before, even when you should.”

I know he is remembering the years when I crawled into Tessy’s bed, or sometimes another girl’s, only to be discovered and reprimanded, or worse, gloved. All I wanted was to curl myself around them, to kiss their hair and maybe the backs of their necks. A rule I made: no rubbing, the way I did in my own bed. I liked touching Tessy’s skin and Wightie’s cheeks, but I did not wait and hunger, coil and uncoil, in anticipation as I do for Kate. Maybe it’s because Kate returns my longing, while I see now that the others only suffered my caresses out of kindness.

The damp rushes into the room, and I know she is here. She doesn’t sit on the bed yet, but raps her knuckles lightly against my lips as if asking for permission to enter. I open, and she places something small and wet upon my tongue. It fills my mouth with a not unpleasant tang.

“Strong, wonderful,” she writes.

“Want to spit.”

“Italian! Garlic!”

“Doctor went to Italy. Doesn’t eat.”

“Cook at Tewksbury Italian.”

“Friend?”

“Taught me everything.”

I wonder if she got the garlic from this Italian. She won’t tell me where she gets the things Cook doesn’t stock. I suppose she has her ways, probably some useful tricks learned from the hard life of an orphan.

After a moment, she says, “Stop. Breath smells.”

I pull the bulb from my mouth. “Made me smell bad?”

She kisses me. “Now we’re same.”

She touches my eyeshade, and I try not to flinch.

“Off,” she writes. “I want to see you.”

Only one person has seen me uncovered since my childhood besides Doctor: Sarah Wight, and that was an accident. But then again no one’s ever seen the rest of me the way Kate has.

“No light,” I tell her. She leans over me to douse the lamp, though I realize I won’t know if she’s really extinguished it or not. I sit astride her and slowly untie the ribbons from my shade, letting it fall onto her stomach. Her hands reach for my face, but I grab her arms and push them down over her head. With my green ribbons I tie her wrists together. The air feels likes cool breath on my face. I trace the empty sockets of my eyes and begin to move.

I wake in the night with our hands entwined and write softly upon hers: “Will get glass eyes for you.” I think she is asleep because her hand is still for a long while, but then she writes, “No. Windows to soul open.” It is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me, and I will try to think of my defect in this new and unexpected way. It will be hard, though, no matter how much she loves me.

I am surprised after lunch when Jeannette tells me that Doctor wants to see me in his office right away. I am even more surprised that I do not rush to him as I always have. I let him wait for almost an hour while I stroll around the back by the stable, hoping to find Kate, but she’s probably still washing up. No doubt I have food on my dress, as I usually do after lunch, but I don’t change it when I stop in at my cottage before going to see Doctor. I splash cold water on my face, and that’s it.

“You must be very busy, L,” he writes instead of greeting me properly.

“Women are busy,” I write. “Children are not.”

“True,” he says as he helps me into a chair. “Looking like a lady. Plumper. Eating well?”

“I can taste.” I hadn’t planned to tell him, but there it is. “Taste food.”

“What?” His touch is rough.

“God,” I say. “God gave me taste.”

“God,” he says. “Very generous of God so late.”

“Serious.”

“Taste everything now? Eggs, pies—”

“Only strong. Vinegar. Garlic.”

“We don’t even have garlic. Ridiculous.”

“You haven’t tried,” I tell him. “Here, gruel, toast, boiled meat.”

“I begged you to eat. Almost starved at home, and now you say I don’t feed you well? Ungrateful girl.”

He is right. He let me come back because he thought I might die, even if he put me in a cottage instead of letting me back in the house. How far I’ve come from starving! Why can’t he share in my joy? I thought he would be leaping for the chandeliers.

“Not ungrateful,” I write. “Happy.”

The floor trembles as he paces. Finally, he stops.

“All right. A test.”

A test? Doctor must always test everything: my word, my happiness; the health in my cheeks is worth nothing to him without science. Without documentation. For years, I sat in this room, early evenings after supper, letting him quiz me for hours just to have the chance to stroke his beard.

“As you wish,” I write and stand to go.

“Down,” he says. “Called you because of problem with new girl. Cook’s helper.”

I squeeze the chair’s cushion until my fingers begin to go numb.

“Know her?”

I nod. I don’t want him to speak her name.

“Irish, but clever. Thought I’d done the right thing.”

I think of the friction of skin on skin. There is nothing else like it in this world, not even close. Regardless of what happens, he has done the right thing.

“She’s been in your cottage?”

“No,” I write. Then, “Maybe. Don’t remember.” It’s all right if she’s been spotted coming in or out; I’ll say I was helping her with lessons.

“Jeannette caught her with your music box behind stable. Tried to bury in hay.”

I don’t understand. “You gave me that box.”

“Kate says you gave it to her.”

“You talked?”

“This morning.”

“She sat in this chair?” Was her bottom, marked with the prints of my fingers, pressed into these cushions as she answered all your questions? Was she frightened?

“Don’t remember which blessed chair. You didn’t give. She stole.”

I imagine Kate squatting in the hay, humming, holding the box in her lap. Such pleasure she takes in its three tunes, especially “Johnnie My Boy.”

“Should’ve checked bumps on her head more carefully when we checked for lice.”

I want to scream. My darling’s head is even more perfect than Doctor’s.

“I gave,” I write. “I forgot.”

“Thought you loved it.”

“Can’t hear music, can I?”

He puts the box into my hands. “You begged for this,” he says. “Twelfth birthday. Your initials carved into its bottom.”

I trace the delicate cuts in the wood. “Still there.”

“Girl did nothing wrong?” he asks. “Sure?”

“Nothing.” I rise. “Much reading to do.”

He bends to kiss my hand. The stiff hairs of his mustache bristle my knuckles, and I wonder if Julia misses the feel of it against her breasts.

I lie on the bed with the music box on my chest. Each time it finishes its cycle, I wind it again. Twenty-seven times and still she hasn’t come. I must have fallen asleep because suddenly the box is being lifted. I grab for her wrist.

“Stealing again?”

She scoots onto the bed. “Would give it back.” She’s certainly very calm for a criminal. Probably not the first time she’s nicked something.

“Why?”

“When I’m not with you, it reminds me.”

I don’t know if I believe her. Kate raises my hand to her cheek, and I feel the tears there. “If I give it, you’ll get caught again.” Slowly, I crank the music box and nestle it between her thighs.

After a moment, she stands and the rough cloth of her work dress falls against my stockinged feet.

“Bruise me anywhere,” she writes.

And so I do.

Kate comes tonight, but only to tell me that she can’t stay, not even for half an hour.

“Three miles’ walk to Saint Malachy’s before breakfast.”

“Just talk to God in your head.” He is my closest friend besides Kate.

“Need help from saints.”

“Saints stupid. God right here,” I tell her, holding out my arms.

Why would anyone communicate with the Lord through a third person when they could have direct access? It was like
choosing
to be blind and deaf, and relying on somebody else to carry your news back and forth. Talking to a saint or even Mother Mary when you can speak to God directly―what a waste. What do these Catholics think they’re doing?