What Is Visible: A Novel (4 page)

N
othing was sweeter. He watched their hands: Laura’s thin white fingers etched her thoughts on Julia’s upturned palm, and then they switched, and Julia’s fingers, plumper but even more dazzlingly white, responded. The last slivers of winter light made a halo of fire of Julia’s red-gold hair, shining against the dark of Laura’s braids as they bent their heads together. His beloveds, the sun and moon in his little heaven. Julia looked up at Doctor and smiled, as if she understood the pure delight he took in seeing them together. She didn’t look the ten years older than Laura’s thirteen.

Laura sensed the slight shift in her audience’s attention and tugged at Julia’s cuff, still writing. In her score of visits in the past year, Julia had mastered the mechanics of conversing with Laura as quickly as any he’d seen—far quicker than Longo or Sumner—but she was not yet ready for Laura on a tear. Finally, Julia raised her unpinned hand and waved.

“She’s gone wild that I’ve called you Chev,” she said. “I didn’t know your nickname was a secret.”

“It’s not, but the children here don’t call me that.” He walked over to the settee and took Laura’s hand.

“Thank you!” Julia shook her arm out. She could be very dramatic. They both could.

Laura pulled Doctor down to face her. “Why Chevalier? Leaving again to fight in Greece?”

“No. Chev a silly name.”

“Like when I make noise for Oliver or Swift?”

“Yes.”

“Are you talking about me?” Julia asked, leaning over Doctor’s shoulders to watch his hands. Her breasts pressed against his back as Laura’s nails pressed into his palm. He was sandwiched between one of the most acclaimed beauties of the Atlantic seaboard and the most written-about miracle girl in the world.

“Are you talking about me?” Laura asked. He freed himself from both of them and stepped away without an answer.

“Dr. Combe will be here in the morning,” Doctor told Julia. “Let’s get you back to the Misses Peabodys’ before it gets late. I’ll tell Brownie to get the carriage ready.”

“You’re serious about that? I really must have a phrenological exam before we can be officially pledged?” She sidled over and put her head on his chest, those auburn curls he dreamed of pulling rippling against the point of his beard. She only came up to his chin. In a couple of years, Laura would be the taller one.

“All my success here at Perkins is built upon phrenological principles, my dear. Combe is traveling all this way to meet you—how could I not let him believe his opinion is of grave importance? He is Spurzheim’s protégé!”

Laura stood up and edged toward them, and Doctor broke the embrace before she joined it.

Combe was already set up in Doctor’s office the next morning when he came in. Laura sat in the student chair and Julia perched on the edge of the desk. Julia wore a blue sprigged muslin that Doctor hadn’t seen before. She would find that she wouldn’t be buying new dresses every week when they were married, but that news could wait.

“You shall have your hands full of heads here, Combe,” Doctor said. The phrenologist was almost seventy, but his handshake was still crushing. “Get your calipers ready!”

“Work Laura first, please,” Julia said. “I would like to observe before I am examined.”

Laura reached out to Doctor. “Have surprise for Julia,” she wrote. Whenever she had a secret, she signed the letters more quickly.

“After the exam,” he wrote equally as quick. It was their equivalent of whispering. She nodded and sat back in her chair, ready for the doctor. He had examined her annually since she arrived six years ago.

Combe stood behind Laura and placed one hand on each side of her head, but he spoke to Julia, who had come closer to watch.

“The brain is made up of congeries of organs,” he said as he drew vertical and then horizontal lines on Laura’s head with his index finger. “Each one corresponds to the thirty-seven innate and independent faculties of man. Each faculty, be it emotional or intellectual, has its seat in a particular region on the surface of the brain, and the size of that region shows the development, or not, of that faculty.” He parted Laura’s hair with the calipers and gently pinched the skin at the front of her skull. “The coronal, just above and behind the forehead, shows enormous growth since last year, especially in relation to her animal region, back here above the nape of her neck. The coronal is the seat of the moral faculty. Right behind her eyes, the organ of language, ah yes, continuing to grow, right on schedule.”

Combe validated that Laura’s brain was responding to Doctor’s rigors and nurturance, just as he had hoped. Before his work with her, the world believed anyone this impaired to be doomed to imbecility, incapable of rational thought or the natural questing of the spirit for the divine. He had proved them all wrong. Not since Itard’s progress with the Wild Boy of Aveyron had anyone created such a stir, and Doctor and Laura already had achieved far more than that feral child and his mentor. Doctor was now the foremost discoverer of the inner workings of the human mind and soul. Like William Parry at the Arctic, he had planted his flag on the farthest shore of the world, unexplored country.

Laura sat perfectly still. She seemed to be enjoying it. Combe continued his exam, stopping periodically to take notes on a small pad.

“Oh, Miss Ward,” he said, “you should feel this. The bump of hope. On the left side below the braid. Very modulated. Do you want to touch it?”

Julia looked closely, but shook her head. Doctor moved Laura’s braid. Yes, he was right. It was pronounced.

“You know, Howe, the girl started out with such a promising head—the contours have always confirmed naturally vigorous moral and intellectual powers—but my, what you’ve done with it!”

Doctor thanked him and tapped Laura to get up.

“My head good?” she wrote, and he told her the news of her growth. She clapped.

Julia sat down in the chair in front of Combe. “I’m a little nervous, I must confess,” she said. She looked at Doctor. “There’s so much riding on something I can’t control.”

“It will be fine,” he said. “Let’s see what she’s got, Combe.”

Julia closed her eyes as Combe picked and measured. “The anterior lobe,” he intoned, tapping the right side of her head. “Very well developed. Knowledge and reflection. Self-esteem, love of approbation―you two share these things, Howe. And here”—he indicated a spot behind her ear—“quite the combativeness bump.”

Julia opened her eyes.

“Almost as large as yours, Howe, if I remember correctly.”

Doctor smiled at her. They would be fine; a little combativeness can be countenanced. Combe had found nothing terrible, no great aggressiveness or lack of order or causality.

“Dr. Howe has one of the largest affection bumps I’ve ever seen on a man. Most women don’t even have them his size—like a walnut—though yours is close. I told him last year he’d better find a girl on which to exercise its benefits. The most eligible bachelor in Boston, over forty with no wife and that enormous bump. A sin, I told him!”

Doctor could have done without his friend sharing this particular knowledge. “That’s not why I came knocking, my dear,” he told Julia, though that wasn’t entirely the truth.

“I’ll take your word,” she said. “Bumps and all.” She laughed as she rose, and Doctor saw that old George was as charmed as most—dare he say all?—men were by his Julia. She laughed as much as any woman he’d ever seen, and yet managed not to be aswoon with frivolity. It must be the eyes, which had a way of looking smart even when her mouth was open. A rare talent for a female. If her laugh were too high, like a schoolgirl’s, or too low, like a washerwoman’s, or too long in duration, like a spinster’s, or so short, like his dead mother’s, God rest her soul, that it might be mistaken for a hiccup, then Doctor would not have been able to consider a life with her, no matter the light of devotion in those large gray eyes.

Laura tugged at his arm. “Julia’s head like mine?”

“Almost exactly,” he wrote, and it was true. They actually had far more in common than Doctor and Julia did.

“Dr. Combe, Oliver is waiting, and then the other children are lined up for you in the main hall,” he told the phrenologist. “And I’d like you to take a look at my six teachers’ heads too, if you could.”

“Of course,” Combe said and paused before Julia. “I hope to wish you the best in the near future.”

Doctor showed him out, but as soon as he returned, Laura erupted in a low howl―“Whoowah! Whoowah!”—over and over again. She cast about for Julia’s arm, but Julia moved quickly out of her reach.

Julia looked frightened. “Why is she doing that?”

Laura made the noise louder, and now he understood. “It’s her surprise,” he told Julia. “She’s made a special naming noise for you.” It was really quite good; she must have been practicing for a long time. “She has noises for everyone she likes, and each one sounds completely different. Well, not completely, but different enough to recognize, anyway.”

Julia sat down in the chair farthest from Laura. “Oh,” she said, “that’s very sweet. It is. Tell her thank you very much, but could she please stop.”

“Julia very excited,” Doctor wrote. “Wonderful present.” She howled again. “But stop now.”

She quieted down and settled back into her chair, smiling, drumming her knees in satisfaction.

Julia said, “Well, that put a little damper on
my
surprise for you. I don’t know how it will compare.” She reached delicately into the front of her bodice with her thumb and forefinger, and Doctor was glad Combe was not there for whatever was coming. She pulled out a folded sheet and opened it, then arranged herself in front of the fireplace, resting one elbow on the mantel. She cleared her throat.

Laura asked what Julia was doing.

“Poem,” Doctor told her and signed the verses as Julia recited them. She was a slow but excellent declaimer.

He didn’t finish writing the poem for Laura; he stopped at “lion-mood.” She didn’t need to know yet that Julia would be his wife. He would tell her when the time was right.

“Brava!” Doctor clapped. “Your poetry almost does your beauty justice.”

“So we are matched then, now that Combe has combed my head for flaws?”

“In high resolve,” he told her. “And so your lovely poems from now on, as we discussed, will be only for private consumption, yes? No more trying to publish, flying them out there in the world?”

“Yes, Chev,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him. “Of course.”

“I don’t want a marriage of two minds, my darling, but only a marriage of two hearts.”

“You have mine,” she said, coming into his arms. Laura stood by her chair, her face turned toward them in rapt attention as if she were truly listening to every word. Doctor was not comfortable holding Julia with Laura this close, so he left the room and went to check on Combe’s progress with Oliver.

Combe had just started on Oliver’s crown when Doctor heard Julia shouting. He rushed down the hall and from the door saw the two of them locked in a strange embrace, Julia’s hands on Laura’s shoulders as Laura thrust her finger in and out of Julia’s ear. He grabbed Laura’s arms and pulled her away, her index finger still poking the air, and pushed her roughly back into her chair. Julia collapsed against him, her breath ragged. They were both breathing hard, and then Doctor realized so was he.

“Did she hurt you?”

“Scared me. I don’t know what set her off.”

Laura’s hands pawed frantically at the air, signaling him. He helped Julia onto the settee and went to her.

“Wanted to feel bumps on her head,” she wrote. “But ear―”

“You scared Julia. Like animal.”

“She can hear you,” she spelled with effort, and then Doctor understood. Through that sweet little maze Laura knew that Julia was able to hear, to let in the whole world, and most of all, his laughs and sighs. Nevertheless, he could not let her go unpunished. Julia was shaking, and this set-to would make the new arrangement of his world more onerous. Laura had slapped Miss Swift or one of the students many times, but never a guest, much less his beloved. She had grown accustomed, no doubt too accustomed, to asking for forgiveness from both the persons she had harmed and from God. Her friends always forgave her, and so too did God, but He absolved her only on the occasions when she was truly sorry. Doctor could tell from the set of her jaw that this was not yet one of those occasions.

He explained to Julia that Laura had only wanted to feel her bumps, and Julia seemed relieved, but when he asked if Laura could write her an apology, his fiancée quickly demurred and left the room. Laura sat in her chair, rocking back and forth, one finger bending the soft, pliable rim of her ear up and down, up and down.

Doctor was more comfortable in his dear Sumner’s apartments than he was with the run of all five floors of Perkins. There he was the Doctor, the Director, while here he was just a man, a friend, a listener, a talker, maker of no decisions, bearer of no consequences. Sumner’s landlady had installed precisely the right number of fat cushions for lounging, eight slung along the back of the divan. They didn’t fall asleep in his rooms; they never fell asleep, even after six courses and too much sherry at Martin’s with Felton and the gang. They always talked all night. Doctor had surrounded himself with women and children, of his own free will, but most days it was a hard bargain. He’d had the war, the wind, even the jail cell in Prussia, and now his most heroic act was guiding blind girls on horses down the beach.

Sumner poured them snifters from his finest decanter of brandy and lifted his glass in a mock toast. “Did you hear, Chev? Dickens’s
American Notes
sold out the first print run in England in two days. You and Laura are all of chapter 4—got it in a letter from Robesey.”