What Is Visible: A Novel (13 page)

Julia was too furious to speak, so she left them for the kitchen, and found it dark and empty. She hurried down the back corridor to Cook’s room, but there was no light under the door. The woman was nearly seventy and the rheumatism was making her job difficult, so Julia knew it would be wrong to wake her for the Doctor’s caprices. A hasty pudding, yes, she could do that, blast them both to Hades. Did it take oats or cornmeal? She racked her brain. Eliza Leslie’s famous cookbook―where was it? Maybe it was flour. In the enormous open pantry, she found the cornmeal first. She dumped some out into a large iron pot with salt and lit the stove, then looked round for the mush-stick she’d seen Cook use to stir it to prevent lumps. The worst thing about hasty pudding was that although it was relatively easy, it actually couldn’t be made in haste or it wouldn’t thicken properly. So Julia stirred and stirred until her arm grew numb, but the mush still had lumps the size of doorknobs, which she finally beat down to the size of buttons. She checked her watch―it had been well over half an hour, so that would have to do. She pulled some cured pork from the larder and scraped the pudding into matching bowls.

The mistress of the house entered the dining room bearing the tray and set it down with a clatter. Chev glanced at Sumner with obvious amusement.

“Looks most worthy,” Sumner said.

“Yes, well, it is what is,” Julia said, “so eat.”

Chev said a much longer grace than usual, taking care to bless the abundance of the feast before them.

“A toast,” Sumner said, tapping his spoon against his goblet. “To Diva Julia, South Boston’s hostess
sans pareil
.”

Julia almost bit clean through the rim of her glass. Of course, South Boston was a virtual wasteland with no prominent houses or hostesses. “Charlie, you know how much I admire your cleverness, but also how much I dislike that ridiculous name.”

Sumner raised his glass again. “Diva Julia lives up to her sobriquet, though she still objects with
but
and
yet
.”

Chev laughed so hard he almost choked on his pudding, which was probably choke-worthy anyway, and Charlie grinned from ear to ear. It was unusual to see him so happy, she’d give him that. Why were they so bent on the task of humiliating her this evening, and in tandem? Had they come specifically for that purpose? “Gentlemen, I am tired and so I’ll take my leave.” She stood, but Chev grabbed her hand.

“Darling, please stay. It’s been such a moon since Charlie’s seen you. And here I thought you’d be pleased that we came here instead of dining in town.”

Julia sat back down and poured herself a second very large glass of sherry, a very rare thing for her, especially when she was this far along. As usual, her husband and his friend delighted loudly in their inside jokes, their endless arguments over political and social issues, which gave them both such obvious pleasure even when they violently disagreed. All this Julia was forced to endure from her corner of the table, and to wish―not for the first time and surely not for the last―that she, Julia Ward, one of the endlessly desired Graces of Bond Street, had been born a man.

Chev was circling back to a topic that would needle her. “Do you remember last year when Fanny Longfellow’s cook went down with the pleurisy, and she plucked all the chickens herself and came up with those ravishing five courses for the dozen of us?”

Julia had heard this story recounted endlessly.

“How could I possibly forget?” Sumner said. “And by the way, this pudding is a masterpiece.”

“And when might you be blessed with a wife of your own, Charlie, to cook for you?”

Julia had attempted to play matchmaker several times, since after all, with his money and connections, he was considered an excellent catch. Yet her ladies to a one reported back to her that while his manners were impeccable, his conversation consisted solely of monologues, and while that could be put up with in a gentleman of his station, his complete lack of interest in their charms could not. “What a slippery one you are! My cousin Charlotte swore you didn’t seem to notice she was even in the room at luncheon last week. She is so lovely, isn’t she, Chev?”

Her husband nodded, unsure of how to counter this attack.

Julia wagged her finger at their guest. “When a man waits too long to find a mate, his meat grows cold upon his plate.”

Charlie set his glass down. “In the jungle, they say, it’s to be deduced, when the lioness denies, the lion will be―”

“Stop it, both of you!” Chev stood. “What are you, children in the nursery?”

“Very clever children,” Julia said.

“Very playful children,” Charlie agreed.

Chev sat back down. “True combatants do not use rhymes for battle.”

Sumner took a long sip of port and pushed back his heavy forelock. As the years passed, he’d come to resemble nothing so much as an overstuffed horse, and probably a Trojan one to boot. “I thank you both, as always, for your continued attention to my poor bachelor state, but I have yet to find a lady who might live up to the memory of my dear mother, or even a helpmeet so satisfactory as Mrs. Longfellow.”

Chev sighed. “The wrong choice, I assure you, can doom you to a life of misery.”

Julia knew that her face was probably as red as her hair, but she couldn’t stop herself, not this time. “As for the brayingly domestic Fanny, she’s good for a dollop of gossip over tea, but the chicken was half-raw. One must never confuse the duties of the wife of a great poet with the duties of a great poet who is also a wife.” The world would probably never uphold the distinction, but for now she could be happy that she’d hushed two of Boston’s biggest mouths, the grand orator and the almighty humanitarian. She left the room knowing that she might not be able to sleep for replaying this small triumph in her head, but that it would be well worth it.

F
or weeks Sarah had hardly slept, staying vigilant for the slightest sound from the adjoining room. She was even more concerned than usual that Laura would seek comfort in the night, given her latest disappointment. At least she had stopped talking about the glass eyes, though she swore to her teacher that when she was “grown” she would get them in spite of Doctor. Frankly, Sarah hoped so. She rose at least three times a night to check on Laura, but every time she appeared to be fast asleep, her fingers signing against the quilt as they did when she dreamed. In the daytime, they continued easily with their studies, the only difference in their routine occurring at mealtimes, when Laura asked to switch from her usual table with just the two of them to the table of the oldest blind girls. Of course, she didn’t know that some of them were her complainants; she must have thought they missed her nighttime company and sought to make it up to them. She reached across the plates often to grab at the girls’ hands, usually Tessy’s. The girls allowed her play in the dining hall, but although Laura couldn’t hear their groans and giggles, her teacher could. Sarah made a point of not listening to their whispered conversations, and only when she heard Laura’s name spoken loudly did she admonish them. Tessy had been her student last year, and though she was intelligent and generally well behaved, she had a mean streak. Sarah thought she would have been very pretty if her general expression were less of a sneer. If only she could have seen her own face.

The truth was that Sarah had never felt for any of her students anything like the affection she maintained for Laura. It wasn’t pity, though, of course, a large dose of that came naturally, but a true love of her curiosity, as annoying as it could sometimes be, and an admiration for her stubborn optimism and self-regard, neither of which her teacher could fathom in the girl’s ridiculously pathetic circumstances. Sarah, on her best day, could not compete with Laura in sheer strength of spirit. The Creator had, in His one stroke of mercy, graced the girl from within. Sarah knew that if she were afflicted with Laura’s deformities, she would probably have been dead long ago, never having left her bed. Some days now she could barely leave it, what with the spells, which Doctor seemed to think were a symptom of her weak emotional constitution rather than her physical one, though she was hardly robust. Maybe he was right, though she’d cried for days after he’d told her. His eyes had not held even the smallest light of empathy on that occasion, but rather a steely glint of reprobation. Sarah thought of herself as a shadow, 
as blanched as her surname suggested
, a woman never completely there, who might fade at any moment into the very air. If she was white, then Laura was a bright, blinding yellow or a shocking blue, some glorious hue of rapturous sky.

On a night when the humidity wouldn’t allow her to sleep, when she stuck to her dressing gown, which stuck to the sheet, Sarah rose at midnight to check on Laura. Good, she was there, but Sarah thought she would get too warm under the coverlet pulled up over her. When she went to turn it down, she found only the lumpy goose down pillow. Oh Lord, Sarah wondered, had she pulled the same trick the other nights? Sarah stalked down the hall, tiptoeing from one room to another. Each room held four to six beds; only Laura had a room to herself. Sarah had to bend down over each bed to see anything, though, because the rooms were kept pitch-black. No need to light the night lamps for these students. One of the girls woke up and Sarah quieted her. It was frightening for the blind to wake to someone standing over them, with no idea who it was. Perpetual night. Sarah didn’t think she’d ever have been able to get used to it; she supposed old age might force her to find out, and she dreaded it, perhaps even more so because of her experience. She expected to discover Laura in Tessy’s bed, but no. In the first bed in the last room down the long corridor, she found her, one leg thrown over one of the new students, both hands tangled in the girl’s long blonde curls. They were both asleep, and though Laura had probably hurt the girl, playing with her hair, she was new and would have been afraid to cry out or go for a teacher.

Sarah shook Laura’s shoulder and she stirred. The girl woke too and asked, “Who’s there?”

“Laura’s teacher,” Sarah said. She shook Laura again, but Laura brushed her away and turned back over, spooning against the girl. Sarah had no choice. She grabbed Laura’s arm and tried to pull her up, but she resisted. She hoisted Laura from the bed with all her strength, and the girl struggled, kicking against her. The new girl jumped out of the bed on the other side. Laura began to yelp, the most terrible of her noises, something between a wolf howling and a baby bawling, and fought Sarah as she was pulled onto the floor with the bedclothes. Several of the students had woken and stood bunched in the doorway. Sarah almost laughed at the idea that she was being
watched
by a bevy of blind girls.

Suddenly Jeannette pushed her way in, her long stocking cap askew over her gray braids. “Shoo!” she told the girls. Jeannette was tall and broad-shouldered like her brother, and within a minute, Laura had been tamed and lay motionless on the floor. The new girl cowered in the corner while two of the older ones patted and soothed her. The women tried to pick Laura up, but she kept her limbs completely limp, as if dead, except for the low whimpering sound she now made. Sarah took her arms and Jeannette her legs, and they carried her down the hall to her room and lay her back in her own bed. She moved only to pat her shade, making sure it was still in place, then locked her arms rigidly at her sides. She knew what was coming.

Jeannette got the gloves from the bottom drawer of the tallboy. Sarah hadn’t even known where they were kept because she’d never had to use them. Jeannette held them out to her.

“You should do it,” Jeannette said.

“I know.” But still she hesitated; Laura would know instantly that it was her beloved teacher punishing her. She turned to Jeannette. “Are you sure―?”

Jeannette nodded emphatically. “When she gets that way, she needs to know there’s a consequence. It’s your job to make sure she conducts herself like a young lady, not a wild beast.”

“And she won’t just pull them off?”

“No, this is a bitter pill she takes when she knows she deserves it.”

Sarah looked at her ward; she was absolutely still, so small and defenseless, barely breathing it seemed. But then she saw it: Laura’s lower lip was protruding the way it did whenever she was defiant, and Sarah could see now that the girl’s jaw was set firm. She wasn’t sorry. It had to be done. Sarah took the gloves. Oh no, they were not soft cotton as she’d expected, but a coarse, scratchy wool. They would be awful in the heat. And they were dark gray; she wished for Julia’s light silken church gloves, pale pink or creamy mint.

She lifted Laura’s right hand gently and eased the glove on, pushing down in the valleys between the fingers to make sure all was snug. She resisted the urge to write any comfort or apology, but as she gloved the left hand, she began to cry, though Laura herself didn’t appear to be crying. The protruding lower lip didn’t tremble. It was the cruelest thing Sarah had ever done in her life. With the gloves on, it was nearly impossible for Laura to communicate with anyone. Though her punishment was deserved, it seemed worse than the solitary confinement with which they punished criminals, because not only would she be cut off from all human contact, she would also lose all but the roughest impressions of the world itself. Touch, her one intact sense, and now it was thickened and furred almost to nullity by the gloves, an item that on other young ladies her age would mean they were going out for a stroll.

“There, there,” Jeannette said, patting Sarah’s back as she stood up. “You’re a wonderful teacher, but sometimes you must be hard.”

Sarah wiped at her eyes. “How long, do you think?”

Jeannette sighed. “Well, if she doesn’t have to wear them daytime so she can’t talk to anybody, it’s not much of a punishment, is it?”

“Tonight and all tomorrow then.”

Jeannette nodded. “Let’s go round and get them all tucked back in. Then we’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

Sarah looked down at the girl on the bed: the hair wild, escaped from its bun, the white cotton dressing gown hiked up, revealing one painfully thin leg, and the hands, still rigid at her sides, now isolated in gray wool.

Dawn found Sarah still awake, and she rose to meet the day with fresh tears, knowing that last night’s scene would unfold again and again.