Helen Keller in Love Read Online Free

night air and suddenly mixed with the scent of sulfur and cigarette smoke.
    Itilted my head toward the swing. Peter was in it, surely, slouched into the swing’s cotton cushions, his fingers on the cigarette as he inhaled the smoke.
    “Now,” Annie said when she came back across the porch and took my arm. She led me inside the hotel’s heavy front door. “He’s far enough away so we can talk.” She sped me across the lobby, and as we rounded the corner by the coffee shop I stiffened. Through an open window Peter’s scent of smoke drifted toward me as we passed. I wanted to stop there, but Annie hurried me toward her room, all the while talking as we walked rapidly down the hall: “If you give money to Germans—
Germans
, Helen, even blind ones—the press will have a field day. I can see the headlines now: ‘Helen Keller, Traitor.’ Then who will come to hear our talks? We get paid to do them, remember? We get paid by the number of tickets collected at the door. Helen, come on. We barely have enough money to make it back to Massachusetts at this rate. If you give money to Germans, believe me, it will be much worse.”
    I turned to move farther down the hall to my own room, but Annie squeezed my hand harder. “What’s going on?” she demanded, leaning against the doorjamb of her room. “What gave you this idea?” When I said, “Peter,” she leaned forward. “Why did you talk about this with him first, and not me?” Her voice under my fingertips slightly oily, the color of dark.
    I felt the whoosh of air as she pushed open the door to her room. The scent of the coffee cup she’d left on her bureau mixed with the tang of her leather suitcase just inside the door. “Watch your step.” I knew Annie was sloppy and she warned me about her clothes on the slippery bare floor, and with her hand looped in mine, she kicked the clothes aside, led me in, and rapidly closed the door. “Stay here.” She crossed the room to the small desk sitting by the far window, came back, and said, “Look at this. I’ll show you how crazy your idea is.”
    She hadscooped up a loose sheaf of papers from her desk and now handed them to me. “Helen, listen.” She read them quickly. The top letter said, “American Investment Warning: Stocks at a Loss, Balance Zero.”
    Then Annie said, “Listen up, Helen. If people stay away from our talks and our stocks keep falling …” She paused. “We won’t be able to keep our house more than another few months.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it,” I said.
    But Annie pulled my hand as if to shake me. “Face facts, Helen. Your father stopped paying me my salary twenty years ago, when you were ten years old. He was supposed to pay me until you were eighteen, but you know his will made no provisions for my salary. And you didn’t get your share after he died, even though your sister and brothers did. We’ve paid our own way since you were twenty-three, by God knows how many lectures, your books, that yearly money from Carnegie and Sterling. But it’s different now. I have this damned cough day and night. You may have the strength to cross the country still, six months of the year. But Helen, I just don’t.”
    At that moment her cough seemed like a retreat. Some place safe where she could stop living our life, ignore our troubles, and just be alone. From the open window by her bed came a breeze so cold it tightened my chest, but I kept Annie’s hand in my own.
    “Keep this in mind. Peter will cost us plenty. But we need him here if I’m too sick to work.”
    At the mention of Peter’s name I wanted to run from Annie’s side, just to be near him.
    But Annie’s scent of defeat called me back.
    She led me across the room to the bed by the windows and sat down.
    I turned toward her. “Stay with me,” Annie told me. “It’ll be all right. It’s probably just a scare.” But I pulled my hand away and moved to the window facing the porch. Its glass cool under my fingertips. The