Helen Keller in Love Read Online Free PDF

“Okay,” he said after I told him Annie was too sick to take me on stage that morning, and that I needed him with me, well, all day. “We’ll trot over to the café, have a bite to eat, then do your show.”
    I paused, but he didn’t seem to notice. I felt him flip his wrist to the side, and guessed he was checking his watch. “Right, we have enough time,” he said. “I’ll get ready, then we’ll shoot over there.”
    Still I didn’t move.
    “Or, maybe you’ve had breakfast?” I stood stock still, and he paused.
    “How would I get breakfast without Annie, or you?” I finally said. “The waiters don’t know fingerspelling, and I can hardly read the menu or tell them my order, you know.” I smiled, but I could feel in his fingers the realization that I really couldn’t go out and do the simplest things on my own.
    “Well, let’s get on it,” he said, and strode off toward the stairs. The
carumph
of his footsteps receded from me in a rapid
tap, tap, tap
, and then, as I leaned against the doorjamb, they came right back.
    “Another blunder.” He gave me his arm. “I lead you, right?” And when he stepped off quickly down the hall and led me out into the day, the weakrays of early sun fell on my bare arms. We crossed the bumpy grass toward the restaurant and the scent of waffles and hot coffee, the mist of the distant lake rising in the air. When I tripped over a thick root sticking out of the grass, Peter clumsily grabbed my arm, lifted me back to my feet, and said, “Don’t even think of saying it.”
    “That cliché?” I said back, eager to feel the sinewy warmth of his arm as I hung on.
    He sped me across the grass. We got to the restaurant and he pulled out a chair for me, its metal frame sending a tingling up the backs of my legs as he dragged it across the floor. He said, “Yes, don’t say that cliché.”
    “About the blind leading the blind?” I tucked my napkin into my lap, hungrier than I’d ever been.
    “That would be the one.”
    He slid a menu across the table to me. I felt a sudden vibration as he pushed his chair away from the table. “Nature calls. Pick out whatever you want. I’ll order when I get back.” I felt his footsteps receding, and I picked up the menu, its creased edge pin sharp in my grip.
    Waiting. The curse of the deaf-blind. Not only couldn’t I read the menu myself, I also couldn’t ask one of the waiters to read it for me, either. Menus weren’t in Braille, and the waiters—like most everyone—didn’t know the manual fingerspelling language I used. So I tapped my feet, sat up straight, and pressed my hands into the cool tabletop, waiting for Peter’s footsteps to thud across the floor so he could translate the menu.
    I sat taller, to suppress my impatience. It was infuriating, this waiting. I was thirty-seven years old. And like a child, an infant, really, I was at the mercy of others. Hour after hour of my life was spent waiting. Waiters brushed past my chair, the scent of raspberries and sugar trailing from their trays as they passed.

    “Onward, missy.” Peter returned, scented of pine soap, and when he pulled out his chair he sat close to me, his leg brushing mine. He picked up the menu.
    “Readit?” I spelled cautiously into his hand.
    “Yes, ma’am. Even the descriptions.”
    I leaned forward.
    “If being your private secretary is this much work, you’re going to have to pay me extra.” His voice hummed through my hand.
    “I’ll pay whatever you want.” I pressed my fingers closer to his lips. I couldn’t wait to taste the pancakes with wild blueberries, pockets of flavor in my mouth.
    Over breakfast we practiced my talk, until the bell clanged its metallic
thong
into the air at ten and Peter led me across the grass to the Chautauqua tent, all the while saying he didn’t know why the American flag hung so easily over the tent when we were approaching war.
    That morning he and I bounded up the three wooden steps to the makeshift