Hidden Places (27 page)

I sat up so I could look into his eyes. ‘‘You’re wrong. You can help me accomplish my dreams. I want to write books. You can read what I’ve written. You can coach me and encourage me when I’m stuck. I value your opinion—even when you’re wrong.’’ I managed to smile, and he smiled in return as we remembered all our spirited arguments about the novels we’d read. ‘‘I don’t think I have the courage to write a book without you, Walter.’’

I watched a tear slowly slip from the corner of his eye and run down his temple. He was silent for a long time as he studied my face.

‘‘There’s a book of poetry over there on my dresser,’’ he finally said. ‘‘Read me the sonnet where the marker is, would you? It’s called ‘The First Day’ by Christina Rossetti.’’

I rose to retrieve the book, then sank down beside him again to read it aloud.

I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If dim or bright the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only I could now recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand—did one but know!

‘‘ ‘Did one but know...’ ’’ he repeated when I finished reading. ‘‘Will you do something else for me, Betsy?’’

‘‘Anything.’’

‘‘Take your hairpins out and let your hair down, then take off your shoes and go barefoot.’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘That’s the way you looked ‘the first day, first hour, first moment of your meeting me.’ Miss Rossetti may not remember, but I’ll never forget it because that’s the day I fell in love with you.’’

‘‘You didn’t! I looked horrible that day!’’

‘‘No, you looked like an angel from a Da Vinci painting—a barefooted angel, quoting Henry David Thoreau, no less.’’ He smiled as he watched me pull out my hairpins. I shook my head until my hair fell loose, then I unbuttoned my shoes and kicked them off along with my socks.

‘‘Does this mean that I can stay?’’ I asked when I finished. ‘‘And that you won’t leave me and go away again?’’

‘‘I’ll agree to let you stay on one condition.’’

‘‘I know—no ‘hovering.’ I’m not allowed to ask you how you’re feeling every two minutes.’’

‘‘Oh, that’s right, ‘no hovering.’ I’ll have to amend that to
two
conditions—‘no hovering’ is one, and the second is that you’ll marry me.’’ I stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘‘You see,’’ he continued, ‘‘I’ll be facing St. Peter at the pearly gates soon, and I don’t want to have a lot of explaining to do about us living here together.’’

I still couldn’t speak.

‘‘Betsy?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ I said in a tiny voice.

‘‘Please kiss me.’’

On the happiest day of my life, I married Walter Gibson. A justice of the peace performed the simple ceremony out by our pond. I went barefoot and wore a crown of wild roses in my bushy hair. Peter served as our best man and ring bearer, having shopped the day before for our two wedding bands. Lydia was my matron of honor, holding baby Matthew in her arms instead of a bouquet, and it was a toss-up as to which of those two bawled the most. The only other person who attended was Father, and he stood around in muddled bewilderment, wondering why a wealthy, intelligent man like Walter would marry someone like me. We honeymooned in our cottage to the accompaniment of hammers and saws as a crew of hired workmen quickly built and plumbed a new kitchen and bathroom addition.

‘‘Hire as many laborers as you need,’’ Walter told the foreman, ‘‘but I want it finished in two weeks. Not one day longer. My bride and I need peace and quiet.’’

They finished in thirteen days. Peter moved into the farmhouse with my father. He walked down to the cottage two or three times a day to help me lift Walter in and out of his wheelchair and get him dressed. Walter also hired a live-in maid named Helen to cook and clean for Peter and my father, and it was a happy ending for everyone when Helen and Peter fell in love and were married, too.

Walter and I settled into a blissful union that few married couples ever attain, even after many years of marriage. He was a tough taskmaster, though, making sure that I spent part of each day writing, but afterward we would read to each other and talk and laugh and love. The workmen built a ramp off the front porch for Walter’s wheelchair and we spent as much time outside as the weather allowed, watching the ducks and geese on the pond, the deer that came to the edge of the woods, the changing seasons in the orchard, and the panorama of stars in the night sky.

One warm summer night as we lay in bed, listening to the frogs and the crickets serenading each other down by the pond, Walter suddenly asked, ‘‘Did I ever tell you about my very first night in this cottage?’’

‘‘No, I don’t think so,’’ I said, nestling closer to him.

‘‘I didn’t sleep. Not one wink. That racket out by the pond! Oh! I’d never heard anything like it! I tore up a perfectly good linen handkerchief and tried stuffing little pieces of it in my ears, but I could still hear that confounded noise. When the frogs finally had mercy and called it quits, your fiendish rooster woke up and started cock-a-doodle-doing! If only I’d had a shotgun! Well, I made up my mind to leave that very next morning. I couldn’t stand another night of all that infernal noise. Surely Henry David Thoreau was never kept awake the entire night at Walden Pond.’’

‘‘What changed your mind?’’ I asked, laughing along with him.

‘‘You did.’’

‘‘Me?’’

‘‘You brought me my breakfast and you must have stayed up half the night yourself reading the book I’d loaned you because you could already discuss it as enthusiastically as if you had written it yourself. You looked so beautiful and fresh and alive, like a sweet, delicious peach picked right off the tree! I decided that I didn’t care if the local fauna did keep me up all night, I was staying!’’

‘‘And I’ll bet you don’t even hear the frogs anymore, right?’’

Walter laughed. ‘‘I wait until you’re asleep before I stuff cotton in my ears.’’

‘‘You know what, Walter?’’ I said with tears in my eyes. ‘‘No one in the whole world ever told me I was beautiful before.’’

He turned to kiss my hair. ‘‘Then the whole world must be as blind as a bat.’’

Peter turned out to be an able carpenter, and since he had little else to do to occupy his time, he began lining the walls of our cottage with book shelves. As fast as he finished a shelf, I would load it with books and Walter would write to Chicago and ask his servants to send more of his collection. One day I unpacked a tattered set of leather-bound journals. Walter had printed his name on the title page and filled the contents from cover to cover with his neat handwriting. I opened the diary to the first entry:

Tuesday, June 23, 1884—Aboard the
S. S. Hibernia
:

I was born to the sea! Everything about it from the salt in the air to the cry of the sea birds makes me feel more alive and invigorated than I’ve ever felt in my life! I longed to pitch in with the men and cast off the hawsers and weigh the anchors as the tugboats nudged us out of the harbor in New Jersey yesterday, but the captain knows that my father is a major shareholder in this steamship line and he was intractable. I argued that I had captained the crew team at Yale, winning the college championship for the Bulldogs two years straight (and sending those despised Harvard boys home in defeat), but he insisted that he would not allow me to do anything that would jeopardize my life or his job. I then warned him that I might one day run the company in my father’s place and I vowed to demote him to cabin boy, but he remained unmoved....

I laughed out loud and skipped ahead to the next entry:

Friday, June 27, 1884—aboard
The S. S
. (Satan’s Ship)
Hibernia:

I hate the sea! Everything about it from the relentless rocking to the savage swaying makes me feel more nauseated and ill than I’ve ever felt in my life! Little did I know when the tugboats nudged us from the safety of the harbor in New Jersey four days ago that they were sending us into twenty-foot swells and gale force winds and a watery grave at the bottom of the sea! I long to pitch myself overboard and end my misery quickly, but the captain still won’t allow me to do anything that would jeopardize my life or his job. He handed me a bucket, threatened to lock me in my stateroom if I didn’t stay below deck, and assured me that I would live to see the port of Southampton, England, in two weeks’ time. If I live to see Southampton, heaven knows I will surely die there because I will never step one foot aboard another ship....

‘‘How did you ever get home again?’’ I asked Walter when I could stop laughing.

‘‘Here, let me see that,’’ he said from across the room. I handed him the diary, then knelt by his feet as he looked it over. ‘‘Ah, this is only my first journal. By the time I survived a derailed train in Europe and a deranged camel in Egypt, the sea seemed tame in comparison.’’

‘‘I didn’t know you could write.’’

‘‘I should hope so. I’m a Yale graduate, you know.’’

‘‘No, I didn’t know that, either. And you used to be the captain of a crew team? What else haven’t you told me about yourself?’’

‘‘The truth is all here in these journals. It’s the unvarnished record of the three years I spent running from the responsibilities of adulthood.’’

‘‘This sounds like good stuff,’’ I said, taking the journal from him again and paging through it. ‘‘Does it tell how you explored new worlds, tamed savage tribes, and rescued several foreign princesses from pirates?’’

‘‘Not that I recall, but your version sounds like it would make a great adventure novel. You should write it someday, Betsy. No, these diaries mostly tell how I was bitten by a variety of savage insects, ate a good deal of very bad food, and traveled by every imaginable conveyance from rickshaw to yak back.’’

‘‘Let’s read these together,’’ I said, settling comfortably against his legs.

‘‘What? And have you discover what a coward I really am? Not on your life!’’

I thought of the unfaltering courage Walter showed every day in the face of a slow, certain death, and my eyes filled with tears. I turned away so he wouldn’t see them. ‘‘You’re the bravest man I’ve ever met, Walter. And we’re going to read these journals cover to cover. You’re going to take me with you to all these places because that’s the only way I’ll ever go there.’’

Walter was a gifted storyteller. As summer turned to fall, I joined him on his exotic adventures in the jungles of Africa, the rain forests of Brazil, the pyramids of Egypt, and the gold fields of Alaska. His journal entries triggered even more memories, and I quickly scribbled them down in my own brand of shorthand as he reminisced. When he sent for his collection of National Geographic magazines, I saw photographs of many of the places he’d described. I had once dreamed of traveling around the world like Nellie Bly—now I traveled the world with Walter in our little cottage by the pond.