What Is Visible: A Novel by Kimberly Elkins Page A

with the blinds, who pester me for news of the happy couple. Julia has gotten very stout, I say, while Doctor is lean as a pistol. Perhaps she steals his food. The baby, the baby, they all want to know, and I stand and show them how I held her in my arms, nuzzling her angel face against mine. The girls grab at my elbows as if I really do hold the child. “She is a fairy baby,” I sign to them. “I felt her tiny wings concealed beneath her traveling gown. We are fortunate to have such a creature among us, but none of you are allowed to touch the child. Only I can hold my fairy sister, Julia Romana.” Tessy and the older girls laugh and say they don’t believe me, and caution the others that my words are not true. But they are, and the best of the children will know that in their hearts.
    Tessy grabs my hand and writes, “I will tell you the secret.”
    What secret? Who is she to know more than I?
      
    Late that night, after everyone is asleep, I slide along the wall to Tessy’s room and slip into her bed. I touch lightly the back of her neck and she stirs, turns over. She gives me her hand.
    “Tell me.” I feel her stretch and yawn, the breasts beneath her cotton gown rubbing against me.
    “Sure?” she writes onto my palm, held close to her face, and I tap her hand.
    “Doctor put his thing in Julia to make the baby,” she says.
    “What thing?”
    Her silky hair whips across my face. “Down Pozzo’s belly. Big thing on some of the horses.”
    I have scratched low on Pozzo’s belly and also accidentally touched on a horse that fleshy, unnatural hose, but Wight said it is how they relieve themselves.
    “Animals,” I remind Tessy. “Different.”
    “All men have,” she writes and traces a long shape down my wrist. I shake my arm to rid myself of the tingle of the loathsome drawing.
    “Animal!” I tell her again. Doctor has no such thing and I should know better than anyone; countless hours I have spent in his study, sitting on his lap, my arms around him, and there was nothing of dog or horse on my dear Doctor!
    “Foolish,” Tessy says, and I want to slap her, but at the same time, her hand is so warm in mine, her chin nuzzled against my neck. How I wish I could sleep with her every night! Or any of the girls, for that matter, even the ones with lank hair or those I do not like, but Doctor won’t allow it. How could he understand how endless the nights are, how terrified I become in the complete stillness that I will never again feel the touch of another human being. I do not believe Tessy’s story, not for one second, but I cannot resist the sweetness of this moment for my body’s sake. Maybe I am an animal too.
      
    The next morning I prepare for Doctor. I choose the blue dress, his favorite, though it’s grown a little tight. I keep my dresses in careful order by color so I’ll know which one I’m picking.
    He makes me wait outside his study door, and I lean my head upon the frame, and as the minutes go by, I begin to knock my temple against the wood. Doctor is back! Doctor is back! is the rhythm I tap into my skull, harder and harder, until he opens the door and I almost fall in.
    “What on earth?” he writes and pats at my head.
    I apologize and take my usual seat, moving my chair up close.
    “You are well?” he asks.
    “Very grown.”
    “I see. Proper young lady.”
    It must be the corset; nevertheless, I am pleased that he sees that I am so different from the colt he left nearly two years ago. He fills my hand with his travels as he mouths them, allowing my fingers to float in front of his lips so that I can feel the different forces and velocities of the puffs of air as he exhales the names of places I will never touch: “London,” “Rome,” and then in a warm fluff of breath, “Paris.” “Paris,” he says again—he knows the exquisite pleasure that the rushing air of any P gives me—and in my excitement, I rub my fingers against his lips. They are slightly dry and