“Jean, if you think Jeannette Antoine is good, then you think that,” Mrs. Eastman said flatly. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Hold your ground. Your ear is as good as anyone’s. Later if you change your mind, that’s okay too. Say what you think even if it’s different from what others think.”
She liked that in Mrs. Eastman, that spunk. After Mrs. Eastman went to bed, Icy and Jean huddled on the floor wrapped in a blanket tent to catch heat through the furnace grating from the family below. “Your mother is so easy to be with. I bet you can talk to her about anything.”
“Just about.”
“Sex?”
Icy nodded.
“I’ve never discussed sex with my Mother. It’s not just that she’s a New Englander. She’s always so distant, about everything.”
“Your mother’s very much a lady.”
“Even to Lucy and me. Maybe I’d be too embarrassed to talk to her anyway. I’d be curious about something, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.”
“So, ask me. Not that I’m an authority.”
Jean’s questions poured out: What does making love feel like? What does a man’s organ look like? How do you know whether you really love a man? How do you know when you’re pregnant? Can you have sex when you’re pregnant?
“I feel so naïve not knowing this, but what kind of women have sex appeal? I mean, is it only physical qualities or is it some kind of aura?”
“Both. For some men it’s more subtle, how you move, how you look at them, what you say.”
“That I know.”
“For others, the more simple-minded, it’s just the size of your breasts.”
“Well?”
“Quite adequate, silly. Especially since you’re so petite and have a small waist.”
The Eastmans were a liberating influence. Mother and Father didn’t take too well to these intimate visits with a family outside their social circle, but Jean went anyway. “I like them,” she protested gently. She knew what she really meant, though she would never say it to Mother. The Eastmans filled a need left empty at Hickory Hill.
Few of Jean’s other friends were in Bristol. The Hill crowd was in college or already married. Occasionally she spent a Saturday with Lorraine, playing piano together at Hickory Hill, but that wasn’t often because Lorraine was busy with two jobs, saving to get married. Once they went to a Saturday matinee of
Gone With The Wind
. They sat in the last row and Lorraine described the action to Jean in whispers. By the end of the movie, Lorraine was hoarse and both girls were shaken.
“You look pretty bleary-eyed,” Bill said when he picked them up.
Jean groaned. “We feel like we’ve been though the war.”
“The burning of Atlanta, all those war casualties, birthin’ babies. No wonder our eyes are red,” Lorraine said.
“Here, ladies, hand over your hankies. Let me ring them out.”
“Quit teasing, Bill. Ginny would have cried, too,” Jean protested, referring to Bill’s fiancée.
“But wasn’t Clark Gable divine?” he said, mimicking her.
“No!” they wailed. “He left her!”
“You mean you didn’t like it, all that passion and sugar- coated history?”
“No. We loved it,” they said, laughing at themselves.
Occasionally Dody spent a weekend at Hickory Hill. Vassar wasn’t too far away. Sometimes Dody got dates for Jean with men she met at West Point mixers. Once after Dody had been home in California for the summer, she burst into Jean’s room and sat on her bed.
“Jean, I met this man at home.”
“So, what else is new?”
“Listen a minute. He lives in a little town east of San Diego called Ramona, or something like that. I think he lives on a ranch.”
“A cattle ranch?” Jean took out a file from the vanity to do her nails.
“I’m not sure. Turkeys maybe.”
“You can’t be serious.” Already it sounded foolish.
“That’s not the point. The point is that he lost his sight too. Something about a high school football accident. I didn’t ask. He went away to college to study dairying or some farm thing, but had to quit when he lost his sight completely. He’s back at home now and he thinks his life’s a ruin. He’s over the worst of it, but still.” Dody paused. “Would you write to him?”
“Me? Why me?” She hadn’t anticipated the question.
“Oh, Jean, you know. You’ve been through it all and you know what it’s like. You can read Braille and type and play the piano. Your life hasn’t stopped. He needs to hear about that, that a normal life can be possible. Will you write to him?”
Jean got up from the bed and turned on the radio on the round table by the window. Benny Goodman was playing. She fingered the tassel on the drapery pull and stood as though she were looking out across the terrace. So Dody thought her life hadn’t stopped. And all this time she felt like she was waiting for it to begin.
“What would I say to him?”
“Just what you’re doing. Music. The Red Cross. You know, teaching that girl to speak.”
Jean moved to the closet and felt through her dresses. She pulled out a short-sleeved blue shirtwaist with a peter pan collar to wear to dinner.
“What’s his name?”
“Forrest Holly.”
“Sounds like some kind of plant.”
“Jean, just do it. How can it hurt you?”
Dody was a good friend. Jean didn’t want her disappointed or annoyed with her. Friends were too valuable. She remembered how, right after she lost her sight, she was so afraid she’d never have friends again. “Leave his address on my desk.”
Jean still saw Sally Anne, too. Ever since Andrebrook days Sally Anne invited her to dances in Jersey and talked continually about men. “You’ve got to live a little,” she kept telling her. Sally’s boyfriend Don had a friend, Jaime, and the four often went out together. Vincent would put Jean on the train near Bristol and she’d get off at Grand Central. Sally Anne would be right there at the platform. Sometimes Don was with her. Sometimes Jaime. One day it was Jaime alone.
Jaime was Spanish, born in the Philippines, and he lived at the YMCA in Summit, New Jersey. One thing could be said for Jaime—he was attentive. When Jean was at Harkness again for a cataract operation, Jaime visited her every night. She’d never had attention like that before. It made her feel buoyant. At least she had Jaime to think about. “When you get out of here, Jean, I’m going to take you dancing,” he said. “We’re going to dinner first and then to the Chanticleer and they’re going to play ‘I’m in the Mood for Love.’” She wasn’t sure whether his attentiveness softened the negligible results of the surgery, or whether she was so used to disappointment that it just didn’t penetrate. Instead, her mind was on their next date, an evening at Rockefeller Center with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in
Top Hat
. They often went dancing, and since Jaime was Latin he really knew how to lead. And since Jean was so sensitive to touch, she knew how to follow. They danced well together.
Eventually, Jaime visited Hickory Hill. “Father isn’t entirely thrilled about any man named Jaime,” Jean told Icy after his first visit. “To him, appropriate men are not named Jaime or Rudolfo, but George or Stanley or Robert, or anything you can say without having to roll your ‘r’s’ or clear your throat.” She began to call him Jimmy at home, but when they visited the Eastmans, he was Jaime again. Jean knew her parents didn’t wholly approve because he was Catholic.
“It’s not that we have any prejudice against the religion,” Mother explained. “It’s just that the serving people in Bristol are Catholic.”
Mother’s attitude made her graciousness to Jimmy false, to Jean at least. Jimmy didn’t seem to notice. He loved the Treadway hospitality. He basked in it. Hickory Hill was far different from the YMCA. Still, the Hill was formal. Stuffy even. Jimmy liked the weekends they spent at the Eastmans better. Except for the coupe. Whenever Jimmy came to Hickory Hill, Father let him use the Packard convertible coupe. It was Yale blue.
Once, driving home from a dance at Farmington Country Club, Jimmy sang a song from
Top Hat
. He put his arm around her, pulled the Packard up the circular driveway and gave her a quick, familiar kiss on the forehead before he turned off the engine and got out. He swung around quickly to open the door for her.
“My lady.” In an extravagant gesture she could only guess at, he offered her his arm and ushered her to the door, humming all the while. Inside, everyone was asleep. Even though it was early morning, Jean wanted to preserve the mood a little longer. “Let’s have some cocoa. I can make some.”
They turned to the right, through the maids’ sitting room to the kitchen. Jimmy still sang softly that he was putting on his top hat. She was quite sure he didn’t own a top hat, but it would be unkind to ask him. Father had several.
Jean felt along the counter for the third ice box door. She found the milk and reached for a saucepan from the rack.
Jimmy executed a few fancy turns with an imaginary dancer, his heels clicking on the kitchen tile.
Jean walked over to the food cupboard and reached right for the cocoa and sugar. Delia hadn’t failed her. Then back to the spoon drawer. She poured milk into the saucepan, keeping her finger over the lip to feel how much she’d gotten. She kept pouring and pouring but didn’t feel the level of the milk. Surely she had enough. She poured more.
“‘I’m steppin’ out, my dear, to breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with class.’” He turned from his imaginary partner. “Jean, stop!” The milk spurted out in little spouts and dribbled down her dress and onto the floor. “That’s not a pan. It’s a thing with holes.”
“A colander? Oh no,” she wailed.
Quickly he pulled her away, grabbed the colander, put it in the sink and began to laugh.
Why did something have to happen every time she made cocoa for someone else when she did it fine for just herself?
He toweled off her dress and took her in his arms. “Wee Mouth, don’t worry.” He chuckled again, tenderly. “It just looked so funny, little squirts of milk coming out in all directions.”
“I guess it must have.” His kisses took away the pain of inadequacy, and she laughed a little too, settling into his embrace. She knew he was good for her because he treated her naturally and he explained things. And his attentions made her feel womanly. She must surely love him. He was comfortable and fun.
One afternoon Jean was playing “I’m in the Mood for Love” on the piano. Mort brought in the mail. “Letter for Jean,” he announced.
“From Jimmy?”
“No. From California. It’s typed. Badly.” She didn’t want to be teased so she just took it without comment. She kept it unopened on her dresser. When Tready visited a few days later, she asked her to read it.
“‘Dear Jean Treadway, You probably know that Dody Rollins asked me to write to you. I don’t much know what to say. I live in a little town called Ramona in California. It’s a ranching town but there aren’t any real big ranches around here. Our little 20 acres is called Rancho de los Pimientos because of the pepper trees. My brother Lance raises turkeys. I have one brother, four sisters and some cows.’ This is a scream, Jean. Who is this guy?” Tready asked.
“Keep reading.”
“‘I have a flea bitten old gray gelding, too. I named him Snort because that’s how I know where he is. My sister Alice and I ride all over the backcountry on dirt roads to visit cattle ranches and Indian reservations and arroyos. That’s a Mexican-style canyon.
“‘The Boss, that’s my father, raises pea fowl. We used to have a porker named Bessie Belch because she did, until the depression made us slaughter her, bless her heart. Maybe you’d like to write back and tell me about you. Forrest Holly.’”
Tready handed it to her. “The typing’s terrible. I could barely read it. Who is he?”
“Just someone in California Dody wants me to write to.” She felt for the wastebasket with her foot and dropped it in.
“What do you know about him?”
“Not much.”
“You going to write back?”
She shrugged. “What are you going to wear to the dance at the club?”
Weeks later when Jean was bored and no one was home, she sat down to type Forrest a letter. She had promised Dody, so she had to. It would have to be read to him. She wondered who would do it. His horse? Not knowing what to say, she started lamely, telling him about Lucy and her two brothers and Mother and Father. “We’re a nice family, and we’re happy, but we’re not too smart. Don’t you read Braille?” It was a short letter.
At least she could tell Dody she did it. When Icy came to pick her up that night to go to Litchfield, Jean took the letter and address and asked Icy to address and mail it.
At Icy’s house, Mrs. Eastman hugged her at the door. “We have some great news for you. I made Icy promise she wouldn’t tell you until you got here. Did she?”
“No. What is it?”
“We read in the paper last week about a new system for guiding the blind. They use trained dogs on a harness. Have you ever heard of that?”
“No.”
“The blind person can feel the slightest hesitation of the dog when there’s danger.” Icy talked fast. “It’s just been brought to this country a few years ago and is being taught at a place called The Seeing Eye in Morristown, New Jersey. You have to go there for a training period of several weeks.”
“We couldn’t wait to tell you. Why don’t you get one?” Mrs. Eastman asked. “It would be just the thing for you. Then you could go around town yourself.”
The idea was astounding. Three times Jean asked Mrs. Eastman to read the clipping. “I don’t think Father would approve.”
“Jean, some day you’re going to have to stand up for yourself, for your own opinions and needs.”
She knew Mrs. Eastman was right. The next week she had another letter for Icy to address and mail. It was to Morristown.
“What did your father say?”
“He doesn’t know. This is just an inquiry, Icy.”
“Mom will be proud of you.”
Soon Jean learned that there were two things Father didn’t want. He didn’t want her writing to some poor blind cowboy in California and he didn’t want a dog. On both counts she had spoken too much. She knew he acted on some stupid fear that she’d get entangled with people of a lower social class. She’d felt it with Lorraine all along, and now she felt it with Jimmy. Tackling both of Father’s objections at once would be too formidable. She chose the one she cared about.