Chapter Sixteen
When they arrived home, Father refused to speak about Forrest or any wedding. “I don’t believe it,” Jean said to Mother the next day after Father had gone to work.
“He wants you to be happy,” Mother offered.
“But not to even talk about it?”
“He just needs time to get used to the idea. He wants to be the one to make decisions.”
“But it’s my life, not his.” She slumped in the wingback chair, hooked her leg over the arm and tapped her heel against the upholstery. The bronze Nathan Hale standing tall by the window would remember this: the day Jean Treadway spoke up to her mother. What was The Seeing Eye all about if her life was still going to be so restricted?
The long wait set in. Jean went back to her piano, hoping that the solace of music might fill the void. She worked on “Moonlight Sonata” all that fall. The expression of yearning in the first movement suited her. The second movement was difficult and she became impatient. She couldn’t get it not to sound jumpy. Progress came slowly since Mother was busier than ever with Red Cross and could give her only an hour a day at best. Then for two or three hours more, Jean worked on the new measures, adding them to what she already knew.
She went back to her students at the Girls’ Club and saved the little money she earned. She went back to the Visiting Nurse Association and the Junior League. There were always more bandages to fold at the Red Cross. Icy visited Hickory Hill often. Her husband was fighting in North Africa. Jean understood Icy’s longings now that she too had someone she loved whom circumstances prevented her from seeing. Whatever she occupied herself with during the great wait, she lived under the guarded hope that Father’s innate compassion would win out.
She paced the living room every day when she heard an Ingraham clock strike two. The mail would be coming soon. If Mother were home, she’d be able read her mail right then. If she were gone, Jean would have to wait. Sweet torture. Hearing the letters once was not enough. Sometimes she’d ask Icy or Lucy to read them again. Privacy was sacrificed for the pleasure of hearing again his words, and his plans.
One day after the mail came Jean sat at the piano, hoping the afternoon would go by quickly. “Anybody home?” Mort called from the front door.
“Only me.”
“Where’s Mother?”
“Downtown. At the Red Cross. What’s the matter?”
“I need to borrow some tools from the garage.”
“You sound upset. What’s really the matter?”
Mort hesitated. “Something happened at work. Again.” He sank down on the sofa.
Jean guessed. Other workers had teased him earlier because he didn’t enlist. “Were they at it again?”
“Worse. ‘Boss’s son’ stuff. They said I’m not going to war because Father got me out of it.” He sounded devastated.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Tell that to a bunch of roughnecks.”
“Don’t they know you’re too nearsighted?”
“Doesn’t matter to them.”
Jean knew he’d been despairing over this for months. “The world isn’t always fair, I guess.” They sat quietly for a few minutes. She had never been in the habit of sharing so personally with either of her brothers, but now Mort had told her this. The urgency to hear any letter from Forrest was too strong. She asked him to check the mail.
“Letter from California.”
“Will you read it?”
Jean missed the first few words because of the odd sensation of hearing Forrest’s folksy speech come from Mort.
“‘When a fella’s going to be married,’” Mort read, “‘he’s got to earn his bride.’” It was so funny to hear him say bride. Such a formal word for Forrest. “‘The whole town knows about you, Jeanie. I tell everybody I’ll haul or pitch or muck or load or do any kind of work to earn money because I’m going to marry you, God willing. And they know they’ll get their money’s worth. I’m strong as a bull moose and I’m not afraid of hard work.’”
That was certain. If only Father knew, if he could see Forrest work, then maybe. But that was impossible. Father would never go there.
The letter explained that after his regular day’s work at the ranch, he worked with a friend named Guy hauling hay. “‘After dinner we head east with an empty truck into the desert to alfalfa farms to load,’” he wrote. She imagined with awe the sight of Forrest thrusting himself at the bales. He had to dig hay hooks into each bale and, with a great heave, hurl them up on the truck. “‘I’m learning about trust, Jeanie. Just got to trust that Guy’s up there to catch ’em. Then we head back over Banner Grade in that rickety old truck. By now I know every curve in the road by the sound of Guy grinding the gears. Then we unload at Whiting’s Feed Store in Ramona long about midnight. Earns me $3 each night for more cows and marriage and you, Jeanie.’
“My God, Jean, he’s a storm center of energy.”
“I know. I know.”
“You love him a lot, don’t you?”
“How can I help it? Don’t you see?”
“He is pretty genuine.” Mort chuckled. “He talks like a cowboy.”
“Oh, I think he does that just to be cute. He knows I like it.”
“What do you think Father will do?”
“I don’t know. You know how he is.” Her eyes got teary. “I feel so helpless. All I can do is wait like a child for Father to say yes when I’ve already said it, and meanwhile Forrest is working like a machine.”
Mort gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “Maybe I can say something to him. Just trust a little longer.”
All her life, it seemed, she had to trust. Trust Chiang, trust the arm of a friend, trust her other senses. Now she had to learn to trust something larger, less knowable, less concrete. The only concrete thing she had, after the cactus flower had wilted, was his gold track shoe. She liked to feel its coolness against her wrist. With her fingers she often traced the tiny raised “R” on the side of the shoe.
She worked on the Beethoven sonata for nearly an hour the next morning after everyone left for the day. Her own movement, her piano, an occasional snore from Chiang and a few rumblings from the kitchen were all the big house contained. A feeling of empty space sat heavily on her.
Her fingers relaxed on the keys and then fell to her lap. She reached for the bracelet, fingered over the charms, but couldn’t find the shoe. She went through the charms again. No shoe. She took off the bracelet and laid it out on the keys to count the charms. One short. She felt around the piano. Her hands moved across the keyboard without a sound, exploring the spaces between black keys. She felt in her lap, in the folds of her skirt. She felt along the piano bench. “Chiang, fetch.” The dog, lulled to sleep by the piano, was called into action. Seeing Eye dogs were trained to pick up incredibly small items dropped by their masters. Once Jean dropped a pill box and Chiang brought her not only the box and lid, but nuzzled her hand again, and dropped into her palm a tiny pill. She joined Chiang on the floor and they looked together. Her heart beat faster.
This was no time to trust Chiang only, no matter how good a dog she was. She went into the kitchen and asked Delia to help. Delia traced Jean’s pathway from her upstairs bedroom to the dining room for breakfast and then to the piano. “I’m sorry, but it’s just not here, lamb,” she said. “Ask Lucy to help you look when she comes home. I’ve got to get back to the kitchen.”
Jean sank down into a cushioned chair. There’s more than one way to skin a cat—Forrest’s words echoed in her mind, his voice carrying a hint of smugness, a private pride in accomplishing things simple to others. She moved the piano bench out of the way and kneeled on the floor. Inch by inch she set out to feel the whole carpet, digging her fingers in the nap. It was impossible even to consider writing that she’d lost it. The shoe was too precious to him, too much a symbol of what might have been, for him. Besides, he might think her irresponsible. Chiang fell asleep again. When Lucy came home, she only confirmed the work of the afternoon.
After dinner Jean didn’t write him as she had been planning to. The next day she taught at the Girls’ Club. The next night she couldn’t do it either. Two days later, in the morning, when everyone had left, she couldn’t put it off any longer, so she wrote the letter. Now she had to wait for two things—Father’s approval, and Forrest’s next letter. Jean spent more time at the Red Cross. At least she was doing something there. She went to the mailbox for the next two weeks with dragging footsteps. She wanted a letter but didn’t want to read what it might say. When it came, she could tell Forrest was hiding his hurt. “I guess it’s stupid to think back on those times in high school. We got more important things to think about now,” he’d written. A hollowness settled in her throat. She became restless. She couldn’t stick to her practice. She forgot the measure she was working on and her hands dropped to her lap.
A few weeks later a tiny package came. Jean opened it with trembling fingers. The ring he had promised her. All anxiety vanished. She explored it tenderly. It had a large raised diamond encircled by tiny ones. It must sparkle beautifully. He must have borrowed money to buy it, probably from his oldest sister, Elizabeth, the one he felt so close to. Here was proof she could offer Father. If Forrest could buy her such a ring, he surely could support her. Certainly a ring like that would be acceptable in their Bristol circle even if Forrest himself wasn’t, at least to Father. At cocktail hour she put it on to show to him.
“I don’t want you to wear it,” he said flatly.
“No! I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t wear it. The subject is closed.”
She felt as if someone had thrown a lead weight right at her chest. Her extended hand dropped slowly, and she cupped her other hand around the ring, covering it and holding it close. What was wrong with her? She was a grown woman. Why couldn’t she defy him?
Why couldn’t he give his approval willingly? She didn’t want to wrench it from him. What would the years ahead be like without his approval? Only tension and alienation. Deeply, she wanted him to want for her what she yearned for, but she didn’t even dare to say it. She still lived under his roof.
Every night in her room, she took the ring from its tiny box and put it on while she read a Braille book in bed. Her right hand moved across the line and her left moved down the left margin to keep her place. At the bottom of each page, she allowed her right hand to touch the ring before turning the page.
“Father, I’m engaged whether or not I wear the ring so it’s stupid to tell me not to.” One night in bed she heard her voice say it, though in her mind the voice was hardly her own. “You just can’t let go to let me grow, can you? What are you afraid of? All my life your own precious need to be in control has come first. You don’t shelter. You crush. Where is there real love in that? And you expect me to give up love and life because
you’re
not sure? No, Father, this is one time you’re going to have to adjust.”
She sat up straighter in bed and her heart pounded with the thoughts. Never had she allowed herself even to frame such feelings into words. But could she actually say them, right to his face? She conjured up a picture of her father’s face, not the mouth or the nose or even the eyes, because she couldn’t remember them. All she saw was a scowl, not one of anger but of worry, and after a while it relaxed and she could imagine the eyes—brown and deep and kind. But were they his?
It would be like a dam breaking if she ever actually started to tell him what she felt. That just wasn’t her. Yet. A Polly Gillespie or a Sally Anne could do it. She doubted if Icy could. And what would it prove? That she could hurt him back? His obstinacy wasn’t malicious, only ignorant, misled. If only he would let go without a confrontation.
To go without restraint, to walk out the door onto the brick porch beneath the hickory trees, like Ibsen’s Nora closing the door behind her forever, hearing it latch shut against her placid, sheltered world. The spirit of Nora bore through her chest. She remembered when she’d heard the play at Andrebrook. She smirked. Andrebrook itself was pretty sheltered. She hardly thought Nora could do it, Nora the flittering skylark who seemed at first so contented with being taken care of, Nora whose life centered around new dresses and parties—this same Nora left her safe shelter for what? Nora didn’t know for what. Jean let out a faint sound from between closed lips. Neither did she. The room had grown stuffy and she kicked the covers off a little, eased herself down and rolled onto her side.
In the morning she put the ring back into its box and carefully put the box in the left corner of her top dresser drawer.
One afternoon Icy came to pick her up to spend a weekend in Litchfield. Jean took her up to her room. She opened the top drawer, took out the velvet hinged box and opened it. Icy gasped. “Ssh. Don’t say a word. Wait till we get out to your car.” She closed the box and put it back in the drawer. But what did it matter? She’d already shown it. Quickly, she pulled it out again and stuffed it into her handbag.
Icy and Jean rode with the windows open even though the New England fall was cool. The wind made Jean’s eyes water. She reached into her handbag and put on the ring.
“It’s magnificent,” Icy said. “When did you get it?”
“Last week. Father won’t let me wear it, so you must never mention it.”
“Mum. Won’t say a word.” Then, after a pause, “Only that I’m happy for you.”
“I know.” She felt her throat swell.
“The ash and hickory trees seem like they’re on fire today, Jean. Brilliant red and orange and gold. When the breeze blows, some of the leaves blow off and it’s like the flames are moving.”
“Thirteen years ago, before I knew you, we took this road to Harkness Hospital. It was about this time of year. Mother kept saying, ‘Oh Jean, just look at those trees.’ I didn’t know then that I should have been memorizing a leaf.” She could tell when the car reached the outskirts of Bristol and climbed the gentle hills of the farmland. “Just smell that hay, Icy. We’re passing a dairy or some cows or a barn, aren’t we?”
“Yes, on the right. A dairy. There’s a rust-colored barn sitting out there proud as can be.”
“Oh, it smells so good and fresh and alive and free.” She chuckled sheepishly. “It makes me think of Forrest.” Then she told again of going out to the pasture with Forrest’s seeing eye bull to find the cows. “Why can’t Father understand that I’ll just shrivel up and turn into an old maid here? He can’t accept that I might want something he can’t provide.”