For the first six weeks, they ate at Mother Holly’s. Before breakfast, sometimes, Alice read a Bible lesson to Forrest. Jean didn’t know what to do when this went on. After she learned the way, she walked by herself a little later each morning so she’d arrive after they finished. While they ate, Forrest and Mrs. Holly and Alice talked about people they’d known for years. The threesome was as tight as a new acorn. After meals Jean wanted to help clean up instead of acting like a guest. The first time she tried to dry the dishes, Alice said, “Oh, Jean, just let me.”
“But a member of the family would naturally help.”
“Oh, yes, but I know where everything is. Then we can get it done faster.”
Jean was left standing in the middle of the kitchen not knowing where to put the plate in her hand. She felt like a newcomer they could do without. She knew she could do it, though. Washing dishes couldn’t be that difficult. There was no mystery about it. It would be different in her own kitchen, but in the meantime, she felt in the way.
“Why don’t we eat breakfast, at least, in our own house?” she said to Forrest one day.
“What would we eat?”
“Oh, dry stuff. Crackers and such. And I can make tea on the oil stove.”
“It’d smell like oil, Jean.”
“But it would be ours.”
Eventually they did.
Until her kitchen wares arrived, there was little for her to do, so she often went with Forrest to check on the cattle and the young calves in the rented acreage of Ramona’s back country. Usually Alice would drive, but when she was busy, Mrs. Holly would have to. Roads were rutted dirt and she tasted dust the whole way. The truck cab was an inferno of heat. The crook of her elbows, under her arms, her palms and the back of her knees were moist, so the dust stuck. Alice loved the adventure of careening around the back country, but Jean saw that it was a ruggedness Mrs. Holly could do without. She was a timid driver so she bumped over gullies, braked too late and hesitated around curves. Jean had to keep her hands braced firmly on the seat on both sides of her. When the truck jerked and Forrest felt his mother hesitate, he’d growl, “Just step on the gas and let her go!”
“Forrest, just because you don’t see it, you think there’s no danger. I do what I have to do.” Sometimes that would send Forrest into a pout. She’d never seen this side of him before, and it gave her a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. What would prevent his impatience and gruffness from being directed at her?
The second week in October the Bischer Truck Line arrived with barrels and crates and her piano from home. It was a great day. Forrest hired two boys on leave from the war to help unload. Jean unwrapped each piece with affection, putting an Ingraham clock on the piano, folding satin slips in her dresser drawer, arranging crystal on an upper kitchen shelf, plates and cups and saucers on lower ones. The nesting instinct was strong, and she sang as she fused the things of her Hickory Hill past with the containing structure of her new life. She thought her things brought a grace to the bare cabin, though their elegance was probably out of place in this western cow town. Still, it made her feel like a bride.
The next day she asked Alice to take her to a grocery store in town. She was to be a real wife after this. After studying Mother Holly’s cookbook, she Brailled a list of foodstuffs and, arm in arm, Alice and Jean walked the aisles of Willard Butters’ Ramona Cash Grocery. It took forever to gather all the food. She tried to hurry but Alice didn’t seem impatient. When they were through, Alice guided her to the counter. “Mr. Butters, this is my brother’s new wife, Jean,” Alice said.
“Well, hello, Mrs. Holly.”
The words caught her by surprise. That was her, she told herself. “Hello.”
“I heard Forrest went east to pick out a bride. Pretty big doings for Ramona folk.”
After he totaled the bill, Jean fumbled in her handbag and held out some money. Nothing happened. She was used to the instant of hesitation in conversations with store clerks as they noticed her blindness. That was common. But this wait was longer. What was so astounding? Only that they both were?
His hand was gentle when he took her money. “If you’d like, ma’m, you can just phone in your order and I can have my boy deliver it to you each week, that is, if you’d like. It’d be an honor for us, ma’m.”
“Why thank you, Mr. Butters.” She turned her head in his direction and smiled. She wanted her face to show she was grateful.
In the afternoon she studied the cookbook again and that evening she cooked a meal for the first time in her life.
“What did you make?” Forrest asked as he sat down, his child voice full of admiration.
“Fish and mashed potatoes and spinach,” she announced in triumph.
After a few moments of silent eating, she discovered all. The spinach was burnt, the fish was too dry and the mashed potatoes watery. “It isn’t your fault,” Forrest said softly. “You shouldn’t take it on yourself.” She managed to eat it, and heard his fork against his plate from time to time, but when she rose to take the dishes to the sink, she found his plate heavy with food. Her face flushed hot with anger and embarrassment. Even though he hadn’t complained, leaving her brave efforts untouched was the same thing as being cranky about it. Probably just as well that he couldn’t see her face.
“How much did the groceries cost?” he asked.
He had to ask, didn’t he. “Forty-five dollars.”
His silence rankled as much as his refusal to eat. She knew that was nearly the amount the state gave as his monthly support, but she couldn’t help what things cost. “I had to get lots of staples to start us out. It won’t be so much the next time.”
“Still, we’ve got to eat by ourselves and be a normal married couple.” He said it as if to himself and then was quiet while she made her way back and forth from the table to the sink. “I’m going to sell another calf. Food for food. Maybe I’ll have to sell one every month for a while until—No.” In that one word his voice fell as if a heavy idea had descended. “Sell Snort instead. Snort’s for pleasure. The calves are for business.” The counter was closer than she expected and she bumped into it, clattering a teacup into the sink. Her concentration had been broken.
She learned many things in the next weeks—that Forrest refused to eat what wasn’t to his liking and that he told her so, that ovens burn arms and elbows, potatoes in potato bins should be counted because forgotten ones begin to smell, pans and spoons get lost because unseen, heads get smashed on open cupboards, relatives come uninvited and announce that ants have invaded kitchen counters, dinners get cold waiting for husbands still outdoors, and forty-five dollars’ worth of food doesn’t last forever. But she also learned that Forrest’s velvety voice meant “come here, honey”, that his whistling as he moved around outside gave her a warm reassurance of his presence, that snuggling in bed at night made the troubles of the day recede.
We’re living on burnt hamburger and hope
, she typed in a letter to Icy.
And so this was life, the Ramona version of Hickory Hill’s damask dining room of tinkling crystal and Ares and Ain’ts conversation. She could entertain here too, she thought one day not long after her initiation into cooking. It would be like fresh air to have someone other than Forrest’s family. She invited Dody and her current naval officer boyfriend to dinner, and she called Willard Butters to order a flank steak. She wasn’t quite sure what one was, but she remembered Mother telling Delia to order one once. She had no idea what it would cost, either, but this was to be her coming out, so to speak, and she wanted it to be special. After all, Dody had been instrumental in putting her where she was. Her fingers searched the cookbook to find what to do with this thing called a flank steak.
By midmorning the sucking dry October winds from the desert to the east had begun. Dust settled over everything so she closed the windows. She thought this must be a Santa Ana, like that Indian Earl Duran had said. What had he said? “Suck milk right out of a cow’s tit.” She chuckled to herself. The house became stifling so she had to open the windows again. She would dust right at the last moment before Dody came. Other cleaning could come first. She started with the bathroom, wiping up the floor and sink and toilet and bathtub, but how was she to know if they were really clean? It would be an embarrassment if they weren’t. She could go ask Alice to look at it for her.
With Chiang leading, she stepped out of the house into the dry mountain heat. She squinted in the brightness and her eyes watered a little. Chiang sneezed from the dust. They passed the tom turkey pen right by the house. It was her responsibility to fetch Lance or Forrest immediately if she ever heard the toms fighting, but how was she to know what turkey fighting sounded like? They were always squawking. She didn’t want to alarm the men and then be embarrassed by calling them for nothing. Forrest said that if a rattlesnake got into the pen, the toms got around it in a circle and mesmerized it by a low clucking until someone would get rid of it. Right now the sounds were just squawks and flapping wings, no clucking as far as she could tell, so she and Chiang walked on by. She wondered what Chiang would do if she saw a rattlesnake. No matter how thorough Lee had been at The Seeing Eye, she doubted that he’d trained Chiang for that. All she could do was walk and listen.
The route along the one lane dirt track to Mother Holly’s was familiar to her by now. Nearly every day she thought of some reason to walk the pathway. It was the only time she got out, and Mother Holly and Alice were the only people she knew. She could tell by weeds brushing her legs if she aimed too far to the left or right. The heat baked right through the soles of her shoes. Fine grit blew against her face. She kept her eyes closed as she walked. Dust blew in under her eyelids anyway, and she still felt the glare. The wind caught a newspaper in a tumbleweed and it crackled across her path. “Alice?” she called when she thought she was close. Chiang led her to the door and Alice came out, cheerful as she always was. On the way back, they stopped at the barn to pick up empty milk bottles and money from the box where neighbors had left it after taking fresh milk that morning. Jean’s job was to sterilize the bottles each day.
In the house Jean showed Alice the bathroom. “Is the bathtub clean?”
Alice hesitated. When she spoke, her voice was a threadlike vibrato. “No, Jean. There’s a horrid ring.”
“Oh, I thought I got it clean.” She felt her shoulders slump.
“I’ll do it, if you like.”
“No, I’ve got to learn.”
“Here, put your hand here.” Alice stretched Jean’s hand over the ring. “You can feel the dirt. It’s not as smooth as the clean area.”
She felt a gummy line. Mother had never told her how to clean. In fact, she doubted if Mother had ever cleaned a bathtub. She couldn’t tell Alice that, though. There was much to learn, and Alice could help, but she shouldn’t depend on her, or on Mother Holly or on anyone too much.
Jean had no time for her piano that day. She made a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and sank down on the picnic bench. A fine covering of dust skinned over her lemonade. By the time she bit into the second half of her sandwich, the peanut butter had glued together two boards of dry, stiff, tasteless bread.
In the late afternoon, Jean was cutting turnips in the kitchen when Mother Holly came in.
“Who who?” It was her usual greeting, like a mockingbird, lyrical and loving. “Jean, I just got some tomatoes from Heddy’s garden. They’re big luscious ones, ripe today. I thought you could use them tonight.” She put them in Jean’s wet hands. “Oh, Jean, Forrest doesn’t like turnips.”
“Yes he does.”
“But he’s never eaten them.”
“He’s going to eat these.”
“You should just cook what he likes. He used to say to me to find something he liked and cook it for him every night.”
“I’d eat whatever was put in front of me if that was what had been prepared. Even if it was scorched spinach.”
“He likes things that go down easily, puddings and smooth things.”
“Last night I made mashed potatoes for him. Again. He took two bites and said ‘I won’t eat this.’”
“You shouldn’t take it to heart. He’s always been a finicky eater.”
“Because he was allowed to be. Before dinner he eats handfuls of peanuts and then he won’t eat what I fix. I can’t tell him not to eat peanuts. He’s a grown man, not a boy. But he’s going to eat these turnips or go hungry.”
Mother Holly said nothing more. Jean felt her gaze. Maybe she’s realizing I’m right, Jean thought. Maybe she’s recognizing that her indulgence of him has made it harder for me.
“Things will get easier, dear.”
“Thanks for the tomatoes.”
Anticipating the meal with Dody brought back the feeling of closeness they had shared years ago. But how could she achieve even a semblance of Andrebrook style on a redwood picnic table in the kitchen? At least she could move it into the living room for the evening and serve the meal in courses. She began to drag it across the floor, then had to turn it on its side to get it through the doorway. As soon as Forrest came in the door she’d have to tell him she moved it.
Dody’s presence when she arrived that night with her new man brought a touch of the old life back, but it also made Jean aware of the tremendous breach she had crossed in coming west. Dody seemed so much more polished than anyone out here. The salad course went smoothly except for Chiang snoring.
“When I first heard that snore on our honeymoon, I got worried,” Forrest said. “Then I leaned down over the foot of the bed, and when I learned it was coming from there, I was relieved.”
Here he goes again, Jean thought. She got up to get the next course from the oven.
“That varmint wouldn’t let me get close to her for weeks with all that whining and howling and carrying on. She wanted to be in bed with Jeanie and have me sleep on the floor.”
That might have been funny the first time he said it, but he was so pleased with himself for thinking it up, that he’d said it to everyone by now. She leaned down to get the steak out of the oven where it was warming. He had no right to tease me about Chiang who’s been so good to me. She pursed her lips, stabbed the meat with a fork and plopped it on a serving plate. It landed off center and, unbalanced, it flipped off onto the floor. Jean gasped.