In the evening they listened to music in Jean’s bedroom and talked of Lorraine’s two boyfriends.
“Which one do you like better?”
“Don, I guess.”
“How come?”
“Mm, I guess it’s because I talk to him more. It’s just easier to be with him.”
“I can’t imagine what it would be like to have one boyfriend, much less two. I’d probably forget which one I’d said things to.”
Lorraine let out a quick, two-note laugh. “That has happened. Sometimes I catch myself just in time.”
Jean sighed. “That must be heavenly. Just so you don’t forget which one you’ve done certain things with. Don’t feel badly about this, but you sort of remind me of the maids. I mean, they really live, have men and adventures instead of, well, like me.”
“But what about Andy?”
“That’s nothing. I hardly know him.”
“I heard he’s taking you to the dance next week.”
“Doesn’t count. Someone arranged that.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Mother mentioned something once about his mother going to DAR, too, so I think it was the two of them. I could tell the moment he asked me. He sounded so formal and he cleared his throat first. What’s he look like anyhow?”
“He’s a dreamboat. He must be over six feet tall.”
“I can tell that. His voice comes down from the ceiling.”
“And he’s blond. And he smiles. Well, the way he smiles is sort of like he knows you like to look at his smile, so he does it, just to make you happy.”
“Won’t move me.”
“You’d know he was smiling. It’s so warm it’d burn you if you stood close. He’s everybody’s dream hero, Jean. Just enjoy it.”
Jean gave a sharp little grunt. “Let’s go have some cocoa.” She stood up and Lorraine followed her down the stairway. “The cook’s upstairs, so we’ll have the kitchen to ourselves. I really can’t cook, but I can make cocoa. Delia taught me.” She led Lorraine into the kitchen.
“Have you always had a cook?”
“As long as I can remember. Oh, sometimes Mother cooks on Delia’s day off. Or on Sunday.”
“And always a maid, too?”
“Usually we have an upstairs and a downstairs maid. Most of the help we’ve had are Irish. Mother gets them fresh from Europe and trains them. The first cook I can remember was Swedish. Amanda. She always wore a white cloth wound around her head, I don’t know why, and she swore in Swedish whenever it came undone. I wish I could remember the words. They sounded cute, not bad or ugly at all. Then I could say them and nobody would know.”
“Did you like her?”
“Yes, but I felt awful once.”
“Why?”
“Lucy and I came in here one night for a snack and I smelled something rotting. Vegetables, I thought. I held my nose and burst out, ‘What’s that awful smell?’ But it wasn’t food at all. It was her feet. Lucy said she only had one pair of shoes and they were too small. She’d cut out the canvas tops, and her toes were lapping over the front edge. I just felt sick. I went back upstairs and didn’t even eat what she gave me.”
Jean felt along the edge of the counter for the row of ice box doors, opened the third one and stood in the coolness a long time before she found a milk bottle. She edged her way to the rack where pots and pans hung, holding her hands high as she sidestepped in front of them, then felt for the right sized pan and unhooked it.
“We’ve had Delia for years. Her pans are always greasy, but I like her. She scuffs around in some kind of felt slippers. See that dinner gong in the passageway?”
“Yes.”
“You can make little melodies on it, like chimes on a pipe organ. When we got Delia, I showed her how to play a tune. It sounded lovely, but it only lasted a few days. After she stayed a while, she just gonged us to dinner. I think she must be 110 years old.”
Jean poured in the milk. Then she felt her way to the pantry. “She’s good, though. She always puts the cocoa and sugar right here on this shelf, level with my waist.” Jean reached right for the two containers and set them on the counter. She felt for a spoon from the spoon drawer, found the cocoa tin again and dipped in the spoon, then touched the hollow of the spoon to make sure it was full. She dipped and touched four times, dropping the cocoa into the saucepan each time. Then she did the same with sugar. She stirred it tentatively and carried the saucepan to the stove. The task absorbed all her attention and for a moment, she didn’t talk. She turned a knob and the far right burner ignited. She lost the pan a moment and had to sidestep along the counter until she found it. Then she put it on the burner. Odd, she didn’t feel any heat yet.
She made her way to the cupboard, brought back two cups and saucers, then sat down at the kitchen table to wait for the cocoa to heat. Lorraine stopped talking. Jean heard her shift her weight in her chair. She scooted it back, then scooted it forward again.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think you put the pan on the wrong burner.”
A cloud descended, black as ever. “Oh.” She moved haltingly when she stood up to change it. “No wonder I didn’t feel the heat yet.” She couldn’t help her voice cracking.
They were quiet while the cocoa was heating. She heard Lorraine move in her chair again and wished she would say something. When the cocoa was ready, Jean brought it over to the kitchen table slowly. “It’s good,” said Lorraine. Jean’s mouth made nervous little movements she couldn’t control. She felt public, naked. It was as if she were a cripple and Lorraine had stepped into her bedroom uninvited when she was wrestling to get upright and out of bed.
“Don’t feel bad, Jean. It’s not so important. You always handle everything else so well.” Jean warmed her hands around her cup and tipped her head down, as though she was looking at her cocoa. “In fact,” Lorraine added, “I don’t see how you do what you do.”
Her voice sounded so earnest that Jean thought she had aged in the space of a few minutes. She didn’t know what to say but wanted to talk more and about something else. “Lorraine.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think Miss Jennings chose you to tutor me?”
“I’m not sure, but she lives near my aunt over on the other side of town, you know, by the river. I guess because of that, she knows my background a little. Maybe she thought it would be good for me, build up my confidence.”
“I can’t believe you need to feel better about yourself. You already have two boyfriends.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, really. I don’t have the things I—the things you have, here. Not things exactly, but advantages. My family isn’t like yours, Jean.”
Jean took a sip of cocoa and felt it warm going down, felt its comfort. “You know, at the beginning of high school when you walked me to school, I didn’t quite trust you. That was stupid of me. I mean, I didn’t know why you were—”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“But why did you come all the way over here to walk with me?”
“I was curious, I guess. About how you did things. How you got along. It was just interesting to me. I thought it would be nice to have a friend who was different.” Her voice became softer. “At the time I thought maybe you could come to need me. But actually, I guess I needed you.” It was a courageous thing to say.
“Funny. I always felt I was the one who constantly needed someone else.”
Jean felt Lorraine’s arms around her. Something turned liquid inside her. She hadn’t been hugged by anyone for a long time.
After a few moments Lorraine tapped her cup gently against the saucer. “Can I have some more cocoa?”
Chapter Five
Jean went to bed that night feeling a rare contentment, as if for those hours, in spite of the trouble with the cocoa, some burden had been temporarily lifted. She had grown to like Lorraine even though she wasn’t part of the Hill. In fact, she felt more comfortable with her than with Louise Barnes or any of the Hill crowd except Tready.
It was puzzling. Cousin Tready had style, sophistication, and Lorraine obviously didn’t. It occurred to her that she never really knew how Lorraine dressed. It probably wasn’t stylish, like Tready. If it weren’t for other people, she would enjoy being with Lorraine just as much, but Lorraine wasn’t popular. Tready was. And fun, too. Anyone on the Hill could be sure a party would be lively if Tready would be there. And if Tready were invited, Jean probably would be, too.
It wasn’t that Jean wasn’t invited to Hill parties on her own. She was, sometimes, but she knew why. The girls’ mothers made them ask her. She could tell when a voice carried the barely discernable off-key tone of obligation. She felt it as the sour taste of insincerity. What was worse, Mother made her go regardless of how the invitation was delivered. “It will be good for you, Jean.” Good to feel like a wallflower, she often muttered to herself.
With Tready, though, she felt lighthearted acceptance. She could ask her anything, silly things that she’d never ask Lorraine. Lorraine would take them too seriously.
“Will you teach me how to put lipstick on?” she had asked Tready when she was fifteen. And Tready stood behind her in front of a mirror and pretended Jean’s lips were her own.
“Tell me what I look like,” she said when they were finished. “I mean compared to others.”
“Well, your skin’s clearer than a lot of other girls. And you’re shorter than most, smaller too. Petite.”
“Tell me honestly, Tready. Do l look like a goon in the clothes I wear?”
“Oh no, Jean. I’d tell you if you did.”
“Am I, am I—?” Maybe her eyes made her awful looking.
“Are you what?”
“Am I average?”
“Better than that, silly. Stop worrying.”
It had satisfied her some then, but now, two years later, she still wondered. Maybe she always would. Maybe that was just part of being a blind woman.
One Saturday toward the end of high school, Jean asked Tready to teach her how to iron a dress. “I’m almost eighteen years old and nearly out of high school and I still don’t know. Every time I ask Mother, she just says, ‘Oh, Jean, just let Mary do it. It’s simpler.’ So Mary gets more work and I can’t practice. Will you?”
Tready let out a sigh. “It isn’t hard. Even a dunce can do it. Okay. Someday.”
“Let’s do it now. It’s Mary’s day off.” Armed with a dress already worn once, Jean led Tready to the laundry room.
“Well, let’s see. The flat skirt part is the easiest. You just start there.”
“In the middle?”
“No, I guess not. You start at the hemline. You can find that.” Tready laid the dress on the ironing board and Jean explored it with her hands and found it two layers thick.
“I think I remember seeing something hanging down.”
“Uh, I guess so. Sleeves or something. Then you work your way to the top, up to the collar. Then you go out and do the sleeves and end with the cuffs.”
“Sounds wrong to me. Come on Tready, tell me. Have you ever ironed anything in your whole life?”
“Not a scrap.”
“You ninny. Why didn’t you say so? Move over. I think you start at the top.”
Jean couldn’t wait for an occasion to surprise everyone. On Mary’s next day off, Jean picked a cotton shirtwaist from the pile of clean clothes and tried again, this time beginning at the collar. It was hot work, but her zeal was hotter. She burned herself twice trying to find the iron after she’d set it down. She wrestled with it for half an hour and when Delia gonged for dinner, Jean put it on and went downstairs.
“How do I look?”
“Fine,” Mother said absently. A match struck against a matchbox.
She’s lighting candles, Jean thought. She isn’t even looking. “I ironed this dress myself,” Jean announced in a voice bigger than normal.
“You what?” Lucy squawked.
“It looks lovely.” Mother’s voice was more direct.
Lucy didn’t say another word. No one said anything for a few seconds. Even Mort stopped talking to Father about the stock market. Mother must be shooting everyone one of those don’t-you-dare-say-a-word looks that she remembered from childhood. She tried to smooth out the skirt with her hands. It must look awful, but they aren’t telling me. She sat down quickly next to Mort. After a few minutes he leaned over and whispered, “I’d be proud to have you as my date.”
Eventually, Jean asked Tready the big question. “Will you teach me how to smoke? I don’t mean just for play, like when we were kids, but smoothly.” Learning to smoke, to hold a cigarette with utter casualness and still be careful—surely that would make her one of the Hill girls.
Her enthusiasm was tinged with nervousness. In the upstairs bathroom with the door closed, they sat down on the floor. They’d never done it in the house before. Tready lit a cigarette and put it between Jean’s index and third fingers. “Hold your fingers straight and crook your wrist back, like this.” Tready moved Jean’s hand into position.
“Ouch. Why?”
“It looks better that way. More sophisticated.”
Jean dragged on the cigarette and choked. “It still tastes brown.”
“Brown?”
“Like dirt,” she sputtered. “Awful.”
“Don’t inhale. I never inhale. Just take a little draw and blow it out.”
“Jean drew in another time, cautiously, and blew out the smoke.
“Hey, don’t aim for me, Jean. Blow the smoke up, not out.”
“Sorry.”
“People sometimes do it in a puff just before they’re going to say something. It looks intellectual.”
Jean tried it. “Like that?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how you’re going to know when to flick the ashes, though.”
“I can remember every few minutes. How do I do that?”
“Tap it with your index finger after you’ve found the ashtray.”
When they finished most of the cigarette, Jean put the butt in the toilet, opened the window and tried to wave out the smoke. They arrived late for cocktail hour in the library, a trail of cigarette smell following them.
“What have you two been doing?”
Father must know already. The tone in his voice told her that. “Smoking, Father,” she said cheerily. Maybe he’d be impressed with simple honesty. His glare burned through the darkness. How did he find out so soon?
“I don’t ever want you to smoke again until you’re eighteen.”
“Yes, Father.”
But she did anyway, and swore Tready to secrecy.