Days passed and Christmas was approaching. She wrote to invite Jimmy to Hickory Hill. He didn’t answer. Vincent brought in their nine-foot tree. The two years before, she and Jimmy had decorated it together. She and Lucy did it this year. The maids hung greens under the chandelier in the stairwell. Jean still didn’t hear from Jimmy. She resigned herself to a “family only” Christmas. The whole Ingraham family, nearly twenty of them, came to noon dinner. They started with clam chowder and proceeded to baked scalloped oysters, turkey, ham, and the traditional New England Indian pudding made with corn meal and molasses. It seemed tasteless this year.
A few days later, Japan bombed Manila. Jean wondered what Jimmy felt about it. He’d been born there. She wrote to ask him to a New Year’s celebration at Hickory Hill. He didn’t respond.
On New Year’s Eve Mother and Father had an Ares and Ain’ts party. Years earlier Yale alumni from the Bristol area developed a private bridge group centered around Father, Mr. Yale himself, lifelong treasurer of his class of 1910. The club was called The Ares and The Ain’ts because, as he explained it, “Some of us are married and some of us ain’t.” Usually Ares and Ain’ts evenings began with a black tie dinner of four or five courses with printed menus. Then they’d adjourn to the living room for bridge and eventually end up in the grill room in the basement, a large room for entertaining fitted up like a British pub with furniture upholstered in deep red velvet. Though the Ares and Ain’ts were conversationally polite at dinner in the dining room, and dead serious about bridge in the living room, they usually raised a storm in the grill room late at night.
Just now, well before the midnight hour, they still occupied the living room. Laughter and music and singing spiraled up the stairway. Champagne corks popped. Glasses tinkled. Jean sat up in bed above the party in a flannel nightgown reading Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca, the wide Braille book spread out on her lap. Mother came upstairs. “Do you want a chicken salad sandwich and some ice cold champagne?”
It tasted good and it was kind of Mother to remember her when so much was going on downstairs, but the interruption made it hard to go back to her book. Her hands were cold, and she tucked them under the covers, giving up reading for a while. She wondered if all of that—the parties, the life with a husband and family, entertaining friends—would ever be for her. Would she always be an Ain’t? Was God only going to give her a piece of life? Would she always be an observer of someone else’s living? An observer. The irony made her smirk. Why was it so wrong for her to imagine and long for the domestic life of an ordinary woman, a life others took for granted?
She pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly and ate a bite of her sandwich. Her eyes blinked. If it is to be, it wasn’t going to be with Jimmy. That was obvious. She hadn’t heard from him for two months. Maybe he was spending New Year’s with that girl at the train station. That mother was more than friendly. Overly familiar, she’d call it. Definitely out to nab him for her daughter. If she could tell the designs that woman had on Jimmy just by her voice, then surely Jimmy must be able to tell, too. But men are stupid sometimes.
Maybe he had felt, all along, the silent disapproval of Mother and Father even though they were properly polite. But proper didn’t always mean genuine. Maybe he realized that Hickory Hill wasn’t for him. Maybe—and this was harder to face—he foresaw that she would become a burden to him. Years might make his extra solicitations grow wearisome. If that could happen, he might eventually resent her. Then she wouldn’t want him either. Her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to see into the future. She pursed her lips.
Where was there a person who could share her life without adopting her limitations? A person who would see her as whole? A normal life had been so close with Jimmy, but when it came right down to it, other routes must have looked easier to him. There was no denying it. Life with her would be different. She was different. Oh, yes, she’d had many advantages. She’d been to the capitals of Europe. She’d heard the world’s finest musicians, read the world’s greatest literature. She never lacked for anything. But she had never eaten a meal cooked with her own hands. Where was normalcy at Hickory Hill?
If Jimmy wasn’t going to give her a natural domestic life, she’d have to do it for herself. They had told her that much at The Seeing Eye, loud and clear on the first night. She’d have to cut her own meat or she’d go hungry. Now here was the bigger picture. She’d have to buy it and cook it, too, or she’d go hungry in a far deeper way.
The words she spoke in her mind jangled again, “If Jimmy wasn’t going to give her a natural life….” There it was—the deeper flaw that would make her permanently dependent, “give her a natural life,” as if Jimmy or any man was going to take the place of Father, providing her with life. Her blindness wasn’t making her feel dependent. Father was, unintentionally—she granted him that—and unconsciously, simply by his enormous need to be provider and to have her continue accepting in meekness. It was in that arena she’d have to struggle free. The test wasn’t on the streets behind Chiang’s harness. It was in her mind. She remembered Miss Weaver’s adamant voice, “Of course you can, Jean.” Look at Miss Weaver. She never married. Marriage was no guarantee of a normal life. And look at the wide world Miss Weaver claimed as hers. Jean’s heartbeat quickened at the possibilities. She reached for the rest of the sandwich and realized she’d eaten it all without noticing.
The first three days of 1942, it snowed continually. Jean opened her bedroom window, leaned out and stuck out her tongue to feel the snowflakes, when she heard Mother call her from downstairs to read her mail. There were two letters. Only one was addressed to her. The other was addressed to Mrs. Treadway, postmarked Summit, New Jersey. She heard Mother open it, but she didn’t say anything. “Just read it,” Jean said.
Mother cleared her throat. “This one’s written to me but it’s really for you. It’s from Jimmy.” Mother’s voice sounded odd. “He’s asking me to explain to you that it wouldn’t work, and that it would be better for both of you if you didn’t see each other any more.”
It started as a sharp wince, then surged up through her chest. Her throat shrank into a taut line. “He wrote that to you?” Her voice shook. “Why couldn’t he tell me himself?” Why did he wait so long, letting me go through the holidays not knowing what happened? All the good times, the laughter and the dancing, Jimmy’s funny singing, all this couldn’t make up for such a cruel, bungling way to end it.
Jean held on to herself while Mother put into her hand two small items. They were cold. She fingered them for a moment. Her ring from Bristol High and a tie pin she’d given him the Christmas before. Slowly she closed her fist around them. In her other hand Mother put the letter. She crumpled it into a ball.
Mother began to tear open the second letter.
“Later.” Jean raced out of the room and ran up the stairs, stumbling at the top one even though she hadn’t needed to count them for years. She rushed to her room and pulled the door shut. She flung herself down and hugged her pillow, burying her face in it. She knew she’d been preparing herself for this. On New Year’s Eve she’d confronted it, but that had been intellectual then. Now it was really and truly here. She wrapped the pillow around her ears so that Mother wouldn’t hear her wail.
After a while she noticed her neck and shoulders, even the muscles in her face, were tense. Where was Vic Gulbransen with his soothing hands now? Jimmy never touched her like Vic had. She imagined again Vic’s penetrating fingers loosening her tightness. Then she had felt like a woman. Jimmy only touched her so safely. He didn’t treat her with the deep regard she felt Vic had. He didn’t even treat her as a human being. Writing a letter to her mother—that denied she was even real, much less a woman. What insight did that show? Only cowardice. Talk about a sighted man! Her face felt tight.
An Ingraham clock ticked. Every other tick seemed to have a higher pitch. She put her hands over her ears. The clock took no notice of the magnitude of this hour. It ticked as it always had. As it a
lways would. Even now, on this winter afternoon, time would already, minutely, begin to diminish the sharpness of the moment, like the snow she remembered rounding the angles of Hickory Hill’s roofline. She half recognized this in the part of her mind that was still thinking objectively. Minute by minute her body relaxed. She discovered her fist tight around the crumpled letter and she loosened her grasp. She smoothed it flat and then methodically tore it in two, then in fourths, eighths, and even once more until it was too small and thick to tear again. She stretched across the bed, found the rim of the wastebasket, and let the pieces fall.
What a stereotyped reaction, she thought, throwing myself on the bed as if I were enacting some melodramatic opera role. She found a handkerchief and blew her nose, then lay back down again.
Maybe she was at fault for allowing herself to think she and Jimmy could have a good life together. Maybe she loved him simply because there was no other. Jimmy was always there, gallant and fun but what more? Her imagination had made him into the perfect mate, but how was she to know whether in the years stretching ahead he was the right one?
She lay there a long time without moving. She may have fallen asleep. She wasn’t sure. When she drew her face away, she was startled for a moment to feel two wet spots on the embroidered pillow slip. Then she remembered.
The next day Mother reminded her of the other letter. Jean asked to hear it. It was from California. Apparently, Forrest had been having a difficult time, too. His father had died. He told how several years earlier when he came home one day, his mother ran out the front door crying, “Come quick. Daddy’s dying.” At his father’s bedside, in a desperate desire to help, Forrest had poured out his love for his father—how he appreciated him, respected him and needed him then more than ever. His father fell asleep and woke up the next morning nearly recovered.
The letter said he came home from work again recently and his mother ran out to him with the same words the second time. “I talked to him like I did before, but he was too far on his way and didn’t hear me.” The letter ended with the sentence, “Love alone is Life.”
Jean carried the letter to her room. It hardly seemed like it was from the same person. The other one seemed so childish, sheepish, jerky. It was written by a boy. This one showed so fearlessly and innocently a well of feeling, freely displayed. Here was a man. Maybe an unsophisticated man, but a man willing to share. Maybe his whole family loved so openly. What could she say to this person she didn’t even know? Strangely, she felt his loss draw her from her own.
A few weeks later she wrote to Dody who was back home in California. Forrest’s artless sharing had aroused her curiosity. The morning after she received Dody’s reply, Jean made an announcement at breakfast. She’d rehearsed it well the night before. “Chiang and I are going to California to visit Dody and her friends.”
She heard Father put down his paper. Jean took a swallow of juice and faced straight ahead. This time, she didn’t fear his reaction, but was only amused by her imagination of his face.
“Jean, you’ve got to be here on Valentine’s Day for Mort’s wedding,” Father said.
“Oh, I will be. I’ll leave after that.” The feeling that she was finally taking charge of her own life gave her voice new authority.
Mother put down her fork. Her voice was firm and measured. “I think that’s lovely, Jean. It will do you good.”
Chapter Thirteen
In San Diego, Dody’s family lived close to the sea. Her family’s Spanish-style house with a tile roof wrapped in a U-shape around a central patio with a fountain, palm trees, and honeysuckle vines so sweet the air was heavy with their scent. Jean felt the tree trunks, rough and different from any tree she’d known, not like a tree at all but pitted like deeply carved cork. So this was California—fragrant blossoms, tropical trees, an ocean breeze, and being outside to enjoy it all even in February.
In the patio with Chiang snoozing, Jean and Dody talked steadily until Dody mentioned Jimmy. Jean braced herself. She knew it would come up sometime. “I have something to tell you and then I don’t want to say any more about it. He sent a letter to Mother saying it would be better if we didn’t see each other any more.” Then she waited for Dody to change the subject. She was determined not to carry that grief across the continent to ruin her trip. This was her first great adventure all by herself with only Chiang to rely on. Leave Jimmy on the east coast, she’d told herself. This is California.
“Did you ever write to Forrest Holly?”
“Once.”
“Do you want to meet him?”
“Would it hurt your feelings terribly, Dody, if I told you I didn’t come all the way across the country just to visit you?”
Dody gave her a quick hug.
The next morning Dody phoned Forrest who lived thirty miles east in Ramona. “Jean’s here. Do you want to come to dinner soon?”
Apparently his answer was enthusiastic; his sister Alice dropped him off that afternoon. Dody led him into the living room and introduced him. Jean stood up and turned toward the direction of “Glad to meet you, Jean.”
“Hello.” The word caught in her throat. How stupid, she thought. Speak up. She held her hand out as she always did but no other hand grasped it. She moved it to the right and then left. Still nothing. Then she raised it and it touched the back of his. In a momentary scramble, their palms met. She giggled nervously. His hand was large and warm. The skin was rough but his touch was gentle. He smelled like leather.
“Wish I’d heard from you two last week. I just got back from fishing in Guymas. Caught half a gunny sack of halibut. You could’ve had some.” He certainly didn’t wait for formalities. Maybe this was the western way.
“Where’s Guymas?” Jean asked.
“It’s on the gulf, the mainland side.”
“Of Mexico?”
“No. Of California, but it’s in Mexico.” He spoke easily in what she presumed was a western cadence. His voice was rich and mellow.
“Is your ranch near Mexico?”
“No. It’s in the foothills northeast of here about an hour and a half. We raise milk cows. Also have twenty head in pens. Some are veal calves, some steers. We feed ’em on corn we grow on rented acreage.”
“I thought you raised turkeys.”
“My brother Lance does. In fact, he’s Turkey Judge.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing much. Judges turkeys is all. He rides with my sis in his western duds in Turkey Day parades.”
Tready was right. He did sound like a hick.
“I ride, too,” he continued, “but not in any parades.”
“Where?”
“All over the valley and in the foothills. Mostly with Alice, but sometimes not. Horses know their way and I can remember a lot.”
“Do you ride a horse whenever you need to go anywhere?”
“No. Used to. Now I have Shasta.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s my car. Used to drive her myself, but now my Indian buddy drives for me.”
“Why do you call it—her—that?”
“B’cause sh’ hasta have gas and sh’ hasta have oil.”
Dody groaned. “I thought Shasta was a mountain.”
“I thought it was a horse,” Jean said.
“No. That’s Snort. Can you ride?”
“I did a little at school in New York.”
“Western?”
“No. English.”
“Well, then, I think Dody ought to bring you out to the ranch and we can take a little ride. I’ll teach you to ride western. Whaddya say?”
“Okay,” she said weakly. Her mind flashed to Andrebrook and the controlled riding ring. She hadn’t ridden since, but to say no would be to close a door that was being held open for her. Miss Weaver would push her right through it. “Of course,” she said more loudly. “I’d like to.”
With Dody keeping the conversation moving at a good clip, dinner passed quickly. Jean did not feel unhappy or uncomfo
rtable the whole evening, only curious. Too soon, it seemed, Alice returned to pick him up. “See ya’ Tuesday, Jeanie,” he said, and then he was gone.
As soon as Jean heard Dody close the door, she asked, “What’s he look like?”
“Oh, about six feet tall with dark hair and a high forehead. He always wears sunglasses. He stands differently than most men, with his chest out as if he’s ready to do battle with the world. He keeps his head high. I’ve noticed it more lately. Sometimes he looks like a man fighting against becoming cowed by life’s troubles. Other times he looks like a boy just grown into a man’s body. He’s kind of lanky.”
“Is he handsome?”
“Jean, you’ve never asked that before about any man.”
“Quit teasing. Tell me.”
“Do you think I’d introduce you to some dud? Apparently before he lost his sight all the Ramona girls were crazy over him. Built up his ego. Too much, Mom says.”
It wasn’t an easy drive to the little backwater town near an Indian reservation. There was no way to get there without crossing some mountains. On the winding road past the town of Escondido, Jean couldn’t anticipate the turns and had to brace herself with both hands on the car seat. Her back was tense and her arms became tired. “My stomach’s doing flip flops,” she said.
“It’s the road,” Dody said.
“I’m not so sure.” She opened the window to get some fresh air but only smelled diesel from a truck ahead. “It’s pretty warm for February.”
“This isn’t New England, you know.”