What Love Sees

  What if she hadn’t moved her head? Or gotten out of bed? Would it have made a difference? She had to know. Her lips felt dry and she moistened them but she still couldn’t ask. She didn’t want him angry with her.

  He just sat there without moving, his weight making her bed dip down. Her hand grew hot and sticky in his and she pulled it away. In the quiet she felt his helplessness cross the space between them, a feeling entirely new to her, and she understood that he was genuinely sad. For an instant everything else slid away and she felt sorry for him because he had to tell her he had failed.

  “I’ve seen a lot already. Twelve years.” Then it all rushed at her. She felt her bottom lip quiver, her eyes water, and she turned away. Why wouldn’t he just go away so she could cry or scream or do something—she didn’t know what. She held tight onto herself until she felt him get up from the bed.

  How was she to know when she was actually alone? Anybody could be walking by the doorway. She didn’t always hear their footsteps. It was like she still had the bandages on. Nothing seemed real. Not even this.

  After a while there were muffled voices in the corridor. She strained to listen.

  “I can’t believe it. She didn’t cry or anything when he told her. Just sat there like a stone statue.”

  “What did you expect?” That was Nurse Williams. “You don’t really know her defeat just because she doesn’t scream it. Let her be discreet about her grief. It’s the New England way.”

  She felt watched. She slumped down in bed and pulled the covers over her head.

  What did they expect? Screaming? Father would expect self-control. Just like his own. And Mother? Mother always said there was a reason for not expressing things that hurt. There might be less to feel. Maybe she could crowd it out by knowing she had behaved well.

  What this would do to her life, she was afraid to guess. She could still go to dancing school. But why? Bobby and Don wouldn’t ask her to dance, now. She felt stifled and shoved down the covers. Well, she could still go skating on the pond. You don’t need a partner to skate. And if somebody helped her, she could still climb the apple tree. But she was never going down Kelly’s Hill on a ripper again, or even on a sled. That was too scary even when she could see.

  Some things wouldn’t change. She still wanted to smoke in secret, that was sure, but with real cigarettes. She would ask Tready. Cousin Tready was a year older and she smoked Old Golds that she snitched from her father. She would ask her. Play cigarettes were kid things anyway, and kid things seemed foolish to her now.

  That night, Nurse Williams kissed her goodnight and it shocked her. Miss Williams’ fuzz on her lip tickled. She must have a moustache. The thought made her cry a little there, right in front of her.

  “Now you try to go right to sleep, Jean.”

  “Was it sunny or cloudy today?”

  “A little cloudy. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She pulled the covers up under her chin. “Good night.”

  She wondered if the last day she had seen was sunny or cloudy. She wished she knew, but she couldn’t remember. It was horrible that she couldn’t remember.

  When Father and Mother brought her to Harkness in the cushiony back seat of the Packard limousine five months earlier, it was fall. Then she could still see enough to know that Connecticut was blazing with orange and gold. Mother kept saying, “Look at the trees, Jean. Just look at those trees.” She wished she had.

  Now, a month after Dr. Wheeler took the bandages off, she rode home with her canary and cage wrapped in blankets on her right and her typewriter in its bulky case on her left. “It’s snowing a little,” Mother said. She heard her mother’s voice as if for the first time. The words fell delicately, just like the downy whiteness she imagined falling along the roadside. She didn’t answer. She was studying a new alphabet. Her fingers inched across a stiff, perforated page.

  Bobby still brought her flowers and she tried to do things with Sybil but she felt awkward, young and old at the same time. It was embarrassing to ask to be with her, like she was asking for a favor. Instead, she spent her time learning to type and to read the six-dot Braille cell. In a way she had not expected, the world was new again. Home was still cozy, but different. The terrace roses below her bedroom window smelled sharper. The Ingraham family clocks chimed louder and reverberated longer. A bronze statue of Nathan Hale stood on a pedestal in the library. That first winter she noticed how cold the bronze was. When summer came the figure attracted the heat from the bay window and she could barely touch him.

  But the world was smaller than ever before. It consisted almost entirely of Hickory Hill. From the moment she arrived home, not a piece of furniture was ever moved. Her first need, Nurse Williams told her, was to relearn home, to sense the length of the staircases, the route from her bed to the bathroom, the distance from the twin grand pianos at one end of the living room to the fireplace at the other. It was forty feet, but how much did forty feet feel like? She paced it off. The polished wood of her piano felt smooth and cool. She held her hands in front of her and walked until her toes touched something hard. She smelled ashes and reached forward and felt the wood paneling of the fireplace.

  She remembered the first time Father had shown them the new house six years earlier. On moving day she and Lucy raced their brothers across that room and screamed when they beat the boys. Since then the living room had lost that spirit. Now it contained gentle conversation of Mother’s reading club, teacups placed carefully in saucers, her own piano practice. No more races. No more screaming. Now the only laughter in the living room tinkled as in crystal goblets. It didn’t roar. The sounds felt comfortable to her now.

  The dining room, too, gave her a feeling of warmth. Whenever she walked in, she smelled flowers. Her place was at Mother’s right so Mother could butter the toast and set it on her butter plate at breakfast. It would always be there. She could count on that. If something were missing, Mother would step on the buzzer under the Persian rug. Mary, chattering like a blue jay with Delia in the kitchen, would cut off the gossip mid-sentence when she slid around the Oriental screen into the room. It often amused Jean. She remembered how proper and serious Mary tried to look in her gray moire dress and white apron, and wished she knew what she had been talking about.

  Father, always in a suit and tie, read the paper at breakfast. “You know that’s discourteous, dear,” Mother would say, but he read anyway, except when he was making announcements. Father always made announcements. “This summer we’ll visit Aunt Anna in Switzerland,” he’d say. Or, “I bought a farm yesterday, children. Now we’ll always have fresh milk.” Or, “Bill will apply to Yale next year.” And then he’d go back to reading without saying another word.

  Once, several months after coming back from Harkness, Jean reached for her milk but moved too quickly. Her glass tipped away from her and spilled before she could catch it. She gasped. Father’s paper crackled and Mother sounded the kitchen buzzer.

  “Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?” Father said.

  “Mary, get something to wipe this up,” Mother said, her voice calm. “She will. She’ll be more careful next time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jean mumbled. How could he have said that? She knew why. It was nothing new. He wanted to treat her just like everyone else. Eventually, she learned to reach for her glass slowly, not quite walking her fingers across the table, more like gliding them while touching the tablecloth lightly.

  One morning more than a year later, Chanteur was singing loudly right behind Father. “Can’t even concentrate to read in here with that bird screeching.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. “He sounds pretty, Father.” She swallowed. She wasn’t used to contradicting him.

  “You like birds, don’t you, Jean?” he said, less a question than an observation. “I think you’ll like the camp we’ve chosen for you this summer. It’s in Vermont and there’ll be plenty of birds in the woods.”

  “Is it a camp for
blind kids?”

  “No. Just a girls’ camp.”

  “Will Lucy go too?”

  “No, she’s going to Cape Cod.”

  “But how can I?”

  “You will.”

  Then she heard him turn the page.

  Camp? He hadn’t even asked her.

  Chapter Two

  “I like to walk behind you, Jean,” Icy said.

  “Why?”

  “I like to watch your feet pick out the path.”

  “Must look pretty silly.”

  “No. I just like to watch it. You’ve got small feet. They look like hands in mittens.”

  “Trying to find a pea.” Her hand rested on Ellen’s shoulder in front of her as the line of girls hiked through the woods. She felt the earth harden beneath her feet. That meant rocky ground might lie ahead. Time to concentrate more. She didn’t think she walked much slower than the other girls, only more carefully and probably less gracefully. Walking was a matter of trust, different from the trust she felt toward people. It was more a dependence on herself, a trust in her own new awareness. If she didn’t concentrate all the time to pick up the clues, she stumbled. And that, of course, was different than the others.

  She heard twigs cracking under foot and the sound of dry branches scraping against someone’s jacket. “Hold them out for that blind girl,” someone up ahead told Ellen. It sounded awful, “that blind girl,” as if she was something to stay away from, something that didn’t have a name, as if just because she couldn’t see that meant she couldn’t hear either. A breeze made the skin on her arms tingle and she shivered. Birds chirped in the trees. “What kind of birds are those?” she asked.

  “Robins and maybe wrens,” Icy said. “Finches, too, I think. They make that high little chirp, fast, like old women gossiping.”

  “They sound like piccolos to me,” said Jean. Suddenly, like a whip, a twig snapped across her face. “Ouch!” she cried. It stung and made her eye water. She gulped air and lost her footing, but stumbled ahead quickly in order to keep her hand on Ellen’s shoulder.

  “Sorry.” Ellen’s voice was breezy.

  That word, so casual, stung her, too. She blinked her eyes and wiped away the wetness. This was the third time today. Why couldn’t Ellen—or anybody—remember? Unless, of course, she let it happen on purpose. That was too awful to think—that people could be like that. Just let Ellen try walking through the woods blind and let’s see what she does. It hurt to swallow. She tried to think about something else—about how the woods smelled fresh and piney. When Icy walked ahead of her, though, it never happened. She could relax more then. If only they were walking in a different order.

  Off to the left she heard other voices. “Hi-lo inni minni kaka, um chow chow, oo pee wawa, ay-dee, ai-dee, oo-dee, you whooo?” The Camp Hanoum call. It sounded pretty silly, she had to admit, but kind of musical, too. She joined in when the girls in the line chorused back. The chattering up ahead increased, sign that two pathways merged.

  “We’d better hurry,” someone said, “or Luddy will be upset.”

  Mrs. Luddington gave a piano concert once a week and she didn’t tolerate latecomers. Secretly, the girls looked forward to the big cry. Every week Miss Throstle, the singing teacher, sang the same soppy love song. They all mopped their eyes appreciatively each time and joined in on the chorus. By the last verse everyone was sobbing with their arms around each other. Not to miss this week’s tears, they stepped up their pace.

  “Jean, stop,” said Icy from behind, grabbing her forearm to make her. “Listen.” Arm in arm they stood immobile while the others went on ahead. A loon called far out on the lake. They both sucked in their breath and didn’t move until they were sure it had finished.

  “Doesn’t it just give you the creepies?” Jean asked.

  “Yeah, wonderful.”

  “Mysterious.”

  “Eerie.”

  “Spooky.”

  “Lonely,” said Icy, stretching out the “o.”

  “He only knows a minor key. That’s why he sounds so—haunting.” Jean made her voice quaver on the last word. The air moved coolly through her hair and they stood together breathing-in the natural world.

  “You know, Jeanie, when the wind blows, the under parts of the leaves turn up and they look all silvery.”

  “Which leaves?”

  “Poplar, I think,” Icy said, pulling her along.

  To Jean, the concerts were the highlight of the week. On the way out to the barn she felt the last faint afternoon sunlight on her face and the spongy earth softening her footsteps. That told her they were in the clearing. Icy helped her over the stile and across the meadow. She stepped in a squishy spot and took a huge step afterward to avoid it with her other foot. Soon she heard girls talking. “We’re at a big old barn,” Icy told her the first time they’d come there. “It has wide double doors that open onto the meadow. It’s kind of like a stage.” Icy was good about describing things. They bunched up a mound of crunchy pine needles and settled in, smelling the woodsy, humid earth. A needle stuck Jean sharply and she sucked her finger.

  Girls nearby burst into laughter, even though no one said anything. “What’s so funny?” Jean asked.

  The laughter died. “Oh, nothing.”

  She knew, though. Probably somebody did something funny or made a face, and explaining it was too much trouble. It wouldn’t be funny anymore. That happened often. She let out a breath, drew her knees up under her chin and waited for the music.

  That blind girl, she thought again.

  She was glad to sit next to Icy. It felt as though she’d known her a long time.

  Luddy announced she would begin with Brahms. Each week was a different composer. Luddy told the girls about the composers’ lives so that Jean began to link the names with the music. There was something thrilling about hearing a piano outdoors, the notes mixing with the breeze and insect sounds.

  That night in the musty canvas tent, the melody of Brahms’ Lullaby played in her mind and mingled with the crickets. She thought of all the things they’d done this summer, how they stretched their days long into late northern sunsets to fit in so much—singing lessons, hikes in the woods, bird and plant identification, storytelling, swimming, boating, quiet afternoons weaving in the crafts center when the others were playing tennis. Weaving she could do. While she sat high at the big loom, the aroma of wool made heavy by the humid forest, her fingers moved over the tightly drawn warp and threw the shuttle. She could feel the patterns made by threads of different thicknesses. The weaving room was peaceful. She could relax for a while by herself and she didn’t have to keep up with the others. She liked being with other girls, but sometimes it was nice to be alone. Tennis was a silly old game anyhow. Running around after a ball for a while and then what do you get? Nothing. But in the weaving room she was producing something, making a scarf for her dresser back home.

  She rolled onto her side and her cot creaked. Her sleeping bag scraped against her sunburned knees. The scratchy tingle reminded her of how the sun beat down for three solid days on the river. Small price for the chance to be out in a canoe with the others. She had done her share of paddling, too. Her aching arms told her that. She liked the rhythmic sound of the paddle against water and the little forward thrust each time the water gurgled. For those nights on the trip they slept with their bedrolls right on the ground, the scent of night and leaves so clean it made her nostrils open enough to imagine she smelled the cold purity of the stars. It felt free and new and even a little wild. Probably wilder than Father thought she’d be. That pleased her oddly, and she relished the new sensation.

  Near her, a cricket cried out urgently against the background of frogs. She heard Icy shift positions on the other cot.

  “Icy, are you still awake?”

  “A little.”

  “I can’t sleep.” She sighed. A breeze came through the open tent flap. “That cricket must be right in our tent.”

  “The frogs are havin
g a competition,” Icy mumbled. “Too many frogs to sleep.”

  “No. Too many thoughts.” She lay still for a few moments listening to Icy breathe. “I can’t believe I didn’t want to come.”

  “Why didn’t you? I couldn’t think of anything else since last summer.”

  “Afraid.” The word stood out alone against the night sounds and surprised her. She knew now she had been ready for what the summer held. Father had been right. Camp Hanoum taught her many things. Here she learned to love the natural world however she could—through the feel of the rough bark of a hickory, the smell of certain leaves crushed in her hand, the honk of the last Canada geese heading north, the coolness of lake water passing between her fingers. She had done most of what the other girls did. She was even bitten by mosquitoes just like everyone else.

  “Did you get any new bites today?” she asked Icy.

  “Yeah. Two or three.”

  “Me, too.” Lake water lapped rhythmically against the shore outside their tent. “Why do you think those girls still don’t know my name?”

  Icy didn’t say anything. Then she wiggled around on her cot. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it’s because you don’t look at them when they’re talking.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You’ve got to turn your head toward anyone speaking. Let people see on your face what you’re thinking. That’s what everyone else does. Otherwise you look dull and uninterested and nobody will want to talk to you.”

  It stunned her. No one in the last two years, not even Mother or Lucy, her own sister, had thought to tell her that. She wondered how she looked. She could remember her face a little, kind of round with thin lips and brown eyes, but she couldn’t remember any expressions. She moved her face around, opened her eyes wide, narrowed them to slits, smiled a little, then a lot, drew her eyebrows together in what felt like a frown, stuck out her lips in a pout, pulled them inward and tried to imagine what she looked like.