“Mindless,” Miss Weaver muttered.
The word stabbed at her. The other girls spoke only in undertones during the rest of the meal, about anything but what had happened. Jean didn’t follow the conversation. Something had collapsed inside her. Miss Weaver, the invincible Miss Weaver, had revealed a crack. A Nazi, nothing more than boots and a gruff voice, had bullied her and for one moment, control wasn’t within her grasp. A bigger authority, hard, cold and foreign, shrank her. Jean wished that just for this moment she could see. Miss Weaver’s face might tell her things, how the ordered world that she always explained so logically had become jangling. How something wasn’t right in her beloved Teutonic civilization. But looking at Miss Weaver now might be like Lorraine looking at her over the cups of cocoa, a violation of the privacy politely given at moments of failure. For the first time, Miss Weaver seemed vulnerable to something, more like her own unsure self. For those moments in the restaurant, with the hum of traffic and the tramp of human feet outside, she felt unutterably close to her, though she doubted if Miss Weaver would ever guess.
Afterwards, back in Munich, the girls avoided walking under the arch that led into Marienplatz where the glockenspiel on the town hall chimed at noon. A Nazi officer was always stationed there and gave the Heil to everyone who walked through the passageway into the square. He expected the proper response. The girls learned a little cutoff to get to the square by another route. “You know, other people are taking this route too,” Icy remarked. “And they’re German.”
The security of Hickory Hill seemed a long way off. Although Jean knew she didn’t understand the political situation, privately she felt thrilled to be where big things were happening. Still, better not to tell such things back home. She wanted Father to let her travel more. He didn’t have to know everything. She borrowed a typewriter at the pension and wrote:
August 19, 1936
Dear Mother and Father,
I’m getting enough of culture. Yesterday we went to the Hofbrauhaus and had some beer. I can drink a mug of it now without making a face, and so can Lucy.
Our few days in Italy went by too fast. LCW insisted that everyone except me climb Cinque Torre in Cortina. It must have been dreadful. Lucy collapsed on the floor in our hotel room the second she came in. But they did sign the roster at the top and Angelo, our Italian guide, yodeled.
In Verona I finally learned what Italianate Renaissance architecture is. There was a balustrade along a staircase in the palace, and I could feel the stonework. We heard a Bach Missa in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, but the pigeons kept up a racket flapping their wings. Suddenly, they’d fly at us out of nowhere. Terrifying to me. Otherwise, alles ist in Ordnung. We hate to leave.
Jean
Chapter Nine
She heard him humming up ahead. It wasn’t like him to hum so gaily.
“You sure seem happy today, Father.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I’m on vacation and it’s a gorgeous day. The water is deep turquoise, so bright I’m squinting.”
“Do you mean to say you’d rather do this than work?”
“Yes, indeedy. Give me a bicycle ride in Bermuda any day over a stuffy office. Besides, it’s good for you. Gets you out a little.”
“You’re just using me as an excuse. You wanted to come anyway. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
She heard him breathing hard. He didn’t answer. Every morning since they’d arrived, she and Father took a ride along the waterfront on a rented tandem.
“Oh, do you feel that breeze, Father? Isn’t it wonderful? Smells like the sea.”
He shouted back to her, “Pump hard, Jean. Hill up ahead.” The pull on the pedals grew harder and she bent into it. Her stomach contracted. She felt perspiration form at her temples and she took in great gulps of humid air. Her cotton blouse stuck to her back. It was a long time before she could pedal more easily. Then, suddenly it was over.
“Thanks for the ride, Jean. I needed that rest.”
“Father, you coasted! There wasn’t any hill at all, was there?”
Father hummed some more. “You didn’t remember it from yesterday did you?”
“Father!” She was surprised at his playfulness. He hadn’t teased her so lightheartedly since she was a child. Pedaling behind him, she smiled at nothing in particular all the way back to the hotel.
Pleasant moments didn’t make her feel less a wallflower daughter, though. Being toted off to an island vacation by her parents wasn’t her idea of adulthood. She was grateful, but she had no freedom to explore on her own. Europe with Miss Weaver had been more exciting.
That night after dinner she stayed up alone in the hotel lobby. The breeze drifting in through an open window felt refreshing after the sultry day. A trio in the lounge played “Begin the Beguine.” Men and women talked together and laughed. She wanted to be a part of the jovial sounds surrounding her. She groped in her handbag for a cigarette. It took four matches before she got it lit. She blew the smoke upwards the way Tready had said was sophisticated. Some time when she was alone, she’d have to practice aiming the match for the end of the cigarette in her mouth. It was hard to make it look smooth. She reached for an ash tray on the table next to her and hoped someone would come up to talk.
No, not just anyone. A man. It was natural for a girl of twenty, she told herself. Why not recognize it? She listened to the music, the light evening talk and the clink of ice in glasses. A couple came from behind her, headed toward the lounge, the woman’s high heels on the bare wood floor a high tap, tap; his, slightly less frequent, a solid, deeper sound. In the lounge the trio swung into a foxtrot. The sound of solid heels came toward her. Man’s footsteps. She tried to make her face animated the way Icy had taught her.
“Hello,” a voice said.
“Hi.”
For a sliver of a second the rhythm of his footsteps broke. Was that an invitation? She didn’t breathe and tried to think of something clever to say. Then he walked on. She knew he could tell. Why was it that a blind person always makes others ill at ease even if she is perfectly comfortable? Stupid, but true. So it was up to her to have the social finesse not only to initiate contact but to put everyone else at ease. Her shoulders slumped. She hated her weakness, her inexperience and timidity, and wondered if she would still be shackled by them if she could see.
A man, yes. But not just any man. One who would be natural with her and not treat her like a china teacup. She sighed quietly and a little scowl came over her face. It would be wonderful, but not likely. She had to be realistic. A longing pulsed in her, that was sure, but a longing for what? Her parents gave her all they could. It was just that riding in tandem with Father wasn’t enough. Maybe I don’t understand myself, she thought. Maybe I want something different from what the world thinks poor little rich blind girls should have. Or do. Or be. The want had ached intermittently for over a year, like a headache or toothache that comes and goes, and when it returned, like tonight, she found she’d forgotten to be grateful for the time it wasn’t there. She ground the cigarette out in the ash tray.
She imagined herself years from now, a spinster with an afghan over her knees, wondering out loud in a thin voice about the world. Only a paid companion would be there to answer. She would have passed years in solitary reading. And when Mother or Lucy could no longer take care of her, what then? Her brothers would kindly file her away in some private and expensive institute. Until all her senses vanished. A knot formed in her stomach.
She listened until the trio finished the set, her hands restless in her lap. Mother came into the lobby. With her smiling voice, she walked her back to their rooms. How could Mother always be so cheerful? Well, she had no worries. A little like Ibsen’s Nora but without the rebelliousness.
The next summer the family took a cruise. Towns and coastlines glided by in an invisible panorama. In Madeira in the Azores Jean and Lucy braved the famous basket ride down steep stone streets into the town. No doubt about it. It was fast. It
was frightening. Jean loved it. Miss Weaver’s trip had taught her the courage to enjoy. At a resort hotel in Lisbon the band played “Tiger Rag.” It made the world seem small. At Mont St. Michel Lucy described the spires and towers, but the ancient abbey was just steps to Jean. Madame Poulard’s omelettes made more sense. At Oban in Scotland, she heard bagpipes on the dock. At Bergen, she felt the water smooth out as they entered the fjords. She stood out on the deck and held her face to the quiet, cold air and knew she was looking at a glacier.
Cold or warm, noisy or quiet, the ports floated by and Jean wondered what she would do next. Not in the next town, but next in her life, when she got home. There was always that to figure out. What to do next. She couldn’t just spend her life chitchatting with women. Restlessness and doubt tugged at her like an anchor all the way back across the Atlantic. Every evening at twilight Jean and Lucy walked the upper deck, their faces to the wind.
“So now that we’re headed home, what’s ahead?”
“Just water.”
“You know what I mean. What do I do at home? Everybody else has something. Bill has Yale. Mort has a new wife, and you have Garland.”
“You can come visit.”
“Dody’s going back to Vassar. Sally Anne’s forever at a party.”
“What’s Elsa doing?”
“Going with her mother on a concert tour out west.”
“We’ll go on another trip soon. Mother wants to go across Canada by train.”
“I can’t just wait at home until Father decides it’s time to entertain Jean again with another trip. I don’t think they know what else to do with me.” She turned from Lucy toward the railing and the sea. The whole vast world seemed cool and uncertain, with no new light promised. “But what should I do with me? I have no goal, and no one to be with.” Lucy didn’t say anything. That showed that there was no simple answer. “I have no plan.” Her voice cracked. “I-I don’t know enough to do anything other than just feel one step ahead. I always have to make choices without knowing or seeing enough.” She realized she was stuttering. She’d never spoken so openly to Lucy, but here, with the sound of the wind engulfing them, separating them from everyone else, she felt a closeness she hadn’t known back home.
“Just because other people can see doesn’t make their way more clear,” Lucy said softly. “I don’t know any more than you what to do with my life. I just go on, that’s all.”
Wind flapped her jacket sleeve rhythmically and water churned below them against the deep hum of the engines.
“There’s always music,” Lucy offered.
Yes, there was that. Nothing thrilling, nothing to make a life out of—she would never be good enough—but certainly pleasant. There had always been piano. She could recall as a child seeing the round black notes on sheet music. They weren’t round exactly, more like tiny black eggs bouncing along the lines. Something about the way they looked was cheerful.
When they were settled at home, Jean began again to study with Mrs. Sturdivant in New York, the teacher Miss Weaver had hired for her. Between lessons, Mother taught her note by note the work for the next week. “This is your next measure on your right hand,” Mother would say. Then she’d play it. “Start on A. Play it as an arpeggio in the tonic chord for two octaves. Run down the scale two octaves. That’s the next two measures.” Jean copied her, drilling it into her head. Her concentration and memory sharpened.
They gave a two-piano concert and invited a hundred Bristol friends. The living room became Hickory Hill Music Salon. The twin grands were dovetailed together in front of the fireplace and they had printed programs: Mozart’s Rondo for Two Pianos, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor with the second piano doing the orchestral part, and Jean’s favorite, the Ahrensky waltz. No matter what music she played, though, it all seemed like variations on one theme: What shall I do? What can I do? What am I good for?
She couldn’t dominate all Mother’s time to teach her everything note by note, but she could do something else with music. She knew enough piano to teach beginners. She asked Vincent, their chauffeur, to take her to the local girls’ club. Could they use a beginning music teacher just to teach children the basics? Yes, of course they could. The words shot back at her without a pause. She smiled; they sounded like Miss Weaver’s. Vincent drove her there once a week.
Vincent would drive her anywhere, for that matter. She sought out other needs in the community. Surely, some places needed volunteers. At the family welfare center she helped a little girl who had a cleft palate, drilling her on sounds. She served at the Visiting Nurse Association. She joined the Junior League and the Red Cross. Vincent was always available, always accommodating. But she had a nagging feeling she wasn’t doing these things simply for themselves. They filled time. And Mother’s friends always said, “How wonderful for you to do that, Jean.” But was that really her? Maybe it was self-love that actually motivated her, doing praiseworthy things so she’d be loved. A justifiable substitute, she supposed. Still, the pain of limitation pulsed.
Except when she was with Icy. Icy lived in a second-floor flat with her mother and sister in Litchfield, 18 miles away. Once a week after work she picked up Jean and they spent the night together at Icy’s.
Icy Eastman didn’t have interests. She had passions. They were the same as Jean’s—music, opera, books. Icy and her mother talked about politics, too, something Jean never heard about at home. Together Mrs. Eastman and the girls listened to operas on the radio and talked about composers and musicians and authors. “I know everyone says Jeannette Antoine’s not as great as Lily Pons,” Jean said one night. “I guess they’re right, but I still like her.”
“Jean, if you think Jeannette Antoine is good, then you think that,” Mrs. Eastman said flatly. “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Hold your ground. Your ear is as good as anyone’s. Later if you change your mind, that’s okay too. Say what you think even if it’s different from what others think.”
She liked that in Mrs. Eastman, that spunk. After Mrs. Eastman went to bed, Icy and Jean huddled on the floor wrapped in a blanket tent to catch heat through the furnace grating from the family below. “Your mother is so easy to be with. I bet you can talk to her about anything.”
“Just about.”
“Sex?”
Icy nodded.
“I’ve never discussed sex with my Mother. It’s not just that she’s a New Englander. She’s always so distant, about everything.”
“Your mother’s very much a lady.”
“Even to Lucy and me. Maybe I’d be too embarrassed to talk to her anyway. I’d be curious about something, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.”
“So, ask me. Not that I’m an authority.”
Jean’s questions poured out: What does making love feel like? What does a man’s organ look like? How do you know whether you really love a man? How do you know when you’re pregnant? Can you have sex when you’re pregnant?
“I feel so naïve not knowing this, but what kind of women have sex appeal? I mean, is it only physical qualities or is it some kind of aura?”
“Both. For some men it’s more subtle, how you move, how you look at them, what you say.”
“That I know.”
“For others, the more simple-minded, it’s just the size of your breasts.”
“Well?”
“Quite adequate, silly. Especially since you’re so petite and have a small waist.”
The Eastmans were a liberating influence. Mother and Father didn’t take too well to these intimate visits with a family outside their social circle, but Jean went anyway. “I like them,” she protested gently. She knew what she really meant, though she would never say it to Mother. The Eastmans filled a need left empty at Hickory Hill.
Few of Jean’s other friends were in Bristol. The Hill crowd was in college or already married. Occasionally she spent a Saturday with Lorraine, playing piano together at Hickory Hill, but that wasn’t often because Lorraine was busy with two jobs,
saving to get married. Once they went to a Saturday matinee of Gone With The Wind. They sat in the last row and Lorraine described the action to Jean in whispers. By the end of the movie, Lorraine was hoarse and both girls were shaken.
“You look pretty bleary-eyed,” Bill said when he picked them up.
Jean groaned. “We feel like we’ve been though the war.”
“The burning of Atlanta, all those war casualties, birthin’ babies. No wonder our eyes are red,” Lorraine said.
“Here, ladies, hand over your hankies. Let me ring them out.”
“Quit teasing, Bill. Ginny would have cried, too,” Jean protested, referring to Bill’s fiancée.
“But wasn’t Clark Gable divine?” he said, mimicking her.
“No!” they wailed. “He left her!”
“You mean you didn’t like it, all that passion and sugar- coated history?”
“No. We loved it,” they said, laughing at themselves.
Occasionally Dody spent a weekend at Hickory Hill. Vassar wasn’t too far away. Sometimes Dody got dates for Jean with men she met at West Point mixers. Once after Dody had been home in California for the summer, she burst into Jean’s room and sat on her bed.
“Jean, I met this man at home.”
“So, what else is new?”
“Listen a minute. He lives in a little town east of San Diego called Ramona, or something like that. I think he lives on a ranch.”
“A cattle ranch?” Jean took out a file from the vanity to do her nails.
“I’m not sure. Turkeys maybe.”
“You can’t be serious.” Already it sounded foolish.
“That’s not the point. The point is that he lost his sight too. Something about a high school football accident. I didn’t ask. He went away to college to study dairying or some farm thing, but had to quit when he lost his sight completely. He’s back at home now and he thinks his life’s a ruin. He’s over the worst of it, but still.” Dody paused. “Would you write to him?”