“Me? Why me?” She hadn’t anticipated the question.
“Oh, Jean, you know. You’ve been through it all and you know what it’s like. You can read Braille and type and play the piano. Your life hasn’t stopped. He needs to hear about that, that a normal life can be possible. Will you write to him?”
Jean got up from the bed and turned on the radio on the round table by the window. Benny Goodman was playing. She fingered the tassel on the drapery pull and stood as though she were looking out across the terrace. So Dody thought her life hadn’t stopped. And all this time she felt like she was waiting for it to begin.
“What would I say to him?”
“Just what you’re doing. Music. The Red Cross. You know, teaching that girl to speak.”
Jean moved to the closet and felt through her dresses. She pulled out a short-sleeved blue shirtwaist with a peter pan collar to wear to dinner.
“What’s his name?”
“Forrest Holly.”
“Sounds like some kind of plant.”
“Jean, just do it. How can it hurt you?”
Dody was a good friend. Jean didn’t want her disappointed or annoyed with her. Friends were too valuable. She remembered how, right after she lost her sight, she was so afraid she’d never have friends again. “Leave his address on my desk.”
Jean still saw Sally Anne, too. Ever since Andrebrook days Sally Anne invited her to dances in Jersey and talked continually about men. “You’ve got to live a little,” she kept telling her. Sally’s boyfriend Don had a friend, Jaime, and the four often went out together. Vincent would put Jean on the train near Bristol and she’d get off at Grand Central. Sally Anne would be right there at the platform. Sometimes Don was with her. Sometimes Jaime. One day it was Jaime alone.
Jaime was Spanish, born in the Philippines, and he lived at the YMCA in Summit, New Jersey. One thing could be said for Jaime—he was attentive. When Jean was at Harkness again for a cataract operation, Jaime visited her every night. She’d never had attention like that before. It made her feel buoyant. At least she had Jaime to think about. “When you get out of here, Jean, I’m going to take you dancing,” he said. “We’re going to dinner first and then to the Chanticleer and they’re going to play ‘I’m in the Mood for Love.’” She wasn’t sure whether his attentiveness softened the negligible results of the surgery, or whether she was so used to disappointment that it just didn’t penetrate. Instead, her mind was on their next date, an evening at Rockefeller Center with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat. They often went dancing, and since Jaime was Latin he really knew how to lead. And since Jean was so sensitive to touch, she knew how to follow. They danced well together.
Eventually, Jaime visited Hickory Hill. “Father isn’t entirely thrilled about any man named Jaime,” Jean told Icy after his first visit. “To him, appropriate men are not named Jaime or Rudolfo, but George or Stanley or Robert, or anything you can say without having to roll your ‘r’s’ or clear your throat.” She began to call him Jimmy at home, but when they visited the Eastmans, he was Jaime again. Jean knew her parents didn’t wholly approve because he was Catholic.
“It’s not that we have any prejudice against the religion,” Mother explained. “It’s just that the serving people in Bristol are Catholic.”
Mother’s attitude made her graciousness to Jimmy false, to Jean at least. Jimmy didn’t seem to notice. He loved the Treadway hospitality. He basked in it. Hickory Hill was far different from the YMCA. Still, the Hill was formal. Stuffy even. Jimmy liked the weekends they spent at the Eastmans better. Except for the coupe. Whenever Jimmy came to Hickory Hill, Father let him use the Packard convertible coupe. It was Yale blue.
Once, driving home from a dance at Farmington Country Club, Jimmy sang a song from Top Hat. He put his arm around her, pulled the Packard up the circular driveway and gave her a quick, familiar kiss on the forehead before he turned off the engine and got out. He swung around quickly to open the door for her.
“My lady.” In an extravagant gesture she could only guess at, he offered her his arm and ushered her to the door, humming all the while. Inside, everyone was asleep. Even though it was early morning, Jean wanted to preserve the mood a little longer. “Let’s have some cocoa. I can make some.”
They turned to the right, through the maids’ sitting room to the kitchen. Jimmy still sang softly that he was putting on his top hat. She was quite sure he didn’t own a top hat, but it would be unkind to ask him. Father had several.
Jean felt along the counter for the third ice box door. She found the milk and reached for a saucepan from the rack.
Jimmy executed a few fancy turns with an imaginary dancer, his heels clicking on the kitchen tile.
Jean walked over to the food cupboard and reached right for the cocoa and sugar. Delia hadn’t failed her. Then back to the spoon drawer. She poured milk into the saucepan, keeping her finger over the lip to feel how much she’d gotten. She kept pouring and pouring but didn’t feel the level of the milk. Surely she had enough. She poured more.
“‘I’m steppin’ out, my dear, to breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with class.’” He turned from his imaginary partner. “Jean, stop!” The milk spurted out in little spouts and dribbled down her dress and onto the floor. “That’s not a pan. It’s a thing with holes.”
“A colander? Oh no,” she wailed.
Quickly he pulled her away, grabbed the colander, put it in the sink and began to laugh.
Why did something have to happen every time she made cocoa for someone else when she did it fine for just herself?
He toweled off her dress and took her in his arms. “Wee Mouth, don’t worry.” He chuckled again, tenderly. “It just looked so funny, little squirts of milk coming out in all directions.”
“I guess it must have.” His kisses took away the pain of inadequacy, and she laughed a little too, settling into his embrace. She knew he was good for her because he treated her naturally and he explained things. And his attentions made her feel womanly. She must surely love him. He was comfortable and fun.
One afternoon Jean was playing “I’m in the Mood for Love” on the piano. Mort brought in the mail. “Letter for Jean,” he announced.
“From Jimmy?”
“No. From California. It’s typed. Badly.” She didn’t want to be teased so she just took it without comment. She kept it unopened on her dresser. When Tready visited a few days later, she asked her to read it.
“‘Dear Jean Treadway, You probably know that Dody Rollins asked me to write to you. I don’t much know what to say. I live in a little town called Ramona in California. It’s a ranching town but there aren’t any real big ranches around here. Our little 20 acres is called Rancho de los Pimientos because of the pepper trees. My brother Lance raises turkeys. I have one brother, four sisters and some cows.’ This is a scream, Jean. Who is this guy?” Tready asked.
“Keep reading.”
“‘I have a flea bitten old gray gelding, too. I named him Snort because that’s how I know where he is. My sister Alice and I ride all over the backcountry on dirt roads to visit cattle ranches and Indian reservations and arroyos. That’s a Mexican-style canyon.
“‘The Boss, that’s my father, raises pea fowl. We used to have a porker named Bessie Belch because she did, until the depression made us slaughter her, bless her heart. Maybe you’d like to write back and tell me about you. Forrest Holly.’”
Tready handed it to her. “The typing’s terrible. I could barely read it. Who is he?”
“Just someone in California Dody wants me to write to.” She felt for the wastebasket with her foot and dropped it in.
“What do you know about him?”
“Not much.”
“You going to write back?”
She shrugged. “What are you going to wear to the dance at the club?”
Weeks later when Jean was bored and no one was home, she sat down to type Forrest a letter. She had promised Dody, so she had to. I
t would have to be read to him. She wondered who would do it. His horse? Not knowing what to say, she started lamely, telling him about Lucy and her two brothers and Mother and Father. “We’re a nice family, and we’re happy, but we’re not too smart. Don’t you read Braille?” It was a short letter.
At least she could tell Dody she did it. When Icy came to pick her up that night to go to Litchfield, Jean took the letter and address and asked Icy to address and mail it.
At Icy’s house, Mrs. Eastman hugged her at the door. “We have some great news for you. I made Icy promise she wouldn’t tell you until you got here. Did she?”
“No. What is it?”
“We read in the paper last week about a new system for guiding the blind. They use trained dogs on a harness. Have you ever heard of that?”
“No.”
“The blind person can feel the slightest hesitation of the dog when there’s danger.” Icy talked fast. “It’s just been brought to this country a few years ago and is being taught at a place called The Seeing Eye in Morristown, New Jersey. You have to go there for a training period of several weeks.”
“We couldn’t wait to tell you. Why don’t you get one?” Mrs. Eastman asked. “It would be just the thing for you. Then you could go around town yourself.”
The idea was astounding. Three times Jean asked Mrs. Eastman to read the clipping. “I don’t think Father would approve.”
“Jean, some day you’re going to have to stand up for yourself, for your own opinions and needs.”
She knew Mrs. Eastman was right. The next week she had another letter for Icy to address and mail. It was to Morristown.
“What did your father say?”
“He doesn’t know. This is just an inquiry, Icy.”
“Mom will be proud of you.”
Soon Jean learned that there were two things Father didn’t want. He didn’t want her writing to some poor blind cowboy in California and he didn’t want a dog. On both counts she had spoken too much. She knew he acted on some stupid fear that she’d get entangled with people of a lower social class. She’d felt it with Lorraine all along, and now she felt it with Jimmy. Tackling both of Father’s objections at once would be too formidable. She chose the one she cared about.
“What’s wrong with a guide dog, Father?”
“You don’t need a dog walking you all over town. You’ve got Vincent. He’ll take you anywhere you need to go.”
“That’s not the point.” Wasn’t it obvious there was a difference?
She had started, but she didn’t know how to follow through. Mother had taught her years ago it was best to let some things lie. “Let the idea work on him. Just wait,” she always said.
She waited. Two weeks.
“He can’t accept the idea that a dog can do something for you that he can’t provide.” Mother patted her on the arm.
She knew she’d have to use the cocktail system. It had worked before, the first time she went to New Jersey to visit Jimmy. It had worked as a child when she and Lucy wanted to go to the sailing camp on Cape Cod. That’s when she discovered it, when she was ten. Getting a dog was important, at least as important as anything else she’d ever done. She would wait until Friday at cocktail hour when Father was relaxing with his manhattan.
Jean was already in the library when Father came in. The air wasn’t moving at all and it was stuffy in the closed up room. She stood up to open a window. She knew what she was about to do would mark a turning point in her life, would begin to break the cords of dependency her father still seemed to need. That’s what it would be for her, like opening a window.
Timing was everything. She had waited this long. A few minutes more wouldn’t matter. She knew the sounds well. She could count the number of times he went over to the sideboard to pour himself a drink and could judge by that, but that wasn’t as reliable as listening to his voice. When he was ready, there would be a different tone to his laughter. It would be a little more jovial. And he would talk faster. That told her to go ahead.
“Father, I applied for a dog at The Seeing Eye. I’ve been accepted if I still want one. And I do.”
“I thought we’ve been through this already.”
“It wasn’t resolved.”
“You don’t need to be traipsing all over town with a dog.”
“Why?”
“I would worry about you, honey.”
“You should worry more if I’m stuck at home forever.”
“You don’t need to stay home. Vincent will take you wherever you want to go.”
“That’s different.”
“What’s the difference?”
Jean swallowed. She’d backed down at this point before. Now she had to go on. She moistened her lips. “Independence.”
This time it was he who didn’t have an answer. She felt him looking at her. Maybe it was better that she couldn’t see his expression. She faced him directly, holding her face up to his. She swallowed, blinked, but didn’t turn away. The clock on the mantle ticked loudly, filling the silence. Father tapped his pipe against an ashtray. She heard him scrape the bowl and pack new tobacco in, heard him light a match. But she didn’t smell the cherry smoke which always followed the sound of his wooden match. Moments passed. Instead, she heard him get up from his leather chair and walk toward her.
He touched her gently on the shoulder. “If you really want to, Jean, I’m not going to stop you.” His voice seemed to come from a long way away. It sounded old and maybe a little tired. His hand rested on her shoulder after he’d finished, as if he wanted to sustain contact. Apparently he could think of nothing else to say.
She heard him walk slowly out of the library and onto the verandah.
Chapter Ten
Mrs. Campbell, the secretary of The Seeing Eye, took Jean into the dining room and sat her between two men. “Jean, on your left is Vic Gulbransen. Vic’s a chiropractor from St. Louis. Vic, this is Jean Treadway from Bristol, Connecticut.”
“Hello,” she said.
“Sit right down here, Jean. Looks like we’re going to get fed in a minute.”
She was already seated. A rough voice came from her left. “Glad to see we’re gonna have some women in this group. I was worried we wouldn’t have any skirts to chase.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“The name’s Ham Walker.”
“You better watch out for him, Jean. A sweet gal like you. I’m Louey.”
“And I’m Dale Richardson,” a mellow voice drawled from across the table.
“Are you from the South?” she asked.
“Tennessee.”
“How many are here?”
“Six men and one other gal, but she’s eating up in her room.”
“Six?” Jean’s voice went high. She’d never eaten with that many men when she was the only woman. “Whew! It’s kind of warm in here, don’t you think?”
“It’ll be plenty hotter tomorrow, you can count on that.” She didn’t know who responded.
Plates clanked on the bare table. “Potato salad at ten o’clock, roast beef at six and tomatoes at two.” It was Mrs. Campbell’s voice, not actually unfriendly, but certainly businesslike. The idea was terrific, to treat plates of food just like a clock. Jean picked at the tomatoes but couldn’t find a way to manage them. They must be stewed because her fork touched a small dish on her plate. She changed to a spoon but couldn’t cut one. They slithered out from under the edge of her spoon each time. She explored her plate.
“Where did she say the meat was?” someone asked.
“Six o’clock,” she answered.
She found something that felt like meat, but for the first time, there was no sighted person eating with her to see her dilemma and cut it for her. She ate the potato salad and scraped several times on that part of her plate to get all of it. She was too curious not to know. “Are all of you cutting your meat?”
“No, but I’m eating it anyway. What does it matter?” He had a point, whoever it was.
r /> Next to her Vic Gulbransen stood up and brushed her elbow. “Anybody want another drink? Jean, can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.”
“I’ll take another iced tea. A gallon of it.” That was a new voice, Ray Johnson. When Vic came back with the drinks, it took the two men awhile to pass it across the table. “Anybody find the salt?”
“What for?” Jean asked.
“My drink. Everything. Been sweating so much I’m dehydrated. Haven’t you heard of using salt for that?” Ray asked.
“Never.”
“Where’ve you been all your life?”
No where, she thought. After dinner she still felt hungry. She heard someone light a match. “Who’s smoking?”
“Me. Vic. Want a cigarette?”
“Yes, but how did you get it lit so fast? I have the hardest time doing it for myself.”
“Here, let me show you.” He held a cigarette and a match book toward her until she found his hand. “Hold the match between your thumb and middle finger, not your index finger, when you strike it.”
“That’s hard to do.”
“Wait. First put the cigarette in your mouth. Got it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, now strike the match. Got it lit?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now put your index finger of the hand with the match on top of the cigarette and slide it to the end so you know how far. Then you can aim.”
She puffed for a moment. “It worked. I guess I needed a blind person to tell me that.”
“Or a gentleman.”
The comment stopped her short. It was true. But then she never asked Jimmy for help in learning how to do it herself. She hadn’t asked anybody since she and Tready had smoked in the bathroom years ago. Maybe a sighted person wouldn’t be of much help anyway. She inhaled deeply.
That night up in her room she wrote a letter home.
Dear Family,
They have typewriters for us to use and a piano in the recreation room. The men all drink beer with dinner. Already I learned how to light my cigarette myself. I know you won’t be pleased with that, Father, but it’s part of independence. We can smoke anywhere except in bed. I’ll have to learn how to cut my own meat. I’m kind of hungry at the moment. Golly, the whole business is so inspiring. The attitude is so natural. There’s no way to avoid bumping into things or each other. No one will help you.