What Love Sees

by Susan Vreeland

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Tell that to a bunch of roughnecks.”

  “Don’t they know you’re too nearsighted?”

  “Doesn’t matter to them.”

  Jean knew he’d been despairing over this for months. “The world isn’t always fair, I guess.” They sat quietly for a few minutes. She had never been in the habit of sharing so personally with either of her brothers, but now Mort had told her this. The urgency to hear any letter from Forrest was too strong. She asked him to check the mail.

  “Letter from California.”

  “Will you read it?”

  Jean missed the first few words because of the odd sensation of hearing Forrest’s folksy speech come from Mort.

  “‘When a fella’s going to be married,’” Mort read, “‘he’s got to earn his bride.’” It was so funny to hear him say bride. Such a formal word for Forrest. “‘The whole town knows about you, Jeanie. I tell everybody I’ll haul or pitch or muck or load or do any kind of work to earn money because I’m going to marry you, God willing. And they know they’ll get their money’s worth. I’m strong as a bull moose and I’m not afraid of hard work.’”

  That was certain. If only Father knew, if he could see Forrest work, then maybe. But that was impossible. Father would never go there.

  The letter explained that after his regular day’s work at the ranch, he worked with a friend named Guy hauling hay. “‘After dinner we head east with an empty truck into the desert to alfalfa farms to load,’” he wrote. She imagined with awe the sight of Forrest thrusting himself at the bales. He had to dig hay hooks into each bale and, with a great heave, hurl them up on the truck. “‘I’m learning about trust, Jeanie. Just got to trust that Guy’s up there to catch ’em. Then we head back over Banner Grade in that rickety old truck. By now I know every curve in the road by the sound of Guy grinding the gears. Then we unload at Whiting’s Feed Store in Ramona long about midnight. Earns me $3 each night for more cows and marriage and you, Jeanie.’

  “My God, Jean, he’s a storm center of energy.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “You love him a lot, don’t you?”

  “How can I help it? Don’t you see?”

  “He is pretty genuine.” Mort chuckled. “He talks like a cowboy.”

  “Oh, I think he does that just to be cute. He knows I like it.”

  “What do you think Father will do?”

  “I don’t know. You know how he is.” Her eyes got teary. “I feel so helpless. All I can do is wait like a child for Father to say yes when I’ve already said it, and meanwhile Forrest is working like a machine.”

  Mort gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “Maybe I can say something to him. Just trust a little longer.”

  All her life, it seemed, she had to trust. Trust Chiang, trust the arm of a friend, trust her other senses. Now she had to learn to trust something larger, less knowable, less concrete. The only concrete thing she had, after the cactus flower had wilted, was his gold track shoe. She liked to feel its coolness against her wrist. With her fingers she often traced the tiny raised “R” on the side of the shoe.

  She worked on the Beethoven sonata for nearly an hour the next morning after everyone left for the day. Her own movement, her piano, an occasional snore from Chiang and a few rumblings from the kitchen were all the big house contained. A feeling of empty space sat heavily on her.

  Her fingers relaxed on the keys and then fell to her lap. She reached for the bracelet, fingered over the charms, but couldn’t find the shoe. She went through the charms again. No shoe. She took off the bracelet and laid it out on the keys to count the charms. One short. She felt around the piano. Her hands moved across the keyboard without a sound, exploring the spaces between black keys. She felt in her lap, in the folds of her skirt. She felt along the piano bench. “Chiang, fetch.” The dog, lulled to sleep by the piano, was called into action. Seeing Eye dogs were trained to pick up incredibly small items dropped by their masters. Once Jean dropped a pill box and Chiang brought her not only the box and lid, but nuzzled her hand again, and dropped into her palm a tiny pill. She joined Chiang on the floor and they looked together. Her heart beat faster.

  This was no time to trust Chiang only, no matter how good a dog she was. She went into the kitchen and asked Delia to help. Delia traced Jean’s pathway from her upstairs bedroom to the dining room for breakfast and then to the piano. “I’m sorry, but it’s just not here, lamb,” she said. “Ask Lucy to help you look when she comes home. I’ve got to get back to the kitchen.”

  Jean sank down into a cushioned chair. There’s more than one way to skin a cat—Forrest’s words echoed in her mind, his voice carrying a hint of smugness, a private pride in accomplishing things simple to others. She moved the piano bench out of the way and kneeled on the floor. Inch by inch she set out to feel the whole carpet, digging her fingers in the nap. It was impossible even to consider writing that she’d lost it. The shoe was too precious to him, too much a symbol of what might have been, for him. Besides, he might think her irresponsible. Chiang fell asleep again. When Lucy came home, she only confirmed the work of the afternoon.

  After dinner Jean didn’t write him as she had been planning to. The next day she taught at the Girls’ Club. The next night she couldn’t do it either. Two days later, in the morning, when everyone had left, she couldn’t put it off any longer, so she wrote the letter. Now she had to wait for two things—Father’s approval, and Forrest’s next letter. Jean spent more time at the Red Cross. At least she was doing something there. She went to the mailbox for the next two weeks with dragging footsteps. She wanted a letter but didn’t want to read what it might say. When it came, she could tell Forrest was hiding his hurt. “I guess it’s stupid to think back on those times in high school. We got more important things to think about now,” he’d written. A hollowness settled in her throat. She became restless. She couldn’t stick to her practice. She forgot the measure she was working on and her hands dropped to her lap.

  A few weeks later a tiny package came. Jean opened it with trembling fingers. The ring he had promised her. All anxiety vanished. She explored it tenderly. It had a large raised diamond encircled by tiny ones. It must sparkle beautifully. He must have borrowed money to buy it, probably from his oldest sister, Elizabeth, the one he felt so close to. Here was proof she could offer Father. If Forrest could buy her such a ring, he surely could support her. Certainly a ring like that would be acceptable in their Bristol circle even if Forrest himself wasn’t, at least to Father. At cocktail hour she put it on to show to him.

  “I don’t want you to wear it,” he said flatly.

  “No! I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t wear it. The subject is closed.”

  She felt as if someone had thrown a lead weight right at her chest. Her extended hand dropped slowly, and she cupped her other hand around the ring, covering it and holding it close. What was wrong with her? She was a grown woman. Why couldn’t she defy him?

  Why couldn’t he give his approval willingly? She didn’t want to wrench it from him. What would the years ahead be like without his approval? Only tension and alienation. Deeply, she wanted him to want for her what she yearned for, but she didn’t even dare to say it. She still lived under his roof.

  Every night in her room, she took the ring from its tiny box and put it on while she read a Braille book in bed. Her right hand moved across the line and her left moved down the left margin to keep her place. At the bottom of each page, she allowed her right hand to touch the ring before turning the page.

  “Father, I’m engaged whether or not I wear the ring so it’s stupid to tell me not to.” One night in bed she heard her voice say it, though in her mind the voice was hardly her own. “You just can’t let go to let me grow, can you? What are you afraid of? All my life your own precious need to be in control has come first. You don’t shelter. You crush. Where is there real love in that? And you expect me to give up love and lif
e because you’re not sure? No, Father, this is one time you’re going to have to adjust.”

  She sat up straighter in bed and her heart pounded with the thoughts. Never had she allowed herself even to frame such feelings into words. But could she actually say them, right to his face? She conjured up a picture of her father’s face, not the mouth or the nose or even the eyes, because she couldn’t remember them. All she saw was a scowl, not one of anger but of worry, and after a while it relaxed and she could imagine the eyes—brown and deep and kind. But were they his?

  It would be like a dam breaking if she ever actually started to tell him what she felt. That just wasn’t her. Yet. A Polly Gillespie or a Sally Anne could do it. She doubted if Icy could. And what would it prove? That she could hurt him back? His obstinacy wasn’t malicious, only ignorant, misled. If only he would let go without a confrontation.

  To go without restraint, to walk out the door onto the brick porch beneath the hickory trees, like Ibsen’s Nora closing the door behind her forever, hearing it latch shut against her placid, sheltered world. The spirit of Nora bore through her chest. She remembered when she’d heard the play at Andrebrook. She smirked. Andrebrook itself was pretty sheltered. She hardly thought Nora could do it, Nora the flittering skylark who seemed at first so contented with being taken care of, Nora whose life centered around new dresses and parties—this same Nora left her safe shelter for what? Nora didn’t know for what. Jean let out a faint sound from between closed lips. Neither did she. The room had grown stuffy and she kicked the covers off a little, eased herself down and rolled onto her side.

  In the morning she put the ring back into its box and carefully put the box in the left corner of her top dresser drawer.

  One afternoon Icy came to pick her up to spend a weekend in Litchfield. Jean took her up to her room. She opened the top drawer, took out the velvet hinged box and opened it. Icy gasped. “Ssh. Don’t say a word. Wait till we get out to your car.” She closed the box and put it back in the drawer. But what did it matter? She’d already shown it. Quickly, she pulled it out again and stuffed it into her handbag.

  Icy and Jean rode with the windows open even though the New England fall was cool. The wind made Jean’s eyes water. She reached into her handbag and put on the ring.

  “It’s magnificent,” Icy said. “When did you get it?”

  “Last week. Father won’t let me wear it, so you must never mention it.”

  “Mum. Won’t say a word.” Then, after a pause, “Only that I’m happy for you.”

  “I know.” She felt her throat swell.

  “The ash and hickory trees seem like they’re on fire today, Jean. Brilliant red and orange and gold. When the breeze blows, some of the leaves blow off and it’s like the flames are moving.”

  “Thirteen years ago, before I knew you, we took this road to Harkness Hospital. It was about this time of year. Mother kept saying, ‘Oh Jean, just look at those trees.’ I didn’t know then that I should have been memorizing a leaf.” She could tell when the car reached the outskirts of Bristol and climbed the gentle hills of the farmland. “Just smell that hay, Icy. We’re passing a dairy or some cows or a barn, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, on the right. A dairy. There’s a rust-colored barn sitting out there proud as can be.”

  “Oh, it smells so good and fresh and alive and free.” She chuckled sheepishly. “It makes me think of Forrest.” Then she told again of going out to the pasture with Forrest’s seeing eye bull to find the cows. “Why can’t Father understand that I’ll just shrivel up and turn into an old maid here? He can’t accept that I might want something he can’t provide.”

  “Just like when you got Chiang.”

  “Exactly. He couldn’t accept that a dog could give me something he couldn’t. Now he can’t accept that Forrest can.”

  “Is it mainly because Forrest can’t see?” Icy’s voice was gentle.

  “Mostly, though he’d never admit it. Pretty narrow minded, huh? But it’s also because Forrest doesn’t have any money, and he’s so far away. He thinks Ramona is Indian territory.”

  “Do you have the same doubts he does?”

  “Not a shred.”

  “Can’t you just leave anyway?”

  “Oh, Icy, you don’t have a father, so you don’t know.” A tear, either from the wind or her anguish, trailed an itchy path down her cheek. “All that growing-up I thought I did at The Seeing Eye, it’s gone. I feel like a little kid.” She turned her face to the window. She smelled the acrid odor of burning leaves. “Do you see anybody burning leaves?”

  “No.”

  “Must be someone doing it, though, somewhere.” She slumped down farther in the seat and rested her head on the window frame. The wind blew her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t think he ever really thought I’d get married to anybody.” In this she had tapped the underlying fear of her life. It hung out there, naked and true. Only to Icy could she have said it. They rode for a few miles without speaking until the coolness of early evening made her roll up the window.

  Fall slipped into the long, white wait of winter. Never could Jean be as honest with Mother as she was with Icy. Mother was, after all, Father’s wife. Telling Mother was too close to telling Father just what she thought.

  “All you can do is wait and hope,” Mother kept saying.

  “That’s all I have been doing. For months.”

  Spring came, the season of new beginnings, but no renewed hope welled up in her. There was only a dull ache. Waiting hadn’t accomplished anything.

  She noticed that one thing Mother never said was, “I know how you must feel.” Even that would have been something. But, no, Mother couldn’t even bring herself to say that. Maybe because she didn’t feel it. How could Mother read Forrest’s letters for nearly a year and not know how she was feeling? She could only hope the good in this man would be filtered through Mother to Father. In a sense, each week’s letter brought that possibility. Once Forrest let it out that every week he paid back a few dollars to his sister for the ring. Another time he wrote, “Our mothers are reading so much from each of us it’s a wonder they don’t fall in love and get married.” At least that made Mother laugh.

  One letter said, “Bought more cattle this week. Now we’ve got 40 head plus the milk cows. What would the governor think of that?”

  “What’s that about?” asked Mother.

  “Oh, he means Father.” She knew Mother missed the most important word in that sentence. We.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the spring, Forrest’s frustration reached the breaking point. He wrote directly to Mr. Treadway:

  I can understand why you are hesitant to let your daughter start a new life out here with me, and I don’t want to hold back any truth about who I am or what I have. I don’t earn a lot, but I work hard and I aim to continue if and when you allow your daughter to marry me. In great earnestness he detailed to Mr. Treadway his assets, his current jobs and his prospects. I’ll wash windows, I’ll muck stalls, I’ll do anything to prove to you that I can be a worthy husband, if you would give me that chance. It was a desperation effort.

  Three weeks later, Alice announced, “Mail’s here. Letter for you, Forrest, from Mr. Morton Treadway.”

  Forrest swallowed. “Lemme hear it.”

  Alice got past brief opening formalities, then stopped abruptly.

  “Go on. Isn’t there anything else?”

  “‘I fear she would lead a sedentary life. Marriage doesn’t work on love alone. The issue is closed.’”

  After a moment of stillness, Forrest asked Alice to look up sedentary in the dictionary: “Characterized by or requiring a sitting posture; accustomed to move about little,” she read.

  He flew into a rage. “The old man has it all wrong.” He stormed through the cabin, bumping his shin on the coffee table. “What does he know? He’s never met me, and he never saw Jean out here on the ranch. Come on, Alice. We’re going for a ride.”

  They saddled
up quickly and took off at a gallop. The sun was high, and the heat of the day made the horses strain.

  “That man doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Forrest shouted. The two horses ran side by side, and for a while he rode in steamy silence, gripped by the agony of being misjudged, the frustration of not being permitted to do what he knew he could do. The trouble with kindness toward people who can’t see, he thought, is that everyone thinks he knows what you can do better than you do. But this man should know. Because of Jean he should know better than the rest of the world. That made his letter hurt all the more.

  “Talk about sight. Her father has about as much sight as a mosquito with a blindfold on.”

  They went to Indian Rock, their usual ride, but Forrest didn’t stop there.

  “Sedentary, hell.” He spurred Snort. “He probably sits at a desk all day in a fancy office.”

  Alice sneezed in the dust raised by Snort’s hooves. She had to spur Pronto to keep up and ahead of Forrest.

  “Sits there making money so he can give his family the perfect life.”

  They crossed the valley and cantered up the hills on the other side, working the horses hard.

  “I guess that’s not far different from what I’d like to do—work hard to give a family a good life.” The thought melted some of his anger. He slowed Snort to a lope, stroked him on the neck and found him wet.

  “Let’s let ’em walk, Alice.”

  Alice breathed heavily. “Good.” They took another route home and walked the horses in silence for a while.

  “What’s the old man testing, anyway? Trial by endurance?”

  “He probably doesn’t trust any love based on only two weeks of time together,” Alice said.

  “But we aren’t kids.”

  After they crossed the highway and the horses were on the dirt of the Holly property, Forrest dismounted and walked next to Snort back to the barn. By the time they got to the corral, Snort’s side wasn’t heaving any more and his breath was back to normal.