What Love Sees

by Susan Vreeland

Jean left the room feeling hollow. He was so untouchable. This was one child with whom she feared failing. He was an enigma to her, only a shadowy presence. Like an iceberg three-quarters hidden, he glided about in mistiness, just out of reach. He was not inarticulate, yet he talked so rarely. If she could only see to read his face. He gave her so little to go on, and then sometimes, like this, he shut her out.

  She walked into the kitchen and stood at the sink. There was a separateness about him, not one of space merely, but of time. He was so different from Faith or Forrie. He seemed to be waiting to live, not living now. He didn’t enter into the boisterous cowboy games Forrie played. Instead, he would climb into the barrels of horse candy in the barn and eat it. Or he’d climb into the fireplace or sit up on the roof for hours. Often when Betty and Warren or Heddy and Karl came in the evening, Billy wordlessly snuggled up to them on the sofa with a winsomeness that demanded nothing, only the pleasure of being there.

  Once, she couldn’t find him all afternoon. She walked through each room, called his name and listened. She asked Faith to look in the barn. She called the logical places—Franny Nelson’s, Lance’s, and Mother Holly’s. Franny walked in an hour later and discovered him right there in the living room all the time, curled up on the sofa facing the fireplace.

  “What have you been doing?” she asked.

  “Sleeping.”

  “When did you wake up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed him. It had annoyed her at the time because she thought he enjoyed playing possum, underscoring her disadvantage. It made her feel watched and tricked. Continually, he withdrew from interaction, and now again today he pulled away from her. She felt inadequate, not knowing whether to draw him out or just let him retreat to his own dreamy world. A world far different from what Forrest would have for him, that’s for sure. Billy retreated from Forrest too. It was wearisome always softening Forrest’s sternness. A father couldn’t always be so demanding; he’d drive his children away. She’d have to confront him. Billy would wither, otherwise. Even though Billy had turned away from her, maybe she had reached him with something that bound them closer. Maybe. And maybe not. She knew Forrest hadn’t felt anything like that with Billy, and she wanted it for him, too.

  That night in their bedroom, they were quiet as they got ready for bed. Forrest was often uncommunicative when mulling something over. Under the cool sheet she reached out, felt the ropey muscles of his back toward her and moved closer. In bed at night certain things could be said that couldn’t be said in the day.

  “Go easy on him, Forrest. He’s just a little boy. Hardly eight years old.” She spoke slowly, pausing.

  “Well, it’s time he grew up.”

  “But he can grow up in his own way. He doesn’t have to grow up in yours.”

  She could tell he was holding tight onto his opinion and his anger. Even though she stroked his back and neck, it was a long time before he relaxed. When she told him about Billy’s hand, he tightened up again. “That might not have happened if you’d let him be.”

  He didn’t answer, but his body was rigid against hers. He had heard her. That she knew. Maybe that was all she needed to say. She tried to stay awake trailing her fingers along his neck and shoulders from behind. After a while, her hand slowed and then stopped and she slept.

  Forrest was quiet in the morning, unusual for him who always woke up robust and ready for a new day. In fact, he was subdued most of the week, and he worked late each night. The next Saturday he went out to do some gardening. She passed by a window and heard him talking in the patio, heard the snap of pruning shears.

  “See any roses?” she heard him say.

  “Uh-huh. Two.” It was Billy’s voice. She stood still to listen.

  “What do they look like?”

  “Fat red ones.”

  “Only two?”

  “Nope. One more. But it’s only a bud. It doesn’t count.”

  “Sure it does. Didn’t you know that inside that bud, wrapped tight around each other, are all the parts that the big opened ones have? There are just as many petals and a center, only it’s not time for it yet.”

  “When’ll it open?”

  “When it’s ready.”

  “How does it know?”

  “It just knows, all by itself.” She heard two more snips of the pruning shears. “Just like you.”

  Billy didn’t respond, but at least she didn’t hear him walking away. Her eyes teared a little, not for Billy this time, but for what Forrest must have undergone this week.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  A rooster crowed.

  “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Jean felt Forrest shift positions. Her voice was soft so as not to disturb the children when she read the Brailled Bible lesson to him in the morning sitting up in the big bed, covers still wrapped up to their middles.

  Two feet padded down the hallway and a small form climbed into the bed and settled himself between them. It was six-year-old Hap. Soon his breathing became heavier, more regular. When Jean finished and got up, the motion of the bed woke him.

  She walked out to the kitchen and filled the tea kettle. His footsteps followed her.

  “Mommy, it’s foggy out. Can’t see anything,” Hap said.

  “What’s it look like?” she blurted, her question pouncing on his stray comment. She held her breath and heard him climb into the breakfast booth by the kitchen window.

  “Gray. Trees are gray. Barn’s gray. We’re trapped in here. Can’t go out.”

  “You can. Later. It’ll go away when the sun comes out.”

  She relaxed. If it was color he was responding to, that was okay. She opened the kitchen door and stood outside for a moment. The air did feel damp. She heard the shower water and the hum of Forrest’s electric shaver. A mourning dove gave a distant who-whoo. The tea water boiled and the kettle began to screech. She took it off the burner and stirred the oatmeal. The pull on her spoon told her it was almost ready. “Hap, go get the others. Time for breakfast.”

  “Sacca la puerta, Cocareeto.” George was waking up too. She reached into his cage to refill his water cup. “Cocareeeto.” He stretched out the third sound of the greeting learned from Celerina. She wondered what it meant.

  A knock on a door, then, “Hurry up, Flappy.” Forrie’s voice down the hallway sounded impatient. A toilet flushed and a door opened. “About time, two-ton.”

  “Mom,” Faith wailed as she came into the kitchen. “Forrie called me Two Ton.”

  “Well?”

  The single word silenced her.

  A hand placed on the upper register of the piano scraped all the way down to the last base note. It set off George.

  “Mommy, George’s been chewing his perch again,” Hap said.

  All four scrambled into the kitchen booth.

  “Can I have syrup on my cereal?” Faith asked.

  “A little.”

  “What day is today?” Billy asked.

  “Monday.”

  “But no school. Summer. Yippee!”

  She smiled. Though summer stretched long ahead of her, this first day of liberation always brought high spirits.

  Someone opened the refrigerator door, letting out coolness into the room. It stayed open for a long time.

  “Close the door.”

  “I can’t find the syrup.”

  “It’s there. Just look.”

  “But I can’t find it,” she whined.

  Jean walked over to the refrigerator, stretched both hands in, felt the tops of a row of bottles along one side, and pulled out the syrup. “Having eyes, see ye not?”

  Forrest’s hard shoes echoed down the hallway.

  “This cereal’s lumpy,” Hap grunted.

  “Eat it anyway,” Forrest said, coming into the kitchen.

  “Can’t. Lumps as big as marbles.”

  “Just got to take the lumps as they come. They’re good for you, too. Why, I
like lumps better than the smooth stuff.”

  “You can have mine.”

  A crash in George’s cage sent a shower of seeds onto the table. Piercing squawks and a flutter of wings followed.

  “What happened?” Jean asked.

  Caught in a fit of laughing, no one could answer. She heard Forrest chuckling, and she began to laugh, too.

  “He fell down, right through his perch,” Faith explained between gasps.

  “He looks so funny, like he doesn’t know what happened. What a seed brain,” Forrie said.

  “Rubbed his beak on that old stick one too many times, did he?” Forrest said.

  “Hey, there’s seeds in my cereal,” Billy grumbled.

  All mornings weren’t like this, but when they were, the day seemed to zing by, and before Jean was ready, Forrest would be home from work. Now that he had his contractor’s license, he had an office in town. It was different not having him nearby, but all right, too. In fact, some days it was a relief.

  She put a load in the washing machine and then opened the windows to let in some air while it was still cool. The windmill across Ash Street began to thrum as the midmorning breeze picked up. She could hear it squeak when it turned its tail away from the wind and the blades twirled. The change in the direction of the wind brought a rumble of cackling and cawing from Heddy and Karl’s chicken ranch. The sound of 40,000 chickens was almost like a waterfall. Karl’s doing well, she thought. That’s good. They deserve some prosperity. She thought she smelled warm feathers. Too early to smell the droppings. They hadn’t heated up to a pungent odor yet because of the fog. When the wind changed again, and the windmill slowed and squeaked to a stop, like a train pulling in to a station, the chicken noises diminished and she became conscious of a low engine roar. Airplanes never fly over Ramona, but it couldn’t be anything else. It grew louder and more ominous. The children ran outside.

  “Wow, look at him,” Forrie squealed and made engine sounds. It made Jean smile.

  “Look at how high he is,” said Faith.

  “Look at what?” Hap’s voice sounded bewildered.

  “Over there.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Right there, right where I’m pointing.”

  “Oh,” Hap muttered. Then the horn on his trike sounded three times. “Move it.”

  The air became drier as morning progressed, and she could smell the eucalyptus trees on the road edge. Mockingbirds in the pepper trees sang an infinite variety of notes. Japanese glass wind chimes at Franny’s tinkled faintly.

  “Got any string, Mom?”

  “Have. Do you have any string,” she corrected. Forrie was eleven now, old enough to say it right. “Bottom drawer in the service porch. What are you going to do?”

  “Fly kites. Chucky doesn’t ever have any string. We wanna send messages to the graves.”

  “How?”

  “See, we make these little notes and send them up on our kite strings with a paper clip. Then we yank on ’em and they fall down over by the cemetery.”

  She heard him rustling in the drawer. Then the door slammed. The motor on the well hummed, high and whining, when the breeze brought it to her. A truck on the highway shifted gears near the crest of the hill and set Mother Holly’s peacocks to screeching. She heard footsteps on the roof. Must be Billy. She headed outside to the clothesline with her laundry basket. Already there was the constant, high, raspy hum of cicadas. One of the horses whiffled. A lone meadowlark pierced the morning with its liquid song. It chilled her with its beauty. She fed on the sounds. They spoke of continuity and order. The temperature felt a few degrees hotter than the last time she was outside. She walked back to the house, let the basket fall to the floor of the service porch and puffed out a sigh.

  “Why do you always sigh like that?” Faith asked.

  She listened again for the meadowlark.

  “Mom, why do you always do that?”

  “Hm? Do what?”

  “Why do you always sigh?”

  Kids can ask a question a dozen times, she thought. “Oh, I guess it feels good. It just feels good to sigh sometimes.”

  “Are you sad, Mom?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Me either.”

  Faith’s sandals scraped against the floor on her way into the living room. She pulled the piano bench out and drummed her fingers on the base notes. She began the first three measures of her lesson. Long ago she had graduated from Teaching Little Fingers to Play and was now on Thompson’s Book II. She pounded out a simple arpeggio.

  The telephone rang. It was someone from the Junior Women’s Club asking if Jean would help again with the father-and-son banquet. Yes, of course she would. It had been fun the year before. Together they baked twenty turkeys. Jean was given the job of grinding onion in a meat grinder for dressing because she could do it with her eyes closed. She had felt part of the community. The women were genuine and she enjoyed being with them.

  Another truck came barreling down the highway, its brakes screeching on the down side before it climbed up to the crest at Mother Holly’s.

  “Will you play ‘Kentucky Babe,’ Mom?”

  The truck sound made Jean wonder.

  “Mom, will you play ‘Kentucky Babe?’”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a minute.” She finished loading the washing machine again and sat down at the piano. “Watch my right hand.”

  Before she finished, the doorbell rang. Nobody in Ramona rang doorbells. They just you-whooed or knocked. Jean and Faith both went to the door.

  “Is this your boy, ma’m?” came a husky male voice.

  “Hap!” Faith cried. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Yes, I guess he is,” Jean said.

  “I found him on his bike, going down the middle of the highway, right down the center line. You’d be right smart to keep an eye on this kid, ma’m. We have to get rolling pretty fast to make it up the hill when we’re loaded.”

  Jean stammered out her thanks and apologies and then scolded Hap.

  After lunch the air hung heavy. Humidity always made her neck sticky, but this day there was a restlessness in the air that made her slightly nervous. She heard Rusty chasing the hens, his barks competing with their cackles. Thunder rumbled low. It sounds a long way away, she thought, remembering her sheets on the line.

  “Faith, what color’s the sky?”

  “Kind of gray.”

  “You let me know, won’t you, if it looks like it’s going to rain.”

  A door slammed. “Mommy, here’s the mail.”

  “Bring it to me, Hap.”

  She felt through the stack. One envelope had the bottom left corner clipped off. For years that had been Lorraine’s method of letting her know a Braille letter was inside. She opened it and read. Lorraine’s husband’s union was still on strike. “We’re getting by, though,” Lorraine had written, “and a settlement is promised any day now. I have three more piano students so that helps.” Typical of Lorraine always to be cheerful. Then, in Lorraine’s characteristic fashion, she commented on every bit of news Jean had told her of the children. It was good to have a friend so interested in the details of her life.

  “But I have to tell you one sad thing,” the letter said. “Last week I saw in the newspaper that Miss Jennings died. It got me to thinking of all the kind things she did and how she brought us together. I felt badly that she may not have known what she really did for us, our friendship.” Dear Lorraine. Her heart was so good. If they had lived closer to each other, she might have loved Lorraine as a sister.

  Jean felt through the rest of the mail and found a stiff, square envelope, the kind that always contained Sound Scriber records from Mother. She opened it and put it on the machine. “Hello all. Today is Wednesday, so I’m headed for the reading club soon. Yesterday Lucy came to swim with the children. The twins are growing up so nicely. Sam was voted most valuable player of his hockey team….We’re going to the
club at Farmington tonight…. The Barnes are on another cruise, to the Bahamas again….The Ingrahams just got back from London with lots of stories.” News hadn’t changed much. Mother’s voice sounded as it always had, gentle but this time a little tired.

  “Mommy, how do they tell what day it is at Grandma’s?”

  She smiled. Certain things always puzzled Hap. “The same way we do here.”

  “But it’s different. Forrie said today is Monday and they’re on Wednesday there.”

  Jean laughed and then explained. “When the others come in, we can make a record for her and, Faith, you can play ‘Dance of the Hours’ on the piano.”

  She heard sheets flapping outside on the clothesline. She opened the back door and stepped outside. The sultry air felt solid, as if it hung low over the house. “It feels like rain for sure. Is the sky darker, Faith?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t say ‘yeah.’ Say ‘yes.’”

  “Yes. I can see it raining.”

  “Where?”

  “Over the mountains. I can’t even see Mt. Palomar. It’s all gray.”

  Thunder cracked and seemed to shake the earth. She picked up the basket, went out to the clothesline and walked right into a sheet. Thunder clapped again, louder, as if struggling to free itself. It made her lift her shoulders involuntarily. A drop of water plopped on her cheek. She hurried to get the sheets in. A few flaps of wings and an angry squawk came from over near the corral.

  “Get away, you,” she heard Hap say. “You meanie.”

  Rain plopped faster, but she made it back in with the dampened sheets while it was still in the threatening stage. The screen door banged a second time behind her.

  “Mommy, Roosty’s a mean old bird. I don’t like him anymore.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “He jumped off the fence and flew at me.”

  “Were you bothering him, Hap?”

  “Nope. He’s just mean, that’s all. He pecked at me for no reason.”

  “Where?”

  “Right in my face.”

  “You have to leave him alone. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  “Naw.”

  The rain came in big, splats, not the steady, day-long rain of winter, but the short, spontaneous outburst of a fast-moving summer storm. It smelled muddy. She heard more doors slam as the others came inside. A sharp breeze caught Franny’s wind chimes and made them jangle. The rain interrupted play, and the children, impatient to be outside again, bickered in whiny voices. She heard one child following her around, not saying anything.