What Love Sees

by Susan Vreeland

  She made the bed and got breakfast ready. Not a sound from him. She fed Chiang. Still no Forrest. What if something happened? He was accustomed to walk the property by himself—their two acres, the ten-acre pasture, the barn, Mother Holly’s, Lance’s turkey ranch—all without help, yet he’d always come back before this. She could call Lance or Mother Holly, but if he were just talking to someone, she’d feel silly for causing an alarm. Or if he just wanted to be alone, that would be worse. She’d wither from embarrassment. Nothing to do but wait. She sorted the laundry. She turned up the oil stove in the living room and pulled up the wicker chair to read, but her fingers halted over the same line again and again.

  A distant, hollow whistling came through the fog. She jumped up. When the door opened, she smelled a foul odor like sewage or rotting meat.

  “Forrest?”

  “Boy, am I glad to see you, Jeanie baby.”

  “What happened?”

  “Fell in a well.” His voice had none of the velvety smoothness of earlier that morning.

  “You what?”

  “I fell into a pit I dug once.” He sounded agitated that he had to repeat it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just let me get out of these clothes. I smell like a cow’s catook.” She heard him yanking off his clothes right on the porch. “A couple of years ago Lance and I dug a well in the pasture about 300 yards from here, dug it 25 feet deep, but it never gave any water so we put barbed wire around it and used it for a trash dump. Threw in tin cans and tree branches and a dead calf once and turkeys whenever they died. I forgot it was there, I guess.” His voice trembled, like a phonograph record going too slow.

  “How could you fall in if you had barbed wire around it?

  “I thought it was the wire at the other end of the pasture.” His voice cracked. “Wasn’t concentrating, I guess.” She understood only too well. Disorientation. “It was partly broken down, and I thought the cattle had broken over it and had gotten into the next field. All I thought of was what a hard job it would be to find ’em now and drive ’em back. I guess I spit a few words at ’em when I climbed over the fence. Next thing I knew, I was in the bottom.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Maybe scratched up some. It was a good thing we’d thrown a lot of junk in there. I don’t think I fell more than 15 feet.”

  “How did you get out? Who helped you?”

  “Nobody. If I yelled, nobody could hear me, so I began feeling my way around in there. There were a lot of branches over me I’d fallen through. I felt some things I wish I hadn’t, too. When I cleared the branches above me, a lot of stuff fell down on me. I don’t what to guess what. The top six or seven feet of the well is square, faced with boards. Where the square part joins the round part there’s a little corner ledge.” His voice cracked again, this time to a falsetto. “I don’t know how, but I pulled myself up on that and then found the edges of those boards and dug my hands in to pull me the rest of the way.”

  Jean wanted to hug him but was afraid to. He smelled awful. “I’m glad you’re okay.” Unnecessary to say, but she said it anyway. She felt his panic. She relived it with him as he bathed, as they took a walk to Indian Rock and to the neighbors’ chicken ranch. It made her feel ashamed for crying the day before. After all, he was struggling, too, working until eleven every night, getting up early every morning, facing a world no easier than hers. And still he whistled on his way back from the well. Perhaps there had been a tone of desperation in that whistle, but it was whistling nonetheless. Alice was right when she said he must do it to keep from crying.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Father’s presence shrank the house. Everything Forrest and Jean did, all they had accomplished, just living actually, seemed inconsequential and provincial when they showed it to him. Not that he said anything critical. And certainly Forrest didn’t seem to feel that way. Maybe it was just her.

  The first afternoon Forrest took them around the ranch, to the barn, to Mother Holly’s, even up to visit Heddy and Karl. “Yeesus Christ, Forrest,” Karl said in front of everybody. “You didn’t tell me you was bringing the governor. We might have swept out the place first.” Jean forced a little laugh.

  On the way back she whispered to Forrest not to take them to Lance and Mary Kay’s turkey ranch.

  “Why not? That’s part of the family.”

  “But it’s—well, not very nice. You said so yourself.”

  He did anyway. “It’s too cold. I’m not going,” Jean said loudly. She turned what she thought was vaguely the direction of the house. “Forward,” she told Chiang.

  They got through dinner without any greater disaster than Mother telling her she took too much off when she peeled the potatoes. When was the last time Mother peeled potatoes? And of course Father missed his cocktail. At least he had his pipe. Still, she knew her wedding damask didn’t hide the rough redwood picnic table underneath.

  When Earl stopped by after dinner to talk about digging a well, Forrest invited him in and introduced him. “Oh, I remember you, ma’m. Evening to you.” Even with the piano bench, Jean knew there weren’t enough places to sit, so she began to drag one of the picnic benches from the kitchen into the living room. Earl saw what she was doing and hurried to help.

  “Father, you sit in the wicker chair,” Jean said. “Hardly like your green leather one, but it’ll have to do.”

  “This is just fine, Jean,” Mother said quickly.

  “We’re going to get you some furniture,” Father said. “This trip. For Christmas. A nice sofa and maybe even a leather chair. And anything else you need.”

  “Nothing else can fit in,” Jean said. She was tempted to give him a quick hug, but he wasn’t the hugging sort. And she didn’t want to fumble for him. She went back into the kitchen to finish the dishes. Mother followed. “I don’t want you to do anything, Mother. Just visit.” Jean tried to listen above the dishwashing sounds and Mother’s news of Lucy and home to the conversation in the living room. She could tell Father was trying to be cordial, asking conventional, get-acquainted questions about home and family.

  “Does your sister live in Ramona, too?” he asked.

  “Nope. She’s peddlin’ her ass somewheres else, don’t know where for sure.”

  Jean turned the water on fast. Maybe Mother didn’t hear. Why doesn’t Forrest change the subject? It was Father who did. “Are most of the homes in the valley served by well water?”

  “Yup. That’s the only way. No public water service. We have to find it ourselves.”

  “How do you know where to dig?”

  “A witchin’ stick,” Earl said.

  “No! That’s so primitive. I can’t believe that’s still used.”

  “Works fine.”

  Jean shifted her weight at the sink and smiled. The visit would be broadening to Father, if nothing else.

  “I’ll show you how, tomorrow, if you’d like. Forrest and I are going to sight one at the Bradley place. Except you’d do better to wear some boots or other pants.”

  “He’s got some,” Forrest said.

  “Boots?”

  “No, I bought some Levi’s today. First pair I’ve ever owned. Where’d we get them, Forrest?”

  “Ransom Brothers Hardware. You don’t have them on now?”

  “No. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to bend enough to sit down at the dinner table.”

  “So Forrest showed you the town, eh?”

  “More than that. He was a big spender today,” Father said. Jean could hear Forrest laugh with chagrin as Father warmed to his story. “He thought he’d take us out to lunch. Where was it?”

  “Warner’s Hot Springs. But they were closed for the winter.” Forrest chuckled again.

  “So we went to—.”

  “Lake Henshaw.”

  “But they were closed, too, so we ended up eating at some fish house on a rickety old dock. A little smelly, but great cuisine, though. We had our choice of codfish sandwich or
fried egg sandwich.”

  “I only spent $3.48 for all of us,” Forrest announced with bravado.

  She could imagine Father telling this at the Ares and Aint’s. Well, it was probably good he felt he could tease Forrest. “Tomorrow night we’re going somewhere else. I had a roommate at Yale, George Richardson, who owns an inn near a golf course west of here. Rancho Santa Fe Inn, I think it’s called.”

  “Yup, I’ve heard of it,” Earl said. “Pretty slick place, I’m told.”

  “Well, he’ll give me a manhattan, even if Forrest won’t.”

  “I don’t hardly know what one is,” Forrest said.

  That night was the coldest one all winter. Why this week, of all weeks? It wasn’t that Jean had never been cold in Bristol, but never in the house. She walked into the tiny second bedroom, practically filled by the borrowed bed. The heat from the oil stove in the living room didn’t penetrate that far and she shivered. “You’d better wear your robe to bed,” she warned Mother.

  In the morning Forrest got up early to heat up the oil stove before he left to do the milking. It crackled as the metal expanded in the heat and made the house smell like oil or diesel. Jean got up early, too. She knew Father and Mother were used to having their own bathroom. Father would die when he realized he’d have to sit in a bathtub instead of take a shower. They weren’t used to making their own bed, either. She would have to try to get in there to do that when he was in the bathroom. She could orchestrate the visit as smoothly as things allowed, but she couldn’t cushion Father from the reality of her life here. The week ahead seemed long.

  As soon as Mother got up, she came out to stand by the oil stove.

  “Do you want another robe, Mother?”

  “No, dear, I’m fine. But I think we’ll spend the rest of the week at the inn.”

  It surprised her, relieved her, too, and she spoke up. “I think that would be very nice.”

  “We’re perfectly comfortable here, but I think your father would like to see George.”

  Jean knew it wasn’t true. That was her mother—always tactful, even loving in her diplomacy, but tact wasn’t closeness, or even openness. Underlying her parents’ decision to stay at the inn was an unwillingness to be temporarily uncomfortable for the sake of sharing and of closeness. Staying here would have shown a different kind of love than her mother’s which was, perhaps, just sweetness.

  It wasn’t resentment Jean felt. She just grew aware of an abyss which separated her from Mother, a difference in temperament. She could not, would not, be an echo of her mother out here in Ramona. The separation had been noiseless, the sundering merely a relaxation of ties. Probably Mother hadn’t even noticed.

  Father came out and pulled the wicker chair up to the oil stove. “Kind of like camping out,” he said.

  Forrest stomped dirt from his boots at the doorstep and came in. A gust of cold air killed whatever heat the oil burner had struggled to create. “You missed the first milking, but you can help on the next. I’ll show you my seeing eye bull. After breakfast, do you want to come with Earl and me? We’ve got to check on the cattle in the rented pasture before we go to Bradley’s.”

  “No, Forrest, I think I’ll just supervise the view from the porch.”

  When Earl came to pick up Forrest, Father cornered him when Forrest was washing up. “Do you think it’s safe for Forrest to follow that bull out there?”

  “I’d worry about the bull if I was you, Mr. Treadway. Forrest can sling one mean rope.”

  After Mother and Father left that afternoon, Jean discovered Father’s stiff new Levi’s, folded and laid carefully on the corner of the bed, with the price tag still on.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It shouldn’t have happened, she thought. Icy deserved better. She was always the one to help me live. She always wanted a fuller life for me.

  Jean blinked back tears and brushed away a fly that landed on her nose. Her hand dropped to the pile of damp balls of rolled up pillowcases, shirts and slips. She counted. Only eight more to go. The tired, old ironing board creaked as she worked. At each pass of the iron, a wave of dryness rose as vacant and sterile, she thought, as this dry, forgotten town. A crow cawed. Its scolding hung in the air.

  It was a horrid way to find out—turning on the radio to listen to Amos ’n Andy and hearing instead the news announcement: “A military transport en route for Frankfurt carrying 321 wives and children of American servicemen visiting their husbands on leave went down over Newfoundland. There were no survivors.” The canned voice had echoed in her mind for days while part of her didn’t believe it until Mother’s telegram confirmed that Icy had been among the passengers.

  Her throat felt stuffed with cotton wadding, dry and bursting for Icy’s death—so wrong, so undeserved—and for their girlhood gone. Up to now, the war had threatened, exploded and died and had hardly touched her. Lucy had joined the Red Cross Club Service and was sent to India at the base of the Burma Road, but she was safe, and was helping those servicemen pouring down from the mountains now that the war was over. Tready lost her husband in the South Pacific, but Alice’s husband came back safe, and Alice had left Ramona to join him at the Army base in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The war had affected others much more directly than it had her. She had lived in relative domestic peace, hampered only by lack of household goods—a washing machine and, for a time, a telephone—and the war had played out its distant drama of numbers, names and places, all without direct personal loss.

  Until Icy. For years she had confided in Icy her fears that her life wouldn’t be full, and Icy had helped to fill it. Now it was Icy who had been cheated. What a dirty trick. She ached for Mrs. Eastman.

  She put aside the iron and, with both hands, lifted the sheet and spread out a new section. She stretched her arms above and behind her shoulders and raised her hair to let in some coolness where a few wet strands were plastered to the nape of her neck. A cicada buzzed its tight, dry squeak. Icy. Icy. She reached for the iron without thinking. The hot triangle caught the knuckle of her little finger. Instinctively she put her hand to her mouth and sucked the burn. A tear crept down her cheek. She wiped it with the back of her hand, reached more gingerly for the iron and worked it back and forth across the sheet. A new tear made a wet, tickling path down her cheek and sizzled when it hit the iron. The sound startled her and made her smile a tight, quick smile. Icy’s lesson, even now: show on your face what you’re thinking. Another raced down the same trail and sizzled again. She imagined it bursting into tiny bouncing droplets like the ones she had seen as a little girl when Mary spit on the iron to see if it was hot. She worked more intensely, in order not to think, but one after another the drops fell and sizzled. Hearing them only unleashed more.

  What would she do if Forrest came in? She’d already cried in front of him about Icy twice, and that was enough. He had little tolerance for tears. He’d want to know what was wrong now, and then she’d have to explain. It wasn’t just Icy, anyway. It was a dozen chronic aches that her mind played over during the brooding afternoons at the ironing board when Chiang, the cicadas and the whirring arms of some windmill were her only company. She couldn’t say she felt homesick, cramped up in this tiny cottage stuck out away from any real culture. That sounded snobby and would injure Forrest who was so contented here. Besides, she had chosen it. She couldn’t say he wasn’t good to her, even though he teased her too much. But telling him would be an admission that she was frail in character, a thing contemptible to him.

  She heard him whistling outside. She sniffled quickly and wiped her face with the back of her hand. The door opened.

  “Hey, Jeanie baby. Where are ya?”

  She swallowed before she spoke. “Right here. Ironing.”

  “Here’s the mail. Looks like another record from your folks.”

  Good. He hadn’t detected, from her voice at least, but she was still afraid a leftover tear might fall to a sizzling exposure. She moved toward him, away from the iron.

&
nbsp; “The fence in the south pasture’s busted. Cows could be anywhere. Earl’s here and we’re going over in the truck. We have to find ’em and fix it before we load.” She turned away from the door in case Earl was standing there looking in and would tell Forrest she’d been crying. “It’ll be after midnight before we’re done tonight.” His voice sounded agitated. He walked toward her and handed her the mail. “Just thought I ought to warn you.”

  A new tear fell on her hand. Day and night were the same to him, she knew. She dipped her head so his kiss would land on her forehead or hair instead of her wet cheek. He turned, his boots struck the bare floor, the door closed, and the truck was off. Dust blew in the open window and she closed her eyes momentarily.

  She always seemed to be waiting for him. Time alone inched forward. Self-reliant, that’s what marriage was making her, she thought. Self-contained, so that whatever happened she’d go on. Whatever Ramona would say about Forrest’s “high falutin’ eastern bride,” whatever Alice would do that cut her out of that cramped sisterly tightness she had with him, whatever Mother Holly would say about how she wasn’t washing her son’s precious wool socks right, whatever Forrest would say teasing her about Chiang and even about Jimmy—calling him an African because he’d lived in Morocco—whatever anyone would say, she’d stiffen up under it. Forrest had said that. Okay, maybe he was right, but it still hurt.

  She blew out a puff of breath, lifting the hair on her forehead and thought back to the time she’d dreamt of marriage, marriage to anybody, before she met Forrest, when Tready tried teaching her how to iron and it was fun and new. She hadn’t known then that marriage could hurt. Even after she met him she didn’t think it would be like this. Maybe you don’t ever really know a man until you live with him, until you wake up tired and brush your teeth with him and wait for him while the dinner gets cold and wait for him to love you at night—maybe you just don’t ever know him before you marry him. And maybe that’s good, because otherwise no one would ever marry.