What Love Sees (8 page)

“Maybe half a mile.”

“It never felt like that before. In fact, it felt wonderful.”

“Well, it’s not supposed to hurt.” He chuckled. “You did fine, Jeanie. Do you think you can stay still while I go back and find your hat?”

“Only if I have to.” She grinned. Miss Weaver was right again. Here was something she could do.

Her piano was often silent in the afternoon now. She had to train for the horse show. Most afternoons she was dressed early. “Who’s ready?” she’d call out her door, anxious to drag the first one down to the riding ring. They were learning drills and formations just as they had seen at Madison Square Garden. Herr Frederich would call out commands and Jean had to memorize how many strides for each command in order to know where she was.

On a horse, away from the security of the earth and in an open ring with no walls to bounce back sound, all sense of space and dimension vanished. On the ground her own legs and the length of her stride told her how far she had gone. Now she didn’t have that guide. She could only guess about the stride of the horse. At one point in the routine her position was on the outside of a pinwheel. She had to sense her distance to the horse next to her on the inside so she wouldn’t stray off, away from the line. Sometimes Dody had to tell her, “Move in a few feet, Jean.” Worse than that, sometimes she got confused and had to ask where she was. She had to stay alert to move in rhythm and still perceive constantly changing spatial relationships. After every practice her shoulders ached from tenseness, but that didn’t matter. The ring, even more than the classroom, was a new arena for learning. Of course, she could do it. Miss Weaver had said so.

Though learning to ride was exciting, the closeness it brought with the other girls was far more satisfying. She sensed they thought her more self-sufficient than before so they pampered her less. It made her relax. She was aware of their move from pity to friendship but doubted if they were conscious of it.

Jean felt even more accepted when Sally Anne showed her how to pin up her hair. One Saturday before an opera trip, Jean sat on her bed with a dish of bobby pins and a half cup of water. She was in a hurry and every curl was a battle. Sally Anne saw her struggling and deftly took over without a word. “There now, I’m finished,” she said. “But I didn’t tell you. I spit on every curl. Ran out of water.”

At last Jean felt she wasn’t being crushed by kindness.

The events of one night made her feel drawn into their circle permanently. Late in the evening the girls on her floor were noisier than usual. When Jean pulled back the covers and climbed into bed, her foot jabbed at a fold in the sheet and she couldn’t get in. “What’s the ma—Who short-sheeted my bed? Dody, did you?” she called out into the hallway where she heard laughter.

“Who, me?”

“Sally Anne, you did!” Jean lunged toward Sally Anne’s giggle.

“Not I,” Sally Anne said innocently, turning Jean around.

“Said the little red hen,” Elsa mimicked.

Sally Anne gave Jean a gentle push in Elsa’s direction.

“You did, Elsa! Then I’m just going to sleep in your bed!” Jean scrambled toward Elsa’s bed and heard a funny kazoo noise.

“What’s that?’ Jean asked, climbing in.

“Just some toilet paper on a comb. Try it.” Elsa handed it to her and got another. Sitting up in bed together, the two girls went through a child’s repertoire, from “Yankee Doodle” to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

“We’re not kids, Elsa. We’ve got to do something more cultured. What about that “
du du
” German song?”

“
Du, du liegst mir im Herzen
,” Elsa sang, and they started in industriously on their combs.

Miss Weaver’s clompy shoes echoed at the base of the stairs. “Girls, lights out.”

“But we’re playing in German,” Jean protested, eliciting giggles from the open doorways down the hall.

“
Geht ins Bett
!”

“Yes, Miss Weaver,” Elsa said in a singsongy voice.

“
Seid ruhig
!”

“Good night,
Fraulein
Weaver,” Jean chorused, placating her and generating more titters down the hall.

Willingly she made her way over to her own bed and snickered as she wrestled to remake it. At last she was one of them, chastised in front of the group. She knew that even though the others thought she was a goody-goody, they valued her loyalty. There was an unspoken arrangement, sacred as any ancient rite. The girls on her floor wouldn’t tell LCW that she read her Braille novels after lights-out, and she wouldn’t tell the crazy things they did, like Sally Anne climbing onto the roof in her slip to look into the boys’ school beyond the stone wall. She never breathed a word about the Polly Gillespie orange escapade.

Polly was a platinum blond from out west, “probably some sprawling ranch,” Dody told her once. Polly had a voice that clattered like cold emeralds tumbling out of a treasure chest, her words loud and older than her years. She’d been everywhere already even though she was youngest. Jean didn’t doubt that she’d done just about everything, too. She imagined her as gaudy butterfly fluttering her eyelashes and waving long, red-tipped fingers. Without fail, she always came back late from holidays because of an asthma attack. “How does she always plan it so well?” Jean asked Dody. Once after semester break Polly arrived a few days late with a basket of oranges.

“For the girls,” she told LCW.

“How thoughtful of you,” Miss Weaver had said. That was before the laughter got louder and louder on the floor above.

Upstairs Polly drew the girls together in her room. “I’ve got something for everyone. Western oranges.”

“What’s so different about western oranges?” asked Sally Anne.

“Try one.”

Sally Anne took the largest one and peeled back the skin. She separated the sections and popped a fat one into her mouth. “Ooh, juicy.” She let out a knowing squeal. “Pass ’em around.”

Most of the girls grabbed, but a few held back. Jean slurped up the juice with the rest of them. “Why are they so juicy?” she asked.

“I injected them.”

“With what?”

“Gin.”

Amid the squeals of laughter, one girl quietly moved toward the door. “Oh, Cathy, stay,” urged Polly.

“No, I’ve got to study.”

A few moments later Jean heard her close the door to her room down the hall.

“Lame excuse. She’s so dull. She’s got no personality. No sex appeal either.”

Polly’s remark stunned Jean. The sex appeal wasn’t what bothered her. Admittedly, she had no notion of what that consisted of, but she had never considered Cathy dull, just quieter than the others. Did that make her dull too? She couldn’t stop wondering. The next day after lunch, Jean followed Dody into her room.

“Is anybody else here?”

“No.”

“Close the door.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I feel stupid asking this. Is Cathy really dull? Do you think so, Dody?”

Dody didn’t answer right away. “Sit down, here, on the bed.” She touched Jean’s hand to the bedspread. “I guess maybe you don’t see the way we do. Yes. She is. Polly was right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with her.”

“How could she say it, though? Right out there like that?”

“Saying it doesn’t matter. We all know it anyway.”

That night Jean didn’t read after lights-out. She sat up in bed for a long time. Here was someone else who probably felt on the outside of things. Jean imagined the hollow feeling Cathy must have had, sitting in her empty room the night before when the others were having fun, like swallowing a hard candy too soon and having it ache in your chest until it dissolved. But Cathy seemed happy enough. Maybe it didn’t matter to Cathy. Maybe it shouldn’t matter so much to her either. Andrebrook wasn’t all that the world consisted of, and school was ending soon anyway. And then what? That made her slide down and pull the covers up.

A few days later, Jean attempted doing her hair herself again. When she went down to the dining room for dinner, Sally Anne said, “Oh, Jeanie, you look lovely.”

But she knew she didn’t. Sally Anne’s sugary voice sounded just like Mother’s had in the dining room when she had ironed that dress herself.

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am, Jean. Don’t you believe me?”

“No.”

In June, 1936, after two years at Andrebrook, Jean was officially “finished.” There was a small ceremony out in the garden for the girls leaving, and Miss Weaver gave a speech about the value of culture and the need to stay alive by continuing to learn and to experience all they possibly could.

Jean listened intently, feeling as though Miss Weaver was speaking especially to her. At the first cocktail hour back home, she repeated it to Father. In the same breath she added, “and Miss Weaver has more space this summer. She always takes five girls to Europe and she only has two so far. It’s an educational experience.”

She heard him light his pipe. “Europe. Well. What countries?”

“Mainly Germany. Austria and Italy, too, and maybe France. But Miss Weaver likes Germany best. She always says ‘The roots of western civilization penetrate deep in the Teutonic world.’” Jean pulled in her chin and mimicked Miss Weaver’s deep voice, stretching out the “o” in roots and trilling the “r.”

“Seems a suitable finishing off. You worked hard. We’ll see.”

“There’s only one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d be a bother to the other girls. And if I’m alone, Miss Weaver will drag me through every museum and explain every painting inch by inch.”

It was a little easier speaking to Father now. She heard him pouring another drink. Evidently, he was thinking. Time to be quiet and wait. Things had to settle with Father on his own terms.

Two days later at breakfast he asked, “Who was that girl with you at Camp Hanoum, the one you liked so much?”

“Do you mean Icy Eastman?”

“Is that the one who always described everything for you?”

“Yes.”

“Have you kept in contact with her?”

“Oh yes. We write letters, and she came to my birthday party last year.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“Working at a bank. She lives in Litchfield.”

“Why don’t you call her up today? If she can take off from work, I’ll send you both to Europe.”

“Oh, Father, do you really mean it?”

“Wouldn’t say it otherwise. And Lucy too, if she wants to.”

“Oh, thank you, Father,” both girls chorused in their rush around the table to hug him.

“Don’t ambush me from both sides.” He chuckled. “Can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace?”

Mother cleared her throat. “What about the trouble there?” she asked. “You know on the radio they say there were civilians murdered in Madrid, nuns and children and—”

“Irrelevant,” Father declared. “Weaver isn’t taking them to Spain. That’s just a rumor anyway.”

“I hope you’re right. But in Germany there were troop parades.”

“Those bluffs strutting around Europe are only putting their manhood back together after losing the war. Let them,” Father said. “Why shouldn’t they go?”

Chapter Eight

Miss Weaver and five girls walked the cool, dim passages of Cologne cathedral.

“Our footsteps echo.” Arm in arm with Icy, Jean knew she didn’t need to say it. Undoubtedly Icy was aware of it, too.

“Can you feel how big it is in here?” Icy asked.

“Not exactly, but sounds come from a long way off.”

“The ceiling seems a mile away. It has stone arches, kind of pointy, and they cross.”

“The stone even smells damp. Are we passing a window?”

“Yes. A tall one. The stained glass glows like jewels. How’d you know?”

“I just had an eerie feeling of light or something.”

Suddenly, the organ began, a sustained full chord. Instantly, Icy and Jean stopped. Sound filled all space. Jean turned around. “Where are the pipes? I can’t tell.”

“Behind us.”

The resonant chords and ranks of voices bounced off the vaulted ceiling so that the music, overlapping measure upon measure, lost its distinctness.

“Don’t you feel small?” Lucy asked, catching up behind them.

“That’s by design,” Miss Weaver said. “Gothic church architecture was calculated to minimize the individual and maximize the loftiness of orthodoxy. Easier to mold the illiterate into obedience.”

LCW had something to say about everything. To Jean, it all seemed so absolute, so logical. She was an authority on all matters.

The last chords from the organ lingered. Jean still didn’t move. A startling quiet sucked up the echo and it seemed as if she’d forgotten how silence felt. She wanted to absorb the hushed stillness and the sense of space. Too soon the mood was broken by people talking and moving around. The girls and Miss Weaver passed through the heavy doors into the brightness of the cathedral square. Jean’s eyes watered. She waited while the others adjusted to daylight.

“Four months ago Hitler’s troops marched here to show his presence in the Rhineland,” Miss Weaver said.

“What’s so important about that?” Lucy asked.

“My dear, he violated the Treaty of Versailles, arming the country in outright defiance of an arms limitations agreement. That’s what’s important about that.”