What Love Sees Read Free Page A

below her bedroom window smelled sharper. The Ingraham family clocks chimed louder and reverberated longer. A bronze statue of Nathan Hale stood on a pedestal in the library. That first winter she noticed how cold the bronze was. When summer came the figure attracted the heat from the bay window and she could barely touch him.
    But the world was smaller than ever before. It consisted almost entirely of Hickory Hill. From the moment she arrived home, not a piece of furniture was ever moved. Her first need, Nurse Williams told her, was to relearn home, to sense the length of the staircases, the route from her bed to the bathroom, the distance from the twin grand pianos at one end of the living room to the fireplace at the other. It was forty feet, but how much did forty feet feel like? She paced it off. The polished wood of her piano felt smooth and cool. She held her hands in front of her and walked until her toes touched something hard. She smelled ashes and reached forward and felt the wood paneling of the fireplace.
    She remembered the first time Father had shown them the new house six years earlier. On moving day she and Lucy raced their brothers across that room and screamed when they beat the boys. Since then the living room had lost that spirit. Now it contained gentle conversation of Mother’s reading club, teacups placed carefully in saucers, her own piano practice. No more races. No more screaming. Now the only laughter in the living room tinkled as in crystal goblets. It didn’t roar. The sounds felt comfortable to her now.
    The dining room, too, gave her a feeling of warmth. Whenever she walked in, she smelled flowers. Her place was at Mother’s right so Mother could butter the toast and set it on her butter plate at breakfast. It would always be there. She could count on that. If something were missing, Mother would step on the buzzer under the Persian rug. Mary, chattering like a blue jay with Delia in the kitchen, would cut off the gossip mid-sentence when she slid around the Oriental screen into the room. It often amused Jean. She remembered how proper and serious Mary tried to look in her gray moire dress and white apron, and wished she knew what she had been talking about.
    Father, always in a suit and tie, read the paper at breakfast. “You know that’s discourteous, dear,” Mother would say, but he read anyway, except when he was making announcements. Father always made announcements. “This summer we’ll visit Aunt Anna in Switzerland,” he’d say. Or, “I bought a farm yesterday, children. Now we’ll always have fresh milk.” Or, “Bill will apply to Yale next year.” And then he’d go back to reading without saying another word.
    Once, several months after coming back from Harkness, Jean reached for her milk but moved too quickly. Her glass tipped away from her and spilled before she could catch it. She gasped. Father’s paper crackled and Mother sounded the kitchen buzzer.
    “Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?” Father said.
    “Mary, get something to wipe this up,” Mother said, her voice calm. “She will. She’ll be more careful next time.”
    “I’m sorry,” Jean mumbled. How could he have said that? She knew why. It was nothing new. He wanted to treat her just like everyone else. Eventually, she learned to reach for her glass slowly, not quite walking her fingers across the table, more like gliding them while touching the tablecloth lightly.
    One morning more than a year later, Chanteur was singing loudly right behind Father. “Can’t even concentrate to read in here with that bird screeching.”
    She couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. “He sounds pretty, Father.” She swallowed. She wasn’t used to contradicting him.
    “You like birds, don’t you, Jean?” he said, less a question than an observation. “I think you’ll like the camp we’ve chosen for you this summer. It’s in Vermont and there’ll be plenty of birds in the woods.”
    “Is it a