What Love Sees by Susan Vreeland Read Free Book Online

made her go regardless of how the invitation was delivered. “It will be good for you, Jean.” Good to feel like a wallflower, she often muttered to herself.
    With Tready, though, she felt lighthearted acceptance. She could ask her anything, silly things that she’d never ask Lorraine. Lorraine would take them too seriously.
    “Will you teach me how to put lipstick on?” she had asked Tready when she was fifteen. And Tready stood behind her in front of a mirror and pretended Jean’s lips were her own.
    “Tell me what I look like,” she said when they were finished. “I mean compared to others.”
    “Well, your skin’s clearer than a lot of other girls. And you’re shorter than most, smaller too. Petite.”
    “Tell me honestly, Tready. Do l look like a goon in the clothes I wear?”
    “Oh no, Jean. I’d tell you if you did.”
    “Am I, am I—?” Maybe her eyes made her awful looking.
    “Are you what?”
    “Am I average?”
    “Better than that, silly. Stop worrying.”
    It had satisfied her some then, but now, two years later, she still wondered. Maybe she always would. Maybe that was just part of being a blind woman.
    One Saturday toward the end of high school, Jean asked Tready to teach her how to iron a dress. “I’m almost eighteen years old and nearly out of high school and I still don’t know. Every time I ask Mother, she just says, ‘Oh, Jean, just let Mary do it. It’s simpler.’ So Mary gets more work and I can’t practice. Will you?”
    Tready let out a sigh. “It isn’t hard. Even a dunce can do it. Okay. Someday.”
    “Let’s do it now. It’s Mary’s day off.” Armed with a dress already worn once, Jean led Tready to the laundry room.
    “Well, let’s see. The flat skirt part is the easiest. You just start there.”
    “In the middle?”
    “No, I guess not. You start at the hemline. You can find that.” Tready laid the dress on the ironing board and Jean explored it with her hands and found it two layers thick.
    “I think I remember seeing something hanging down.”
    “Uh, I guess so. Sleeves or something. Then you work your way to the top, up to the collar. Then you go out and do the sleeves and end with the cuffs.”
    “Sounds wrong to me. Come on Tready, tell me. Have you ever ironed anything in your whole life?”
    “Not a scrap.”
    “You ninny. Why didn’t you say so? Move over. I think you start at the top.”
    Jean couldn’t wait for an occasion to surprise everyone. On Mary’s next day off, Jean picked a cotton shirtwaist from the pile of clean clothes and tried again, this time beginning at the collar. It was hot work, but her zeal was hotter. She burned herself twice trying to find the iron after she’d set it down. She wrestled with it for half an hour and when Delia gonged for dinner, Jean put it on and went downstairs.
    “How do I look?”
    “Fine,” Mother said absently. A match struck against a matchbox.
    She’s lighting candles, Jean thought. She isn’t even looking. “I ironed this dress myself,” Jean announced in a voice bigger than normal.
    “You what?” Lucy squawked.
    “It looks lovely.” Mother’s voice was more direct.
    Lucy didn’t say another word. No one said anything for a few seconds. Even Mort stopped talking to Father about the stock market. Mother must be shooting everyone one of those don’t-you-dare-say-a-word looks that she remembered from childhood. She tried to smooth out the skirt with her hands. It must look awful, but they aren’t telling me. She sat down quickly next to Mort. After a few minutes he leaned over and whispered, “I’d be proud to have you as my date.”
    Eventually, Jean asked Tready the big question. “Will you teach me how to smoke? I don’t mean just for play, like when we were kids, but smoothly.” Learning to smoke, to hold a cigarette with utter casualness and still be careful—surely that would make her one of the Hill girls.
    Her enthusiasm was tinged with nervousness. In the upstairs