“I wouldn't mind."
“Well, I would. No, I'm okay. Really. See you Sunday.”
She had only a half hour before driving her blind kids, but she took the time for a quick shower and sprayed on a tiny, precious bit of the Giorgio perfume to which she'd treated herself for her birthday. These kids, having lost one sense, had developed the others to a high degree. It was a running joke with them to guess what sort of soap and shampoo she'd used, and they could often tell if she'd been to the store recently because of the scent of onions or cleaning materials or whatever she'd carted around in the station wagon.
As she flew through the kitchen, she found Edith leaning on the counter, gazing out the window and languidly sipping at a cup of coffee. There was no sign of her having done any cleaning at all.
Jane had a delightful morning with her kids. They identified the perfume right away, and knew about the cleaning materials. One of them also pointed out that there was a weak spot in the upholstery in the back seat, and the muffler didn't sound at all good.
The previous spring Jane had told the teacher that, come the new school year, she wanted to start learning how to help these kids in a more concrete way than simply acting as taxi driver. So, during class, she was blindfolded. "You can't pretend you're blind, Mrs. Jeffry," the teacher said. "You won't be really motivated unless you experience not seeing.”
Jane acquired a few bruises trying to get through a maze of chairs using a cane, and discovered she had insensitive, if not downright numb, fingertips when she was introduced to braille. Still, as she drove home, she felt she'd gained valuable insight into what these children faced.
The experience gave her a lot to think about. Back in February, when Steve died, her great-aunt May had phoned to say, "My dear, I'm going to tell you the best advice I got when I was widowed and I want you to follow it. Do nothing for a year. Make no changes, no decisions that aren't necessary. Too many new widows dash into things they shouldn't before they've come to terms with their loss.”
It was, she'd discovered, good advice, and she was glad she'd taken it, but now, little more than halfway through the first year, she was feeling impatient. She must do something. The children were growing up fast; in a few years they wouldn't need her so much. But she would still have whole days to fill. She needed to start planning how she was going to fill them.
It was probably too late now, but by the spring semester she was going to start some courses at the local junior college. She wanted to find out what else she might like and be good at besides mothering. Working with the blind children might be exactly that avenue.
When she got home, the kitchen was actually clean. Not spotless, by any means, but better than when she left. She had come in very quietly, not exactly admitting to herself that she wanted to sneak up on Edith, but doing so just the same. Dorothy's remarks about the cleaninglady just slouching around kept echoing in her mind. She wanted to know at what pace the woman worked when she was unsupervised. The vacuum cleaner was sitting in the living room and the magazines were straightened up. She ran her finger over the coffee table and sighed. No dusting had been done. There was no sign of Edith.
She went upstairs, hating herself for being so stealthy. No sign of her there, either, although the beds were made. She must be doing the family room in the basement. The last step creaked — it always did and Jane had forgotten — so she abandoned her sneaking. "Edith? Are you here?”
From the small adjoining office, Edith answered. "You're going to have a mildew problem down here if you don't get some circulation. Spiders too." She emerged, carrying a feather duster, and frowned sourly at Jane.
“I thought I told you I didn't want anything done in there." Jane was irritated. The office was off limits to everyone, even the kids. Steve had worked there, and she'd taken it over last winter for bill-paying and just plain hiding out. She considered it her own ward of a sort of personal mental health institute. It was the one place she could go and be absolutely alone when the pressure built up. She resented any intrusion. She was sure she had told Edith not to do the room, but Edith must not have been listening. Neither did she appear chagrined at the mistake.
“Those webs will get in the typewriter and make a mess of it," Edith said, clumping up the steps. It was clear that the discussion was over as far as she was concerned.
Suddenly Jane felt unaccountably depressed. She'd come home so buoyant, and now, because of a trivial irritation, she was deflated. These spells had come over her frequently last winter and spring, but over the summer, with the kids around all the time they had become less of a problem. Now that school had started and the regular routine was beginning, would she be subject to them again? Shelley had told her she should see a shrink, something about grief therapy, but she had found therapy of her own.
She closed the door, sat down in the butt-sprung chair, popped a tape of the 1812 Overture into the tiny cassette player she kept in the top drawer, and leaned back with her feet on the desk top. She closed her eyes and let the music take her away. Within a few minutes, she was smiling and directing the orchestra.
Seven
Jane would have had a whole, precious hour of solitude if Shelley hadn't phoned. "Jane, you are going to that PTA meeting at the junior high this afternoon, aren't you?" she asked briskly.
“Are you crazy?"
“Good. I'm so glad. Early planning for the spring fund-raising carnival is so important."
“You have gone mad. You can't have forgotten the last one. The time I had to run the cotton candy machine and got that goo in my hair and vowed never to become involved again."
“I knew you'd feel that way. I'm looking forward to seeing you there. I'd give you a ride, but Paul is dropping me off."
“I see. Paul's there and you can't say what you mean."
“Wonderful. Yes, of course. See you then.”
Jane gave some serious thought to the nature of friendship before dragging herself to the junior high. This seemed too high a price to pay. But, if Shelley was desperate enough to attend such a meeting, Jane's curiosity alone was roused to the point of enduring the setting to find out what was up.
She parked at the front of the big circle drive, the better to escape when the opportunity came. She had to sit quite still, getting her nerves under control, before she could enter the building. In Jane's opinion, junior high schools were possibly the worst idea educators had ever come up with. At the age children most needed to have older teens to look up to and younger children to set examples for, the system pulled them out and isolated them to flounder around without guidance. No, not without guidance; they had nearly as many counselors as teachers assigned to the school, but those supposedly trained adults hadn't a fraction of the influence the mere presence of exalted high school kids would have had.
Drawing a deep breath, Jane entered the school. Unfortunately, at that moment, the bell rang for the last class change and she found herself engulfed in a tide of children. A good third of the boys towered over her and half of them tripped over her. She was jostled unmercifully as she struggled to make her way to the art room, where the meeting was to be held. Some of the kids ran into her deliberately, some because they weren't paying attention, and a few because the poor things simply didn't know where all the parts of their rapidly developing bodies were at any given moment. Twice, as she clawed her way forward, a timid voice greeted her by name. She couldn't discern the source either time.
She thought she glimpsed Katie, but made no attempt to get her attention. That would have been asking for a snub. She knew that junior high schoolers always tried to maintain the fiction that they had no parents. They might, if pressed, grudgingly admit to a father for the sake of filling out forms, but not to a mother. And never in public.