Casteel 1 - Heaven (42 page)

I closed my eyes, wishing he'd talk on forever and wouldn't give me the chance to ruin his dream and mine.

“We'll marry while the roses are still in bloom, the year I graduate from college. Before the snow falls, Heaven.”

I shook my head, half caught up in his fantasy. My eyes closed, my breath regulated to coincide with

his. He was caressing my back, my armsand then, tentatively, my breast. I jumped, cried out as I jerked away and sat up. My voice shook as I said, “Let's go now. You have to see, if you're to understand who and what I am.”

“I already know who and what you are. Heaven, why are your eyes so wide and frightened- looking? I wouldn't hurt you, I love you.”

He wouldn't, not when he knew the truth. It was Cal who knew what I'd been through and Cal who understood. I was a Casteel, born rotten, and Cal didn't care, not the way the perfectionist Stonewalls would. Time and again Logan had turned from Fanny because she was wild and too free with herself.

Logan's bright eyes clouded with worry, seeming to sense I had a secret that wouldn't make him happy. I felt so small, so tainted, so alone.

“I've got a strange desire,” I said in a small, quivery voice. “If you don't mind, Logan, I'd like to see my mother's grave again. When she died she left me a portrait doll I couldn't save from a fire, and I needed it to prove who I am when I return to Boston to find my mother's family!”

“You plan to go there?” he cried in a deep, troubled voice. "Why? When we marry, my family

will be your family!“ ”Someday I've got to go there. It's something I

feel I have to do, not only for myself but also for my mother. She ran from her parents and they never heard from her again. They can't be too old, and must have worried about her for so many years. Sometimes it's better to know the truth than to go on forever wonder- ing, speculating . . ."

He drew away from me now, though he matched his steps to mine as we climbed upward. Soon the leaves would flame into a witch's

brew of bright colors, and autumn would flare briefly in the mountains. Down in the valley where the wind didn't blow, two Stonewall parents would resent this Casteel girl who wasn't worthy enough for an only son. I reached for his hand, loving him as only the very young can love. Instantly he smiled and stepped closer. “Must I say I love you ten million times before you believe me? Should I go down on my knees and propose? You can't tell me anything that would make me stop loving and respecting you!”

Oh, yes, there was something I could say, and everything would change. I held his hand tighter, leading him on, always ascending, curving around tall pines, thick oaks and hickories, until all the trees

turned to evergreens . . . and then we were there, in the cemetery. Room for only a few more now. Newer, better graveyards down lower, where it wasn't so much trouble to haul up machines to mow the grass, and men to dig the graves.

No one mowed the grass where my young mother lay, all alone and off to one side. Just a narrow mound that was beginning to sink, a cheap headstone in the form of a cross.

Angel Beloved wife of Thomas Luke Casteel

I released Logan's warm hand and sank to my knees, and bowed my head and said my prayer that someday, some wonderfully kind day, I would see her in paradise.

Along the way here I'd plucked a single red rose from the garden of Reverend Wayland Wise, and this I put in a cheap glass jar I'd buried at the foot of her grave years ago. No water nearby to put in the jar to keep the rose alive and fresh. A red rose left to wither and turn brown. As she had withered and died before I ever had a chance to know her.

The wind whipped up and lashed the long arms of the evergreens as I knelt there and tried to find the will to say what I had to.

“Let's go now,” Logan said uneasily, glancing up at the late-​day sun that began a swift descent behind the mountaintops.

What was he sensing? The same thing I was? All the little evening sounds bounced back and

forth, echoing across the valleys, singing with the wind through the canyons, through the summer leaves, whispering the tall grass that hadn't been cut in years.

“It looks like rain . . .” Still I couldn't tell him. "Heaven, what are we doing here? Did we

come just so you could kneel and cry, and forget the pleasures of being alive and in love?"

“You're not listening, Logan. Or looking, or understanding. This is the grave of my real mother who died when I was born, died at the tender age of fourteen.”

“You've told me about that before,” he said softly, kneeling beside me and placing his arm over my shoulder. “Does it still hurt so much? You didn't know her.”

"Yes, I do know her. There are times when I wake up and I feel as she must have felt. She's me,

and I'm her. I love the hills, and I hate them. They give so much, and they rob you of so much. It's lonely here, and beautiful here. God blessed the land and cursed the people, so you end up feeling small and insignificant. I want to go, and I want to stay."

“Then I'll make up your mind for you. We're going back to the valley, and in two years we'll be married.”

“You don't have to marry me, you know that.”

“I love you. I've always loved you. There's never been anyone but you. Isn't that reason enough?”

Tears were streaking my face now, falling to make raindrops on the red rose. I glanced up at the storm clouds swiftly drawing closer, shuddered, and started to speak. He drew me against him. “Heaven, please don't say anything that will spoil what I feel for you. If what you're planning to say is going to hurt, don't say it, please don't say it!”

And I went and said it, as I'd planned all along, to say it here, where she could hear.

“I'm not what you think I am” “You're all I want you to be,” he said quickly. “I love you, Logan,” I whispered with my head

bowed low. “I guess ever since the day we met I've loved you, and yet I let another”

“I don't want to hear about it!” he flared hotly.

Because he jumped to his feet, I jumped to mine, and then we faced each other. The wind snapped my long hair so it brushed his lips. “You know, don't you?”

“What Maisie's been spreading around? No, I don't believe anything so ugly! I can't believe gossip! You're mine, and I love you . . . don't you try to convince me there's a reason I can't love you!”

“But there is!” I cried desperately. “Candlewick wasn't the happy place I wanted you to believe when I wrote those letters. I lied about so much . . . and Cal was”

He wheeled about and ran!

Ran for the path to take him back to Winnerrow, calling back, “No! No! I don't want to hear more! I don't want to hearso don't tell me! Never tell me!”

I tried to catch up, but he had much longer legs, and my little heels dug into the mushy earth and slowed me. I headed back up the trail, to visit again the cabin that stunned me with its bleakness. There on the wall was the pale place where Pa's tiger poster used to hang, and underneath, when Tom and I were babies, our cradle had sat. I stared at the cast-​iron

stove covered with rust where it wasn't green with fungus, and gazed with tears in my eyes at the primitive wooden chairs fashioned long ago by some dead Casteel. The rungs were loose, some were missing, and all the little things we'd done to pretty this place were gone. Logan had seen all of this! I cried then, long and bitterly, for all I'd never had, and all I might still lose. In the silence of the cabin the wind began to howl and shriek, and the rain came down. Only then did I get up from the floor to make my wet way back to Winnerrow, which was no home at all.

Cal was on the porch of the Setterton home, pacing back and forth. “Where have you been that you come back wet, torn, and so dirty?”

“Logan and I visited my mother's grave . .” I whispered hoarsely as I sat wearily on the top step, not caring that it was still raining.

“I thought you were with him.” He sat beside me, as heedless of the rain as I; he bowed his head into his hands. "I've been with Kitty all day, and I'm beat. She won't eat. They're putting intravenous tubes in her arm, and beginning the radiation treatments tomorrow. She didn't go to a doctor as she told you she had. That lump has been growing steadily for two

or three years. Heaven, Kitty would rather die than lose what represents her femininity to her."

“What can I do to help?” I whispered.

“Stay with me. Don't leave me. I'm a weak man, Heaven, I've told you that before. When I saw you walking with Logan Stonewall, it made me feel old. I should have known that youth would call to its own, and I'm the old fool caught in my own trap.”

He tried to sit beside me. I jumped up, a wild panic in my heart. He didn't love me, not as Logan did. He only needed me to replace Kitty.

“Heaven!” he cried. “Are you turning away from me too? Please, I need you now!”

“You don't love me!” I cried. “You love her! You always have! Even when she was cruel to me, you made excuses for her!”

Wearily he turned, his shoulders sagging as he headed for the front door of the Setterton home. “You're right about some things, Heaven. I don't know what I want. I want Kitty to live, and I want her to die and get off my back. I want you, and I know it's wrong. I should never, never have let her talk me into taking you into our home!”

Bang! Always doors were being slammed in my face.

Twenty-​one Without A Miracle . A WEEK PASSED. EVERY DAY I TENDED

TO KITTY IN THE hospital. I hadn't seen Logan since the day he ran from me and left me in the rain, and I knew that in just one more week he'd be returning to college. Many a time I strolled by Stonewall Pharmacy, hoping to catch a glimpse of hini;'even as I tried to convince myself he'd be better off without someone like me. And I'd be better off without someone who'd never forgive me for not being perfect. Too flawed, Logan must have been thinkingtoo much like Fanny. If Cal noticed I was miserable from not seeing Logan anymore, he didn't say anything.

Hours spent in the hospital at Kitty's bedside made all the days seem exceptionally long. Cal sat on one side, I on the other. He held her hand most of the time, while I kept my hands folded on my lap. As I sat there, almost feeling her suffering as my own, I pondered the complexities of life. At one time I would have rejoiced to see Kitty helpless and unable to deliver slaps and insulting words to take away my self-​esteem. Now I was full of compassion, willing to

do almost anything to ease her pain, when there was little enough I could do to make her comfortable. Still, I tried, thinking I was redeeming myself, forgetting, as I struggled to find myself worthy and clean again, just what Kitty had done to make me hate her.

There were nurses to give her medications, but I was the one who gave her baths. She gave me signs to hint she'd rather have me do for her all the pampering things the nurses didn't have time for, such as smoothing lotion all over her body, or brushing and styling her hair as she wanted. Often as I teased, then smoothed with a pick, I thought I could have truly loved her if she'd given me half a chance. I made up her face twice a day, dabbed on her favorite perfume, painted her nails, and all the time she watched me with those strange pale eyes. “When I die ya gotta marry Cal,” she whispered once.

I looked up, startled, and started to question, but she closed her eyes again, and when she did that, she wouldn't speak even if she were still awake. Oh, God, please let her get well, please! I prayed over and over. I loved Cal and needed him as a father. I couldn't love him in the way he wanted me to.

Other times, as I tended to her needs, I rambled on and on, talking as much to myself as to her; talking

about her family and their great concern for her welfare (even though they didn't have any), trying to lift her spirits and give her hope as well as courage to fight the thing that was controlling her life now. Often her eyes were shiny with tears. Other times those dull seawater eyes riveted on me without expression. I sensed something in Kitty was changing, for better or for worse, I couldn't tell.

“Don't look at me like that, Mother,” I said with a kind of nervous resentment. I was afraid Maisie might have visited and told her tales of seeing some touch or small bit of affection between Cal and me. But it wasn't my fault, Kitty, not really, I wanted to say as I pulled on her pretty new gown and arranged her arms so she didn't appear so lifeless.

No sooner had I finished with Kitty than her mother came in, scowling disapprovingly, her large, strong arms folded as shields across her fake swelling bosom, her scowl deep and menacing. “She'd look betta widout all that paint on,” she grumbled, giving me another sour look. "She's done taught ya rotten ways, ain't she? Done made ya inta what she is. Gave ya all her own faults, ain't she? An I licked her many a time t'take t'evil out of her. Neva did. Neva could. She's got it in her yet, festerin, killin her . . . an t'Lord

in t'end always wins, don't he?“ ”If you mean we all have to die, yes, Mrs.

Setterton, that's true. But a good Christian like you should believe in life after death"

“Are ya mockin me, girl? Are ya?”

In her eyes I saw some of Kitty's meanness shining forth. My indignation rose. “Kitty likes to look pretty, Mrs. Setterton.”

“Pretty?” she queried, staring down at Kitty as if seeing an abomination. “Don't she have no color gowns but pink?”

“She likes pink.”

“Jus goes t'show she's got no taste. Redheads like her don't wear pink. Done tole her that all her life, an still she wears it.”

“Everyone should wear whatever color they like. It's her choice,” I insisted.

ya?“ star.”

"Ya don't have t'make her look like a clown, do

"No, I paint her face so she looks like a movie

“A whore is more like it!” Reva Setterton stated flatly before she turned her stony eyes on me. "Know what ya are now. Maisie done tole me. That man of hers, knew he couldn't have been no good or he

wouldn't have wanted her. She's no good, neva was even when she were a babyan neitha are ya! I don't want ya in my house! Don't ya show up there agin, hill-​scum filth! Take yerself ta t'motel on Brown Street, where all yer kind of trash hangs out. I've made her man move all yer stuff out along with his."