Heaven

  I was the guilty one.

  I was bringing this on myself. Just as Fanny couldn't help being what she was, I couldn't either.

  Of course I'd known for a long time about Cal's smoldering passion for me, a girl ten years younger than he, thrust at him in a thousand ways by Kitty herself. I didn't understand Kitty, probably never would, but since that horrible day when she burned my doll his need and desire had become ten times more intense. He didn't see other women, he didn't really have a wife, and certainly he was a normal man, needing release of some kind. If I kept rejecting him, would he turn from me and leave me totally alone? I both loved and feared him, wanted to please him and wanted to reject him.

  Now he could take me out more often in the evenings, with Kitty in the hospital, the object of every medical test an army of doctors could dream up, and still they could find nothing wrong with her. And she'd say nothing to give them any clue to her mysterious ailment.

  In a small hospital office, Kitty's team of doctors talked to Cal and me, seeking clues, and neither of us knew what to say.

  All the way home from the hospital Cal didn't say a word. Nor did I. I felt his pain and his

  frustration, his loneliness--but for me. Both of us from different backgrounds, struggling to live with our battle scars delivered by Kitty. In the garage he let me out, and I ran for the stairs, for the safety of my room, where I undressed, put on a pretty nightie, and wished I could lock the door. No locks in Kitty's house, except in the bathrooms. Uneasily I lay on my bed, frightened that he'd come up, talk to me, force me . . . and I'd hate him then! Hate him as much as I hated Pa!

  He did none of that.

  I heard his stereo downstairs playing his kind of music, not Kitty's. Spanish music . . . was he dancing by himself? Pity overwhelmed me, a sense of guilt, too. I got up, pulled on a robe, and tentatively headed for the stairs, leaving an unfinished novel on my night-stand. It was the music that drew me irresistibly down the stairs, I kept telling myself.

  Going nowhere in reality, poor Cal, marrying the first woman who appealed to him. Loving me was another mistake, I knew that. I pitied him, loved him, distrusted him. I felt choked with my own needs, my own guilts and fears.

  He wasn't dancing alone, though the music played on and on. He was just standing and staring down at the Oriental rug, not seeing it, either, I could tell by the glaze in his eyes. I drifted through the door and stood beside him. He didn't turn to speak, to give any kind of sign that he knew I was there; he just continued to stare as if he were looking into all the tomorrows with Kitty as his wife, useless to him, except as a burden to care for. And he was only twenty-seven.

  "What's that song you're playing?" I asked in a low, scared voice, forcing myself to touch his arm and give him comfort. He did better than just tell me, he sang the lyrics softly; and if I live to be two hundred and ten, I'll never forget the sweetness of that song and the way he looked at me when he sang the words about a stranger in paradise.

  He took my hand in his, staring down into my eyes, his luminous and deep in a way I hadn't seen them before, appearing lit by the moon and stars, and something else, and in my mind I saw him as Logan, the perfect soul mate who would love me all the days of my life, as I wanted and needed to be loved.

  I think the music got to me as much as his voice and his soft eyes, for somehow my arms stole up around his neck when I didn't send them there. I didn't willfully place one hand' on the back of his neck, my fingers curling into his hair, the other cupping his head to gently pull it down to where he could find my lips eagerly waiting for his kiss. No, it just happened. Not my fault, not his, either. Fault of the moonlight snared in his eyes, the music in the air, the sweetness of our lips meeting, all that made it happen.

  His hand cupped my head, treasured it, slid down my back, shaping it to fit his need, and then it was on my hip, hesitating there before he moved it to caress my buttocks, fleetingly, lightly, his hand darting to briefly touch my breasts, discovering me again, trying to wake me up as his lips found mine.

  I shoved him away.

  "Stop!" I slapped his face. Cried out "NO, NO!" and ran up the stairs, slamming my door behind me, wishing again it had a lock, wishing I had more of what came naturally to Fanny, and despising myself for even thinking that. For I loved him now.

  Loved him so deeply, so much, it hurt to think of my hand striking his beloved face. A tease, the boys in Winnerrow would call me, or much worse. Cal, I'm sorry, I wanted to scream out. I wanted to go to him in his room, but I was held back by all the words Kitty had said to make me feel foul, unclean, unwholesome.

  Again, some powerful force pulled me to the top of the stairs. I looked down. He was still there, glued like a statue to the floor in the living room, the same music still playing. I drifted down the stairs, caught up in some romantic notion of sacrificing myself to please him. He didn't turn or speak when I reached his side. My hand slid into his tentatively, tightened around his fingers. He failed to respond. I whispered, "I'm sorry I slapped you."

  "Don't be. I deserved it."

  "You sound so bitter."

  "I'm just a fool standing here and thinking of my life, and all the stupid things I've done--and the dumbest of all was to allow myself to think you loved me. But you don't love me. You just want a father. I could hate Luke as much as you do for failing you when you needed him; then maybe you wouldn't be needing of a father so much."

  Again my arms went around him. I tilted my head backward, closed my eyes, and waited for his kiss.. . and this time I wasn't going to run. It was wrong and I knew it, but I owed him so much, more than I could ever repay. I wasn't going to tease him, then scream no, as Kitty had been doing for years. I loved him. I needed him.

  Not even when he swept me up and carried me into his room and laid me on his bed and began doing all those frightening wrong things did I realize what I'd started, and it was too late to stop him this time. His face was smeary with bliss, his eyes glazed, his actions making the bedsprings creak, and I was bounced, my breasts jiggling with the pure animal force of his lovemaking. So this was what it was all about. This thrusting in and out, this hot, searing pain that came and went--and if my conscious mind was shocked and didn't know how to respond, my unconscious physical side had innate knowledge, moving beneath his thrusts as if in other lives I'd done this ten thousand times with other men I'd loved. And when it was over, and he was curled up on his side holding me clutched tight in his embrace, I lay stunned with what I'd allowed him and myself to do. Tears were on my cheeks, streaming down to wet the pillow. Kitty had burned the best of me when she burned my doll in the fire.

  She'd left only the dark side of the angel who went to the hills and died there.

  He woke me up in the night with small kisses on my face, on my bared breasts, and asked his question. NO, NO, NO, I could almost hear Kitty yelling, as she'd screamed at him so many times when he must have asked her the same thing. I nodded and reached for him, and again we joined as one. When we finished I, again, lay stunned and sickened by my actions, by my too-enthusiastic response. Hill scum! I could hear Kitty shouting. Trashy no-good Casteel, I heard all of Winnerrow shouting. Just what we expected from a Casteel, a no-good scumbag Casteel.

  The days and nights swiftly passed and I couldn't stop what had begun. Cal overrode all my objections, saying I was being silly to feel guilt or shame when Kitty was getting what she deserved, and I was doing no worse than many girls my age, and he loved me, really loved me, not like some rawboned boy who'd only use me. Nothing he said took away the shame, or the knowledge that what I was doing with him was wrong, totally wrong.

  He had two weeks alone with me that seemed to make him very happy, as I pretended to have let go of my shame and guilt. Then one morning Cal drove off early to bring Kitty home. I had the house sparkling and filled with flowers. She lay on her bed blankly staring at all I'd done to make the house pretty, and she showed no signs of recognizing where she was. Home was where she'd said she wanted
to be . . . perhaps just so she could pound on the floor overhead with a walking cane, and demand our attention. Oh, how I learned to hate the sound of that cane pounding on the floor that was the living-room ceiling.

  Once every week one of Kitty's beauty-salon operators came and shampooed and set her red hair, gave her a manicure and a pedicure. I suspected Kitty was the best-looking invalid in town. At times I was touched by Kitty's helplessness, lying in her pretty pink nightclothes, her hair long and thick, and beautifully groomed. Her "girls" seemed devoted to Kitty, coming often to sit, chat, and laugh while I served them treats I made on Kitty's best china, then raced about trying to keep the house clean, be a companion to Cal, and also keep his books and, using Kitty's checkbook, pay household bills.

  "She wouldn't like me doing this," I said with a worried frown, then chewed on the end of a ballpoint pen. "You should be doing this, Cal."

  "I don't have time, Heaven."

  He took the stack of bills from the small desk that had been Kitty's and put them back in a filing cabinet. "Look, it's a beautiful summer day, and it's been almost a month of constant caring for Kitty. We need to do some serious thinking about what to do with Kitty. Paying those nurses to help you is costing a fortune. And when you go back to school, I'll need another nurse . . . around-the-clock nursing. Have you heard from her mother yet?"

  "I wrote and told her Kitty was very ill. But she hasn't replied yet."

  "Okay . . . when she does, I'll call and talk to her. She owes Kitty a great deal. And perhaps before school starts, we can work out some permanent solution." He signed and glanced at Kitty before he said, "At least she does seem to enjoy the TV." I'd never seen him look so miserable.

  Was this retribution--did Kitty deserve to be stricken with whatever she had? She'd asked for it, and God in his mysterious ways did prevail after all. And my own exhaustion made me say yes, going back to Winnerrow and turning Kitty over to her mother was a fine idea, and it would give me the chance to see Fanny, check on Grandpa . . . and hunt up Tom, to say nothing of Logan. Beyond that I couldn't think. For how could I even look at Logan now?

  Finally a letter came from Reva Setterton, Kitty's mother.

  "I hate going-back there," he said after he read the short letter that showed no real concern for a sick daughter. "I can tell from the way they look at me they think I married her for her money, but if we don't stay with them, they'll think you and I have some kind of relationship going on."

  He wasn't looking at me when he said this; still, I heard something wistful and yearning in his voice that made me feel guilty again. I swallowed, quivered, and tried not to think about what he might be implying.

  "Besides, you need a break. You work too hard waiting on her, even when the nurse is here. If we stay I'll go broke from paying for nurses. And I can't let you quit school to tend to her. The worst thing is, nothing at all seems wrong with Kitty but her desire to stay home and watch TV."

  "Come back to life and love him before it's too late,"

  I yelled at Kitty that day, trying to make her understand she was losing her husband. She'd driven him to me with her coldness, her cruelty, her inability to give.

  Later when he was home: "Cal," I began in a low, scared voice, not wanting to desert him now when he had no one, "Kitty wouldn't want to be there all day and night without moving if something weren't terribly wrong."

  "But I've had the best doctors in the country look at her. They've made every test they can think of, and found nothing."

  "Remember when those doctors gave you their diagnosis? They did admit sometimes the body is as much a mystery to them as it is to us. Even though the neurologists said she seems perfectly healthy, they don't know what's going on inside her brain, do they?"

  "Heaven, taking care of her is ruining both our lives. I don't have you as much as I need you. I thought at first it was a blessing in disguise." He laughed, short and hard. "We've got to take Kitty back to Winnerrow."

  Helplessly I met his eyes, not knowing what to say.

  Kitty was in her bed, wearing a hot-pink nightgown under a hot-pink bedjacket trimmed with row upon row of tiny pleated ruffles. Her red hair was growing longer and longer, and appeared remarkably healthy.

  Her muscle tone didn't seem as flabby as it had, nor did her eyes seem quite as stark or apathetic as they turned our way when we entered together. "Where ya been?" she asked weakly, showing little interest.

  Before one of us could answer, she fell asleep, and I was stricken with the pity of such a strong, healthy woman lying still all the remaining days of her life.

  I was also filled with excitement, with relief, with a rare kind of anticipation, as if Winnerrow had once given me something besides pain.

  "Cal . . there are times when I think she's getting better," I said after we left Kitty's room.

  His brown eyes narrowed. "What makes you think that?"

  "I don't know. It's nothing she does, or doesn't do. It's just that when I'm in her room, dusting the things on top of her dresser, I feel she's watching me. Once I glanced up and I could swear I saw some fleeting emotion in her eyes, and not that blank look she usually wears."

  Alarm sprang into his eyes. "That's all the more reason to move fast, Heaven. Loving you has made me realize I never loved her. I was just lonely, trying to fill the void in my life. I need you; I love you so much I'm bursting with it. Don't pull away and make me feel I'm forcing you." His lips on mine tried to give me the same kind of passion he experienced; his hands did what they could to bring me to the pitch of excitement he reached so easily--why couldn't I let go of the sense I was drowning myself? Going under each time we made love.

  He possessed me with his body, with his will, with his needs, so much that he began to frighten me as much as Kitty once had. Not that he'd ever hurt me physically . . . only mentally and morally I felt damaged beyond repair. Regardless, I loved him, and I had that same insatiable, aching hunger to be cherished tenderly.

  Going home would save me, save him, save Kitty, I convinced myself.

  I'd find Tom, see Grandpa, visit Fanny, find Keith and Our Jane. I brainwashed myself with this litany I repeated over and over. I made of Winnerrow a kind of refuge, believing it held all the solutions.

  PART THREE Return to Winnerrow . eighteen Winnerrow Family

  .CAL AND I MADE A BED FOR KITTY IN THE BACKSEAT, loaded our suitcases in the trunk, and set off on a fine sunny day in mid-August, a few days before her thirty-seventh birthday. Kitty had been incapacitated for two months, and seemed likely to stay that way from the vacant way she acted.

  Yesterday her "girls" had shampooed and set her hair, had given her a fresh manicure and pedicure, and this morning I'd given her a sponge bath, put on her pretty pink bra, then dressed her in a brand-new pink summer pantsuit. I'd styled her hair as best I could, and done a pretty good job before I put on her makeup so she looked pretty. But for the first time during a trip, Kitty didn't say a word. She just lay as if dead, like the doll she'd burned so ruthlessly.

  All the things we should have said on this return to West Virginia remained unsaid as Cal and I sat in the front seat with enough room between us to have put Kitty, if she could have sat up. Soon Kitty and Cal would be established with her family and no longer could he come to me with his needs. Pray God that the Settertons never learned about what we had done together. It troubled me so much I felt almost ill. Was Cal thinking the same thing? Was he regretting now his declarations of love for a hill-scum girl?

  This was our moment of truth, or soon would be. His eyes stayed on the road ahead, mine on the passing landscape. In another few weeks school would be starting again, and before that we had to decide what to do with Kitty.

  I couldn't help but compare this summer's trip with the winter one, more than two years ago. All that had been impressive then had now become

  commonplace. McDonald's golden arches no longer commanded my awe or admiration, and hamburgers no longer pleased my palate since I'd eaten in the
best restaurants in Atlanta. What was Cal going to do with me now? Could he turn off his love and need, as Kitty could so easily turn off what she used to be? I sighed and forced myself to think of the future, when I'd be on my own. I had already taken my SAT exams and applied to six different universias. Cal had said he'd go with me to college, and acquire his own degree while I began my higher education.

  It wasn't until we were halfway to Winnerrow that I knew why Miss Deale had come to our range of mountains, to give the best of her talents to those who needed it most. We were the forgotten, the underprivileged of the coal-mining regions. A long time ago I'd told Tom in jest I'd be another Miss Deale; now, looking around, I knew I wanted more than anything to be her kind of inspiring teacher. Now that I was sixteen, Logan would be in college, home for summer vacation, but soon to leave. Would he see guilt and shame on my face? Would he see something to tell him I was no longer a virgin? Granny had always said she could tell when a girl was "impure." I couldn't tell Logan about Cal, could never tell anybody, not even Tom. I sat on and on, feeling heavy with the burden of shame I carried.

  Miles and miles and miles slipped by. Then we were in the hill country, steadily climbing, winding around and around. Soon the gasoline stations became more widely spaced. The grand new sprawling motels were replaced by little cabins tucked away in shadowy dense woods. Shoddy, unpainted little buildings heralded yet another country town off the beaten track, until those too were left behind us. No fast expressway to take us up into the Willies. How scary that name sounded now.