Heaven

twenty THE LOVE OF A MAN

  . CAL WAS WAITING FOR ME WHEN I FINALLY RETURNED TO the Setterton home. "Heaven!" he cried when he saw me on the steps. "Where the devil have you been? I've been worried sick about you."

  He was the man who loved me, who'd given me so much happiness when he gave me kindness and care, who gave me shame when he gave me love; and added all together, it totaled up to feeling trapped. As I surrendered to his quick embrace and his hasty kiss, I was enveloped in a heavy fog of despair. I loved him for what he'd done to save me from the worst of Kitty's meanness, and yet I wished desperately that he'd just stayed my father, and not become my lover.

  "Why are you looking at me like that, Heaven? Can you love me only in Candlewick, and not in Winnerrow?"

  I didn't want to love him in the way he wanted me to! I couldn't let him overwhelm me again with his needs. I whispered hoarsely, "I saw Tom today, and Fanny, and Grandpa."

  "And you're crying? I thought you'd be happy." "Nothing is ever quite what you think it's going to be, is it? Tom has grown to be as tall as Pa, and he's only sixteen."

  "And how was Grandpa?"

  "So old and pitiful, and pretending Granny's still alive, sitting in the rocker next to him." I half laughed. "Only Fanny was predictable. She hasn't changed at all in personality, except she has turned into a beauty."

  "I'm sure she can't hold a candle to her sister," he said in a low, intimate voice, lightly touching my breast. At that moment Maisie opened the screen door, and her eyes were huge. She'd seen! Oh, God!

  "Kitty's been callin fer ya," said Maisie in a small voice. "Ya betta run on up an see what she wants. Ma kin't do nothin right fer her."

  Sunday morning we were all up early preparing to go to church. Kitty had to wait until Monday to see the doctors. "We're all goin t'church," said Reva Setterton when she saw me in the hall. "Ya hurry an eat yer breakfast so ya kin go. I done took ken of my daughta early, so she's all right t'leave alone fer a few hours."

  Cal was in his bedroom doorway, staring at me in a disturbing way. Did he realize now that it was better that he and I never be alone again? Surely he had to know Logan was the right one for me, and he'd let me go without making further demands. I pleaded with my eyes, begging him to restore our proper relationship . . . but he frowned and turned away, seeming hurt.

  "I'll stay here with Kitty; the rest of you go on," I said. "I don't like to leave her alone." Instantly Cal turned to follow Kitty's family out the door. He glanced back to give me a long, appraising look before his lips quirked in a wry small smile.

  "Be good to your mother, Heaven."

  Was that sarcasm I heard in Cal's voice?

  Here I was, stuck in this house, when Logan would be waiting for me in the church. How stupidly blind of me to presume Reva Setterton would stay home with her daughter, and how indifferent she'd been to suggest leaving her alone.

  Slowly I climbed the stairs to check on Kitty.

  Kitty lay on the wide bed, her face scrubbed so clean it shone. Not only was it red and chafed, as mine had been after that bath in scalding water, her thick red hair had been parted in the middle and was tightly braided in two long plaits that just reached the swell of her bosom. Her mother had put her in a plain white cotton nightgown such as old ladies wore, buttoned up to the throat, the very kind of nightgown Kitty despised, a plain, cheap nightgown. I'd never seen Kitty look so unattractive.

  Her mother was wreaking her own revenge, as Kitty had hers when she put me in boiling water . . . and yet I felt an overwhelming rage rising. I hated Reva Setterton for doing this to a helpless woman! How cruel when Kitty was so defenseless. Like a protective mother I gathered what I needed to undo what Reva had done. I pulled out Kitty's prettiest nightgown, and took off the plain ugly one, before I soothed her chafed skin all over with lotion; then gently I eased the lacy pink nightie over her head. Then I began to undo her tightly bound hair. When I had it styled as best I could, I carefully soothed her irritated face with moisturizer and began to apply her makeup.

  As I worked to repair the damage I talked on and on. "Mother, I'm just beginning to understand how it must have been for you. But don't you worry. I just put a good moisturizing lotion all over your body, and cream to help your face. I know I won't make your face up as well as you do it yourself, but I'll try. We're taking you to the hospital tomorrow, and the doctors are going to give your breasts a more thorough examination. It isn't necessarily true that you have to inherit tumors, Mother. I hope to God you really told me the truth, and you did go, as you said you did--did you really go?"

  She didn't answer, though it seemed she was listening, and a tear formed in the corner of her left eye. I went on talking, using blusher, eyebrow pencil, adding lipstick and mascara; and when I'd finished, she looked like herself again. "You know something, Kitty Dennison, you are still a beautiful woman, and it's a damned shame you're lying there and not caring anymore. All you had to do was reach out and tell Cal you love him, and need him, and stop saying no so much, and he'd have been the best husband in the world. Pa wasn't meant to be any woman's husband. You should have known that. He's a born rogue! The best thing that ever happened to you was when he walked out and Cal walked in. You hate my mother, when you should have pitied her--look what he did to her."

  Kitty began to cry. Silent tears slid down her face and ruined her freshly applied makeup.

  Early Monday morning an ambulance drove Kitty to the hospital. I rode beside her, and with me was Cal, while her mother and father stayed home. Maisie and Danny had gone on a hayride into the mountains.

  For five hours Cal and I sat on hard,

  uncomfortable hospital chairs and waited for the verdict on Kitty. Sometimes I held his hand, sometimes he held mine. He was wan, restless, chainsmoking. When Kitty had ruled her house, he'd never smoked; now he couldn't leave cigarettes alone. Finally a doctor called us into an office, and we sat side by side as he tried to tell us without emotion:

  "I don't know how it was overlooked before, except sometimes a tumor is very difficult to find when a woman has such large breasts as your wife, Mr. Dennison. We did a mammogram of her left first, since for some reason women seem to have them more frequently on that side than the other, and then her right. She does have a tumor, set deep under the nipple in the most unfortunate place, for it's difficult to discover there. It's about five centimeters in size. That's very large for this type of tumor. We are absolutely sure your wife has known about this tumor for some time. When we tried to do the mammogram, she suddenly came out of her lethargy and fought us. She screamed and yelled, and shouted out 'Let me die!"

  Stunned, both Cal and I. "She can talk now?" he asked.

  "Mr. Dennison, your wife could always talk. She chose not to. She knew she had a growth. She's told us she'd rather be dead than have her breast removed. When women feel this strongly about losing a breast, we don't push the issue; we su: est

  alternatives. She's refused chemotherapy, for it would cause the loss of her hair. She wants us to try radiation . . . and if that fails, she says she is ready to 'meet her Maker." " He paused, and something that I couldn't read flickered through his eyes. "In all honesty I have to tell you that her tumor has gone beyond the size that can be treated by radiation . . . but since that's all she'll do to help herself, we have no alternative but to do our best--unless you can convince her otherwise."

  Cal stood up and seemed to quiver. "I have not once in my life convinced my wife of anything. I'm sure I can't now, but try."

  He did his best. I was with him when he pleaded at her bedside. "Please, Kitty, have the operation. I want you to live." She clammed up again. Only when she glanced at me did her pale green eyes shimmer, with hate or something else, I couldn't tell.

  "You go home now," ordered Cal, settling in the only chair in her room. "Even if it takes me a month, I'll convince her."

  It was three o'clock on Monday, and my heels made clicking sounds on the pavement. I wore blue button earrings Cal had given me only
a week ago. He gave me so much, everything he thought I could possibly want. He'd even given me Kitty's jewelry box, but I couldn't force myself to use anything that belonged to her. The sweetness of this beautiful afternoon made me feel younger and fresher than I had since that first day Kitty had made me feel like hill scum. Whatever happened to Kitty would be of her own making, in a way, for she could have saved that breast if she'd acted sooner, and ended up with only a tiny scar that no man would ever notice.

  With every step I took I prayed Cal would convince Kitty to have that operation. I prayed, too, that she'd see him for the fine man he was, and when she did, I knew he'd let go of me. It was Kitty he loved, had always loved, and she'd treated him so poorly, as if she couldn't love any man after what Pa had done to harm her.

  Pa! Always full circle back to Pa!

  Footsteps were following. I didn't look around.

  "Hey," called a familiar voice. "I waited for you yesterday."

  Why did my steps quicken when all along I'd hoped he'd seek me out? "Heaven, don't you run. You can't run fast enough and you can't run far enough to escape me."

  I spun around and watched Logan approach. He'd grown to be everything I'd ever dreamed he could be--and it was too late to claim him now for my own. Much too late.

  "Go away!" I flared. "You don't want me now!"

  "Now, you wait a minute," he growled, catching up and grabbing me by the arm, forcing me to walk with him. "Why are you acting like this? What have I done? One day you love me, the next day you push me away. . . what's going on?"

  My heart ached so much I felt weak. Yes, I loved him, had always loved him; would always love him; and yet I had to say what I did. "Logan, I'm sorry, but I keep remembering how you ignored me that last Sunday before Pa sold me to the Dennisons. I wanted your help, and you looked right through me, and you were all I had after Miss Beale went away. You were my white knight, my savior, and you did nothing, absolutely nothing! How can I ever really trust you after that?"

  Pain was in his eyes as he reddened. "How dumb can you be, Heaven? You think you're in this world all by yourself with your problems, while nobody else has any. You knew I had trouble with my eyes that year. What do you think I was doing while you were starving up there on your mountaintop? Down in the valley I was almost going blind, so I had to be flown to a special hospital to have eye surgery! That's where I was! Far from here, stuck in a hospital with my head held in a clamp, my eyes heavily bandaged until they healed. Then I had to wear dark glasses and take it easy until my retinas were securely attached again. That day when you thought I saw you in church, I was only trying to see, and all I got were blurry images--and I was looking for you! You were the reason I was there at all!"

  "Do you see all right now?" I asked with a lump in my throat.

  He smiled, then stared into my eyes until my vision blurred.

  "I'm seeing you with twenty-twenty eyes. Say I'm forgiven for that long-ago Sunday?"

  "Yes," I whispered. I swallowed all the tears that wanted to come again, bit on my lip before I bowed my head and rested my forehead briefly on his chest. I said a silent prayer for God to let him forgive me when or if I ever had to tell him. Useless to him now that I wasn't what he believed me to be-- untouched, no longer a virgin. Yet I couldn't bring myself to tell him, not here.

  With resolve I began to lead him toward the woodsy area of Winnerrow.

  "Where are we going?" he asked, his fingers intertwining with mine. "To see your cabin?"

  "No, you've already gone there by yourself and discovered all I wanted to hide from you. There's another place I should have shown you years ago."

  Hand in hand we strolled on toward the overgrown trail that would take us up to the graveyard. I glanced at him from time to time; several times our eyes met and locked, forcing me to tear my eyes away. He did love me. I could tell. Why hadn't I been stronger, shown more resistance? I sobbed and stumbled, and quickly he reached to balance me. I ended up in his arms. "I love you, Heaven," he whispered hoarsely, his warm, sweet breath on my face before he kissed me. "All last night I lay awake thinking about how wonderful you are, how faithful and devoted you stay to your family. You're the kind of woman a man can trust; the kind you can leave alone and know will stay faithful."

  Gone numb from the misery I felt, I tried not to let too much sunshine come into the shadows of my heart as he rambled on and on, making me familiar with his parents, his aunts and uncles and cousins, until we came to the riverbank where we'd sat for so many hours a long time ago. Here time had stood still. Logan and I could have been the same adolescents falling in love for the first time. We sat again, perhaps in the very same place, so close our shoulders brushed, his thigh next to mine. I stared at the water that rippled over the stones. And only then did I begin the most difficult story of my life. I knew he'd hate me when it was over.

  "My granny used to say my real mother came to that spring over there," I said, pointing to the water that jetted from a crack in the rock face, "and she'd fill our old oak bucket with the spring water since she thought the well water wasn't as good for drinking, or for making soup, or for the dyes Granny used to make to color old stockings she'd braid into a rug to fit under a cradle and keep out the drafts. She was fixing up the cabin as best she could for my birth . . ."

  He sprawled on the grass at my side, playing idly with long tendrils of my hair. It was romantic sitting there with Logan, as if we were both brandnew, and nobody had ever loved before but us. I could see us in my mind's eye, young and fresh, unwrinkled and bright, in the prime flowering of our lives--but other bees had already flown to me. . . . He played with my hands, first one, then the other, kissing my fingertips and palms before he folded my fingers on the kiss gifts he'd put in my hands. "For all the days when I wanted you so much, and you were gone." He pulled me down so my upper half lay on his chest, and my hair was a dark shawl that tented both our faces as we kissed, and then I lay with my cheek on his chest, his arms enfolding me. If only I were what he thought I was, then I could really enjoy this. I felt like a dying person on the last picnic of my life; the sun in all its glory couldn't keep the rain from my conscience.

  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 arms--and 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 frightenedlooking? 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 wondering, 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?