Heaven (Casteel 1)

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

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

"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 baby--an 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."

Astonishment and anger widened my eyes before my shame and guilt made me blush. She saw and smiled cruelly. "Don't warm see ya agin, not eva--ya hide when ya see me comin!"

Trembling, I spread my hands wide. "I have to keep visiting Kitty. She needs me now."

"Ya hear me, scumbag! Come no more t'my place!" And out of the room she stormed, having come and looked at Kitty without one word of sympathy or encouragement or compassion. Had she come just to let me know what she thought of me?

Kitty was staring at the door, an unhappy pale fire in her eyes.

Tears coursed a crooked way down my cheeks as I turned again to Kitty, arranging her bedjacket so she looked neat, before I fiddled again with her hair. "You look lovely, Kitty. Don't believe what you just heard. Your mother is a strange woman. Maisie was showing me the family photograph albums, and you look a great deal like your mother when she was your age. . . except you are prettier, and no doubt all your life she's been jealous of you." (Why was I being so kind, why, when she'd been so cruel? Perhaps because Reva Setterton might have done many of the things to Kitty that Kitty had done to me.)

"Git out now," Kitty managed when I was through with her.

"Mother!"

"Not yer motha." Some terrible pain fleeted through her eyes, the agony of frustration so horrible I had to duck my head and hide my pity. "Always wanted t'be a motha, more than anythin else wanted my own baby.

Ya were right when ya told me what ya did. Ain't fit t'be a motha. Neva was. Ain't fit t'live."

"Kitty!"

"Leave me be!" she cried weakly. "Got t'right t'die in peace--an when t'time comes, I'll know what t'do."

"No, you don't have the right to die! Not when you have a husband who loves you! You've got to live! You have Cal, and he needs you. All you have to do is will your body to fight back. Kitty, please do that for Cal. Please. He loves you. He always has."

"Git out!" she yelled with a bit more strength. "Go t'him! Take kerr of him when I'm gone. Soon I will be! He's yers now. My gift t'ya! Only took him fer my man cause he had somethin about him that made me think of Luke--like Luke coulda been if he'd been brought up by some nice family in t'city." She sobbed low in her throat, a hoarse, raw sound that tore at my heart. "When first I saw him afta he came an sat at my table, I squinted my eyes an pretended he were Luke. All t'time I been marriedt'him, I could only let him take me when I played my pretend game--an made him Luke."

Oh, Kitty, you fool, you fool!

"But Cal's a wonderful man! Pa's no good!"

The pale fire flared hotter. "Heard that all my life bout myself, an I'm not bad, I'm not! I'm not!"

I couldn't take any more. I went out into the fresh September air.

What kind of trick did love play on common sense? Why one man when there were thousands to choose from? Yet here was I, hoping to find Logan. Almost wild to find him and have him tell me he understood and forgave me. But when I passed Stonewall Pharmacy, Logan wasn't to be seen. In the drizzling rain I stood in the shadow of a huge elm and stared across the street at the windows of the apartment over the corner store. Was he up there looking down at me? Then I saw his mother at one of the windows just before she pulled the cord and closed the draperies, shutting me out. I knew she'd like to keep me forever out of her son's life. And she was right, right, right . . .

I walked toward Brown Street, to the only motel in town. The two rooms Cal had rented were both empty. After I'd refreshed myself and put on dry clothes, I went out into the rain again and walked all the way back to the hospital, where I found Cal sitting dejectedly on a waiting-room sofa, staring moodily at a magazine held loosely in his hand. He glanced up when I came in.

"Any change?" I asked.

"No," he answered gruffly. "Where have you been?" "I was hoping I'd see Logan."

"Did you see him?" he asked dryly.

"No . . ."

He reached for my hand and held it firmly. "What do we do, and how do we live with something like this? It could last six months, a year, longer. Heaven, I thought her parents were a solution. They're not. They're withdrawing their financial support. It's you and I or no one, until she's well, or gone . . ."

"Then it's you and I," I said, sitting down to hold his hand in mine. "I can go to work."

He didn't say anything. We continued to sit, our hands joined, as he stared at the wall.

For two weeks we lived in that motel. I didn't see Logan. I was sure he'd gone back to college by now, without even saying good-bye to me. School started, and that told me only too clearly I might never again enter a classroom and college was only a dream cloud drifting off into the sunset. And the job I'd thought would be so easy to find when I could type ninety words a minute didn't materialize.