Oh, that was all.
No one moved more swiftly than I did that
afternoon. I stacked the pretty china in the dishwasher; while it washed, I ran upstairs to bathe and dress. Cal was ready and waiting, smiling at me, seeming relieved to have the dining room restored to a museum piece. I was ready to step out the door before I remembered. "One moment, and be back. Wouldn't want Kitty to come home and find her china not put back exactly in place."
As I finished doing this and that, he decided to go back to the basement to put his own tools away—
that's when the doorbell rang. We so seldom had guests the sound of the bell startled me, and I quickly went to the door. The mailman smiled at me.
"A certified letter for Miss Heaven Leigh Casteel," he said cheerfully.
"Yes," I said eagerly, staring at the pack of letters in his hand, so many.
He extended a clipboard with a paper. My hand trembled when I made my crooked signature.
Once I had the door closed, I sank down onto the floor. The sun through the fancy diamond windows near the door fell on the envelope of a letter I was sure was from Tom—but it wasn't. Strange handwriting.
.
Dearest Heaven,
I hope you don't mind my familiarity. I'm sure you will forgive me this when you hear my good news. You don't know my name, and I can't sign this letter. I am the woman who came with her husband to become the mother of your darling little sister and brother.
If you recall, I promised to write and keep you in touch. I remember your great love and concern for your brother and sister, and I have to admire and respect you for that. Both children are very well, and have, I believe, adapted to this family, and have stopped missing their mountain family so much.
Your father didn't want to give me your
address; however, I persisted, believing I should keep my promise. Our Jane, as you used to call her, has recovered from an operation to correct a diaphrag-matic hernia. You can look this up in a medical encyclopedia, and find out exactly what it was that made that dear child so frail. You'll be happy to know she is now gaining weight and has a good appetite.
She is as healthy and normal as any seven-and-a-half-year-old girl. Every day she and Keith have all the fruit juice they want. And I do leave night-lights on in both of their rooms. They attend a good private school, and are driven there each day, and picked up when school is over. They have many friends.
Keith shows great artistic talent, and dear Jane loves to sing and listen to music. She is taking music lessons, and Keith has his own easel, and equipment for drawing and painting. He is especially good at drawing animals.
I hope I have answered all questions, and given you enough information to keep you from worrying.
Both my husband and I love these two children as if they were our own. And I believe they love us as much in return.
Your father says he has found good homes for all of his children, and I pray this is true.
Under separate cover I am sending you photographs of your brother and sister.
My best-wishes to you.
R.
.
That's the way she signed her letter, with just an initial, no address to give me a clue. My heart thudded madly as I stared at the envelope again, trying to read fingerprints, hidden numbers and street names. It had been postmarked in Washington, D.C. What did that mean? Had they moved from Maryland? Oh, thank God the doctors had found out what was wrong with Our Jane and had cured her!
For the longest time I just sat there, thinking about Keith and Our Jane—and the kind of lady who'd been thoughtful enough to write. Again and again I read the letter. I brushed tears from my eyes as I read it through. Oh, it was wonderful to hear that Our Jane was well and happy, and she and Keith had everything —but it wasn't good to hear they'd forgotten me and Tom, not good at all.
"Heaven," said Cal from a few feet away,
"would you rather sit on the floor and read letters all day than go to the movies?"
In a moment I was up, showing him the letter, eagerly telling him the contents even as he read them for himself. He appeared as delighted as I felt. Then he began to look through his own mail. "Why, here's another envelope for Miss Heaven Leigh Casteel," he said with a broad grin, handing a heavy brown envelope to me.
A dozen snapshots were inside, and three
photographs taken at a professional portrait shop.
Oh, dear God—snapshots of Keith and Our
Jane playing on the grass in a garden behind a huge, beautiful house. "Polaroid shots," said Cal, looking over my shoulder. "What beautiful children."
I stared at the lovely children in expensive-looking play clothes, both sitting in a sandbox with a bright awning overhead. Behind them was a
swimming pool, the chairs and tables placed on flagstone borders. The same man and wife were there, wearing swimsuits, smiling lovingly at Keith and Our Jane. It was summer where they were! Summer! Did that mean Florida? California? Arizona? I studied the other snapshots that showed Our Jane laughing as Keith pushed her on a swing play-yard set. Others taken in her pretty bedroom with all the dolls and toys. Our Jane sleeping in a fancy little bed, all ruffled, with a pink canopy overhead. Keith in his blue room full of all kinds of toys and picture books.
Then I opened a large, elaborate cardboard folder to see Our Jane really dressed up, in pink organdy with ruffles, her hair curled, looking as if she belonged in the movies, smiling at whoever was snapping her picture; and there was another of Keith dressed in a cute blue suit, wearing a small tie, and a third portrait showing them together.
"It cost money to take portraits like those," Cal said from over my shoulder. "See how they're dressed.
Heaven, they are very beloved children, well cared for and happy. Why, look at the shine in their eyes.
Unhappy children couldn't fake smiles like that—smiles that light up their faces. Why, in some ways you should thank God your father did sell them."
I didn't realize how much I was crying until Cal blotted my tears by holding me against his chest.
"There, there . . ." he crooned, cuddling me in his arms, giving me his handkerchief to blow my nose.
"Now you can sleep at night without crying and calling out for them. Once you hear from Tom, your whole world will brighten. You know, Heaven, there are very few Kittys in this world. I'm just sorry you had to be the one to suffer at her hands . . . but I'm here. I'll do what I can to protect you from her." He held me close, closer, so I felt every curve of my body pressed against his.
Alarm filled me. Was this right? Should I pull away to let him know he shouldn't? But it had to be right, or he wouldn't be doing it. Still, I felt uneasy enough to push him away, though I smiled tearfully into his face, and turned so we could leave, but not before I carefully hid the letter and the photographs.
For some reason I didn't want Kitty to see how lovely Pa's other two children were.
That Saturday was even more special than the others had been. Now I could really enjoy myself, knowing Our Jane and Keith weren't really suffering .
. . and someday I'd know about Tom, too.
It was ten-thirty when Cal and I drove back from Atlanta, both of us rather tired from trying to do too much: see a three-hour movie, eat in a restaurant, and do some shopping. Clothes for me that Cal didn't want Kitty to see. "I hate those saddle shoes as much as you do. However, don't let her see these new ones,"
he warned before we drove into the garage. "Sneakers are fine for gym, and the Mary Janes she bought for church are just too young for you now. I'll keep these locked in one of my workshop cabinets, and give you a duplicate key. And if I were you, I'd never let my wife see that doll or anything that once belonged to your mother. I'm ashamed to say that Kitty has an abnormal hatred for a poor dead girl who couldn't have known she was taking from Kitty the one man she could truly love."
That hurt, really hurt. I turned big sad eyes his way. "Cal, she loves you. I know she does."
/>
"No, she doesn't, Heaven. She needs me once in a while, to show off as her 'prize catch'—a college man—'her man,' as she so often puts it. But she doesn't love me. Underneath all those exaggerated feminine curves is hidden a small, cold soul that hates men . . all men. Maybe your father made her that way, I don't know. I pity her, though. I've tried for years and years to help her overcome her traumatic childhood. She was beaten by her father, by her mother, and forced to sit in hot water to kill her sins, and handcuffed to her bed so she wouldn't run off with some boy. Then, the moment she was set free, she ran off with the first man she met. Now I've given up. I'm just hanging around until one day I can't take any more—then I'll go."
"But you said you loved her!" I cried out. Didn't you stay when you loved? Could pity be the same as love?
"Let's go in," he said gruffly. "There's Kitty's car. She's home, and there will be hell to pay. Don't say anything. Let me do the talking."
Kitty was in the kitchen pacing the floor.
"Well!" she shouted when we came in the back way.
"Where ya been? Why ya look so guilty? What ya been doin?"
"We went to the movies," said Cal, stalking by Kitty and heading for the stairs. "We ate dinner in the kind of restaurant you seem to hate. Now we're going to bed. I suggest you say good night to Heaven, who must be as tired as I am, after cleaning this house from top to bottom before noon."
"She ain't done one damn thin on my lists!"
snapped Kitty. "She went off with ya an left this house a mess!"
She was right. I hadn't really done much
housecleaning, since nothing ever seemed to get messy and dirty, and Kitty seldom bothered to check.
I tried to follow where Cal led, but Kitty reached out and seized my arm. Cal didn't look back.
"Ya damned stupid kid," she hissed. "Ya put my best china in t'washer, didn't ya? Don't ya know I neva use my Royal Dalton and Lenox unless there's company? It's not fer every day! Ya done chipped my plates, two of em! Ya done stacked my cups, broke a handle! Cracked anotha! Didn't I tell ya neva t'stack my cups, but t'hang em up?"
"No, you never told me that. You just said don't stack them."
"I did tell ya! I warned ya! Ya don't do what I say not t'do!"
Slap slap slap.
"How many times do I have t'tell ya?"
Slap slap slap.
"Didn't ya see t'hooks under t'shelves—didn't ya?"
Sure, I'd seen the hooks, and hadn't known what they were for. She hadn't had the cups hung from the hooks. I tried to explain, to apologize, promising to pay for the plates. Her eyes grew scornful. "How ya gonna do that, dummy? Those dishes cost eighty-five dollars a place settin—ya got that kind of dough?"
I was shocked. Eighty-five dollars! How could I know the fancy dishes in the dining-room breakfront were only for looking at, never for using?
"Yer a damned fool—that's my best—took me foreva payin fer all those cups, saucers, plates, an thins—now ya gone an ruined my thins—goddam Jesus Christ idiot hill-scum trash!"
Her pinching grasp hurt my arm. I tried to tug free, "I won't do it again, Mother. I swear I won't!"
"Yer damned right ya won't do it again!"
Wham! She punched my face, once, twice, three times!
I staggered backward, off balance, feeling my eye beginning to swell as my nose began to bleed from blows she threw like a boxer. "Now ya git upstairs an stay in that room all day tomorra—with t'door locked. No church an no food until ya kin come down an make me believe yer really sorry t'have ruined my best thins that should be hand-washed."
Sobbing, I ran for the stairs, for the little room with the furniture Cal and I had chosen, hearing Kitty swearing behind me, saying such awful things about hill-scum trash I felt those words would be forever engraved on my brain. In the hall I collided with Cal.
"What's wrong?" he asked with alarm, then caught rue and forced me to hold still so he could see my face.
"Oh, God," he groaned when he saw my injuries.
"Why?"
"I chipped her best plates. . broke a handle off a cup . put her wooden-handled knives in the washer. .
."
He strode off, descended the stairs, and down there I heard him raise his voice for the first time.
"Kitty, because you were abused as a child is no reason for you to abuse a girl who tries to do her best."
"Ya don't love me," she sobbed.
"Of course I do."
"NO YA DON'T! Ya think I'm crazy! Ya'll leave me when I'm ole an ugly. Ya'll marry some otha woman, younga than me."
"Please, Kitty, let's not go through this again."
"Cal , . . didn't mean t'do it. Neva mean t'hurt her. Or hurt ya. I know she's not really bad . . it's jus somethin about her. . somethin about me, don't understand it . . .
Cal, I got me yearnins t'night."
Oh, God, what went on beyond their bedroom wall had taught me only too well why he stayed on and on, despite all the ways she had of castrating him.
In that bedroom with the door shut and locked, he was putty in her hands. She didn't blacken his eyes, or make his nose bloody. What she did for him made him smile in the morning, made his eyes bright, his steps light.
The next morning was Sunday, and Kitty
forgave me for chipping her china, forgave me for breaking a cup handle and ruining an expensive knife.
. . now that she had Cal under her thumb again. Yet when Cal and I were in the car, waiting for her to finish checking to see what I'd failed to do, he said without looking my way, "I promise to do all I can to help you find Tom. And when you're ready to go to Boston to see your mother's parents, I'll do some detective work myself, or hire others to find your mother's family. They must have been very wealthy, for I hear a Tatterton Toy Portrait Doll costs several thousand dollars. Heaven, you must show that doll to me one day—the day you fully trust me."
To prove how much I did trust him, while Kitty napped upstairs that very afternoon Cal and I entered the basement. First I had to put in a load of Kitty's clothes, and while the washer spun I opened my precious suitcase of dreams and lovingly lifted out the doll. "Turn your back," I ordered, "so I can straighten her gown, put her hair in order. . . and then look, and tell me what you think."
He seemed stunned to see the bride doll with her long silver-gold hair. For long moments he couldn't speak. "Why, that's you with blond hair," he said. "How beautiful your mother must have been. But you are just as lovely. . ."
Hurriedly I wrapped the doll again, tucked her away. For some reason I felt deeply disturbed. After seeing the doll, why did Cal look at me as if he'd never seen me before?
There was so much I didn't know. So much to keep me awake at night in the small room with so much space still taken up by all the things Kitty refused to move out. Again Kitty and Cal were arguing, over me.
"Stop telling me no!" said Cal in a low but intense voice. "Last night you said you wanted me every day, every night. Now you shove me away. I'm your husband."
"Kin't let ya. She's right next door. Where ya wanted her."
"YOU put her in our bed! But for me she'd still be here between us!"
"I went in there—walls ain't thick enough.
Makes me self-conscious t'know she kin hear."
"That's why we have to get rid of all your stuff.
Then we could put her bed on the other wall, much farther away. You do have a huge kiln in your classroom. And all the other junk should go as well."
"It's not junk! Ya stop callin my thins junk!"
"All right. They're not junk."
"T'only time I kin get a rise out of ya is when ya defend her—"
"Why, Kitty, I didn't know you wanted a rise out of me."
"Yer mockin me. Yer always mockin me by sayin that, when ya knows what I mean . ."
"No, I wish to God I knew what you really are up to. I wish I knew who and what you are, what thoughts go on beneath all that red hair—"
"Ain't re
d! Auburn! Titian . . ." she flared hotly.
"All right, call it whatever you want. But I know this: if ever you hit Heaven again, and I come home to see her nose bleeding, her face bruised, her eyes black . . .
I'll leave you."
"Cal! Don't say thins like that! I love ya, I do!
Don't make me cry . . . kin't live without ya now. I won't hit her, promise I won't. Don't wanna anyway. .
."
"Then why?"
"Don't know. She's pretty, young—an I'm genial old. Soon I'll be thirty-six, and that's not far from forty. Cal, life ain't gonna be no good afta forty."
"Of course it will." His voice sounded softer, more understanding. "You're a beautiful woman, Kitty, getting better each year. You don't look a day over thirty."
She yelled: "I wanna look twenty!"
"Good night, Kitty," he said with disgust in his voice. "I won't see twenty again, either, but I'm not grieving about it. What did you have when you were twenty but insecurity? You know who and what you are now; isn't that a relief?"
No, apparently knowing who and what she was was the horror of being Kitty.
However, to celebrate Kitty's traumatic thirty-sixth birthday, that summer Cal reserved rooms in a fine hotel near a beach, and in August, the month of the lion, all three of us were under a beach umbrella.
Kitty was the sensation of the beach in her skimpy pink bikini. She refused to leave the shade of an umbrella bright with red stripes. "Skin's delicate, burns easy . . . but ya go on, Heaven, Cal. Don't mind me. I'll just sit here an suffa while ya two have fun."
"Why didn't you tell me you didn't want to come to the shore?"
"Ya didn't ask."
"But I thought you liked to swim and
sunbathe." "That's how much ya know about me—nothin." Nobody had any fun when Kitty didn't.
It was a flop of a holiday, when it could have been so much fun if Kitty had only shared the water with us, but Kitty made her birthday vacation a torture.
The day we returned from vacation, Kitty sat me down at the kitchen table with her large box of manicuring equipment and began to give me my first manicure. I felt ashamed of my short, broken fingernails as I admired her long, perfectly groomed ones, with all the cuticles pushed back, and never a chip—never! My ears perked up when she began her lecture on how to have nails as nice as hers. "Ya gotta stop chewin on yers, an learn how t'be a woman. Don't come naturally Chill girls, all t'gracious ways a woman has t'have. Why, it takes time an trainin t'be a woman, takes a lot of patience with men."
Heaven (Casteel Series #1) Page 28
