In the huge old trees birds were chirping; a yellow canary in a white wicker cage hung from the porch ceiling began its cheerful song. It startled me to hear that singing from such a high place; the bird had been put there, I guessed, to keep it safe from cats and drafts. All her life Fanny had wanted a canary in a white cage; now she had one.
But for the singing of the birds, there were no other noises.
How silent this great house that gave no hint of its inhabitants.
How was it that such a lovely house could
appear so threatening?
nineteen
Found
Casteels
.
SEVERAL TIMES I JABBED AT THAT
DOORBELL. As I STOOD and waited for what
seemed an eternity, I grew more than impatient. Every so often I looked to see if Logan had gone away as I hoped he would, but he hadn't. He leaned against a tree, smiling when I glanced his way.
Faint footsteps sounded inside the house. I stiffened and listened more closely. Slow, sneaky steps . . . then the heavy oak door opened just a wee slot. Dark sloe eyes peered out at me, glittering narrowed eyes that appeared suspicious, unfriendly.
Only Fanny had almost black eyes like that, only Fanny—and Pa. "Go way," said the voice that was undeniably Fanny's.
"It's me—Heaven," I called excitedly. "I've come to see you, to find out how you are. You can't send me away."
"Go way," Fanny whispered more insistently.
"Kin do what I want. An I don't wanna see ya! Don't know ya anymore! Don't need ya anymore! I'm Louisa Wise now. I've got everythin I eva wanted. An I don't want ya comin round t'mess it up."
She could still sting me with her mean, selfish words and ways. Always I'd believed that, underneath all her hostility and jealousy, Fanny loved me. Life had warped her in ways different than it had me.
"Fanny, I'm your sister," I pleaded in a low voice, ashamed Logan would overhear her
"welcome." "I need to talk to you, to see you, and know if you've heard anything about Keith and Our Jane."
"Don't know nothin," whispered Fanny, opening the door a bit wider. "Don't wanna know nothin. Jus go way, leave me alone."
I could see my younger sister had grown into a very pretty girl with long black hair and a figure shapely enough to break many a man's heart. That Fanny would break many hearts without remorse had always been my expectation. Still, I was hurt that Fanny would refuse to let me enter the house, and showed no interest at all in how I'd been, or where I'd been.
"Have you seen Tom?"
"Don't wanna see Tom."
I winced, again stung. "I wrote you time and time again, Fanny Casteel! Didn't you receive my letters?" I demanded, forcefully holding the door open so she couldn't slam it in my face. "Damn you, Fanny!
What kind of person are you anyway? When people are kind and thoughtful enough to write letters, the least you can do is answer—unless you just don't give a damn!"
"Guess ya got t'picture," snapped Fanny in reply.
"Now, you wait a minute, Fanny! You can't slam the door in my face! I'm not going to let you!"
"Ya neva wrote me, not once!" she cried, then turned to look over her shoulder with alarm. Her voice lowered to a whisper again. "Ya gotta go, Heaven."
Urgency was in her eyes, a look of fright. "They're upstairs sleepin. The Reverend an his wife hate t'be reminded of who I am. They've done warned me not t'eva talk t'ya, or any otha Casteel. Neva have heard from Pa since I came." She wiped at a tear that came to the corner of one eye and slid like a dewdrop on her cheek. "I used t'think Pa loved me best; seems he don't." Another tear formed that she didn't wipe away.
"Glad ya look good." Her eyes swept over my face before her full red lips thinned a bit.
"Gotta go now. Don't want em t'wake up an scold me fer talkin t'ya. Ya jus take yerself out of here, Heaven Leigh—don't wanna know ya; wish I'd never known ya; kin't remember nothin good about ya an those ole days when we were younguns in t'hills.
Only rememba stinks an hunger, an cold feet, an neva enough of anythin."
Quickly I thrust my foot in the door when
Fanny would have slammed it shut with more force than my hands alone could resist. "You wait a minute, Fanny Louisa Casteel! I've thought about you night and day for more than two long years—you can't tell me to go away! I want to know how you've been, if you've been treated fairly. I care about you, Fanny, even if you don't care about me. I remember the good times 'when we lived in the hills, and try to forget all the bad. I remember when we used to snuggle up together to keep warm, and I love you, even if you always were a damned pain in the neck."
"Ya get off this porch," sobbed Fanny, crying openly now. "Kin't do nothin fer ya, kin't."
She brutally kicked my foot out of the way and slammed the door. The inside lock was turned, and I stood alone on the porch.
Almost blind with tears, I stumbled down the steps, and Logan was there, sweeping me into his arms and trying to comfort me. "Damn her for talking like that to you—damn her!"
I yanked away, hurting so much from Fanny's indifference I could hardly keep from screaming.
What good did it do to dole out so much love to people who turned against you the moment they no longer needed you?
What did I care if I'd lost Fanny? She'd never been a loving sister anyway . . . why did I hurt so much? "Go away, Logan!" I yelled, swinging my fists at him when he tried to embrace me again. "I don't need you—don't need anybody!"
I turned from him, but he seized me by my arm and swung me around so his strong arms drew me against him. "Heaven!" he cried. "What's wrong?
What have I done?"
"Let me go," I pleaded weakly.
"Now, look," he urgently pleaded, "you're taking out your anger on me when it's Fanny who hurt you. She's always been a hateful sister—hasn't she? I guess I knew all the way here she'd act like she did.
I'm sorry you're so hurt, but do you have to turn on me? I wanted to hang around and be here when you needed me. Need me, Heaven! Don't slap out at me! I haven't done anything but admire, respect, and love you. I could never really believe your pa would sell his kids. I guess I do now. Forgive me for not fully believing until today."
I yanked away. "You mean in all this time you haven't talked to Fanny about me?"
"I've tried many a time to talk to her about you .
but you know how Fanny is. She takes everything and turns it around until she makes herself believe it's her I want to hear about, and not you. Fanny doesn't care about anyone but herself." He blushed and stared down at his feet. "I've found out it's better to leave Fanny alone."
"She still comes on strong, right?" I asked bitterly, guessing that Fanny must have been her usual aggressive self with him. . . and I wondered if he'd fallen, like all the others.
"Yeah," he said, raising his eyes. "Takes a lot of resisting to hold Fanny off . . . and the best way to do that is to stay miles away."
"From temptation?"
"Stop! I do what I can to keep girls like Fanny out of my life. Since you went away, I keep hoping someday a girl named Heaven will be the one to really love me. Somebody sweet and innocent; somebody who knows how to care and how to give. Somebody I can respect. How can I respect anyone like Fanny?"
Oh, God help me! How could he respect me . . .
now?
We walked away from Reverend Wise's home
and didn't even glance back. Obviously Fanny had adjusted well to her new life.
"Logan, now Fanny's ashamed of her old family," I said with tears in my voice. "I thought she'd be glad to see me. There were times when she and I did nothing but fight, but we're blood kin, and I love her just the same."
Again he tried to hold me, to kiss me. I held him off and turned my face aside.
"Do you happen to know where my grandfather is?" I asked in a small voice.
"Sure I know. I visit him from time to time so I can talk to him about you, and often I help sel
l his whittled animals. He's good, you know, really an artist with that knife of his. And he's expecting you. His eyes lit up when I told him you were coming. He said he was going to take a bath, wash his hair, and put on clean clothes."
Again my throat constricted . . . Grandpa was going to take a bath without urging? On his own going to wash his hair and change his clothes?
"Have you seen or heard from Miss Deale?"
"She isn't here anymore," he said, keeping my hand tightly in his. "She left before you did, remember? Nobody's heard from her since. I go by our old school every once in a while, just for old times' sake, and sit on a swing and remember how it used to be. Like I said before, I've even been up to your cabin, and walked in your empty rooms—"
"Oh, why did you do that!" I cried, so ashamed.
"I went there to understand, and I think I do. To think that someone as smart and beautiful as you could come from such as that cabin, and Tom as well, fills me with awe, and so much respect. I don't know if I could have come out of that with all your courage, and all your drive, and when I see Tom—"
"You've seen Tom? When?" I asked eagerly.
"Sure, and soon you'll see him too." He smiled sadly when he saw my expression. "Don't cry. He's fine, and quite a guy, Heaven. You just wait and see."
We were approaching Martin's Road, which
was one of the lesser, poorer areas, about twelve blocks from where Fanny lived in the grandest house of all. "Mrs. Sally Trench runs a nursing home, and she's the one who takes care of your grandpa. I've heard that your father sends money once a month to pay for his stay there."
"I don't care what my father does." But it surprised me to know he could be that caring . . .
sending money to support an old man he'd seldom noticed.
"Of course you care about your father, but you won't admit it. Maybe he did take the wrong road out, but you're alive and well. Fanny seems happy enough to me, and so does Tom. And when you find Keith and Our Jane, no doubt you'll be amazed at how well they both are. Heaven, you've got to learn to expect the best, not the worst; that's the only way you'll give yourself a chance to be happy instead of miserable."
My heart felt heavy, my soul wounded, as I glanced his way. Once I'd believed that kind of philosophy . . . now I didn't. I had tried his way of thinking with Kitty and Cal, doing my best to please both of them, and fate had tricked me, maybe tricked all of us. How could I restore the trusting innocence I'd lost? How could I turn back the clock and this time say no to Cal?
"Heaven . . . I'm never going to love anyone as much as I love you! I know we're both young and inexperienced and the world is full of others who might attract us later on, but right this minute you've got my heart in your hand, and you can throw it down, step on it, and crush it. Don't do that to me."
I couldn't speak, made dumb from all the guilt I felt, all the shame of not being the girl he thought I was.
"Please, look at me. I need you to love me, and now you don't let me touch you, hold you. Heaven, we're not kids anymore. We're old enough now to feel adult emotions—and share adult pleasures."
Another man who wanted to take from me!
"My family gives me lots to worry about. I wonder how I managed to grow at all," I managed to say.
"Seems to me you did a super job of growing—and shaping up." His tentative, troubled smile faded as his eyes went serious, and for a moment I thought I saw in those stormy bliie eyes all the devotion and love an ocean could hold. For me, for me! An eternity of love, caring, and faithfulness. A deep throb stabbed me and made me feel for a moment there was hope, when there couldn't be, not ever.
"What's the matter?" he asked when I began to stride onward at a faster pace. "Have I said something wrong? Again? Remember the day we pledged ourselves to each other?"
I remembered just as much as he did that
wonderful day when we'd lain by the river and made our childish vows to love each other forever. Now I knew nothing lasted forever.
Then it had been easy to make pledges,
thinking neither he nor I would or could ever change.
Now everything had changed. I wasn't worthy of him anymore, if ever I had been. Funny how being a hill scumbag wasn't nearly as humiliating as being what I was since first I had allowed Cal to touch me, just another trampy girl who'd allowed herself to be used by a man.
"I guess you've never had any girlfriend but me?" Bitterness was in my voice that he didn't seem to notice.
"Just dates, casual dates."
We'd reached Martin's Road. And there on the corner was a huge monster of a house, painted a sickly sea-foam green, like froth on the sea, like Kitty's eyes.
The yard about the house was wide, mowed to perfection. It was hard to picture Grandpa shut up in such a big house as that. Every last one of the old rockers on the porch was empty. Why wasn't Grandpa on that grand front porch, whittling?
"If you want, I'll wait out here while you visit with him," Logan said thoughtfully.
I stared at all those tall thin windows, all those steps there had to be inside, and Grandpa might now be as feeble and lame as Granny had been.
The home was on a treelined street. All the houses looked well kept up. Each had a front lawn, and morning newspapers lay on porch steps, or near the doors. Husbands in morning disarray were out walking dogs on leashes.
Many a night I'd visited Winnerrow in dreams when all the streets were dim, empty, and dogs didn't bark, and birds didn't sing, and not a sound was to be heard. Terrible dreams in which I walked alone, always alone, searching for Our Jane, Keith, and Tom.
Never for Grandpa, as if my subconscious had truly believed he'd always be in that hill cabin, somehow surviving, just because I wanted him to.
Logan spoke again. "I've heard that your grandfather helps with the cleaning to pay for his room and board, when your father forgets or is late paying Sally Trench."
The sun, hardly over the horizon, was already blazing-hot, smothering the valley. No refreshing cool breezes blew as they did up in the Willies. And to think all my life I'd believed the valley represented paradise.
"Let's go," Logan said, taking me by the elbow and guiding me across the street and up the brick walk. "I'll wait out here on the porch. Take your time.
I've got all day—all my life—to spend with you."
A fat, frowsy-looking woman in her mid-fifties responded to my timid knock, stared at me with intense interest, then swung the screen door wide and admitted me.
"I've been told my grandfather, Mr. Toby Casteel, is staying here with you," I announced.
"Sure, honey, he's here—an ain't ya a pretty thin, though. Really a pretty thin, ya are, ya truly are.
Love that color hair, those pretty lips—kissin lips, ya could say." She sighed, glanced in a nearby window, and scowled at her own reflection before she turned back to me. "Dear old man, got a soft spot in my heart fer such as him. Took him in when nobody else would. Put him in a nice room, an fed him betta meals than he's eva had before. Lay ya ten t'one on that, twenty t'one. Bettin fool, I am. Have t'be. Kin't stay in this kinda business if ya don't gamble. People's tricky, real tricky. Younguns come an put their parents in here an say they'll pay, an they don't. They go, neva show up agin, an some old daddy or momma sits all their lives away, awaitin an awaitin fer visitors who neva come, an letters nobody writes. It's a shame, a cryin shame, what kids kin do t'parents once they're too old to do em any good."
"I understood my father sends money every month."
"Oh, he does, he does! A fine man, yer father, a real fine lookin an actin man. Why, I rememba him from way back when he were a kid, an all t'gals were hot t'catch him. Kin't say I blame em none—but he sure turned out a lot different than most folks thought he would—he sure did."
What did she mean? Pa was a rotter through and through, and all of Winnerrow had to know that.
She grinned, showing false teeth so white they appeared chalky. "Nice place, ain't it? Yer Heaven Casteel, ain't
ya? Saw yer mom once or twice, a real beauty, really too fine fer this hateful world, an I guess God must've thought t'same thing. Ya got t'same kind of look as she had, tender, like ya kin't take much." She rested her small but friendly eyes on me before she frowned again. "Get ya gone from this place, honey. Ya ain't meant fer t'likes of what we are."
She would have rambled on all day if I hadn't asked to see my grandfather. "I haven't got much time.
I'd like to see my grandfather now."
The woman led me through the dim foyer of the house. I glimpsed old-fashioned rooms with beaded lampshades, browning portraits hanging from ceiling moldings on heavy twisted silken ropes, before I was led up the steep stairs. This huge house seemed terribly old now that I was inside. All the glory of new paint and refurbishings was on the outside. There was nothing fresh and clean inside but the scent of Lysol.
Lysol. . .
Take yer bath now, hill scum.
Use plenty of Lysol, stupid.
Gotta rid ya of Casteel filth.
I shivered.
We passed a room on the second floor that
seemed a page straight from a thirties Sears catalog.
"Ya kin have five minutes with him," I was informed as the woman became more businesslike.
"I've got sixteen people t'feed three meals a day, an yer grandpa has t'do his share of t'work."
Grandpa hadn't ever done his share of the
housework!
How abruptly some personalities could change.
Up three more flights of steep, twisting stairs. The buttocks under that flimsy cotton dress seemed twin wild animals fighting each other—I had to look away.
Oh, how had Grandpa managed to climb these stairs, even once? How did he ever go outside? The higher we went, the older the house appeared. Up here no one cared if the paint was chipped and peeling off, if roaches scuttled all over the floor. Spiders spun webs in dim corners, draped them from chair to table, from lamp to base. What a fright all this would give Kitty! .
Heaven (Casteel Series #1) Page 36
