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I stepped to the door, then said in a calm voice, "I'll help myself, in my own way, in my own time."

He stood for a moment looking back, like a small boy who'd lost his way, before he closed another door, softly.

seventeen SAVING GRACE

. OUR LIVES IN CANDLEWICK TOOK AN UNEXPECTED TURN after Chuckles died. Mr. Taylor naively accepted my excuse about Chuckles dying in childbirth. One day passed, and in the cage I'd brought back there was another hamster, also pregnant (and little different from the one Kitty had killed), again named Chuckles. It hurt, really hurt, to see that one life more or less really didn't make any difference.

I'm not going to love this one, I told myself. I'm going to be careful not to love anything while Kitty is still in my life.

After this incident, as if the murder had done something to shame her spirit, Kitty slipped into a deep, prolonged silence, sitting for hours in her bedroom just staring into space and combing and brushing her hair, teasing it until she had it standing straight out like a wire brush; then she'd smooth it down again, and repeat and repeat the entire process until it was a wonder she had any hair left.

She seemed to have undergone a drastic personality change. From loud and abrasive she became brooding and too quiet, reminding me somewhat of Sarah. Soon she stopped brushing her hair and doing her nails and face. She no longer cared how she looked. I watched her throw out the best of her lingerie, including dozens of expensive bras. She cried, then fell into a dark pit of reflecti

on. I told myself she deserved whatever she was going through.

For a week Kitty made excuses for not going to work, for staying in bed, staring at nothing. The more Kitty withdrew, the more Cal lost his abstract quality, forgot his moodiness, and took on a new, confident air. For the first time, he seemed in control of his life as Kitty gave up control in hers.

Strange, so strange, I couldn't stop wondering about what was going on. Could it be guilt, shame, and humiliation, so Kitty didn't have the nerve to face another day? Oh, God, let her change- for the better-- for the better, Lord, for the better.

School ended, hot summer began.

Temperatures soared over ninety, and still Kitty was like a walking zombie. On the last Monday in June, I went to find out why Kitty wasn't up and ready to rule over her beauty-salon domain. I stared at Kitty lying on the bed, refusing to look my way or respond to her name. She lay there as if paralyzed. Cal must have thought she was still sleeping when he got up. He came from the kitchen when I called to tell him Kitty was desperately ill. He called an ambulance and had her rushed to the hospital.

At the hospital she was given every test known to medical science. That first night at home, alone with Cal, was very uncomfortable. I more than suspected Cal desired me, and wanted to be my lover. I could see it in the way he looked at me, feel it in the long, uncomfortable silences that came suddenly between us. Our easy relationship had flown, leaving me feeling empty, lost. I held him off by setting a daily routine that wore both of us out, insisting we spend every second we could with Kitty in her private room in the hospital. Every day I was there doing what I could, but Kitty didn't improve, except that she did begin to say a few words. "Home," she kept whispering, "wanna go home."

Not yet, said her doctors.

Now the house was mine to do with as I pleased. I could throw out the hundreds of

troublesome houseplants that were so much work, could put some of those gaudy ceramic pieces in the attic, but I did none of this. I carried on exactly as I'd been taught by Kitty, to cook, to clean, dust, and vacuum, even if it did wear me out. I knew I was redeeming my sinful acts with Cal by working slavishly. I blamed myself for making him desire me in a way that wasn't right. I was dirty, as Kitty had always said I was. The Casteel hill-scum filth coming out. And then, contrarily, I'd think, NO! I was my mother's child, half Bostonian--but--but--and then I'd lose the battle.

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.